The Tribune, Chandigarh, India

Shunglu indictment
Khanna, Dikshit in line of fire

THE stench of the Commonwealth Games (CWG) corruption has become all the more overpowering, with the V.K. Shunglu committee, appointed by the government in October, indicting Delhi’s Lt-Governor Tejender Khanna and Chief Minister Sheila Dixit for delays and losses in infrastructure projects for the Games. According to the report, the cumulative loss due to delays was Rs 900 crore while undue gains worth Rs 254.10 crore were handed over to contractors in 19 of the 25 CWG projects that the committee studied. Not only that, it reveals in sordid details how tendering rules were changed to favour a select few, quality of work was compromised and tainted officers appointed in key positions in the Games Organising Committee.

For obvious reasons, the government has avoided tabling the report in the budget session of Parliament and would do so only in the monsoon session. But after some parts made their way into the media, the committee has itself been uploading its reports immediately after submitting them to the PMO. That has provided enough ammunition to the Opposition, which will be further armed when the committee makes public the remaining three reports by March 30, a day before its term expires. These are likely to be even more explosive, considering that these are on matters relating to the Suresh Kalmadi-led CWG Organising Committee, problems and excessive expenditure at the Games venues and governance issues arising out of the conduct of the Games with recommendations on how similar events should be organised in future.

While evaluating many “out of the box” decisions that were taken, one will have to take into account the economic slowdown that had prevailed in the runup to the Games and the need to finish all work in time. The government’s grouse is that unlike the CAG, the Shunglu panel did not seek written responses from indicted departments and officials. While it did send several queries to top officials of the DDA, it did not do so in the case of Mr Khanna and Mrs Dikshit. It is not certain if that technicality would be enough to blunt the edge of the knives that are currently being sharpened.

Hardly a mission
Rural healthcare is ‘a joke’

Ambitious projects launched with fanfare often flounder at the implementation stage. The National Rural Health Mission is a case in point. The Centre launched it in 2005 and has spent Rs 30,000 crore since. But the Public Accounts Committee of Parliament, headed by Murli Manohar Joshi of the BJP, has dubbed it a fiasco and a joke, and asked the Health Ministry to restructure the project. The project has not flopped in a state or two, but in most of the 18 states where it is being implemented. Health centres in villages, says the PAC, are used as cow sheds, foodgrain godowns or community halls.

Still worse, expired medicines are given which can do more harm than good to patients. It is widely known that medicines banned in advanced countries for negative side-effects are available over-the-counter in India. The PAC auditing finds out that in Orissa, West Bengal and Jharkhand medicines were purchased without quality checks. There is a shortage of not just doctors and specialists but even nurses and mid-wives in the rural areas. Diagnostic services and laboratories are woefully inadequate. Expensive medical machines and equipment, wherever available, even in city hospitals, remain in disuse for long periods due to lack of repairs and funds.

These are some of the harsh facts of India’s ailing health sector which might dismay the city-bred intelligentsia, but the rural health staff and villagers know it well. These facts re-emphasise the obvious, which is, India is growing fast, while change is very slow in Bharat. How can the result be otherwise when the government spends just 1.1 per cent of the GDP on health against the recommended 3 per cent? A large part of the poor spending is grabbed by vested interests well-entrenched in the system. A badly funded and governed healthcare system is unlikely to meet the challenge of providing an ordinary citizen a basic need: access to quality and affordable healthcare.

Thought for the Day

I was made to work. If you are equally industrious, you will be equally successful.
— Johann Sebastian Bach

ARTICLE

Looming urban challenge
Need for policy interventions
by N.S. Sisodia

THE global percentage of urban population grew from 13 in 1900 to 29 in 1950, and 49 in 2005. If the present trends continue, by 2030 nearly 60 per cent of the global population will be living in cities. In 2015, the world will have 58 cities with 5 million people each; and by 2025, 27 mega cities with more than 10 million people each.

A Harvard economist, Edward Glaeser, in his recent book, “Triumph of the City: How our Greatest Invention Makes us Richer, Smarter, Greener, Healthier and Happier”, argues that cities are “our species’ greatest invention”, as they make people more inventive, productive and kinder to the planet. But are the cities indeed such an unmixed blessing, particularly in the global south?

Cities do offer advantages of agglomeration, better infrastructure and economic and social opportunities. They serve as cultural melting pots, centres of knowledge and innovation; fora of political engagement; and sites of investment. Cities thus become magnets that attract people from less developed regions. But particularly in the global south, cities are also home to acute congestion, slums, deprivation and poverty. Their large ungoverned spaces are conducive to organised crime, drug and human-trafficking and urban warfare.

Cities expand due to natural growth, migration, greater employment and economic opportunities, declining labour-intensity of agriculture and globalisation. Instability and civil strife in parts of the global south, coupled with weak governance, also contribute to rural-urban migration.

For the first time in history, most of the world’s population will be concentrated in cities located in the world’s poorest countries, where policing, sanitation and medical facilities are scanty. The World Bank estimates that between now and 2050 over 70 per cent of population growth will take place in 24 low and lower-middle income countries that have an average per capita earning of less than $3855 (2008). Asia’s urban population is currently 37 per cent. Over the next two decades, it is projected at 55 per cent. By 2030, India’s urban population will be 500 million. The mega cities of South Asia are expanding even more because of rural poverty and high fertility rates rather than economic dynamism. Mumbai, where at least half the population lacks adequate shelter, is projected to have a population of 22.6 million in 2015. Karachi, already trapped in chronic political turbulence, will have 16.2 million people by 2015. Dhaka, one of the world’s poorest cities, is likely to have 17.9 million inhabitants by 2015.

Cities in the developed world grew at a more leisurely pace than those in Asia’s developing countries. For example, between 1950 and 2015, New York’s population will have grown by just 30 per cent, whereas Karachi’s will have grown by 2000 per cent and Dhaka’s by 5400 per cent. In the developed West, moreover, growth took place after nation-states and governments were firmly established. The developed world’s urbanisation also predated the information revolution, which has led to rising expectations and a heightened sense of deprivation among the less affluent.

The cities of the global south are unlikely to be what Edward Glaeser calls the mankind’s “greatest invention”. Their pattern of growth will pose a serious challenge to human security in diverse ways. Firstly, deprivation, poverty and social exclusion will have a predominantly urban face. Between 1993 and 2002, the number of poor living on US $1 a day declined by 150 million in villages, but increased by 50 million in cities. Deprivation and disparities are particularly acute in slums and shanty towns, which lack basic amenities like water. Slum-dwellers sometimes pay 50 times more for clean water than those living in serviced colonies.

Secondly, in many urban spaces, and particularly in poorer neighbourhoods, effective governance is non-existent or is overwhelmed by the magnitude of the challenges. In such pockets, violence becomes the basis for alternative “parallel” forms of order, control, identity, legitimacy and resource distribution. The poor in such areas survive in chronic insecurity and face the risk of urban warfare.

Thirdly, haphazard and rapid urbanisation leads to severe environmental degradation. Crowded cities become centres of disease and epidemics. Inhabitants of congested cities are highly vulnerable to devastation in the wake of extreme weather events. Cities close to low-lying coastal zones will be prone to flooding and consequent economic loss.

Fourth, cities marked by religious, ethnic and linguistic diversity can accentuate tensions arising from other factors like competition for the limited number of jobs and resources. Rapidly urbanising centres affected by a youth bulge can foster violence in an environment of deprivation and denial.

Cities are also becoming both the sources and targets of urban terror. They offer tempting opportunities for shock and publicity, which are greatly valued by terrorists. It is hardly surprising that recent terror attacks have targeted iconic symbols in cities like New York and Mumbai.

The urban challenge looms large in India. A UN-HABITAT report notes that 63 per cent of South Asia’s slum-dwellers are Indian. The largest number of slum-dwellers in the country live in four mega cities: Mumbai (6.5 million, which is more than the entire population of Norway); Delhi (1.9 million), Kolkata (1.5 million) and Chennai (0.8 million).

If governments continue to adopt a business-as-usual attitude towards the urban challenge, chronic chaos in most mega cities of Asia is the most likely scenario. While cities like Karachi already present a picture of unending disorder, other mega cities like Dhaka, Lahore, Mumbai, Kolkata and Jakarta could well face a similar fate.

Densely populated urban centres will be particularly vulnerable to natural disasters and these in turn will challenge governments’ capacities to address them. Climate change scientists forecast extreme weather events and disasters like the Asian tsunami of December 2004. The recent earthquake and the tsunami in its wake have been termed by the Japanese Prime Minister as the country’s greatest crisis since World War II. Massive damage caused by natural events, epidemics or other disasters may overwhelm city and national governments.

Chronic neglect and exclusion make people particularly prone to embracing radical ideologies. Left-wing extremism, which presently afflicts 196 districts in 20 states of India, is making systematic inroads in several cities. This is likely to grow unless the urbanisation process can be managed more imaginatively and efficiently.

The urbanisation phenomenon, therefore, needs to be viewed from a strategic perspective. Policy interventions to tackle the challenge may include sound planning for urban growth and effective implementation of such plans; giving due emphasis to environmental protection; vigorous efforts to provide basic amenities; slum improvement, pro-poor policies and inclusive growth. Appropriate measures are also needed to prevent disasters if possible, and mitigate and manage them when they cannot be prevented.

The writer is the Director-General of the Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses, New Delhi.

MIDDLE

The changing contours
by B. K. Karkra

I had developed somewhat curly hair naturally, as I grew into my teens. My father, however, was unprepared to believe that it was a natural growth. He thought that I had managed the curls by pressing and pulling my hair with the back of my comb and was getting too much of a ‘shokeen’ (fashionable) for his comfort. So, he decided to take the things in his own hands to put an end to my churlishness. One day he was ready with a comb in hand to take on me, as I came out of the bathroom.

He made me sit in front of him and started running the comb into my hair. These were then wet, soft and yielding. He was thus able to have his way with them for a while. He parted these in the middle and pasted these on the sides neatly to give me, what he thought, was a ‘beeba’ (gentle) boy look. I, however, felt depressed to find myself having the appearance of a sophisticated dancing girl like ‘Umrao Jan’.

Mercifully, as the hair dried up, these started curling like the suddenly broken strings of a sitar to the great exasperation of my father. All the good work done by him came to a naught. He soon left me as a bad job and never bothered me again for my hair.

After some sixty-five years my story repeated itself on my little grandson, Aryan. Just a few days back, we had a function in our family— the golden jubilee celebration of our own marriage, in fact. All our close relations had congregated at Gurgaon and were getting ready to go to a banquet hall. The gathering included another grandson of ours from London, Karan. He is a strapping young man on whom anything would look nice. In keeping with the times, he had done up his hair by lifting the jelly-applied tufts like the pyramids of Egypt. He saw young Aryan around and took him away to dress up his hair in all fondness. Aryan emerged from the room in real high spirits with his hair lifted from the sides in to a crocodile type of hump on the top.

However, just as he was about to leave for the ceremony, his Naniji (mother`s mother) accosted him with the words, ‘Be tu ne abhi bal bhi nahi banay’ (O You, you have not yet even combed your hair)? She got hold of him and combed his hair tidily to the sides. The generous amount of jelly ensured that these stayed there. Aryan now appeared to be having no hair on the head. It just seemed to have been painted shiny black. The poor little fellow looked visibly bewildered and appeared asking what he had done to deserve this.

OPED-tribal art

The way the tribal see it
Exhibitions of contemporary Indian tribal art are held in art capitals of the world like Paris, New York, Boston, Tokyo and Mumbai. Their works are auctioned at Sotheby's. The global aspiration for harmony reflected in their works takes the art of the tribal masters to a new plane, vying for parity with mainstream modern art
Ashok Vajpeyi

The cosmic rhythm of energy flow in 'Is it a call for me' by Jangarh Singh Shyam

THE idea germinated with J Swaminathan joining us when we were trying to envisage the kind of museum we should have for Bharat Bhawan, Bhopal, in 1982. We have had many imposing institutions of colonial legacy where folk art has been relegated to craft. This allowed only the urban art to occupy the entire space of modern contemporary art. The art activity taking place in the rural and tribal areas of India was not given the place it deserved. This notion of modern Indian art needed to be questioned because these so- called museums of art had excluded a lot of vibrant, exiting art stamped as craft. To redefine contemporary art and to override this dichotomy we acquired works of S H Raza, M F Husain, Krishen Khanna, Ghulam Mohammed Sheikh, N S Bendre, V S Gaitonde, Manjit Bawa and Satish Gujral for Roopankar Museum of Fine Arts, and placed them along with the works of Bhuri Bai, Mitti Bai, Ram Singh Urveti and Ladoo Bai, known in general parlance as tribal artists.

Then something magical happened. On his usual tours to the interiors of Bastar, Swaminathan chanced upon a stone-breaker boy from Pradhan Gond community of singers and story tellers in Pattangarh. The boy had an uncanny gift for singing ancestral memories and an extraordinary sense of form and style which he used for decorating village huts. Swaminathan brought him to Bharat Bhawan where he worked on a giant mural in the Charles Correa-designed arts complex. He flowered and the world of art came to know of Jangarh Singh Shyam's tribal art which eventually came to be known as Jangarh school of art.

Jangarh had an amazing gift for translating ancestral musical memories into visual images. He brought with him new materials and metaphors. At Bharat Bhawan he learnt to take native art on to canvas and paper, using water colours and acrylic paints to create works that would circulate in galleries not just in India, but in France, the US and Japan. These images were mediated by references from the new art world he had entered. The images born of this cross-over were transient: birds morphing into airplanes; or a stag's horns turning into a vast forest. He made a beginning which would offer a new field of art to the world.

More and more artists joined in with their unique sensibility. Mitti Bai came from Bilaspur, she had never boarded a train, but, after workshops with artists from other continents, vocabulary of these artists changed, it acquired an exclusive contemporary idiom. Mitti Bai made a mural of mud and clay juxtaposing aero planes with elephants, horses and lizards - domesticating technology.

This new idiom in art was very contemporary. Udyan Vajpeyi wrote a book 'Jangarh Kalam', on the school of art that came with Jangarh Singh Shyam's brilliant creative sensibility. To call it tribal art would be relegating it to some form of primordial activity.

Unfortunately, Jangarh committed suicide at Mithila Museum (outside Tokyo) in July 2001. It was also a frightening reminder of the trend of exploitation of folk artists at the hands of commercial agents. Since the unfortunate incident, about 30 to 40 families from Pattangrah, mostly his relatives, have been carrying the tradition of Jangarh art, or, what is commonly known as Gond art.

The transformation and transition- from tribal to contemporary art could happen due to changes taking place at three different layers. After setting up of Roopankar Museum, we invited the former director of NSD ( National School of Drama), B V Karanth to set up a repertory company of theatre at Bharat Bhawan. Folk theatre artistes from different genres; pandavani, ramleela, tamasha , swang etc were encouraged to perform modern plays in their own language and style. For the first time Bertolt Brecht's 'The Caucasian Chalk Circle' was staged in Bundelkhandi, Shakespeare was played in Malwi. These artists had their own take on things, and it was no less sophisticated than any urban production. Along with this, the artists were constantly sharing and exchanging experiences through workshops with other folk artists- like the Aborigines of Australia and tribal artists from Africa, along with the urban artists. This created a new field of creativity, which was neither urban nor tribal-rural. This new field created wonders.

Today this art has created its own buyers and collectors. There is a growing interest in these artists-globally. And, there are reasons for this. One, there is a lurking ethnic element in fashion and whatever is glamorous and stylish. Two, this art is much more affordable, compared to the urban-modern art. And, there is a lot of variety in styles. About thirty different forms- from the North East to Kerala have established their own niche. And, most importantly, it proves that poverty doesn't come in the way of art. There is no co- relation between art and affluence.

Poet, writer and critic, Ashok Vajpeyi heads Lalit Kala Akademi, New Delhi ( as told to Vandana Shukla)

Booking the tribal

Mark Tully's 'No Full Stops in India' has a chapter devoted to Jangarh Singh Shyam's life and works. The anti-caste publisher Navayana has just published a graphic novel chronicling the life of B R Ambedkar illustrated by Gond artists Durgabai Vyam and Subhash Vyam.

The other masters
Vandana Shukla

Technology attracts but later repels: A profound observation in Durga Bai's Bhopal Gas Tragedy.

IF the ultimate stamp of having arrived in the art world- an auction by Sotheby's- is something to go by, Indian contemporary tribal art has arrived, even though in its infancy. Warli artist Jivya Soma Mashe's painting on canvas was sold for $13,600 last year. Jangarh Singh Shyam's works auctioned for the first time in its March, 2010 auction, where a 2001 work estimated for $5,000-7,000 was sold for $13,750. Two large paper works executed in 1988 and 1989 were sold in July for $15,000 and $18,000. In September the auction house expected Jangarh's canvas to fetch somewhere between $30,000-50,000. Though these are far removed from the record price of $2.4 million achieved by the Aboriginal artist Clifford Possum, in the same auction, global recognition to the other masters of the Indian art is a recent phenomenon.

For the artists who have been used to expressing their art on the cow-dung plastered walls of their hutments or with materials like straws, clay and mud, working with pencil and paper or canvas and colour is a new reality they are coming to terms with . But, this new reality is paving way for possibilities never before explored for artists of over two dozen ethnic Indian idioms like Worli, Godna, Madhubani, Patachitra, Manjusha, Kantha and Gond, which has aroused interest among international curators and buyers for their vibrant idiom.

That a small incident that began with Jangarh Shyam's arrival at Bharat Bhawan and ended with his tragic suicide because his agent in Japan refused to return his passport ( the privately owned museum was paying him a monthly salary of Rs12,000 for creating works in residence at a time when each of his works was already selling for close to lakh), has now developed into a movement that reveals both the prejudices and challenges of modernity faced by contemporary tribal artists. Their art reveals their resilience and capacity for masterful innovation. Their creative adaptability in keeping themselves and their traditional culture relevant in a globalizing India and the post-modern international art world is one of its kind. The conflict of these two worlds creates a new world of artistic beauty.

Theorists and curators are busy mapping this new field of art which is neither metropolitan nor rural. Neither is it post- modernist nor traditionalist. It has not evolved in an art institution, nor is it inherited, without changes. Experts call it the art activity of the third field of contemporary Indian culture. In simple terms the tribal approach of reverence to life and its celebration is something the so- called developed world is now beginning to fathom, if not to emulate it. Essentially, tribal art depicts life in its entirety. Extremely simplified forms characterise tribal paintings, something that abstract artists strive to achieve. Perhaps, this explains a growing interest in tribal art across the globe.

In their world animals and plants are treated with same sensitivity as one treats a child. The curiosity and enthusiasm for life is the same on the face of a tree, tiger and horse as that of a child. Life and everything that revolves around life like trees, mountains, rivers, animals are treated as sacred. Even the machines- symbols of modernity encroaching upon their space, are treated with an affectionate hand as are animals and humans. There is an underlying acceptance for all that life renders.

The popularity of this art can be gauged by the number of exhibitions held on tribal art- globally. In April last year, Paris hosted an exhibition of contemporary tribal art at the Pres du Muse Branly, which was curated by art historian Dr Jyotindra Jain. The exhibition showcased the challenge of keeping a 3000 year old tradition of art by infusing it with new idioms to help it survive along the very dynamic urban, modern contemporary art. Artists like Jivya Soma Mashe, 65, one of the first to break away from traditional Worli art, by transporting the art of the walls to a more saleable cowdung-coated cotton paper. Sonabai, 67, another artist from Madhya Pradesh, who works in clay, by making little figurines and using them on wall installations to recount a story and Thangaiya R, who has given his monumental terracotta horses and elephants a global character by painting them in vibrant colours, lend an appeal to viewers of all classes by incorporating innovations in a tradition. Wellesley College, Massachusetts, organised a month long exhibition of Pradhan Gond Art at David Museum and Cultural Centre, titled Painted Songs and Stories in September. The show had on display private collection of John H Bowles, a collector of Gond art.

If J Swaninathan and Dr Jyotindra Jain, reinvented tribal art in India, a lot of credit would go to Paris-based Hervé Perdriolle who started his pursuit as a collector in 1996 and carried his curatorial re-look of Indian tribal art, to take it to a global level. Now, as a gallerist, he is an active agent in promoting artists like Jangrah Singh Shyam, Jivya Soma Mashe and the Mithila painter Chano Devi. John Bowles, who has been tracing growth of Gond art since 1981, and has written a book on their art has been instrumental in turning Jangarh Shyam's art into a kind of internationally recognised tribal art movement. Perhaps, what is being narrated at the tribal level, is, quintessentially an expression of global aspiration for harmony.