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The Sant
and the accord Humanitarian
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Accountability
mantra
Hunger
still haunts us
Ladies
sangeet
Working
women in a trap A letter from a
housewife
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Humanitarian aid
Pakistan
has done well to accept India’s offer of $5 million in aid initially for the rehabilitation of over 20 million people hit by the worst floods in that country’s history. The offer was made by India as a responsible South Asian country when External Affairs Minister S.M. Krishna made a telephone call to his Pakistani counterpart Shah Mehmood Qureshi last week. Then on Thursday Prime Minister Manmohan Singh rang up Pakistan Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani to express India’s sympathies to Islamabad in its hour of crisis. Dr Manmohan Singh repeated the aid offer, saying that it was the primary duty of all South Asian countries to come to the rescue of the flood-hit in Pakistan. However, Islamabad showed initial reluctance in view of the history of relations between the two neighbours, though it appreciated New Delhi’s gesture. The change in Pakistan’s thinking seems to be the result of the US statement that the aid from India must be welcome as New Delhi’s intention is to contribute to the efforts to save human lives. The unprecedented floods have affected a large part of Pakistan, claiming over 1700 lives during the past few days. Pakistan, faced with a major humanitarian crisis, has appealed to the international community to come to the aid of the flood-hit liberally. The United Nations has also issued a similar appeal. The donor response has, however, not been as encouraging as it could be seen when Haiti was devastated by a massive earthquake recently. Aid has started picking up after a lot of efforts by the UN and the US. Bringing in politics in humanitarian aid, as it could be noticed in Pakistan’s initial response to India’s gesture, is not fair. It is the duty of every human being to contribute to the efforts for the rehabilitation of the victims of natural disasters anywhere in the world. India is in a much better position, geographically and otherwise, to do whatever it can to save human lives in Pakistan. It is good that the reality has dawned on Islamabad at last.
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Accountability mantra
As
UPA Chairperson, Mrs Sonia Gandhi well knows that the stink of corruption in high places is all pervasive and her government may have to pay a heavy price if this malady is not addressed. So, she has indulged in some tough talking, pledging that no misdeed would go unpunished. The arena where the irregularities are the most glaring is the Commonwealth Games. She has not minced words while promising that as soon as the Games are over, the government will look into the allegations of malpractice and spare no one found to be involved in them. That is warning enough for the Suresh Kalmadi-led Organising Committee whose wings have already been clipped with the Centre deputing 10 senior officials to oversee critical aspects of the Games. At the same time, Mrs Gandhi has reminded all citizens of the prestige of the nation and urged them to ensure the success of the Games. Just as Prime Minister Manmohan Singh described Naxalism as the biggest internal security challenge facing the country, she terms the emergence of illegal mining as the “most serious menace” in a number of states. These mineral and forest-rich areas are notorious for tribal deprivation and left-wing violence. The UPA government will have to tackle all these problems simultaneously. She acknowledged that successive governments had been inadequate in dealing with the Bhopal gas tragedy, but skirted the central issue of the role of the then Congress governments at the Centre and in Madhya Pradesh in the release of Union Carbide chief Warren Anderson. Again echoing Dr Manmohan Singh’s emotional appeal to Kashmiris to shun violence, she said reaching out to the people of the state, particularly the youth, was the need of the hour. Everyone will agree with her that dialogue and mutual understanding are the key to ending the cycle of violence and tragic killings. But how to put this precept into practice is the moot point before her and her government.
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There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies and statistics. — Benjamin Disraeli
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Hunger still haunts us DURING his Independence Day address to the nation from the ramparts of the Red Fort Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said, among other things, that no one in this country “should go hungry”. He has said this before, as have prime ministers in the past. The tone was indeed set by the Mahatma. Far away from the celebrations on August 15, 1947, he said in Noakhali that in independent India “no man, woman or child should go to bed hungry”. But what is the sad, in fact shameful, reality full 63 years later? It would probably help to comprehend the painful situation if we begin
the story from the beginning. In the early years of Independence, when the chaos resulting from Partition and the accompanying carnage and mass migrations prevailed, the country was short of food and even more so of foreign exchange. During the early fifties the United States gave us wheat loans but in a manner that caused unhappiness to both sides. Agriculture began to pick up. In 1963, the then Food Minister, S. K. Patil – on the verge of leaving the Nehru government under the Kamaraj Plan – boasted: “My granaries are full. There is no food problem any longer.” Barely three years later, just as Indira Gandhi was being sworn in as Prime Minister, savage drought and crippling shortage of foreign exchange made us almost totally dependent on the import from the US of PL 480 wheat to the tune of 10 million metric tonnes. Lyndon Johnson,angered by New Delhi’s criticism of the Vietnam War, put the wheat shipments on such a tight leash that India lived almost literally “from ship to mouth”, and with every morsel we had to swallow a bit of humiliation. The Green Revolution enabled this country to feed itself. But even at
its peak it could never ensure that the poor could partake of the plentiful food. So, they continued to go to bed hungry. The Green Revolution has long past even its plateau. The second green revolution, urgently needed, has not materialised. Even so, the country produces enough food grains and has huge foreign exchange reserves with which to buy food abroad, if and when necessary. Yet, even in this era of Rising India and nearly 9 per cent rate of growth – and there is every reason to be proud of these up to a point — the blight of hunger casts its dark shadow on a very large section of Indians. Their actual number may be even higher but, according to the UN statistics, India is home to 220 million people who are “food insecure” or hungry. This is more than the combined population of Germany, France and Britain. Poverty and hunger have a symbiotic relationship and the number of poor in this country is not less than 400 million. Moreover, poverty in this country is not just grinding but also dehumanising, especially among the Adivasis. In this context, one might add that while the Maoist menace must be combated with all the might of the Indian state, it should not be forgotten that the dividing line between hunger and anger is very thin. In all fairness, almost all Indians considerably above the officially prescribed poverty line are today eating much better and living longer than ever before. But then this only accentuates the horror that those below the poverty line are much worse off. The best explanation for this state of affairs – to which the Indian upper crust is totally indifferent – comes from M. S. Swaminathan, unquestionably the greatest expert on agriculture of our time and one of the architects of the Green Revolution. He points out that the mere availability of food grains is not enough.
Those yearning to eat it must have the necessary purchasing power, which sadly eludes millions of families. To be sure, some poverty alleviation programmes, especially the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA), have helped. But, as Dr Swaminathan explains, this law ensures a job for one member of a rural family of five members on an average for 100 days at a daily wage of Rs 100. The Rs 10,000 thus earned for the whole year can buy the family’s food requirements only for a few months, especially because of high prices of lentils, etc. During the rest of the year what does this family do, with food prices going through the roof? The Food Security Bill that has yet to be passed is a welcome advance
on the situation. But it cannot be overlooked that but for the insistence of Congress president Sonia Gandhi the government dominated by her party would have diluted it woefully. More importantly, it would be enforced in only 150 districts, one-fourth of the total. The sweep of poverty and hunger knows no geographic boundaries. The move towards food security has to be viewed together with the two
particularly disgraceful perpetrations on the poor and the hungry, thanks to the rampant corruption that has polluted both the government and its agencies like the execrable Food Corporation of India on the one hand and the so-called free market on the other. The public distribution system (PDS) has been deliberately decimated; and, secondly, enormous stock of food grains, stored in the open and covered only by tarpaulin, either rots or is devoured by rodents, without anybody being bothered. Strangely, Union Agriculture and Food Supplies Minister Sharad Pawar
had the temerity to stand up in the Rajya Sabha and blandly claim that
the estimate of rotting food grain was an “exaggeration”. He wouldn’t give his own estimate but couldn’t deny that wheat and rice worth Rs 17,000 crore has been lying around in the open, principally in Punjab and Haryana, through not one monsoon but three, which is nothing short of madness. Mr Pawar has been presiding over both the production and distribution of food for six consecutive years. Would he care to enlighten the country about the additional storage space he has built up over this period? By an ironic coincidence, just a couple of days before the Independence Day celebrations, the Supreme Court, appalled by the amount of food that is going to rot and rats, advised, not directed, the government to give away the grain free to the poor or sell it at
a relatively low price rather than let it become “un-issuable”, official euphemism for grain that is unfit for consumption even by animals. Will the United Progressive Alliance government heed the apex court’s sage
advice?
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Ladies sangeet My
neighbour’s wife, Rama Gautam, came to our house to invite my wife Shalja, to attend “ladies sangeet” in connection with the forthcoming marriage of her daughter Kunj with Mathieu of Besune, well-known wine trading town, three-hour motor journey from Paris. She is a middle-aged beautiful, happy-go-lucky woman, heart made of pure gold. She mischievously told me: “Bhai Sahib tomorrow is exclusively women’s day and men are not at all invited”. Next morning, pink tents were raised, daris, gaddas and chairs were beautifully arranged in the front lawn of their house. Caterers made arrangements for snacks and food. The air was filled with the aroma of tasty food. On the “dholak” women of all ages began to sing Punjabi and Hindi songs. After half an hour around 50 women, including some French ladies from the bridegroom’s side, began to sing and dance to DJ music. As warned, I picked up my book, ‘The Hindu’, written by Wendy Doniger and made a hasty retreat from my house’s lawns to the lobby. It was really exclusively ladies day, chit-chatting and enjoying. The moment I entered my lobby, thoughts pushed me back to a “ladies sangeet” I witnessed as a child in 1958 at Patiala. My uncle Dewan Sham Singh Puri’s only son Rajinder Puri was getting married and my mother arranged a “ladies sangeet” on this occasion on the rooftop of our haveli. Curtains were drawn and after a few songs on the dholak, women were asked to perform as their husbands. Women dressed in men’s clothes began to arrive in the pandal. The first was Shanti Bua who wearing pants, shirt, necktie, a stick in one hand and a black hat in the other, entered the pandal and impersonating her husband called out: “Shanti Kahan ho jaldi aao. Aaj ka din bahut achha raha. Achhi khabar hai”. Next to enter the pandal was Sardar Bahadur Kuldip Singh’s wife. She entered the pandal behaving like a drunkard, shouting: “Sardarni, Nohar Chakkar Kithe mar gai? Koi mennu Sambhalan wala hi nahi. Mai sara din kam kar ke thakya han, koi hai”. The third was my mother, who entered as Dewan Sahib: “Shila Ajj da din sari umar yad rahega. High Court wich barey mushkal case wich meri rai di bahut tarrif hoi. Then came Dr Ruldu Ram’s wife clad in a doctor’s white coat. With one hand raised she softly said: “Roti Lagalo, Sara din marijan naal sir mar ke akya han”. There were cheers after each performance. Justice Girdhari Lal’s wife was the last. She entered the pandal walking briskly, loudly saying, “Khana lagao or hukka garam karoji”. Both “ladies sangeets” are unforgettable as both were arranged by the ladies and for the
ladies.
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Working women in a trap It is understanable if a family is in financial dire straits, the woman of the house is forced to go out for work. Then there is the woman whose husband is a drunkard, a drug addict or handicapped. She has no choice but to struggle. But with middle-class incomes rising, an increasing number of couples have a choice where one of them can stay at home, leaving the job for someone more needy. Many youngsters' marriage gets delayed because they are without work. There are educated women from well-off families and husbands with high-income wives who can quit to fully perform the parental duty towards children. When I hear women having good jobs talk at those feminist seminars of liberation while leaving their kids in someone's captivity, I cringe at the thought of a possible loss of pride in motherhood, the loss of childhood. Since joint living is disappearing, children grow up in nuclear families as strong individuals but sometimes without the traditional family values of sharing and caring. What drives couples out of the house is not just the desire to get reasonably enough for the family. It is to catch up with the lifestyle of the rich colleague or relative. It is to buy a bigger car, a second or third car, a bigger house or a better TV or sofa set. Once caught in the rat race there is no end. After breaking free from the oppression of family routine, the working woman has landed herself in an acquisitive culture where everything seems inadequate and insufficient. Children too pick up parental habits of showing off what they have bought, not what skill or quality they have acquired. In the pursuit of materialism the husband is seldom good enough to meet the family's growing needs. He always fails to measure up to the wife's as well as children's expectations. Men and women slog on unthinkingly - like robots or zombies. Even if you realise the futility of running the material race, it may not be easy or possible to step out and relax. A break in the hills or a holiday abroad may be soothing for a few days but puts an extra pressure on the earning hands to work more for a similar or better experience next year. The craze for owning things has diminished us as humans. There are justifications for joint families melting away, for the time spent away from the relationships we once valued. If marriages are falling apart or illicit relationships are flourishing, there must be reasons other than the obvious faults in the partner. We are drifting away from nature. If society is becoming more violent and accidents are becoming more frequent, who will step out to cycle in the rain? Where is my space for a walk? In the pursuit of big things we have lost on small joys. The house may be large and loaded with every luxury available but the child held back in traffic or lost in a chat with a friend can give us a nightmare. To survive in such an insecure world the girl is told to shed grace and other feminist traits and be strong like a boy, learn karate, excel in music as well as top in exams. The pressure builds on- be it the race from school to tuition, the competition for admission to a college of her choice or the struggle for a job. Marriage and job bring in more problems. While going to work there is the daily tension of driving safely on the killing roads. She has to work at office, fighting off unwanted male attention and leering, and compete with the male colleagues in a desperate effort to prove that she is doing an equally good, if not better, job. On way back home, she buys groceries, then cooks food, cleans the house, helps the child with homework and makes the beds. At the end of the day, she might think: Why is it so tough being a woman? Rabbi Sofer said it so feelingly: "No woman is required to build the world by destroying herself". The husband is under pressure to chip in with whatever he can do. But the poor fellow had never got any chance to enter a kitchen and understand what goes on there. The assertive wife makes him do things he hates. The submissive one takes on herself the extra burden Forget, yoga, deep breathing, mediation and stuff like that. The fact is: No one is happy - not the kids, not the wife and hardly the husband. It is time to sit back and reflect, to slow down and simplify. Life in the slow lane — shorn of the trappings of the modern age — can be given a thought.
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A letter from a housewife
Dear Society, I am not very happy with the way you've always looked down upon me. Even if I never say anything I seethe within when you accuse me of not doing anything worthwhile or twiddling my thumbs. But I can sit mum, no more. My patience has burst. Not a murmur when I was clubbed with beggars and prostitutes as an 'unproductive class'. I was outraged when I read a column in which my ilk and I were termed as 'ideological orphans.' All of you who take so much of delight in the oft-repeated dialogue, resonating across decades, 'mere paas ma hai,' seem to have forgotten that producing children, rearing them and mothering them comes at a cost. A cost I alone bear. By cost, I don't mean cost to company, but tremendous physical, emotional and psychological cost of being there 24/7 to wash, cook and give my unflinching support. Oh the intangible, unquantifiable word - support. Yes, sounds good, but is that it? This support is what you all lean on in good and bad times, and yet I'm taken so much for granted. I am there with you in the peaks and troughs, to wipe a tear and share a smile. I'm a picture of domestic bliss while rustling up a delicacy, bending backwards over to change 'your house' (you never acknowledge it's mine, too!) into a home. I try and juggle the household budget to keep the ever-increasing inflation at bay, put two squares meals on the table, and yet scrimp and save. Worse still, what I save is what you spend, I don't. To all those who deify the drudgery of the housewife (mostly men of a special type) all one would want to ask is: Try and step into my worn-out chappals for a week or a day, if you like, and then let's talk of the bliss that is full-time homemaking. Remember, partners have the option of helping (a dash of tea here or a dish there) an option they seldom exercise. How many of us have this option of not doing our bit? You'll probably be starved to death if we were to go on a Gandhian Satyagraha. What further rubs in your apathy is when the 'vast done' remains unnoticed, and little undone is torn to shreds. Despite all my labours (with or without love), my sincerity is forever doubted and efforts trashed, even if the 'Lord and Master' spots a minor speck of dust, an odd, unclean dish or an unfinished task. 'What do you do the whole day?' is how he pours out his squeamishness. That is when I simmer and seethe, and want to fly into a violent rage, even rave and rant or hit the streets. And if I ever do, there comes the characteristic patronising tone: 'Maybe, you should keep yourself occupied!' You think, I just sit here counting your chickens. How awful! Do you think keeping a home afloat is not a job, it is leisure? Thankless job is what I do, and again, with no fancy perks or packages to keep me going. My job is always downplayed, as if it is something inferior to what is done outside the house. Sometimes, I bear this double burden of being a wife and a professional. That is when the daily grind crushes me ever so slowly, unlike the God's mills. We slog round the clock, so that you can work undisturbed in the office and come back to a safe, secure haven. Wish, I had the freedom to opt out, and I really could! I am always there, like the furniture of the house, not only for the family but also for the uncountable guests, ailing parents, in-laws and whosoever wants to draw on my reserves. Often, I'm the last to go to the doctor, the last to attend to my personal needs and exigencies. You call me the lynch-pin in your chariot. Yes, I'm constantly being lynched with everyone's pins and pricks. Do you ever spare a thought for me? And yet, I'm made to feel that I don't do enough. My cloistered existence gives everyone a feeling that I have no interest in politics, business or the outside world. Whether by choice or compulsion, my world may never make headlines, but I continue to blunder on, waiting to turn into a negligible footnote to everyone else's existence. Why must I be apologetic about my existence? I do as much, if not more, than all of you put together. Yet all this conveniently fades into oblivion. Only if I could outsource my job, call it quits or simply leave you to your resources. Am I just talking to myself, other housewives, or are there others (I mean the men folk) listening, too? Yours truly (despite everything) As articulated by Aruti Nayyar
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Not a word of praise, not a hug or an effort to see how I feel or think. While everyone spins around in a tizzy, I pick up the wet towels, put caps on toothpastes, do the laundry and even if I have help, supervise and plan the meals, go for school meetings, annual functions, doctors and then wake up early to send everyone else off.