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The Congress after the debacle
The revival of the party remains a challenge
Kuldip Nayar
 The
defeat of the Congress in Haryana and Maharashtra in the state elections does not come as a surprise. This was expected. Those who have followed the political developments since the 2014 Lok Sabha elections had inferred that the party was a story of the past. It had been battered by charges of corruption so much and for so long that it had no public image left. The other parties, particularly the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), are finding favour with people. Take Haryana. It never returned more than 10 BJP candidates in the earlier elections. This time the party has constituted its government single handed. It shows the strides the party has made. Maharashtra has seen the Shiv Sena pulling down the Congress colossal. But the BJP has never been in the reckoning. The two together have an absolute majority today. Whether this astonishing scenario is due to the spell which Prime Minister Narendra Modi has cast on the nation is not a matter of discussion any more. There is no doubting of the BJP emerging as a national party and Modi as a national leader. True, nationalism is the trump card Modi plays. Parochialism is its main content. The secular forces are meekly surrendering. Surprisingly, both Haryana and Maharashtra, progressive otherwise, have returned very few women. The parties are essentially to blame because they fielded only a few female candidates. But the archaic thinking of voters is very much evident. After nearly seven decades since Independence, women have not been able to get their due. I do not think that the Congress can bounce back at least for another decade. And that too would require new vigour and a new leadership. Since Congress president Sonia Gandhi does not see beyond dynastic politics, there is very little hope for the party to recover. She does not appreciate, even after years of projecting, that Rahul Gandhi does not sell nor has he any content. The disorder in the Congress is palpable. The growing frustration within the party ranks only confirms this. Some of the old Congress loyalists have found courage to raise their voice and have blamed Rahul Gandhi and his team for the debacle. But such voices are stifled in the party. Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi run the party. Now that both have failed, who do the people turn to? Both had reportedly once offered to resign. But the loyal Congress Working Committee had refused to accept their resignations. Both continue to constitute the party and its leadership. And both have seen to it that the non-dynasty elements do not come up. Logically, Rahul's political career should have been over after the two back-to-back reversals, one in the Lok Sabha elections and the second in some of the state assembly polls. Yet in dynastic politics, there is no room for such a debate. The Gandhi family has come to be considered central to the survival of the Congress. Rahul is important for the party, particularly when Sonia has an indifferent health. Despite the resentment against Rahul's style of functioning, the sycophants in the party are still hopeful that he would one day act like a leader. That, in a way, sums up the strategy of the Congress and Sonia Gandhi. It is amusing to see the party leaders sheltering Rahul from criticism. The A.K. Antony report that followed the Lok Sabha's pathetic poll results points to the organisational weakness rather than putting the blame squarely on Rahul Gandhi for the defeat of the party. He had to be pulled out of the election campaign in Haryana and Maharashtra because he was having a negative effect. One good thing that Sonia once admitted in a letter was that the revival of the party was a challenge. Her letter to the leaders offered encouraging words, infusing fresh confidence to overcome the hostile conditions. "This path is long and requires relentless struggle. But I am confident you can overcome the hostile conditions with your determination and hard work. I am always there with you in this struggle. I shall be in regular contact with all of you," she had said. For the demoralised leaders, the letter served as a soothing morale booster. The leaders admitted that unlike Rahul's attitude, Sonia's letter was full of humility with soothing words, providing them with some much-needed comfort in these difficult times. Yet they wonder why Rahul was still relying on his advisers who failed him in the assembly elections held in the last two years. The plain truth is that the Congressmen have nowhere to go except the dynasty which has run the party since independence. Jawaharlal Nehru was compared with a banyan tree which did not let anything beneath to grow. The Congress was dependent on him. Consequently, none in the party emerged to be its natural choice when he died. Mrs Indira Gandhi, his daughter, whom he had groomed, was not acceptable to the party in the beginning. Yet, slowly and surely, she made her way to the top. The end of the Congress may not be good for the country because it has provided an ideological platform with pronounced secular credentials. What is still disconcerting is that the vacuum created by the vacation of the Congress is being filled by the elements which are inimical to the integrity of the country. Their efforts to polarise the country have already evoked a sense of discrimination in the country. The attack on people from Manipur in Delhi is one recent example. Unfortunately, the Modi phenomenon has the RSS blessing. This is interfering in the affairs of governance. The appearance of RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat on Doordarshan was unfortunate and told the story of the RSS ideology being an integral part of the government. At present, Modi is trying to be on the side of development, not the RSS philosophy. But he will have to distant himself from the organisation for the sake of credibility. The Muslims are feeling insecure and they, as good Indians as the Hindus, have to be given confidence. How Modi does it is his business. But he must do that.
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MIDDLE |
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Adventures and fun in air
Kirti Dua
 A journey
by air has always fascinated me since my childhood. In the school days, when it was taught that earth continuously revolves around its axis, one of my class fellows floated an amazing idea. By the way if a person in a helicopter stays in the air, there will be continuous changing of places underneath him due to the rotational movement of the earth and on arrival of the destination he can always come down! However, this technique never worked for me but I got a few chances to travel by air. Once I booked my ticket on British Airways to travel from Birmingham to Berlin and my booking agent forgot to mention vegetarian against the meal option. During the flight, the mistake was realised but the air hostess did not have any thing vegetarian for me. In her effort to accommodate me she asked me if I could take chicken or fish which were basically very small creatures and could be considered vegetarian. Finally, I told her that since it was a short flight, I would just have a cup of tea. She refused to serve me tea as it contained milk which was also an animal product and there was no soya milk on board. On that day I came to know that vegetarians are of two types. Most of the Asians who consume cow milk and not meat are classified as Asian vegetarian and those who don't take any sort of animal product are called vegans. In a similar situation, on an erstwhile USSR flight, I had an interesting experience. In the flight I was given a lunch box having rice with a leg piece topping. I tried to explain the flight attendant that since I was a vegetarian I could not have the meat. One common problem on these flights is the restricted communication with the flight attendants because of their limited English-speaking ability. From that conversation he could only make out that meat was not required. So he picked up the leg piece from my lunch box and asked me to enjoy the lunch which had no meat now! Once a Pandit was travelling by air. It was his first air journey and he was under the impression that like a hotel, one could order anything for eating during a flight. When the air hostess approached him for meals, he made a request for his traditional feast item -- Kheer and Puree. The air hostess smiled and replied in a lighter note “Pandjit ji, you are in a flight not on some body’s ‘Shraddh’”.. In flights you come across a variety of people. Many a time you rub your shoulders with VIP dignitaries. But the most memorable could be your interaction with the first-timers on the flight. During one such flight, a gentleman was sitting next to me. He was to visit his son in New York. Since it was his first flight, he was slightly nervous. Out of curiosity, he asked me the height at which the plane was flying. I told him that international flights generally flew at 35,000 ft which was about 10 km from the earth. He asked innocently, “Why do airplanes fly so high? Flying low is much safer. Because if due to any reason, a plane comes down, at least one can survive from a shorter height whereas a fall from such a height is always fatal”. Genuine safety concerns!
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OPED
— Women |
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Delayed child-bearing to help employers?
The option of egg freezing is fast catching up with urban women as the method safeguards their hope of conception at a later period of their lives, while they continue to pursue their careers
Vandana Shukla
To date, approximately 2000 children have been born using frozen eggs worldwide, and the numbers are increasing. Thinkstock |
Medical
technology is breaking new grounds. If contraceptive pills gave women the freedom to exercise control over their fertility and pursue a career of their choice, egg freezing (oocyte cryopreservation) is enabling them to extend their fertility span. With the new technologies women can postpone the child birth till they feel they have made a mark in their career. If God is male — a controller of birth and death — he is going to face a challenge from the female quarters now.It is not the technology of freezing eggs that has been available for medical purposes for over a decade, which caught women's imagination. An announcement made by Apple and Facebook, in a strange co-incidence on the same day, stating, they will help pay for female employees to freeze their eggs, which triggered a debate on the social media, if companies are doing this to empower women or to enslave them further? For women committed to a professional life, the announcement signalled the possibility of finally getting the elusive balance between a dream career and a happy family, something enjoyed naturally by men. A woman's career graph is hampered by the breaks she needs for maternity and child rearing through her youth. She ends up in the 'either or' situation, often compromising her career dream for raising a family. And the glass ceiling persists for her.
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All about egg freezing
 Females are typically born with a finite number of immature follicles, each containing a single egg. At birth, the female baby normally has approximately 1 to 2 million oocytes. That number drops naturally to 200,000-500,000 at puberty, and to a mere 1000 by menopause. A vast majority of women lose 88 per cent of their maximum ovarian reserve by the age of thirty, and 97 per cent by forty. Hence, a woman's fertility drops from 86 per cent at age twenty to 52 per cent at thirty-five, 36 per cent at forty, and to only 5 per cent at age forty-five.
The process of egg freezing begins with the woman undergoing procedure by getting hormone injections to stimulate multiple egg production. When the eggs reach the appropriate size, the woman, who is under IV sedation, will have a reproductive endocrinologist use a needle to extract the eggs from the ovaries. The eggs are then immediately frozen using a slow-freeze method or a flash-freeze process. A woman might have to undergo multiple egg-retrieval cycles to freeze 10 to 20 eggs, recommended for better prospect of fertility in future.
When the woman is ready to use her eggs, the eggs will have to thaw and then be fertilized with sperm via a process similar to IVF. Those eggs that become fertilized (now as embryos) will be transferred back into the woman's uterus using a catheter. Nearly 1,000 published papers have concluded that frozen eggs could produce healthy babies.
A cycle of egg freezing usually costs $10,000 to $15,000, and many women are encouraged to do more than one cycle to harvest more eggs. Storage costs about $500 a year.
In India, women may not be expecting such employment perks, but the procedure, available at most hospitals, costs
Rs 1.5 lakh to Rs 2 lakh along with annual freezing cost at Rs 30,000.
The road to empowerment
In 1873, the United States of America passed the Comstock Act prohibiting advertisements, information, and distribution of birth control and allowing the postal service to confiscate birth control sold through the mail.
In 1916, Margaret Sanger opened the first birth control clinic in the US. The next year she was deemed guilty of maintaining a public nuisance and sentenced to jail for 30 days.
The first permanent birth control clinic was established in Britain in 1921 by the birth control campaigner Marie Stopes, in collaboration with the Malthusian League.
In 1960 the first oral contraceptive, Enovid, was approved by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) as contraception.
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Career, the prime concern There are several reasons why more and more women are postponing child bearing. It is confirmed by data, in developed countries, as in the urban areas of the developing countries, the number of women having their first child while in their thirties and forties has quadrupled since 1970, while the number of women having their first child in their early twenties has declined by one third. With more and more women wanting to establish their careers and financial stability before having a child, the option to delay their child bearing ability has come as a boon. Also, many women who want to find a partner they can see themselves having a child with, opt for egg freezing. Especially, as the median age for marriage is increasing across educated classes. The debatable issue is, if freezing eggs, other than for medical purposes, beneficial to women-professionally as well as socially, or, is it beneficial only to the employer? Even if in some sense paying for egg freezing may seem a logical extension of employee-sponsored health plans that already cover pregnancy, childbirth and some infertility treatments, for women whose professional growth seem to be disrupted by having a child in their 20s or 30s, the new benefit will conquer the last frontier for their empowerment. As such the development resonates with the new generation, who are getting married and having children later than ever before. The added advantage is, it will have an unprecedented effect on the trajectory of women's careers. Employer benefit Yet, some would see it as a ploy adopted by the employer, paying women to put off childbearing. The fear is, women who choose to have children earlier could be stigmatised as uncommitted to their careers. They fear, just as the Silicon Valley benefits like free food and dry cleaning serve to keep employees at the office longer, so could egg freezing, by delaying maternity leave and child-care responsibilities. Advocates of the increasingly popular practice say it gives women more choice and control, allowing them to potentially put off parenthood until it's the right time for them or their careers. It has resulted in a surge in interest since the 'experimental' label on egg freezing was lifted few years ago. Yet potential conflicts cannot be ruled out between the employer and the employee interest. Joan C. Williams, a professor at the University of California Hastings College of the Law, says it's a laudable benefit as long as it is offered in the right context. "If women are asking for it, I think it makes sense to give it to them," she says. The move could prove futile if the companies do not offer other comprehensive work-life benefits like lengthy maternity and paternity leave plus childcare facility at workplace etc. Or, it could send the wrong signal in a culture that already only rewards people who commit to putting work above all else and where they still cling to the male lifecycle model -- if you can't sprint in your mid 30s to mid 40s -- you never reach the top of the ladder. What women want? "I think this is a step in the right direction", says Head of HR, Archana Tiwari, at Trinus Corporation, a technical professional services company in Glendale, CA. This new benefit not only gives women an option to choose and helps with the cost of freezing eggs, but also gives the message that they have the support of their employer in this decision. Even in cultures where this is not a commonly accepted norm, things are changing. She cites the example of a female employee, an attorney, unmarried and of the South Asian origin, who decided to have a child by using this same method in her mid 40s. After some initial resistance, family members agreed. And the pouring support of her friends, co-workers and family was quite noticeable. "The transformation in this woman is amazing! Having the choice to first focus on her career and then have a baby makes her a happier woman." Tiwari hopes more companies will follow the lead. And it would be interesting to see how this new benefit will impact the maternity and adoption leave and the healthcare laws. Seema Mohapatra, a law professor at Barry University School of Law in Orlando, Fla., argues, women who do not fit that profile could feel pressured to use the benefit. Her worry is that the technology is not going to be used by the target population alone ie. women in their late 30s or early 40s, but by the population in their 20s and early 30s. She clarifies, "If I want to be seen as a serious employee and make it to vice president, I can't take maternity leave." In fact, surveys reflect, women in their 20s are already freezing eggs as insurance for future motherhood. A popular choice To date, approximately 2000 children have been born using frozen eggs worldwide, and the numbers are increasing as many more women have decided to preserve their fertility by freezing their eggs. In India, almost all big cities have the facility and professional women are already exercising this choice. Fertility clinics across the globe are seeing an increase in the number of women wanting to preserve their eggs for a time later in life. Egg freezing is creating new hope that delaying the biological clock may be possible. Everything that constitutes progress has a negative side too. Egg freezing is fundamentally akin to the birth control pill or the right to an abortion. It is a natural evolution of a movement that values women's right to choice, independence, and control over their own bodies. So what if it also benefits employers? It just gives women an opportunity that men have always had, to say, I'm not really ready right now and I'm going to wait.
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