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Monday,
July 28, 2003, Chandigarh, India  
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Incursion in Subansiri Delaying tactics Rape redefined |
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How not to combat AIDS
Man with a mission
Has the IMDT Act outlived its purpose? Pandits’ pain of dislocation
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Incursion in Subansiri THE latest incursion by a Chinese patrol across the Line of Actual Control in Arunachal Pradesh underscores the urgent need to resolve the Sino-Indian border dispute. The Minister of External Affairs, Mr Yashwant Sinha, has admitted in Parliament that a Chinese patrol last month transgressed the LAC in the Asaphila area in Upper Subansiri district of Arunachal Pradesh and that India had taken up the issue with China. Beijing has come out with a statement that it were the Indians who crossed the LAC and not its forces. The Chinese government has also used the occasion to rub in its claim to the entire Arunachal Pradesh. Mr Sinha has stated that this "is an area where there are differences in the perception of the LAC between the two countries", pointing out at the same time that the Chinese had not observed the specific provision in the 1996 agreement between India and China to deal with situations involving contacts between patrols of the two sides. While the one-month old incursion by the Chinese has now become public and led to verbal exchanges between the two countries, it is clear from Mr Sinha's statement that the issue is sought to be sorted out by diplomatic means and not by the men on the ground. Hopefully, the two countries will continue to display enough maturity to ensure that such violations of the LAC — or its interpretation — do not vitiate the ongoing process of improving relations between India and China. The two nations cannot afford to set the clock back to the times when every incident aroused passions and caused more complications for finding a solution of the border dispute. Luckily, the channel of communications between India and China are open and there are mechanisms to deal with such situations so that they do not blow up into major furores. The recent Chinese incursion and the Beijing statement following it make it necessary for the two countries to resolve their border disputes in both eastern and western sectors without more loss of time. Hopefully, the two nations will realise that they cannot allow their own perceptions of the border to stand in the way of improvement in bilateral relations. It is in recognition of this need that during Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee's recent visit to China both sides decided to have high-level talks with the specific purpose of narrowing their differences on the border issue. National Security Adviser Brajesh Mishra from the Indian side and Executive Vice-Foreign Minister Dai Pingguo from the Chinese side have been nominated to hold these talks. Needless to say, both command the confidence of the political leaderships in the two countries and are, therefore, in a position to hold purposeful talks aimed at resolving the border dispute forever. The task before Mr Brajesh Mishra and Mr Dai is crucial and delicate. Enough groundwork has been done by the Joint Working Groups of the two countries on the border dispute. The talks at their level have to untangle the stubborn knots. They should not lose much time to begin their exercise. |
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Delaying tactics THE Supreme Court notices to the Union Government and the oil PSUs, HPCL and BPCL, on a public interest litigation challenging the Centre’s decision to disinvest its stakes in these two public sector companies without seeking approval of Parliament can delay the privatisation process substantially. Perhaps that is the intention of the Oil Sector Officers’ Association which has filed the PIL. Last-ditch efforts are being made not only in this particular case but in almost every PSU earmarked for privatisation to scuttle the process. Most of the naysayers take a narrow view of the whole scenario because of personal reasons. What is ignored is the fact that the PSUs are in such poor health that any delay can only worsen their condition. Fortunately, courts have, by and large, refrained from taking an obstructionist stance. What is regrettable is that politicians themselves take an ambivalent stand depending on their electoral convenience. That is why no unanimity has developed in spite of the fact that the drive now being carried forward by the BJP-led government was initiated by the Congress. Now that the latter happens to be in the Opposition, it has started finding faults with the process. Ironically, the Congress is a votary of privatisation in the states where it is in power. It is pointless blaming the Congress when there is no unanimity in the ruling front at the Centre itself. However, these are desperate last-ditch efforts. The privatisation process has gathered enough momentum to go through the obstacles sooner than later. Closer home, Punjab’s disinvestment drive has got a fillip following the state government’s success in finding a buyer for the 23.49 per cent shareholding of the Punjab State Industrial Development Corporation (PSIDC) in Punjab Tractors Limited (PTL). The previous two attempts to sell its equity in loss-making Puncom and Punjab Alkalies and Chemicals Limited (PACL) had proved futile. The PSIDC equity in PTL has been picked up by the United Kingdom government-owned Commonwealth Development Corporation (CDC) Group for Rs 218.13 crore at Rs 153 per share. The hesitation of bidders to come to the government’s rescue should be an object lesson for the armchair critics who always crib that an attempt is being made to sell family jewels. In reality, the “jewels” come covered with so much of liability that most professional investors are wary of touching them even with a barge pole. So where is the question of a sellout? |
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Rape redefined RAPE is a subject that has been debated to death. Yet, Indian lawmakers have done little to give teeth to the antiquated rape laws. Out of the 232 rape cases decided in Delhi till May 2003, only 42 led to conviction. In the remaining cases the accused were either acquitted or discharged. A primary reason for the low rate of conviction is the reluctance of the victims to be subjected to "verbal rape" in full public view by the officers of the law during the hearing of the case. Even when women are seduced to have sex on the false promise of marriage, few among them have the courage to seek judicial remedy. The case that was decided in favour of the complainant by the Calcutta High Court should, therefore, be treated as pathbreaking and a wake-up call for the gender-insensitive Indian lawmakers. In the West sex with the false promise of marriage falls in the category of date rape, and there are stringent laws to provide protection to unsuspecting girls. The Calcutta High Court has at least provided a sound basis for the lawmakers to act. It ruled that having sex with a woman by making the false promise of marriage amounts to rape. But the fine print of the case shows the docility of Indian women in resisting emotional and physical abuse in a male-dominated society. The victim after suffering a live-in relationship for years complained only when the man married someone else. In the West at least one-third girls are victims of date rape. In India only a fraction of the cases ever get reported. However, Indian women must share a large part of the blame for the violation of their basic rights as wife, mother and daughter. Several countries now recognise forced sex even with one's "legally wedded wife" as rape. American pressure groups in 1995 prevailed upon the United Nations to adopt a resolution that grants women the right to say no to sex. In India the judicial protection that restitution of conjugal rights enjoys prevents abused wives from spurning the unwelcome advances of their men. Most gender rights groups in India may not even be aware that acquaintance rape or date rape or hidden rape or sex on the false promise of marriage has emerged as a real and relatively common problem in the global village. Much of the attention that has been focussed on this issue is the result of the growing willingness at the global level to acknowledge and address it as part of domestic violence and a violation of women's right. |
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Thought for the day To jaw-jaw is always better than to war-war. —Winston Churchill |
How not to combat AIDS IT is late. The simple, middle-class couple is tense. The man peers at his watch constantly, the woman struggling to keep her composure. Where could their son be at this hour? Has something happened? Who can they ring? Rummaging through his drawer for possible leads reveals a pack of condoms — both shrink horrified as the implication sinks in. Then the father rallies and remonstrates to his wife: “Boys will be boys, but he is wise. He is protecting himself” or words to this effect. The mother sees reason, smiles happily reassured. The young man finally returns from the dark night and sweeps past. The parents look on indulgently, relief and understanding writ large. One of 9 TV spots was screened last year by the public broadcaster, Prasar Bharati, in collaboration with the BBC and sponsored by the National Aids Control Organisation (NACO). Their aim: restructuring Indian social attitudes to “progressive values” to combat HIV/AIDS - “dispelling embarrassment around condoms, to make them commonplace like cabbages”. Let us not talk just now about the deeper implications of breaking parental restraints, creating public acceptance of licentious lifestyles and an unapologetic macho culture. Prasar Bharati donated Rs 40 crore worth of airtime for this campaign. The AIDS communication, prepared jointly with the BBC, had still more massive funding (reportedly Rs 100 crore) from the UK’s official aid. Its development needed several visits to London for key individuals — where, interestingly, the spots were screened prior even to their release in India! The condom-campaign was taken off the public broadcaster in the wake of public protest. This speaks of the understanding external-led research and expertise forge intimate social concerns and strategies. Financial wastefulness is perhaps the lesser part of it. The greater being the severe consequences of erosion of those very family and social holds that minimise promiscuity among the young so far. But, as sections of the elitist media are openly firing their guns on behalf of “recreational sex” and condom lobbies, the battle has only begun. Our huge numbers make everything a huge commercial opportunity, including the commodification of sex. Media channels, already quite gung-ho, will come on cue to make condom-talk hip and breakdown community standards of the acceptable. Already, we are a helpless witness to what was unthinkable a few years ago become printable/viewable today! Will this help combat HIV/AIDS or fuel it? Mass media has the minimal impact (world-wide research) on getting those not using condoms to actual use. But condom lobbies, desperate to grow demand at any cost and looking for financial support from government budgets as their international aid share shrinks, have zeroed on India. Condoms account for barely 7 per cent of the worldwide contraceptive users; developed countries, including Japan where condoms are the mainstay, have not escaped HIV/AIDS. Obviously, condoms have a limited role but offer no magic answer. Increasing promiscuous situations requiring “condom protection” are only counter-productive. Internationally, a discernible shift is there in thinking that protection through delaying the age of sexual initiation, abstaining from sex before marriage, faithfulness in marriage and committed relationships is vital — and successful — in AIDS prevention. Luckily, the majority of our people value these norms. Therefore, the key challenge for AIDS prevention is to nurture and protect the same. The Prasar Bharati-BBC fiasco is only the latest in the unending string of fiascos that has constituted India’s efforts at HIV/AIDS prevention under the earlier strong-armed international direction effectively linked to Indian elite lobbies. A separate vertical effort for AIDS prevention mandated to NACO made it a self-contained empire, dictating North-inspired policies and programmes, despite the fig-leaf cover of decentralised planning. This article is not the occasion to detail the appalling waste of public funds by the misguided HIV/AIDS control programmes since 1992. The stray HIV infections found among prostitutes in Chennai/ Mumbai and drug addicts in Manipur in the late eighties have snowballed to nearly four million despite intensive investments and force-fed strategies. More than 80 per cent of new infections have been reported from Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, Manipur, and Andhra Pradesh despite Mr Chandrababu Naidu’s flamboyant leadership of the condom brigade guided by a Mumbai “advertising guru”. Maharashtra alone has more than half of India’s HIV/AIDS cases, with Mumbai accounting for half of these and serving as the magnet for the vice trade — not only within the country but also for the entire subcontinent. This HIV/AIDS progression has occurred despite concentrated media efforts and “prevention” projects galore in these states that are being considered models for further expanded efforts. Disregarded by the power structures there is, nevertheless, a significant body of expert opinion asserting the medicine itself as possibly worsening the situation. But who is listening? The AIDS programme is a cash-cow for both the media and NGOs, as hundreds of crores of rupees are blown on spreading general AIDS awareness and communication activities concentrated to achieve a behavioral change among vulnerable “high-risk groups”. Behavioral Change Communication (BCC) and Targeted Interventions (TI) are the obtuse technical terms masking a simple formula — condoms and STD treatment/motivation services to groups involved in risky sexual behaviour, i.e. mainly women in prostitution called “commercial sex workers”, truckers, homosexuals, drug addicts and street children. The AIDS prevention agenda has carefully cultivated every influential lobby in the country to change their attitudes about risky sexual behaviour. This is to create an “enabling environment”. The principal target of the World Bank-supported NACO (Phase 2) — ending next year — is to increase “protected sexual encounters” so that 50 per cent of the “sex workers” use condoms 80 per cent of the time! The 1500 crores allocate no funds for basic root- remedial actions — such as working in prostitution supply areas/vulnerable communities with initiatives to stop the influx of girls and women into the vice dens or for rescuing those already trapped and giving such women viable retraining for reintegration into society through decent means to earn their livelihoods or for de-addiction programmes to stop drug-addiction. Nor, for alternative wholesome rest stops along highways that reinforce positive lifestyles. Increasing city brothels and prostitution dens along highways as the prime sources of HIV/AIDS spread should be ringing alarm bells. AIDS-related research meticulously documents such facts, but only to erroneously conclude that there is need for more condoms/STD drugs. Illustration: the Tamil Nadu AIDS Prevention and Control Project’s sixth survey noted an appreciable increase in the number of thugs on the highways, increased group sex and an influx of newcomers into prostitution, many now home-based, making condom promotion difficult. Funded by USAID for seven years at a cost of over $10 million, the overall condom distribution levels increased only incrementally in Tamil Nadu, but this “successful model” resulted in a similarly strategised $ 40 million AVERT project in Maharashtra starting last year. Maharashtra has meticulously mapped 3521 “commercial sex access points” simply for streamlining condom/STD supplies! Those of us who witnessed Sub-Saharan Africa in the late eighties/early nineties obediently follow similar prevention strategies and now note its complete devastation by the worst HIV/AIDS epidemic in the world have grown hoarse saying that this is not how India needs to combat HIV/AIDS. But there is no space to amplify such
voices. The writer is a noted commentator on population, AIDS and related issues. |
Man with a mission I HAD not imagined when I wrote a letter in The Hindu criticising the late Archbishop Benedict Mar Gregorios for spearheading an unwarranted strike by the private college managements in Kerala in the early seventies that I would ever get a response, let alone a quick one. The response, in the same newspaper column, was from Fr John Vallamattom who, as the chief spokesman of the college managements’ association, had been hogging the limelight. A few months after the ill-starred strike was called off, the Archbishop visited our college to inaugurate a students’ programme. I took advantage of the opportunity to get acquainted with him. That was my first and last meeting with the Archbishop, who had a large circle of friends in all religions and castes and introduced to Kerala many rare species of trees and plants he brought every time he visited a foreign country. In this respect, he was like William Carey, the pioneering missionary-cum-botanist, after whom Careya herbacea is named. Vallamattom’s moment of glory was over once the strike, one of the longest in Kerala, fizzled out in the face of a determined government and stout resistance from the students and the general public. More than a decade later by which time I had cut my journalistic teeth, I received a printed invitation to the release of a new newsmagazine from New Delhi. The invitation was signed by John Vallamattom. The name rang a bell. Was it the same spokesman of the private college managements? I did not have to scratch my head for long when soon after on a visit to New Delhi I met for the first time the man with a mission. He waxed eloquent about the need for a Christian mouthpiece like, perhaps, the Christian Science Monitor, read and respected by non-Christians as well. But when I had a look at his Indian Currents, I knew journalism was not his cup of tea. The inadequacies of the journal were too obvious except, perhaps, to Vallamattom, who was the editor, printer and publisher. Every time I met him, he told me about the difficulties in bringing out the magazine without any support worth the name. But he ploughed on, unmindful of backbiting. He took great pains to publish the first-ever directory of Christians in the Capital collecting voluminous data all by himself. Hyperactivity and restlessness were second nature to Vallamattom, who took the initiative to organise periodic get-togethers of like-minded journalists under the banner of what he himself christened the Quill Club. He shunned luxury and ostentation like the plague. For Vallamattom, secularism was an article of faith. When the responsibility of inviting a chief guest for our Parish Day celebration fell upon me, I could not think of a better person than the priest-turned-editor. A parishioner volunteered to pick him up by car but he preferred to come by public transport. He arrived on the dot and delivered a memorable speech. He spoke about the importance of secularism and how any effort to destroy it would strike at the roots of the Republic. Little did we know that as he was thundering against the enemies of secularism from the pulpit that morning, Babri Masjid was being razed to the ground by the karsevaks in distant Ayodhya. There were no cellphones and SMS on that Sunday - December 6, 1992 - to check the happenings in Ayodhya. As soon as the meeting was over, I rushed out of the church to inquire about Ayodhya. The first person I met on the street told me that the mosque had become a thing of the past. Vallamattom was so shocked by the news that he preferred not to join us in the celebratory lunch. Vallamattom gave up the stewardship of Indian Currents when he was posted to a rural parish in Germany. Though we exchanged a letter or two in the first year of his foreign posting, I lost touch with him until a couple of months ago a journalist from Nagpur, whom Vallamattom had initiated into the profession, visited me in Chandigarh and gave the information that he was leading a retired life in Kerala. How could Vallamattom lead a retired life is a question the visiting journalist could not answer. I had no inkling that he was, instead, fighting a case in the Supreme Court until last Thursday when every newspaper in the country led with the report of the Supreme Court asking the government to take steps to introduce a uniform civil code. Buried in the report was a line that the petitioner in the case was Fr John
Vallamattom.
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Has the IMDT Act outlived its purpose?
The genesis of the current state of affairs can be traced to the primary causes upon which the very foundations of a massive student agitation spearheaded in the 1980s by the All Assam Students Union (AASU) was built. Broadly, the AASU agitation was based on three primary issues: demarcation of the international border with Bangladesh, disenfranchisement of illegal migrants from the voters’ list and deportation of all those who had crossed over to Assam after a certain period of time. The porous Indo-Bangladesh border in Assam has long served as a major conduit for Bangladeshi labourers to cross over to India in search of better economic opportunities. It was not similar to the influx of refugees as witnessed in the aftermath of Partition. For one, these migrants were citizens of a different country who came to India much after Partition and still continue to do so. They are not refugees in the strictest sense of the term. Some analysts have described the phenomenon as creating a living space in somebody else’s land. The AASU-led agitation, which enjoyed mass support from the indigenous Assamese community, culminated in the Assam accord signed between the student leaders and the Rajiv Gandhi government in 1985. Accordingly, March 25, 1971, (the day when Bangladesh became a sovereign country) was chosen as the cut-off year and all those Bangladeshi citizens who entered after this year would be deported through specially promulgated legislation — the Illegal Migrants’ (Determination by Tribunal) Act. However, even before the euphoria of the accord and the election of P K Mahanta (then AASU President) as the Chief Minister of the state had settled down, the complexities connected with implementing the legislation came to the fore. According to the IMDT Act 1983, if a complaint is made about the citizenship of any person crossing over to India, the onus of establishing before the District Tribunal that the said person is not a citizen of the country will be on the complainant himself. Further, the complainant should be living within the 5 km area of the person against whom the complaint was made. The cumbersome procedure in the IMDT Act had thus failed to meet its objective. The ineffectiveness of the Act can be gauged from the fact that during the period 1985 to 1995, only 9,855 people have been found to be foreigners under the IMDT Act. Of them, 1,287 have been deported since 1985. At present 16 tribunals under the IMDT Act are functioning in the state to deal with foreigners who entered Assam on or after March 25, 1971. As of 1997, a total of 12,113 cases are pending with the IMDT tribunals. Given this background, the recent reports on the Centre’s move to repeal the IMDT Act has once again drawn political attention on the issue with the Lok Sabha elections just a year away. The contention of the Centre is that the IMDT Act has outlived its purpose and therefore it was necessary to adopt a different approach to address the issue of illegal migrants which is threatening to bring about a demographic change in Assam. However, any move to repeal the Act is likely to receive severe opposition from the Congress and the Left parties as they strongly feel that if the IMDT Act is repealed, the linguistic and religious minorities would be harassed in the name of deportation. “When the then Congress government entered into an agreement with the AASU, sacrificing its own government in Assam, it took special care to protect the interests of Bengalis and Muslims,” Congress spokesperson Jaipal Reddy said. Asserting that the Congress is opposed to any move to repeal the IMDT Act, Mr Reddy said: “The Act fulfils the special need of the people of Assam.” Although the Congress’s stand has credence, the party’s decision to oppose any move to repeal the Act smacks of its vote-bank politics as linguistic and religious minorities in Assam have been traditional vote-banks of the Congress and the Left parties. The BJP, which is leading the coalition at the Centre, strongly favours the move to repeal the IMDT Act as it would apparently lead to polarising the voters in its favour. Now it has to be seen how the BJP-led government tackles the issue with the lack of majority in the Rajya Sabha and only a simple majority in the Lok Sabha. |
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Pandits’ pain of dislocation
AGITATIONS for reservation in jobs and admissions to educational institutions by the other backward castes have curtailed the upper castes’ hold over power centres in Kashmir. As a result, members of the elite class have moved out of their home towns to bigger cities in India and abroad. While in the rest of the country lower classes comprise mostly Hindus, in the Kashmir valley they belong to the Muslim community. Land reforms, quotas in jobs and admissions to educational institutions for Muslims in Jammu and Kashmir have created resentment among the Pandits and other communities. The Hindutva brigade, which had been working in the state much before Independence, took the lead in the 1969 Pandit agitation. There were dharnas, fasts and processions demanding jobs and admissions to educational institutions. The agitation was suppressed by mass arrests. Central government officials who were Pandits were dubbed agents-provocateur and transferred to far-off places. The secessionist movement in the valley assumed the fundamentalist colour after India punished Pakistan for its misadventures on Kashmir by helping its eastern part to gain independence in 1971. The pressure on the state government from the teeming educated Muslim youth for jobs and college admissions increased. A race for positions of power began. With the thwarting of democratic channels, discrimination against Muslim youth became more intense. The majority, unhappy with the state, turned its ire against the Pandits. Then began killings of Pandits and those who represented the Indian state. The Hindutva brigade of Pandits went to the then Governor of J&K Mr Jagmohan, now the Minister of Tourism, seeking security. Instead, he counselled them to leave the valley, which they did, presuming it to be a short-term measure. The BJP, then moving towards power at the Centre, made a show of its sympathy for the Pandits. Besides opening community kitchens and organising temporary shelters for the displaced families, it helped them in the delivery of separatist and communal organisations like Panun Kashmir. While the Pandits who stayed behind continued to face the bullets in the valley, these organisations and other Pandit Sabhas furthered the BJP line on Kashmir by presenting the exodus of Pandits as ethnic cleansing and a communal problem. At the heart of the displacement of Kashmiri Pandits and a section of the Muslims is not the question of religious identity, but the economic crisis created by the raj of quotas and subsidies. Instead of allowing the Naya Kashmir plan, a step towards egalitarian social order, to strike roots in the state, the quota and subsidy raj created selective prosperity and a large-scale deprivation, a fertile ground for militancy. The predicament of the Pandits, who migrated before militancy (1989), started hasn't changed even outside the valley. Being from the upper caste, they don't get the quota benefits in government and educational institutions. For those who migrated in 1989 and after, a move is afoot to make Pandit employees of the state government to accept either voluntary retirement or report for duty in the state. The educational institutions do not recognise school-leaving certificates from schools outside the state for migrant quota admissions. There are instances of Pandits being transferred to the valley because the institutions no longer recognise the valley as a disturbed area. Like the upper castes from other parts of the country, Pandits prefered ruling in the hell of shallow power to being part of the productive class in the valley. This mindset has alienated them from the producers of foodgrains, craftsmen and providers of services in the valley. Unlike the other upper castes, Pandits have largely abandoned their language, food, dress and endogamous character. They seek power by being with those who associate nationalism with geography. It is only when Pandits give up hollow rehtoric, come down from the pedestal of shallow power, feel the earth of the lacerated state, join the productive class and reclaim their land and wealth, can they go back to their homes.
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AMID the mystic roar of the Brahmaputra and the picturesque surroundings, a serious
politico-economic crisis is confronting Assam threatening to erode the demographic fabric. The cause — hordes of illegal Bangladeshi migrants crossing over to the state and staying put there.