The Tribune, Chandigarh, India

Punjab Governor’s address
Contentious issues revived

The Governor’s address to the Punjab Vidhan Sabha on Wednesday raised the demand for the transfer of Chandigarh and other Punjabi-speaking areas to Punjab, which was contested, as expected, by the Haryana Chief Minister. The water dispute is pending in the Supreme Court. These divisive and emotive issues — for which the Akalis had launched agitations during their years in opposition — have remained largely dormant for years. The ruling Shiromani Akali Dal and the BJP did not touch them in the recent elections.

However, the issue of alleged Central discrimination with Punjab has cropped up off and on. Interestingly, the Akali Dal-BJP government is perturbed at the Central industrial package-cum-tax holiday given by the NDA government, of which they were coalition partners, to the hill states which was stopped by the UPA government two years ago. Though annoyed at this, the Himachal Pradesh Chief Minister denied that industrial units moved to the hill state from Punjab. A business chamber has blamed red tape, corruption, high land prices and power shortage for industries keeping off Punjab. The address claims the state will be power surplus in the near future but the cost of power production may shoot up if the current problems of coal shortage and high oil prices persist or worsen.

The Punjab Chief Minister is a strong votary of more powers for states but avoids talking of his own government failing to make good use of conditional Central grants. His case for greater fiscal powers would gain wider acceptance if his government shuns the politics of populism and prudently uses the available resources. States usually talk of high growth rate, high per capita income or low unemployment to indicate that things are improving. But Punjab says its revenue has grown sharply, which is largely due to the introduction of VAT. The debt figure is given but there is no commitment to contain or reverse the trend of heavy borrowings. For a change, the Opposition did not disrupt or boycott the Governor’s address. This is a positive beginning.

Poverty statistics
Confusion compounded by controversy

Poverty, asserted the Planning Commission this week, has come down substantially in the last two years. While 37 per cent of the population were stated to live below the notional ‘poverty line’ in 2004, the Planning Commission estimates that the figure came down to 29.8 per cent in 2011. A large section of the opposition in Parliament, however, made it clear that they found the figures bandied around by the Commission to be absurd. The Samajwadi Party President, Mulayam Singh Yadav, declared that at least 65 per cent of the people in the country continued to live in abject poverty and that the Planning Commission clearly did not know what it was talking about. What raised the hackles of the MPs was the Commission’s claim that an expenditure, not income, of Rs 28.65 per person per day in the urban areas and Rs 22.42 per person per day in the rural areas was now the benchmark for deciding the poverty-line.

In the din, the explanations provided by the Commission were all but drowned. The outrage was compounded by the fact that in an affidavit filed before the Supreme Court last year, the Planning Commission had put different figures as the benchmark; Rs 32 in the urban areas and Rs 26 in the rural areas to be precise. The unavoidable conclusion was that the Planning Commission was trying to artificially lower the number of poor so that the government would have to spend less on welfare schemes. The clarification, given by the Commission and the government, that the figures were not linked to welfare entitlements, failed to convince anyone. The Commission’s plea that the figures presented by it last year were just a ‘forecast’ based on the trend in 2004-05 while the figures released this week, were based on the actual expenditure data collected by National Sample Survey in 2010, also failed to cut any ice.

While the uproar does indicate the government’s chronic failure to consult, explain and take on board the States and the Opposition on crucial issues, the Planning Commission makes the point that it has not really shifted the goal post. A per capital expenditure of Rs 19 in urban areas was the benchmark in 2004, it points out, while the figure has moved to Rs 29 in 2011. The outrage, it submits, is therefore misplaced. What does stand out though is the need to end the bickering on estimates of the poor and get down to the more serious business of fighting poverty.

Thought for the Day

Common sense is not so common. — Voltaire

ARTICLE

Reservation stir in Haryana
Jats need better leadership
by D.R. Chaudhry

The 23-day-long Jat agitation in Haryana for reservation to Jats under the OBC category was called off on March 13 after prolonged suspension of rail and road traffic in a part of the state. The Tribune has rightly called for a re-think on reservations (March 14).

The reservation in government jobs and admission to educational institutions was initially granted to the Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes. These sections have led a sub-human existence in Hindu society for ages and they richly deserved this affirmative action. This was for a period of 10 years, hoping that these deprived sections would climb up the social ladder and would no longer be in need of a quota crutch. No serious attempt has been made in the country for structural changes in property relations to help these sections to look up in the social set-up. Now this quota crutch seems to have become a permanent feature. In the process, a new elite has emerged in these sections and the quota benefit has been monopolised by it, blocking its percolation to those who badly need it.

Then followed a 27 per cent quota for the OBCs as recommended by the Mandal Commission Report. Besides the quota in government jobs and educational institutions, the commission made two other important recommendations. Its report states: “Reservation in government employment and educational institutions … will remain mere palliatives unless the problem of backwardness is tackled at its roots …. until the stranglehold of the existing production relations is broken through radical land reforms, the abject dependence of under-privileged classes on the dominant higher castes will continue indefinitely.”

The report unequivocally states: “It is the commission’s firm conviction that a radical transformation of the existing production relations is the most important single step that can be taken for the welfare and upliftment of all backward classes.” Besides structural changes, the commission made another important recommendation: “Unless adequate follow-up action is taken to give special coaching assistance to these (OBC) students, not only these young people will feel frustrated and humiliated but the country will also be landed with ill-equipped and sub-standard engineers, doctors and other professionals.”

The two crucial recommendations were consigned to the dust-bin by the ruling set-up in the country. The quota crutch became an important tool in the vote bank politics. This has been enticing more and more community groups to have a share in the quota pie. The growing economic crisis for the bulk of the Indian populace has made the competition more fierce and brutal. The vote-catching device has been reduced to gimmickry and the voters have started seeing through the game. The provision of 4.5 per cent share in the OBC quota for the minorities was supposed to bring a windfall for the ruling party at the Centre in the recently concluded assembly elections in the UP, but it came a cropper.

There is need to have a serious re-look at the way the reservation policy has been implemented in the country. The thrust of the policy was to loosen the elitist stranglehold on the administrative structure in the country. Its faulty implementation has led to contrary consequences. It has fostered a new elite in the hitherto marginalised sections of Indian society, making its benefits confined to it, leaving the bulk of its brethren vegetating at the base of the social pyramid. The most urgent corrective measure in the policy at the national level is to deprive the progeny of this elitist section of the reservation benefits.

A family which reaches a certain level through the affirmative action —say, one getting a class II job has to be drawn somewhere --- should be de-scheduled and its children should be made to compete in the general category so that the benefits of the policy percolate to those who urgently need them.

The above two recommendations of the Mandal Commission must be kept in view for implementation before reservation is extended to Jats or any other community. The young man who was killed during the quota stir in Haryana was a casual labourer. His father is a factory worker. Most of the Jat peasants who were active in the stir are small and marginal farmers. According to the agricultural census of 2005-6, 67 per cent of the landholdings were below two hectares. The peasants whose cultivable land was less than one hectare were 47.67 per cent of the total peasantry and their land added up to only 3,46,118 hectares. But plots of more than 20 acres, just 5.58 per cent of total landholdings, totalled whopping 11,50,488 hectares, which was 32.1 per cent of the cultivable land in the state.

The Green Revolution in Haryana has reached its plateau. Farming has become a losing concern for small and marginal peasants. Children of such peasants get education in government schools whose products are unemployable and they are incapable of pursuing higher education. Government school education in Haryana is in a shambles and there is no policy to revamp it. The industrialisation in the state is negligible. There is no way to generate a sufficient number of jobs. There is not a single industrial unit in the state which employs even 5000 workers. Unless the issues of industrialisation and revamping of school education are addressed, reservation benefits to Jats would be garnered by a small affluent section which sends its children to the so-called public schools which are a common sight even in the rural hinterland, and this would foster a new elite in the administrative apparatus. .

The stir was called off by giving six months’ time to the government. The government’s contention was that it could not take any decision before the Backward Classes Commission appointed by it gave its recommendations. The agitators have given this breather to the government and they are back to the point from where they started the agitation. The Haryana government’s mishandling of the agitation is too evident to need elaboration. It gave, as correctly stressed editorially by The Tribune, “a long rope to the protestors by allowing them to stop illegally and indefinitely the free movement of people and goods (March 14).”

Om Praksh Chautala, leader of the Opposition, fully supports the agitators’ demand. He had been earlier the Chief Minister of the state for six and a half years, but never thought of implementing the Justice Gurnam Singh Commission Report, which recommended reservation for the Jats. The politics of opportunism has touched the lowest ebb in Haryana.

The torching of the car of a district judge and the drunken youth extorting money from motorists in return for the safe passage through the road blockades, as reported by the media, are ominous portents,

What has been the gain in this Jat agitation? Nothing specific. And the outcome? The corpse of a youth, detention of over 100 agitators for a number of days, a big financial loss to Indian Railways and Haryana Roadways, inconvenience to thousands of commuters for a number of days and the intensifying distrust and hostility of non-Jat communities against Jats. The Jat community, known for its dynamism, hard work, resilience and grit, is at the crossroads at present and it surely deserves a better leadership at every level.n

The writer, a retired Delhi University academic, specialises on socio-cultural affairs.

MIDDLE

The purpose of suffering
by Harish Dhillon

If the God we worship is benign, kind and loving and protective, how can he subject the creatures he created in his own likeness to so much pain and suffering? Many explanations have been offered: it is a punishment for past sins, it ennobles us, it helps us to remember the gifts that have been showered upon us and which we take for granted, that it’s God’s way of ensuring that we do not forget him.

I have never before pondered upon this question. My litany of suffering includes the loss of a limb, an unhappy love affair, the death of my first born, a broken marriage, the loss of a lifetime of accumulations such as my children’s’ photographs and their vast collection of medals and certificates in a devastating fire, and a host of chronic ailments. But I have taken all these in my stride and some of them have spawned dozens of hilarious jokes, providing endless hours of amusement to my listeners and to me.

Then recently I suffered an acute attack of bronchial asthma. I was weary and tired and when I was finally hospitalised, all I wished to do was to curl up and drift into a long, deep sleep. At last my mind turned to the purpose and reason for human suffering. In the last year and a half I had suffered an acute and prolonged attack of typhoid, severe bouts of vertigo and great fluctuation in my blood pressure. What was the purpose of this deep and prolonged suffering? I had no answer and was filled with despair. But this despair was short-lived.

An 85-year-old woman in the ICU, who too was suffering from an acute respiratory problem, was visited by her daughter. Through her gasps of breath, and rasping cough, she gave instructions to make sure that her new suit was ready by tomorrow, that the confectioner got the right lettering on the cake, and that Bapu did not get to see his present before his birthday. And, most importantly, that she collected well in time for the party.

On her way out, the girl kindly stopped by my bedside to ask how I was doing. I, in turn, asked about the party. It was her son’s ninth birthday. Then looking over her shoulder, she added in a whisper:

“My mother is going to be very disappointed. The doctors say that she is not going to be discharged for at least a week.” But the lady proved the doctors wrong. She fought her illness with all her will and she was there for her grandson’s party.

I snapped out of my despair. When finally, the Reaper comes for me I hope to meet him with a smile. But till that final moment comes, I will fight weariness and despair with every breath of my being , I will not “go gentle into the good night.”

For me the purpose of my suffering is to make me stronger than I was before.

OPED ENTERTAINMENT

The much talked about episode of Ekta Kapoor’s serial Bade Achhe Lagte Hain has once again triggered an intense debate over television content. Are lines between what is suitable and what is not fiercely drawn or blurring fast?
Can bold be beautiful?
Nonika Singh

Dateline: March 12.
Time: 10.30.
Place: Indian television.
A burly Ram Kapoor and attractive Sakshi Tanwar create history as they enact the longest and steamiest ‘love making’ scene in Ekta Kapoor’s Bade Achhe Lagte Hain.

A still from Bade Achhe Lagte Hain
A still from Bade Achhe Lagte Hain

Not too long ago TV’s uncrowned queen Ekta Kapoor was grilled for ushering in the age of regressive saas bahu sagas. Today, she is being questioned for making the boldest statement ever on Indian television. As India watched with bated breath, Ram and Sakshi locked their lips and amidst the background score of the lilting AR Rahman number In lamhoen ke daaman mein from Jodha Akbar, made impossible possible. That is portrayed one of the most sensuous, certainly erotic and a long, long foreplay on Indian television industry. Predictably, hullabaloo was to follow. Some puritans have even filed complaints.

Yet nothing can take away from the fact that ever since the (in) famous episode of Bade Achhe Lagte Hain (BAHK) was aired, the buzz hasn’t stopped. While You Tube has reported over million viewers, the media has gone into a frenzied mode. And the serial hasn’t ceased to make headlines since then.

Much ado about...

Actors’ take

BALH’s hot episode has created ripples among TV viewers. Has it also ruffled the feathers of TV actors? We bring to you their viewpoints as to whether they think it is a progressive step.

Rohit Roy My serial, Virasat with Sangeeta Ghosh had steamier scenes. BALH caught more attention because of the unusual pairing of Ram Kapoor and Sakshi Tanwar. It was good to see one real act on screen but what’s important is that such scenes should be the demand of the script. They should take the story forward and shouldn’t be used as mere fillers to garner TRPs. Audience is too smart and cannot just be engaged with the support of sensuous shots. Just like Swabhimaan had a storyline much ahead of its time, I hope we have more such soaps. — Rohit Roy

Reshmi Ghosh It is important to get bolder storylines and not just scenes. Television soaps are family dramas meant for the collective audience. One bold scene in BALH can’t bring an overnight change in the regressive way of storytelling on TV. In fact, the scene was just a gimmick to earn the maximum TRPs. Not that I mind the scene but it should not become an example for other producers to follow. It will make the content even shallower.— Reshmi Ghosh

Rohit Khurana I saw the first kissing scene on TV in the series, Hotel Kingston so many years back. Suddenly the episode from BALH caught everyone’s fancy only because it’s after a very long time producers have gone a step forward. There is nothing wrong with showing a steamy scene; in fact it renders a realistic touch to the storyline. I wish more soaps can muster courage to come up with real stuff. Only aesthetics should remain intact.— Rohit Khurana

Shaleen Bhanot TRPs are an indication of what audience like. And if the special episode of BALH has earned the maximum TRPs that means viewers really appreciated the effort by the actors, scriptwriters and producers. Slapstick comedy is also a hit on TV, which indicates that audience is ready for bolder stuff. What should be only taken care of is that you are able to cater to the right age group. It’s better to slot such episodes late at night. — Shaleen Bhanot

Ragini Khanna One steamy scene can’t revamp the TV industry. Consider older TV soaps like Bangei Apni Baat, Just Mohabbat and Hip Hip Hurray, they were much ahead of their time. Why can’t we have modern subjects in real terms and not just a kissing scene blown out of proportion? What is needed is progressive story-telling and not the same old stories. — Ragini Khanna

— As told to Ashima Batish

So what does it mean for Indian television? Do we rejoice in its coming of age or has it crossed the Lakshman Rekha?

Interestingly Ekta’s father, yesteryears hero, Jeetendra and brother Tusshar Kapoor are not the only ones defending the bold intimate scenes. Even television producer Kavita Barjatya of Rajshree Productions doesn’t think the episode contained anything objectionable that should offend the sensibilities of Indian viewers. Though personally in sync with Rahshree’s ethos, she wouldn’t make such a programme she deems that both the makers and the channels are well within their right to show what they want to. Chandigarh-based filmmaker Mukesh Gautam too believes the serial has not transgressed any line. For one, the scene fitted into the requirement of the script and number two, it was aesthetically picturised sans obscenity of any kind. Sure the 17-minute-long scene was a trifle dragged. But then shoots off actor Sargun Mehta the lead of Phulwa fame, "So are all the other scenes. In television even a simple one liner is repeated ad nauseam."

The maker in Gautam justifies the length from a purely production point of view. Says he, "See if the producers had been building a crescendo backed by tantalising teasers it is only expected that they would go overboard when they actually present it. Else the impact would have been lost."

TRP booster

Indeed, that is not to say the scene wasn’t a well-thought out TRP gimmick. But then that’s how television cookie crumbles. After all TV business is all about grabbing more and more eyeballs`85..whatever it takes.

Director producer Ajai Sinha, who made serials like Hasratein and Justjoo more than a decade ago, fails to understand what the fuss is all about. He not only dared to talk about relationships considered taboo in society but also suggested nudity and love making back then. He feels that each time something unconventional happens, people get absorbed by it, whip up a storm and forget that similar things have happened in the past too.

Not the first time

Boldness hasn’t been an anathema to Indian television. The bold quotient of Bigg Boss which has seen guests like Pamela Anderson with her eye-popping cleavage, sex siren from Pakistan Veena Malik and more recently porn star Sunny Leone, has always been high. UTV Bindaas’ Superstud became truly bindaas with its massage sequence. When the contestants showed off their massaging skills on Kashmera Shah many eyebrows were raised. Soaps too haven’t been always about sati savitiris. Barjatya reminds that several serials like Maryada have handled bolder themes like gay sex. Besides, consummation of marriage anyway has been a central theme as well as a highpoint in many a serial. Few like Tum Dena Saath Mera have shown something similar weeks before Bade Achhe’s episode was shown. The honeymoon scene in Rang Badalti Odhni too created a stir.

Marketing move

BAHK, however, has generated an unprecedented interest precisely because it’s Ekta’s serial and she is a mastermind when it comes to marketing her serials. Without a doubt, she is not only a trendsetter in more ways than one but also understands the pulse of her audiences. Sargun, who wouldn’t have thought twice before doing a similar act, adds, "Ekta has an uncanny knack of knowing what viewers want and at the same time making them lap up what she offers." Many feel that had Ekta dished out such an episode 10 years ago it would have been rejected outright but today audience is more mature. But seriously, is it?

Viewers’ response

Well, judging by the feedback, viewers do seem to have shed their conservative outlook. Of course, there were some nasty tweets on twitter—many even took digs at Ram’s weight—a day after. But an overwhelming number also saw nothing wrong in the steamy scenes for the bottom-line was that there was nothing vulgar about it. And those, who keep harping that TV is a family and a drawing room (hence no bedroom scenes please) medium argued viewers at several social networking platforms, had a choice. Even though a miniscule few may have been surprised by the extent of boldness, it couldn’t possibly have hit them like a bolt in the blue for the promos were "promising" enough. So, those who call for greater restraint on TV could have stayed away or quite simply switched to a different channel.

Creative licence

That is not to say that regulation should be given a complete miss in the name of creative freedom. But were the axe to fall it should first and foremost on reality television. Programmes like Sach Ka Saamna that make infidelity sound like a commonplace phenomenon, if not a virtue, are far more detrimental to the social fabric. In comparison, scenes that celebrate a union well within the confines of socially sanctioned relationship can at worst be awkward and uncomfortable for family viewing. But certainly not immoral that could send wrong signals down the line. Or, as some say incite crimes against women. Barjatya states that most channels have a regulatory mechanism in place and producers have to follow the dos and don’ts. Perhaps, the contentious episode of BAHK too wouldn’t have been aired had it been an eight o’clock show.

New milestone

But has BAHK set a new milestone in Indian television? Perhaps. Will it open the floodgates of similar long drawn enactments? Possibly. After all, the much-criticised kitchen politics too has been ruling the small screen for more than a decade. Gautam feels that each new fad is milked dry till it reaches a saturation point. Will lip-locks and foreplays too become pass`E9 as it has on zillion number of serials being aired on foreign channels? If it does, Ekta Kapoor could take a bow for placing "bold and sexy" on prime time space on our smalls screen and out of our "easily provoked" minds.