O P I N I O N S

PERSPECTIVE

ON RECORD
NDA govt sabotaged reservation Bill for women: Brinda Karat
by Tripti Nath
FOR almost two decades as the General Secretary of the All India Democratic Women’s Association (AIDWA), Brinda Karat has lent her voice of reason to empower unorganised textile workers, handloom workers, street vendors, disabled women and those from the minority community.

Quota politics: Diluting the concept
of creamy layer
by V. Eshwar Anand
ON the face of it, the Union Cabinet’s decision to increase the income ceiling for determining the “creamy layer” among the Other Backward Classes (OBCs) from Rs 1 lakh to Rs 2.5 lakh a year is purely aimed at wooing the voters in the ensuing Lok Sabha elections.

OPED

PROFILE
Suman, a champion of food security
by Harihar Swarup
RARE are persons like Suman Sahai, so committed and dedicated to ensuring food security and the livelihood of farmers and tribal communities. Her ‘Gene campaign’ spread over a decade saved India’s prestigious “Basmati” rice, cotton, mustard and potato particularly from the “kiss of death”. Basmati, like Darjeeling tea, is India’s most easily identifiable premium and a prized product.

COMMENTS UNKEMPT
Food and cooking as a lavish ritual
by Chanchal Sarkar
FROM his rock edicts all over India historians have recovered that, after he accepted Buddhism, Asoka (273 BC-232 BC) reduced the animals slaughtered daily in his royal kitchen from thousands to three: two peacocks and a dear. And even this was later abolished. In other times with other rulers food and cooking were an elaborate and lavish ritual.

DIVERSITIES — DELHI LETTER
TV series on nature, environment and writers’ retreat
by Humra Quraishi
PEAK time here in New Delhi as far as people’s arrival and activities go. No, my evenings don’t invariably end in any of those eventful peaks as I get tired after I go covering a this or that, peak. I’m just back after attending the French Ambassador’s reception for Nicolas Hulot who is the much famed producer of the French television series ‘Ushuaia’' on environment and nature.

REFLECTIONS

PERSPECTIVE

ON RECORD
NDA govt sabotaged reservation Bill for
women: Brinda Karat
by Tripti Nath

FOR almost two decades as the General Secretary of the All India Democratic Women’s Association (AIDWA), Brinda Karat has lent her voice of reason to empower unorganised textile workers, handloom workers, street vendors, disabled women and those from the minority community. Member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of India (Marxist), Brinda is proud to be associated with the AIDWA. Brinda was drawn to politics in the late sixties while working in England. “At the time of the Vietnam War, I was influenced by the anti-war movement. I started thinking seriously about politics and getting attracted to the ideology of Marxism,” she says, recalling her change from an apolitical being to a political person, in an exclusive interview to The Tribune. Excerpts:

Q: Why is the government dilly-dallying on the passage of the Women’s Reservation Bill?

A: Well, there can only be one interpretation. The National Democratic Alliance government in spite of the best opportunity, a pledge given in writing by the main Opposition party that they will support the Bill, refused to put it to vote. Therefore, it is primarily responsible for the sabotage of the Bill. Worse, it came up with an alternative of double member constituencies.

Q: Will women organisations be able to persuade political parties to give more tickets to women in the ensuing elections?

A: Frankly I’m not very hopeful because if they refused to pass the Bill, they are not interested in increasing the representation of women. There may be a token increase in representation but it would certainly be inadequate to strengthen the democratic processes.

Q: How will women organisations convince political parties of the winnability of women candidates?

A: I can only speak on behalf of the AIDWA. Our understanding is that at present, we have to make a difference in the political agenda of parties along with women’s reservation. Elections are a time when we have to assess the performance of political parties on various fronts — political, social, legal and economic. On all these fronts, the NDA government has failed to help women. The Bill on Domestic Violence has been put in cold storage. The original draft was most atrocious on domestic violence. The right to residence (matrimonial home) of a woman who is being assaulted was not even mentioned in the Bill. When women’s organisations raised an objection, the government set up a parliamentary select committee. Though it submitted its recommendations a year ago, it has not been implemented. Why is the government not recognising that today in India more women are killed in cross bedroom terrorism than all those killed in terrorist attacks or wars that India has fought?

Q: Is the CPI(M) open to the idea of giving women a legitimate chance to contest in the polls?

A: We fought only 70 seats in the last Lok Sabha elections. There is a limited number of seats that we contest. So the scope for tickets for women is limited.

Q: The National Commission for Women has initiated a debate on the review of the legislation on dowry. Is this a meaningful exercise?

A: The killing of women is the end result of the practice of dowry. A survey by AIDWA on dowry in 16 states last September indicated that dowry has even spread to communities where it was not practised (it is mostly practised in the upper caste urban communities). The study concluded that it is now being practised among the minority community besides tribals and dalits.

Q: What is your stand on death penalty for rapists?

A: The conviction rate is well below 15 per cent. There is reluctance by the authorities concerned to give maximum punishment under the existing law. If death penalty is included in the statute book, it would be a guarantee to further leniency because no one pronounces a death sentence. Secondly, it would increase the vulnerability of the rape victim to murder.

Q: Why has the NDA government failed to provide meaningful economic opportunities to women?

A: Wage workers are facing problems of unemployment and lack of work opportunities. We have just completed a survey of two villages, one each in Hissar and Rohtak in the supposedly prosperous state of Haryana to look at the women in 500 households. In both villages, we found that agricultural workers are not getting more than 35 days of work in the entire year. What do they do for the rest of the year? They are eating much less than they did ten years ago. Nutritional deficiencies are on the rise. The rural per capita calorie intake has come down by 300 calories. This would be much lower for women.

Q: About honour killings, the AIDWA passed a resolution upholding the human and democratic right of every adult to choose his or her partner. How did this come about?

A: The convention is part of the whole struggle against honour killings and self-proclaimed law givers. The most horrendous case was reported from Hoshiarpur in November where a gang of Rajputs killed a Jat Sikh youth who had married a woman from their community. The struggle for women’s emancipation is very closely linked to the abolition of the caste system. Personal assertions as choice of marriage partners, frienships, relationships, interaction are very closely and strongly shaped by the iron framework of caste. Where a woman rebels and crosses the caste rekha, the community perceives it as a crime and thinks that she has to be taught a lesson to maintain the so-called purity of the caste. In the caste system, women’s chastity is equated with women’s honour and the centre of the entire caste system is control over women. We have found the most savage and barbaric violence wherever upper caste women got married to men from lower caste. This is happening particularly in North India and states like Punjab and Haryana. An extremely dangerous development has been the proliferation of caste panchayats in Haryana and all areas of Western Uttar Pradesh where there is a challenge to democratic and judicial processes. The extra-constitutional authorities take the law into their hands and meet out murderous sentences.

Quota politics: Diluting the concept of creamy layer
by V. Eshwar Anand

ON the face of it, the Union Cabinet’s decision to increase the income ceiling for determining the “creamy layer” among the Other Backward Classes (OBCs) from Rs 1 lakh to Rs 2.5 lakh a year is purely aimed at wooing the voters in the ensuing Lok Sabha elections. The Centre may have been guided by the recommendations of the National Commission for Backward Classes (NCBC) following demands from the OBCs, on the ground that the existing limit of Rs 1 lakh was “too low”. However, there was absolutely no justification for the government to more than double the income ceiling and exacerbate societal tension.

The Supreme Court order to eliminate the creamy layer (comprising the socially and economically advanced sections among the castes benefiting from reservation) is yet to find acceptance mainly because of the difficulties in identifying this category. While false income certificates are easier to obtain than bogus caste certificates, the government has done little to prevent the misuse of reservation for the poor even though the income limit for determining the creamy layer had been fixed 10 years ago.

The NCBC, headed by Justice Ram Surat Singh, was constituted in October, 2002, to review the income criteria for excluding the creamy layer among the OBCs. The Union Government directed it to evolve a formula for periodic revision of the criteria and the income for determining the creamy layer.

In the Indira Sawhney and others versus the Union of India (November 1992), the Supreme Court had directed the Centre and the states to specify the basis of applying the relevant and requisite socio-economic criteria to exclude the creamy layer from the OBCs. Accordingly, the Union Ministry of Personnel and Training, on the recommendations of the expert committee headed by Justice Ram Nandan Prasad, issued an order on September 8, 1993, stipulating that the rule of exclusion would apply to children of persons holding constitutional positions. Families owning irrigated land, which was equal to or more than 85 per cent of the ceiling limit in terms of irrigated land (as per the State ceiling laws) and persons having a gross annual income of Rs 1 lakh or above or possessing wealth above the exemption limits prescribed in the Wealth Tax Act for three consecutive years (incomes for salaries or agricultural land not clubbed) are also excluded.

The Centre has now extended the income limit to Rs 2.5 lakh. Is it justifiable? For one thing, the increase does not reflect the Supreme Court’s concern on the issue. For another, it makes a mockery of its ruling. In fact, the apex court’s rationale behind excluding the creamy layer from the ambit of reservations is that the beneficiaries will have to be phased out of reservations as they moved out of the ladder. However, if the present trend is any indication, there seems to be no effort to phase out reservations but continue them in perpetuity.

If today the income limit for an OBC family stood at Rs 2.5 lakh, after some time, it is bound to be raised further to help fairly comfortable middle-class families. Thus, most OBC families can still continue to avail themselves of the reservation benefit, with the promise of further income upgrades in the future. This is a gross abuse of the concept of creamy layer by the political bosses to suit their partisan ends.

The country is already paying a heavy price because of its reservation policy that compromises meritocracy at the altar of mediocrity. There is no denying the fact that India must always place foremost the interest of the depressed sections. But it is very short-sighted to imagine that this interest will be served by turning out third-rate IAS officers, scientists, engineers, doctors and teachers who happen to be SCs, STs or OBCs. In individual instances, this might mean a labouring family’s transition to middle class status. But worthless qualifications will not enable him/her to consolidate promotion. Moreover, it is a pity that the political bosses, in their anxiety to woo vote banks, refuse to understand that the short-cut is doing incalculable harm not only to education but also to public faith in professionals and the system as a whole.

Clearly, every enlightened citizen needs to look at the reserved quota beneficiary’s standard of service to his/her clientele. What will be the standard of his contribution as a prospective medical specialist in a government hospital or a technocrat in a public sector undertaking? Will a heart patient allow surgery if he knows that the specialist in question has come to wield the scalpel purely on account of favoured academic treatment based on caste considerations?

The question should be examined dispassionately, particularly in the context of globalisation. The response to global competition should logically be to heighten standards rather than to lower them. It is not that children from the socially backward sections should be consigned to permanent poverty. But the redressal of their socio-economic deprivation is not to give them academic seats, government jobs or in-service promotions on a platter.

Ideally, the Union Government should review the issue de novo on a state-by-state basis, examine such anomalies as Karnataka’s “backward” and “more backward” communities, and decide the extent to which the policy of reservation has upgraded the depressed classes and helped to strengthen the common Indian label. Ideally too, special privileges should be phased out gradually to ensure a level-playing field to all citizens irrespective of caste, sub-caste, colour or creed.

It is doubtful if the new government that emerges at the Centre after the Lok Sabha elections would be strong enough to contemplate so bold a step. The practical difficulties would be less daunting, however, if all political parties were at least persuaded to acknowledge the need to rethink the problem afresh.

OPED

PROFILE
Suman, a champion of food security
by Harihar Swarup

RARE are persons like Suman Sahai, so committed and dedicated to ensuring food security and the livelihood of farmers and tribal communities. Her ‘Gene campaign’ spread over a decade saved India’s prestigious “Basmati” rice, cotton, mustard and potato particularly from the “kiss of death”. Basmati, like Darjeeling tea, is India’s most easily identifiable premium and a prized product. Like Champaign wine from France, international consumers treat Basmati as a luxury food. So when an attempt was made to breed a genetically modified (GM) Basmati, like the experiment of cultivating BT cotton, she swung into action, creating awareness of the likely disaster. It was conclusively proved that the economics of cultivating GM Basmati and Bt cotton were not in favour of farmers. The seed is about four times more expensive than the good local hybrids. It was, therefore, a moment of fulfillment for Suman when she was honoured with the prestigious Norman Borlaug award for 2004. The award, named after the famous scientist who helped India’s Green Revolution, will be formally presented to her by President A.P.J. Abdul Kalam.

Dr Suman Sahai had a brilliant academic career. Mysteries of genetics always fascinated her. As a B.Sc student of Lucknow’s prestigious Isabella Thoburn College and later as a pupil of M.Sc (Botany) at Lucknow University, her first love was genetics. The more she read about the subject, the more she got curious about the gene. New Delhi’s Indian Agricultural Research Institute, which has popularly come to be known as “Pusa Institute” was, perhaps, the only institute at that time which gave a degree in Genetics. She joined the Institute as a research scholar and after months of hard work obtained Ph D in the subject. Her work in genetics drew attention abroad and she got an offer from the University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada. She left India and taught Genetics at Alberta and later moved on to the University of Chicago. Finally, she landed at the Institute of Human Genetics, Heidelberg University in Germany as Professor. For the German Institute, Dr Suman was a rare find.

She says even though “I have spent long years in Canada, USA and Germany, I never wanted to live abroad. I am deeply rooted in India and always pined for my country”. She had not to wait for long; she got the opportunity for home coming when GATT threw up issues which concerned India directly. “I was greatly concerned by GATT, issues raised at the forum with a bearing on India. I wanted to do something... saw the impending danger as Genetics specialist and decided to return to my country”, she told this writer at a two-hour-long chat.

Jayaprakash Narayan’s movement before the Emergency too had also left a profound impact on her. Young men and women, who were the backbone of the JP movement, formed the core of her Gene Campaign. She says “after returning to India, I started looking for the young and budding of the JP movement. I must have sent hundreds of postcards at the addresses I struggle to find”. Her persistence and dedication ultimately bore fruit; she found the persons she was looking for and an activist of the JP movement, Mohan Prakash, was one of them. He was as committed to the causes espoused by Suman as she herself and formed the nucleus of the Gene Campaign.

A group of likeminded people with diverse backgrounds led by Suman joined hands and started the NGO “Gene Campaign” with the avowed objective of ensuring food security, rural livelihood, farmers’ rights, indigenous knowledge and related issues. She says “as a scientist trained in genetics, I saw the threat to genetic resources both in the lab and the field, coming from institutional factors like IPRS, as well as unsustainable use and flawed policy”. Gene Campaign works for improvement in these areas, having realised that for developing societies, bio-resources are the basis for food and livelihood security and income generation. Its 35-odd Core Group is spread over 17 states, serves as centres for public education and awareness about the new developments related to agriculture, food security and the livelihood security of farming and tribal communities.

Having rescued Basmati, cotton, potato and other commodities from the “death kiss”, Suman’s next crusade is against what she perceives as the “powerful GM technology having very aggressive markets”. Six multinationals own this technology. Unfortunately, “this technology is promoted by the government”, she says. Suman has been stressing “let us see if this technology is beneficial to Indian farmers. Do the test and find out”. Going by the past experience, this technology has proved disastrous to India. Experiment in Basmati and cotton have been examples. Suman is of the firm view that GM technology is of no relevance to Indian farmers.

COMMENTS UNKEMPT
Food and cooking as a lavish ritual
by Chanchal Sarkar

FROM his rock edicts all over India historians have recovered that, after he accepted Buddhism, Asoka (273 BC-232 BC) reduced the animals slaughtered daily in his royal kitchen from thousands to three: two peacocks and a dear. And even this was later abolished. In other times with other rulers food and cooking were an elaborate and lavish ritual. A friend of mine who is very knowledgeable about cuisine and is also a talented cook has discovered a Persian manuscript of the time of Shahjahan called Nushka-e-Shahjahani which deals with cooking, garnishing and serving. Of the Mughal emperors, Babur preferred the food of his native Turkistan. Humayun was not a gourmand. Akbar, Jahangir, Shahjahan and later, Bahadur Shah Zafar were the emperors who paid a lot of attention to food and eating.

Nushka-e-Shahjahani is a very elaborate cook book from which, says my friend, there is a great deal to be learnt. Some of the bigger Indian-food restaurants of Delhi produced large, leather-bound menus which describe categories of dishes with a smattering of explanative history to impress their guests. At first reading they seem to dispense quite a bit of knowledge, but when one is confronted with what the royal and much respected chefs of Shahjahan (recruited from a variety of countries) who practised creative cooking in the royal Dastarkhwans, then the heavy-leather menus of Delhi’s Mughlai restaurants seem very flimsy in content.

My friend might have been exaggerating a teeny bit but the Emperor Akbar, according to her, made cuisine a separate division of his administration under an officer with almost prime-ministerial rank. For Jahangir, as is well known, Kashmir was the most beautiful place in Hindustan and he introduced Kashmiri flavours into his royal cuisine.

For the Mughals, pulao was of many kinds with many names and had to be cooked to perfection — moti pulao, naranj pulao (with oranges), mutanjan pulao, puri pulao and rishte pulao, for instance, each one different. Surprisingly, the Mughals added very, very few spices. Most used were cloves, cinnamon, cardamom, coriander, aniseed and fresh ginger. However, a clear import from the cooking of Turkey, Persia, Afghanistan and other countries of Central Asia were dried fruits, tamarind and turmeric. Sugar and lemon juice were added to qalyas and pulaos. Some kababs were floated in sugar syrup. Some regional dishes incorporated dried apricot, turnip, pumpkin, potatoes and pepper.

The Mughals were, of course, certified non-vegetarians and used lamb and sheep in their pulaos. Cooking was with animal fat or pure ghee called roghan zard. Rice came from various parts of the empire — waterfowl and special vegetables from Kashmir, fruits arrived from all corners of the country and even from across the borders.

Nushka-e-Shahjahani not only lists recipes but gives directions about how to clean and wash fish and tenderise the bones, how to make paneer, how to colour pulao and garnish dishes. Heating, direct and indirect, is instructed. Decorating and flavouring with saffron and other aromatic herbs is advised. A wide variety of cooking vessels are described. All this, as my friend says, is from but one manuscript. Geography, history, customs and experimentation added up to a whole range of cuisine which were part of a sophisticated civilisation.

***

What ails India

Whenever one comes across a lecture with the title “What Ails the Nation” one is almost certain of being served a large helping of preachy guff and moralisation. Exceptions are very, very few. Recently I came across the text of one such — a lecture by Dr P.C. Alexander, one of an annual series in honour of a distinguished administrator who belonged to the Indian Civil Service — S. Ranganathan. In a very lucid and systematic exposition Dr Alexander has listed the ailments under: lack of national integration, absence of a healthy party system with a limited number of parties and all-pervasive corruption.

Almost any politician, civil servant or even a disgusted citizen would have used the same categories and trotted out “clitch, clitch, clitch” as a tower of the British Labour Party, Earnest Bevin, once described speeches by his arch rival, Herbert Morrison. Dr Alexander does not discover new truths. But the old ones have been expressed in such an orderly and well-argued way that even those who blame them day in and day out are left full of praise for one who has, in a lifetime of experience in service, recognised the weaknesses of 57 years of independence.

He traces the journey from deliberate imperial divide-and-rule to the communalism which still stains our society. From caste to excessive and irreversible reservation. From an inability to educate the people of the country to more and more divisive diversity and demands for “autonomy” rather than a quest for unity leading to an ultimate lack of governance. From the anarchy brought on by armed People’s War Group, Naxalites and Maoist movements to the vengeful violence against “outsiders” in a state. The inability to break-free from the Congress system despite Gandhiji’s early warning that the Congress should be wound up. The break up into innumerable parties including many regional ones which today claim power even at the Centre. Defections and yet more defections and leaving decisions to supremos who themselves have no experience of the ground roots of electoral politics. The want of inner-party democracy and the growth of a “nomination culture”. The lack of accountability of elected representatives and the failure of political parties to keep and publish proper accounts, are all treated tersely.

Finally, a description of the corruption that envelopes and taints the senior most in our politics and bureaucracy, brings Dr Alexander to the close of a lecture that is never dreary and repetitive and would surely have left his listeners appreciative. Unfortunately, there is no solution offered except character and nishkama karma — but they are the most difficult to find in modern India. Even so it is worth going over the ailments which hold India back despite all the natural resources and capabilities of its billion men and women.

DIVERSITIES — DELHI LETTER
TV series on nature, environment and writers’ retreat
by Humra Quraishi

PEAK time here in New Delhi as far as people’s arrival and activities go. No, my evenings don’t invariably end in any of those eventful peaks as I get tired after I go covering a this or that, peak. I’m just back after attending the French Ambassador’s reception for Nicolas Hulot who is the much famed producer of the French television series ‘Ushuaia’' on environment and nature. And what was he doing in our country when we are ruthlessly and systematically damning the environment and nature?

He and his team were in Ladakh and its interiors for the last few weeks, filming and shooting for this forthcoming series. He was so taken up by the shots he’d taken that whilst he described them to me his eyes gleamed and the skin moved under the tanned layer.

With the French around can the British be far away? No sir. And for some inexplicable reason or not really so, British Council Director Edmund Marsden’s invite for the preview of the feature film ‘In Othello’ by Roysten Abel, was for the same evening and for precisely the same time Feb 6 at 6.30 pm. Obviously, I couldn’t have possibly stretched myself to have a simultaneous dekho at the two, so Othello had to be bypassed.

It’s precisely on the same day and time that Roli Books’ Pramod Kapoor decided to host a party for the coming writers’ retreat. Since that was held in far-flung GK 11 (one extreme end of South Delhi), I couldn’t have retreated all that distance to have attended that. But I must mention here that as far as my knowledge goes this is the only publishing house which holds an annual writers’ retreat (Pramod, I’m told, takes a bunchful of moody writers all the way to his family home at Mussoorie) but this idea should and ought to spread.

I wonder why mention of Roli Books does get me write about their Managing Editor Kishwar Ahluwalia’s forthcoming wedding to Lord Meghnad Desai, the well known economist of UK. I have known Kishwar for some years, first through her parents (her father Mr Rosha had earlier served as IG of Police in Jammu and Kashmir and later in Punjab and Haryana) and then, more recently, I have been meeting her on the common social circuit of New Delhi. A second marriage for her and also for Lord Desai; her two children from the previous marriage are studying in the US and his brood of three from the first liaison live quite settled in the UK. A couple of days back when I spoke to Kishwar she told me that by midweek, Desai would be here and she would start her travels with him. It’s only in April that the wedding will take place in New Delhi, followed by round two in London.

Humane angle

As we go along the path of comings and goings, I must mention about Dr Glen D Paige. He is Professor Emeritus of Political Science at Hawaii University and also the founder president of the Centre for Global Non-violence (Honolulu). He was here to deliver lectures. Two aspects I wish to highlight. He was absolutely categorical when he said that a religious person isn’t necessarily a spiritual person. He cited the example of the American President, with words running along the strain — US President Bush is a practising Christian and yet he ordered war on Iraq which resulted in so much of human misery and killings. So being religious is not the end all but it’s only when you see the human being and human life from a humane angle that you actually go a step ahead.

He also came up with a whole list of dos — we must make an effort to interact with people from different faiths and then question. He gave the example of Jain monks — why don’t we ask them the whys to what they eat and the rationale behind the time factor etc (Jain monks eat before sunset because of the rationale that digestion is actually affected by the sun rays etc and it is only vegetarian fare and again they have a strong rationale behind it) or the fact that meaning of each word of the prayers chanted by the various religious followers is again of great relevance.

Dr Paige gave the example of his close friends being anti-Muslim. He got his man to see and hear a Muslim scholar say the Namaaz reciting the exact meaning in each word and line and with that his friend’s anti-Muslim or anti-Islam bias got so completely changed. For each religion tries to take you up towards a broader outlook where human beings are not slotted along divides. It’s time we developed our set of Dr Paiges in each little town of the country

Valentine’s Day

Here the Valentine’s Day fever has begun to take charge. Invites getting thrown, tables and chairs getting booked for those hooked. Will keep you update on this.

REFLECTIONS

— Shri Krishna, (Bhagavad Gita)