Here, I partly reproduce a mail sent to a friend abroad with some additional writing. Thought some of you might be interested:
The other day, I was speaking to a bureaucrat, who offers me a very typical take of the farmers' problem. Over the years, I have been watching thousands of acres of farmland disappear to make way for industrial, commercial and residential constructions.
I was asking him if he has any idea how much land has thus been sacrificed to so-called progress. He said urbanisation is an inevitable process and one must not resent it if villages disappear. I told him the farmers take the lumpsum money given for their fields and then have no steady source of income.
But he was on to bigger things. Even if villages dont exist in Maharashtra, he told me, it doesn’t matter because we the people don’t depend on the state for grains or pulses. We only get our fruits and veggies from our neighbourhood.
So what's the big deal? he said. Most farmers grow jowar and bajri for local consumption. That shouldnt bother us city slickers, he argued. When I pointed out the state’s popular crop, sugarcane, to him, he said only cash crops grow in Maharashtra for real sales and they don’t suffer. So it's perfectly alright if they die or sell their fields.
I remembered cotton but i decided to stop this silly conversation before it got more inane. When I told him Punjab and Haryana, the wheat bowl of India, too were seeing farmer suicides every day, he said, oh yes, but that should not concern us because Maharastra cannot do anything about it.
He implied thus that our concerns should be limited to what we can do something about. How callous and self-absorbed can we get?
If you look at how these dead farmers' families get relief, it's even more pathetic. Some junior official peeps into his home, asks his family questions. If he finds a family problem, there is no way the family gets any money; the suicide is promptly attributed to internal problems even if he has a huge outstanding debt staring in everyone’s face. If the land is not his name, he is doomed, and so on. And, just how much does this dead farmer get anyway if he kills himself? All of one lakh rupees, which comes, if it does, after six whole months or more. Some of these process have now been streamlined. But again, as someone said, one cannot take pride in giving prompt `compensation’ (such a disgusting term!) when we couldnt prevent the farmer from killing himself in the first place.
I seriously cannot understand what's wrong with us as people that we cant see the suicides clearly as something very wrong, unethical, unequal and outrageous.
The world over, the pattern of development is skewed. Urban agglomerates thrive at the cost of villages which ironically provide the feed for this parasitical growth.
India being agrarian (soon, we will saying this in the past tense), it cannot afford to blink at the problems facing its villagers. The entire community fabric of the village –its culture, spirit, and self-reliance, -- is coming apart. The crafts are dying, there is no colour left in the green belts, and the fields are starved of water, power.
The way I see it, we are paying the price for ignoring Gandhiji. India lives in its villages, he said, implying thereby and saying it loudly on too many occasions as well, take care of the farmer and his village and you will have taken India on the road to prosperity. Today, India lives in two halves—one half is upwardly mobile, prosperous and a go-getting wannabe while the second is a stark picture of poverty, deprivation and hunger. We depend on the villages instead of the other way round. So, shouldn’t wealth too flow from there instead of the other way round?
Even if you don’t agree with this argument, we urbanites are directly affected by this neglect of our rural countrymen. Thanks to ceaseless migration, life in cities has become difficult for each one of us. At least for that reason, lets speak up and stem the rot.
Saturday, August 19, 2006
Monday, August 14, 2006
Today, I want to share with you an experience that gnaws at me...
Last week, I was on my way home by train when a eunuch jumped into the ladies first class compartment at Kurla. Slim, athletic build, bright red lipstick standing out in a made-up face. She squatted on the footboard, and started crying silently. No sobbing but I could see the tears kept streaming down her cheeks.
Not knowing what to do, I buried myself in the paper. We have been conditioned by society to fear eunuchs. But though I dont fear them much, I felt awkward about approaching her probably because of the others around and because I didnt know how she would react.
After 15 minutes of this should-i-should i-not, I decided to talk to her. I tapped her knees which were thrust protectively in front of her and asked her, ``kya hua?'' She ignored me. Again, I asked her, Kya hua? She continued looking down.
I turned to the door, and stood there. Suddenly, she looked up at me with a tear-stained face and said in perfect English, ``I am suffering from AIDS.'' I was stunned. She continued, ``I don't want to die. I love my mother very much. I dont want to leave her.''
I swallowed that with some difficulty. I had thought it would be a more manageable problem of abuse by cops and clients or some such thing, and I could help. Recovering, I asked her if she was taking medication-- the anti-retroviral therapy prescribed for AIDS patients. She nodded and started sobbing now. I told her not to worry, that many AIDS lived for 15 to 20 years and as she didn't seem to have any apparent health problem, she too would live. ``Nothing will happen to you,'' I told her uncertainly, not knowing what else to say. As we were nearing my station, I patted her shoulder, gave her some money and was about to jump off when she suddenly knelt down and kissed my dirty big toe. ``God bless you!'' she said with big teardrops shining in her eyes.
The lipstick took some removing...
Why do we shun eunuchs? Why can't they earn a decent living, like the rest of us? Instead of sympathising with them, we condemn her to a contemptible existence because of one organ gone wrong. And then, we condemn her again because she is forced to sell herself to eat.
We seem to accept all those men who torture, burn and murder their wives or rape other women much more easily. Isn't this too inequality of the sexes?
The thought keeps nagging me: what exactly was her fault? Do we shun people who have a hole in their hearts or don't have a limb? Do we throw them out of our homes and ban any civilised living for them? Gender profiling, what?
Last week, I was on my way home by train when a eunuch jumped into the ladies first class compartment at Kurla. Slim, athletic build, bright red lipstick standing out in a made-up face. She squatted on the footboard, and started crying silently. No sobbing but I could see the tears kept streaming down her cheeks.
Not knowing what to do, I buried myself in the paper. We have been conditioned by society to fear eunuchs. But though I dont fear them much, I felt awkward about approaching her probably because of the others around and because I didnt know how she would react.
After 15 minutes of this should-i-should i-not, I decided to talk to her. I tapped her knees which were thrust protectively in front of her and asked her, ``kya hua?'' She ignored me. Again, I asked her, Kya hua? She continued looking down.
I turned to the door, and stood there. Suddenly, she looked up at me with a tear-stained face and said in perfect English, ``I am suffering from AIDS.'' I was stunned. She continued, ``I don't want to die. I love my mother very much. I dont want to leave her.''
I swallowed that with some difficulty. I had thought it would be a more manageable problem of abuse by cops and clients or some such thing, and I could help. Recovering, I asked her if she was taking medication-- the anti-retroviral therapy prescribed for AIDS patients. She nodded and started sobbing now. I told her not to worry, that many AIDS lived for 15 to 20 years and as she didn't seem to have any apparent health problem, she too would live. ``Nothing will happen to you,'' I told her uncertainly, not knowing what else to say. As we were nearing my station, I patted her shoulder, gave her some money and was about to jump off when she suddenly knelt down and kissed my dirty big toe. ``God bless you!'' she said with big teardrops shining in her eyes.
The lipstick took some removing...
Why do we shun eunuchs? Why can't they earn a decent living, like the rest of us? Instead of sympathising with them, we condemn her to a contemptible existence because of one organ gone wrong. And then, we condemn her again because she is forced to sell herself to eat.
We seem to accept all those men who torture, burn and murder their wives or rape other women much more easily. Isn't this too inequality of the sexes?
The thought keeps nagging me: what exactly was her fault? Do we shun people who have a hole in their hearts or don't have a limb? Do we throw them out of our homes and ban any civilised living for them? Gender profiling, what?
The past two days have been spent panicking over the next terror target. The fear was always in the air but it's now verily palpable. And while Britain and the US grind their teeth and rub their noses to the ground to ferret out potential terrorists, we in India are coping with a bigger crisis: The Government.
What was India's first reaction after 11/7 (isn't that how WE write our dates instead of 7/11 as most newspapers have been obligingly calling it?) ? None. On the third day, when the whole world was wondering what we are waiting for and when the country was agonising over the deafening silence, PM Manmohan Singh took a ``hard stand''. He said the talks between India and Pakistan ``may'' suffer. Wow!
All dailies lapped up his tough talk and nodded grimly in appreciation. What else did we expect? A complete freeze on all talk of talks with Pakistan? A crackdown on terrorist factories in Pakistan, and mass detention of the trouble-makers from SIMI and allied forces? Pressure on the US to bring Pakistan to book? A complete stop to all those friendly buses plying between the two countries and legitimising the transfer of terrorists and their lethal wares?
Nah! This is what right-thinking countries do. The US and the UK would do. We know what the US did post 9/11. We also know what the UK did after the 7/7 train bombings. Actually, we should leave the US out of this. It went too far. The Bush brand of terrorism which destroys countries is much, much worse than 9/11, by any standards. Many, like my mother, couldnt sleep for days after his attack onIraq, feeling for all the innocents being bombed. I actually began hoping Saddam wont be caught and was positively depressed when he was.
Just a few days ago, Tony Blair branded all subversive acts in Kashmir as terror acts. A big step that finally got India some kind of international recognition that the violence of Kashmir was not a local concern. Something we couldnt achieve with all our coaxing and tomes of proofs for decades, one single act of terroism on his home ground has managed.
Leaving aside its terror act in Iraq, the US too has done some hard sniffing and hard talk. A few days ago, Hafeez Mohammed Sayeed, founder of al Qaida’s political wing, Jammat ul-Dawa, was about to enter Pakistan-occupied Kashmir, to make some pre-Independence Day speeches when US pressure forced Pakistan to detain him in Islamabad. Sayeed’s right-hand man, Jia ur-Rehman Lukhvi, heads the operations in India and operates from Anantnag in Jammu and Kashmir.
I dont know why we are so diffident. India has been very firmly yanked into the terror dragnet of late. But even as terror knocks at our doors every now and then, we are still unprepared to cope. It is still grappling with archaic policing methods, weak intelligence and political will – all of which erode its prevention and detection capabilities.
In May, when 13 kgs of RDX and a cache of AK-47 rifles were seized in Aurangabad, three key terror operatives – Fayyaz Kagzi, Rahil Sheikh and Zabiuddin Ansari – managed to flee in good time. Had they been nabbed, many believe 7/11 would not have happened.
If the police don’t err, the political bosses do. Every time, the cops grab a suspect, they are told to back off. The US and the UK, on the other hand, are known to be brutal in their treatment of suspects so much so that a Muslim constable in the Scotland Yard was stripped of sensitive duties after the 7/7 bombings last year. While that amounts to discrimination, what we have in India is reverse discrimination.
Nobody had heard of Raju Khan until he got a summons from a local police station inquiring about his recent visit to Dubai. The next day, Khan, who we now know is the son of choreographer Saroj Khan, was all over the papers. Some more Muslims were detained for questioning in different parts of the state, causing a first mention on byte-starved TV channels and then a full-fledged outcry in Asian Age. How dare they? fumed Seema Mustafa. (Only namesakeness, nothing more here!) Feeling left out, other papers including Times of India joined the chorus. Soon, police chief A N Roy was defending himself before the media and his political bosses, in that order for acts of omission he hadnt quite committed. ``We are questioning 3000 persons out of whom 800 are Hindus,'' he said plaintively.
What gives? Why can't he simply say yes, we are questioning everyone we think is suspect. If you don't want us to, dont complain when you get bombed. We could be wrong but then, we could be right too. We havent quite killed or tortured anyone yet. We are damned if we dont get a lead on the blasts, and we are damned if we question someone for a lead. How can this approach work?
Look at Australia. It has told the hardline Islamic radicals to buzz off if they want to crib about the country. Not very kindly too. Nobody found anything amiss. Imagine anyone even whispering something like that. They would be roundly packed off to oblivion.
In Mumbai at least, the police force is in a sorry state, thanks to weak will. A senior officer such as Hemant Karkare came back from a useful stint with central intelligence agencies to the Anti-Corruption Bureau instead of being lapped up by an intelligence wing—and that, after a three-month neglectful wait.
Similarly, many feel that the crime branch, which was once an elite force, should have been asked to lend its might to the Anti-Terrorism Squad in busting the blasts. As somebody told me, the line between terrorism and underworld is very thin and sometimes, not quite there. The crime branch’s inputs would have been invaluable, had it been pushed into service. The only hitch: who will tell the cat, our politicians?
Indian agencies has a long way to go before they achieve the wizardry and sophistication of their US counterparts. The book `The true face of Jehadis,’ by Pakistani journalist Amir Mir quotes from Gerald Posner’s book, `Why America slept..the Failure to prevent 9/11’ to narrate the skills used by the US to make a top al Qaida operative sing.
Pakistan was forced to hand over Abu Zubaydah, captured from Rawalpindi in March 2002, to the US. According to Posner’s book, the man was taken blind-folded to Afghanistan to a simulated Saudi jail with a created Saudi environment that made Zubaydah comfortable. He is alleged to have then told all about terror’s political patronage and Pakistani military sympathizers. This degree of conception, planning and execution is still unthinkable for us.
But if we aim there, we might manage a little better than we do now.
What was India's first reaction after 11/7 (isn't that how WE write our dates instead of 7/11 as most newspapers have been obligingly calling it?) ? None. On the third day, when the whole world was wondering what we are waiting for and when the country was agonising over the deafening silence, PM Manmohan Singh took a ``hard stand''. He said the talks between India and Pakistan ``may'' suffer. Wow!
All dailies lapped up his tough talk and nodded grimly in appreciation. What else did we expect? A complete freeze on all talk of talks with Pakistan? A crackdown on terrorist factories in Pakistan, and mass detention of the trouble-makers from SIMI and allied forces? Pressure on the US to bring Pakistan to book? A complete stop to all those friendly buses plying between the two countries and legitimising the transfer of terrorists and their lethal wares?
Nah! This is what right-thinking countries do. The US and the UK would do. We know what the US did post 9/11. We also know what the UK did after the 7/7 train bombings. Actually, we should leave the US out of this. It went too far. The Bush brand of terrorism which destroys countries is much, much worse than 9/11, by any standards. Many, like my mother, couldnt sleep for days after his attack onIraq, feeling for all the innocents being bombed. I actually began hoping Saddam wont be caught and was positively depressed when he was.
Just a few days ago, Tony Blair branded all subversive acts in Kashmir as terror acts. A big step that finally got India some kind of international recognition that the violence of Kashmir was not a local concern. Something we couldnt achieve with all our coaxing and tomes of proofs for decades, one single act of terroism on his home ground has managed.
Leaving aside its terror act in Iraq, the US too has done some hard sniffing and hard talk. A few days ago, Hafeez Mohammed Sayeed, founder of al Qaida’s political wing, Jammat ul-Dawa, was about to enter Pakistan-occupied Kashmir, to make some pre-Independence Day speeches when US pressure forced Pakistan to detain him in Islamabad. Sayeed’s right-hand man, Jia ur-Rehman Lukhvi, heads the operations in India and operates from Anantnag in Jammu and Kashmir.
I dont know why we are so diffident. India has been very firmly yanked into the terror dragnet of late. But even as terror knocks at our doors every now and then, we are still unprepared to cope. It is still grappling with archaic policing methods, weak intelligence and political will – all of which erode its prevention and detection capabilities.
In May, when 13 kgs of RDX and a cache of AK-47 rifles were seized in Aurangabad, three key terror operatives – Fayyaz Kagzi, Rahil Sheikh and Zabiuddin Ansari – managed to flee in good time. Had they been nabbed, many believe 7/11 would not have happened.
If the police don’t err, the political bosses do. Every time, the cops grab a suspect, they are told to back off. The US and the UK, on the other hand, are known to be brutal in their treatment of suspects so much so that a Muslim constable in the Scotland Yard was stripped of sensitive duties after the 7/7 bombings last year. While that amounts to discrimination, what we have in India is reverse discrimination.
Nobody had heard of Raju Khan until he got a summons from a local police station inquiring about his recent visit to Dubai. The next day, Khan, who we now know is the son of choreographer Saroj Khan, was all over the papers. Some more Muslims were detained for questioning in different parts of the state, causing a first mention on byte-starved TV channels and then a full-fledged outcry in Asian Age. How dare they? fumed Seema Mustafa. (Only namesakeness, nothing more here!) Feeling left out, other papers including Times of India joined the chorus. Soon, police chief A N Roy was defending himself before the media and his political bosses, in that order for acts of omission he hadnt quite committed. ``We are questioning 3000 persons out of whom 800 are Hindus,'' he said plaintively.
What gives? Why can't he simply say yes, we are questioning everyone we think is suspect. If you don't want us to, dont complain when you get bombed. We could be wrong but then, we could be right too. We havent quite killed or tortured anyone yet. We are damned if we dont get a lead on the blasts, and we are damned if we question someone for a lead. How can this approach work?
Look at Australia. It has told the hardline Islamic radicals to buzz off if they want to crib about the country. Not very kindly too. Nobody found anything amiss. Imagine anyone even whispering something like that. They would be roundly packed off to oblivion.
In Mumbai at least, the police force is in a sorry state, thanks to weak will. A senior officer such as Hemant Karkare came back from a useful stint with central intelligence agencies to the Anti-Corruption Bureau instead of being lapped up by an intelligence wing—and that, after a three-month neglectful wait.
Similarly, many feel that the crime branch, which was once an elite force, should have been asked to lend its might to the Anti-Terrorism Squad in busting the blasts. As somebody told me, the line between terrorism and underworld is very thin and sometimes, not quite there. The crime branch’s inputs would have been invaluable, had it been pushed into service. The only hitch: who will tell the cat, our politicians?
Indian agencies has a long way to go before they achieve the wizardry and sophistication of their US counterparts. The book `The true face of Jehadis,’ by Pakistani journalist Amir Mir quotes from Gerald Posner’s book, `Why America slept..the Failure to prevent 9/11’ to narrate the skills used by the US to make a top al Qaida operative sing.
Pakistan was forced to hand over Abu Zubaydah, captured from Rawalpindi in March 2002, to the US. According to Posner’s book, the man was taken blind-folded to Afghanistan to a simulated Saudi jail with a created Saudi environment that made Zubaydah comfortable. He is alleged to have then told all about terror’s political patronage and Pakistani military sympathizers. This degree of conception, planning and execution is still unthinkable for us.
But if we aim there, we might manage a little better than we do now.
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