The Tribune, Chandigarh, India

Avoidable Blow
Diesel price hike to push up prices

Coming after much delay, Friday’s diesel, kerosene and LPG price hike was badly timed. It happened after the global oil prices crashed 7.4 per cent to $105.72 as Western nations decided to release 60 million barrels of oil in July. This is aimed at countering the Opec resistance to increase production to calm prices. The oil prices spike is due to production losses caused by the civil war in Libya. It would have made some sense had the diesel prices been raised when oil touched $127 a barrel recently. Opposition parties are bound to exploit justified public anger to their advantage.

Kerosene is a fuel of the poor, who are already hit by high food inflation. The cooking gas prices had not been raised for quite some time. LPG is much cheaper in India than Pakistan, Nepal, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka. It is the increase in the diesel prices that would push up prices as the cost of travel and transportation of goods goes up. This will drive the RBI to take steps to push up interest rates, further slowing down growth. But the government’s subsidy bill will ease.

Oil pricing is a complicated issue. Oil firms report profits while complaining of under-recoveries, which are losses due to selling oil below the cost. Firms are kept in fiscal good health to face any sudden oil shocks. But why should the government tax oil — and that too so heavily? It gained by raising petro prices but lost revenue by abolishing the duty on crude. States too tax oil. Punjab imposes 33.25 per cent taxes on petrol, perhaps the highest in the country. When petrol prices go up, the state’s revenue too rises. This is so in all states. Yet the Centre alone faces the flak for costly oil. The states should also slash taxes on oil to benefit consumers and control inflation.

Thank you, Mr Burney
Sailors’ rescue a PR coup by Pakistan

Expressions of grudging gratitude for Pakistani human rights activist Ansar Burney do no credit to the Indian establishment. The tepid ‘thanks’ conveyed to Mr Burney for successfully negotiating the release of 21 hostages, six of them Indians, held by pirates off the coast of Somalia, shows a gracelessness that is embarrassing. Not only did Mr Burney negotiate with the pirates but the Ansar Burney Welfare Trust raised a whopping Rs 11 crore for the ransom that was eventually paid to secure the release of not just the four Pakistanis on board the MV Suez, but of everyone. There were four Pakistanis and a Sri Lankan, besides sailors from other countries in the Egyptian ship, which was taken over by Somali pirates in August last year. They had initially demanded a ransom of Rs 20 crore, which was later scaled down to Rs 11 crore. The India Navy added to the embarassment by claiming that it had done its best to help and rescue the sailors while accusing a Pakistani Naval Ship of damaging INS Godavari. It goes without saying that no Indian billionaire paid a paisa for the ransom.

The fact remains that Pakistan has pulled off a ‘public relations coup’ and upstaged the Indian government at every step. The sailors, now safely back home, have complained that their attempts to reach out to Indian naval ships in the vicinity had evoked no response. Their anxious relatives have also been candid in pointing out that neither politicians nor bureaucrats took much notice of their desperate pleas for help. Neither the state governments of Haryana, Himachal Pradesh and J & K, from where four of the six Indian sailors hailed, took up the case in earnest nor did any Indian human rights activist or welfare organisaion showed the initiative in securing their release. The decision to pay the ransom could not have been an easy one and the payment could not have been carried out without active support of the Pakistan government and the Navy.

Both Mr Ansar Burney and Pakistan deserve to be commended for their extraordinary rescue mission. One hopes the Indian elite and the Indian government would be more sensitive in future to tragedies involving ordinary people.

Thought for the Day

There is no little enemy. — Benjamin Franklin

ARTICLE

Options before Gen Kayani
US pressure for operation in N. Waziristan
by D. Suba Chandran

During the second week of June, Pakistan’s military held the 139th Corps Commanders’ meeting in the backdrop of the killing of Osama bin Laden and the attack on PNS Mehran, joint session of Parliament on the security situation, and the growing public criticism against the capability and orientation of Pakistan’s military and intelligence agencies. What was discussed in the all-powerful Corps Commanders’ meeting will be known only to General Kayani and the rest, who were present during the meeting. However, the Press release issued at the end of the meeting highlighted three important issues, which provide an overview of what was the nature of discussions and the debate in the higher echelons of Pakistan’s military.

Is there a deliberate effort to “run down the armed forces” and “drive a wedge between the Army and people”?

According to the Press statement, the Corps Commanders noted with regret that “some quarters, because of their perceptual biases, were trying to deliberately run down the armed forces and the Army in particular. This is an effort to drive a wedge between the Army, different organs of the state and, more seriously, the people of Pakistan.”

The above perception within the military looks more like a reflection of an ostrich phenomenon than a critical evaluation of the existing public mood within Pakistan. Especially after the killing of Osama bin Laden by the US Special Forces deep within Pakistan, there were two sets of questions — was the Pakistan military in collusion with the US, or incapable of defending its own air space? More than the killing of Osama and the military’s role in it, it was the brutal killing of journalist Shahzad Salim — believed to be by the intelligence agencies that he was working for exposing the growing Al-Qaida influence within the military — that made the media highly critical of the military and intelligence agencies.

While many within Pakistan expected that there will be a thorough introspection during the Corps Commanders’ meeting on what has gone wrong, unfortunately, the military seems to believe that there is a conspiracy to keep them away from the people.

The second most important issue, which was discussed at the Corps Commanders’ meeting, obviously, was the US-Pakistan relations at the military level. According to the Press release, the COAS has informed the Corps Commanders that the “military-to-military relationship with the US has to be viewed within the larger ambit of bilateral relations between the two countries,” in the “backdrop of the 2nd May incident” and “dictates of the Joint Parliamentary Resolution passed on 14th May 2011.”

At the end, according to the Press release, the military has recommended “that the US funds meant for military assistance to the Army be diverted towards economic aid to Pakistan which can be used for reducing the burden on the common man.” It was also decided that “no intelligence agency can be allowed to carry out an independent operation” on Pakistani soil.

Undoubtedly, from the common man to the COAS, everyone in Pakistan wants to reorient the ties with the US. But what options do they have except making rhetorical statements? If the Pakistan military is against the drone attacks, and see them as a violation of their country’s sovereignty, why don’t they counter-attack? The statement clearly says that the drone attacks “are not acceptable under any circumstances”. If it is so, from missiles to anti-aircraft guns, one is sure there is so much in the Pakistan military’s kitty which could be used to fire against the drones. Then, why is that no single bullet has been fired against these drones? The drones are neither stealth nor do they fly at an altitude that cannot be targeted.

The statement that the US military aid can be used to reduce the burden of the common man appears more like a public relations exercise than based on any concern for the general public. The critics within Pakistan even argue that with growing opposition within the US Congress for any military aid to Pakistan, the COAS should be well aware that the military-to-military aid is not going to be substantial and without strings attached.

Moreover, even if the Pakistan military wants to reorient the military-to-military ties, what leverages do they have, especially after the killing of Osama bin Laden in the heart of Pakistan by the US Special Forces? How can Pakistan’s military, which is at the receiving end from the US side for non-cooperation and double crossing, reorient its ties with the US? One option is to pursue what General Musharraf did successfully — to use the TINA strategy — there is no alternative than supporting Pakistan and its military.

Perhaps, one should read the recent report that appeared in The New York Times, saying that the COAS is facing a revolt from within for, among various other issues, not breaking the ties with the US. This could very well be a well-thought-out strategy to convince the US that the military leadership is facing not only the Taliban, but also a threat of a revolt within.

Certainly, none in the US would like to even consider a scenario of an internal revolt or a coup within Pakistan’s military. Clearly, for the US, the war against terrorism is not over despite the killing of Osama bin Laden. With Al-Zawahiri already becoming the next leader, the Al-Qaida network is yet to be completely dismantled. More importantly, the US is preparing for 2014 — the deadline set for exiting from Afghanistan. A stable and undivided Pakistani military is a part of the American calculus and an absolute must for Washington, at least until 2014.

Is there an American pressure to initiate other military operations in North Waziristan? The third important issue discussed during the meeting was the proposed military operations against the militants in North Waziristan. From the statement it is clear that the military operation is imminent, though the statement underlined that the Army is under “no pressure to carry out operations at a particular time,” and that it will go ahead “with political consensus.”

What options does General Kayani have on this issue as well? There is enormous American pressure to initiate a military operation in North Waziristan. If not, the US will continue with the drone attacks, as it has been doing even after the killing of Osama bin Laden. Since May 2 there have been 11 drone attacks, most of them in North Waziristan, including the attack on June 6 in which Ilyas Kashmiri was killed. Besides the American pressure, General Kayani also cannot afford to witness Taliban attacks all over Pakistan, with their base in North and South Waziristan. He can either delay the operation in North Waziristan and risk more drone attacks, or initiate a military operation and bargain with the US to go slow on the drones. His choices are limited — either do not take any action and be seen as an incapable General, who is letting the US to violate Pakistan’s territory, or take action and face internal opposition. Perhaps, there may be more support to the latter — both from within the military and the public.

What will General Kayani do? Whatever he does, he will face criticism from within the military and outside. He is facing the wrath for what his predecessors did or didn’t do, starting with General Zia. Damned if he does, damned if he doesn’t.

The writer is Director, Institute of Peace and Conflict Studies, and Visiting Professor, Pakistan Studies Programme, Jamia Millia Islamia.

MIDDLE

Conditioned to an AC
by Amaninder Pal

I belong to an age when the now ubiquitous airconditioner was a symbol of luxury and status.

Needless to say, coming from a middle class family, my mother never tired of extolling the virtues of sleeping in the open and the ill effects of being cooped up in AC rooms. “God never comes to meet us if we sleep in the closed-door AC rooms”, she reasoned to our impressionable minds.

Alas, nowadays, this logic has been turned on its head and today even toddlers throw a tantrum if invited to a place that isn’t air-conditioned.

Recently, I too decided to join the “haves” and spend summer in relative comfort with my family. Surprisingly, my mother, who after spearheading the long, intra-family, protracted ‘anti-AC’ stir simply said ‘aye.’

My jubilation lasted a few hours and, to my dismay, the price of even the most economical model was enough for me to break into a sweat in the airconditioned showroom. This is not to mention a big hole in my shallow pocket. In a jiffy, I also realised why my mother had advocated sleeping under the stars all these years.

The glib talking salesman guessed my predicament. He cooled me down and suggested an EMI option, reserved for “pitiable” customers like me. Things went on smoothly till he asked what my avocation was. Proudly puffing my chest, I answered his query officiously, “I am a journalist”.

I should have known better than saying that. The salesman closed the file he was filling, looked up and gave me a look that spoke volumes of the esteem that he held for journalists. There goes my AC, my heart sank.

My entreaties with him and the portly owner cut no ice. “No EMI facility for the PPPs (politicians, the police and the press). All three are under the “high risk profile,” I was pointedly informed. Come to think of it, I was in my late 20s and as fit as a fraudulent!

On the lonely ride back home, I pondered over the barrage of questions facing me at home besides the double whammy of putting up with the accusing looks of my better half and the strong prospect of spending the summer months in the open, probably alone.

OPED WOMEN

The path of professional achievement has many obstacles. While misconceptions like women are weak and fragile inhibit their advancement, restrictions that they face as working mothers and homemakers too stall their progress. Dual responsibilities put additional pressure on them
Successful, yet scared
Rajshree Sarda

A successful woman executive has to deal with guilt and anxiety about her home life.

Women today who have ventured out to take the responsibilities of being both a wife-mother and a careerist have to learn to cope with a great deal of physical and emotional stress that these dual roles bring about. The female sex has always been encouraged to be more compliant, nurturing, and sensitive in actions, thoughts and behaviour. In every culture, although in varying intensities, a girl child is brought up to believe that her primary responsibility is to be successful on the home front, i.e. in taking care of her husband, raising a healthy progeny and managing her household responsibilities efficiently.

Success generates stress

There are, of course, many women who have dared to break the shackles of rigid cultural and social norms. They have climbed steadily upwards on the ladder of success, achieving positions as high-ranking officials, and executives. However, some of these successful women continue to experience emotional stress, guilt and turmoil because of the positions they occupy.

Academic studies reveal growing discontent among working women; they face considerable disadvantages throughout their working life. Furthermore, the emotional stress is compounded when a successful woman begins to dissect herself as a wife, mother, and careerist, rather than view herself as a fully functional integrated whole.

Since marriage and motherhood still dominate the lives of working women they sometimes accept “dead end jobs” because they do not want the responsibility, visibility or inconvenience associated with career advancement.

Difficult balance

Few who go in for higher accomplishment of economic independence, a sense of discontentment and grievance affects them too. The dual role they play demands 16 hours of hard work per day. “It is very tedious…after the tight schedule at my office a hectic day begins at home. What have I done to myself?” says Anjali working in Bank of America. Working women’s quest to strike a balance between home and office has made them susceptible to frustration. Besides this, of late there is a growing feeling among working women that they do not receive as much from their jobs as they expected or deserve.

Gender role expectations

Men work for career and money and that they are the breadwinners is still the belief that lives on, quite subversively deep inside our heads. So when a woman brings home the bacon, family dynamics sometimes take a turn for the worse over gender role expectations. In the traditional order of things, money brought with it authority. Working women report that their ability to bring home a pay cheque increases feeling of power and improves self-esteem. But they also sense that society as a whole has yet to embrace female earning power as a positive value. There is a cultural stereotype that a powerful woman is less feminine, desirable and attractive than one who isn’t. “The societal norm still say that there is something wrong with a man if a woman is making more money” says psychologist Dorothy Canter, co-author of “Women and Power.”

Earning power

A part of this problem lies with men. Working women have re-constructed the definition of womanhood but men have been slower to respond to the change because it challenges the notions of male privilege and entitlement. Males are not ready to give up their advantage in terms of earnings and social power.

The idea of a woman, having the upper hand threatens the traditional male identity and their image as providers. So when a woman earns more, he feels unimportant and often anxious and the marriage itself is threatened. It takes a very mature male to feel comfortable with a higher earning spouse. He sees the partner as “the opponent” and finds fault with her to feel better about himself.

Women not only face confusion and resistance from their partners-but a deep struggle within themselves. The female also is not pleased about earning more. She is angry and feels exploited. She feels he should be earning more.

High earning women may also harbour feelings of guilt and if it doesn’t arise within them, it is often thrust upon them by outsiders, parents, friends and co-workers. Successful women often go to great lengths to downplay their salaries. Nonetheless, marital counsellors report an evolution in men’s attitudes. More men want to marry a woman who is ambitious as many of them are tired of being cast in the role of provider.

Expectations vs reality

According to social activist Vijaya Raghunath, “What works against most ambitious women is her social consciousness and domestic commitment”. She attributes the poor service record of women to the family life, which she feels is very demanding. Most working women admit that they are under stress and complain about disturbance in the family life.

It is hard to decide whether one ought to congratulate the housewives or be sympathetic to working women. For a successful woman executive who has a meeting to attend and who is also needed to be present at home to attend to her sick child, there is guilt and anxiety. This can be effectively reduced only when she realises that she cannot demand a perfect performance from herself in all roles. To pressurise oneself to always perform at peak levels is highly stressful. Therefore when a woman can learn to view herself as intuitive, caring and creative person with her share of weakness, she can be relieved from the physical and emotional pressures of being a superwoman.

Easing tension

There are certain lessons for both men and women to learn which can effectively ease tension:

n The key for couples is to view each partner’s contribution to the relationship as valuable, be it child care or career regardless of the monetary value attached to it.

n To see the marriage as common ground on which both partners have equal standing and play as a team which may be divided up differently at different times. When money begins adding up to less love, what can a couple do? In therapy, we reframe a person’s worth. Partners must see each other’s worth as people, not for what they make.

The writer is a Chandigarh-based psychologist

Casting women in stereotypical moulds
How women are depicted in popular media has a deep impact on the public, both men and women
Rajesh Gill

Gender stereotyping continues to be reinforced, thanks to the popular culture generated by Indian television, Bollywood, radio and print media.

As per an advertisement of a fairness cream, a young girl, who is dark and average looking, fails to attract a good bridegroom, thus causing frustration to her father. And one fine day she finds herself fair and lovely and within 15 days she succeeds in getting a handsome groom. Her father, who initially cursed his destiny, now feels proud of his daughter (because she has fetched a match). Thus empowerment has to come to women from outside, even a fairness cream.

Similarly, in another advertisement of an eye hospital on radio a girl narrates: “So many boys rejected me because of my spectacles and then I went to an eye institute which cured me and then I was selected, and now I am happy and married.” It is strange that the so-called empowered woman still continues to be selected or rejected like a commodity.

It would be incorrect to presume that messages sent through the media are meaningless. In fact, they have a deep impact upon the public, both men and women. There are numerous ads which lure women into buying expensive jewellery, sarees and cosmetics. Women are thus often projected like fools who can be easily manipulated and befooled. Our films and television serials always depict the images of women that are either too bold or too weak.

Where are the ordinary looking women? Actually, a majority of women are average, neither too weak nor too strong, just like their male counterparts, struggling to survive in private and public spaces. We hardly find such women in films, serials or advertisements.

The popular media often depicts gender violence in extremely strong incidents such as rape, molestation or murder. But in reality, these are not the most frequent and scary crimes committed against urban middle class women. More frightening are the mundane humiliations that a woman in employment has to face while travelling, marketing, working or simply surviving silently. In fact, a persistent show of extreme forms of violence against women on television, in the name of news has rendered the viewers immune. It hardly pricks the viewers, unless one has a personal connection with the incident.

Bollywood too persistently depicts a popular culture that reinforces the conventional image of women as beautiful, submissive and ultra-feminine. The eulogising of the wedding ceremonies in some Hindi movies has played havoc with the whole project of women’s empowerment. These messages have percolated down right to the bottom of social hierarchy, enhancing the desires of even the poorest of the poor to marry off their sons lavishly, especially in the north India. Despite the law against dowry, it has assumed monstrous proportions in the country. The way violence is depicted on television and films, especially against women, it titillates the audience. Over-made up women shown in television serials have more or less ruined the project of women’s empowerment in India.

The negative depiction of women sarpanches and panches shown as dummies, the depiction of heroines in Hindi films resembling yesteryears’ vamps and the macho image of male heroes strongly reinforce gender stereotypes. But the most disturbing fact in this context is an absolute non-resistance from the civil society, especially women to such media messages. Instead, as per media reports, young girls in many South Asian countries are starving themselves to a zero figure, many of them are getting their thighs surgically thinned down, where not only the fat but even their muscles are removed, making them handicapped for life and many of them are reported to be swallowing worms in order to lose appetite and remain thin. Why so? One major reason is that it is television/films, which is educating our young and not so young women on the definition of empowerment. Films like “Main Hoon Naa” project the image of an ideal teacher through Sushmita Sen, who more than teaching, is able to arouse the sensuality of her male students.

So much premium has been attached with physical appearance and femininity, courtesy films and television that aging women struggle hard to stay young, dreading age more than death. Intensive consumerism has indeed resulted in a trivialisation of gender issues, even on the part of women themselves. It has trapped not only the young women but even small kids a who are seeking empowerment
in consumerism.

In an advertisement by a garment store, a small girl child says: “Whatsoever I wear, people tell me that I look beautiful.” Such marketing uses children ruthlessly, killing their childhood and pushing them into youth immediately after infancy. Such is the impact of the mass media that parents compete with each other to make their little daughters look sensuous and pretty.

Popular culture should have worked towards a liberating, and empowering experience. But in reality it has not only been reinforcing the traditional notions of masculinity and femininity it has seriously impaired gender empowerment by trivialising the whole issue for vested commercial interests.

The writer is Chairperson, Departments of Women’s Studies and Sociology, Panjab University, Chandigarh.