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Politics of inaction
Why loans get costlier |
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Not so sweet
The Obama visit
Grounded feet
It's about time we stopped holding women responsible for crimes committed against them.
What they need is a fair trial, not a postmortem of their behaviour
Engendering attitudes
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Politics of inaction
Instead
of abating, the agitation in Haryana by the Jats demanding reservation is taking a turn for the worse. Incidents of arson and violence continue. The leaders of the agitators openly say that the government has just seen a glimpse of “a little disorder and unrest in the state”. The message is clear and ominous: much more is to follow. The plan is to cut supplies to the national capital and also to disrupt the Commonwealth Games if their demands are not met. What is all the more unfortunate is that the ham-handed manner in which the government reacted to the agitation has caused a caste divide. A murder case has been registered against former Hisar SP Subhash Yadav for the death of a youth in police firing while the easily identifiable agitators roam free. There is a large section which believes that Yadav was singled out because he, acting under Supreme Court orders, had arrested 130 persons, almost all of them from the Jat community, for the Mirchpur violence where two Dalits were burnt alive by a Jat mob. No wonder, uncomfortable questions are being asked about the government’s inaction against those responsible for this week’s violent incidents. Even the Punjab and Haryana High Court has directed the state to inform it as to what action is being taken against the rioters as many of them are clearly identifiable from photographs in newspapers as well as from TV footage. It was only on Friday that cases were registered against some agitators. The government has given the unfortunate impression of being partisan. It has not taken action against any rioter but awarded compensation to the kin of the deceased. A rioter is a rioter, whatever the cause he represents. The Haryana government owes a responsibility to those who lost their property due to the agitation. It had come in for strong criticism for being mild towards the majority community during the Mirchpur violence. It must not make the same mistake again.
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Why loans get costlier
The
RBI’s hikes in the repo and reverse repo rates will lead to higher interest rates on home, car and education loans. Why has the RBI done this? Why raise the cost of borrowings for individuals and companies? If more people take home and car loans, it means more demand for housing and automobiles, and higher growth for companies engaged in these sectors. If companies get cheaper loans, they undertake expansion and/or new projects, which means generating more employment. The overall industrial growth picks up and the economy attracts more domestic and foreign investment. Then why is the RBI playing a spoilsport? The RBI’s sole purpose is to rein in price rise. Inflation based on the wholesale prices grew at 8.5 per cent in August and that is quite high. Food inflation at 15.10 per cent for the week ending September 4 is still higher. The central bank thinks since there is too much money supply in the system, it fuels demand for goods, which, in turn, leads to price rise. High prices particularly hit the poor and are politically incorrect. However, it is the high prices of food items that make life difficult for the poor and these are not driven by money supply. If the supply of food items is increased – through imports and better management of the distribution system in the short term and by raising farm productivity in the long term – then food inflation can come down without hurting growth. The RBI can indeed bring down the prices of manufactured products by tightening money supply and squeezing demand. Another reason for the apex bank draining liquidity is that in 2008 the industry was extended a financial stimulus in the shape of cheaper loans and tax breaks to cope with recession. Now that recovery has begun and growth is robust, it is time to roll back the stimulus and ease the government’s financial burden.
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Not so sweet
Multiple
benefits of honey have been driven home since times immemorial. That the honey traditionally meant to be an elixir could contain antibiotics, including the banned chloramphenicol, not only comes as a big shock but also raises questions over the food and safety regulations prevalent in the country. A Centre for Science and Environment exposé has come out with damning reports of presence of antibiotics in honey available in the market. The CSE, an NGO that had previously taken on powerful cola manufacturing companies and highlighted the presence of pesticide residue in cola drinks, has tested nearly 12 brands of honey and found six harmful antibiotics in 11 samples. The report indicts both domestically produced honey as well as the imported one. This is not the first time that doubts have been raised over the quality of honey available in India. Earlier, Punjab’s honey industry had been stung by antibiotics. Doraha-based International Institute of Beekeepers and Agro Enterprises had warned that 90 per cent export samples were laced with antibiotics and lead. Today it seems ironical that while honey exported to other countries is being tested for antibiotics, both the domestically produced and imported honey escapes regulations. Actually, the presence of antibiotics in honey, be it for the domestic market or exports, cannot be taken lightly. Even in small doses, its repeated consumption can lead to several health problems. Oxytetracycline, one of the antibiotics found by the CSE, can cause blood-related disorders. Honey laced with antibiotics can lead to antibiotics resistance. While many of the honey manufacturing companies have refuted the allegations, a country whose health care system and food and safety regulations (especially for the domestic market) leave much to be desired cannot sit smug. Health hazards, whether they come in the form of blatant adulteration or are a fallout of boosting production as in the case of honey, milk or vegetables, need to be probed. Those responsible, both the beekeepers and the foreign companies who often dump unhealthy products in India, need to be taken to task if found violating health norms.
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Even quarrels with one’s husband are preferable to the ennui of a solitary existence.
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The Obama visit BRISK India-America talks are in progress to prepare the ground for President Barack Obama’s first official visit to this country in early November. Six months ago during a strategic dialogue between the two countries at the level of foreign ministers Washington had chosen to be extraordinarily warm to the India and its Foreign Minister, S. M. Krishna. Brushing aside protocol, Mr. Obama had driven from the White House to the state department to join Hillary Clinton’s reception in Mr Krishna’s honour. With his trademark oratory he had declared then that during his visit to New Delhi he would be “making history”. However, huge changes in the situation, internal and external, since then have cast doubts whether the US President’s rhetorical flourish can be matched by reality. This should explain the accentuation of efforts by both sides to see to it that the visit is as productive and useful as possible. Foreign Secretary Nirupma Rao’s visit to Washington this week will be followed by that of National Security Adviser Shivshankar Menon. In October the US Undersecretary of State William Burns will arrive in New Delhi. What the veteran diplomats are struggling against is the combination of circumstances that have constricted Mr Obama’s capacity to deliver on his promise. The most important of these is the domestic challenge to him. The US economy hasn’t improved as much as he had claimed. On the contrary, unemployment is higher than during the recession. No wonder the President’s job ratings have plummeted from 60 to 40 per cent. Sadly, during the recently surcharged atmosphere, some Americans started calling him a “Muslim President”. On top of it he faces a very hard election to the House of Representatives and a third of the Senate in November almost immediately after returning from India. The general forecast in the US is that the Democrats will lose at least one House, if not both. If so, this would be a heavy setback to Mr Obama, circumscribing his elbowroom in the conduct of international relations. Strangely, this is already working more to the disadvantage of India than any other country. Look at the restrictions that the US has placed on the outsourcing of services such as IT operations and call offices to this country. The vehemence with which the American side, including Mr. Obama himself, has defended this action is jarring. Commerce Minister Anand Sharma has already protested against this “regressive” resort to “protectionism”. What adds to the hurt is that no comparable restrictions on China have even been thought of. Ironically, China has an annual trade surplus with the US of more than $200 billion, and the Chinese have flatly refused America’s repeated requests for a revaluation of their currency. The Indian IT industry’s earnings from the US are no more than $50 billion. More importantly, the US is supposed to be the global leader of a free market economy. If it resorts to protectionism, why wouldn’t other countries? Of course, protectionism alone is not the issue. It is intertwined with the vexed question of technology transfer. The mere dropping of some Indian entities from America’s entity list is not enough. Nor is there any point in saying that processes for issuing licences to Indian firms have been accelerated. The point is that after the Indo-US nuclear deal there is no reason to treat this country like those whose nuclear activities are under watch. For its part, the American side has been unhappy with the contents of the recently enacted Nuclear Liability Act though they have expressed themselves in relatively low key. Even so, India had told the US that after Bhopal no Indian government or legislature would accept its demand for the exemption of American suppliers from “all Indian laws”. The suppliers, really Japanese-owned, cannot be indifferent to investment opportunities worth $15 billion. The mother of all problems, however, is the imbalance in the triangular relationship between India, the US and China. The Prime Minister’s off-the-record remarks, which were published anyhow, underscore how concerned India is over China’s escalating activities against this country and overly in support of Pakistan, especially those focussed on Kashmir. The presence of the PLA in the Gilgit-Baltistan region of Pakistan-occupied Kashmir, next door to Xingjiang, may be only 2,000, not 7,000 as reported. They may not be combat troops but soldiers of the Construction Corps. But the grave implications of their deployment are obvious. Pakistan’s ability to hold on this much-suppressed and rebellious region is becoming more and more doubtful. The situation is rather like it was in several areas of Myanmar that the Chinese have virtually taken over. The history might repeat itself. In any case, Pakistan, much beholden to China, is happy to be its surrogate in keeping India “confined” to South Asia so that it does not become China’s rival on the wider Asian scene. In this respect the US has regrettably been woefully wanting. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton did warn China about its strident maritime claims in the South China Sea that are naturally contested by its Southeast Asian neighbours. But neither she nor any other American dignitary has ever said a word about what China or Pakistan or both together are doing to undermine India. In relation to Pakistan the US attitude is even more puzzling. Whatever its compulsions in Afghanistan, the US is fully aware of Pakistan’s double-dealing and duplicity vis-à-vis the “fight against terror”. Yet, Washington continues to court the Pakistan army, especially its chief, General Ashaque Kiyani. Furthermore, the US praises the enormous constructive and humanitarian work this country is doing in Afghanistan even though it is denied transit facilities to Kabul. At the same time, Washington remains receptive to Pakistani clamour for curtailing the Indian presence in the Afghan land. There is a curious objection even to the Indian consulates in Jalalaabad and Kandahar. To be sure, American leaders, from the President down, do speak of India as their “indispensable partner” in promoting democracy, peace and stability in the region, Asia and the world. But, unfortunately, actions speak louder than words. India knows – and those Indians who don’t ought to know – that good and close relations with the US are in the best interests of both. All the more reason, therefore, that China and Pak-Af should be on the top of the agenda during the Obama visit, and Indian concerns should be voiced in a friendly and firm manner. Nothing can be more self-defeating than slurring over unpleasant
realities.
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Grounded feet
While
waiting at the Bangalore airport for a flight to Delhi, I saw a middle-aged man walk to the water cooler in his bare feet. I envied him the informality of being able to kick off his shoes. But later, when we queued up for embarkation, I was horrified to see that he still wasn’t wearing shoes — he had obviously forgotten to put them on again. But when I went up to remind him, he only smiled and said; “I never wear shoes”. We found ourselves sitting next to each other. He told me that years ago, when he was not financially well off, he had gone to buy a pair of shoes and found that he was seven rupees short. Some strong impulse made him kick off his tattered shoes and vow never to wear shoes again. Our acquaintanceship survived for many years and I was amazed at the spread of his business and the wealth and power he commanded. And yet his feet were always bare —whether the pavements were sizzling at 48 or freezing at minus 20. He said it was to ensure that in spite of all his material success and his wealth, he would never forget the time when he did not have enough money to buy a pair of shoes. When I think of him, I am reminded of a story in a text book, while at school. The Shah of Persia, while out hunting, loses his way, and finds shelter and warmth in a shepherd’s hut. He is impressed by the earthy wisdom of his host and decides to appoint him as his wazir. The new wazir travels all over the kingdom to assess the people’s problems, always carrying a big trunk with him. His efforts bear fruit and he is a great success at his job. This draws upon his head the bitter jealousy of the older courtiers. They launch a slander campaign accusing him of corruption and say that he has amassed a great store of diamonds and rubies which he is loath to leave out of his sight. He carries this in his trunk. The Shah, at first, ignores these rumours but when he sees that the wazir does, indeed, never let the trunk out of his sight, his suspicions too are aroused. He commands the wazir to open the trunk and show him what is in it. The wazir opens the box and draws out the long sheep-skin coat that he used to wear to keep the cold of winter at bay. “I never let this coat out of my sight so that in all the glamour and wealth of my position, I always remember that I am only a shepherd.” The world would be a much happier place if all of us who come from humble origins always kept a symbol of these beginnings. Then in the midst of all the wealth and fame that life might gift us, our feet would remain firmly grounded.n
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It's about time we stopped holding women responsible for crimes committed against them.
What they need is a fair trial, not a postmortem of their behaviour
Crime, especially crime that can lead to the death of someone, needs to be punished severely. Our society really believes in this and adheres to it vehemently. But this universal belief seems to take a strange twist when it comes to crimes against women. If it is a high profile case, our society follows it religiously. We all try and look for answers and try to ascribe the blame somewhere or the other, without even knowing the facts of the matter or its essence. The ancient barbaric social evil of a witch-hunt does not seem to leave us. We love to ascribe blame, and we love to do it on women, especially if we can link the matter to her sexuality. It gives us all a sense of complacency that we are not ourselves in that situation and someone else is bearing the brunt of transgressing social, moral and patriarchal boundaries. All over Europe in the middle ages and as recent as the nineteenth century, women who digressed from the beaten track, or did something socially amoral, or were educated or knew a lot about natural medicines or were extremely beautiful or had tremendous property or were too old to be productive in anyway — were branded as witches and burnt in the town's marketplace where the crowd cheered on in the most inhuman and barbaric way. Women were often tortured to exorcise the evil in them and then killed for crimes that were uncertain, dubious and never proved. In India too, this practice still goes on in many villages and women are hounded by society such that they are driven out of their homes or killed. In bigger, so-called educated and aware cities, we do not commit such barbaric acts. We do not kill. We take the dead and exhume them again and again. We bring out every minute juicy detail of their lives and we devote a great deal of social talk and gossip to it. Rather authoritatively, we claim that the woman was of low character or she was using her femininity or that she was of a dubious background. We love to hear how many affairs she had or how vain she was or how she was using the man. Well, while she was alive, none of us dared to air our moral considerations, when the deed was happening right before our eyes. But once dead, we love to flog the carcass. The question that arises is — why do we do that? Society has strange ways of dealing with things that it finds problematic to put into slots. A woman who dies in a promiscuous relationship or is raped or murdered or commits suicide is seen as something which was not supposed to happen in a civilised, moral and ethical society. So we need to ascribe blame for the unfortunate incident on someone. And who could be better than the woman herself? Very self righteously, we conduct a social trial, where we are all jurors and come to a conclusion that the woman was responsible for the crime done against her. It is easier for us that way because it is extremely difficult to question a whole society which drove a woman to her death. Facing that kind of stark reality is not what most of us have the courage for. We cannot think that we all as a society have a role to play if a young woman is killed or raped or kills herself. We want to sit in our comfortable smugness and not question our existing socio-cultural institutions, merely because we do not have the courage to. When crimes happen all too often, especially crimes against women, it is because of the way our society has evolved and hence we all have to bear a collective responsibility for it. The particular victim or crime is just a symptom of the deep-rooted disease which is rampant in our society. Suppressing a symptom or finding a scapegoat to pile the blame upon is not going to cure the disease. We have to get at the root of it. For this, society as a whole has to march towards a social change, for which we need proper legislation, implementation of laws, empowerment of women and change in social attitudes towards women. All this is a Herculean task and will obviously occur over a long period of time. But the important point, and what we can start from today itself, is to stop turning the victim into a criminal. Whenever a crime is done against a woman, it simply needs to be punished like any other crime, without harping upon the woman's background or her past life or attitudes or morality. The trial is not about her character, it is about her death. Be it the Scarlet Keeling case or the German minor rape case or the Nadia case or those innumerable unfortunate cases, where women have made wrong choices, need to be viewed objectively and if the crime is proven, it should be punished without a social and media trial of the victim herself. It is foolish to proclaim that the woman invited it. No one invites assault, rape or murder. There is a distinct difference between committing a socially unacceptable deed and committing a punishable crime. We cannot put both on a par and club the victim with the criminal. If we keep ascribing blame on women for crimes done against women themselves, the criminal-minded men who commit such crimes would be emboldened and crimes would continue to happen. And with what faith can a victimised woman go to society, the police or the legal system when she knows that approaching any of these is going to merely expose her to further ignominy and trauma? That is the reason most of the time women do not even report a crime done against them. Moreover, let us for a moment stop judging these women, most of them very young, some of them even kids, naïve and perhaps misdirected. Isn't it more human to empathise than to judge? And who are we to judge after all?
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To
put it simply, gender stereotypes require a person to act and dress according to gender. In India more often than not gender stereotyping works against women. It not only blocks her development but also indirectly puts her in the dock. It is as if all social norms hinge on her behaviour and character. This is exactly what this cross-section of people feel. Amrit
Brar, AIG (Crime), Punjab
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Something similar seems to have happened to the Nadia Torrado case in Goa, the Viveka Babaji case in Mumbai, the Jessica Lal case in the past and to mostly all the cases where women have died. The fact of the matter is that a girl has died and if anyone has committed a crime, it should be duly punished. But the paraphernalia of social norms that we all carry does not let the issue remain so simple. Whenever a woman is involved in a socially reprehensible situation, a crime done against her acquires a totally different connotation. While the accused is hounded before being proven guilty, so is the victim — the woman; and her background, her character, her demeanour, her social status, her past relationships, everything is brought out and published in newspapers and splashed on TV.
" So strong is the notion of gender bias that the onus that the crime is not committed against a woman too rests on her. She is expected to ensure her safety and is somehow held responsible for the behaviour of men. The convoluted mindset is perceptible right from the taxiwallahs to the high and mighty. Who can forget the statement of Chief Minister of Delhi Sheila Dikshit, herself a woman, that girls shouldn't move out alone at night."
"Stereotypes harm the interests of not only women but all weaker sections of society like Dalits. In case of women the bias runs deeper — the moment she is seen as asserting her right she is frowned upon. At times I am forced to tell women to act and dress in a conservative way for their liberal and independent image can actually prejudice the judgement against them."
"Undoubtedly we run down women more than necessary. As against men women don't get an opportunity for a fair trial. When it comes to social privileges, we have different yardsticks for the fair sex. It's not men alone who nurse gender prejudices. Even women don't give other women a fair chance."
"No doubt gender stereotyping exists and works in favour of men and to the detriment of women. She is expected to dress modestly and behave in a particular fashion. Over the years gender stereotyping has decreased but will continue till women are fully empowered financially, politically and intellectually."
"Stereotypes of any type are the worst way of viewing things and reinforce an escapist perspective. It helps us to find easy answers and solutions. Instead of addressing the real issues and concerns we try to find excuses to avoid the problem. Maintaining the status quo through gender stereotypes helps the male-dominated society that doesn't want to give women their rights."