‘Maha’ blunder

A new “gem” from the Maharashtra government: it has floated a new proposal to “reward” families who have a third child if it is a girl. Am I mighty impressed by this sudden girl shopping spree of the government? Apparently, the government wants to correct the skewed boy-girl ratio in the state, which is among the worst in the country at an abysmal 883 girls for every 1,000 boys. It also plans to tweak the existing laws to ensure government employees or elected representatives at all levels, including the gram panchayats, are not disqualified for giving birth to a third girl child.
This is the most bizarre proposal I have come across in a country, struggling with a high rate of population growth. We are already grappling with many many more mouths to feed, and a state government in this country comes up with this brainwave of encouraging families to go for a third child.
This is certainly not a solution to improve the sex ratio. The state government has ignored the gaping holes in its implementation of the Pre-Conception and Pre-Natal Diagnostic Techniques (Prohibition of Sex Selection) Act (PC-PNDT) and the consequent large scale female foeticides. Now does it have a moral right to introduce an idiosyncratic proposal?
It says it will now introduce an awareness campaign in the state’s seven-worst affected districts. Where were those awareness campaigns when there were loud warning signs of a lop-sided gender ratio? Besides, how can families predict that its third child will be a girl? And, what if the third child turns out to be a boy in two of every three or say four families? Can our country afford to take this risk that will throw us beyond the edge of a population explosion? What’s more? The state government seems to be going against its own law, banning sex determination.
On the whole, the entire idea is ridiculous, bordering on profligacy. Merely doling out largesse and incentives to the girl child is grossly insufficient to curb the practice of female foeticide. In fact, it will only open up fresher avenues of corruption; the more proposals and incentives, the more money goes floating around, and more are the chances of that money sticking to the palms of our powers-that-be.
There has to be a turnaround of our psyche to make the girl child wanted; and this will work only if certain social evils are rooted out of our system. There has to be awareness in every warp and weft of our society’s fabric to eliminate gender discrimination that is prevalent at various layers and at various levels. In lower echelons, the gender discrimination begins with food and work distribution, education and health care; it continues at the altar and ends at the grave. In the middle-level society, basic education and health care is by and large taken care of, thanks to peer dynamics. But then career choices are given to a privileged few. In any case, most of them end up getting entangled in the evil web of dowry (sometimes in the guise of grand weddings). And, the lavishness of weddings despite the affordability of this class speaks volumes about the bias firmly entrenched in society.
The government must effectively implement laws securing gender equality. It must work from the grassroots level to ensure right to food, education and health care across gender; it must ensure to put in place effective mechanisms to root out social evils.
Finally, the bulk of the population, which comprises the middle class, must understand the meaning of bearing a healthy child, rather than a boy child. We, as a populace, must understand that it is not necessary to have a male progeny to “carry” forward the family name. That is the most preposterous of arguments in favour elimination of female foetuses and the urge to keep trying for a male child.
So instead of blaming our dumb politicians, let us clear the cobwebs in our minds; the gender ratio will automatically improve.

Lust property

Two days back, the back page of a daily had this rather huge picture of a woman’s back side that said “WHAT AN ASS” in all capitals. The woman in question was showing off her ample rear for a jeans brand that incidentally also doubled up as a writing board for the copywriter’s rather trite one-liners. An example of one of the patronisingly sexist taglines: “The idiot who refused me a ride home.”
A few days back, there was a news story about Air India’s decision to clear its stock of “matron-like” air-hostesses and replace them with the young, alluring ones. The national carrier, it seems, has had enough of plain Janes adorning the aisles; it now wants to add chutzpah to its flights of fancy. It wants to follow the success route of other airlines, whose USP is not their fleet of safe aircraft and sober pilots, but its flock of hot, attractive air-hostesses. The news story also had a table on the list of airlines that had the highest BQ (beauty quotient). Needlessly to say, Richard Branson’s Virgin topped the list, followed by Singapore Airlines, Air Etihad, Emirates, Aer Lingus (all in the UAE area), Lufthansa, cathay Pacific, TAP and KLM. A predictable observation is that all these airlines’ air-hostesses are (by default?) fair-skinned (by the sheer nature of their origin). India has been attempting a befitting reply to this “international look” via Punjab and Delhi, which breed the maximum number of air-hostess training institutes in the country!
Now what is the scale that measures beauty? Fair skin, tall and slim frame, and…what else? We do not know. These air-hostesses are expected to be turned out exceptionally well during each flight. They are given warnings even if their nail polish is chipped by a fraction of an inch, or their hair clips move by a few centimetres; they even face salary cuts if they weigh a few grams more. Basically, they have to sell cold sandwiches and colder juices using their bewitching smile to the starved passengers.
But does the air-hostess carry an airline’s success on her pretty shoulders? Probably. Considering a poll, in which travellers across the world preferred to savour those airlines that had the maximum DQ (drool quotient).
One can blindly credit the entertainment industry, cutting across the globe, with this large-scale commodification of women: from creating the voluptuous pin-up girls to the anorexic ramp reeds.
In the Indian film industry, female actors seem to prefer the “item girl” sobriquet after filmmakers set the trend of showcasing the bosom-heaving, cleavage-baring item girls breathing out raunchy numbers to tease the male libido. And, these show girls have created an iconic status for themselves, and are proud of it.
The Indian film industry is known to be canning this heady concoction of the “bad” woman (the I-dare-to-bare types), and her fully clothed and servile “goody” counterpart (the bejewelled and beclothed ones), to fan the flaming male fantasy. But, ultimately, both this good and the bad represent the ugly face of the raw male authority that crushes the feminism with its six-pack muscle power.

I want to believe you, Mr Modi

Narendra Modi joins the swelling bandwagon of satyagrahis.
The man who has nothing but the state (and language) in common with the original script-writer of satyagraha, M.K. Gandhi, has decided to sprinkle some saffron strands to this cauldron that has stirred the imagination of the burgeoning middle class urban India, courtesy Anna Hazare.
He plans to go on a three-day fast to give peace a chance in Gujarat.
A very novel gesture, Mr Modi.
There is a saying in Tamil which roughly translated means “rocking the cradle after pinching the baby”.
Sorry, Mr Modi. Am I alluding to a sticky past?
The Gujarat Chief Minister today finally broke his “silence”, apparently buoyed by the Supreme Court directing a trial court in the State to take a final decision on the complaint filed against Mr Modi by Zakia Jafri, wife of former MP Ehsan Jafri, who was killed in the Gulberga Society carnage.
Mr Modi said he believed that the Supreme Court's Monday order had ended an “unhealthy environment” created by the “unfounded and false allegations” against him and his government.
Have you and your government been given a clean chit, Mr Modi? The highest court has only shifted the case.
He then came up with this emotional masterstroke: “For the past 10 years, it has become fashionable to defame me and the State of Gujarat.”
We are in tears, Mr Modi.
He plans to go on a three-day fast to “further strengthen the State's environment of peace, unity and harmony”.
I am overwhelmed, Mr Modi.
“These elements who could not tolerate the positive developments in Gujarat have left no stone unturned to defame Gujarat.”
I have read reports, Mr Modi, about the modus operandi your government has been adopting to usurp farmland in exchange for the attractive industrial climate you are offering.
Are they also false campaign, Mr Chief Minister?
“But even amid these lies, false propaganda, conspiracies and allegations, the State has always marched towards peace, harmony and progress, and it will not waver from this path.”
"It is the responsibility of the people of the State to strengthen unity in social life. We have got an excellent opportunity to proceed with a positive attitude. Let us come together and contribute to enhancing the dignity of Gujarat.”
Wow! The state’s environment of peace, unity and harmony! Please, Mr Modi, I honestly want to believe this.
But just one question: Fear can also spur peace, unity and harmony. Right, Mr Modi?

Punishment on democracy

Anna Hazare has made a surprisingly unexpected statement. To quote him: "If any candidate takes or gives money in Vidhan Sabha or Parliament for asking questions or voting, such people should be given severe punishment, in fact according to me, they should be hanged."
His remarks came soon after former Samajwadi Party leader Amar Singh was sent to Tihar to join the other high-profile politicians. By the way, Amar Singh’s neighbour in jail is Madhu Koda, the former Jharkhand chief minister who is facing trail for siphoning off millions of dollars.
But what is strange is Anna’s demand for capital punishment. I hope he was at least referring to the judicial process of execution, rather than execution by “people’s judgement”. I have this confusion because of his “fast-track” resumption of a Lok Pal, ably fuelled by the electronic media that propelled large-scale citizen participation in a classic film style mass appeal. The Lok Pal Bill had been part of the legislative woodwork ever since Shanti Bhushan introduced it in 1968, popping up into debates subsequently once in a while by our “conscientious” men in white.
Coming back to the demand, it is strange because it came from Brand Anna, who has been portrayed as the post-modern Mahatma Gandhi. His brand positioning has been done carefully on the lines of Mahatma Gandhi and his ideals of satyagraha and non-violence. His Ram Lila fast episode was remarkably advertised by news channels as a peaceful, non-violent, Gandhian method to coerce the UPA government into tabling a “people-centric” ombudsman that will be sympathetic and for real, rather than mere tokenism. And, it struck a chord with the middle class, who were tired of paying bribes for almost every service they expected for smooth running of their everyday lives.
But the point is having carefully nurtured this Gandhian image, why did Brand Anna, who commands a mass hysteria, make this comment? Isn’t this a dangerous remark in a country of human icon-worshippers? Remember the original Gandhi once said: show the other cheek to the one who slapped one cheek?
Capital punishment is a debatable issue. The blast outside the Delhi High Court premises is apparently a message to the judiciary to pardon Mohammad Afsal, or Afsal Guru, the Kashmiri convicted of conspiring the December 2001 attack on Indian Parliament.
Then came the President, Pratibha Patil’s rejection of clemency petitions of three LTTE members, Murugan, Santhan and Perarivalan, for conspiring to kill Rajiv Gandhi in 1991.
The rejection acquired a parochial hue with most Tamil Nadu political parties seeking pardon for the perpetrators of the crime. The Dravidian parties are, as always, playing their game of political one-upmanship by lending a sympathetic shoulder for the cause of Tamil eelam. It will help them in their election speeches to draw lusty cheers from the dialogue-hungry Tamil electorate.
But why can’t we do away with capital punishment? Is it fair to practice this in an adolescent democracy like ours, of politicians, by politicians and for politicians?
Capital punishment in India seemed to have become a blatant political tool. So while the presidency is simply sitting on Afzal Guru’s mercy petition, it rejects those of Rajiv Gandhi’s killers. This automatically draws attention to the fact that the President is a UPA government nominee.
Crime has no religion, caste or linguistic identity. Irrespective of the nature of the crime, our country’s leaders, with a myopic wisdom, have no right to decide who can live and who cannot. An impartial presidency is a constitutional truth, but remains only that: a documented fact with no evidence of it being applied.

Shall we have a mature television?

The electronic media has gone berserk. The television anchors are getting hysterical trying to bringing to our drawing rooms the Anna Hazare phase of post-independent India. The sound bites were flying back and forth; political temperatures went soaring with camera-friendly spokespersons of parties ripping one another apart; and there was a fair sprinkling of familiar Bollywood voices too. But what could not be swallowed was the mindless adrenaline rush of our anchors and their sense of having achieved this possibility of bringing the drama “live” on to our flat screens; their senseless holler drowned the scream of politicians and even became more prominent than the UPA government’s apparent gaffe. Is it Peepli going live again?
The print media, too, is at a loss for words. Most of their headlines have the UPA government eating “humble pie” in the wake of Anna’s fast. And, the urban middle-class is feasting on the fasting capsules and is lovin’ it. Anna is hogging the elite drawing room limelight, leaving the i-pad2 behind.
The Congress is indeed in a corner, and seems to have lost its marbles in this show of strength by civil rights activists and their swelling support base. The movement against corruption has reached a stage of a virtual revolution, with Facebook pledges and text messages pitching in for the cause. The Right and Left twain also met to corner the “undemocratic hand of the Congress”.
Whoever said the Gandhian method of fasting had worked in the colonial era, but would not work now? Who said it needs an audience to carry forward Bapu’s method of non-violence? Sorry Ms Arundhati Roy, it seems to be working big time. When one of the civil rights activists, Manoj Sisodia, was released, he told the waiting television crew that he came out of Tihar to convey to millions of Indians watching television, that’s right, television, that Anna would remain in jail despite his release orders till the government gave him unconditional permission to hold his hunger-strike at JP Park. Our electronic media has created the new, post-colonial audience. It does have a potential to carry forward this anti-corruption revolution. We are lucky to have a fairly free media, unlike Egypt, which still managed with an active virtual participation.
This movement has the potential of giving lessons on maturity to our television journalists. The medium is explosive, and this is the right time to fine-tune the mechanisms and let the medium ripen and mellow. It has to become wiser and stress more on content than voice culture, or howl culture. The audience is waiting to take on the corrupt; a little help from an adult television presentation would go a long way into stirring up this audience further. Let the people in power and aspiring for power get the jitters next time they extend their hands for kickbacks; let the next generation understand politics as a serious cause and not use it as a five-year recurring deposit scheme; let the audience turn out in large numbers at poll booths and decimate the men in white with dark skeletons in their fancy cupboards.

Modi, still a dirty word

Narendra Modi is still a dirty word.
A word of praise for him, and the media and the political fraternity put on their hate glares to see the riot-tainted images of the 2002 riots and the Gujarat Chief Minister’s alleged role in it.
Yesterday, Maulana Ghulam Mohammad Vastanvi was removed from the post of vice-chancellor of Darul Uloom, Deoband, by the Majlis-e-Shoora, the powerful governing body of the institution seven months after he praised Modi. The Maulana had said at a function in his home state of Gujarat that like all other communities, “Muslims too had progressed under the Narendra Modi government, and that the Muslims should look beyond the post-Godhra communal riots and press ahead”.
All hell broke loose. The Maulana’s statement was seen as an attempt at giving a clean chit to Modi, triggering violence on the Darul Uloom campus, with deafening demands for his ouster.
So why is Modi still a dirty word? In April, Gandhian and activist Anna Hazare came in for sharp criticism for praising Modi and Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar for their efforts on rural development. “The Chief Ministers of other states should also work like this,” the 73-year-old activist had said.
Again, his statement drew flak, with a number of Left and civil rights organisations wanting to distance themselves from Hazare in his campaign against corruption. The Congress MP Rashid Alvi had even said: “No secular person in the country can support Modi.”
Early this year, former President A.P.J. Abdul Kalam was all praise for the high economic growth Gujarat had achieved under Modi during the past six years. He cited the state’s agricultural growth that had been steady at 7 to 9 per cent for the past six years. He said Modi had created a dedicated power grid for uninterrupted supply to rural areas and improved irrigation systems, turning 20,000 hectares of unirrigated land into a rich agricultural area.
So here is the debate between the ghost and growth.
On the other hand, we have errant and corrupt chief ministers ruling over our states. While one has been holidaying in Mauritius even as his state’s Lokayukta report has indicted him of having amassed wealth in exchange for granting illegal mining licenses, we have another one building statues and amassing diamonds. While a political patriarch lost his chief ministership in a state after having bred ministers who had embroiled themselves in one of the biggest telecom scams ever, we had another political leader who had lost his chief ministerial chair after having been involved in a housing scam meant for Kargil widows.
What I am trying to think is that on the one hand we have our unscrupulous leaders continuously draining the state exchequer, while filling up their personal coffers, and we have a Chief Minister who has been drawing praises for his agricultural and other development work, but has the ghost of 2002 handing like an albatross round his neck.
What is the greater evil? A Chief Minister with a riot-tainted past? By the way, there are stray evidences and multiple allegations of the government machinery involved in the gory, “cleansing” act of 2002.
Or is it the unscrupulosity of our leaders who see political power as a short-term personal fixed deposit scheme, in which they would have to park as much wealth as possible.
So what is the dirtier word: Modi or Corruption?
I haven’t got an answer to it.

Don’t let us down!

The Supreme Court finally acted on the draconian Salwa Judum, stripping it off power and arms. The special police force had been organised by the Chattisgarh government to tackle the so-called Naxal “menace” as the ruling power loves to call it. By the way, in all drawing room discussions, the areas where Naxals are active are called Naxal-infested, as if they were insects or even rabid.
The Salwa Judum, with its heady concoction of upper caste “warriors” ably backed by the state machinery had run roughshod across the rural belt, intimidating villagers and tribals, and spewing orders in the name of justice. It had become an extra-constitutional authority.
The Supreme Court also passed another order last week, directing the Mayawati government to return “usurped” land to farmers.
And, Jairam Ramesh, when he was environment minister, intervened two days back to stop Vedanta from raping Nayamgiri hills, by refusing environmental clearance for bauxite mining.
These decisions are important, almost landmark because they might bring back people’s faith in our country’s democratic system. Just might, what with most of our political leaders vying for space in Tihar with multiple charges of corruption and some even enjoying their tea with jail officials.
The country’s growth is lopsided at the best. The government is projecting a growth rate of over 10 per cent, lacing it with the argument of a trickle-down effect. Only the so-called bounty that is seemingly trickling down gets blocked periodically.
Today’s reshuffle in the Manmohan Singh Cabinet may seem to be a shake-up to ascertain itself as having taken some action in its corridors of corruption. But as Anna Hazare pointed out: a reshuffle will not tackle corruption, only a change will.
An important man who has been juggled around is Jairam Ramesh. His exit is a major loss to the environment ministry. Ramesh had combined activism with his ministerial position, often embarrassing the government, which sometimes chose development at the cost of displacement. This portfolio will now be handled by Jayanti Natarajan, a rather tame choice for such a high-profile (read important) ministry. She will have to do lot of tight-rope walking to take forward the work of her predecessor without succumbing to pressure.
Ramesh’s elevation to the status of a Cabinet minister with the rural development portfolio is in my opinion a “ploy” by the government to play down the environmental issues thrown into the public radar by our activist-minister. But Ramesh can get into the skin of his new portfolio of rural development and dig out hidden concerns into the public arena. His decisions to look into the Naxal strongholds and the tribal heartland that comprises the backward areas could help further elevate his stature in the public eye. His steps in the direction of the rural employment guarantee scheme for the uplift of the people could be useful. What’s more; he could use this portfolio to integrate rural development with preserving our ecology by guaranteeing tribals their native livelihood, and not the one “promised” by corporate land sharks who promise employment that would at best be petty and menial. An effective penetration into rural development can at the most preserve our countryside from being made into concrete jungles with brick and mortar.
Ramesh, please don’t let us down!