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Let truth triumph Insecure minorities |
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To eat or not to Dietary advice can leave you famished EATING is turning out to be a complex, confusing exercise. No, we are not talking of the endless choices that we have started having because of the world becoming a global village. It is just that the nutritionists are taking pleasure out of eating.
Cine-dreams and reality
“Baratis” on hire
Raising farm productivity Sexual harassment shatters high life Time for stories, salt tea in Kashmir
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Let truth triumph IF truth alone triumphs, as the government motto avers, the Satyendra Dubeys and S. Manjunaths shouldn’t be getting themselves killed or committing suicide like Sanjay Rathi, the chief accounts officer in the Akola municipal corporation. But they are, and we now have the case of a whistle-blowing constable of the Border Security Force (BSF) sitting in custody for “indiscipline.” Amidst the allegations and counter-allegations, it is not clear yet as to who is in the right. But the events follow a familiar, suspicious pattern. An employee complains of wrongdoing. The organisation comes down hard on the person, charging him with misbehaviour and operational interference. Mr Gautum’s family is even alleging death threats from senior officers who were “exposed” by him. The call for an Act to protect whistleblowers gathered momentum after the Dubey killing, and following Supreme Court and Central prodding, the law ministry is reportedly working on a draft Bill. Countries like the UK and the US do have such laws, with the US specifically boasting of a whistleblower protection law. More important than any law, however, is an organisational culture that cuts out incentives for malpractice, and the casual penalisation of whistleblowers as mere squealers. There is considerable resistance to such legislation, even in the corporate sector, which has fiercely resisted changes to protect whistleblowers in companies. Legal experts are also divided about the value of such a law in government, arguing that it would further paralyse what is already quite dysfunctional, and would simply make for even more defensive decision-making. Existing laws do offer a measure of protection against different forms of victimisation, and even in the West, new laws have been resisted. In India, however, such legislation may well be desirable. At the least, it can help create a new culture of governance, where it is the wrongdoer, and not the whistleblower, who looks over his shoulder in fear. As for the BSF, as a proud force making immense sacrifices in guarding the nation’s borders, it should set an example by doing right by Mr Gautam.
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Insecure minorities A Sikh qualifying to become an officer in the Pakistan Army is good news. The young man from Nankana Sahib has created history of sorts as he is the first Sikh to have earned this rare honour. Among the minorities, only Christians had opportunities to serve this most influential and prestigious institution in Pakistan. Another significant institution, the judiciary, has been more liberal as some time ago one of its members, Justice Rana Bhagwandas, was sworn in as the acting Chief Justice of Pakistan when Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry was away to China. Pakistan’s cricket team, too, has a Hindu player and its National Assembly (parliament) has 10 members representing the different minorities. This, however, does not mean that Pakistan has become more caring for its minorities. Isolated cases like that of the Sikh boy may indicate the walls of discrimination have been coming down slowly. But it is difficult to believe even this much in a country known for its poor track record so far as the minorities are concerned. Recently at least 300 Christian families were attacked and three churches burnt by hoodlums in the Sangla Hill area in Nankana Sahib after being instigated by self-appointed guardians of Islam. The provocation was a rumour spread by some religious mad caps that a copy of the Quran had been torched by members of the
targeted community. Those who took the law into their own hands felt encouraged because of Pakistan’s blasphemy law, which has been mostly abused so far. The minorities have been feeling more insecure ever since the law came into being during the rule of Gen Zia-ul-Haque. Pakistan added to its list of minorities the Ahmedis during General Zia’s time and since then they along with the Christians have been targeted the most on the pretext of violating the blasphemy law, which has it that anyone showing “disrespect” to Prophet Mohammad can be punished with death. Gen Pervez Musharraf has been talking of “enlightened moderation”, but has failed to get the most abused law removed from the statute book. The minorities will feel great relief if the blasphemy law is repealed as early as possible.
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To eat or not to EATING is turning out to be a complex, confusing exercise. No, we are not talking of the endless choices that we have started having because of the world becoming a global village. It is just that the nutritionists are taking pleasure out of eating. There are as many studies on what is good for you as there are human beings on this blue planet. The conclusions that they draw are contradictory to the extreme. One tells you that tea is harmful for you; the next says it is the confirmed brew for longevity. The others offer similarly diametrical advice on alcohol, meat, chocolate, eggs and what have you. Interestingly, most such research papers are later expanded into self-help books that very often become bestsellers. What makes the life of the common man all the more difficult is the fact that such advice changes almost on a daily basis, like the English weather. One day your chhota peg is slow poison; the next day it may be hailed as your lifetime insurance against heart diseases, only to be reviled yet again a few days later. An apocryphal story goes that a doctor advised a patient to eat brinjals three times a day for his ailment. One month later when he went to the doctor again, he was told not to go anywhere near the vegetable. When he protested that the doctor himself had asked him to eat them, the learned man said nonchalantly: “But you don’t know how much science has advanced in these 30 days”. One has an uncanny feeling that multinational companies may have sponsored some of these findings but one can never be too sure. So what should one do in such circumstances? Perhaps the best advice would be to pick and choose what strikes one’s fancy. There are bound to be enough research papers to support one’s choice. Eat, drink and be merry for tomorrow you may
die(t).
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The urge for destruction is also a creative urge. — Michael Bakunin
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Cine-dreams and reality WHENEVER someone connected with the International Film Festival of India opens his mouth, he talks grandiosely of making it as prestigious as Cannes or Venice in a few years. That’s nice as a fantasy, but flies in the face of harsh ground realities. Leave alone joining the world league, the Indian festival is yet to make its mark as a regional event. Before aspiring to be as good as Cannes, the Goa festival has to at least prove itself to be better than what it was during the previous year. But during the 36th edition of the IFFI at Panjim from November 24 to December 4 this year, the hopes were not even partially fulfilled. This despite the fact that last year’s festival was the first in Goa and everything had been done in a frenzied hurry. With full one year to eliminate the teething troubles, things ought to have been better. Yes, there were slightly better films on offer but the overall organisation was nothing to write home about. How tacky the inaugural ceremony was had to be seen to be believed. Cheap, dirty plastic chairs were laid out in the courtyard of the INOX theatre. This was ostensibly done to accommodate more people, but the way they had to sit through a lacklustre programme in stifling heat was an embarrassment. The closing ceremony was no better either. This was perhaps the first time in 36 years that the Information and Broadcasting Minister did not find time to grace the occasion. This function too degenerated into an unabashed PR exercise for a Bollywood film, whose music was released on the occasion. All that goes on to show how much the fate of a festival hinges on the interest shown by the government of the day. As long as the IFFI is held as just another sarkari event, it is not going to be a vibrant and happening do. The problem is that an honest appraisal is considered unwarranted criticism by the Directorate of Film Festivals and it goes into a denial mode with point-by-point rebuttal. What it does not realise is that the world is not going to evaluate the festival on the basis of self-congratulatory notes that the directorate issues to itself. It is high time a hard, dispassionate assessment is done and the whole concept of the festival is revised thoroughly. The first notion that needs to be dropped is that the IFFI is a means to promote tourism. Organisers need to ask themselves whether this fond hope has been fulfilled anywhere else in the world. It has not been, and nor is Goa going to benefit much on that count from the hosting of the festival. So, let’s think of promoting cinema rather than tourism and develop the whole blueprint in that light. There are many critics of the choice of Goa as the permanent venue of the IFFI. They argue that in a country of the size of India, holding a film festival in a corner inconveniences film-lovers of far-off areas. Even otherwise, Goa has a culture of song, dance and theatre, but not really cinema. So, a festival there will always be more of a carnival. But now that the die has been cast and a full-fledged 25-acre complex is likely to come up at Dona Paula in a few years, Goa can be as good-or as bad-venue as any other. Moving the festival from one place to another will pose daunting problems. More than the venue, what is required is professional organisation of the festival. The Directorate of Film Festivals will need to pull itself by bootstraps to bring about the metamorphosis. The experiment of farming out some of the responsibilities to professional event management groups will have to be given up because they have been making a hash of it. There is also need for a permanent Director. Organising an international film festival is a daunting responsibility and one learns a lot on the job. This experience can be put to good use only if there is a permanent Director. With so many feature films vying for viewers’ attention, short films and documentaries are a neglected lot. Their makers lament that they are being given a step-motherly treatment, but actually it happens only because they are only the second priority for the rushed viewers. It will not be a bad idea to screen them at a separate festival where such films get due recognition. Glamour is an integral part of a film festival and that mainly comes from mainstream cinema. However, that should not mean that the organisers should prostrate before Bollywood stars. Of late, the trend is to hold the premier of such films at the festival. The organisers have to tell the film producers in no uncertain terms that premiering of a film in an international film festival is a privilege extended to them and they must adhere to the set norms. The opening shows of “Apaharan” as well as “Dubai Return” were held way beyond schedule, much to the annoyance of delegates. Next time, the producers must be told that an IFFI premier is entirely different from an ordinary one and the actors should reserve their starry airs for the latter. IFFI audiences can be unforgiving, as they were in Goa, and virtually booed out the latecoming stars. Incidentally, both the opening and closing functions too had begun fairly late. While all these nuts and bolts are being taken care of, the most important factor is the quality of films. Till last year, the competition section was confined to Asian films. Now it has been expanded to include African and Latin American films too. To be sure, the quality of films has improved considerably, also in the non-competitive “Cinema of the World” section. If the festival is run efficiently, it will automatically attract better films and enhance its status. The typical Indian masala films may not win any awards but there is considerable overseas market for them. The film bazaar organised on the sidelines of the IFFI does some business but it is only slightly better than negligible. Better running of the festival will address this problem as well. What Indian film-makers must have realised fully is that their offerings are nowhere near world standards. It is high time they came out of the beaten-to-death “boy-meets-girl” mould. If the IFFI can motivate even one or two of them to make it bold to come up with sensible cinema, the IFFI would have served its purpose. Everything boils down to holding it in a slick, professional manner. Do so and good films will head the Goa way on their own. Keep mouthing inane homilies about the great future of the festival and it will remain a lacklustre also-ran. The choices are as black-or-white as
that.
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“Baratis” on hire A BUSINESS tycoon was explaining to a young man that to succeed in life you have to jump at the right opportunity. “But how do you know the opportunity has come?”, he enquired. “You dashed well don’t know”, was the reply, “you just keep on jumping”. One does not know whether an entrepreneur in Jodhpur had been following that precept, and if he had, how long his spell of jumping had lasted. He did, however, find that his last jump and the long-awaited opportunity had coincided very precisely. He had hit upon the highly unusual business of providing “baratis” on hire to rich families. He had observed that many affluent families, who had recently arrived in Rajasthan, had few relatives there and even fewer acquaintances. When they had to marry off their children, they had practically no one who could form the “barat”, and a marriage without a large group of “baratis” would be a serious jolt for the family honour. Hence our new business man’s chance. He has got hold of an array of prospective “baratis” who are not averse to making some money on the side (along, of course, with his lining his pocket much more) and rents them out for a carefully graded tariff. At the lowest level are men wearing dhotis and kurtas. Then come those sporting shirts and trousers. Next are persons with formal suits and ties especially if they have the ability to converse in English. The creamy layer wears the traditional Rajasthani dress. The range of the daily rent is Rs 100 and Rs 500 plus sumptuous meals. So the number of the “baratis” and their apparel can be selected to suit your budget. Most of them are educated unemployed youth and are briefed in detail about the groom and the bride and their families to avoid any faux pas. And they are instructed to exercise special care to ensure that they do not give anyone even an inkling that they are on hire for the event. The business has flourished well beyond the initial expectations, and indeed the prospect seems so promising that it is proposed to open branch offices in other cities of the state. News has come from Germany of another novelty in the line of business: hotel accommodation in the branches of a 30-foot high tree. If you have grown a little tired of staying on the ground level that is just the alternative that will suit you. The rooms numbering five are wooden and are connected by narrow walkways and come with small balconies, electric lights and shared toilets. On the opening night all the rooms were fully booked at the cost of £ 100 to £ 150 a night. So the accommodation was not exactly expansive but was obviously very popular with people who liked to have their feet off the ground for a
change.
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Raising farm productivity WHATEVER might have happened to the much-hyped National Commission on Farmers set up last year, the Prime Minister has set up yet another high-powered committee under his chairmanship to focus on agricultural development and policy. While the commission is still grappling with the core issue of farmers’ plight, the newly constituted committee may examine fresh policy initiatives that can pull the agriculture sector’s promised 4 per cent contribution to the country’s GDP. In the year that has gone by, corporate profit and farmers’ suicides have continued to move in unholy parallel. The Sensex has continued to attain new heights while suicides by farmers have plunged the country into deep despair. With the growth rate having overshadowed all other concerns, suicides seem to have been taken for granted. No wonder, the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) was recently pulled for not doing as much to enhance the agricultural growth rate. Did anyone hear farmers’ suicides being as much a concern? As the country begins to lose count of the farmers committing suicide, a rare exception of the recent past has literally become a undesired norm. Even the much-hyped poor man’s budgets haven’t been of much help. Shockingly, a plethora of agriculture research institutions, policy planning bodies and relief programmes have been mute witnesses to this blood bath. It’s shocking that the successive governments have failed to even diagnose the problem, leave aside solve it! No sooner did the new government assume office than the Prime Minister set up the National Commission on Farmers to prescribe exigency measures. Cynics wondered if the commission could help provide a lasting remedy. Many wondered if those who had pioneered the Green Revolution could get hapless farmers out from the residual impact of the revolution itself. Isn’t it a reality that proponents of the Green Revolution could never foresee that farm incomes would decline one day, forcing farmers to take their own lives? Undoubtedly, the entire agriculture bureaucracy and the farm scientists’ fraternity has been caught napping. Not discounting the wisdom that is supposedly resting within the commission, it is undeniably true that solutions cannot come from the same source that had been the root cause of the problem. Not without reason had Albert Einstein remarked: “you can’t find a solution to a problem by employing the same thinking (people) that moved you into the problem in the first place.” Einstein’s prophetic words need to be dispassionately examined in the present context. Improving credit flow in the rural areas has been tossed up as a solution. True, a majority of the farmers, who took the fatal route to escape the humiliation of increasing indebtedness, did so on account of their inability to repay the loans. Easy credit undoubtedly can clear loans, but what it cannot perhaps do is to improve crop harvests. Can a fresh loan to erase the previous loan be any solution? Will it not trap the poor into the perpetual debt cycle? Credit could be a part of the solution but not a solution itself. What the farmers need is an assured income — an income that takes care of their family needs and leaves them with a little surplus to sow the next crop. But with the magic of the Green Revolution on the decline, nobody is able to assure farmers about any surplus harvest from the farm. Not without reason though, as farmers in Punjab have recorded negative returns on their investment. Studies have also shown that there has been a decline in farm incomes in the past five years. Rice farmers in West Bengal earn 28 per cent of what they earned in 1996-97. Sugarcane farmers in Uttar Pradesh and Maharashtra have recorded a decline in their incomes by about 35-40 per cent too. Conversely, corporate profits and urban incomes are on an upward upswing. Critical to this decline is the fact that the input-output equation of the Green Revolution hasn’t held on to its promise. Input costs of fertilisers and pesticides have consistently gone up with a concurrent decline in crop harvests. Unless harvests can be sustained at a shade higher than the input costs, farmers cannot be pulled out from the perpetual debt cycle. Consequently, extending credit as a solution under the situation defies logic. The planners have gone wrong in their diagnosis on another account too. Far from addressing the core issue of imbalance in the input-output ratio, expanding irrigation facilities has remained a populist measure with all successive governments. The present government too has promised greater investment in the irrigation sector. Irrigation can play a significant role only if the skewed input-output ratio gets corrected first. Had irrigation been the most crucial factor for sustaining harvests, farmers in Punjab would not have been on the suicide trail. Paradoxically, farmers in the arid regions of the country would have been on the forefront of suicides for a long time. Though significant, irrigation is critical if other inputs stay balanced. It needs no rocket science to know that indeed maintaining land’s productive capacity is the key to surplus harvests. If Finance Minister P. Chidambaram’s budget speeches are any indication the government lacks a road map to boost agricultural growth. The government has left the responsibility for further experimentation on the hapless farmers. At a time when a simple opening of a savings account comes with an insurance cover these days, leaving farmers and their crops uncovered by insurance indicates gross neglect of the farm sector. With political rhetoric and illusive promises as the driving keys, it will not be surprising if genetically modified crops and contract farming get prescribed as the solutions to the present malady in the days ahead. If news reports and analysis are any indication, the current developments in the agriculture sector — backdoor entry of the corporate sector — is being promoted to achieve the desired growth rate in agriculture. Till such time, farmers can wait!
— Grassroots Features
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Sexual harassment shatters high life IT was once seen as a glamorous occupation that offered young women the opportunity to see the world. But the reality of life as an air stewardess is irregular hours, disrupted sleep, sexual harassment and tensions with their partner over child rearing. A survey of 2,000 women who worked for a national airline found more than one in five said they had suffered sexual harassment from passengers with one in 20 having to fend off unwanted advances in the past year. The threat was greater still from members of the crew with almost half of the women saying they had had to put up with offensive remarks or lewd behaviour by colleagues or superiors. More than one in 10 said they had had to fend off a colleague in the past 12 months and, in a third of the cases, the incident was of the most severe type. Sexual harassment was classified as receiving unwanted attention, being propositioned, groped, subjected to offensive remarks about personal appearance, shown sexually explicit material, being threatened, blackmailed, or subjected to attempted non-consensual sexual acts. Women who reported being sexually harassed by passengers were almost three times more likely to rate their health as fair or poor, according to the study published in Occupational and Environmental Medicine. The survey was conducted among current and former air stewardesses who joined Alitalia, the Italian national airline, between 1965 and 1995. Terri Ballard and colleagues from the Istituto Superiore di Sanita in Rome, who led the study, said the effect on the women of passengers’ behaviour was unexpected. “It might possibly be due to the more constant nature of this type of harassment, and its effect may be compounded by other types of disagreeable passenger relationships,” they write. Anger and anxiety over flight delays could exacerbate the problem by provoking uncooperative behaviour and verbal abuse from passengers. The authors say: “The effect of sexual harrassment by passengers on the health of flight attendants may be relevant to other working women dealing with the public.” Being a mother added to the stress, the researchers found. More than threequarters of air stewardesses who had children said it was more difficult to be a good mother than for other women in work. Tension over childcare arrangements with partners increased levels of distress and reduced job satisfaction. Better organisation of the work schedule was seen as crucial to enabling a more normal personal and family life, the researchers say. Air stewardesses have been dismissed as “trolley dollies” whose job is undemanding and dependent on how they look rather than how they perform. But previous research has shown high levels of mental distress as a result of the pressures of the job. An earlier study by the same team found suicide rates were three times higher among air stewardesses than the general population. All the deaths involved women aged 23 to 44. “The effects of family and work conflicts, low job satisfaction and sexual harassment should be explored more in depth... among working women in various occupations not just the airline industry,” the authors of the study conclude.
— The Independent
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Time for stories, salt tea in Kashmir TRADITIONAL recipes — with chicken and turnips — and folk tales weave a blanket of warmth over Kashmir during the cold winter days. “Rooster and turnip cooked over a simmering fire a whole night in an earthen vessel tickles the taste-buds with its rich aroma,” says Muhammad Sidiq, a resident of Srinagar. This special dish of ‘shab deg’, which was an integral part of the supper ritual at his ancestral home, is still a mouth-watering memory for him. “My grandmother would engage the entire family to dress the turnips and fowl. You had to be careful not to remove the bird’s skin. Then a new earthen pot was arranged for. The actual cooking would start only in the evening. “Over a firewood hearth, the vessel would be sealed shut with dough and kept to simmer over a low fire the whole night. The matriarch of the family alone had the privilege of opening the pot and serving the dish,” Sidiq adds. The nostalgia is for bringing back to life a cohesive social past that was essential to the joint family system. Smoked fish and dried vegetables like pumpkins, brinjals and tomatoes that had been painstakingly preserved for the lean winter months formed the compulsory stock to ward off shortages. And to cap the culinary adventures, people gathered in small groups in each locality to listen to fairy tales of demons and golden-haired princesses. “I still persuade my children and grandchildren to listen to ‘Gul Raze’ — a Kashmiri epic written by Maqbool Shah Kralwari. Despite their IT education, they are able to appreciate the extraordinary genius of a writer so masterful,” says Habibullah, who lives in Chunduna village of Srinagar district and has seen 60 summers. “It is about love, intrigue, loneliness and separation, but the underlying message is that of truth’s triumph over evil. It was because of such heritage that the people remained essentially noble in their dealings.” And how does the younger generation react to Habibullah’s reminiscences? Says his son Showkat: “When father sits wrapped in his warm blanket, telling the tales he had heard from his grandfather, even his face is transformed. His wrinkles suddenly vanish and his voice becomes young. “Those are the times I feel very close to him.” Rues a sociologist here: “The storytelling sessions are all about family values. Winter provided the time to renew and repair social bonds. With the breaking up of joint families and the beginning of the nuclear family system, such pleasures are naturally becoming outdated.” Interestingly, wherever the joint family system still exists in Kashmir, access to Internet or cable television has not made story telling unfashionable. “Every society must learn to coexist with its traditional value system. If we give up our heritage and old value systems to change with the times, it would be a great loss. We must somehow try to have the old gel with the new,” the sociologist adds. With youth evincing keen interest in learning about their past, the Kashmiri heritage seems in safe hands as of now. “There is a cultural rebound of sorts. Kashmiris who live in the US and Europe approach me for CDs of regional music. They also show keen interest in their culture and heritage,” says Ravi Bhan, who runs a music studio here. Winter also reminds Kashmiris of famous poet Mir Ghulam Rasool Nazki’s words: “Wanda, sheena, hamama, kunga, Harisha te toot nun chiyi dama Ali Sheikha, Hassan Sofiya, Shameema, Rasul Mirun te Mehjoorun kalama.” (Oh times, whither that winter of snow, warmth, saffron, Harisha and a hot cup of salt tea? Whither that voice of Ali Sheikh, Hassan Sofi and Shameema? Whither that song of Rasul Mir and Mehjoor?)
— IANS |
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From the pages of Blazing indiscretion Sir Michael O’Dwyer has crowned a fairly long list of indiscreet utterances by a speech as extraordinarily unwise and unstatesmanlike as any speech could be. Salient extracts from this speech will show that it was on a line with, and had all the characteristics of, the famous Simla speech, with this difference that while that speech was made in a Council in which “plan-speaking” could be, as it actually was, met by “plainspeaking,” in the present case both because Sir Michael was the President of the Council and also because of the composition of the Council itself no such thing was possible. There is another difference. At the time when the Simla speech was made Sir Michael had a part of his administration still before him. When he spoke on Monday last he was, on the other hand, on the very eve of his retirement.
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Generally our ignorance clouds this glowing truth. We reconcile ourselves by blaming fate for our accidents. The learned one knows that the cause of the accident was some deed in the past; not fate. He examines his past behaviour and makes amends in the future. — Sanatana Dharma Unless all the discoveries that you make have the welfare of the poor as the end in view, all your workshops will be really no better than Satan’s workshops. —Mahatma Gandhi Do not give up because you are finding it difficult to work without attachment. Even a single piece of work, done well and without desires for personal gain, will help you towards self-consciousness. — Bhagvad Gita
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