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More or less Farming kills Strike Bank of India |
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HIV infections in India
Twenty years later
Innocence in jail Development aimed at employment Crazybusy: a severe case of modern life
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More or less BY the Indian standards of criminal justice system, the punishment meted out to the Mumbai constable who raped an innocent girl in a police chowky at Marine Drive is exemplary. Without going into the question whether the 12 years of rigorous imprisonment will meet the ends of justice in this case or not, the manner in which it was conducted has a lot to commend itself. It is unusual for a rape case to end in conviction and that too within a year of committing the offence. Equally commendable is the role of the witnesses who stood their ground and did not go back on their original version. The prosecution too played its cards well, presenting a foolproof case before the judge. Few incidents of rape have shocked the nation, particularly Mumbai, as the heinous act committed by constable Sunil More. The whole metropolis stood up as one man to condemn his abominable act, which brought disgrace to the entire constabulary. The spontaneous public outrage rubbed off on the Mumbai police too. More was not only summarily dismissed from service but the law was allowed to take its course in the case so much so that he has become, perhaps, the first “constable” to receive such a severe punishment. Given the enormity of the crime – he raped a girl whom he was duty-bound to protect — his was a fit case for awarding the maximum punishment, which is life imprisonment. Be that as it may, the case shows that if the prosecuting agencies really want a rapist to be convicted and punished, they can indeed do so. It is tempting to compare the instant case with those like the BMW and the Jessica Lall murder case where almost every witness turned hostile during the trial, forcing the judges concerned to give the benefit of the doubt to the accused and set them free. Of course, unlike those cases, the accused in the Mumbai rape case is a lowly constable, who did not have either the political or monetary clout to influence the witnesses and turn justice on its head. Even so, the punishment awarded to Sunil More is heartening as it underscores the point that if all the concerned parties are determined in having the guilty punished, nothing can really stop them. |
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Farming kills It was once said by a British farmer, not at all in jest, that one of the easiest methods of losing money was to choose farming as a means of livelihood. Well, things are even worse in India. Here, farming is also the easiest route to suicides. Except for a few rich landlords, who in most cases are engaged in other professions and use agriculture only as a smokescreen, most farmers toil day and night and yet are not able to arrange even two square meals for themselves and their families. Ironically, many farmers of even Punjab, which takes pride in its Green Revolution, have had to choose death over a hopeless life. Debt trap caught them so badly that there was no escape. When the families of such victims come together on one platform, as they did near Sangrur the other day, the enormity of the problem overwhelms you. Basically, it is an administrative failure. There is hardly any safety net for farmers, despite this being a high-risk profession. It is no consolation that other sections too are equally vulnerable. In the case of a crop failure, which happens far too often, they have no option but to take loans from Shylocks in the neighbourhood at exorbitant rates because government officials and banks tend to be too cold and officious to lend them a helping hand in time. When they are unable to pay, they simply end their lives. The spreading misery must shame the administration into action. The easy lending facilities that it claims to be in existence must actually be there. Nobody goes to a moneylender of free choice. If the government did its job properly, they would be out of business, considering that they charge impossibly high interest rates. At the same time, farmers themselves must refrain from taking big loans for non-productive purposes like solemnising a wedding in the family lavishly or buying a tractor or jeep that they don’t really need. Keeping up with the Joneses is a natural instinct, but if one has to pay for it through one’s life, it must be curbed at all costs. |
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Strike Bank of India ON the face of it, the indefinite nationwide strike by officers and employees of the State Bank of India (SBI) from April 3 is illegal and unjustified. They have no right to go on strike and hold the country to ransom. The strike has adversely affected the banking operations throughout the country and is causing a lot of inconvenience to the people. The SBI is the country’s pre-eminent bank with a network of over 9,000 branches. With all the 2.5 lakh staff having struck work, cheque clearance, call money and forex markets and ATM operations (including those of other banks) have all been affected. Considering the fact that the SBI is the lead bank, handling over 30 million transactions every day, the staff should not have resorted to an indefinite strike. Comparatively, the SBI staff enjoy higher salaries and perquisites than those of other public sector banks. Even though they enjoy a pensionary benefit in addition to the contributory provident fund (CPF), they want 50 per cent of the last pay drawn as pension. The employees of other public sector banks, however, get only either of the two, pension or CPF, that too, as per the one-time option given to them a decade ago. The SBI staff may have the right to demand enhanced pension, commutation on par with industry, index-linked dearness allowance on pension and the like, but such demands should be followed up at appropriate levels across the table, without resorting to strike. They should also understand the hardship caused to people by the strike, its consequences on the economy and the chain reaction in other public sector banks. In fact, as PF is no more lucrative due to low interest rates, the public sector bank employees have been demanding a second opportunity to choose between CPF and pension. In any case, the SBI employees resorting to strike as a pressure tactic to browbeat the government is highly deplorable. |
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Virtue is like a rich stone, best plain set.
— Francis Bacon |
HIV infections in India March 31, 2006, international media blitz — one-third decline in HIV infections in high-prevalence South India pointed out in a study published on March 30 by Indo-Canadian researchers in Lancet Online. The timing is intriguing, particularly as India’s HIV/AIDS programme-Phase 11 — begun in 1999 with $191-million World Bank credit and attached $100 million bilateral/multilateral aid, besides subsequent independent $200 million Gates Foundation flow to a core-concept — ended on March 31, 2006. Meanwhile, the World Bank’s pre-appraisal mission had finalised Phase 111, which awaits $200 million loan clearance despite the absence of mid-evaluation, delayed end-evaluation of Phase 11 (as it happened in Phase 1). Further reports: the World Bank withholds one billion dollar from India’s health projects, as the Bank examines alleged frauds in drugs procurement in the Reproductive and Child Health project and presumably weaknesses in the handling of allied health sector loans. Spectacular changes in the HIV landscape, vindicating past strategies and promising light in a dark world, are so obviously strategic to this point of time. Does it show any agenda-slip? The wave-creating study examines data for 294,050 women (ante-natal clinics) and 58,000 men (STD clinics) from the HIV surveillance sites network. Large-scale and dauntingly scholarly, few could dare speak easily on it, but one eminent diehard public-health expert’s opinion I sought dissected: let’s ignore issues of study-design/ data-quality (plenty) and look at two major points: First, a decline in the younger population is plausible and consistent with the views highlighted by many Indian epidemiologists even prior to Phase 11 launch — contrary to the international hype on the exploding HIV-infections India’s sentinel surveillance trends show it as stationary or declining. The study confirms earlier insights. Further, its low-mortality data references corroborate the absence of large-scale AIDs deaths. Secondly and significantly, it provides no concrete correlation between the decline and targeted activities with sex-workers/condom-use that it validates as the principal instrument of change, relying on mere mathematical models, known as notoriously inaccurate with human behaviour predictions. It also fails to explain why without similar large-scale targeted interventions, the North has a low, plateau prevalence. Other facts: the study’s co-author, Mr Prabhat Jha of Toronto University is none other than the Task Leader who developed the NACO Phase 11 project that principally grounded the condom-and-drugs-centric Targeted Interventions despite considerable initial opposition to this approach. Now Phase 111 aims at blanket “saturation” of all high-risk groups across the country with condom-and-STD-drugs-focused Targeted Interventions. It no longer minces words, as it happened at Phase 11 start-up when senior health officials blatantly lied on the scale and scope of this component, its public presentation clouded with euphemisms. Phase 111 calls for “overarching initiatives” to create an “enabling environment” that “reviews and reforms the structural constraints, legal procedures and policies that impede (targeted) interventions” and “realistically address the emerging issues related to sexual behaviour of young people”. Phase 11’s intensive advocacy with elite political and civil society ranks has paid off and Phase 111 has provisions for more. The Independent Commission on Health (ICHI) criticised the gross manipulation: HIV estimates that ranged from 2 to 2.5 million over 1993-97 suddenly rose to 4 million in NACO’s 1997-98 report a la a newly-formed NACO Expert Group on Estimates (May 1997, prior to the World Bank Review Mission, September 1997). The uproar resulted in some backtracking. But the changed estimates presentation — from the point figure to range methodology with 20 per cent plus minus proposed to cover double-counting/under-reporting and eventually flat addition of 20 per cent brought NACO figures to 3.7 million HIV-infected in 1999, a 50 per cent jump from 97 levels approximating the 4 million in the World Bank appraisal! The World Bank project’s cavalier assumptions and figures: not only over-estimation of 4 million HIV-infected in India at project-start, but one-third of it presumed as new infections each year (also 1 per cent of Indian women prostitutes!) reckoning 4.5 million new infections over project-period. Successful implementation of the proposed Targeted Interventions it argued would downscale these to 3.7 million. Also claimed, without interventions, HIV-infected would reach 37 million by 2005! (Reality check: cumulative 5.1 million in 2005) ICHI categorically noted (2000): “Flawed estimates at the outset could result in scams of enormous public expenditures vindicated through the notional reduction of ‘infections averted’ from levels not scaled in the first place — fudged figures as in the family planning ‘sterilisation and births averted’ claims could lie ahead.” That stage is now here. The current need militates for numbers that are not exploding, rather that pushed strategies have been effective in containing the situation. Interestingly, this time condom procurement suddenly doubled from 2003 to 2005! NACO Phase 111 proposes halt and reversal of the HIV epidemic a 60 per cent reduction of new infections in high prevalence states and 40 per cent in vulnerable states from the estimates of new infections as taken in year one. Does a bell ring? Not enough is known of the World Bank-GOI ongoing dynamics beyond the information on RCH drugs. But the CAG reports on NACO’s performance too highlight considerable lapses and inadequacies that have failed to capture sufficient media/NGO attention, otherwise alert to such shortcomings, nor of the World Bank. Further, NACO’s governance — high-powered committees did not meet/met perfunctorily, Technical Task Forces largely are dysfunctional, mid/end-evaluations not done as scheduled in either phase. Surely, not the ingredients of a World Bank project meriting a highly satisfactory rating? That considerable Targeted Interventions funding remained outside central audit scrutiny being donor-funded is another story. But what is worth noting is the lead component-donor’s evaluation threatened funding end unless performance and financial handling, most particularly in one southern state, improved substantially. Phase 11 was sneaked in by an interim government of 14 days! Later, Prime Minister Vajpayee turned a Nelsonian eye on protestations as he worked on his international profile. The new World Bank President’s demand for more probity and integrity in Bank projects in the health sector is welcome to clean our act, both on their technical advice and our financial spheres, if borrowed money is to improve the country’s well-being, not drain it. Clearly needed are strategies that curb the rate of promiscuity, not legitimise it. India’s public needs to demand greater transparency and accountability than forthcoming from NACO — and other allied organisations — for public money raised from public debt and public taxes, or for that matter donor gifts that are no free lunches. The fallacies of bankrupt strategies that threaten to turn our society inside-out, upside-down need exposure, not validation through seemingly thorough but arbitrary research findings. The declining trends emphasise that the choice can go beyond the devil and the deep sea! India has the capability to show wholesome choices that are presently being smothered to our real
peril.
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Twenty years later
Folks, remember Rakesh Chaba? One night he woke me up at 3 a.m. on a chilly winter night and asked me to follow him outside the hostel in Dalhousie. He raised his finger and said ‘that is Mars’. He did things like astronomy and love signs. Ghosts and all strange things were his forte”, said Satish Mahajan. Many more anecdotes creating pictures of fellow classmates and their typical antics fuelled the roar of laughter among us friends till well past midnight in a sleepy village, Keerian Gandyal, in Jammu and Kashmir. We six classmates were meeting after a gap of 20 years. Rakeshwar Katoch now works for a multi-national, Hardeep Singh runs a school, Randhir Singh looks after his farm, Satish Mahajan his brick kiln business and Ajay Chaudhary is a business manager. There was no mention of what we were doing now. We only talked about the 10 years of our lives we had spent in a hostel mastering the “theory of the survival of the fittest” as Randhir remembered. We aped the mathematics teacher, Mr Puri, who spoke English in Hindi accent and repeated words like “oye bewakoof (fool), it is simple yaar, I will give you solid thappar (slap) at a right angle”. The PT teacher, Mr Bishamber Dass, an ex-serviceman, always threatened to “line haazir” defaulters with front-rolls and back-rolls. Mr Som Dutt, the English teacher was very fond of Punjabi poetry and gave very frequent renderings of “kudi pothohar di”. It all started when I was in the US during the summer of 2005. On the Internet, almost sub-consciously, I put the name of my school and I was excited to read the name of Munish Chowbey, our school captain. He replied to my mail immediately and said we must try to locate all old classmates. Back home in India, I got in touch with Randhir aka “chooha” (mouse). He traced Katoch aka “tota” (parrot) who found Ajay “haathi” (elephant) and also Hardeep “moola”. I was filled with apprehensions as to how it will feel meeting them after such a long gap when I reached the gate of Randhir’s house. He almost ran and grasped me firmly. There were also Satish and Rakesh and Ajay. “Choohe, Billi, oye Tote’, let me go”, I shouted. There were bursts of langhter. We went inside. Satish said: “Hope you don’t start off with your Charles Dickens any more”. There was another roar in the room. Hardeep entered silently. “Guys, pay me back for the loads of sweets you stole from my baggage every night”. There was no break in the story-telling session as one followed the other. Randhir was very emotional the next day when we parted. “You guys promised last time we will meet regularly but we didn’t. This time, however, I pray we are not lying”.
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Innocence in jail Hundreds of women prisoners languishing in jails suffer from a deep sense of loss and guilt that fills them every second of their incarceration. While some women reel under the pain caused by separation from their children, others live with the guilt of keeping them inside prisons and forcing them into an emotional chaos they will never be able to handle. In their attempt to secure a support system, they ignore the implications of their act. The practice is disastrous as it creates situations where children end up becoming victims of offences they have not committed. What’s worse – they must go back to the community once they turn six. Suddenly forced into a hostile setting, they crumble under the weight of rejection. Studies show that very few children manage to go back to extended families; most are left alone to endure the pain caused by the label: “convict’s children.” And while the state remains oblivious to the long term consequences of this phenomenon, correctional administration experts underline the need to take women prisoners and their children out of prisons into places that refresh their spirits instead of degenerating them. The National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) data in this regard is telling: “There are 1123 women undertrials lodged in Indian jails. They are accompanied by 1075 children who grow in surroundings hostile to their cognitive development. About 272 women convicts are living in jails with 321 children.” The NCRB is now compiling statistics to include details on children in jails – the period they have been inside, their health and other indicators. Punjab alone has 73 children in its nine women jails. Of these, 26 live with 197 convicted mothers; 47 live with 612 undertrial mothers. While women undertrials can still hope for release, convicted mothers suffer on two counts – their own crime and the misery of their child. It is however strange that they don’t want to let go of their child despite knowledge of the irreversible psychological damage the prison environment might inflict upon him. In Punjab’s jails, children sleep on cemented slabs with their mothers, play on broken floors, and barely study because there is either no motivation to study or no teachers. On top of that, they live among convicts absorbing from them all that they should never have been exposed to. The jails are congested. While the sanctioned strength of women’s jails in Punjab is 336, they are housing 809. Dr Jyoti Seth, a Chandigarh-based sociologist, who has conducted a study on “Women in Detention in Punjab Jails” for the National Commission for Women, observes, “Women turn a blind eye to their child’s trauma. The child remains devoid of the essentials for holistic growth. Jails don’t have any recreational facilities for children; they have no special nutrition plans for them, no good teachers or pediatricians, and absolutely no concept of “growth””. Significantly, because women comprise only five per cent of the total prison populations in India, their issues remain low on government priority. In jails across Punjab, children get to eat the same chapattis and dal their mothers eat. They get just one extra glass of milk in the name of nutrition. There are hardly any indoor games for them, no swings, barely any exposure to sights and sounds – the quintessential elements for cognitive development. Upneet Lalli, Deputy Director, Institute of Correctional Administration at Chandigarh, makes an important observation in this regard: “Very often children born in jails have no clue to what a certain animal or vegetable looks like because they have never been exposed to one. Very few authorities like those at Chattisgarh, Raipur and Lucknow take children for excursions to keep them aware of the world around them. `In Delhi, the India Vision Foundation started by former head of Tihar Jail Kiran Bedi is doing a good job. It works with NGOs that look after the children of women inmates. But all this is a far cry from foreign countries like the UK where prisons have special rooms for infants born inside. These are filled with music and colours to facilitate cognitive growth which mainly happens when the child is 1 to 3 years old.” While NGOs in Southern India have assumed a positive role by counselling imprisoned mothers and caring for their children, those north of Delhi are yet to make a start. Dr Seth reasons, “In Punjab people donate generously in the name of religion but no one comes forward to help such children who live on the fringes. Often forced into separation with their siblings, they suffer silently, unable to complain or choose.” Although some institutional support exists in the shape of Bal Niketans, women inmates are reluctant to send their wards to such places. The need is to empower them and their children by devising comprehensive rehabilitation strategies, as suggested by Mr A.P. Bhatnagar, Advisor, Prisons Department Punjab who recently visited a unique project in New South Wales, Australia. The Corrective Services Department at New South Wales runs a development programme aimed at enabling a woman convict with a child to apply for release on parole for enrollment under the programme. The Department has built a village called “Jacaranda Cottages” in which women on probation along with their children are set up for a year. “The Department gets jobs for these women and while they work, the Department looks after their children. The mothers are expected to get absorbed in their jobs at the end of their probation. They go out of the cottages empowered to provide for their children. That is correction,” says Mr Bhatnagar, adding that incarceration without a humane approach adds to criminalization. |
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Development aimed at employment Thanks to the arrival of some top industrial names followed by an organised publicity blitz, a breeze of development has started blowing in Punjab.
The moot point is, whether the course of development adopted is in the right direction. The biggest problem, closely linked to the wretched condition of farmers, is the bulging population of unemployed youth dejectedly starting at society and the State. Does the development road adopted meet their needs immediately? A list of the prospective mega projects shows that out of 122 odd projects as many as 50 are of construction companies. The rest are big industries which of course are for long term development. When and where the latter will come into shape is uncertain. As regards the construction companies, the private builders are already making hay by constructing numerous flats in and around Mohali. The immediate impact of publicized builders is that land in Zirakpur/Kharar area and suburbs of Mohali is selling by inches rather than yards. Ironically, the government is boastful of this hike terming it as its achievement. They claim the farmer is getting rich, callously oblivious of his ultimate fate when he loses his only source of livelihood. This boom in land price will be a farmer’s one time bounty and he knows little about how to fruitfully invest and utilize money. Apart from the likelihood of frittering away the bounty, farmers may be tempted into new ventures where he will fail as he has only one skill i.e. farming. At the most, the transport sector, (becoming a trucker) can catch his fancy. Therefore, unless a plan for suitable alternative means of livelihood for the farmer whose land is taken for industries or otherwise is put in place, the development is going to create a new source of social unrest. The construction activity, whether of housing/flats etc. or of industrial and residential buildings, is not going to give much relief to Punjab’s unemployment. The Punjabi Youth is shy of doing manual labour or a menial job on his own soil. He is however happy where he can command, – a police constable is fine – or is happy at the wheel where the truck or car is at his command. The jobs with construction companies are mainly of manual labour. As regards the big industries, these will mostly be automotive, requiring lesser and lesser hands, that too highly technical. This area will also not be a green pasture for the Punjabi unemployed force. The planners of the development road map have not laboured hard to work out those devices which will engage the unemployed youth and demonstrably satisfy them. Punjab is a state of more than 12000 villages. One each in a cluster of 10 villages, should be identified. All the unemployed youth of the cluster should be given training as per their taste in vocations like dairy, poultry, fishery, service units like electricians, mechanics, shopping small food processing etc. Banks, training institutes, NGO’s should be persuaded to join the venture with respective inputs. Marketing of the products should be assured. Many more schemes on similar lines can be launched. Further, these nodal villages will pulsate with economic activity and will stop migration to city centres. |
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Crazybusy: a severe case of modern life Got it. Next point? These days, people get the picture quickly – or think they do. We do everything faster, not just because we’re busy but because speed is fun. Speed rivets attention. Speed blasts you out of boredom. Nothing is boring if it’s fast enough. But slow is agonizing. So many of us zip through life so fast we’re beyond busy, we’re crazybusy. Yet there is no correlation between a fast life and a happy life. Nor is there a correlation between fast and smart — or slow and stupid. “Please explain the problem to me slowly, as I do not understand things quickly,” Albert Einstein said. Today’s world, with its energy, excitement and excess, its novelty, chaos and confusion, its dust storms of data, its creative spirit and irreverence, its speed and its incoherence, looks much like another world I know well: the world of attention deficit disorder, or ADD. People with untreated ADD rush around, feel impatient, get frustrated easily, lose focus in the middle of a task, bubble with energy but struggle to stay organized, forget where they’re going or what they’ve gone to get, fail to complete what they are doing, feel they could do a lot more if they could just get it together, procrastinate and feel busy beyond belief but dissatisfied with their performance. Sound like anyone you know? As a psychiatrist, I’ve seen an upsurge since the mid-1990s in people who don’t have true ADD but do suffer from many of these symptoms. They complain of being distracted, disorganized and overbooked. They suffer memory loss from data overload and wonder if they have early Alzheimer’s. They multi-task and (surprise!) feel they do nothing well. I call it a severe case of modern life. So why do we keep ourselves so busy? Tick all that apply. a) We can be. Can you imagine how bored we must have been before cell phones and e-mail? b) We must be. The wolf is at the door. Its name is China. The wolf behind it is named India. Third in line is the guy down the street. c) We imagine that we must be. All the smart people say that life is really insecure these days. d) We love channel surfing. Maybe somewhere, something better is going on. e) We work hard but not smart. No one tries to work stupid, so why do we? f) Being busy is a status symbol. Isn’t that strange? g) We are afraid. Will we be left out, miss something or see our standard of living decline if we don’t do everything we’re “supposed to”? h) We can avoid pain. Being crazybusy leaves no time to worry about the abyss, gratuitous human cruelty, death, world hunger, global warming, AIDS, the nuclear threat, terrorism and other Big Horrible Problems I Can’t Do Anything About. i) We think if we go fast enough, we’ll be able to create time when we won’t have to be busy. A seductive idea, but delusional. The key is to slow down and thrive today. As that slowpoke Einstein said, ``Creativity is the residue of time wasted.’’ Well, you’re probably too crazybusy to read to the end of the alphabet, so I’ll fast-forward to: z) All of the above. If you answered “z,’’ I agree. By arrangement with LA Times — Washington Post |
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From the pages of A lakh a day! One lakh of rupees a day. That is what India is spending on the Waziristan operations. Punitive expeditions in the last century might have been “tip and run” affairs, but not this, the 55th expedition. It has been going on for the last six months during which the Government forces have suffered 588 casualties, including 169 killed. We are no judge of the military aspect of the situation. If the Government is satisfied with the progress it has made we have nothing to say, though it is difficult to forget that the Faqir of Ipi, the man who lighted the blaze, is still at large and the kidnapping racket has not completely ceased. What leads to heart-searching is not the fortunes of the war, but the Himalayan bills which the country has to foot. There can be no two opinions that these are a tremendous strain on the purse of a country which requires every pie for its nation-building activities. How long can the country go on sinking money at this rate in the tribal land “which breeds but does not feed?”
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The law which governs all life is God. — Mahatma Gandhi God’s bounties are common to all. It is we who have created these divisions and distinctions. — Guru Nanak May me ears only
hear good. — The Upanishadas Look at the shining visage of the great warrior, his eyes bright with intelligence, his strong shoulders and braod chest. Now do you question his lineage when he stands before you in all nobility? Did ever a she-breed tordly tigers in her humble little lair — The Mahabharata |
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