Sunday, December 24, 2000		Speaking generally

There are no tears for repression
By Chanchal Sarkar

OVER a million people — out of a population of about 50 million — in Burma are what is called "internally displaced". They have been moved from their homes in villages and also towns and forcibly sent elsewhere where they have to do forced and unpaid labour for government projects or are just relocated. We have started making a fuss about people ousted from their villages by big dams and about the slow and inadequate rate of rehabilitating them elsewhere. But we pay no attention to the state of things in a neighbouring country, whose border touches ours.

On the contrary, Indian officialdom has built a policy of mending fences with Burma, a country criticised in most democratic countries for its human rights situation and its military authoritarianism. The Chief of India’s Army Staff paid two visits to Burma this year and New Delhi has just had a visit from the highest-ever level delegation from Burma. One of the main objects of these discussions is to get Burmese help in dealing with the tribal dissidents from India who operate from across the border.

Other countries are indeed hypocritical. Australia, the United States, France and Japan are at times critical of the suppression of democracy in Burma and its human rights record and, simultaneously, bid for Burma’s oil, natural gas, timber, gems and its plan to build a tourism industry. But India should not be involved in hypocrisy of that kind. It is known that in Burma even speaking to a foreigner is looked upon with suspicion and visiting the offices of legal parties there can lead to arrest, imprisonment and worse. The Burmese currency, the Kyat, is down to 350 per US dollar and, if unprotected, would fall to 500. People have an acute shortage of elementary consumer goods and medical attention is severely limited and primitive. It is widely believed, not without cause, that much of the revenue of the Burmese government comes from the growth and sale of narcotics worldwide. An example is 500 million amphetamine tablets (made from 1.2 tons of ephedrine) pushed into Thailand from Burma every year.

The minorities, settled for centuries in their own traditional homelands, are in a very bad way even though the Burmese government claims to have made peace with them. Particularly harassed are the people of the Karenni, Karen Arakan and Shan States. About 100,000 Karens are said to be displaced and about 300,000 Shans. Many of those people live in fear and total deprivation in forests, caves, and wooded island always expecting the Burmese Army to jump on them. In the forests they are often the victims of landmines planted by that Army.

In India Burmese refugees have a hard time. Of the 800 refugees in New Delhi about 600 are recognised and paid a monthly stipend by the UN High Commissioner for Refugees. The stipend is only Rs 1550 and recently it has been cut by Rs 150 and there is delay in payment.

In the very recent joint meeting in Laos of the ASEAN and the European Union, the European Union reiterated its opposition to a soft approach to Burma because of its human rights record which a recent Amnesty International report has criticised strongly. European Union representatives are to visit Burma. ASEAN has been welcoming to Burma and even made it a member despite opposition from some of its members like the Philippines. But India seems quite indifferent as to what the Burmese junta is doing to 50 million people in a country next door.

In our subcontinent reports are one-a-rupee — cheap and prolific. They always prove how little can be said in how many words. Someone has sent me a Bangladesh Country Paper about what is being done about women there, prepared for the Women 2000 meeting of the UN General Assembly.

Of course it has long lists of things that have to be done in 12 critical areas of concern like establishment and strengthening of national women’s machinery like National Council for Women’s Development, the Parliamentary Standing Committee of the Ministry of Women and Children Affairs, Women’s Development Implementation and Evaluation Committee etc. etc. But these I discard as so much guff.

What struck me forcibly are certain tangible steps — such as: 10 per cent reservation for women in gazetted government posts, 15 per cent in non-gazetted posts, increasing day care services so that mothers can work, stipends for girls up to grade twelve, free education for them to the primary level, 60 per cent quota for female teachers, lateral entry for women to government posts. Some of these are way ahead of what India has done. There’s no free education for girls upto the primary level here and no quota for women teachers or for posts in government.

Women in Bangladesh are also most forward in micro-credit where, in groups, they take loans from NGOs like the Grameen Bank for development purposes and repay them to the level of almost 100 per cent. Here, too, India has not measured up to Bangladesh. Literacy for women there is relatively high, 42.2 per cent, and maternal mortality about 3 per thousand live births and these are developments we should know about but don’t care in the least.

What we know today about our women is from figures, statistics and they roll off our backs like water on the backs of ducks. Also, what we see in towns are mostly the ‘have’ class except where we pass jute-and-plastic shanties right near the heart of posh areas like Nehru Park in New Delhi.

A friend of mine has, for the past several months, has been going round with a tape-recorder, recording the stories of women in four villages of West Bengal’s Midnapore district. Now he has put some of the tapes together, edited and published them. They make tearful reading. How much accumulated labour, injustice, blind obedience these women have had to undergo. And how they had reached some shore of security and self-fulfilment through forming groups or samitis. Their stories are worth going into by all of us ‘bystander’ classes. The stories must be written about.