Watching Sachin Tendulkar lord over the proceedings of the Chepauk test match on the final day of the first test match with England, a plethora of emotions held sway over the mind. 19 years after making his international debut, the realization that Sachin – “The Wall” was as constructive as and no less destructive than Sachin – “The Master Blaster” hits you with a pang of guilt thrown in. Haven’t we all not been guilty of writing off the champion, haven’t we cribbed about the waning of his batting abilities, haven’t we all thought that perhaps Sachin was a spent force, every time he failed to put up a good score or when he had to grind his way for runs?
In 1989, a 16 year old, bloodied in the nose from a Waqar Younis delivery shrugged off all requests for medical attention and straight drove the next ball to the fence. Later in the tour, he belted 27 runs off an over by retiring Abdul Qadir in the one-day series that followed. Of course all this is cricketing lore, but India had discovered not just a new idol who played cricket to the needs of television, but also a whole new generation of youngsters devoted to watching the game. I would know, because I was a 9 year old then, who started desperately following Sachin’s exploits on tv, newspaper, radio and finally on the internet. And after 19 years, on Monday, December 15 in the autumn of Sachin’s career, the long held dream of watching him play in front of my eyes materialized. And he didn’t disappoint.
Cricket has become a big man’s game with almost every player out on the field being powerfully built or standing six feet tall. And there was Sachin who looked a midget in comparison, but with the magnetism that accompanies great achievers, dwarfing every other player in sight as fifty thousand pairs of eyes willed him on to a century and an Indian win. The pitch misbehaved – it gave the spinners turn and the pacers uneven bounce. Through every watchful stroke, every run, every conversation with Yuvraj Singh, the determination that he would finish the task without leaving it for another man was evident. Cricket lovers are quickly forgetting Tendulkar’s erstwhile breathtaking shots as they realize the efficacy of his stoic defence, perfect technique and the wizardry of his behind the wicket shots.
Spoilt by powerful television cameras that slow down the cricket ball at delivery followed by slow motion views from several angles, the viewer in me at the stadium realized, not without a little shock the blinding speeds at which the ball reached the batsman, whether bowled by a spinner or pacer. The split-second decision to go for the behind wicket shots, and the tight precision needed to get the bat to the ball for those stock shots by Sachin, made me bow down to his amazing resilience towards the way his game, his body, his team and his relevance has changed over the years. Sehwag, Yuvraj and Dhoni may be the future. Bradman, Richards and Lara are of the past. But none can deny that any of these players had to face the weight of expectations that Sachin has had to shoulder for the last 15 years. At 99, with the Chennai crowd roaring manically for his hundred, a fellow journalist quips, “This is crazy. How can he not go mad? Others would have crumbled!” Superhuman. I could think of no other word.
P.S - Feature written for sports page in college newspaper.
Wednesday, 17 December 2008
Saturday, 13 December 2008
Are we asking the right questions?
Like everyone else, I was also a proud Indian, until a few months back. I believed most of what the media dished out to me as news and most of what the Indian government did as part of state policy. Of course like every other Indian, I was wary of the sly politician, the corrupt bureaucrat and the all powerful police. I was also a staunch believer of the responsibility of newspapers to the public and its role as a watchdog of democracy. And then I quit the IT industry to become a student, eager to join the hallowed profession of journalism, and ``serve’’ the society even while I earned my bread and butter. But the first lessons we were taught at journalism school was to question everything, especially all that was appearing in the media as news.
This business of questioning was painful. But it didn’t bring my concept of India crashing down. Instead it woke me up to the harsh realities that India has to live with - realities that are swept under the carpet for the sake of pragmatic politics, booming economy and national pride. We have not bothered to ask why Kashmir revolted against India in 1990. We have not inquired why a microscopic minority of Indian Muslims took to terrorism after 2002. Neither do we ponder why the Naxalites have come to dominate matters in 150 out of the 602 districts in India. Nor do we think about why the LTTE turned against the Indian government.
For long, the media has been feeding us with one side of the story. It could be convenience, it could be laziness, it could be fear of government repression, it could be blind trust in the government, it could be the conservative beliefs of media bosses or it could be the absence of a tradition of questioning what is taught to us - a sad remnant of our long colonial history. A few magazines like Economic and Political Weekly and Tehelka have shown the courage to go out of their way to ask the tough questions and provide insightful analyses but the mighty state can afford to turn the other way as these publications, with their limited circulation, rarely reach the masses.
Since I have made grave charges against the government in the earlier paragraph, I will attempt to address them as succinctly as I can within the constraints of the space allocated to me. The roots of the Kashmir problem lay in the Indian government rigging polls successively, until in 1987, several of today’s ``separatist’’ leaders like Abdul Majid Dar, Yasin Malik and Shabir Shah took up the gun in disgust after the rigging deprived them of victory in the elections. The phenomenon of home-grown terrorism started after the Gujarat genocide of 2002, when young Muslims lost their faith in the Indian state’s intention to protect them; this was evident, if evidence was needed, with the failure of the Central government to sack Narendra Modi as Gujarat Chief Minister.
When Manmohan Singh called Maoists as the ‘single biggest threat’ facing India, he chose not to address the reason for their overwhelming popularity with the Scheduled Tribes. The Adivasis who make up around 10% of our population had been systematically deprived of their lands and livelihood for the sake of economic development of our country and none else stood up for them. The Indian Peacekeeping Force(IPKF) that went to Sri Lanka in 1987 to keep peace between Sri Lanka and the LTTE ended up taking sides with the Lankan Army and alienated the long-oppressed Tamil population of that country.
Of course, we have had examples of great journalism in the past when the Indian Express opposed the Emergency or The Hindu unravelled the Bofors scandal and the media as a whole exposing the spate of corruption scandals that came out during the early 90’s during P.V.Narasimha Rao’s rule, the reportage of P.Sainath in the Times of India in 1993-94 that signalled quite early on the lopsided path to development that India was taking, through the New Economic Reforms of 1991, by cutting down on public spending in health and education. Contrast this with the last 4 years of UPA rule and not a single corruption scandal involving the government has been uncovered. Has the government played straight or do you also smell something foul in the silence of the media? The world over, the media has grown lethargic and treat governments and erring institutions with kid gloves. How else would you explain the several acts of mal-governance by George Bush and co that went un-investigated?
It is important then, that we question and ask the right questions, if the media does not do it for us. The next time you read the newspaper, read it with an open mind (of course, feel free to criticize me too for lack of objectivity in this article, if you think I am wrong). See the news item from the perspective of a factory worker whose job is under threat; a farmer whose lands are about to be acquired; a pensioner whose pension funds were siphoned away and we will realize the havoc that an all-powerful state and unscrupulous corporates could wreak. But then, we are the middle-class, we earn good salaries, our lives are safe and secure, we live in cities which are pampered by the state, but think of the thousands of families in Gujarat and Madhya Pradesh whose lands and homes will go under water when the dam is completed and the waters of the Narmada rise. Ask the right questions today. Tomorrow you could be the person blindsided by the State.
P.S - Article to appear in the upcoming issue of Sparx Mag - a recently launched weekly e-paper "targetted" at the IT and BPO crowd in Chennai. Check out the website
This business of questioning was painful. But it didn’t bring my concept of India crashing down. Instead it woke me up to the harsh realities that India has to live with - realities that are swept under the carpet for the sake of pragmatic politics, booming economy and national pride. We have not bothered to ask why Kashmir revolted against India in 1990. We have not inquired why a microscopic minority of Indian Muslims took to terrorism after 2002. Neither do we ponder why the Naxalites have come to dominate matters in 150 out of the 602 districts in India. Nor do we think about why the LTTE turned against the Indian government.
For long, the media has been feeding us with one side of the story. It could be convenience, it could be laziness, it could be fear of government repression, it could be blind trust in the government, it could be the conservative beliefs of media bosses or it could be the absence of a tradition of questioning what is taught to us - a sad remnant of our long colonial history. A few magazines like Economic and Political Weekly and Tehelka have shown the courage to go out of their way to ask the tough questions and provide insightful analyses but the mighty state can afford to turn the other way as these publications, with their limited circulation, rarely reach the masses.
Since I have made grave charges against the government in the earlier paragraph, I will attempt to address them as succinctly as I can within the constraints of the space allocated to me. The roots of the Kashmir problem lay in the Indian government rigging polls successively, until in 1987, several of today’s ``separatist’’ leaders like Abdul Majid Dar, Yasin Malik and Shabir Shah took up the gun in disgust after the rigging deprived them of victory in the elections. The phenomenon of home-grown terrorism started after the Gujarat genocide of 2002, when young Muslims lost their faith in the Indian state’s intention to protect them; this was evident, if evidence was needed, with the failure of the Central government to sack Narendra Modi as Gujarat Chief Minister.
When Manmohan Singh called Maoists as the ‘single biggest threat’ facing India, he chose not to address the reason for their overwhelming popularity with the Scheduled Tribes. The Adivasis who make up around 10% of our population had been systematically deprived of their lands and livelihood for the sake of economic development of our country and none else stood up for them. The Indian Peacekeeping Force(IPKF) that went to Sri Lanka in 1987 to keep peace between Sri Lanka and the LTTE ended up taking sides with the Lankan Army and alienated the long-oppressed Tamil population of that country.
Of course, we have had examples of great journalism in the past when the Indian Express opposed the Emergency or The Hindu unravelled the Bofors scandal and the media as a whole exposing the spate of corruption scandals that came out during the early 90’s during P.V.Narasimha Rao’s rule, the reportage of P.Sainath in the Times of India in 1993-94 that signalled quite early on the lopsided path to development that India was taking, through the New Economic Reforms of 1991, by cutting down on public spending in health and education. Contrast this with the last 4 years of UPA rule and not a single corruption scandal involving the government has been uncovered. Has the government played straight or do you also smell something foul in the silence of the media? The world over, the media has grown lethargic and treat governments and erring institutions with kid gloves. How else would you explain the several acts of mal-governance by George Bush and co that went un-investigated?
It is important then, that we question and ask the right questions, if the media does not do it for us. The next time you read the newspaper, read it with an open mind (of course, feel free to criticize me too for lack of objectivity in this article, if you think I am wrong). See the news item from the perspective of a factory worker whose job is under threat; a farmer whose lands are about to be acquired; a pensioner whose pension funds were siphoned away and we will realize the havoc that an all-powerful state and unscrupulous corporates could wreak. But then, we are the middle-class, we earn good salaries, our lives are safe and secure, we live in cities which are pampered by the state, but think of the thousands of families in Gujarat and Madhya Pradesh whose lands and homes will go under water when the dam is completed and the waters of the Narmada rise. Ask the right questions today. Tomorrow you could be the person blindsided by the State.
P.S - Article to appear in the upcoming issue of Sparx Mag - a recently launched weekly e-paper "targetted" at the IT and BPO crowd in Chennai. Check out the website
Friday, 12 December 2008
Swamped by waste
The expanding girth of our cities has devoured in its wake every landform like villages, lakes and farmlands that supported in the first place, the existence of these urban centres. Pallikaranai is one such sad story of a fresh water marshland that humans, birds, animals all depended on for their sustenance until the rapid growth that Chennai witnessed, needed a dumpyard for the thousands of tonnes of waste that the burgeoning metropolis manufactured daily. The tragedy of Pallikaranai was compounded by landfilling that converted several hectares of land on its fringes into affluent settlements for the upwardly mobile population of the city.
Once spread over 5000 hectares, Pallikaranai Marsh is home to 61 species of water plants, 110 species of birds, 21 species of reptiles and 46 species of fishes besides being a source of drinking water for the people in surrounding villages. Dumping at Pallikaranai began in 1985 on a small scale but now extends to atleast 700 acres. And guess what the citizens of Chennai contribute for the upkeep of this dumpyard - 2500 tons of garbage daily! The cast of characters in the epic struggle at Pallikaranai includes naturalists, resident associations, corporation officials and ragpickers. Each has a stake in what becomes of Pallikaranai for different reasons. Naturalists are protesting environmental damage, resident associations complain of health problems, corporation officials struggle with finding an alternate dumpyard while for ragpickers it is a question of livelihood.
With the fresh water habitat declining in area and quality, migratory birds which had made Pallikaranai their temporary abode for ages have stopped coming back. Poisons emanating from non-degradable wastes like plastics, heavy metals, etc have seeped into the soil posing enormous threat to the ground water system of Chennai. The filling of land around the boundaries of the marsh have severed this ecosystem’s connection with the Bay of Bengal and during heavy rains the several arteries that once acted as a channel for flood water are now choked causing flooding in nearby areas like Velachery. Environmentalists like Nityanand Jayaraman and A.Murugavel say that the Chennai Corporation recent decision to restrict dumping to 200 acres won’t help but were hopeful that their agitation for zero-dumping at Pallikaranai will succeed.
Residents in and around Pallikaranai were the first to start agitating against the dumping and burning of garbage but their struggle gained force only when the environmental angle got highlighted. Today 793 acres of the marshland have been classified as reserve forest area. Residents complain of unbearable stench, lung-choking smog, mosquito menace, respiratory diseases like asthma and sadly studies conducted have discovered even toxins in breast milk, caused by the rampant dumping and burning of organic and inorganic wastes. From the IT companies that have set up shop in the area through upper middle class residents of recently constructed apartments to the poorer residents of the old villages around the marsh, everyone wants the dumpyard to close down, but is the corporation listening?
Corporation officials blame the continuation of dumping at Pallikaranai on the unavailability of another place to dump and the low capacity of the Perungudi recycling plant to handle all of Chennai’s wastes. Their efforts for segregation of waste at source and for localized disposal of organic wastes have just taken off and may take years to yield results. They also conveniently pass on the blame of the burning at Pallikaranai to the ragpickers, and say that they are being demonized for no crime of theirs. While corporation officials say that ragpickers burn the garbage to unearth the metal scraps that earn them more money, Exnora International, a group that works with ragpickers says that the dumpers have orders to burn the garbage so that more of it can be accommodated. Moreover, the ragpickers collect not just the metal; anything from plastic to rubber is of value to them. Finally, ragpickers do the work that everyone from the waste producer to the collecting and disposing agencies are supposed to be doing: retrieving anything and everything that can be recycled!
The last act in this long winding drama surrounding Pallikaranai saw the Madras High Court on November 17 step in and serve show cause notices to Chennai Corporation on why contempt of court proceedings should not be initiated against it. The burning stopped but residents are wary of a return to old habits. The environmentalists’ demand for making the entire Pallikaranai Marsh a reserve forest area is yet to be addressed. The court’s concern for citizens’ health rather than the environment is obvious when it wanted the burning to stop but through the order obliquely allows dumping to continue. Ultimately, the struggle to save Pallikaranai must begin from Chennai’s homes. For long we have blamed civic authorities for their waste disposal practices; it is time we waste producers are held accountable too. It is an irony of our progress that a once picturesque area like Pallikaranai has today become an eyesore. Nature can regenerate; Pallikaranai can still save itself. But only if we want it to. Only if we keep our hands off.
P.S - Feature written for college newspaper.
Once spread over 5000 hectares, Pallikaranai Marsh is home to 61 species of water plants, 110 species of birds, 21 species of reptiles and 46 species of fishes besides being a source of drinking water for the people in surrounding villages. Dumping at Pallikaranai began in 1985 on a small scale but now extends to atleast 700 acres. And guess what the citizens of Chennai contribute for the upkeep of this dumpyard - 2500 tons of garbage daily! The cast of characters in the epic struggle at Pallikaranai includes naturalists, resident associations, corporation officials and ragpickers. Each has a stake in what becomes of Pallikaranai for different reasons. Naturalists are protesting environmental damage, resident associations complain of health problems, corporation officials struggle with finding an alternate dumpyard while for ragpickers it is a question of livelihood.
With the fresh water habitat declining in area and quality, migratory birds which had made Pallikaranai their temporary abode for ages have stopped coming back. Poisons emanating from non-degradable wastes like plastics, heavy metals, etc have seeped into the soil posing enormous threat to the ground water system of Chennai. The filling of land around the boundaries of the marsh have severed this ecosystem’s connection with the Bay of Bengal and during heavy rains the several arteries that once acted as a channel for flood water are now choked causing flooding in nearby areas like Velachery. Environmentalists like Nityanand Jayaraman and A.Murugavel say that the Chennai Corporation recent decision to restrict dumping to 200 acres won’t help but were hopeful that their agitation for zero-dumping at Pallikaranai will succeed.
Residents in and around Pallikaranai were the first to start agitating against the dumping and burning of garbage but their struggle gained force only when the environmental angle got highlighted. Today 793 acres of the marshland have been classified as reserve forest area. Residents complain of unbearable stench, lung-choking smog, mosquito menace, respiratory diseases like asthma and sadly studies conducted have discovered even toxins in breast milk, caused by the rampant dumping and burning of organic and inorganic wastes. From the IT companies that have set up shop in the area through upper middle class residents of recently constructed apartments to the poorer residents of the old villages around the marsh, everyone wants the dumpyard to close down, but is the corporation listening?
Corporation officials blame the continuation of dumping at Pallikaranai on the unavailability of another place to dump and the low capacity of the Perungudi recycling plant to handle all of Chennai’s wastes. Their efforts for segregation of waste at source and for localized disposal of organic wastes have just taken off and may take years to yield results. They also conveniently pass on the blame of the burning at Pallikaranai to the ragpickers, and say that they are being demonized for no crime of theirs. While corporation officials say that ragpickers burn the garbage to unearth the metal scraps that earn them more money, Exnora International, a group that works with ragpickers says that the dumpers have orders to burn the garbage so that more of it can be accommodated. Moreover, the ragpickers collect not just the metal; anything from plastic to rubber is of value to them. Finally, ragpickers do the work that everyone from the waste producer to the collecting and disposing agencies are supposed to be doing: retrieving anything and everything that can be recycled!
The last act in this long winding drama surrounding Pallikaranai saw the Madras High Court on November 17 step in and serve show cause notices to Chennai Corporation on why contempt of court proceedings should not be initiated against it. The burning stopped but residents are wary of a return to old habits. The environmentalists’ demand for making the entire Pallikaranai Marsh a reserve forest area is yet to be addressed. The court’s concern for citizens’ health rather than the environment is obvious when it wanted the burning to stop but through the order obliquely allows dumping to continue. Ultimately, the struggle to save Pallikaranai must begin from Chennai’s homes. For long we have blamed civic authorities for their waste disposal practices; it is time we waste producers are held accountable too. It is an irony of our progress that a once picturesque area like Pallikaranai has today become an eyesore. Nature can regenerate; Pallikaranai can still save itself. But only if we want it to. Only if we keep our hands off.
P.S - Feature written for college newspaper.
Friday, 5 December 2008
Road to New Delhi: 2009 general elections
With the 15th Lok Sabha elections slated to be held before May of next year, all political activity in the country has geared towards addressing people's issues and mobilizing party machineries. The ball was set rolling during the no-confidence motion against the present dispensation, when fears of the UPA government falling, seemed a taut possibility. A re-alignment of sorts happened with parties scrambling to form new alliances to stabilize and destabilize the present government, while also having an eye on the impending general election.
The Congress-SP-JMM, BJP-INLD, the short lived BSP-Left tie-ups were an immediate result of this search for new partners. In the months following the confidence vote, political parties all over India began hectic parleys to find common ground in an effort to create pre-poll alliances. The emphasis on pre-poll rather than post-poll alliances signifies the acceptance of ground realities by the two major national parties, Congress and BJP that their base has further shrunk. The third front that the Left is attempting to stitch together will be a major player in the next Lok Sabha too with parties like BSP, TDP, Praja Rajyam, AIADMK, DMDK, JD(S), TRS and RLD searching for space in the national arena, as they are currently not allied with either the UPA or the NDA.
The issues that ordinary citizens are most concerned with have not changed significantly from 2004. To be certain, the UPA will not make the BJP's mistake of presenting a "Shining India" to 80 per cent of the country who had no part in the rapid economic growth India saw. Moreover the economic slowdown, has deflated any claims, the Congress would have loved to make, of the massive economic reforms that it undertook which took the Sensex to record levels, despite the opposition from Left parties.
The UPA can boast of the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS), Right To Information (RTI) and Indo-US nuclear deal while the Left will pat itself on the back for backing NREGS and RTI while obstructing attempts to subvert the RTI Act, diverting Pensions and Provident Funds and increasing FDI's in insurance; the last two of which would have put India in trouble from the global economic crisis. The BJP predictably has latched on to the terrorism threat and weaknesses of the UPA in fighting terror but its nationalist agenda received a severe setback following the involvement of Hindu "extremists" in the Malegaon blasts and brought undone its claims that terrorism was a Muslim domain.
However, it is a reality that the spate of bombings across the country have become a concern for citizens, but who they choose to throw their lot with on this count remains in doubt as successive governments of the BJP and Congress have fared equally poorly on the security front, but the Congress is on the backfoot as it has repeatedly fumbled on evolving a strategy to combat terrorism and addressing the flaws in the security and intelligence apparatus. The recent violence against Christians, the UPA's hesitation to ban the Bajrang Dal and the pressure to bring POTA back has foisted insecurity on minorities. The Congress has been sceptical of playing the secular card in recent times, and has lost significant minority support to third front.
The economic slowdown might be a boon to the ruling UPA, as it has brought demand and hence inflation down. The Congress has a masterstroke up its armoury which it is waiting to unveil: lowering of petrol and LPG price. This will satisfy the middle class and the agriculture sector as prices of essential items will come down in the short run. The recession's impact on the service and industry sectors is troublesome for the UPA as the work-force in these sectors enjoy enormous sympathy in the media but is not a major factor in votebank politics. However Manmohan Singh seems to have got it wrong, when he talks of a financial stimuli or bailout for industrialists while forgetting that a similar crisis exists in the agricultural sector too where incomes have continued to deflate or remain stagnant as a result of our pursuit of neo-liberal policies.
The recently held assembly polls to the Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Chattisgarh, Jammu-Kashmir, Delhi and Mizoram will act as the true curtain raiser to the Lok Sabha elections. Though local issues and performance of the state governments will decide the contest, no political party can afford to see the results in isolation as these elections come with a strong psychological factor which will boost the morale of the parties that win, ahead of the general election. The assembly polls are significant for another reason that in Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Delhi and Chattisgarh the Congress and BJP are directly pitted against each other while both parties hold significant stakes in Jammu & Kashmir.
Also interesting to observe, will be the performance of Mayawati's BSP which is a fringe group in Madhya Pradesh, Rajastan, Delhi and Chattisgarh. A credible performance by BSP will boost her standing as a probable prime-ministerial candidate for the third front and make her a strong national player. The Left Parties will see their numbers fall from the high of 61 MP's they now possess, as the Trinamool Congress in West Bengal and the Congress-led UDF in Kerala have regained significant strength to put up a stronger fight this time.
Though anti-incumbency, policies and performance are the major forces in deciding most elections, caste politics will also play a major role in deciding the outcome of the Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu and Karnataka elections. The middle class will split between the Congress and the BJP while rural India where a majority of the people live, will be swindled again by parties which promise a lot for agriculture but end up pursuing neo-liberal policies and undoing the welfare state that India strived to become for the first 44 years of independence.
The 15th Lok Sabha elections are important because it could change the course of recent developments like the junking of non-alignment for the Indo-US alliance, terrorism, rising insecurity of minorities, the undeniable influence of Maoists, agricultural stagnation and the demand for a regulated economy versus more globalization. The Americans dubbed Obama's presidential elections as a vote for change; our politicians too will come knocking at our doorsteps with better slogans. Several actions of the UPA government in the last two years were indicative of a government for the corporations, not for the common man. The sad reality of different Indias for different Indians can still be fought. But it is no secret that the warped policies of the past will continue, whichever existing political party comes to power.
P.S - Op-Ed written for college newspaper.
The Congress-SP-JMM, BJP-INLD, the short lived BSP-Left tie-ups were an immediate result of this search for new partners. In the months following the confidence vote, political parties all over India began hectic parleys to find common ground in an effort to create pre-poll alliances. The emphasis on pre-poll rather than post-poll alliances signifies the acceptance of ground realities by the two major national parties, Congress and BJP that their base has further shrunk. The third front that the Left is attempting to stitch together will be a major player in the next Lok Sabha too with parties like BSP, TDP, Praja Rajyam, AIADMK, DMDK, JD(S), TRS and RLD searching for space in the national arena, as they are currently not allied with either the UPA or the NDA.
The issues that ordinary citizens are most concerned with have not changed significantly from 2004. To be certain, the UPA will not make the BJP's mistake of presenting a "Shining India" to 80 per cent of the country who had no part in the rapid economic growth India saw. Moreover the economic slowdown, has deflated any claims, the Congress would have loved to make, of the massive economic reforms that it undertook which took the Sensex to record levels, despite the opposition from Left parties.
The UPA can boast of the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS), Right To Information (RTI) and Indo-US nuclear deal while the Left will pat itself on the back for backing NREGS and RTI while obstructing attempts to subvert the RTI Act, diverting Pensions and Provident Funds and increasing FDI's in insurance; the last two of which would have put India in trouble from the global economic crisis. The BJP predictably has latched on to the terrorism threat and weaknesses of the UPA in fighting terror but its nationalist agenda received a severe setback following the involvement of Hindu "extremists" in the Malegaon blasts and brought undone its claims that terrorism was a Muslim domain.
However, it is a reality that the spate of bombings across the country have become a concern for citizens, but who they choose to throw their lot with on this count remains in doubt as successive governments of the BJP and Congress have fared equally poorly on the security front, but the Congress is on the backfoot as it has repeatedly fumbled on evolving a strategy to combat terrorism and addressing the flaws in the security and intelligence apparatus. The recent violence against Christians, the UPA's hesitation to ban the Bajrang Dal and the pressure to bring POTA back has foisted insecurity on minorities. The Congress has been sceptical of playing the secular card in recent times, and has lost significant minority support to third front.
The economic slowdown might be a boon to the ruling UPA, as it has brought demand and hence inflation down. The Congress has a masterstroke up its armoury which it is waiting to unveil: lowering of petrol and LPG price. This will satisfy the middle class and the agriculture sector as prices of essential items will come down in the short run. The recession's impact on the service and industry sectors is troublesome for the UPA as the work-force in these sectors enjoy enormous sympathy in the media but is not a major factor in votebank politics. However Manmohan Singh seems to have got it wrong, when he talks of a financial stimuli or bailout for industrialists while forgetting that a similar crisis exists in the agricultural sector too where incomes have continued to deflate or remain stagnant as a result of our pursuit of neo-liberal policies.
The recently held assembly polls to the Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Chattisgarh, Jammu-Kashmir, Delhi and Mizoram will act as the true curtain raiser to the Lok Sabha elections. Though local issues and performance of the state governments will decide the contest, no political party can afford to see the results in isolation as these elections come with a strong psychological factor which will boost the morale of the parties that win, ahead of the general election. The assembly polls are significant for another reason that in Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Delhi and Chattisgarh the Congress and BJP are directly pitted against each other while both parties hold significant stakes in Jammu & Kashmir.
Also interesting to observe, will be the performance of Mayawati's BSP which is a fringe group in Madhya Pradesh, Rajastan, Delhi and Chattisgarh. A credible performance by BSP will boost her standing as a probable prime-ministerial candidate for the third front and make her a strong national player. The Left Parties will see their numbers fall from the high of 61 MP's they now possess, as the Trinamool Congress in West Bengal and the Congress-led UDF in Kerala have regained significant strength to put up a stronger fight this time.
Though anti-incumbency, policies and performance are the major forces in deciding most elections, caste politics will also play a major role in deciding the outcome of the Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu and Karnataka elections. The middle class will split between the Congress and the BJP while rural India where a majority of the people live, will be swindled again by parties which promise a lot for agriculture but end up pursuing neo-liberal policies and undoing the welfare state that India strived to become for the first 44 years of independence.
The 15th Lok Sabha elections are important because it could change the course of recent developments like the junking of non-alignment for the Indo-US alliance, terrorism, rising insecurity of minorities, the undeniable influence of Maoists, agricultural stagnation and the demand for a regulated economy versus more globalization. The Americans dubbed Obama's presidential elections as a vote for change; our politicians too will come knocking at our doorsteps with better slogans. Several actions of the UPA government in the last two years were indicative of a government for the corporations, not for the common man. The sad reality of different Indias for different Indians can still be fought. But it is no secret that the warped policies of the past will continue, whichever existing political party comes to power.
P.S - Op-Ed written for college newspaper.
V.P.Singh’s legacy
Very few political careers have seen the kind of turmoil, courageous actions and blemishless conduct that have been the hallmark of V.P.Singh's public life. Singh basked in the centre-stage of national politics for a mere seven years. First as Finance Minister, and then as Defence Minister in Rajiv Gandhi's cabinet followed by 11 months in office as Prime Minister, Singh's career was marked by fights against corruption and championing the cause of social justice.
The Janata Dal that V.P.Singh cobbled together achieved the impossible in Indian politics by bringing the Hindu Right and the Left parties together to defeat the Congress in the 1989 Lok Sabha elections. His implementation of the Mandal Commission recommendation of 27 per cent reservation for OBC's in central government jobs blew the lid on the inequalities in India. Despite violent protests and acts of self-immolation by upper caste youth, Singh went ahead with the commission's recommendations. For the first time, caste as the strongest reality in Indian politics came out in the open, and Indian politics have never been the same again.
The upper caste, upper class attitude to V.P.Singh changed overnight, and for the last 20 years he has been vilified in the strongest terms for what was seen by these groups as the subversion of Indian politics and the denial of "equality of opportunity" to them. The Congress rule in the Hindi heartland had been simultaneous with Brahminical dominance over the other caste groups until 1990. But the political formations that soon sprung up, based themselves on caste affiliations throwing out all pretensions of socialist agendas, and quickly ate away the Congress base in the politically important states of Bihar and Uttar Pradesh which then contributed 140 seats to the Lok Sabha.
Simultaneous with the rise of casteist politics as a by-product of Mandal, was the rise of Hindutva politics through the BJP, and together these two forces of caste and religion contributed to the marginalization of the Congress in large pockets of North India. Along with language, an identity that forced itself out in the open during the fight for linguistic states, India had soon become the playground for two more identities its common people held dear to their hearts: caste and religion. V.P.Singh lost his prime ministership in 1990 and stayed out of the public spotlight. The level of acceptance he enjoyed with non-Congress, non-right wing parties was obvious when he was invited to become Prime Minister again in 1996, an offter that he politely refused.
India has not seen single party rule since 1989 and the so called national parties like the Congress or BJP, have accepted coalition governments grudgingly. Mandal was approved by the Supreme Court and by most political parties. Today, reservations have been extended to institutions of higher learning and measures to implement reservation in private education and jobs might soon follow. An act of political courage by V.P.Singh had thrown open opportunities for India's historically oppressed in many spheres of life. Herein, lies his primary contribution to India and though the bourgeoisie press and upper castes and classes will continue to deride his role in restructuring India, history textbooks will remember V.P.Singh as our first ruler who successfully empowered the lower castes.
P.S - Editorial written for college newspaper. Long-time readers of my earlier blog will remember my blatant opposition to reservations. Thanks to this man, who in one lecture, convinced me that reservations are right.
The Janata Dal that V.P.Singh cobbled together achieved the impossible in Indian politics by bringing the Hindu Right and the Left parties together to defeat the Congress in the 1989 Lok Sabha elections. His implementation of the Mandal Commission recommendation of 27 per cent reservation for OBC's in central government jobs blew the lid on the inequalities in India. Despite violent protests and acts of self-immolation by upper caste youth, Singh went ahead with the commission's recommendations. For the first time, caste as the strongest reality in Indian politics came out in the open, and Indian politics have never been the same again.
The upper caste, upper class attitude to V.P.Singh changed overnight, and for the last 20 years he has been vilified in the strongest terms for what was seen by these groups as the subversion of Indian politics and the denial of "equality of opportunity" to them. The Congress rule in the Hindi heartland had been simultaneous with Brahminical dominance over the other caste groups until 1990. But the political formations that soon sprung up, based themselves on caste affiliations throwing out all pretensions of socialist agendas, and quickly ate away the Congress base in the politically important states of Bihar and Uttar Pradesh which then contributed 140 seats to the Lok Sabha.
Simultaneous with the rise of casteist politics as a by-product of Mandal, was the rise of Hindutva politics through the BJP, and together these two forces of caste and religion contributed to the marginalization of the Congress in large pockets of North India. Along with language, an identity that forced itself out in the open during the fight for linguistic states, India had soon become the playground for two more identities its common people held dear to their hearts: caste and religion. V.P.Singh lost his prime ministership in 1990 and stayed out of the public spotlight. The level of acceptance he enjoyed with non-Congress, non-right wing parties was obvious when he was invited to become Prime Minister again in 1996, an offter that he politely refused.
India has not seen single party rule since 1989 and the so called national parties like the Congress or BJP, have accepted coalition governments grudgingly. Mandal was approved by the Supreme Court and by most political parties. Today, reservations have been extended to institutions of higher learning and measures to implement reservation in private education and jobs might soon follow. An act of political courage by V.P.Singh had thrown open opportunities for India's historically oppressed in many spheres of life. Herein, lies his primary contribution to India and though the bourgeoisie press and upper castes and classes will continue to deride his role in restructuring India, history textbooks will remember V.P.Singh as our first ruler who successfully empowered the lower castes.
P.S - Editorial written for college newspaper. Long-time readers of my earlier blog will remember my blatant opposition to reservations. Thanks to this man, who in one lecture, convinced me that reservations are right.
Monday, 27 October 2008
Spring Returns to Malayalam Cinema
Malayalam Cinema which was in a free fall for the last 13 years, saw a refreshing change this Onam season. In the absence of superstar films, Kerala was witness to a by now rare phenomenon of four middle-of-the-road films releasing in theatres simultaneously. Arriving with hardly any publicity or hype, the four films, Thalappavu, Thirakkatha, Gulmohar and Rathrimazha, managed to combine good production values, fresh storylines, scintillating performances and excellent cinematic craft to bring class audiences back to theatres. Though these films failed to enthuse the masses like commercial potboilers succeed in doing, the average collections registered will go a long way in encouraging producers to invest in more of such quality ventures.
Thirakatha, starring Prithviraj, National Award winning actress Priyamani and Anoop Menon is a take-off on the life of the late actress Srividya and centering around her failed love affair with Kamal Hassan. It brilliantly explores the lives of film personalities through their failures, success, fame and oblivion. With Thirakatha, Renjith, one of Malayalam cinema’s best writers, salvages his fading reputation thanks to a string of big budget disasters, and comes up with a script that is in equal measure a stinging critique of the superstar-centric industry that Malayalam cinema has become.
Perhaps the best film of the year, Thalappavu is inspired from the true story of a police constable confessing to the murder of legendary Naxal leader Varghese, at the behest of his superior officers. The story told in flashbacks uses the stream of consciousness technique to bring back memories of Varghese to the contrite police constable whose life goes downhill, from the moment he pulls the trigger. The character of Varghese, is played brilliantly by Prithviraj, who invests such sincere dignity and fiery splendour to the role, that he does deserving justice to the first ever portrayal of the revolutionary leader on celluloid. Lal, in a career best performance essays the role of the suffering constable with pathos and restraint. Thalappavu succeeds in raising several pertinent questions of the day which need to be seen in conjunction with the rise of Maoists movements in several parts of India.
With Gulmohar, Jayaraj, one of Malayalam cinema’s greats returns to his roots, and emphatically ends loose talk by film aficionados that he had lost steam after several disastrous attempts to gain a foothold in commercial cinema. The film tells the story of a middle-aged school teacher, who was the member of a left radical student group that broke up, failing to achieve its objectives. Circumstances force the teacher, today a husband, father and responsible citizen to fall back on revolutionary action. Jayaraj’s masterstroke was to compel writer-director Renjith, to debut in front of the camera for the protagonist’s role. Renjith exceeds all expectations and satisfies every requirement of a complex role - graduating from a tough, manly and intense youth to the slouching, tender and mild mannered teacher.
The favourable response to these films promises middle-of-the-road cinema a new lease of life. Offbeat films have struggled to find releasing centres with the closure of several theatres across the state. But multiplexes are coming up soon, ensuring adequate screens for art films too. Cable TV which gained popularity at cinema’s expense has today lost its sheen. With companies like Adlabs and Pyramid Sairmira venturing into film production, the infusion of capital and corporate culture might just be the tonic needed to revive Malayalam cinema from its slumber. A generation of directors, writers, actors and other technicians are slowly being phased out and a new guard is emerging. Meanwhile Keralites wait in hope of a return to the golden age of Malayalam Cinema, a period which lasted 10 years between 1985 and 1995, when the state had an embarrassment of riches with Padmarajan, Mohanlal, Mammootty, MT Vasudevan Nair, Bharathan and Lohitadas to name just a few of the legends who were at the peak of their creative prowess.
P.S - Feature written for course work.
Thirakatha, starring Prithviraj, National Award winning actress Priyamani and Anoop Menon is a take-off on the life of the late actress Srividya and centering around her failed love affair with Kamal Hassan. It brilliantly explores the lives of film personalities through their failures, success, fame and oblivion. With Thirakatha, Renjith, one of Malayalam cinema’s best writers, salvages his fading reputation thanks to a string of big budget disasters, and comes up with a script that is in equal measure a stinging critique of the superstar-centric industry that Malayalam cinema has become.
Perhaps the best film of the year, Thalappavu is inspired from the true story of a police constable confessing to the murder of legendary Naxal leader Varghese, at the behest of his superior officers. The story told in flashbacks uses the stream of consciousness technique to bring back memories of Varghese to the contrite police constable whose life goes downhill, from the moment he pulls the trigger. The character of Varghese, is played brilliantly by Prithviraj, who invests such sincere dignity and fiery splendour to the role, that he does deserving justice to the first ever portrayal of the revolutionary leader on celluloid. Lal, in a career best performance essays the role of the suffering constable with pathos and restraint. Thalappavu succeeds in raising several pertinent questions of the day which need to be seen in conjunction with the rise of Maoists movements in several parts of India.
With Gulmohar, Jayaraj, one of Malayalam cinema’s greats returns to his roots, and emphatically ends loose talk by film aficionados that he had lost steam after several disastrous attempts to gain a foothold in commercial cinema. The film tells the story of a middle-aged school teacher, who was the member of a left radical student group that broke up, failing to achieve its objectives. Circumstances force the teacher, today a husband, father and responsible citizen to fall back on revolutionary action. Jayaraj’s masterstroke was to compel writer-director Renjith, to debut in front of the camera for the protagonist’s role. Renjith exceeds all expectations and satisfies every requirement of a complex role - graduating from a tough, manly and intense youth to the slouching, tender and mild mannered teacher.
The favourable response to these films promises middle-of-the-road cinema a new lease of life. Offbeat films have struggled to find releasing centres with the closure of several theatres across the state. But multiplexes are coming up soon, ensuring adequate screens for art films too. Cable TV which gained popularity at cinema’s expense has today lost its sheen. With companies like Adlabs and Pyramid Sairmira venturing into film production, the infusion of capital and corporate culture might just be the tonic needed to revive Malayalam cinema from its slumber. A generation of directors, writers, actors and other technicians are slowly being phased out and a new guard is emerging. Meanwhile Keralites wait in hope of a return to the golden age of Malayalam Cinema, a period which lasted 10 years between 1985 and 1995, when the state had an embarrassment of riches with Padmarajan, Mohanlal, Mammootty, MT Vasudevan Nair, Bharathan and Lohitadas to name just a few of the legends who were at the peak of their creative prowess.
P.S - Feature written for course work.
Wednesday, 1 October 2008
How many more Rajans?
“The world of stories is going away. In every piece of knowledge there is the echo of truth. The hunters are continuing the hunt. The victims are begging for life with pressed hands. I don’t know whether I will be strong enough to describe the torture that my son underwent at the Kakkayam camp. Like the torture at Hitler’s concentration camps, what went on at Kakkayam was an experiment, undemocratic and heartless, to find out whether the intellectual honesty and sense of justice of a generation could be destroyed by the power of an iron fist. How much Mr. Jayaram Padikkal succeeded in this experiment is something for history to evaluate.”
- Prof. Eachara Warrier, Memories of a Father
The importance of literature in keeping alive the crimes of the past for present generations to remember and to watch out for, so that they don’t fall in the same trap cannot be more underscored than by the fact that the tradition of storytelling has almost died out. Today the oral tradition that once kept alive our ancient epics, folk tales, ballads, songs, etc is a casualty of modernity. My father did some anti-emergency work and i believe even hid at the AKG Centre, but this was something I overheard (him telling this over the phone to a friend). In an earlier age, children had the privilege of growing up hearing the exploits of their parents, but not anymore.
Works of literature have today kept fresh in our memories the brutalities in France, England, Russia, etc which brought about revolutions and social reform. It has memorialized wars and genocide and attended to human suffering in a way that laws and media were helpless in stopping in the first place or alleviating in hindsight or keeping fresh in public memory . I have read articles on the emergency period, some defending it like Khushwant Singh and most criticizing it like Kuldip Nayyar. I have read the best novel in English on the Emergency, The Fine Balance but nothing struck so deep a chord in me and caused so much pain and empathy for human suffering as Memories of a Father by Prof.Eachara Warrier.
Prof. Warrier writes in the book, “The most inhuman aspect of the Emergency was that the two major human rights, the right to life and the right to know, were totally denied. The tragedy of my son was typical of this denial of rights.”
The book, I am referring to is related to the Emergency, a case called the Rajan Case. Rajan, was an REC Calicut, final year student, who was arrested by the police on March 1, 1976 and was never seen again. His father, Prof. Eachara Warrier, a freedom fighter and communist movement sympathizer began an unending struggle to find the truth about his son. He penned this autobiographical account of his struggle to find his son, to arouse public consciousness to the evils of emergency and how the injustices of then haven’t died out but are ever present in Indian society, justice and legal system. What sets this book apart from most other accounts of the Emergency is the deeply personal journey on a path crowded with thorns, which a father undertakes for justice to his son, and the resolve that fills him in the process. A resolve to ensure that no son, father, mother, wife or husband will have to suffer the same fate, that Prof.Warrier was strong enough to fight against.
The Rajan case was fought out in courts and even lead to K.Karunakaran, the most powerful Kerala politician of the 70’s, 80’s and early 90’s having to resign his Chief Ministership in 1978. But the legal system failed Eachara Warrier in that they let off all the accused by just imposing a fine on them, without imprisoning them and putting Prof. Warrier through the torture of fighting cases at all levels and questioning his character, motivations and his honesty. The media in some instances, like the Malayala Manorama newspaper and others wrecked Prof. Warrier’s efforts by publishing reports that tarnished Rajan and Prof. Warrier’s reputation.
I believe this book opened the people of Kerala to the trauma Prof. Warrier had to undergo on account of the Rajan case. The book was made into an award winning movie, Piravi, which won the Golden Camera at Cannes in 1987. Prof.Warrier along with Justice Krishna Iyer came to be considered by Malayalis as a champion of human rights and civil liberties. Today, Prof. Warrier is no more. His legacy will remain the fight he put up for his son, Rajan as a result of which the police force and the executive in Kerala thought twice before resorting to extra-judicial methods of interrogation and arrest. What survives though, for us of this generation, from that tired old man, is a memorable work of non-fiction which needs to be read and passed on to every fellow Indian we see on the street.
To sum up the relevance of Prof. Warrier’s crusade, I use this extract from his book, “The Emergency was lifted over 25 years ago. The general public has forgotten those days almost completely. This is dangerous. The dark powers of the Emergency are still there. Like venomous snakes they are hiding in their holes. Given a chance, they will raise their heads again, so people need to be constantly alert. This life trained me to go down deep into the whirlpools of human existence. I saw cruelty, and the helplessness of losing everything. I saw the high peaks of love, too. As if after a short dream, Rajan’s disappearance awoke me from the natural indolence of a Hindi teacher. It was an odyssey from then on, begging for the alms of human awareness and compassion."
P.S - Yet another writeup for course work. Was done in a hurry. But I thought it deserved a place here.
- Prof. Eachara Warrier, Memories of a Father
The importance of literature in keeping alive the crimes of the past for present generations to remember and to watch out for, so that they don’t fall in the same trap cannot be more underscored than by the fact that the tradition of storytelling has almost died out. Today the oral tradition that once kept alive our ancient epics, folk tales, ballads, songs, etc is a casualty of modernity. My father did some anti-emergency work and i believe even hid at the AKG Centre, but this was something I overheard (him telling this over the phone to a friend). In an earlier age, children had the privilege of growing up hearing the exploits of their parents, but not anymore.
Works of literature have today kept fresh in our memories the brutalities in France, England, Russia, etc which brought about revolutions and social reform. It has memorialized wars and genocide and attended to human suffering in a way that laws and media were helpless in stopping in the first place or alleviating in hindsight or keeping fresh in public memory . I have read articles on the emergency period, some defending it like Khushwant Singh and most criticizing it like Kuldip Nayyar. I have read the best novel in English on the Emergency, The Fine Balance but nothing struck so deep a chord in me and caused so much pain and empathy for human suffering as Memories of a Father by Prof.Eachara Warrier.
Prof. Warrier writes in the book, “The most inhuman aspect of the Emergency was that the two major human rights, the right to life and the right to know, were totally denied. The tragedy of my son was typical of this denial of rights.”
The book, I am referring to is related to the Emergency, a case called the Rajan Case. Rajan, was an REC Calicut, final year student, who was arrested by the police on March 1, 1976 and was never seen again. His father, Prof. Eachara Warrier, a freedom fighter and communist movement sympathizer began an unending struggle to find the truth about his son. He penned this autobiographical account of his struggle to find his son, to arouse public consciousness to the evils of emergency and how the injustices of then haven’t died out but are ever present in Indian society, justice and legal system. What sets this book apart from most other accounts of the Emergency is the deeply personal journey on a path crowded with thorns, which a father undertakes for justice to his son, and the resolve that fills him in the process. A resolve to ensure that no son, father, mother, wife or husband will have to suffer the same fate, that Prof.Warrier was strong enough to fight against.
The Rajan case was fought out in courts and even lead to K.Karunakaran, the most powerful Kerala politician of the 70’s, 80’s and early 90’s having to resign his Chief Ministership in 1978. But the legal system failed Eachara Warrier in that they let off all the accused by just imposing a fine on them, without imprisoning them and putting Prof. Warrier through the torture of fighting cases at all levels and questioning his character, motivations and his honesty. The media in some instances, like the Malayala Manorama newspaper and others wrecked Prof. Warrier’s efforts by publishing reports that tarnished Rajan and Prof. Warrier’s reputation.
I believe this book opened the people of Kerala to the trauma Prof. Warrier had to undergo on account of the Rajan case. The book was made into an award winning movie, Piravi, which won the Golden Camera at Cannes in 1987. Prof.Warrier along with Justice Krishna Iyer came to be considered by Malayalis as a champion of human rights and civil liberties. Today, Prof. Warrier is no more. His legacy will remain the fight he put up for his son, Rajan as a result of which the police force and the executive in Kerala thought twice before resorting to extra-judicial methods of interrogation and arrest. What survives though, for us of this generation, from that tired old man, is a memorable work of non-fiction which needs to be read and passed on to every fellow Indian we see on the street.
To sum up the relevance of Prof. Warrier’s crusade, I use this extract from his book, “The Emergency was lifted over 25 years ago. The general public has forgotten those days almost completely. This is dangerous. The dark powers of the Emergency are still there. Like venomous snakes they are hiding in their holes. Given a chance, they will raise their heads again, so people need to be constantly alert. This life trained me to go down deep into the whirlpools of human existence. I saw cruelty, and the helplessness of losing everything. I saw the high peaks of love, too. As if after a short dream, Rajan’s disappearance awoke me from the natural indolence of a Hindi teacher. It was an odyssey from then on, begging for the alms of human awareness and compassion."
P.S - Yet another writeup for course work. Was done in a hurry. But I thought it deserved a place here.
Saturday, 20 September 2008
Draupadi’s Dead Sons...
Santhi could not control her excitement any longer. She had been made to wait a long time for this day. The tall walls of the temple, painted in alternating red and white bands did not look forbidding anymore. Another fight was coming to an end for her people. It had taken them long to realize that no god or temple was beyond their beck and call. And when they did, it had taken them only 20 years to force their way in. The last leg of Kali had begun to totter. Or to put it better, two millennia of discrimination was on its last legs. Their fight was no longer against the B’s or T’s. The Dalits had come face to face with the last of their oppressors. The V’s. The V’s - a people who had suffered the humiliation and shame inflicted by the caste system, like the Dalits, had now risen up the social ladder. The change had begun 20 years back. Today they dressed, walked, talked and behaved like the T’s and in the Dalits they had found a docile race to stamp their authority on. But times had changed.
The sun rose higher and higher into the sky. The huge posse of policemen posted in and around the temple began to wilt in the heat. They cursed and swore under their breaths. Her people also struggled for breath – their hearts were pounding wildly. Several of the older men and women kept muttering prayers while the younger ones waited impatiently for the temple doors to open up. Within the temple walls, a commotion was frothing. The regular priests were refusing to do the poojas. It was too late to find someone else to step in. Officials from the Hindu Religious and Charitable Endowment Board who had taken the initiative to open the temple to the Dalits debated on the course to take. This occasion could not be put off. Tensions were running high in the village. The V’s dominated the village and life in it. In protest, they had deserted their homes and lands and taken refuge on a nearby hillock. Before they decided on a more drastic course of action, the temple entry had to be initiated and committed to practice. Finally, an official of the HRECB, familiar with the rites volunteered for the Poojari role.
The door opened at 10 am and tepidly, they moved slowly into the unfamiliar grounds of the temple. Santhi clasped her hands in prayer; her watchful eyes following her son, Guna, whose youthful enthusiasm had lead him to the head of the slow procession. Guna had begun college this year, the only Dalit youth from the village to get this far. Santhi worried endlessly about harm coming his way. Activists of the Dalit political movement unfurled party flags and shouted slogans, honoring their leader, who had wisely chosen to absent himself from today’s momentous victory. The sanctum sanctorum opened and the people strained their necks to get their first look of the deity. One man, Ganesan, their chief, was allowed to move forward and garland Draupadi Amman. Tears streamed down Ganesan’s face as he came out. Santhi felt nothing. She had no use for a temple after living 40 years outside its walls. Seeing the deity evoked nothing.
People had begun to leave. No one would work today at the village. They would all celebrate, drink, dance and go to sleep happily. Except for Santhi and Guna. Santhi’s husband had died last year and Guna was forced to pitch in with his labour. Their family made firecrackers for a living. The authorities had permitted them to explode crackers on the temple grounds tonight at 8pm. Guna and Santhi started for home together. Both mother and son had been each other’s best friends for a long time. Guna never found himself getting distant from Santhi even when the fancies of the teenage years or the manliness of adolescence, made its presence felt within and without him. He had seen in Santhi the toughness to withstand his father’s wild ways after drinking and the wisdom to shield Guna from the boys of his age and keep him focused on his studies. When her husband died, how quickly she took over the firecracker work and kept the finances and his studies afloat! Often, Guna would wonder, what Santhi would have become, if education had not been denied to her.
“I was watching you earlier. I got afraid seeing your enthusiasm.” Santhi could not hold back her worries.
“Amma, how many times have I told you, that whatever I do is well thought out!” Guna said, not making the effort to hide his annoyance.
“I have only you left in this world. Even the goddess doesn’t speak to me.”
“What we did today will be seen, heard and read about, all over this country. I had to be at the front. Some day I will lead our people.” A sigh escaped Santhi at Guna’s words. She didn’t have the right to dream for this child, she thought. He belonged to the people.
Outside their one room hut, Guna began sorting out the crackers they had worked hard on all month, to ready for this night. Only he and Santhi would be allowed back into the temple at night. Placing each cracker delicately into a sack, he tied the sack around the edges with a rope, heaved it over his head and started walking.
“Have your lunch before you go. It will take me only half an hour to get it ready,” Santhi called after him, but to no avail.
“I will see you at the temple in the evening,” Guna shouted back as he kept walking.
She went back into the house and noticed that Guna had forgotten to take the box of gunpowder to be used for one of the crackers. Making a mental note to take it with her, she crumpled on the floor and closed her eyes, beckoning sleep to come, and carry away her worries. She had forgotten everything about lunch.
Night had cast its dark shroud on the temple making it almost invisible. Santhi entered the temple road, a strange sense of foreboding following her like a shadow. A woman sat under a tree on the roadside, digging at the ground with a stick.
“Are you not Santhi,” she asked, as Santhi passed by.
“Yes,” Santhi replied, her thoughts elsewhere.
“You seem troubled.”
“That I am. But who are you?” Santhi paid closer attention to the woman now. They were about the same age, Santhi guessed. She could make nothing more out of the woman. Santhi had never seen her in the village before. There was something exceedingly powerful and stately about her.
“It doesn’t matter. You will have to do something that requires great courage.”
“I don’t understand anything. What are you trying to say?” Santhi persisted.
“Ah, nothing at all. I don’t want another fight in my name. Or is a fight a good thing? Time will tell, I guess…” Her voice began to fade but she kept rambling to herself.
Santhi quietly withdrew, wondering whether the woman was mad. The woman didn’t seem to notice.
A dozen policemen stood guard to the temple and the deity. The others must be out patrolling the streets. Leaving the gunpowder box near their other accessories like an empty sack, kerosene, candles, conical racks for placing the gunpowder, etc she went around looking for Guna.
“Have you seen my son?”
“Is he the kid who is exploding the firecrackers?”
“He just went down that way to the village well to get water,” one of the policemen replied.
“My god. Why would he do that? That well belongs to the V’s. Maybe he went because they have deserted the village,” Santhi kept her thoughts to herself. But unable to contain the fear that had accompanied her all through the day, she ran, hoping to catch up with him.
As she neared the well, she heard shouts and then a piercing cry. A steady moan rent the air. She slowed down, knowing very well, who the person in pain was. With heavy steps she approached the limp body of her son. He was silent now. The pitiful groans had stopped and his face radiated a serenity of a person in deep meditation - as though, he had completed his life’s calling. The calling he had talked of, earlier in the day. The tears that had streaked down Santhi’s face a few seconds earlier had dried up. Her face began to light up in a rage that thirsted for revenge. I am nothing but a weak, old, Dalit woman, she thought. Her powerlessness to do anything shamed her. The policemen. I want my boy’s murderers brought to justice, she said to herself. She ran. Past the tree where the woman had sat.
“My son! My son! Over there. Please help me.”
“What happened to him?” the cops tried to calm her down but to no avail.
“They killed him. Please catch them. Please.”
The cops deliberated on what to do, within her earshot.
“We can’t go after the culprits now. It is too dark,” one said.
“We have to recover the body first,” another said.
“The situation will go out of hand. We will need more bandobust,” a third added.
The policemen went down to the village well.
Santhi was left all alone. She knew she could expect no justice. Her eyes fell on the wretched temple. It was all for a god to pray to. If I don’t have my son, you people don’t need a god. She moved with purpose towards the crackers. A manic rage had overcome her. Lifting the kerosene can, she waved it around, pouring the fluid on the walls of the temple. Next she gathered the gun powder and sprinkled it frantically. She looked around for a moment. The policemen had not returned. A sudden calm came over her.
“Should I do this? Am I lighting the spark to a caste war? How many people will have to die for my act? Or will I spark peace instead? Will the fire I start burn or purify?” she had no answers to the doubts that crept in.
She remembered the woman under the tree. It was time to act. With steady fingers, she lit the match.
P.S - A short story I wrote at the insistence of a faculty member here, based on a news story in TN. Had to labour hard on this; probably the most uneven of my fictional exertions, but treasured because of its political theme and the reality of caste which we, the the urban elite choose to brush aside. Censored a little as you would have noticed, am ashamed about it, but am scared of violent reactions!
The sun rose higher and higher into the sky. The huge posse of policemen posted in and around the temple began to wilt in the heat. They cursed and swore under their breaths. Her people also struggled for breath – their hearts were pounding wildly. Several of the older men and women kept muttering prayers while the younger ones waited impatiently for the temple doors to open up. Within the temple walls, a commotion was frothing. The regular priests were refusing to do the poojas. It was too late to find someone else to step in. Officials from the Hindu Religious and Charitable Endowment Board who had taken the initiative to open the temple to the Dalits debated on the course to take. This occasion could not be put off. Tensions were running high in the village. The V’s dominated the village and life in it. In protest, they had deserted their homes and lands and taken refuge on a nearby hillock. Before they decided on a more drastic course of action, the temple entry had to be initiated and committed to practice. Finally, an official of the HRECB, familiar with the rites volunteered for the Poojari role.
The door opened at 10 am and tepidly, they moved slowly into the unfamiliar grounds of the temple. Santhi clasped her hands in prayer; her watchful eyes following her son, Guna, whose youthful enthusiasm had lead him to the head of the slow procession. Guna had begun college this year, the only Dalit youth from the village to get this far. Santhi worried endlessly about harm coming his way. Activists of the Dalit political movement unfurled party flags and shouted slogans, honoring their leader, who had wisely chosen to absent himself from today’s momentous victory. The sanctum sanctorum opened and the people strained their necks to get their first look of the deity. One man, Ganesan, their chief, was allowed to move forward and garland Draupadi Amman. Tears streamed down Ganesan’s face as he came out. Santhi felt nothing. She had no use for a temple after living 40 years outside its walls. Seeing the deity evoked nothing.
People had begun to leave. No one would work today at the village. They would all celebrate, drink, dance and go to sleep happily. Except for Santhi and Guna. Santhi’s husband had died last year and Guna was forced to pitch in with his labour. Their family made firecrackers for a living. The authorities had permitted them to explode crackers on the temple grounds tonight at 8pm. Guna and Santhi started for home together. Both mother and son had been each other’s best friends for a long time. Guna never found himself getting distant from Santhi even when the fancies of the teenage years or the manliness of adolescence, made its presence felt within and without him. He had seen in Santhi the toughness to withstand his father’s wild ways after drinking and the wisdom to shield Guna from the boys of his age and keep him focused on his studies. When her husband died, how quickly she took over the firecracker work and kept the finances and his studies afloat! Often, Guna would wonder, what Santhi would have become, if education had not been denied to her.
“I was watching you earlier. I got afraid seeing your enthusiasm.” Santhi could not hold back her worries.
“Amma, how many times have I told you, that whatever I do is well thought out!” Guna said, not making the effort to hide his annoyance.
“I have only you left in this world. Even the goddess doesn’t speak to me.”
“What we did today will be seen, heard and read about, all over this country. I had to be at the front. Some day I will lead our people.” A sigh escaped Santhi at Guna’s words. She didn’t have the right to dream for this child, she thought. He belonged to the people.
Outside their one room hut, Guna began sorting out the crackers they had worked hard on all month, to ready for this night. Only he and Santhi would be allowed back into the temple at night. Placing each cracker delicately into a sack, he tied the sack around the edges with a rope, heaved it over his head and started walking.
“Have your lunch before you go. It will take me only half an hour to get it ready,” Santhi called after him, but to no avail.
“I will see you at the temple in the evening,” Guna shouted back as he kept walking.
She went back into the house and noticed that Guna had forgotten to take the box of gunpowder to be used for one of the crackers. Making a mental note to take it with her, she crumpled on the floor and closed her eyes, beckoning sleep to come, and carry away her worries. She had forgotten everything about lunch.
Night had cast its dark shroud on the temple making it almost invisible. Santhi entered the temple road, a strange sense of foreboding following her like a shadow. A woman sat under a tree on the roadside, digging at the ground with a stick.
“Are you not Santhi,” she asked, as Santhi passed by.
“Yes,” Santhi replied, her thoughts elsewhere.
“You seem troubled.”
“That I am. But who are you?” Santhi paid closer attention to the woman now. They were about the same age, Santhi guessed. She could make nothing more out of the woman. Santhi had never seen her in the village before. There was something exceedingly powerful and stately about her.
“It doesn’t matter. You will have to do something that requires great courage.”
“I don’t understand anything. What are you trying to say?” Santhi persisted.
“Ah, nothing at all. I don’t want another fight in my name. Or is a fight a good thing? Time will tell, I guess…” Her voice began to fade but she kept rambling to herself.
Santhi quietly withdrew, wondering whether the woman was mad. The woman didn’t seem to notice.
A dozen policemen stood guard to the temple and the deity. The others must be out patrolling the streets. Leaving the gunpowder box near their other accessories like an empty sack, kerosene, candles, conical racks for placing the gunpowder, etc she went around looking for Guna.
“Have you seen my son?”
“Is he the kid who is exploding the firecrackers?”
“He just went down that way to the village well to get water,” one of the policemen replied.
“My god. Why would he do that? That well belongs to the V’s. Maybe he went because they have deserted the village,” Santhi kept her thoughts to herself. But unable to contain the fear that had accompanied her all through the day, she ran, hoping to catch up with him.
As she neared the well, she heard shouts and then a piercing cry. A steady moan rent the air. She slowed down, knowing very well, who the person in pain was. With heavy steps she approached the limp body of her son. He was silent now. The pitiful groans had stopped and his face radiated a serenity of a person in deep meditation - as though, he had completed his life’s calling. The calling he had talked of, earlier in the day. The tears that had streaked down Santhi’s face a few seconds earlier had dried up. Her face began to light up in a rage that thirsted for revenge. I am nothing but a weak, old, Dalit woman, she thought. Her powerlessness to do anything shamed her. The policemen. I want my boy’s murderers brought to justice, she said to herself. She ran. Past the tree where the woman had sat.
“My son! My son! Over there. Please help me.”
“What happened to him?” the cops tried to calm her down but to no avail.
“They killed him. Please catch them. Please.”
The cops deliberated on what to do, within her earshot.
“We can’t go after the culprits now. It is too dark,” one said.
“We have to recover the body first,” another said.
“The situation will go out of hand. We will need more bandobust,” a third added.
The policemen went down to the village well.
Santhi was left all alone. She knew she could expect no justice. Her eyes fell on the wretched temple. It was all for a god to pray to. If I don’t have my son, you people don’t need a god. She moved with purpose towards the crackers. A manic rage had overcome her. Lifting the kerosene can, she waved it around, pouring the fluid on the walls of the temple. Next she gathered the gun powder and sprinkled it frantically. She looked around for a moment. The policemen had not returned. A sudden calm came over her.
“Should I do this? Am I lighting the spark to a caste war? How many people will have to die for my act? Or will I spark peace instead? Will the fire I start burn or purify?” she had no answers to the doubts that crept in.
She remembered the woman under the tree. It was time to act. With steady fingers, she lit the match.
P.S - A short story I wrote at the insistence of a faculty member here, based on a news story in TN. Had to labour hard on this; probably the most uneven of my fictional exertions, but treasured because of its political theme and the reality of caste which we, the the urban elite choose to brush aside. Censored a little as you would have noticed, am ashamed about it, but am scared of violent reactions!
Thursday, 11 September 2008
Will Singur force rethink on blatant SEZisation?
The CPI(M) have for long claimed the leadership of the left movement in India. But Singur and Nandigram, have today openly questioned the left establishment in India. While they wax eloquent on imperialism, globalization and workers rights, even in these niche areas of protest where they enjoy complete domination of the political spectrum, they have had to helplessly watch India move towards a capitalist economy. Singur has also opened up a can of worms around the rapid development we are trying to incubate cloning the Chinese model, raising in its wake the issue of SEZs, farm land acquisition, violent suppression of an essentially political opposition and extra-judicial killings.
The background of the Singur struggle has to be seen in the transition CPI(M) has witnessed from a proletarian party to incorporating petit-bourgeoisie and later bourgeoisie elements. In the two states where they enjoy a commanding position, West Bengal and Kerala, they have been blamed for the lack of industrial growth and exodus of a huge talent pool because their policies were seen as anathema to development. A new generation of CPI(M) leaders emerged who pay lip service to socialism but saw in the 1991 reforms - an easier and less complicated path to rapid economic development, rather than the tried and tested but faultily implemented and hence-failed socialist model of progress. When Buddhadeb Bhattacharya replaced Jyoti Basu as West Bengal Chief Minister in 1999 and made all the right noises about development, the national media took notice, hailed him as Bengal's saviour, and even gave him top billing in surveys as India's top chief minister. Buddha, the wise one, went on an overdrive inviting corporates of all hues and colours to invest in his investment starved state, and for a while he actually seemed to be winning his fight with CPI(M) hardliners.
When the Tatas announced the Nano project, Bengal went all out to invite them to the state and even gave Tata the freedom to choose the land needed for the SEZ. Tata conveniently chose Singur, a district near Kolkatta, which already had basic infrastructure in place like highways, water supply, etc. Singur had very fertile soil and was home to one of the most productive agricultural areas in the country and the area of 400 acres chosen was home to around 2000 farming families. Despite being offered compensation, a majority of them were unwilling to move out of their land but in the face of an enthusiastic state for whom the project had become a major prestige issues, their options were severely limited.
The irony of the matter was that CPI(M) which had the foresight to pioneer legislation to ban conversion of agricultural land for other economic activities, took an ideological u-turn and went against their rural vote banks and mass base to set up Special Economic Zones. In the past, left leaders have been critical of SEZ's for being a capitalist construct, for gross violation and undermining of labour laws and the labour movement in the country and for companies inside SEZ's becoming a veritable law unto themselves. The democratic culture of the CPI(M) also came into question for their browbeating of political opposition and the resort to arms, violence, molestations and rapes to cow down what was essentially a people's movement.
In 2008, a whole new dimension was added to the Singur issue, when India was faced with a food crisis. Though falling productivity, crop diseases, low yielding varieties, etc could be blamed nobody could deny a major issue here - the failure of the system to provide encouragement and succour to the farmer. Farm lands all over the country have become the target for land acquisition for SEZ's when barren, unproductive land is also vastly available. In such a situation with little or no state support, it is no surprise that farmers are giving up agriculture, a profession they are happy doing despite all the hardships they have faced from nature. In this respect the West Bengal government has also faced criticism that they opted for productive lands like Singur and Nandigram, when it also encompasses vast regions like Purilia which has no economical activity worth its name to boast of.
Despite slow progress, India's commitment to socialism and social justice ensured that rural way of life and agriculture didn't suffer too badly. The New Economic Reforms have widened the disparity between urban and rural areas, service-industry sectors and agriculture, and several other categories of social strata. In a fitting culmination of a people's struggle the WB government decided to return the acquired land back to the farmers on Sept 7. In a way, democracy which is about majority and popular sentiment lost. The people of the country, especially the middle-class , thanks to a media which conveniently overlooks the broader picture, overwhelmingly hoped the Tata's don't lose in Singur. We can only hope for the success of many more localized movements like in Singur, so that they ultimately open people's eyes to the reality that the State is not always right...that the State can also commit grave wrongs!
P.S Op-Ed written for course work.
The background of the Singur struggle has to be seen in the transition CPI(M) has witnessed from a proletarian party to incorporating petit-bourgeoisie and later bourgeoisie elements. In the two states where they enjoy a commanding position, West Bengal and Kerala, they have been blamed for the lack of industrial growth and exodus of a huge talent pool because their policies were seen as anathema to development. A new generation of CPI(M) leaders emerged who pay lip service to socialism but saw in the 1991 reforms - an easier and less complicated path to rapid economic development, rather than the tried and tested but faultily implemented and hence-failed socialist model of progress. When Buddhadeb Bhattacharya replaced Jyoti Basu as West Bengal Chief Minister in 1999 and made all the right noises about development, the national media took notice, hailed him as Bengal's saviour, and even gave him top billing in surveys as India's top chief minister. Buddha, the wise one, went on an overdrive inviting corporates of all hues and colours to invest in his investment starved state, and for a while he actually seemed to be winning his fight with CPI(M) hardliners.
When the Tatas announced the Nano project, Bengal went all out to invite them to the state and even gave Tata the freedom to choose the land needed for the SEZ. Tata conveniently chose Singur, a district near Kolkatta, which already had basic infrastructure in place like highways, water supply, etc. Singur had very fertile soil and was home to one of the most productive agricultural areas in the country and the area of 400 acres chosen was home to around 2000 farming families. Despite being offered compensation, a majority of them were unwilling to move out of their land but in the face of an enthusiastic state for whom the project had become a major prestige issues, their options were severely limited.
The irony of the matter was that CPI(M) which had the foresight to pioneer legislation to ban conversion of agricultural land for other economic activities, took an ideological u-turn and went against their rural vote banks and mass base to set up Special Economic Zones. In the past, left leaders have been critical of SEZ's for being a capitalist construct, for gross violation and undermining of labour laws and the labour movement in the country and for companies inside SEZ's becoming a veritable law unto themselves. The democratic culture of the CPI(M) also came into question for their browbeating of political opposition and the resort to arms, violence, molestations and rapes to cow down what was essentially a people's movement.
In 2008, a whole new dimension was added to the Singur issue, when India was faced with a food crisis. Though falling productivity, crop diseases, low yielding varieties, etc could be blamed nobody could deny a major issue here - the failure of the system to provide encouragement and succour to the farmer. Farm lands all over the country have become the target for land acquisition for SEZ's when barren, unproductive land is also vastly available. In such a situation with little or no state support, it is no surprise that farmers are giving up agriculture, a profession they are happy doing despite all the hardships they have faced from nature. In this respect the West Bengal government has also faced criticism that they opted for productive lands like Singur and Nandigram, when it also encompasses vast regions like Purilia which has no economical activity worth its name to boast of.
Despite slow progress, India's commitment to socialism and social justice ensured that rural way of life and agriculture didn't suffer too badly. The New Economic Reforms have widened the disparity between urban and rural areas, service-industry sectors and agriculture, and several other categories of social strata. In a fitting culmination of a people's struggle the WB government decided to return the acquired land back to the farmers on Sept 7. In a way, democracy which is about majority and popular sentiment lost. The people of the country, especially the middle-class , thanks to a media which conveniently overlooks the broader picture, overwhelmingly hoped the Tata's don't lose in Singur. We can only hope for the success of many more localized movements like in Singur, so that they ultimately open people's eyes to the reality that the State is not always right...that the State can also commit grave wrongs!
P.S Op-Ed written for course work.
Wednesday, 20 August 2008
Vigilante By Profession...
The two pockets of his shirt seem to be bursting at its seams with sheafs of paper stuffed into them. He holds on to yet another bundle in his left hand. You would think he is a postman or a lawyer’s clerk, until you notice the policeman with a rifle, tailing him. Meet V.R.Ramaswamy alias “Traffic” Ramaswamy, Chennai’s one man army fighting official negligence and public apathy to the burning civic problems of our times. His days are spent fighting battles in courts, regulating traffic on roads and as a watchdog to new acts of omission and commission, committed day in and day out by our political masters. At the ripe old age of 74, Ramaswami does not fit our classical figure of a cartoon superhero or the vigilantes that our actor-superstars play on screen.
Born on April 1, 1934 Ramaswamy’s remarkable story makes you wonder that the day’s connotation could be apt for any other man. His fight against officialdom sounds almost foolish, to the cynics we all are. His public service began at the age of 15, when he got a tahsildar suspended for dereliction of duty. After studying one year for the old F.A degree, a brief stint with the establishment ensued, where he worked as PA to a minister in Rajaji’s cabinet. It gave him an understanding of how the government worked and subverted. Ramaswamy got married in 1964, but walked out of his house, when his father demanded dowry from the bride’s family. With the introduction of PILs, Ramaswamy found his niche in public service and till date has filed 50 PIL’s most of which he claims to have won.
He cites the demolition of a multi-storeyed building for grossly encroaching on Ranganathan Street in T.Nagar in 2006 as his biggest achievement. He got the one-way around high court were 25 lives were lost, made into a two-way. For raising his voice and fighting corruption, he has been attacked five times and is today protected by the courts. Ramaswamy even ruffled M.Karunanidhi’s feathers by photographing the CM’s motorcade going the wrong way on Broadway, and getting it published in newspapers. The police official who took the route was transferred and Traffic Ramaswamy made a new enemy in the most powerful man in Tamil Nadu. After receiving death threats and warnings of harm to his near ones, he left his family and has started living alone.
For his efforts, Ramaswamy has won recognition, though it can be argued that those are not commensurate with his achievements. The Bharat Sevak Samaj honoured him with a Best Traffic Regulator Award. If you see an old man regulating traffic in the North Beach area don’t be surprised – Ramswamy has been given the honorary position by the Asst Commissioner of North Beach. His foresight to start a Home Guard during the 1971 Indo-Pak war adds a whole new dimension to this man – that of a patriot. The TN govt eventually took over the organization and today is headed by the State DGP.
So what keeps him going strong and healthy at 74, when younger men in their twenties droop in the heat? Pat comes the reply - water, a few cups of tea, biscuits and 4 plantains until a few years back! On the advice of doctors, he has added two idlis to his diet to sustain his life energy. His public life begins at 7 in the morning and he knows no rest till 10 at night. On being a lone-ranger, he says he doesn’t mind the tag but adds that he gets support from people in all walks of life. The finance for his efforts comes from them, he adds. On being made fun of, for his work and his attire, he says he doesn’t mind the barbs. “I have a conscience. I will follow it. I walk with the wads of paper in my two pockets, so that people can recognize me, wherever I go.”
And mass recognition is not far away for him. Nepali, a recent movie had mention of him. Another upcoming film, Ayudham Seyvom, will have a lookalike of “Traffic” Ramaswamy. An invitation to join politics, lies open to him, through Vijayakant’s Dravida Kazhakam. But Ramaswamy says he will lose his identity in public service by joining a political party. No doubt he has a king-sized ego. You might even suspect him to be a megalomaniac. But there is no doubting his commitment to making our flawed Indian system work - he left us young people, the journalists of tomorrow, who interviewed him with the intention of getting a story, an iota of awareness for our legal system by explaining how simple filing a PIL is and to question a traffic cop who asks you for a fine, instead of conveniently slipping him the 100 rupee note.
P.S - A feature written for course work. Amazing guy. I felt ashamed of my youth and the hollow idealism in me, as this old man goaded us to fight.
Born on April 1, 1934 Ramaswamy’s remarkable story makes you wonder that the day’s connotation could be apt for any other man. His fight against officialdom sounds almost foolish, to the cynics we all are. His public service began at the age of 15, when he got a tahsildar suspended for dereliction of duty. After studying one year for the old F.A degree, a brief stint with the establishment ensued, where he worked as PA to a minister in Rajaji’s cabinet. It gave him an understanding of how the government worked and subverted. Ramaswamy got married in 1964, but walked out of his house, when his father demanded dowry from the bride’s family. With the introduction of PILs, Ramaswamy found his niche in public service and till date has filed 50 PIL’s most of which he claims to have won.
He cites the demolition of a multi-storeyed building for grossly encroaching on Ranganathan Street in T.Nagar in 2006 as his biggest achievement. He got the one-way around high court were 25 lives were lost, made into a two-way. For raising his voice and fighting corruption, he has been attacked five times and is today protected by the courts. Ramaswamy even ruffled M.Karunanidhi’s feathers by photographing the CM’s motorcade going the wrong way on Broadway, and getting it published in newspapers. The police official who took the route was transferred and Traffic Ramaswamy made a new enemy in the most powerful man in Tamil Nadu. After receiving death threats and warnings of harm to his near ones, he left his family and has started living alone.
For his efforts, Ramaswamy has won recognition, though it can be argued that those are not commensurate with his achievements. The Bharat Sevak Samaj honoured him with a Best Traffic Regulator Award. If you see an old man regulating traffic in the North Beach area don’t be surprised – Ramswamy has been given the honorary position by the Asst Commissioner of North Beach. His foresight to start a Home Guard during the 1971 Indo-Pak war adds a whole new dimension to this man – that of a patriot. The TN govt eventually took over the organization and today is headed by the State DGP.
So what keeps him going strong and healthy at 74, when younger men in their twenties droop in the heat? Pat comes the reply - water, a few cups of tea, biscuits and 4 plantains until a few years back! On the advice of doctors, he has added two idlis to his diet to sustain his life energy. His public life begins at 7 in the morning and he knows no rest till 10 at night. On being a lone-ranger, he says he doesn’t mind the tag but adds that he gets support from people in all walks of life. The finance for his efforts comes from them, he adds. On being made fun of, for his work and his attire, he says he doesn’t mind the barbs. “I have a conscience. I will follow it. I walk with the wads of paper in my two pockets, so that people can recognize me, wherever I go.”
And mass recognition is not far away for him. Nepali, a recent movie had mention of him. Another upcoming film, Ayudham Seyvom, will have a lookalike of “Traffic” Ramaswamy. An invitation to join politics, lies open to him, through Vijayakant’s Dravida Kazhakam. But Ramaswamy says he will lose his identity in public service by joining a political party. No doubt he has a king-sized ego. You might even suspect him to be a megalomaniac. But there is no doubting his commitment to making our flawed Indian system work - he left us young people, the journalists of tomorrow, who interviewed him with the intention of getting a story, an iota of awareness for our legal system by explaining how simple filing a PIL is and to question a traffic cop who asks you for a fine, instead of conveniently slipping him the 100 rupee note.
P.S - A feature written for course work. Amazing guy. I felt ashamed of my youth and the hollow idealism in me, as this old man goaded us to fight.
Sunday, 27 July 2008
Fighting An Inconvenient Textbook...
A middle school text book on social studies has become basic reading for all of Kerala - school children, matriculates, graduates and every section of society has taken keen interest in reading the contents of this book which has given rise to a debate reaching far beyond the seventh standard classroom it was intended to be discussed in. For Kerala, whose educational standards have fallen alarmingly despite a glorious past, the introduction of a few imaginative chapters with progressive ideals in a revised textbook has lead to another controversy in the fight for hegemony in the high-profit business of education - it has raised the hackles of the conservative establishment which see in the move a hidden agenda to propagate communist ideals among schoolchildren.
The chapter that offended religious sentiments especially of the minorities dealt with a student born out of an inter-religion marriage being enrolled in school without an entry for his religion and caste. When the headmaster quizzes the parents on what the child will do without a religion and caste when he grows up, the parents reply saying that "let the child chose his religion and caste when he grows up". The opposition UDF led by the Congress was quick to raise an agitation on the issue but the Congress student wing, KSU, which today has been reduced to a fringe organization within the Congress with a few dozen active volunteers in each district failed to actively spearhead the movement. The more effective opposition to the textbooks came from Muslim League's MSF which burnt textbooks in Malappuram and Christian schools which even paraded schoolchildren out in the sun.
Nonetheless the intervention of church leaders and other religious figureheads from other communities succeeded in getting the government to appoint an expert committee headed by eminent historian K.N.Panikkar to review the textbook though their larger demand of withdrawal of the textbook hasn't found favour with the CPM-led government which continues to stand strongly by the contents of the textbook. Though there have been calls to launch a stir reminiscent of the notorious Liberation Struggle which brought down the first EMS government, the faint response to these calls from the Christian faithful and other upper caste communities indicate the heavily eroded base of these pressure groups.
The establishment taking up cudgels for the schoolchildren on the basis that the textbook propagates atheist ideals and undermines religion, have grossly underestimated the capacity of our young minds to think for themselves and form an independent opinion of matters. It is indicative of our system of pedagogy which teaches children to cram information and become slaves to the educational curriculum but halt them from deriving any benefit from their schooling by preventing any real discourse or analysis of even basic social problems. Our tendency to shove uncomfortable questions under the carpet is also highlighted by the opposition to the basic progressive ideals raised here.
A consensus on the textbook issue looks unlikely. The government has the option of forcing aided schools run by dissenting groups to toe its line but private managements have time and again managed to outwit the government in past battles. It remains to be seen who will blink first in this showdown. Whatever happens, lets hope that the issues raised to provoke thought and the mode of pedagogy that the textbook espouses will survive to give a positive boost to our educational system that produces clerks, peons and IT zombies by the thousands every year but very few citizens with the desire and ability to change the existing order.
P.S - Op-Ed written for course work. It was in late May when I reached TVM that this issue burst out. My first suspicion was cpm agenda and probably it is, but over time my brooding on this topic tells me that religion needs to be questioned by young minds.
The chapter that offended religious sentiments especially of the minorities dealt with a student born out of an inter-religion marriage being enrolled in school without an entry for his religion and caste. When the headmaster quizzes the parents on what the child will do without a religion and caste when he grows up, the parents reply saying that "let the child chose his religion and caste when he grows up". The opposition UDF led by the Congress was quick to raise an agitation on the issue but the Congress student wing, KSU, which today has been reduced to a fringe organization within the Congress with a few dozen active volunteers in each district failed to actively spearhead the movement. The more effective opposition to the textbooks came from Muslim League's MSF which burnt textbooks in Malappuram and Christian schools which even paraded schoolchildren out in the sun.
Nonetheless the intervention of church leaders and other religious figureheads from other communities succeeded in getting the government to appoint an expert committee headed by eminent historian K.N.Panikkar to review the textbook though their larger demand of withdrawal of the textbook hasn't found favour with the CPM-led government which continues to stand strongly by the contents of the textbook. Though there have been calls to launch a stir reminiscent of the notorious Liberation Struggle which brought down the first EMS government, the faint response to these calls from the Christian faithful and other upper caste communities indicate the heavily eroded base of these pressure groups.
The establishment taking up cudgels for the schoolchildren on the basis that the textbook propagates atheist ideals and undermines religion, have grossly underestimated the capacity of our young minds to think for themselves and form an independent opinion of matters. It is indicative of our system of pedagogy which teaches children to cram information and become slaves to the educational curriculum but halt them from deriving any benefit from their schooling by preventing any real discourse or analysis of even basic social problems. Our tendency to shove uncomfortable questions under the carpet is also highlighted by the opposition to the basic progressive ideals raised here.
A consensus on the textbook issue looks unlikely. The government has the option of forcing aided schools run by dissenting groups to toe its line but private managements have time and again managed to outwit the government in past battles. It remains to be seen who will blink first in this showdown. Whatever happens, lets hope that the issues raised to provoke thought and the mode of pedagogy that the textbook espouses will survive to give a positive boost to our educational system that produces clerks, peons and IT zombies by the thousands every year but very few citizens with the desire and ability to change the existing order.
P.S - Op-Ed written for course work. It was in late May when I reached TVM that this issue burst out. My first suspicion was cpm agenda and probably it is, but over time my brooding on this topic tells me that religion needs to be questioned by young minds.
Tuesday, 8 July 2008
Puppet Life...
"I don't want to go!" the dying man's pleas for a "presidential" pardon sounded unbearably pathetic to everyone gathered around. He was 90 years old and had lived a good and fruitful life. Now as he lay dying his children and grandchildren sat around his bed willing him on in his final journey. Was it the presence of his loved ones that held him back? Was it the fear of the other world, a new life or meeting the maker that jarred in him? Or was it the claustrophobia of a coffin and being sent underground that scared him? None gathered around could ask. But each made their assumptions.
"Aniyankunje, please don't leave me alone," he pleaded to a man who took a few steps back to leave the room. Aniyan had been a dutiful son but his father's refusal to accept death gracefully riled him. He couldn't rebut him either. This would be their last moment on earth as father and son and Aniyan couldn't bear to hurt his father.
"But what of the priest. He can certainly do something," so thought Aniyankunje and proceeded in the direction of the priest who had already administered the rites of the last sacrament and now watched the drama mutely, wondering how long the final act would stretch on for. Parish priests are a strange tribe. People go to them for all sorts of help, for relief from all sorts of problems, and they lead a life surrounded by people. But it is amazing how detached they are, how nothing around seems to affect them, how they can neither show more affection or more disdain for anything happening around. Their souls always developed a strong defense mechanisms to the fancies and travails of other human souls, yet put up a time-tested and trained act of delivering them to the maker.
"Acho, why can't you talk sense into him?" Aniyan's crude words shook the priest up.
"That is not my job," he offered as excuse.
"If I am not mistaken, that is the devil talking," Aniyan was in no mood to let go.
"Why don't you ask everyone to clear the room?"
"Let him be by himself. Let him realize it is time to go. Let him realize that is what his bonds on earth wish for to."
"Are you all leaving me?" The old man's defiant spirit began to flounder.
"Is it to end this way, My Lord? Will you abandon me too?" The silent god wouldn't reply.
He was at peace. The room began to narrow in on him. The ceiling kept getting closer. His face contorted in a fear and pain he didn't understand. He could see a dark shadow enveloping him. He struggled for his breath. He had feared the coffin. Now he was in it before he had died. And then he saw nothing. His consciousness left him like it entered him. Without his permission, without his knowledge.
P.S - A few days remaining to leave for Chennai. Slept last night in my parents' bedroom, in their absence. Woke up early from a bad dream. The air-condition had left my body and the room frozen. My laptop lay besides me. Thought I should pen it down before I lost my stream of subconsciousness. Ended up taking the form of a short story. This blog is not supposed to be for short stories. But a week gone by and I am yet to write anything socially relevant.
"Aniyankunje, please don't leave me alone," he pleaded to a man who took a few steps back to leave the room. Aniyan had been a dutiful son but his father's refusal to accept death gracefully riled him. He couldn't rebut him either. This would be their last moment on earth as father and son and Aniyan couldn't bear to hurt his father.
"But what of the priest. He can certainly do something," so thought Aniyankunje and proceeded in the direction of the priest who had already administered the rites of the last sacrament and now watched the drama mutely, wondering how long the final act would stretch on for. Parish priests are a strange tribe. People go to them for all sorts of help, for relief from all sorts of problems, and they lead a life surrounded by people. But it is amazing how detached they are, how nothing around seems to affect them, how they can neither show more affection or more disdain for anything happening around. Their souls always developed a strong defense mechanisms to the fancies and travails of other human souls, yet put up a time-tested and trained act of delivering them to the maker.
"Acho, why can't you talk sense into him?" Aniyan's crude words shook the priest up.
"That is not my job," he offered as excuse.
"If I am not mistaken, that is the devil talking," Aniyan was in no mood to let go.
"Why don't you ask everyone to clear the room?"
"Let him be by himself. Let him realize it is time to go. Let him realize that is what his bonds on earth wish for to."
"Are you all leaving me?" The old man's defiant spirit began to flounder.
"Is it to end this way, My Lord? Will you abandon me too?" The silent god wouldn't reply.
He was at peace. The room began to narrow in on him. The ceiling kept getting closer. His face contorted in a fear and pain he didn't understand. He could see a dark shadow enveloping him. He struggled for his breath. He had feared the coffin. Now he was in it before he had died. And then he saw nothing. His consciousness left him like it entered him. Without his permission, without his knowledge.
P.S - A few days remaining to leave for Chennai. Slept last night in my parents' bedroom, in their absence. Woke up early from a bad dream. The air-condition had left my body and the room frozen. My laptop lay besides me. Thought I should pen it down before I lost my stream of subconsciousness. Ended up taking the form of a short story. This blog is not supposed to be for short stories. But a week gone by and I am yet to write anything socially relevant.
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