Development News from India

Confining childhood in India

2011-03-01T01:47:00.000-08:00

Do child rights activists need to step out of the boxes of ‘development’, ‘survival’, ‘protection’ and ‘participation’ into which they have confined India’s children? Do we need to interrogate child rights programming and the somewhat limiting notions of childhood around which it is built?

By many accounts, childhood in India consists of various conglomerate experiences that get clothed in ‘universal’ beliefs about the nature of children and the ‘essence’ of childhood. Many of these ‘universals’ are echoes of the colonial past of this country, and emerge from the fact that the middle class is routinely brought up on Rousseau-esque notions of the innocence of childhood through our education system. Some of these notions have been reinforced in the last few years with the urban upper-crust moving towards an increasingly ‘globalised’ lifestyle.

Structures and agencies that engage extensively with children also demonstrate a more or less unitary approach to children and childhood. NGO interventions, for instance, approach children and their worlds largely through the framework of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC), a document that was ratified in 1992 and which reinforced the duties of the state towards the children citizens who inhabit it. The document, while internationally lauded, is often critiqued for generating a standard of childhood that has come to be seen as the norm and on which all interventions are modelled (1).

The education system plays a crucial role in institutionalisation approaches to childhood. A cursory look at textbooks reveals that they too are by and large written for the normative child -- male, upper-caste, middle class, urban. In many, there continues to be a gender bias with most stories/narratives/pictures excluding girls or reinforcing stereotypes about girlhood. Not only this, tribal children, children from dalit families, children from rural India might find it difficult to identify with the children in these books because they are inevitably modelled on a dominant image of childhood.

In cinema, children continue to be cute voices of conscience, with very few roles written for children as persons rather than instruments in the unification of the male and female heroes. Coverage in newspapers invariably focuses on stories of children being violated in some way -- children dying of malnourishment, children run over by vehicles, children neglected by parents, children committing suicide. Of late, with the focus on the Right to Education Act, 2010, it often seems as though childhood and the rights of children all centre on and are determined by the schooling system.

So what does childhood in India mean? And how do we understand it?

Perhaps it would be best to start at the beginning and ask, instead, why we are asking these questions.

Over the past two decades, children have made a significant contribution to the consumer market, with specific segments of goods being made available to them. In order to ensure the success of these goods, there has been extensive investment in advertising and here the visibility of children has increased manifold in the last 20 years. They are cast in the role of salesperson (in advertisements, convincing people -- not just other children but adults as well -- to buy particular goods) as well as consumer. Given the monumental takeover of public mindspace by the audiovisual media over the last 20 years, this means that even at the most superficial level, children have a much higher presence in public life than they did in the pre-liberalisation years.

Aside from their presence in advertising there is also an increasing visibility of children in television serials, reality shows, cinema, game shows, etc. This has been a particular kind of visibility, associated with many things that are part of the globalised image of India -- intense competition, high drama, bright lights and costumes and, on several occasions, what many see as an uncomfortable masquerading of children as miniature adults. All this has sparked off debates on how children are growing up too fast, and of how much and what kind of exposure to media is desirable for children, at what ages. This discussion is grounded within the discourse of concern and protection that is frequently in use when matters pertaining to children are brought up.

Simultaneously, and in almost diametric opposition to the lifeworlds of children portrayed in the electronic media, there is increasing light being thrown on the great numbers of children who get insufficient food, medical treatment, shelter, water, access to quality education and so on. Currently, funds are being mobilised both by the government and non-government sector in the name of these children of the country. Most funds are generated based on sectoral interventions -- for food, education, vaccination, play space, etc -- and interventions designed accordingly.

When NGOs write about their work, or go into a field area for an assessment of the situation with regard to children, children’s lives are bracketed into the compartments of ‘development’, ‘survival’, ‘protection’ and ‘participation’. While most people accept that these four categories of child rights often intersect and overlap, few think of childhood outside of these compartments, mostly because the UNCRC remains the framework within which funding strategies are built and proposals structured.

In other words, children who are seen as requiring state intervention in their lives (less privileged or marginalised children) get broken down into their ‘needs’, which fit within the UNCRC format, and are then addressed by various policies, programmes and schemes.

Olga Nieuwenhuys very rightly asked in a 2009 editorial in Childhood, “Is there an Indian childhood?” (2). Her argument is that childhood in India continues to be thought about mainly in terms of issues that children face, and problems that they may create. The focus on issues, according to her, casts “Indian children’s lifeworlds in a series of binaries that divide their childhood into what is undesirable and therefore must be addressed and rectified, and what is not and can therefore be ignored” (3). So, for instance, that children go hungry or remain uneducated is something we as a society find ‘undesirable’ and therefore there are engagements in place from government and non-government bodies, as well as individuals, to address these issues or at least address these problems for one/two children. There is also the belief that children should not be alone or in child-headed families -- so interventions ensure that children are ‘sheltered’ by putting them in institutions, in foster care, etc. However, play is an aspect of children’s lives that often gets ignored. One assumption may be that all children find time to play in some manner or the other, so this aspect of a child’s life is rarely seen as a feature of NGO programming (4). Another possibility is that play is not seen as an essential component of the lives of ‘deprived children’, and therefore is an issue that can be ignored (5).

In India, where there continues to be a reluctance to engage with the politics of deprivation, perhaps it can be argued that there is a need to focus on ‘important’ issues and ensure rights to all children. What Nieuwenhuys’ question offers us is an opportunity to reconsider how we engage with this politics of deprivation. It is a chance to see whether we are able, at some point in the process, to put all the sectoral interventions together and to understand if, in their totality, they are able to engage with the nature of, the reasons for, and the existence of deprivations of childhood in the country. What she also compels one to do is think about whether indeed children are at the centre of these interventions, as is regularly claimed, or if children are incidental to the programmes.

***

Some writers and activists have engaged with concepts of childhood in India -- with issues of inconsistency in the constitutional engagement with children, hidden inequalities that bias policymaking and implementation and a concern over the continued engagement with polarised understandings of childhood.

In 1996, Asha Bajpai (6) listed the various ways in which the Indian Constitution engages with childhood and showed how there are variations in the age of maturity/boundary of childhood depending on the legislation. Interestingly, a male person aged 18 can vote but is not free to marry. He is not considered capable of managing an inheritance at 18 either; the suitable age for that is 21. The age at which a person can begin to earn money legally is 14. The age until which the government takes responsibility for one’s health is 6. The age at which one is held accountable for one’s criminal offences is 18. Enveloping all these legal boundaries at which activities are allowed/disallowed is the UNCRC, the international document that stipulates that all individuals aged 18 and under are to be considered ‘children’. In the context of legislation, therefore, there are several ambiguities regarding the age at which children are considered vulnerable/capable and with reference to what aspect of their lives. A closer interrogation of this might reveal a few biases regarding sexuality, wealth and citizenship which possibly have their basis in colonial and brahmanical notions of identity. The relationship of the state and the child is also ambiguous -- till what stage in life the state is willing to take responsibility for different aspects of a child’s life varies from 6 to 21.

Krishna Kumar is among those who have written about the essentially masculinist bias of the education system in the ways it precludes and excludes girlhood in India. Work done by activists such as Debolina Dutta and Oishik Sircar in West Bengal shows that children of sex workers conceive of themselves in terms that emphasise the dignity of the lives of their mothers -- a very different vision from the perennially exploited colours the NGO world paints them in (7). Authors from Anveshi (a Hyderabad-based NGO) have recently brought out a series of storybooks that engage with everyday issues in the lives of non-mainstream children. Purnima Mankekar (8) analyses the incident of a very young Muslim girl (Ameena) to show how, in public discourse, the identity of childhood seems to subsume all other identities -- in doing so she unveils some of the politics in which children’s identities are deployed as nation-building exercises in the public sphere.

There are a dedicated few in India who are committed to grappling with the paradoxes and nuances of childhood in the country, to develop an understanding that will both allow for and engage with the plurality of experience as well as the many commonalities that cast children as a structural category.

***

In Europe, almost all scholars agree that there was a surge of interest in the study of childhood following the publication, in 1967, of Philip Aires’ work Centuries of Childhood. He argued that the notion of childhood as a distinct and separate stage from adulthood is a modern one, and that in medieval times children were understood more as little adults rather than separate beings altogether. Aires’ work has been engaged with at multiple levels, with critiques of his assumptions, methodology and framework. But it does seem to be largely accepted that this work initiated an interest in childhood as a concept that had not been seen before in the study of the social sciences. This interest is often called the Social Studies of Childhood.

Discussions about childhood within the Social Studies of Childhood have been centred along the structure/agency axes, with scholars invariably arguing that childhood is a social structure that determines the way power is shared within society. However, within this structure there is engagement by children at the individual and collective level, which is what allows us to engage with childhood in more than simply deterministic terms. So, for instance, two of the most widely published authors in this field write: “Childhood is imaged as a social space that is continuously located within and shaped by the social structure of a given society, but that is also shaped by the actions of successive generations of children who succeed in creating and re-creating diversity within this common socially constructed category.” (James, Allison and Adrian. 2001. p 34)

Leena Alanen sees childhood as a generational structure in which, through a set of processes, some people get characterised as children and others as adults. This then becomes the basis through which one can understand inequalities pertaining to access to resources, children’s subordination and the general underestimation of their contribution to society. Her approach allows us to explore ways in which power gets shared in our society using the yardstick of age.

Alan Prout makes a case in The Future of Childhood (2005) for moving beyond the structure/agency, child/adult, capability/vulnerability arguments on childhood. He argues for making childhood studies truly interdisciplinary by suggesting the use of understandings of juvenility from biology, the possibility of understanding childhood using the framework of the Actor-Network Theory (taken from Deleuze and Guattari) and Complexity Theory, and enabling a questioning of the polarisations that childhood studies often finds itself swinging between.

In her recent editorial in Childhood, ‘Keep Asking, Why childhood? Why children? Why global?’ (9), Olga Nieuwenhuys also makes this last argument. Insisting on keeping the field fresh and critical she exhorts researchers to continue to ask the fundamental questions regarding childhood and to keep questioning whether indeed “children are interesting otherwise than as carriers of traits that turn them into the target of global childhood governance…” (p 295)

***

With that last statement we come back to the question that was posed by the same author a year ago -- Is there an Indian childhood? To this we must add our own questions -- Is childhood to be studied, understood, and engaged with only insofar as it impacts the future of the nation? Is there an intrinsic instrumentality in our engagement with childhood that comes from our belief that children inevitably become adults and that is when their participation in the socio-political fabric of society becomes real? Is there a need for practitioners in the field of child rights and child welfare to engage with issues pertaining to the dominant understanding of childhood, and does that need interrogation? How does legislation shape childhood in the country and how has legislation and its implementation in India impacted our understandings of equity and justice as they pertain to childhood?

Child rights programming is inevitably driven by a certain understanding of who children are, what they need, and how these needs should be addressed. Only rarely are organisations in touch with the fact that in designing a certain kind of programme they are also endorsing a certain kind of idea of childhood. For example, while many who work with children under the age of 12 focus on the need for safe spaces/shelters, schools, anganwadis and healthcare services, people who work with adolescents are seen to focus more on ‘life skills’, ‘vocational training’, ‘anger management’, participatory citizenship and other such issues. Few focus on the need for health and education rights for adolescents. Simplifying somewhat, there is an endorsement in this manner of at least two assumptions regarding a phase of life that loosely gets called ‘childhood’:

Children below the age of 12 need protection; children above the age of 12 need disciplining and guidance.
Children below the age of 12 need health and education; children above the age of 12 need to be trained to become ‘good citizens’ by ensuring a set of behaviours and skills which will make them amenable to civilised society.

It is possible that these are not the beliefs of those who run programmes or work with children in some way. It is also true that both kinds of work are necessary with both age-groups. What one is trying to illustrate here is that an objective look at the manner in which child rights programming happens reveals that there are patterns to the work that reinforce somewhat limiting notions of childhood, and that these need interrogating.

Legislation in India also seems to perpetuate this dichotomous understanding of childhood. Children below the age of 14 are to be protected from child labour and must be in school. These issues are addressed both by the Right to Education Act, 2010 and the Child Labour (Prevention and Regulation) Act, 1986. However, neither of these Acts addresses the rights of children between the ages of 15 and 18. Children in this age-bracket are therefore not protected by these legislations and can indeed be legitimately deprived of their rights to education and against employment.

Until we begin to think about and engage with some of the issues listed above, programmes and legislation that are ostensibly for all children may continue to address only those who fit within the dominant understanding of childhood. It is only when a problematisation of this conception of childhood happens that one can begin to engage with real children in real spaces, rather than with a generalised notion of what children ought to be.

(By-Havovi Wadia is a development professional with experience in the field of child rights and human rights. She is currently a PhD student at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences)

Infochange News & Features, February 2011

Exciting opportunities in the social change and development sector for communications and development professionals

2007-04-22T21:53:00.000-07:00

CCDS (www.ccds.in) is a leading social change resource centre based in Pune. We:

Manage www.infochangeindia.org, a leading web resource base on social justice and sustainable development issues
Conduct research, capacity-building and advocacy on issues related to social and economic rights, democratic governance etc
Publish high-quality dossiers and information packages, and
Run a unique civil society outreach programme called Open Space (www.openspaceindia.org), using literature, cinema, art, workshops, seminars etc to reach out to people and promote debate and action on social justice issues.

We’re looking for motivated professionals committed to human rights for the following positions:

Programme Director
This is a senior position. You will be responsible for building a strong team and promoting institutional stability and long-term growth, managing programmes, networking with national/international organisations and preparing regular reports. You should have a background in development and/or communications, with strong management and people skills, and excellent writing/communication skills.

Programme Coordinator, Open Space
To strengthen and coordinate our social and cultural initiatives amongst citizens in Pune and at the national level. You must have excellent interpersonal and organisational skills, and the ability to inspire and initiate change and citizens’ action/advocacy. You should have a background and interest in the social sciences, human rights and social justice issues, and combine that with strong communication and leadership skills.

Researchers
You need to be a young and committed media/development research professional, to research, compile, travel and report on human rights and sustainable development issues related to South Asia. You need to have excellent writing skills in English.

Manager, Resource Mobilisation
To build and implement models of institutional sustainability, and find new ways to reach out to wider audiences. You must have excellent skills in networking, the ability to increase outreach and circulation of our publications and develop and strengthen revenue-generating models for our publications and capacity-building programmes. Prior experience in resource mobilisation and social marketing is essential. We are looking for young and energetic management graduates or someone with a track record in resource mobilisation and marketing.

Send your application and CV by email, within the next 10 days to: infochangeindia@dishnetdsl.net. State the position applied for in the subject line of your email.

All positions are based in Pune. UGC payscales are applicable for programme staff

The powerful get water, the powerless don’t: UNDP report

2006-11-16T06:05:00.000-08:00

The UNDP’s annual Human Development Report for 2006 focuses on water and advocates small-scale solutions and efficiency improvements to tackle the global water crisis

The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), in a report released on November 9, 2006, has said that lack of water is caused by lack of power, rather than by limited resources. “The scarcity at the heart of the global water crisis is rooted in power, poverty and equality, not in physical availability… There is more than enough water in the world for domestic purposes, for agriculture and for industry. The problem is that some people -- notably the poor -- are systematically excluded from access by their poverty, by their limited legal rights or by public policies.”

The UNDP’s annual Human Development Report for 2006, that focuses on water, advocates an approach to tackling the global water crisis that is radically different from that advocated by the likes of the World Bank and the Indian government’s water resources ministry. Storing water in large centralised reservoirs centralises political power. The benefits of big, capital-intensive water investments tend to be captured by the rich and powerful. “The danger is that the claims of the politically and commercially powerful will take precedence over the claims of the poor and the marginalised,” the UNDP warns.

Illustrating the argument with an example from India, the report says: “In water-stressed parts of India, irrigation pumps extract water from aquifers 24 hours a day for wealthy farmers, while neighbouring small holders depend on the vagaries of rain.”

Advocates small-scale solutions

The report, titled ‘Beyond Scarcity: Power, Poverty and the Global Water Crisis’, argues that decentralised, small-scale solutions and efficiency improvements are more likely to reach the poor than centralised reservoirs and canals. “For much of the past hundred years, water shortages in agriculture have been countered by dams and large-scale irrigation works. In the years ahead, the focus will shift decisively to demand management. Getting more crop per drop, rather than more water to the fields, is becoming the central concern in public policy debates.”

This should open the eyes of India’s water resources ministry that is dominated by the big dam lobby. The performance of India’s irrigation infrastructure, which is the largest in the world, is among the poorest, India’s Finance Minister P Chidambaram said in his budget speech last year.

There is huge scope for improvements in the performance of existing infrastructure, noted the mid-term appraisal of the Ninth Five-Year Plan. A 10% increase in irrigation efficiency (which would still not be the most efficient performance) could increase irrigated area by 14 million ha, an agenda of about 10 years at the current rate of growth in irrigated areas.

But there is little progress in that direction. On the contrary, due to siltation, about 1.95 billion cubic metres of reservoir capacity are getting silted up each year. This means that two-thirds of the nation’s storage capacity is being silted up annually, and nothing is being done about it.
Similarly, if the system of rice intensification (SRI), a new and efficient method of rice cultivation, is adopted in even half the irrigated rice area of around 24 million ha in India, it could help add at least 6 million ha of additional irrigation, at the same time increasing production by at least 50%. This is what the UNDP report advocates when it says more crop per drop should be the approach. Precious little is being done at the national level in India to adopt the SRI, except for paying lip service to it.

Large irrigation projects won’t alleviate poverty in an unequal society

Such efforts are also much more likely to help in poverty alleviation, says the UNDP report. Dispelling the myth that canal irrigation necessarily implies poverty alleviation, the report says this is true only where there is greater equity in landholdings. It gives the example of Pakistan (and India) where poverty levels have been found to be as high inside irrigation networks as they are outside them.

Illustrating with an example from India how the benefits of irrigation from large projects are cornered by the powerful, the report says: “In India, about 13% of the population has access to irrigation. Within this group, the richest one-third of farmers receives 73% of the subsidy.”

The more than 500 million small farming families are the world’s “epicentre of extreme poverty”. Most of these poor farmers work marginal, rain-fed lands. They are far more likely to benefit from modest investments in decentralised water storage and supply than from large dams and riverlinking projects, as advocated in India. The UNDP report says that with an initial investment of $ 7 billion, extending small dams to store water and recharge groundwater could increase the value of the country’s annual rain-fed crop from $ 36 billion to $ 180 billion. This approach would also help increase employment in rural areas, reducing migration from rural areas and cutting the pressure on urban infrastructure. It would also empower the rural poor and help them gain excess to water.

Climate change will impact water-stressed areas more

The report warns that global warming will transform patterns of water availability. The overwhelming weight of evidence can be summarised in a simple way: “Many of the world’s most water-stressed areas will get less water, and water flows will become less predictable and more subject to extreme events.” In South Asia, the report predicts that there will be disruptions in monsoon patterns, with potential for heavier rain but fewer rainy days, and more people affected by drought.

Access to water is a right, not an “optional extra”

The hard-hitting report argues that access to 20 litres per capita per day of safe, affordable and clean drinking water is a fundamental right, and governments cannot shirk from the responsibility of providing the same. “Human rights are not optional extras.” It estimates that 1.8 million children die each year from diarrhoea (due to lack of access to clean drinking water), and this death toll is six times more than that of armed conflicts. The report says: “No act of terrorism generates economic devastation on the scale of the crisis in water and sanitation.”
But more water is getting polluted due to lack of effluent treatment from urban areas and industries. The UN report is particularly critical of Delhi in this regard. “Delhi has many of the trappings of a developed country sanitation model,” but “less than a fifth of the city’s waste is processed before it is dumped into the Yamuna river, transmitting risks downstream.”

Privatisation is not the “magic bullet”

The report says that recent examples of spectacular failures in privatisation show that it is no magic bullet: “From Argentina to Bolivia, and from the Philippines to the United States, the conviction that the private sector offers a “magic bullet” for unleashing the equity and efficiency needed to accelerate progress towards water for all has proved to be misplaced.”
Lack of sanitation kills five times more people than terrorism or wars

On sanitation to the poor, the report says: “Toilets may seem an unlikely catalyst for human progress -- but the evidence is overwhelming.” However, the UNDP’s advocacy of flush toilets for all might not be appropriate everywhere, as different solutions may be appropriate
depending on the conditions of the area.

There is a lot that Indian planners and policymakers can learn from this landmark report from a mainstream agency. Unfortunately, the Indian government is proceeding down a suicidal path in pushing for commercial and corporate agriculture. There are many indications of this: the increasing number of farmer suicides is one of the clearest. And if another were needed, the UNDP report provides it. “While many governments extol the virtues of small-holder farming, most concentrate scarce public investment on relatively large-scale, capital-intensive commercial farming areas. That approach may be bad for long-run growth and for poverty reduction.”

InfoChange News & Features, November 2006

Killing ourselves slowly

2006-11-16T05:53:00.000-08:00

With growing calls for the reintroduction of DDT to fight the resurgence of malaria worldwide, we must not forget the reasons why many countries have banned this toxic substance and other dangerous chemicals that cause cancers and other persistent diseases that impair health and possibly prove fatal

Chemicals are so ubiquitous that we often forget about them. They range from plastics to pigments for use in paint and dyes, to precursors for pharmaceuticals, computers, toys, perfume, T-shirts, shoes and products that we use every day. There are now a staggering 100,000 chemicals currently in commercial use. Indeed, with the proliferation of the IT industry, the spectre of “e-waste” or electronic waste is now hovering over poor societies.

We are all aware of the ubiquity of chemicals in our daily lives. Or are we? At a recent meeting of international environmental journalists, organised by the NGO Greenaccord in Rome, a WWF representative, Eva Alessi, emphasised how chemicals have permeated every nook and corner of human existence, often with disastrous consequences.

The WWF took blood samples of 13 families across Europe, across three generations. To drive the point home, these were not your average persons-on-the-street, the hoi polloi, but some of the most influential people in their societies. They included members of the European Parliament, 14 directors of newspapers and magazines, and other VIPs.

The findings were nothing short of shocking: all the samples were contaminated by a cocktail of hazardous chemicals. That is literally close to the bone.

As Alessi cited: “Blood samples were analysed for more than 100 persistent, bio-accumulative and/or endocrine-disrupting chemicals, many of which are found in everyday consumer products, like organochlorine pesticides (including DDT).” At a time when pesticide companies are renewing attempts to popularise DDT in India, also as a weapon against malaria, this new evidence from Europe, where DDT has been banned for several years, will fan the flames of the old controversy over whether DDT is beneficial or harmful to human life.

The WWF says: “The results of these surveys show that every person, from grandmothers to children to VIP to MEP, is contaminated by a cocktail of at least 20 different man-made chemicals. Some of the identified chemicals, such as PCBs (polychlorinated biphenyls) and DDT, have been banned for decades but persist in the environment and continue to contaminate new generations.”

Some key findings are:

Of the 107 chemicals analysed, a total of 73 were detected in the whole survey. Sixty-three were found in grandmothers, 49 in mothers, and 59 in children.
Brominated flame retardants, organochlorine pesticides, PCBs, perfluorinated chemicals and artificial musks (fragrances) were found in the blood of every family member tested, including children as young as 12.
The children’s generation had the highest median level of PBDE (polybrominated diphenyl ethers) flame retardants, PFCs (perfluorinated compounds) and artificial musks.
Of the 31 different PBDEs analysed, 17 were found in children compared to 10 in grandmothers and 8 in mothers

Chemicals are so ubiquitous that we often forget about them. They exist in products that range from plastics to pigments for use in paint and dyes, to precursors for pharmaceuticals, computers, toys, perfume, T-shirts, shoes, items that we use every day. There are now a staggering 100,000 chemicals currently in commercial use. Indeed, with the proliferation of the IT industry, the spectre of “e-waste” or electronic waste is now hovering over poor societies. At last year’s Vatavaran environmental film festival in Delhi, for example, a film depicted how uninformed recyclers of e-waste in the capital were salvaging materials from computers that had been junked, at huge risk to their health.

If, as the WWF alleges, little is known about the impact of these chemicals in Europe, the situation in this country can well be imagined. There are 30,000 industrial chemicals in use in Europe, but the public is not informed about the consequences of using most of them. While some monitoring of chemicals was introduced after 1981, the persistent prevalence of chemicals introduced earlier -- as the WWF survey shows -- is seldom, if at all, addressed.

A growing number of industrial chemicals are known to contaminate people. Some recent examples:

Brominated flame retardants: Contaminates people and wildlife across the world. Two were phased out in Europe (penta and octa). Deca is increasingly being used, despite contaminating polar bears, birds of prey and people.

Perfluorinated chemicals (PFCs): Used in Scotchguard, teflon-manufacture. Action to phase out such chemicals has been slow and ineffective.

How should we tackle this problem? A sustainable chemical regulatory system requires substantial improvements in current systems, to first ensure availability of safety data on all chemicals. Secondly, there is a need to create effective methods of restricting and phasing out problem chemicals. Thirdly, downstream users need to be educated in safe use (and disposal) of chemicals. Chemical manufacturers should take more responsibility for what they produce, and safer products or substitutes must be promoted.

The WWF’s initial concern began when it discovered chemicals like DDT and PCBs in the bodies of wildlife in the 1990s. It didn’t take rocket science to conclude that if polar bears and the like were being affected, humans could not escape this fate. This, among other things, is what led much earlier to the furore over DDT. While proponents of its use pointed out that it killed pests that would otherwise deplete foodgrain stocks and cause starvation, critics alleged that it would, in the long run, cause cancers and other persistent diseases that would impair health and possibly prove fatal. It was once cited how Indians had more DDT in their bodies than any other nationals in the world. One has only to recall the WHO poster a few decades ago, which showed a bare breast with the caption: “Milk in these containers is unfit for human consumption.”

Perhaps the most startling finding by the WWF (and Greenpeace) is the emergence of endocrine-disrupters. Because these toxic chemicals hit humans -- more particularly macho males! -- where it hurts most (below the belt!) by lowering fertility or even causing changes in sex, they have caused worldwide alarm. The WWF and Greenpeace have been accused by the chemicals industry of spreading unnecessary alarm about these chemicals, but their consequences cannot be simply dismissed as scare-mongering. It is now common knowledge that the sperm count of males worldwide is declining.

Alessi observed: “These chemicals, which have recently attracted great public and scientific attention, are a structurally diverse group of compounds that may adversely affect the health of humans and wildlife and/or their progeny, by interacting with the endocrine system, and particularly influencing reproductive function. They can mimic endogenous hormones, disrupt reproductive functions and cause developmental abnormalities (such as intersexes) in wild animal populations. They include chemicals heavily used in the past, in industry and agriculture, such as polychlorinated biphenyls and organochlorine pesticides, and chemicals currently used as plasticisers and surfactants.” Sources of these chemicals include farming, livestock, forestry, industrial chemicals, waste incineration, consumer products, food, pharmaceuticals and sewage discharge.

In Stockholm, at the recent annual congress of the International Federation of Environmental Journalists, participants were taken to a marine research station some distance away from the city where researchers provided a graphic example of such processes at work. Since Sweden is largely composed of islands, and the people there are sea-loving, they tend to go boating a great deal. When the Swedes found that their boats were getting encrusted with shellfish and other marine life, which impeded speed, a special paint was devised which deterred these creatures from attaching themselves to the vessels. However, when the researchers began examining life in the shallow Baltic Sea, they found that the paint had begun to lead to sex changes in snails and other marine life. This led to a ban on such paints in Europe.

One of the little known facts about DDT is that it is also an endocrine-disrupter, according to research carried out only last year. It was developed in the 1940s and used as an insecticide against a very wide range of pests, particularly malarial mosquitoes, and as an agricultural insecticide. It is a long-lasting toxic chemical that builds up in the tissue of living organisms like plants and in the fatty tissue of animals and humans. According to the International Agency for Research on Cancer, it may cause cancer in humans. The US Environment Protection Agency too states that DDT probably causes human carcinogens. DDT sticks to soil, can travel long distances and causes widespread global dispersion. It has been banned in many countries, including the EU, since 1970 (regulated by international treaty as a “POP” or persistent organic pollutant). It is still used in some developing countries.

The dilemma of whether to ban toxics like DDT or restrict and control their use has been compounded by climate change. At the Rome meet, Dr Andrew Githeko of the Kenya Medical Institute listed how the 1990s was the hottest decade in the world’s recorded meteorological history (and 1998 the hottest year since 1861). We are witnessing the resurgence not only of malaria, but also dengue, chikungunya and even the dreaded yellow fever. North America is experiencing cases of Lyme disease and West Nile fever due to very warm summers; malaria has raised its head in eastern Europe. All this has revived demands for the use of DDT and similar chemicals -- very much a Faustian bargain.

Without sounding alarmist, the WWF points to the need to take proper measures. As Alessi said: “A new principle for guiding human activities, to prevent harm to the environment and to human health, has been emerging during the past 10 years. It is called the ‘principle of precautionary action’, or the ‘precautionary principle’. In order to protect the environment, the precautionary approach shall be widely applied. Where there are threats of serious or irreversible damage, lack of full scientific certainty shall not be used as a reason for postponing cost-effective measures to prevent environmental degradation (as endorsed at the Wingspread conference in Wisconsin in the US in 1998). In view of the magnitude of the potential risks associated with endocrine-disrupters, scientific uncertainty should not delay precautionary action on reducing the exposure to and from the risks.”

Needless to say, all this is a far cry from the situation in this country where the indiscriminate use of pesticides like endosulphan in cashew nut plantations in Kerala has caused the most horrific abnormalities. While these cases have been documented to some extent, the “slow poison” associated with widespread use of chemicals is proceeding unabated. In 2001, the UN Environment Programme laid down a treaty on POPs, which also governed the “dirty dozen” -- 12 chemicals that include DDT, aldrin and chlordane. Apart from pesticides and fungicides, there are PCBs, which are primarily used in capacitors and transformers, paint, adhesives, as well as dioxins, by-products of combustion, of chlorine bleaching and paper bleaching. These chemicals surround us “every step we take”.

The Delhi-based NGO, Toxics Link, has done some pioneering work in making us aware of this slow poison. But much more needs to be done. For a start, the chemicals industry needs to become more proactive in disclosing the ingredients of its products and by-products, and what these may entail. And, to draw a parallel with the earlier phase of the campaign against child labour, the more hazardous occupations involving toxics, like ship-breaking and recycling waste, ought to be strictly monitored, if not banned outright. The counter argument, that we cannot afford to do this in a poor country, will not wash. On the contrary, if people are poor, illiterate and undernourished, their degree of protection against such contamination should be enhanced rather than lowered.

InfoChange News & Features, November 2006

Playing God: The arbitrary nature of capital punishment

2006-11-16T05:49:00.000-08:00

The Supreme Court has stated that the death penalty is to be awarded only in the rarest case of exceptional depravity and brutality. But human judgement, as several recent court cases have revealed, is totally subjective

The death sentence awarded to Mohammed Afzal Guru, accused in the 2001 Parliament terror attack case, has brought the issue of capital punishment centrestage once again. A clemency petition by his family is pending before the President, and the execution has been stayed for the time being.

Recently, the Delhi High Court pronounced the death penalty on Santosh Kumar Singh for the murder of Priyadarshini Mattoo. The trial court had acquitted Singh. In the Parliament attack case, along with Afzal, S A R Geelani was sentenced to death by the trial court. The Delhi High Court acquitted Geelani, as did the Supreme Court. Today he is a free man.

In the Rajiv Gandhi assassination case, the trial court awarded capital punishment to all the 26 accused. The Supreme Court acquitted 19 of the accused -- it found them innocent of any crime.

The facts speak for themselves.

All the evidence for and against an accused individual is adduced before the trial court. The prosecution and police produce whatever material evidence they have to establish the guilt of the accused. The individual accused of a crime adduces witnesses and material to show that he is innocent. Generally, no additional evidence is produced by either side at any stage after the trial is over. Thus, it is on the very same evidence that the Supreme Court found that there was no material to show the culpability of 19 of the accused in the Rajiv Gandhi case, while the trial court directed that they be “hung by the neck till dead”. The evidence for acquittal and the death penalty in Geelani and Singh’s case remained the same.

The fallibility of human judgement cannot be more clearly demonstrated. The criteria formulated by the Supreme Court that the death penalty is to be awarded in the “rarest of the rarest” case of exceptional depravity and brutality ultimately depends on the judge’s feelings of moral outrage and lie in the realm of the totally subjective. In fact, the award of the death penalty to Nalini in the Rajiv Gandhi case, is illustrative of the role of subjectivity in the imposition of capital punishment. Justice Quadri, after observing that “the taking of life, when it cannot be given, is a divine function,” went ahead and awarded the death penalty to Nalini. Justice Quadri, while resolving his dilemma in favour of death for Nalini, observes that Rajiv Gandhi “was a young popular leader so much loved and respected by his fellow citizens”. The judge goes on to say that Nalini joined the gang of conspirators “only because she was infatuated by the love and affection developed for Murugan (A-3)”. These factors seem to have weighed strongly with the judge.

But what if a judge did not have such a high opinion of Rajiv Gandhi? In fact, it is possible that a judge may think that the crowning of Rajiv Gandhi as leader of the Congress and prime minister was the perpetuation of dynastic rule, which has no place in a modern democracy.

The presiding judge, Justice Thomas, commuted Nalini’s capital punishment to life imprisonment. The fact that Nalini had a small child born in captivity, and that the death sentence on Murugan, the child’s father, had been confirmed, weighed with the judge. Concern that an innocent child is not orphaned through judicial decree appears to have swung the balance in favour of life in Justice Thomas’ mind. However, this factor did not influence the other two judges on the bench who confirmed the death sentence on Nalini.

Unfortunately, judges are as subjective as any other human being. There can be no doubt that caste, class and gender biases operate in decisions to award capital punishment. Even to non-believers, the decision to order the cold-blooded execution of a human being seems like the arrogation of God-like powers by mere mortals. The South African Constitutional Court, while declaring the death penalty unconstitutional, reached the conclusion that “poverty, race and chance play roles in the outcome of capital cases and in the final decision as to who should live and who should die”. Studies the world over have found that the percentage of poor persons being awarded the death sentence is much higher. In the words of a condemned prisoner: “Them that have the capital, never get the punishment.”

The general arguments in favour of awarding capital punishment are those of deterrence and retribution. However, the onus of establishing the deterrent value of capital punishment is on those seeking to retain it. Till today, there are no scientific studies to show that the death sentence acts as a deterrent. Rather, the abolition of the death penalty in the princely state of Travancore, between 1947 and 1950, did not result in any proportionate increase in the number of murders. The hanging of Satwant Singh and Kehar Singh for the murder of Indira Gandhi does not seem to have deterred Rajiv Gandhi’s assassins.

As far as retribution is concerned, the less said the better. At most it may be understandable in a mob, anguished over the murder of a beloved leader, that screams, “Hang the villains!” It should have no role to play in the psyche of a judge who is not expected to be swayed by populist sentiment and on whom has been conferred the power of life and death over a fellow human being. The calculated and cold-blooded execution of a person convicted of murder does not serve any purpose. In the case of Nalini, as the majority of two out of three judges awarded capital punishment, it was the President who commuted the death sentence to life imprisonment.

A long illegal incarceration by the armed forces, a six-year-old child, and the fact that Afzal was neither the main conspirator nor actively participated in the attack should prompt the President to exercise the noble power of compassion and commute the death sentence to life imprisonment.

The global trend is towards abolition of the death penalty. Eighty-eight countries, including England, Germany, Brazil and Nicaragua, have abolished the death penalty as a means of securing human rights.

In the face of the contemporary reality of escalating violence and killings, the words of Bernard Shaw ring true: “And so to the end of history, murder shall breed murder, always in the name of right and honour and peace, until the Gods are tired of blood and create a race that can understand.” However, God may well turn out to be on the side of the bigger battalion, and blood, death and destruction. It is time for mere mortals to work towards the abolition of capital punishment in this country, as it annihilates the dignity and sanctity of human life.

InfoChange News & Features, November 2006

‘Donors are stuck in sympathy mode’: Ingrid Srinath

2006-05-21T23:35:00.000-07:00

CRY, which has just changed its nomenclature from Child Relief and You to Child Rights and You, is trying to bring about an attitudinal change to children’s issues, from charity-focused to issue-based support. It has also changed its approach to middle class citizens -- from merely asking them to write out a cheque to getting them to volunteer to advocate the cause of child rights, says Ingrid Srinath, CEO of CRY

“I’d rather accept a cheque for $20,000 than have a donor write out a cheque for $40,000 because of the sympathy factor,” declares Child Rights and You Chief Executive Officer Ingrid Srinath. Her statement is a reflection of how important the rights-based approach is to the organisation. It is also ready acceptance of what the three-decades-old CSO stands to lose in terms of funding as it seeks to supplement (not substitute, as Srinath is at pains to clarify) its stupendously successful relief-based strategy with a rights-based approach to children’s issues in India. An interview with the MBA and former advertising executive, who says she chucked up a cushy job as an accounts executive because she was convinced she could do things other than boosting some shareholder’s bottom line

What were the key issues that CRY was engaged with three decades ago? What are they now?

In 1979, CRY was very education-focused. Education was the great big hope for us then. But there were a dozen other things that were keeping kids out of school. We had to address those issues by interfacing with local government, through policy implementation. To make a significant dent in the problem, we had to start looking at national policy and we were only going to be able to do that if we created alliances, first at the state level with partners we were already working with.

What’s changed today is that education is not the end – now we see education as more an outcome, not an input. We’re trying to get communities to see the linkages between education and what they see are the other important issues for them – livelihoods, migration etc – and get them to see that education is a way out of these problems. Today we are committed to ensuring the quality of education available to children, to ensuring that the government system works.

Earlier we would run balwadis, substitute wherever the government was lacking, whereas now the approach is to make sure that the government is accountable, that the system works. In fact the balwadi often lets the government off the hook. We need to ask the government, when you say education is a fundamental right, what is the minimum quality of education that you will deliver?

What is the most pressing children’s issue at the moment?

The child’s right to survival is a key concern – maternal health is a key determinant of infant health, female foeticide and infanticide, malnutrition, and the availability and quality of healthcare services. There has actually been a decline in government services offered in everything from the Integrated Child Development Scheme (ICDS) to the primary healthcare centres (PHCs). For example, women in Thane (self-help groups) are being expected to fund the ICDS programme. On the one hand you advocate community participation but on the other hand that has become an excuse for the government to completely absolve itself of the responsibility of running these services.

Why has CRY chosen to take the rights-based approach now? To what extent will the change in nomenclature impact the care and delivery aspect of CRY’s work?

The national campaign for the right to education was the template for our future strategy. Right from 1979 we have had state-level alliances and grant-making relationships with other organisations and groups. But in 1997-98, when the nationwide campaign for the right to education began, we realised there was strength in numbers…. the government took us that much more seriously because there were so many of us coming together. The education campaign was the template.

Donors are stuck in sympathy mode. CRY has never done sympathy. However, now we are looking to bring about an attitudinal change to the whole business of children’s issues, from charity-focused to issue-based support. If this approach means getting less donor support, that’s a risk I’m willing to take, in the interests of bringing about long-term changes in donors’ mindsets.

Even today, only 14% of donors are institutional donors, the rest are individuals. And all they ask is that we make it convenient for them to donate and be accountable, using their money honestly and effectively. CRY has been successful because we have been able to do that.

Will CRY’s focus on rights advocacy affect its care and delivery services?

No. You need direct action in the here and now in the form of balwadis, you need the community mobilisation component, but you also need the advocacy. What has changed is how we approach the middle classes, in terms of what we’re asking them to do. Until now in many ways it hasn’t really been about volunteerism, it’s primarily been about them giving up money. For example, we set up these community action groups in five cities – Mumbai, Delhi, Kolkata, Chennai and Bangalore -- where we’ve got a range of people, educated urban middle class, slumdwellers, professionals, the entire microcosm of that community coming together to see what are our issues and how are we going to deal with them collectively, not as adversaries, as urban middle class vs slumdwellers’ associations. Some of these groups are working on identifying how many children in their neighbourhoods are in school or out, why, what their conditions are, how they can improve them, using the right to information to get better services from the government.

The response you or I would get if we started asking questions in a government school is very different from the answer a parent of one of these students would get. It's about getting them to see that any solution that gives priority to one group's concerns over the others' is inherently unsustainable.

What are the strategies and methods that CRY will employ to advocate child rights?

We have been fairly successful in getting local, tribal communities to mobilise their resources within their specified area. Over the years we’ve discovered that community participation works. One of our most successful community participation initiatives was in Uttar Pradesh in an area called Ghorawal where we ran a joint programme with a group called Child Welfare Services. This was a district where zero children were in school -- a carpet-weaving hub with a mostly adivasi population. Drought was common. Most children were employed in the carpet factories. Instead of haranguing people to get their kids into school, we began with evening classes, then campaigned for minimum wages so that adults could earn a decent wage, and the movement spread like wildfire, to 26 villages within months. The locals then reclaimed 250 acres of land that had been expropriated and used it for community farming of medicinal herbs. Eventually, 98% of the children were in school and from two primary schools the area now has 17.

The thing is, how do you scale that up, how do you build a coalition of communities everywhere -- of the marginalised, the middle class, media, bureaucrats, the administration, judges, the corporate sector and so on -- who can be persuaded to actually work together .We think child rights should be a national priority. Millions of children are dying every year before they reach their fifth birthday: that’s a national calamity on a scale much bigger than the tsunami and everything else put together

The methods will be largely the same – advertising, direct mailing, events, the Internet. It will be the same media-type advocacy, but focusing all these methods into a rights-based message rather than a relief message.

What about the Charter of Child Rights that CRY recently presented to the President of India?

Most important is a uniform definition of a child as defined by the United Nations. A child is simply everyone 0-18. Currently the definition varies depending on what you’re talking about -- if it’s the Child Labour Act it is 14 years, for some other laws it is 12 or maybe 15 years.

Other key demands are: make available at least 10% of GDP for education and make the fundamental right to education available to all children 0-18; ban child labour in all sectors, not just for hazardous industries but for all sectors including agriculture; make child labour illegal; expand coverage of the mid-day meal scheme to all children, regardless of whether they are in school or not. The right to survival is universal, why should it be restricted to just the children who are in school? That's just wrong. You can do it through the ICDS programme that covers children 0-6, you can technically use the PHCs, there is existing infrastructure that can be deployed to deliver these services.

We need a better definition of the poverty line -- for example, we are told that 27% are below poverty line but 51% of children are malnourished .Evidently, there are families above the poverty line who are unable to feed their children adequately. What kind of measurement is that? Originally, the poverty line was a calorific count, based on how many calories a person consumed a day. Then the government went and changed it to the number of goods a person owned etc and the whole thing got skewed. All sorts of people got excluded from the list. We would like a return to the earlier definition.

InfoChange News & Features, May 2006

Why some civilisations survive and others die

2006-05-21T23:28:00.000-07:00

Is it ecocide and the depletion of natural resources that is responsible for the collapse of the Mayan and other civilisations? Is it natural disasters, or socio-political cataclysms that are responsible for societal decay? Jared Diamond’s new book discusses these issues

When Satish Sahaney, director of the Nehru Centre in Mumbai, recently asked me to take part in a discussion on Jared Diamond’s new book, Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Survive (Penguin, London, 2006, ₤ 6.99 in India), I was intrigued. I was intrigued merely because the title of Diamond’s previous book sounded strangely radical: Guns, Germs & Steel (Vintage, Random House, London, 1998). I had imagined that these were the three ingredients that determined how some societies conquered others.

I had not read that book and, for that reason, was not acquainted with its sub-title: A short history of everybody for the last 13,000 years. When I did some research, I felt that Diamond’s earlier book was far too ambitious, if not arrogant. “Everybody,” really? Can anyone paint on such a vast canvas and yet not leave some areas untouched? In fact, the title is derived from a question that a New Guinea islander (off the Australian coast) put to the author, who is an evolutionary biologist by training: “Why is it that you white people developed so much cargo and brought it to New Guinea, but we black people had little cargo of our own?”

Perhaps unknown to him, Diamond carries a great deal of baggage himself, not all of it visible. In his current book, Penguin leaves no stone unturned in going for the jugular: ‘The No 1 International Bestseller’, it crows above the title.

I delved into the book and found it difficult going, because it is so densely argued, packed with case studies of why certain societies flew out of the pages of history books while others survived to tell the tale.

Diamond was a psychology professor at UCLA Medical School but branched off into a study of the ecology and evolution of birds in New Guinea. I suspect both the careful observation enjoined by ornithology, coupled with a study of the birds’ exotic habitat, led him to examine much more fundamental issues -- the terminal decline of civilisations or, in his own words, ‘ecocide’.

I once asked Dr Salim Ali, India’s pre-eminent birdman, how he was qualified to pronounce on such complex issues as the controversy over the hydroelectric dam in Silent Valley in Kerala or the threat to the Taj Mahal from the Mathura oil refinery. He said that if anyone had spent a lifetime, as he had, painstakingly studying the life of birds he was capable of understanding the impact on the environment of big projects.

At the Nehru Centre, each discussant chose some chapters, so that s/he could do justice to parts of the book.

Diamond’s thesis is that there are eight factors that are seminal to survival or demise: deforestation, habitat destruction, soil, hunting, fishing, population, the human footprint (referring to the actual area that a person uses to obtain all the natural resources he consumes) and the intrusion of foreign species. That’s a fairly comprehensive list and no one would quarrel with these being responsible, in various permutations and combinations, for societal decay.

To begin with, there is the collapse of the Mayan empire. Diamond’s interesting observation is that because the Mayans did not keep proper records of such ‘mundane’ things as drought -- they restricted their notings to the deeds of kings -- they could not learn from history. Droughts, it is now learned (presumably from carbon dating or some other such modern tools), had occurred some two centuries before the collapse of this empire (or more properly, empires), but there was no way that the people knew this.

Diamond refers to ‘Twilight at Easter’, the huge, enigmatic, carved stone faces left on Easter Island, while other traces of human habitation have been totally wiped out. This must have led, in the days before archaeology, to people speculating whether this was the handiwork of visitors from another planet! Some of the statues weighed as much as 80 tonnes, which must have been as much an artist’s masterpiece as it was a marvel of engineering to erect. The story, it seems, is that the islanders, closed to outside societies, farmed far too intensively and in the process robbed the soil of its support systems. There was no escape for them by way of migration.

Diamond also speculates that the construction of the stone visages must have itself taken a terrible toll of the ecology. The builders, who must have numbered several hundred, had to be fed; they were doing ‘unproductive’ work, reminiscent of the pyramids of Egypt. There are archaeological traces of ferocious fighting between clans as well as cannibalism. The Easter islanders had a particularly grisly curse: “May the flesh of your grandmother stick in my teeth!”

There are also historical records that when a French ship sailed past a few centuries ago, the islanders called out in desperation -- not to be rescued from their isolated hell but for the timber embodied in the vessel, a resource they had overexploited to the point of no return. The author wonders, as many environmentalists do today, what it was like when the islanders decided to cut the very last tree. Was it everybody for himself (or herself, in these days of politically correct herstory)? During the Silent Valley controversy, the well-known poet Sugatha Kumari, who is an avid environmentalist and social activist, composed a poem called Maram (‘tree’ in Malayalam), where the last monkey on earth mistakes an electric pole -- Kerala sorely lacked electricity in the 1970s, as it does today -- for a tree, jumps on it and electrocutes itself.

The Mayan civilisation melted into the jungle -- as did some which bear a Hindu hand, the spectacular ruins of Angkor Wat in Cambodia and Borobodur in Indonesia -- till it was ‘re-discovered’ in the 18th century. The Mayans consumed corn, which contained less protein than other staples. What’s more, they couldn’t store it, given the primitive methods of that era, for more than a year, which made them highly vulnerable to famine. There may have also been shortages of freshwater: even though some cities were a square mile in area there were no rivers nearby, especially at those heights, and they had to harvest the rain. As cities grew, it is conceivable that they ran out of this most precious of resources. After all, closer home, Tughlaqabad and Daulatabad have suffered the same fate.

Additionally, stripping the forest slopes to cultivate crops may have caused the downfall, since it would have led to erosion, especially when coupled with population pressures. Unfortunately -- once again, the vital importance of communication -- Spanish bishops burned historical records for being ‘pagan’, leaving no trace of why this most sophisticated civilisation had to bite the dust.

The discussants raised a most fundamental issue. How does Diamond judge which society is successful and which is not? By any yardstick, the US is the most successful economy (as distinct from society!) in the world. But by ecological standards it is a disaster. This is why his overall thesis is flawed: while North Americans and Europeans are enjoying unprecedented prosperity, it is their insatiable appetite for natural resources, and energy in particular, that is destabilising the entire climate regime of the world and causing tremendous havoc globally. Might there be a Diamond -- or ‘Heera’ in this neck of the woods -- who, in the 23rd century, excavates the tip of the Empire State Building or similar skyscrapers in Manhattan and analyses the causes of the collapse of this affluent society?

Diamond employs a comparative approach, which was endorsed by some of the discussants. Citing the absence of traces of animals in the Mayan and Easter Island societies, one pointed out how rhino bones have been discovered in Harappan towns. These two early societies must have depended on wild nuts and other sources of protein.

A great deal depended on the presence or absence of ruling elites in early societies, as well as what produce they marketed or bartered. Ecocide, in Diamond’s words, was more of a process than an event or sudden calamity. In Harappa there was a co-existence of city and countryside, with agriculture and animal husbandry continuing alongside. Out of 132 Indus Valley civilisations, as many as 101 were abandoned. These populations didn’t simply disappear, they must have voted with their feet -- an option that the Easter islanders didn’t possess. Elsewhere, in the Saraswati Valley, the population actually increased. The Indus Valley decline was more of a socio-political-economic disaster than a cataclysmic event.

There is speculation in our country on how the vegetation around Lothal consisted of thorn and dry deciduous forests, which were used to make charcoal. There are also traces of teak growing near what is now Ahmedabad. Ultimately, whether due to climate, or population, or over-intensive agriculture, only acacia was left. Interestingly, in Harappan culture, we find deodhar logs brought all the way from the Shivaliks.

Metallurgy gave rise to several ecological problems. To produce a single kilo of smelted copper -- recall the Indus Valley figurines which have given this country one of its most potent iconic images -- it took 620 kg of charcoal: convert that into trees lost. Incidentally, the Bishnois have a long tradition of protecting the sparse natural terrain around them in memory of their fellow community members who were hacked to death when a king wanted to cut down their kejri trees to fire bricks for his palace. Verrier Elwin has recorded how the Agaria tribe in Madhya Pradesh had to search for trees for their livelihood as traditional ironsmiths.

There are also records of how the Harappan civilisation prompted soil salinity and massive erosion. It is difficult to say what population pressures there were between 2600 and 1800 BC. In Mohenjodaro it is possible to speculate that the widespread cultivation of wheat and barley required cattle to plough. In turn, the cattle had to be given fodder, which would have impacted on the local vegetation. The huge quantities of bricks found there would have lopped off the topsoil; there are records of some 700 wells, which would have been affected too.

A discussant who is a sociologist had difficulties with Diamond’s methodology, which all research depends on. He ascribes far too benign a role to business, even if one subscribes to neither environmentalism nor anti-environmentalism. The reference to ecocide would also trigger off the “deepest anxieties” in western readers, with visions of an apocalypse. This is reminiscent of Samuel P Huntington book, Who Are We: The Challenges to America’s National Identity (Simon & Schuster, 2004) where the best-selling author raises fears of Americans being swamped by the Hispanic culture.

Similarly, I was uneasy about the glib assumptions that the best-selling Diamond makes, like the two maps showing how there is congruence between the political and environmental ‘trouble spots’ in the world, which include Nepal, Bangladesh and Pakistan (fortunately, we have escaped!). Only recently, a study by the New Economics Foundation and the Open University in the UK pointed out that the United Kingdom is “eating the planet” -- in other words, depleting the earth of natural resources far faster than it is able to replenish them. If global consumption levels reached those of the UK, it would take 3.1 earths to meet the demand. Needless to add, neither the UK nor Europe, and least of all the US, figure in Diamond’s demonology.

I have even greater problems with the author’s assertion that business can play a constructive role in protecting the environment, which he illustrates by his experience as a consultant with an oil company in New Guinea. Anyone who is painting a picture of entire societies in decline cannot fail to see how the oil companies have contributed to global warming for 150 years. And, as for the record of companies like Shell in Nigeria, where the earlier military government executed Ken Saro-Wiwa, the celebrated opponent of its oil fields in a tribal region, the less said the better...

In conclusion, what does one make of this book? There is a danger, like in the mainstream American media, that most Americans will derive their notions of why societies collapse from books like these that catch their attention as they wait to pay their bills at the supermarket. Michael Crichton’s State of Fear, a novel that pooh-poohs the whole science of climate change, is an even worse example of preaching scepticism to the ignorant. There is a great deal of fact in Diamond’s book, but there is some fiction as well. Indeed, his thesis resembles a rough, uncut gem, which deserves to be polished to reflect its myriad facets, not to present a unilateral view of the world.

InfoChange News & Features, May 2006

Public sector research and agricultural biotechnology

2006-05-21T23:27:00.000-07:00

Over 20 research studies related to GM crops are ongoing in the public sector in India. It is important that public sector research be supported in order to facilitate a level playing field with resource-rich private sector companies

At the third meeting of parties to the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety in Curitiba, Brazil, from March 13-17, the role of public sector research on genetically modified organisms (GMOs) received considerable attention. One of the concerns raised by public sector scientists is that under the Protocol the information requirements for small-scale confined field trials and risk assessments have to undergo a lengthy documentation process similar to that of bulk shipments meant for commercial use. Though the motive is not to undermine the objectives of the Protocol, the information requirement, the public sector scientists argue, should be commensurate with the lower level of risk involved in research activities. There is growing apprehension that in the long run this could hinder public sector research and instead increase the influence of the private sector as knowledge providers. It would hamper the attempts of civil society organisations to curtail private sector research and influence, which in a way defeats the purpose of the Protocol. Currently, the public sector in India has over 20 research activities related to the development of genetically modified crops. The government projects agricultural biotechnology as an important instrument in achieving food security in India. It is therefore important that public sector research gain necessary support in order to facilitate a level playing field with the resource-rich private sector companies, else the latter stand to gain.

Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety (MOP3)

The third meeting of parties to the Cartagena Protocol (MOP3) held in Curitiba, Brazil, reached a landmark decision on the documentation requirements for living modified organisms (LMOs). After hours of deliberation a consensus was reached: it was agreed that shipments that are identified and separated as containing transgenics will carry the label ‘Contains LMOs’. This landmark, as argued by some, will have a crucial impact on international trade in products derived from genetic engineering.

The Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety is a legally binding international treaty that governs the transboundary movement of genetically modified organisms. Adopted in 2003, the Protocol aims to ensure safe transfer, handling and use of living modified organisms that may have adverse effects on biodiversity and human health.

In 2005, two years after its adoption, the MOP2 at Montreal was to resolve issues on information requirements for documentation of LMOs for food, feed or processing (LMO-FFPs), but failed to do so, due to conflicting trade interests. It was apparent at MOP3 that countries were eager to reach a decision on the controversial issue of documentation. However, the article remained the bone of contention till the final hours when Mexico, supported by Paraguay, delayed the proceedings by resisting the clause on mandatory labeling of transboundary shipments containing LMOs, and instead suggested the insertion of brackets, implying that the topic was not completely resolved but open to future dialogue. After further negotiations, the signatories reached a consensus; they agreed to review country experiences on the implementation of documentation requirements in 2010 at MOP5, after which a final decision will be made at MOP6 in 2012. Mexico insisted on adding a clause which states that mandatory labeling does not apply to transboundary movement between parties and non-parties. Mexico is a major trading partner of LMO exporting countries such as Canada and the US, a non-party to the Protocol.

MOP3 also took decisions on other matters, including biosafety capacity-building activities, risk assessment for GMOs, and the operation of the Biosafety Clearing House, the web-based information exchange portal established by the Protocol.

Public sector research and the Protocol

The debate over LMOs at MOP3 was largely dominated by trade interests and therefore much of the implications of the Protocol are assessed in terms of its impact on trade in agricultural commodities. On the other hand, the “side events” were dominated by civil society organisations targeting their scepticism at big transnational companies that develop these genetically modified crops and also the socio-economic implications of such crops on small farmers. In hindsight, what seems to have emerged at the Protocol is the presence and importance of public sector research in agricultural biotechnology. Though public research was debated more informally at the side events than at the formal negotiation table, discussing its role in agricultural biotechnology itself underlines the fact that public sector research has wider policy ramifications. Particularly since the Cartagena Protocol is seen as a model on which countries formulate their biosafety policies. The larger picture that emerges from this debate is whether certain provisions in the Protocol can have a restrictive effect on public sector research -- a large number of which is carried out in developing countries -- as it requires lengthy information for small-scale confined field trial research and risk assessment where the level of risk is considered lower than shipments intended for commercial purposes. Is it possible to evolve a regulatory response that does not undermine the objectives of the Cartagena Protocol? At present, the Protocol does not accord separate treatment to LMO shipments for commercial purposes and for public research. Public sector researchers express concern about the implications of such decisions in the Protocol.

This lengthy documentation requirement can delay research and lead to increase in opportunity cost and utilisation of public funds. A study by the International Food and Agricultural Trade Policy Council (IPC) shows that for China, the cost involved in meeting strict documentation requirements for soybean imports amounted to US$ 13.98 million in 2005. Public sector scientists claim that the information required is so exhaustive that sometimes it is not available since research is ongoing or yet to be conducted. For instance, confined small-scale research on fruit and shoot borer resistant Bt brinjal in the Institute of Plant Breeding, University of the Philippines, Los Banos College, experienced a setback as the documentation process for importing the Bt gene from India took almost a year, instead of the expected three months. Scientists explain the need to define LMOs for confined field trials as public research could suffer serious setback worldwide.

The public sector initiative

Recognising the crucial role of the public sector in biotechnology and also the need to explain the implications of the Protocol on public research, several public research scientists from different parts of the world with similar concerns and objectives united to form the Public Research and Regulatory Initiative (PRRI). Most international negotiations such as the Biosafety Protocol are discussed and debated at length among country policymakers, many of whom may not be trained to handle complex scientific issues such as biotechnology. On the other hand, scientists work in isolation in laboratories knowing little about the implications of these negotiations on their research. It has been observed that the international negotiations of the Cartagena Protocol which began since 1995 have always been well represented by NGOs and the private sector. However, public sector researchers were conspicuous by their absence, despite the fact that the Protocol could have a direct impact on their research. The PRRI is an initiative to involve public researchers in international negotiations that have a direct impact on their work, such as the Cartagena Protocol.

One of the major reasons for participation in the Protocol is to make delegates aware of the substantial role played by the public sector on research in modern biotechnology worldwide. The team is represented by public research scientists from different parts of the world concerned about the importance of disseminating science-based information and to explain in layman’s terms, the science of agricultural biotechnology and to dispel certain misconceptions about crop biotechnology. The PRRI seeks to clarify that it does not align with private sector companies that develop GM crops, since both private and public sector are developers of GM crops, and are therefore considered to have similar profit motives.

Public sector research in developing countries

Since most public sector research is not profit driven, but more directed towards the needs of local farmers, the products derived from the sector have wider acceptance among farmers and sceptics, as no conditions are imposed on them. Besides, the products are distributed at costs that are lower than those of the private sector companies.

The role of the public sector in the research and development of crop biotechnology, particularly in developing countries, is often undermined. A study conducted by International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), released in 2005, shows that there are more than 200 types of research conducted on genetically modified (GM) crops in 15 developing countries. The largest number of research studies was in Asia (109) of which 21 are in India. About 85% of the genetic resources used for developing these GM crops were sourced from locally available materials. Farmers seem to prefer the local variety as they adapt better and are also devoid of the intellectual property issues associated with the most of the private sector developed genetic materials. In most developing countries, examples of public-private partnerships in plant biotechnology are rare.

In many Asian countries the focus is on food crops and crops of high commercial value to increase food production in order to meet the demands of the burgeoning population and also to assist resource-poor farmers with marginal land holdings. These crops are developed to respond to local needs, in the form of drought and salinity resistance, insect, fungal and bacterial resistance, reduction in the use of agrochemicals, prolonged shelf-life, nutritional improvement, etc. In India where almost 70% of the population is still dependent on agriculture, these varieties can offer tremendous benefits.

Despite the large number of ongoing public sector research studies in developing countries, only seven have been commercially released. In India, crop biotechnology research in the public sector is at all various of development -- from the experimental to the pre-commercial stage, but none are approved for commercial cultivation. In China, public sector developed GM vegetables have been approved for cultivation. Currently, there are more than 44 ongoing confined field trials in developing countries and most of them have problems in moving on to the next phase, the pre-commercial trial stage. This is partly due to the confusion regarding the amount of information required for the confined and open field trials. One of the reasons for this delay, as cited by IFPRI research, is the implementation process of the Cartagena Protocol. This involves huge regulatory costs and can be carried out either by sharing these with government seed production facilities or seed companies. There is a need to expedite regulatory decisions and testing of public sector developed GM crops. Though it is widely accepted that public research can deliver GM crops in response to local needs, the regulatory procedure necessary to gain approval for commercial use can delay the process as these are novel crops that have not been tested earlier. The irony is that the GM crops in the West get speedier approval in developing countries as they have already been tested. As a result, crops developed by the public sector remain at the pre-commercial stages and farmers continue to wait.

Biotechnology is considered by many in the public and private sector to have enormous potential in achieving food security. At the same time, the scepticism of critics of agricultural biotechnology has been directed largely towards issues surrounding the technology, such as the transnational companies that develop it, the royalties involved, the socio-economic implications etc, but the focus has rarely been on the technology per se. Public sector scientists claim that genetically modified crops developed by public research can contribute to meeting the needs of the local farmers and that scientifically unfounded claims about the technology need to be dispelled. They emphasise that their role is to present the scientific facts of genetic engineering as they are, without any particular agenda. Transnational companies have the financial resources, but lack the trust of the general public. On the other hand, public research institutes have limited financial resources but are trusted to develop crops in response to specific local needs.

In India, the National Biotechnology Regulatory Authority suggested the speeding up of approval process for transgenic crops through a single window clearance mechanism. This is particularly significant for the public sector as it would minimise the public funds as well as the opportunity cost. At the same time, it would be important to examine the health and environmental safety aspects of the novel transgenic crops. Once the regulatory and safety aspects are in place, it is the farmers who would ultimately have the last word.

InfoChange News & Features, May 2006

Refugees are not illegal migrants

2006-05-21T23:24:00.000-07:00

Though India plays host to over 300,000 refugees from neighbouring countries, the country has a completely ad hoc system of refugee determination, deportation and protection

India plays host to approximately 332,300 refugees (World Refugee Survey 2003), and is the second largest refugee-receiving country in South Asia, after Pakistan. India’s multi-ethnic, multi-lingual society has made it an attractive destination for a lot of asylum-seekers. Tamil refugees from Sri Lanka, the Jumma people from Bangladesh, the Chin and other tribal refugees from Myanmar, refugees from Afghanistan, Iran and even Sudan comprise the bulk of India’s refugee population.

But the enormity of the situation is discussed only with regard to the political rhetoric on ‘illegal migrants’ who, the government claims, have become an economic burden on the country and need to be deported. This claim works as a strategy for playing the ethnicity card, to create vote-banks before the elections. At other times, people rejoice when census figures show that the number of ‘illegal migrants’ has actually gone down. How the government deals with the ‘illegal migrants’ and the process of their determination and deportation is seldom questioned. Not by the media, not even by civil society.

As a major player in South Asian politics, and indeed world politics today, issues regarding India’s economic might have become central to its attempts at claming South Asia’s ‘big brother’ status. As a rapidly ‘developing’ nation, free movement of capital in and out of the country is supported by a structured regime of national economic policies that adhere to international trade-law obligations through the WTO, World Bank and IMF and regional trade cooperation treaties through SAARC. However, we know very little about India’s state obligations towards respecting and protecting the human rights of people who are labelled ‘illegal migrants’ or ‘aliens’, arrested as criminals under the Passport Act 1967, the Registration of Foreigners Act 1939 or the Foreigners Act 1946. In spite of the presence of such large numbers of people in the country who have fled persecution in neighbouring countries, India has a completely ad hoc system of refugee determination, deportation and selective protection.

The government officially recognises only Tibetan and Sri Lankan Tamil refugees and provides them state protection. For all other refugee populations -- the Burmese Chin, Chakmas and Rohingyas from Bangladesh, Sudanese and Afghans, etc -- it’s left to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in New Delhi to administer operations to provide refugee identity certificates to those belonging to communities/nationalities not recognised by the government.

So, people fleeing persecution and ending up in India are left at the mercy of the government’s ad hoc policies and the limited operations of the UNHCR. All this, despite a Supreme Court judgment (NHRC vs State of Arunachal Pradesh) that categorically states that all ‘refugees’ within Indian territory are guaranteed the right to life and personal liberty enshrined under Article 21 of the Constitution.

This judgment, passed in the year 1996, has not yet prompted the Indian government to accede to the 1951 UN Refugees Convention. According to the government, the convention is Eurocentric in nature and does not reflect the special needs of the countries of the Global South. This, however, has not prompted India to take proactive steps towards a national law on refugee protection or to initiate a dialogue to develop a regional refugee protection regime. In fact, the country’s fears of an economic burden created by ‘illegal migrants’, and also the security threat posed by ‘terrorists’ could actually be allayed by the setting up of a national or regional refugee protection regime.

Although the UNHCR has done some commendable work in the country, in the absence of any national law, India’s ad hoc refugee policy curtails a lot of its work. In India, the UNHCR provides only de facto protection to its mandate refugees and relies on the tolerance and goodwill of the Indian government. The government only partially recognises the UNHCR mandate; mandate refugees therefore have no formal recognition and are subject to the same municipal laws as foreigners. This lack of formal status weakens the UNHCR’s role in advocacy and intervention for refugee rights.

This situation is mirrored in other South Asian countries that have not acceded to the 1951 convention or the 1967 protocol, thus undermining the international legal regime for the protection of refugees. Though the Indian government proceeds on the assumption that India has a strong humanitarian tradition of hosting refugees, which was present even before the drafting of the convention, lack of accession or the development of a national or regional refugee legal regime is cause for concern.

Even with its limited capacities, the UNHCR itself flagrantly ignores guidelines for the treatment of refugees while conducting interviews to determine and adjudicate refugee status.

Ravi Nair, director of the Delhi-based South Asia Human Rights Documentation Centre (SAHRDC) observers: “The cardinal problem arises when both the UNHCR and the Government of India (GoI) violate their own standards and principles. While it is possible to bring the GoI under the scrutiny of quasi-judicial bodies like the National Human Rights Commission and the judiciary, there is no such mechanism to scrutinise the UNHCR. Official rules and procedures have become an excuse to raise the veil of secrecy and to resort to arbitrariness at the expense of the refugees.”

Consider an incident that took place in October-November 2003, when Burmese Chin refugees and asylum-seekers staged a protest against the UNHCR for not processing their applications in time and humiliating them during the assessment process. Following the protest, the police arrested around 25 demonstrators. It took more than three weeks for organisations working with refugees in the capital to arrive at a consensus on how to bail the demonstrators out!

This was a point where the UNHCR’s New Delhi office required security protection -- fearing attacks from Burmese Chin refugees it claimed to assist. When the demonstrations turned slightly volatile, the UNHCR actually got them arrested, knowing full well that some of the protestors were asylum-seekers and could now be deported. Those arrested were remanded to custody for over two weeks without any intervention by the UNHCR. The Socio-legal Information Centre (SLIC), one of the UNHCR’s implementing partners responsible for providing legal assistance to refugees, also turned a blind eye to the events. It was only when other civil society organisations took up the issue that the UNHCR responded.

This is just one of the many instances where the UNHCR has violated its own standards.

Given the realities in South Asia, efforts should be geared towards developing comprehensive national laws that uphold the universal principles of international refugee protection, while at the same time taking into account the distinctive traits of the region. This would be a more solution-oriented approach; one that is both pertinent and fair in light of current displacements within the South Asia region.

“If such a national legislation were adopted by South Asian states without acceding to the refugee convention, it would be a rare example of national legislation superseding international obligations,” says Brian Gorlick, a former legal officer with the UNHCR, New Delhi. “The absence of national laws has meant that refugees are dependent on the benevolence of the state rather than on a regime of rights to reconstruct their lives in dignity. A consistent legal framework is vital for the prevention of political ad hocism, which often translates into forcible repatriation for refugees,” adds Nair.

The first attempt at formulating a draft regional law for refugee protection was formulated in 1966, when the African-Asian Legal Consultative Committee, an inter-governmental organisation, adopted the Bangkok Principles on the Status and Treatment of Refugees. These principles have since been kept in cold storage; only the text was finalised at a meeting in New Delhi in 2001.

In November 1997, the Eminent Persons Group (EPG) for South Asia, put together by the UNHCR, approved a model national law at its Dhaka Consultation. This model law is the first step in the process of building a consensus on preventing, managing and solving the problems accompanying refugee flows within South Asia in a comprehensive and humane manner. The purpose of the law is to establish a procedure for granting refugee status to asylum-seekers and those forced to migrate due to a well-founded fear of persecution; to guarantee them fair treatment and to establish the requisite machinery for its implementation. The model law provides a comprehensive definition suiting the needs of the region. Unfortunately it has remained a legal fiction, with states showing no inclination towards incorporating it in their respective national legislations.

Since India is one of the largest receiving countries in South Asia, it should take the initiative in establishing a refugee law regime in the region by first making a national law on refuge protection. This would be an extension of India’s obligations under various international human rights instruments that it has acceded to. Such an initiative would also show that India takes its membership of the UNHCR EXCOM (executive committee) seriously, and wants to strengthen its role there. As Professor B S Chimni, an international law expert and vice-chancellor of the National University of Juridical Sciences, Kolkata, points out: “To remain a member of the EXCOM without either acceding to the 1951 convention or passing a national legislation shows an opportunistic attitude towards UN institutions that does the image of the country little good in the international community.”

Post September 11 and July 7, political realities and trends in immigration policies inevitably lead to the conclusion that refugee rights protection in South Asia can only be made effective if efforts are focused on improving the national legal and judicial practices to supplement the existing conventional international refugee law framework. A regional refugee treaty would be the most effective way of making sure that states remain bound to their obligations. It is also recommended that a treaty-monitoring body be established with powers similar to those of human rights treaty bodies. This body should have the authority to issue general recommendations, view state reports and receive individual complaints from people facing persecution.

The process of developing an ‘asylum law’ regime in South Asia must include governments, NGOs and protection agencies alike because it is important to take a holistic view of this phenomenon. Along with advocating and campaigning for the establishment of a national/regional ‘asylum law’ regime, civil society institutions must urge states that are not signatories to other international human rights law instruments to accede to them and also press those states that have acceded but have not made enabling legislation to do so.

“Governments must be more concerned about the protection of people facing persecution, rather than thinking about how a refugee regime might open the floodgates to illegal immigrants. It is a substantive law that would facilitate states to identify illegal immigrants from refugees,” says Chimni.

A step in this direction would not only be a landmark achievement in the development of asylum jurisprudence in the region, it would also be a major addition to intervention mechanisms for the protection of human rights globally.

InfoChange News & Features, May 2006

Children on the mean streets of Chennai

2006-04-25T21:52:00.000-07:00

Unprecedented rains in Chennai over the last few months have destroyed the homes and possessions of hundreds of poor slum and pavement-dwellers. The worst-affected are children

It’s been a gruelling few months for families in the slums and pavements of Chennai, as incessant rain at the end of October severely damaged their homes and meagre belongings.

Perhaps the worst-affected were children, who had little or no food to eat, bearing the brunt of nature’s fury, and poverty.
During the wet spells, the children were forced to live out in the open, close to the speeding traffic. Being small, they were in danger of drowning. At the Greams Road slum, a mother almost lost her son, three-year-old Monesh, to the floods. In some areas, children had to spend the nights sharing space with drunken men and drug addicts, as families crowded into schools and other spaces for shelter.
According to the 2001 Census – which, for the first time in its history, marked a slum demography for the country based on the actual count -- Tamil Nadu has the third largest number of cities and towns with slum populations (63) after Uttar Pradesh (69) and Andhra Pradesh (77). According to the census, 10-20% of the urban population of Tamil Nadu live in slums. That’s 2.9 million people; over 100,000 are children in the 0-6 age-group.

Chennai itself has over 1,000 slums; the government still has to categorise a number of unknown slum settlements. Official estimates indicate that there are over 300,000 children in the city’s slums and on its pavements. “The number of families in slums in Chennai is estimated to be over 100,000 lakh, of which 33,000 families live by the river, including the Cooum and other canals. The rest live along the pavements,” says N Balaganga, chairman, Tamil Nadu Slum Clearance Board.

People living in slums do not receive the attention they are due, in the government’s agenda. When three-year-old Sarojini got jaundice, her mother took her to the government hospital close by only to be met with rude attendants. “They asked me to take her to the hospital she was born in. People at the hospitals treat us badly. Where do we go, emergency or otherwise,” she asks.

While the city corporation lists the number of hospitals that slum people can access, it does not do anything to ensure that they are attended to. “If the official in the area is proactive, alternatives are found easily,” says Andal Damodaran, honorary general secretary, Tamil Nadu chapter of the Indian Council for Child Welfare.

Then, perhaps, children like 10-year-old Anjali, who lives in the Egmore slum area, would have been more secure during the rainy season. Anjali recalls how children in her slum, who number around 50, slept the night at bus stands, under bridges, in any dry place they could find, during the months it rained. They still do. Worse, they went hungry. “We used to eat three meals every day but after the rains we lost most of what we owned, and there was no money to buy food. Now we eat only two meals a day,” says Anjali. All the houses in her area have been damaged.

In many slums, there were no officials organising medical assistance on a big scale, to cover every family, or even enquiring about the situation the families were in. Doles were promised and given out, but often they did not reach the people at the right time.

According to M B Nirmal of Exnora International, who worked with people in the slums during the rains, the government machinery was not fully geared to meeting the unexpected intensity of the rains. “Our corporation’s priorities are wrong. They spent crores of rupees on creating new parks, when their first priority should have been to clean the storm water drains that have become dysfunctional. Moreover, because of encroachments at the outlets of floodwater canals, the water could not flow away and so entered the slums. The same rains could have been a gift to the poor… instead the children will be psychologically affected by all this,” he says.

Recent dry weather has given these poor people some cause for cheer. As children got re-equipped for school, families were hoping to begin rebuilding their homes -- a time-consuming process that they will have to undertake themselves, brick by brick.

Resettlement is a different ball game altogether. The government has new plans to clear some settlements and provide the slum-dwellers with alternative accommodation in resettlement colonies. Sites have been earmarked but nothing has been finalised. “The Corporation of Chennai, the Slum Clearance Board and the PWD will have to jointly decide on the process. It will take two to three years to materialise. You know how governments work…” says community development officer Zafarullah.

Data on the exact number of slum- and pavement-dwellers affected by the floods is yet to be compiled by the five talukas. According to the Chennai collectorate, 595,151 people -- categorised under low-income families, including slum- and pavement-dwellers with ration cards -- have received the relief announced by the Tamil Nadu government which includes Rs 2,000 in cash, 10 kg of rice, one sari, one dhoti and 1 litre of kerosene, the last through the public distribution system. Around 55,000-60,000 more will receive their dole by mid-January this year, completing the relief work for the entire city.

But two months after the first rains, people are still crowded together on the streets waiting to start rebuilding their homes and get back to a normal routine. What appears to be lacking is not just a sensitive approach towards poverty and deprivation, but a continuing denial of standards for families caught up in the poverty trap. And, as a result, for the children wedged in between.

InfoChange News & Features

The Haji Malang shrine: Whose God is it anyway?

2006-04-24T01:53:00.000-07:00

The popular shrine of Haji Abdur Rehman Shah Malang near Mumbai, where Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs and other communities have worshipped together for generations, is being contested by fundamentalist Hindus and Muslims

Jagtar Singh is the odd one out in the sea of humanity clambering uphill to the dargahof Haji Abdur Rehman Shah Malang. His deep red turban bobbing above the uncovered heads of pilgrims struggling up the Malang hill, 2,596 feet above sea level, marks him out on this pleasant February morning.

“I am here to thank Baba,” the middle-aged transporter speaks softly above the din. Business has been good this year, and Singh has joined the congregation, cutting across caste and creed, in gratitude.

Hindus and Muslims throng this hilltop shrine, as do Parsis, Christians and Sikhs, every February to celebrate the urs of the Baba.

The 13-km-long drive from Kalyan railway station outside Mumbai is the first indicator of trouble beneath the pastoral calm. Road signs en route have ugly blotches of tar clumsily defacing the word ‘Haji’, betraying the handiwork of Hindutva forces. The overbearing presence of khaki sharing space with the gaudy office of the Shiv Sena at the base of the Malang hill completes the picture of communal strife.

But the hundreds of devotees like Singh who are trudging up the hill do not seem to mind. The long winding path uphill is paved with granite, Cuddapah stone and even white bathroom tiles -- tokens of gratitude now broken down through wear-and-tear.

As I join in the climb, shabbily dressed children -- Hindu and Muslim -- accost me with tiny packets of peanuts. Rs 10 gets me 20 packets for the monkeys that wait to be fed during the 80-minute climb. Local entrepreneurs have put up tiny stalls at every turn to sell freshly crushed sugarcane juice. Sadhus and fakirs alike engage in banter and beg for alms.

Past the two smaller mazaars where devotees of pir saab must stop and pay their obeisance, scores of devout Muslims bow before the Hindu Brahmin priest who oversees worship at the dargah. “I am the 14th generation priest to serve this shrine,” says Kumar Ketkar, a trained lawyer.

Today, the first day of the urs, a palanquin symbolising the spirit of pir saab has just been brought from Ketkar’s ancestral home at the foot of the hill in traditional Hindu style. After the rituals, spread over several hours, Ketkar and the other trustees of the shrine are greeted by scores of devotees. Many of the local Muslims respectfully touch Ketkar’s feet and seek his blessings.

“The celebrations peak on the final day of the urs, the full moon night during the Hindu month of Magh, which is also the 13th day of the month of Chand in the Islamic calendar,” Ketkar explains. Most years, this day falls in the month of February. The celebrations will end with another palanquin procession bearing chadors and sandalwood paste from the dargah in the reverse direction. Seven groups of local fakirs belonging to different jamaats elect a leader from among themselves to complete the rituals.

Before they leave, Hindu and Muslim devotees usually visit the nearby Maruti mandir and a mosque respectively.

The Ketkar family’s association with the Haji Malang dargah goes back to 1780, when the British laid siege to a nearby fort, then in the possession of the Peshwa rulers. The Peshwas held out for six long months, forcing the British to withdraw. “My ancestor Kashinath Pant Ketkar issued a proclamation ascribing the victory to the pir saab,” says Ketkar. Since then, local Hindus and Muslims have worshipped here together.

According to lore, Haji Abdur Rehman Shah was a 13th century mystic from Yemen who settled down here to preach. The local ruler, King Nall, is said to have offered his daughter to the pir as a disciple. The mazaars of the pir and Ma Fatima lie side by side.

This façade of communal harmony, however, is punctured by groups of fundamentalist Hindus and Muslims locked in a fierce contest for control over the shrine. Before his death some years ago in a road accident, local Shiv Sena leader Anand Dighe threatened to take over the dargah by force after claiming it as a Hindu shrine.

“Amar Parvat was the original name of the place because rishis gave diksha to Lord Amarnath here,” says Dinesh Deshmukh who heads the Thane unit of the Hindu Manch, an umbrella body of different Hindutva groups. “What they call the mazaars are basically small mounts that have come up around gifts given by the gurus to their disciples,” he adds.

Haji Malang’s believers contest Deshmukh’s claim. “We don’t subscribe to their ideology or their stories as we have written records and parchments dating back several centuries substantiating our claims,” says Ketkar.

However, a move by some of the shrine’s trustees to hand over the dargah to the Waqf Board threatens to isolate moderates like Ketkar. “Under Section 43 of the Waqf Act, 1993, all dargahs, mosques and kabrasthans automatically come under the Waqf Board,” says Nasir Khan, a trustee of the shrine. With the Maharashtra government deciding to implement the new Waqf Act from 2003, even the Waqf Board is pressing for takeover of the administration of the dargah from the charity commissioner.

According to Dr M A Aziz, chairman, Waqf Board, and member of Maharashtra’s legislative council, little of the rituals at the dargah will change. “We accept Kumar Ketkar as the hereditary trustee. He won’t have any excuse not to work under the Waqf Board,” says Dr Aziz.

The Hindutva bodies are raising the future of the nearby Maruti mandir as a political issue. “Will the Waqf Board also take control of the temple? Isn’t it also part of the complex?” asks Deshmukh.

The Waqf Board has, however, decided to let Hindu organisations take charge of the temple. “The Waqf Board will not manage the temple,” says Dr Aziz.

With the trustees now resorting to personal attacks against one another, devotees of the pir saab are hoping that the Maharashtra government will take direct control of the shrine. “The government should enact a special law like the one for the Shirdi Sai Baba and Ajmer Sharif shrines,” says Ketkar.

InfoChange News & Features, April 2006

Big dams and nuclear energy make a backdoor entry

2006-04-20T23:18:00.000-07:00

Piggybacking on the goal of reducing carbon emissions, multilateral banks are aggressively re-orienting their lending priorities. On April 23, the World Bank will discuss a confidential report that advocates big hydro projects and nuclear energy to mitigate the effects of climate change in transition countries like India and China

Far away from the current impasse over the Sardar Sarovar dam project in India, decision-makers at the World Bank (WB) are swiftly pushing for big hydropower projects in Washington. The World Bank is also talking about lending for nuclear power projects.

In the early-1990s, the Narmada Bachao Andolan (NBA) campaign against the WB-funded Sardar Sarovar Project forced the Bank to stop funding the project. Since then, the WB has been reluctant to lend for big projects.

Closer home, the Asian Development Bank (ADB), a regional multilateral development bank based in Manila, Philippines, is also seriously considering lending for high-risk big hydropower projects, and is also talking about lending for nuclear power projects.

The return of multilateral development banks to lending for big dam projects, and their reversal of the principle of not lending for nuclear power projects, piggybacks on the goal of reducing carbon emissions to mitigate climate change.

These banks are aggressively re-orienting their lending priorities to allow them to capture the multi-billion-dollar carbon market as well as increase lending in transition countries like India, China and Brazil. The WB and the ADB are trying hard to stay relevant in big borrower countries like India and China. And, given the enormous energy needs of these fast-growing economies, the energy sector is turning out to be a priority sector for multilateral development banks. The threat of climate change only facilitates this process.

On April 23, in Washington, the Development Committee, a senior decision-making body of the World Bank, will debate a confidential report titled ‘Clean Energy and Development: Towards An Investment Framework'. This comprehensive report strongly advocates multilateral development banks lending for big hydropower projects and nuclear power, to help reduce carbon emissions. It also accepts nuclear energy as a viable clean energy source that needs to be encouraged. The report focuses on transition countries like India and China.

The development committee will debate the report on April 23, at the spring meeting of the World Bank in Washington -- a debate that will lay the ground for the framework to be approved at the WB-IMF annual meeting in September this year.

The report is a comprehensive and radical assertion of lending for big hydropower and nuclear projects, as insurance against climate change. Although it claims that its suggestions are not WB-centric, it does point to the Bank's future lending areas.

The report, which was put together in consultation with officials from India, Brazil, China and South Africa, can be safely said to reflect the governments' priorities in lowering carbon emissions.

It suggests a ‘fast two-track' approach to developing an investment framework for clean energy to reduce carbon emissions. Interestingly, despite the fact that developed countries are the biggest polluters, with the US alone contributing 25% of greenhouse gases, the report prescribes carbon reductions for developing countries. It sees developing countries as the place where most carbon reduction activities will have to take place. This can be interpreted as the World Bank seeking opportunities for lending (after all, developed countries don't borrow from the Bank).

At the summit of the Group of Eight (G8) most industrialised nations, in Gleneagles, Scotland, last July, the World Bank was asked to propose a plan for a global transition to a sustainable energy future that would support energy sector expansion towards the ultimate goals of economic growth and poverty reduction. The G8 gave the World Bank the mandate to “take a leadership role in creating a new framework for clean energy and development”.

The report identifies and emphasises that big hydropower projects and nuclear energy are two ‘feasible and economically viable' options for reducing carbon emissions. It describes nuclear energy as a clean and efficient energy and clubs it with other renewable sources like wind power.

The document adds that financing options should be ‘fast-tracked' and completed by September 2006, which is when the WB-IMF annual meeting will discuss and finalise it.

Charting out an agenda to attain the above objective, it suggests that its own financial strength and that of other international financial institutions (IFIs) should be explored, to start with. And as a strategy to reduce carbon emissions quickly, it prescribes the exploration of new sources like nuclear and big hydropower projects.

The World Bank has historically been the single largest financer of large dams worldwide, providing an average of around $ 1.25 billion a year for big dams over the past 60 years -- five times more than current lending for clean, renewable energy. The report shows that 60% of the Bank's supposed support for renewable energy and energy efficiency (RE and EE) is, in fact, for big hydro projects.

In its annexure, the report details the carbon reduction activities of specific countries. For India, it says that the government is pushing for big hydro projects along with nuclear energy. The report's authors consulted extensively with Indian officials, including the energy ministry and the Planning Commission. India is the fifth largest emitter of carbon related to fossil fuels, after the US, China, Russia and Japan. It contributes 4.2% of the world's total carbon dioxide. Eighty per cent of India's electricity comes from thermal sources, thus making it one of the largest producers of greenhouse gases. The report is very specific in its prescription for India: “…opportunities to reduce the GHG intensity of the power sector is to shift the balance of production towards more diversified and cleaner sources. The latter include a mix of large and small hydro (projects)….”

For India, the World Bank has already made clear its intention to lend for big projects; this confidential report carries this intention forward. The foray back into large dams in India comes close on the heels of the Bank's approval of an Infrastructure Action Plan (IAP) in July 2003. The plan aims to increase Bank support for what it terms “high risk/high reward” infrastructure projects such as large dams, over the next two years. As part of the IAP, the World Bank recently announced a doubling of its lending to India, predominantly for projects in the power, water and transport sectors. On April 25, the Bank's development committee, at the spring meeting in Washington DC, will discuss the implementation of this plan.

The carbon rush

Meanwhile, the ADB is going to review its energy policy adopted in 1995. According to a high-level official at the ADB: “We are not sure whether we will be lending for nuclear power projects, as currently we don't have any request for lending. But definitely this year we will be talking about it.” The ADB is one of the World Bank's key partners in its clean energy development programme. “Nuclear power generation is a proven technology that provides about 20% of the world's electricity production. There is, however, widespread public concern about the safety of nuclear power operations and waste disposal methods,” reads the energy policy. In its 1995 energy policy, the ADB states that based on concerns of transfer of nuclear technology, proliferation risks and environmental and safety aspects, the ADB would not support nuclear power. However, the 2000 review papers of the policy don't mention this.

Sources say that given requests from big borrowers like India and China, the ADB may consider starting a debate on it. Meanwhile, the ADB is now definitely open to lending for big hydropower projects. It has announced a $ 2 billion a year credit line for water-related projects; the World Bank had already done so in 2004. Both pitch for large centralised projects.

Of late, multilateral development banks like the World Bank and the ADB have become the new trustees of climate. Over the last five years, they have seriously pursued the carbon market. The World Bank coordinates all such activities; this latest report is one way of establishing its primacy in this field. The G8 asked the World Bank to prepare this report last December. Over the past five years, banks like the World Bank, the ADB, the African Development Bank, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, European Investment Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank have invested over $ 17 billion in projects that directly or indirectly contribute to lowering carbon emissions in developing countries.

Both the World Bank and the ADB now manage carbon funds worth close to $ 5 billion. The former is managing eight carbon funds as trustee, where various countries contribute. The ADB is managing four funds under its Renewable Energy, Energy Efficiency and Climate Change (REACH) programme.

The catch is that the International Energy Association estimates that a total capital investment of $ 8.1 trillion, equivalent to an average of $ 300 billion/year, is needed from 2003 to 2030 for developing and transitional economies to meet their energy needs. Of this, electricity comprises roughly 73%, oil 12%, natural gas 12% and coal 3%. Of the total global greenhouse gas emissions, the energy sector contributes 80%. Thus any carbon reduction programme has to focus on the energy sector.

The World Bank report says that to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions it would cost anything between $ 10 billion and $ 200 billion/year. This offers huge opportunities to lend and do business in the name of climate change mitigation. The focus on developing countries stems from the fact that developed countries with carbon emission commitments can't reduce emissions in their own countries. According to the World Bank, in developed countries the cost of reducing one tonne of carbon dioxide could cost between $ 15 and $ 100, while it would be around $ 1 to $ 4 in developing countries.

InfoChange News & Features, April 2006

Challenges in implementing the ban on sex selection

2006-04-18T23:25:00.000-07:00

On March 28, the very first doctor in India was sentenced to two years in prison for violating the Preconception and Prenatal Diagnostic Techniques Act. In the 11 years since the Act was enacted, why have lawbreakers got away?

It is more than 11 years since the enactment of the Prenatal Diagnostic Techniques (Regulation and Prevention of Misuse) Act 1994. It is also at least two years since the more comprehensive, amended Preconception and Prenatal Diagnostic Techniques (PNDT) Act, 2003. Yet enforcing the law has proved to be a major challenge.

“Our main anxiety is that existing strategies are not working,” says Dr Puneet Bedi, Delhi-based gynaecologist, who has been part of the anti-sex selection campaign for decades.

Today there are some 350 cases filed under the Act. Of these, 226 are for running a diagnostic clinic without registration, and 26 are for not maintaining accounts. Just 37 are for communicating the sex of the foetus, and 27 for advertising sex selection. The first conviction with a prison term was ordered on March 28, 2006, when a doctor and his assistant were sentenced to two years in prison and a Rs 5,000-fine in Palwal, Haryana. Until this recent conviction, only one case had resulted in successful prosecution, but even that person received an insignificant punishment.

Ask government officials responsible for the programme why this happens and you’ll hear the same stories: the authorities are under-staffed and over-worked and they have no money to pursue legal action. And the powerful doctors’ lobby renders their actions null and void. Clinics that have been sealed for breaking the law have been re-opened for practice within a few days. Lawbreakers have got away after paying fines of just Rs 1,000.

At recent regional and national consultations and in informal discussions, government and non-government representatives and activist groups have talked about the difficulties faced in enforcing the PNDT Act.

Activists such as Sabu George, who has been doggedly pursuing the issue for years, note that it is easy to find out who is conducting sex selection in any given district. Then why are these doctors getting away scot-free?

As always in any such effort, much of the battle consists of ensuring that the necessary trained personnel are in place, they have the resources, and – most important -- they do what they are supposed to do to implement the law. And clearly, this is not being done.

There are other difficulties as well. First, the crime takes place behind closed doors, and with the involvement of both parties (the doctor motivated by money, and the woman coerced by family and social pressure). Evidence for a legal case is difficult to put together and there may be limitations to the use of circumstantial evidence and decoys to pin a case on a doctor. Second, the sex selection industry is run by a guild of medical professionals who have, so far, shown little inclination in putting their house in order – and the authorities are apparently not taking them on. Third, there is a need to tread carefully to ensure that opposing sex selection does not undermine women’s right to abortion. Finally, there is also the question of what to do as new diagnostic tests on the distant horizon take foetal sex detection outside the scope of the regulatory system.

Details of the law
The Preconception and Prenatal Diagnostic Techniques Act, 2003, covers pre-conceptual techniques and all prenatal diagnostic techniques.

The following people can be charged under the Act: everyone running the diagnostic unit for sex selection, those who perform the sex selection test itself, anyone who advertises sex selection, mediators who refer pregnant women to the test, and relatives of the pregnant woman. The pregnant woman is considered innocent under the Act, “unless proved guilty”.

All diagnostic centres must be registered with the authorities. They are required to maintain detailed records of all pregnant women undergoing scans there. These records must include the referring doctor, medical and other details of the woman, reason for doing the scan, and signatures of the doctors. These records must be submitted to the authorities periodically.

Penalties under the Act are imprisonment for up to three years and a fine of up to Rs 10,000. This is increased to five years and Rs 100,000 for subsequent offences. Doctors will be reported to the state medical council which can take the necessary action including suspension.

For implementing the Act, “appropriate authorities” are appointed at the state level and work with the director of health services, a member of a women’s organisation and an officer of the law. At the district level, the appropriate authority is the casualty medical officer or civil surgeon. Appropriate authorities are assisted by advisory committees consisting of doctors, social workers and people with legal training. Supervisory boards at the state and central levels look at the implementation of the Act. The appropriate authority may cancel the diagnostic centre’s registration, make independent investigations, take complaints to court, and take appropriate legal action. It may demand documentation, search premises, and seal and seize material. Courts may respond only to complaints from the appropriate authority.

Arvind Kumar, the collector of Hyderabad district, has illustrated what can be done through systematic work, and dedication. He actually tracked down all 389 diagnostic clinics in the city, issued notices to those which had not registered, took action against those providing incomplete information, seized machines that were not registered, and prosecuted equipment suppliers for supplying machines to clinics with no registration licences. But Kumar is an exception to the rule.

Problems in implementing the law
Dr Ratan Chand, in charge of the PNDT cell at the union ministry of health and family welfare, reported on the quality of enforcement after touring the country as part of the National Inspection and Monitoring Committee.

The committee visited selected districts in Maharashtra, Punjab, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Delhi, Gujarat and West Bengal. It found that appropriate authorities did a poor job of monitoring registered clinics, even going through their documentation for accuracy. Many clinics had poorly maintained records, with missing information, incomplete forms, blank signed forms, forms not signed by the doctor, etc. The authorities did not follow up court cases properly, or monitor the use of portable ultrasound machines which are likely to be used for sex selection.

The state authorities say there is not enough staff. Another problem is that the appropriate authorities don’t know their functions and responsibilities. And when they’re trained in their work, they get transferred. For example, in Rajasthan, an NGO which trained over 125 appropriate government authorities found a year later, when reviewing their work, that all but 35 of them had been transferred.

“The lack of resources is an excuse by the PNDT authorities,” says Dr Bedi. “What is the point of making doctors keep records if they are not audited?”

Cases under the PNDT Act must rely heavily on such documentation. Malini Bhattacharya, member of the National Women’s Commission, points out that a careful reading of all the centre’s documents will provide circumstantial evidence if something wrong is being done. Centres doing sex selection are likely to slip up on maintaining the required records. An examination of clinic records found that many clinics reported doing just one or two scans a day which is financially unviable for a scan centre. Obviously, they were not recording most of the sonographies that they conducted. Many forms did not contain all the required information. Some were unsigned; some clinics had blank, signed forms.

Sting operations
Still, some have argued that circumstantial evidence is less than ideal in proving a case. Ultimately, the best proof can come from a pregnant woman who visits a doctor, asks for a sex detection test and then testifies against the doctor. But this poses its own problems. There is the risk that pregnant women could face subtle coercion, however slight, to participate in this process. They may have to remain involved with the case after the sting operation. Also, it is not possible to sustain such efforts in the long term. On the other hand, there does not seem to be any alternative to the use of decoys. There are limits to the quality of evidence from clinic records alone.

“Auditing will provide enough evidence for legal action,” says Dr Bedi, arguing that sting operations are not necessary. “If data is missing, it is presumed that it covers an illegal act. The basis of the law is auditing the records – and this is not being done, and this is deliberate.”

The medical profession
The sex selection industry is run by medical professionals who have, so far, shown little inclination in putting their house in order. This was evident at a meeting in Kolkata where senior doctors shrugged their shoulders on the matter of getting their associations to do something about the illegal practice. No associations of medical professionals have taken a strong stand curbing the unethical use of diagnostic procedures. They have fought only as lobbies to control their commercial interests. The fact is that providers have benefited from promoting the technology for decades. Doctors have even gone to court against the law.

Against sex selection, not against women’s right to abortion
Opponents of sex selection must face both conceptual and practical tensions. They must ensure women’s right to abortion while opposing sex selection. This balance is sometimes difficult to maintain. For example, there have been suggestions that abortion clinics be monitored and the sex ratio of female foetuses be tracked. Such monitoring could threaten the tenuous access to abortion that women have today.

The supply versus demand problem
There have also been efforts to shift the focus from the medical profession’s unethical practices to addressing the social demand for sex selection. One of these is rewarding panchayats whose sex ratios improve. The problem, as noted by participants at one recent meeting, is that this can encourage the manufacture of data. Second, there are not enough births within a panchayat to monitor for changes in sex ratios – you need a sample of at least 28,000 births to be able to detect changes in the sex ratio, says Dr Bedi.

Beyond regulation?
Finally, there is the question of what to do as technology advances to take foetal sex detection beyond regulation. Foetal sex selection using ultrasound has, so far, been doing the damage. But all this may change in the next few years. When the PNDT Act was drafted, ultrasound could not be used for sex selection until very late in the pregnancy. That is no longer true, and this is the technique that is most prevalent today. But the most frightening development, reported by Dr Puneet Bedi at a recent consultation, is a blood test isolating foetal cells from maternal blood, enabling foetal sex detection. This could throw the entire campaign into chaos. “The technology is at a very crude level today,” says Dr Bedi. “And even if it becomes accurate, it will be very expensive initially. But in any case, that is a different fight. Today we have to fight the fightable fight.” If we don’t win this battle, we won’t win that one either.

InfoChange News & Features

Turning mill land to mall land

2006-04-18T23:18:00.000-07:00

The Supreme Court’s recent verdict on the sale of mill lands in Mumbai has implications for the future development of all cities in India, and the redevelopment of derelict industrial lands in other cities

Why should a Supreme Court verdict removing the legal stay on the sale of land belonging to cotton mills in Mumbai be at all relevant to other cities? Mumbai is unique in that there have never been such a large number of workers -- 250,000 at the peak, in the 1970s -- in one industry in a single city. It is for this reason that Mumbai was called (along with Ahmedabad) the Manchester of the East.

As it happens, the court verdict is important because it redefines many important facets of the environment, which will set a precedent in cases elsewhere. This concerns not only the potential redevelopment of derelict industrial land in other cities -- like the Binny’s factory in Bangalore and Ahmedabad’s cotton mills -- but the entire concept of what constitutes environmental concerns itself. These industrial graveyards occupy prime real estate in city centres, and their development is crucial to future urban growth.

The court genuflects before Articles 14 and 21 of the Constitution regarding the fundamental right to life and to a ‘decent’ environment. However, it then elaborates the scope of a public interest litigation in the case of mill land. It asserts that it had to ascertain whether public interest was being served and had to strike a balance between several competing interests. These were “consideration of ecology,” the rights of workers, the claims of public sector institutions, including banks, owners’ rights, rehabilitation of sick industries and schemes approved by the Board for Industrial and Financial Reconstruction (BIFR) and, finally, “advancement of public interest in general and not only a particular aspect of public interest”.

It goes on to state: “Public interest litigations, thus, have been entertained more frequently where a question of violation of the provisions of the statutes governing the environment or ecology of the country has been brought to its notice in the matter of depletion of forest areas and/ or when the executive while exercising its administrative functions or making subordinate legislations has interfered with the ecological balance with impunity. The High Court of Bombay, therefore, cannot be faulted for entertaining the writ petition as a public interest litigation.”

In 1991, the Maharashtra government introduced the Development Control Rules (DCR), under which a mill owner was permitted to sell or redevelop his land, provided one-third was surrendered to the municipal corporation for public amenities and another third to the Maharashtra Housing and Area Development Authority (MHADA) for low-cost housing. The remaining third was the owner’s. Ten years later, it surreptitiously amended this clause to make it apply only to vacant land -- as distinct from the entire footprint of the mill. Since mills, characteristically, occupy a huge footprint -- each worker has about 32 sq metres of space in a shed -- the amendment fraudulently deprived Mumbai of several hundred acres of space at one stroke.

As the apex court notes: “DCR 58 was made to revive and resurrect neighbourhoods, foster development, regenerate lands which had become sterile, encourage the shifting of textile mills (thereby reducing the attendant strain that industrial activity places on civil amenities) and pay off chronic arrears and dues of workers, banks, institutions, statutory dues, etc. In its operation and implementation new DCR 58 would also unlock large real estate and make it available to residents.”

The public interest implicit in this amendment is apparent: it begins with the need to revive neighbourhoods. The entire Girangaon, or mill district, comprising 600 valuable acres or 280 hectares in mid-town Mumbai, is in decline with the closure of the mills since the late-1970s. The final blow was the 18-month-long strike in 1982-83, led by Dr Datta Samant, which was the world’s longest strike involving the largest number of workers. Dr Samant himself was murdered over another union dispute, the following decade. Many workers, rendered jobless, have sold their chawls and migrated to the northern suburbs where they eke out a livelihood as casual labourers.

While questioning whether the 2001 amendment substantially reduces the amount of land available to the public, the court has taken a very restricted view of what constitutes the “environment” in this case. By its own calculation, under the 1991 rules, Matulya Mill (owned by the Mafatlals), which was the first to adopt the original formula, would have surrendered 5,641 sq m for open space and 4,616 sq m to MHADA. Under the revised rules, the court shows that these areas would be 474 sq m and 388 sq m respectively. In the case of Modern Mills, the corresponding figures are 8,626 versus 1,163 sq m as open space, and 7,058 sq m versus nothing for housing.

The court has resorted to some sleight of hand of its own in lumping what it terms “private greens” with what is to be surrendered to the public, and thus deciding that the total open area remains a third of the total land available. As it says: “From what has thus been noticed hereinbefore, it is difficult to agree with the contentions of the writ petitioners that there had been substantial reduction in green area… It is contended on behalf of the Appellants that out of the total area of 2,430,000 sq m, the lands which would be available to MCGM as public green is 11.53% and the private greens works out to be 20.87%, thus, totalling 32.43%.” How this private space within office and residential complexes can be lumped together with public space defeats logic. By their very nature, these private areas are not open to the public.

It is worth recalling a precedent of a kind in Mumbai. When the first mall, Crossroads, opened several years ago at Mahalaxmi, there was a huge rush due to the sheer novelty of the concept. However, as Indians are characteristically astute shoppers and are more conscious -- for the most part! -- of price rather than brands, they visited the gleaming new attraction but did not buy very much. The owners wanted to deter crowds from visiting the complex and tried to restrict entry to those who owned a credit card or a mobile phone. In other words, it wanted to create two kinds of citizens: ‘haves’ and ‘have-nots’. As might be expected, there was a furore and the plan had to be shelved. However, not many are aware that the huge atrium within the complex is actually public space (when the building plans were passed) and by no stretch of the imagination could it be appropriated in this manner.

In the mill case, the court was not swayed by public interest when it concluded: “From what has been noticed hereinbefore, it is evident that the purported reduction in green area compared to the pre-1991 situation would not create much difference so far as maintenance of the ecological balance is concerned by giving effect to 2001 regulations vis-à-vis the 1991 regulations.” It is this extremely narrow and legalistic definition of the term “environment” that causes concern for future cases and could set a precedent.

I attended public hearings on the mill proposals that the central Ministry of Environment and Forests imposed last year -- thanks only to the scrutiny these cases came under after the Bombay Environmental Action Group filed a writ petition on the mill land and obtained a stay on development in the high court. The Maharashtra Pollution Control Board, which conducted the hearings, also took an excessively restrictive view of the environment, and the developers referred glowingly to how they were planting trees and grass within their complexes, recycling water, and taking other largely cosmetic measures. The environment can never be treated purely in such aesthetic terms; crucially, it involves the rights of the public to access resources at every stage.

The apex court argued: “We do not furthermore agree with the approach of the high court in interpreting the aforementioned provisions having regard to certain other factors, namely, deluge in Bombay in the year 2005 as also the requirements of the entire population of Bombay from environmental aspect.” Is the deluge of July 26 last year so irrelevant to the mill land case? The 280 hectares that mills occupy in central Mumbai are already seeing a massive makeover: malls, high-rises and the like. The National Textile Corporation, which owned 25 of Mumbai’s 54 mills, is already thinking of building an international convention centre at its 12-acre seaside property known as India United Mills No 6 (once the property of the famous Sassoon family).

This is not, as may be imagined, out of some overwhelming desire to make Mumbai catch up with Shanghai or other cities of its ilk; such complexes have a floor space index (FSI, the ratio of buildable area to footprint) of 2.7, twice the prevailing ratio. The NTC argues quite unabashedly that this will enable it to put up a 75-storey tower there. What’s more, if it loads FSI from its other mills on to this more valuable site, the sky is the limit -- permitting a staggering 120 floors!

But what about the supporting infrastructure? The mill is located on Cadell Road, which is the main north-south transport axis. Any addition of cars will bring traffic to a grinding halt. Girangaon lacks any infrastructure worth the name -- whether by way of roads, pedestrian connections to railway stations, drainage, or open spaces. There is an important factor also to be borne in mind: the island city of Mumbai will shortly connect to the mainland by a trans-harbour sea link starting from Sewri, cheek-by-jowl with the mills. And there are 1,800 acres of adjoining land belonging to the Mumbai Port Trust which are also derelict and also open for redevelopment.

Unless the authorities take a holistic view and plan for the entire mill and port area, Mumbai is in for a disaster that could make 26/7 look like a picnic. The island city does not afford any easy escapes because of the prevailing north-south traffic. If there are floods or riots in this area bristling with skyscrapers, there will be no escape for thousands of people. The city’s growth cannot be dictated, as it now is, by builders.

While Greater Mumbai already has 14 million inhabitants, if one takes the Mumbai Metropolitan Region, which is 10 times larger, we are talking about nearly 29 million by 2020 -- the second biggest urban agglomeration in the world. This is why what happens in Mumbai is of significance not only to the rest of India but to all developing countries. One must therefore take strong exception to the Supreme Court’s edict that “the requirements of the entire population of Bombay from environmental aspect” was of no consequence when it decided on the future of the mill lands.

There are two other aspects of the case that have been brought to light by Shailesh Gandhi, a right to information activist. It was he who, exactly a year ago, caused a stir by citing evidence, culled by resorting to the RTI law, that the leases of several mills had expired; the documents of some in fact were not even traceable. In any case, there has been a change in land use from running mills to running malls and other modern amenities. The owners were given land at subsidised rates towards the middle of the 19th century, and early in the 20th, to create jobs in Mumbai. How has the municipal corporation permitted this change in use? Gandhi has also pointed out how mill owners (as well as owners of other old industrial sites) pay pitiably small lease rents a year -- amounting to a few paise per sq m per year, on average. For a state that is around Rs 110,000 crore in the red, such munificence is strange to say the least.

Gandhi has now drawn attention to another lacuna. As the Supreme Court verdict itself repeatedly emphasises, the DRC only permits sale or redevelopment of mill land if, under the BIFR’s sanction, the proceeds are used to rehabilitate a mill. The NTC is at least observing the letter of this law, if not the spirit. The private mills have done nothing of the sort; they have been made over irretrievably. This charade is relevant to other derelict industrial sites elsewhere in the country, which will be up for development. The verdict has not taken all these considerations into account, which impact urban growth and concern natural justice.

InfoChange News & Features

Child abuse in Mumbai: A tourist’s report

2006-04-18T23:14:00.000-07:00

Young, sick infants are carted around in polystyrene boxes and produced to extract money from sympathetic tourists. This South Mumbai scam is perpetrated right under the noses of the local police

Having just returned from my third visit to India in 28 years, I continue to be outraged at the failure of the Mumbai authorities to address the abuse of children as instruments of begging, in the Gateway of India tourist area.

Whilst the organised gangs of mutilated children are well documented and still prevalent in the area, preying on the pity of tourists, the ‘mother-and-sick-infant’ scam is out of control and needs immediate attention by the local authorities. The frequent grabbing of tourists by mothers with infants through taxi windows is an accepted and daunting experience throughout India and, in many cases, is a genuine plea for help.

Having returned from a business trip to Dubai, I was approached by a young girl (approximately 15-16 years old) with a small infant less than two months old on her arm. I had seen the same girl two weeks earlier carrying a different and slightly older child. She claimed the sickly two-month-old was her sister and that her mother was currently in hospital suffering from diabetes and too ill to breastfeed her daughter. She pleaded for canned powdered milk for her sister and a small bag of rice for her other brothers and sisters.

Aware that this was almost certainly a deception, I refused, although the sight of the sick infant, barely the size of my hand, was distressing and weighed heavily on my conscience.

The girl followed me around for four hours, waiting outside shops until I reappeared, clearly assessing that, in the end, perseverance would lead to a successful outcome. I relented and offered her money, feeling that if the child received just a small portion of the contribution, at least some good would have been achieved. The girl refused my offering and said she only wanted milk and rice that could be bought from any one of a number of shops on the streets behind the Taj Mahal hotel.

This caught me off-guard and made me think: maybe, just maybe, the case was genuine. The girl suggested I accompany her to the store and purchase the produce with her, indicating that the items could be opened in my presence. I agreed and bought the items from the storekeeper, saying that opening the goods in front of me was unnecessary. I parted with just under Rs 500 (a fairly insignificant contribution, but more than my original monetary offering), a sense of goodwill and expressions of gratitude from the girl.

When I returned and recounted my experiences to a local friend, he quickly outlined the scam for me and the fact that these girls make an estimated
US$ 300 every month. What’s more, the storekeepers play a major part in the scam, providing over 50% of the produce value in rupees to the girl upon return of the goods.

I hate deception and, more importantly, the fact that very little, if any, of the money will be used to feed the sick infant.

I returned to the area later that day and, surprisingly, observed the same sickly child in the arms of another girl sitting on the dirty sidewalk. She was slightly younger than the girl who had so successfully applied her trade. I approached this girl and expressed my anger at her using the child in the scam. I told her the child needed medical treatment. To my shock and horror, a second child, a twin, was produced from one of two sealed polystyrene boxes on the pavement, looking just as sickly as the first. When the box was opened, dozens of flies descended upon the listless child. On closer inspection, I saw that the boxes had four minute keyhole punctures for ventilation -- totally inadequate, especially on a day when the temperature was above 30 degrees C.

Meanwhile, my emotive discussions had attracted quite a crowd that confirmed that this truly was the mother and that she was an innocent party to the ploy. They said that the ‘first’ girl had intimidated the mother for use of her child, although, most probably, she had received some benefit for the ‘transaction’. The husband arrived and on hearing about the incident set off angrily to find the girl who was known to frequent the area around the Gateway of India. Within five minutes she appeared, displaying a more petulant attitude to the one I had witnessed earlier that day. When I confronted her the girl suddenly appeared mortified and indicated to her accomplice, another girl I had seen carrying a child in the streets, to return my money. I refused and said that the money belonged to the child and that I wanted her to give it to the mother. She threw the money on the road and departed. I gave it to the ‘father’ in the vague hope that the twins would see some benefit. An hour later, I observed the girl accomplice with a different child begging from two newly-arrived tourists at a hotel in the main shopping area.

I hope I’m not sounding too self-righteous. And I do appreciate that each person must derive a means to survive in this harsh and tough city. However, the use of frighteningly young infants is a crime that the authorities must address. I have been told that it was not my place to be involved. But I did confront the three storekeepers who, I was informed, were major players in the scam. All of them denied their involvement, even the man who sold us the milk and rice.

Upon my return to Australia I was informed by an Indian friend who had visited India two months earlier that she had been deceived by the same milk-and-rice child scam!

InfoChange News & Features

Urmil's story

2006-04-18T23:07:00.000-07:00

What constitutes a dowry death? Various amendments have been made to the Dowry Prohibition Act of 1961 to make the law more effective. The Pawan Kumar vs State of Haryana judgment on the dowry death of Urmil is significant in this regard

In May 1985, Urmil married Pawan Kumar and went to stay in Sonepat, Haryana. Within a few days, she returned home complaining of demands being made for dowry of a refrigerator and scooter. The demands continued and, on account of their non-fulfilment, Urmil was tortured and harassed.

In April 1987, Urmil’s maternal uncle died and she visited Delhi with her husband to offer her condolences. Pawan Kumar later returned to Sonepat and Urmil stayed on at her sister’s place in Delhi. On May 17, 1987, Pawan Kumar visited his wife, a quarrel ensued, and Urmil expressed her unwillingness to return with him. However, she did finally go back to Sonepat. The very next day, on May 18, 1987, Urmil was found dead with burn injuries, in a room full of smoke. Her parents arrived and a post-mortem was conducted. The cause of death was found to be shock and asphyxia as a result of severe burns, which were sufficient to cause death.

The trial court convicted Urmil’s husband, father-in-law and mother-in-law for dowry death under Section 304-B of the Indian Penal Code (IPC), abetment to suicide under Section 306 of the IPC and cruelty by the husband or his relatives under Section 498-A of the IPC. The high court maintained the conviction and Urmil’s husband, father-in-law and mother-in-law were sentenced to seven years’ imprisonment for dowry death and abetment to suicide, and two years for cruelty. Under appeal, the case reached the Supreme Court; the judgment is reported as Pawan Kumar versus State of Haryana (1998) 3 SCC 309.

It was contended on behalf of the husband and in-laws that there was no evidence that just before her death, Urmil was subjected to cruelty or harassment for or in connection with a demand for dowry. It was submitted that there was neither any demand for dowry nor any agreement at the time of marriage. It was argued that unless there was an agreement for dowry at the time of marriage, or in connection with marriage, it would not fall within the definition of ‘dowry’ under the Dowry Prohibition Act, 1961. According to the submission, merely asking for a fridge or a scooter and having a grouse due to non-fulfilment of the demand in the absence of any agreement would not constitute dowry. Therefore, the offence of dowry death under Section 304-B cannot be said to have been committed. In addition, the contention advanced was that suspicion, conjecture and surmise could not be the basis of a conviction, and that guilt had to be proved beyond a reasonable doubt on the basis of concrete evidence.

The court examined relevant provisions of the law to determine the ingredients necessary to constitute the offence of dowry death. It noted that two conditions had to be satisfied before the death of a woman could be termed a dowry death. The death of a woman due to burns or bodily injury, or in a manner other than under normal circumstances, should have occurred within seven years of marriage. The second requirement is that just prior to her death the woman was subjected to cruelty or harassment by her husband or his relatives in connection with dowry.

Applying the analysis to the case, the court observed that it was not in dispute that Urmil had died of burn injuries, that is, she did not die under normal circumstances, and that the death occurred within seven years of marriage. The court noted that Urmil’s mother had deposed that within four days of marriage her daughter had returned and told her that she was being subjected to taunts for not bringing a scooter and a refrigerator as dowry at the time of marriage. That her mother pacified her and sent her back. That Urmil came to her again, after two months, and told her that she was being continuously taunted, mistreated and called ugly for not bringing the articles as dowry. After the birth of her son, Urmil again complained of maltreatment. Her father said that he had been unable to meet his daughter’s demands and had pacified and sent her back. Urmil’s sister and brother-in-law made similar depositions.

The court examined the Dowry Prohibition Act in the context of the definition of dowry. It noted that the Act had been brought in to provide an effective check to dowry deaths, which were continuing despite the prevailing laws. The objective was to prohibit the giving and taking of dowry. At the time the Act was brought in, in 1961, dowry was defined as property given, or agreed to be given, as “consideration for the marriage,” “before or at the time of marriage”. As both dowry and dowry deaths continued despite the enactment, drastic amendments were brought in to make the law more effective.

Because it was proving difficult to prove that, in many cases, property given was “consideration for the marriage”, in 1984 the words “in connection with the marriage” were included in the definition. Similarly, in 1986, the definition of dowry was extended to include not only property at or before marriage but also that given “after the marriage”. The 1986 amendment introduced Section 304-B to the IPC, making dowry death a distinct and separate offence. The explanation to the provision specifies that dowry shall have the same meaning as in the Dowry Prohibition Act. For similar reasons, Section 498-A, making cruelty by the husband or his relatives punishable, was introduced in the IPC through an amendment in 1983.

The court then dealt with the argument that an agreement was necessary for the demand to fall within the definition of dowry. It observed that while interpreting the definition of dowry, one had to keep in mind the defect or mischief due to which the amendment had been brought in to enlarge the definition of dowry. It held that the interpretation given should further the objective for which the amendment had been made in the provision.

Section 304-B makes “demand for dowry” punishable. The court observed that a demand neither conceives nor would conceive of any agreement. If, to convict an offender, an agreement is to be proved, then hardly any offenders would fall within the provision. The deceased Urmil was tortured, mistreated and harassed within days of marriage for not bringing in the articles mentioned. Hence, the demand is in connection with the marriage.

The court noted that the demanding of dowry, directly or indirectly, from the bride’s parents, relatives or guardian had been made punishable through amendments made in 1984. The agreement referred to in the definition of dowry had to be interpreted in the context of the mandate and objective of the Act as well as the other provisions. Section 3 of the Dowry Prohibition Act makes the giving or taking of dowry punishable. Section 4 makes the demand for dowry itself punishable. Repeated demands for articles like TVs and scooters from the bride or her parents made after marriage would fall within the category of ‘in connection with marriage’ and constitute dowry for the purpose of dowry death under Section 304-B of the IPC.

Applying it to the case, the judgment notes that there had been demands for a scooter and a fridge within a few days of Urmil’s marriage. Non-fulfilment of this demand had led to repetitive taunts and mistreatment. Observing that it was not always necessary that there exist an agreement for dowry, these demands were held to be ‘in connection with’ the marriage. The court concluded that, clearly, there was a demand for dowry falling within the definition of dowry under the Dowry Prohibition Act, and for the purpose of dowry death under Section 304-B of the IPC.

As regards the second ingredient in the offence of dowry death, the court examined whether Urmil had been subjected to cruelty or harassment by her husband or his relatives “soon before her death”. The submission made on behalf of the accused was that there were no signs of any physical injury, nor was there any evidence from neighbours or other independent persons of cruelty towards Urmil. The court observed that mental torture in a given case could also be construed as cruelty and harassment for the purpose of dowry death under Section 304-B, and cruelty by the husband or relatives under Section 498-A. Explanation (a) of Section 498-A refers to both mental and physical cruelty. The requirement under the provision is that there should have been wilful conduct by the accused persons.

The court observed that a girl looks forward with hope and aspiration on entering a marriage, and if, from the very next day, the husband starts taunting her for not bringing in dowry and calling her ugly, then it would clearly amount to mental torture, cruelty and harassment of the bride. Just a day before her death, Urmil had quarrelled with her husband. These would all constitute wilful conduct on the part of the husband. Urmil was staying with her sister and brother-in-law who had both deposed that she told them that her husband was mistreating her in connection with the demand for dowry. She was reluctant to go back with her husband, and her parting words, on May 17, 1987, were that they may not see her face in the future. The next day she died of her burns.

The court rejected the submission that Urmil’s quarrel with her husband, the day before she died, was not connected with dowry. It noted that, under Section 8-A of the Dowry Prohibition Act, the burden of proving that the demand for dowry had not been made was on the accused person. That, under Section 113-B of the Evidence Act, if it is shown that a person had treated a woman with cruelty and harassment just prior to her death then it shall be presumed that the said person has caused the dowry death.

The husband, in Urmil’s case, had produced no evidence to dispel the presumption under the law of demanding dowry and causing the dowry death. The court held that the quarrel the day before Urmil’s death and the direct evidence of her parents, sister and brother-in-law cumulatively amounted to cruelty and harassment just before death, fulfilling the requirements of Section 304-B and 498-A of the IPC. The court also held that the quarrel amounted to abetment of suicide, under Section 307 of the IPC.

The court held that there was no convincing evidence that the father-in-law or mother-in-law had subjected Urmil to cruelty. The evidence of cruelty and harassment just before death was also confined to the husband. Both the mother-in-law and father-in-law were given the benefit of the doubt and acquitted. The husband Pawan Kumar was sentenced to seven years’ imprisonment for dowry death under Section 304-B of the IPC, four years’ imprisonment for abetment to suicide under Section 306 of the IPC and two years’ imprisonment for cruelty under Section 498-A of the Indian Penal Code.

InfoChange News & Features

Convert and remarry?

2006-04-18T22:48:00.000-07:00

If a non-Muslim converts to Islam without any real change in belief, merely to avoid an earlier marriage and enter into a second one, should the second marriage be considered void and the person prosecuted for bigamy?

Sushmita Ghosh married G C Ghosh in May 1984, in accordance with Hindu rites, and they were living together. In May 1992, Ghosh advised his wife to agree to a divorce by mutual consent in her own interest, as he had converted to Islam in order to remarry. He had already fixed up his marriage to someone called Vanita Gupta. Ghosh showed her a certificate issued by the office of Maulana Qari Mohammed Idris, Shahi Qazi, dated June 1992, certifying that he had embraced Islam.

All efforts to get Ghosh to change his mind failed; he said that if Sushmita did not agree to a divorce she would have to put up with a second wife.

Sushmita Ghosh petitioned the courts saying that her husband G C Ghosh alias Mohammed Karim Ghazi had converted to Islam solely for the purpose for remarriage, and that he had no real faith in Islam. He neither practised the prescribed Muslim rites nor changed his name or religion on other official documents, she claimed. Ghosh asserted her fundamental right not to be discriminated against on grounds of sex or religion.

The petition also submitted that in the past several years it had become common for Hindu males who could not get a divorce from their wives to convert to Islam solely for the purpose of remarriage. And that, after the second marriage, they re-converted to Hinduism in order to retain their rights over property. They then went about their business in their old name and religion.

Ghosh asked the courts to declare polygamous marriages by Hindus and non-Hindus after conversion to Islam, illegal. And to make suitable amendments to the Hindu Marriage Act to curtail and forbid the practice of polygamy. If a non-Muslim male converted to the Muslim faith without any change of belief, merely to avoid an earlier marriage and enter into a second one, then any marriage entered into after the so-called conversion should be considered void. Ghosh also prayed for an order restraining G C Ghosh from marrying Vanita Gupta or any other woman during the time he was married to her.

Meena Mathur got married to Jitender Mathur in 1978 and had three children by him. In 1988, she learnt that her husband had married Sunita Narula, alias Fathima. The marriage had been solemnised after Jitender and Sunita converted to Islam. Meena contended that her husband’s conversion was done solely for the purpose of marrying Sunita, and to circumvent the provisions of Section 494 of the IPC (Indian Penal Code), which punishes bigamy.

Sunita, alias Fathima, filed a petition submitting that she and Jitender Mathur had embraced Islam, got married and had a son. After marrying her, Jitender, under the influence of Meena Mathur, reverted to Hinduism and agreed to maintain his first wife and their three children. Sunita (Fathima), who is still a Muslim, pleaded that she receives no maintenance from husband and has no protection under either of the two laws.

Geeta Rani was married to Pradeep Kumar according to Hindu rites, in 1988. Her husband mistreated and beat her. In 1991, he converted to Islam and married Deepa. Kalyani, a women’s organisation, filed a petition to check the growing number of desertions of wives married under Hindu law, and husbands resorting to conversion in order to rid themselves of their wives.

These petitions were heard together and a judgment delivered in 1995 in the Sarla Mudgal versus Union of India case.

A review of the 1995 judgment was sought and was heard along with a public interest petition by Lily Thomas. A judgment was delivered in 2000.

The central issue in all these petitions where a non-Muslim has converted to Islam without any real change in belief, merely to avoid an earlier marriage and enter into a second one, is whether the marriage after conversion should be considered void and the person liable for bigamy.

The court examined the provisions of the Hindu Marriage Act, 1955 (HMA) and Section 494 of the IPC that makes bigamy an offence. According to Section 5 of the Act, one of the conditions for marriage between two Hindus is that neither party should have a living spouse at the time of marriage. If either party does indeed have a spouse living at the time of marriage, that marriage can be declared null and void under Section 11 of the Act. Section 17 further declares that a marriage between two Hindus is void if either has a husband or wife living and that the provisions of Section 494 of the IPC punishing bigamy would be applicable.

Section 494 of the IPC punishes bigamy and lays down that a person who marries whilst having a husband or wife living (and the marriage is void by reason of having taken place during the life of such husband or wife), is punishable with seven years’ imprisonment and a fine. Complaints of bigamy can only be made by the aggrieved person, ie, by the spouse. In the wife’s case, the complaint can be made by her father, mother or brother.

The court declared that if a Hindu wife complained that her husband had converted and remarried, the offence of bigamy would have to be investigated and tried in accordance with the provisions of the Hindu Marriage Act. According to the Act, conversion of one of the spouses does not automatically dissolve a marriage solemnised under Hindu law. The persons continue to be ‘husband and wife’, despite the conversion of one of them. Conversion is only grounds for divorce or judicial separation.

Therefore, unless a decree of divorce is obtained the ‘marital bond’ persists. A second marriage, even after conversion, would be void under Section 11 of the Hindu Marriage Act. The marriage would also be void under Section 17 of the Act, which makes bigamy punishable by making Section 494 of the IPC applicable. The court declared that as long as the first marriage subsists, according to the Hindu Marriage Act, a second marriage is not permissible even under another personal law. Even after conversion to Islam, if a second marriage is performed during the subsistence of the first one, the person is held liable for prosecution for bigamy under Section 494 of the IPC. Prosecution under Section 494 of the IPC with respect to a second marriage under Muslim law can be avoided only if the first marriage too was under Muslim law.

The argument that there should be no prosecution for bigamy of persons who had solemnised their second marriage before the passing of the judgment, as this would violate Article 20 (1) of the Constitution, was rejected. Article 20 (1) declares that a person cannot be convicted for an offence that was not a violation of law in force at the time of the commission of the act. The court declared that the judgment had not made second marriage by a person converted to Islam an offence, but had merely interpreted the existing law that was in force and so was not violative of Article 20 (1).

The contention that prosecuting a person contracting a second marriage after conversion was a violation of the right to freely profess and practise religion was also rejected. The court observed that freedom to practise religion guaranteed under Article 25 is a freedom that does not encroach upon the freedom and rights of another. The argument that making a Hindu who converts to Islam and solemnises a second marriage liable for bigamy is against Islam was also dismissed. The court observed that it would be doing an injustice to Islamic law to urge that a convert be entitled to practise bigamy notwithstanding the continuance of his marriage under the law to which he belonged prior to conversion.

The Jaat-e-Ulema Hind and the Muslim Personal Law Board argued that the interpretation given by the court would render the status of the second wife to that of a concubine, and children born out of that marriage as illegitimate. The court took the view that the issue before it was ascertaining the criminal liability of a person who undergoes a second marriage after conversion under Section 17 of the Hindi Marriage Act, read with Section 494 of the IPC. It observed that the legitimacy of the second wife and children was not an issue that had arisen in the case, and hence no ruling was necessary on the matter. The court also clarified that the judges had merely expressed their views in the 1995 Sarla Mudgal case, and that no directions had been issued for codification of a common civil code.

The judgment reported as Lily Thomas versus Union of India, 2000 (6) SCC 224 unequivocally declares that if the first marriage was under any personal law where there is a prohibition on contracting a second marriage during the lifetime of the spouse, as in Hindu or Christian law, then a second marriage performed under Muslim law would make the person liable for prosecution for bigamy.

InfoChange News & Features

The violence against women campaign: Where have we failed?

2006-04-18T22:34:00.000-07:00

For 25 years women’s rights advocates have been campaigning against violence against women. They have succeeded in changing the law, changing the stand of the judiciary. But have they succeeded in changing social attitudes, asks Flavia Agnes, lawyer and noted activist

On November 25, 2005, a news article appeared in The Times of India about a minor girl allegedly raped by her father withdrawing her allegations. The High Court of Himachal Pradesh had earlier acquitted this man saying that there were loopholes in the story and it was not plausible. However, the Supreme Court in November 2005 had overturned the High Court judgment and awarded the father a life term. And then the daughter said in a sworn statement that her father was innocent, and that she had framed him at the instigation of her mother. What happens to the punishment given by SC now that its very basis has gone?

For 25 years, the autonomous women’s movement in India has grappled with the issue of violence against women, and more particularly sexual violence -- rape and domestic violence. At the end of it, and in the middle of this international fortnight raising awareness about violence against women, we are confronted with this news item.
For 25 years we’ve tried to call attention to the fact that women are raped. After all this, when the Supreme Court sees rape as a human rights violation, they are confronted with this girl withdrawing her statement, and saying that she was instigated by her mother to file the complaint against her father. We’re back to where we started: women are liars; half the rapes reported don’t really happen.

Where has the movement gone wrong? Is there a need to say something different, something new, something more complex?

There was another story in the same edition of the newspaper. It was about a girl, just a few days short of her wedding. The boyfriend met her. Without the knowledge of the family, she went somewhere else, near a cemetery. And he says: prove your love for me. She says: I’m willing to die for you. He says: Lie down on the road. And he drives over her three times. This is the other side of the coin. This is where half our girls are – educated, stylish and modern, yet wanting to prove their love to the boys they are getting married to, and getting ready to do anything at all. He thought she had died. She is in the hospital. Maybe when she is better, she will want to marry the same boy.

These are educated, economically sound families. Our concepts about violence against women must change. How do we confront this message that women are liars? Most women don’t talk, but those who talk are liars. Or something is wrong with her, she has a boyfriend, something must have happened, that’s why men behave that way, that’s why he hit her. Some justifications will be added in with the story.

We thought we were making big changes -- changing the judges, changing the law, changing the court, changing everything, changing social attitudes. And 25 years later, we see the next generation saying the same things and this brings me to the question: where did we fail? How do we consolidate the campaign against violence today?

A feminist framework for rape and sexual abuse
Let’s go back to 1980, to the Mathura rape case. A young tribal girl, a maid working in somebody’s house, an orphan, was said to have eloped with her boyfriend. But an orphan, illiterate tribal girl working as a maidservant does not have the agency or social space to elope. She was induced into an elopement by the nephew of the mistress of the house she was working in. She was raped by two police constables at the police station.

But how she came to be at the police station is to me, important. Her brother brought her in. Patriarchy doesn’t operate only at the father’s level. Patriarchy operates at the next level and operates much more viciously and crudely at that level (where for instance the brother says -- she’s coming home late, she’s talking to the boys; everybody at college is talking about her). She had no parents, so her brother went and complained. Then the Nagpur sessions court said Mathura is a liar, Mathura made up this whole story. She wants to sound virtuous in front of her boyfriend and brother so she said she was raped. So the policemen were acquitted. It goes on appeal, and the High Court says no, acquired acquiescence is not consent, and they punish the guilty policemen. The case goes to the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court reverses it. It changes the conviction into acquittal -- we uphold what the sessions court says, that Mathura is a liar.

Why did the court think she had made up the story? There were no injuries on her body. According to the Supreme Court, if she was virtuous, she would have guarded her virginity and chastity more than her life. They said that virginity is the most precious thing for an Indian woman. Hindu women will not easily lose their virginity. Does this mean that other women will? Hindu women won’t, Indian women won’t, but foreign women will? Upper-class women will not, but for tribal women rape is part of their culture? So we have already marked out which group, class and community find virginity and chastity most important.

This is the understanding of rape that we have today: that rape is worse than death. And since there were no injuries on her body, she does not consider her virginity more important than her death. And if you have lost your virginity at a pre-marital stage, then how can you be worthy of justice? Because you have to come to court with clean hands…you have to come to court worthy of justice and you should be a woman whose rights need to be protected. Mathura wasn’t one. A tribal girl, whose virginity had been lost, is available for rape to all and sundry. This is the situation we started with in 1980, with how the Supreme Court reasoned, how the Supreme Court thinks of bodily autonomy, the bodily integrity of women. That when there are no injuries, there is no rape.

When I come here today to give this lecture, and for this campaign, and see this one judgment in the newspaper about the girl who has withdrawn her statements against her father, I feel our entire campaign has collapsed. We know the number of rapes that occur. Out of that the number of rapes that get actually reported, out of that how many get charge-sheeted, and how many get to the sessions courts. It has taken us 25 years to change the framework of rape from rape to sexual abuse. And to get it acknowledged that sexual abuse is not something that happens outside: brothers can abuse sisters, and uncles can abuse their nieces, fathers can rape their daughters.

Post-1995, we had come to this situation of looking at rape in a much more complex manner as sexual abuse. Sexual abuse of minors, non-penetrative sex, insertion of objects, oral sex…a whole gamut of sexual abuse has been brought under this new law that has been formulated. The whole confines of the earlier law which according to me was extremely patriarchal, said that only penetration is rape, and there’s nothing else. Now we have come to a point where we say that a whole lot of sexual violations of a woman’s bodily integrity constitute offence.

Stricter punitive measures aren’t enough
When we started, we did not have the confidence to have a feminist framework for rape. The framework continued to be patriarchal, where there had to be some penetration. What we wanted was more stringent punishment. What did we ask the State? Increase punishment: seven years minimum punishment, ten years for aggravated. And we got it.
We didn’t even get the Evidence Act changed: Section 155 clause 4, where past sexual history cannot be brought into a rape trial. It got amended in 2003. This law was used to humiliate women and girls who are ready to file a complaint and whose case goes up for trial: who’s your boyfriend? What kind of mother? Is she divorced? There were a whole lot of things you could humiliate the girl with on the basis of her sexual behaviour, not only with the man in question, but with anybody. That became a defense for the accused, but still we didn’t get it. What we did get was an increase in punishment. Is that enough?

Take the issue of dowry and dowry deaths. All of us who campaign against violence against women, campaign against these two issues -- rape and dowry death. We believe that death happens in the homes of women in the case of dowry death. The death is related to dowry. All our laws were based on this premise -- 304B on dowry death, 498A related to cruelty to the wife, where one of the major causes is dowry harassment. Dowry is the culprit, we said. The slogan was, ‘Don’t give dowry, don’t take dowry’. But we didn’t question that if this girl doesn’t get dowry, what does she actually get when the patriarchal biases of the family still operate so strongly? So first the girl was to be married off with dowry, now she is to be married off without dowry. Don’t give gifts. Don’t give dowry. Don’t give anything to the girl. Don’t come back. Stay there till you die, and if you die, we will make a case to get the dowry back.

But is violence against women always related to dowry? All the cases of boys throwing acid at women who have thwarted them are not related to dowry. In every case the mother-in-law need not harass the daughter-in-law for dowry, but it took us 20 years to say that violence is not just about dowry. Domestic violence is not always linked to dowry.

First and foremost, why do we need to marry off the daughter? She can have a good job, she can be a social worker, but she’s not complete if she’s not married. Why is rape a state worse than death? Because now, the Supreme Court said, she can’t get married, because her virginity is lost. Parents would put a rape as well as an incident of consensual sex on the same level, because in both cases they cannot marry off the daughter to somebody else. These are the issues we really need to think about. Even if girls are allowed to study, generally it is up to a certain level. Even if they are well-educated, they are not allowed to work. Or they can work under restrictions. Why? So that their chances of marriage are not marred. If you’ve studied more, then where will you get suitable boys? In our society, the boy should have studied more than the girl.

In the end it comes back to the fact that the girl’s parents are responsible for getting her married, and for not allowing her to come back, for making her stay in the marital home. The patriarchal mode continues to operate in her home as much as or more than in her husband’s home. How are we going to change these social attitudes?

We had a case in Pune, the Manjushree Sarda case, of a husband murdering his wife. The husband was having an affair and the woman was depressed, so she wrote letters to her mother saying she was very depressed. The husband worked in a chemical factory. The poison he administered to her is not available over the counter, but it is available in the factory where he worked. He administered the poison to her. All her letters were read in court. They said that she was depressed, and wanted to die. The man was acquitted. Not only was he acquitted, but while the trial was going on, somebody else gave their daughter to this man. While this campaign was going on. So do you think all these stricter punitive measures will help us? Something much deeper is wrong here, and the campaign against violence against women needs to address that. We need to find a way to bring about fundamental changes in mindset and attitudes.

Right to Shelter and domestic violence
It took us 25 years to realise what domestic violence is, and that the Domestic Violence Act, which punishes the husband and keeps him under lock and key, is not the answer for her survival, because if he is behind bars, what will she eat? Only if he works, can she eat. And, if it’s a civil imprisonment, she has to pay to keep him there. Today, for the first time we recognise that the woman who suffers violence needs shelter. Denying that shelter is violence against women. You don’t have to beat them, this is a form of violence, too. A lot of women suffer not because of dowry. Their salary is taken away. Their husbands are having affairs. The threat of being thrown out is constantly given. We need to look into the concerns of modern women. We still go under the law of maintenance. Half the women don’t need maintenance, as they are working, and anyway a lot of them are not entitled to it. What they need is the right to shelter -- a roof over their heads. In the new Domestic Violence Act, for the first time we recognise that a woman needs a roof over her head. This remedy could have been used even earlier by innovative lawyers to get an injunction saying that this woman cannot be thrown out of her home. It’s not stricter punitive measures that we need – it’s innovative and activist lawyers who will fight for women’s rights.

Rakhmabai as an icon for the women’s movement

There is a need for the women’s movement to take stock of our history to find inspiring icons who personify the credibility of our resistance.

Rakhmabai was a very important icon of the women’s movement. She was from the carpenter caste. She was married when she was 13 years old. In the case of child marriage, the girl was not sent to the husband’s house until she grew up. Then there is a second ceremony. When Rakhmabai became an adult, her husband asked for her. She refused to go. There was a case for restitution of conjugal rights, in 1884, where the first judge said that there is a difference between restitution of conjugal rights and institution of conjugality. Only if conjugality has been instituted and then the girl has left, can we restitute conjugality. But we cannot put the girl there for him to have sex with her: that is not what the law says. Everybody against child marriage supported her and the others supported the husband. That’s how the case was fought. And in appeal, the two judges said, no, she must go back. But Rakhmabai still stood her ground. She stood there and said, send me to prison, but I will not go back to my husband.

After 25 years of our campaign against violence, why don’t we adopt Rakhmabai as our symbol of strength? Why do we look for international symbols? Unless we understand our own history, how will we fight this battle?

In 2005, we’re still talking about women having to uphold family pressure, family honour, family this and that. Why don’t we carry the tradition of Rakhmabai?

(This article is based on a public lecture by Flavia Agnes, lawyer and women’s rights activist, in Pune on November 26, 2005. The talk was part of a fortnight-long campaign against violence against women, coordinated by the Centre for Communication and Development Studies and its outreach programme, Open Space.)

InfoChange News & Features

How to measure a country's HIV burden

2006-04-18T22:16:00.000-07:00

The figure for HIV prevalence in India for 2004 looks encouraging -- an increase of only 28,000. But how has this figure been arrived at? And how accurate is it?

Every year the National AIDS Control Organisation (NACO) releases figures on India 's HIV burden. These figures are based on data from annual sentinel surveillance -- blood samples are taken from designated ‘sentinel' groups in every state and union territory in the country. The sentinel groups are pregnant women at government hospitals, clients visiting sexually transmitted diseases (STD) clinics, and groups with high risk behaviour such as female sex workers, men having sex with men, and injecting drug users. Most surveillance sites are in urban areas although a certain number of rural sentinel sites are also sampled to get an idea of HIV prevalence in rural areas. A specified number of samples is collected from each sentinel site (400 from the sites of pregnant women and 250 from others) and tested for HIV. Incidentally, India has the largest HIV sentinel surveillance programme in the world. In 2004, it was carried out at more than 650 sites throughout the country.

Sentinel surveillance is used along with other measures to look at trends in HIV prevalence. Information from various sources is triangulated -- surveillance data, number of AIDS cases reported, number of AIDS deaths reported, age-specific mortality, blood bank data, and size of population of groups with high risk behaviour. The behavioural surveillance survey is an excellent way of monitoring risk behaviour. The first national behavioural surveillance survey was conducted in 2001. A second round is being planned.

Sentinel surveillance is a good tool for noting trends in HIV prevalence, and changes over the years. It is a costly and labour-intensive exercise (over Rs 2-3 crore is spent every year), is well carried out and generally well supervised. External quality assurance in the testing of samples is also done.

The problem arises when sentinel surveillance data is used to estimate a country's HIV burden. Sentinel surveillance is not designed for this.

Estimating the HIV burden in a low prevalence area

For one, HIV is not very prevalent among the general population. The chances that a sample survey will be accurate depend partly on the prevalence of the condition. The lower the prevalence, the higher the minimum sample needed. Also, sampling biases are worsened when the condition has a low prevalence.

And there are various biases in the existing sampling process. For example, practically all sentinel sites are in government hospitals, whereas the majority of people use private services. We don't know the HIV prevalence among those who attend private hospitals. Estimates of the overall HIV burden are mainly based on prevalence among pregnant women attending government hospitals. This excludes those who go to private hospitals for antenatal care -- and those who don't receive any healthcare at all.

Further, the samples are of pregnant women and various groups with risk behaviour. They offer no direct information on other women or on men outside these groups. Finally, samples taken from STD clinics are intrinsically biased -- they are taken from people with symptoms of a sexually transmitted disease who attend government STD clinics for treatment.

In addition, if the condition is unevenly distributed in the population any sample taken will not be representative of this population. Representative samples are necessary in order to make projections or estimates, or else the results will be unreliable. To illustrate, each state provides 400 samples each for the annual surveillance, from several antenatal clinics. Just two or three positive samples among them could skew the overall results. In Uttar Pradesh, in 2003, at least eight of the 17 antenatal clinics did not have a single positive sample.

By contrast, in South Africa , the antenatal prevalence in 2003 was 28%. If they had used the same system as ours they would have had 112 positive samples out of 400 samples at a single site.

The only way to get an accurate picture of the HIV burden is through a ‘head count', which obviously is not possible. So one has to be satisfied with the limitations of using sentinel surveillance data.

Assumptions behind the NACO algorithm

When NACO mentions an increase of 28,000 in the last year, it is referring to an estimated number based on a calculation. When such estimates are made, the policy is to look at trends over time rather than the value in a particular year, in assessing the rate of growth of the epidemic. This is because since these figures are projected estimates based on sample surveys, sampling errors affect the final estimate.

If one looks at the rate of increase of HIV burden, in 2002 there was an increase of 6.1 lakh over 2001. In 2003 there was an increase of 5.26 lakh over 2002. In 2004 there is an increase of only 28,000. It is quite possible this represents a true slowing of the epidemic due to certain preventive efforts paying off. But one can be really certain only if a similar slowing is seen in subsequent years as well. We don't have to wait very long to find out. The preliminary results of this year's surveillance round should be available by the end of November.

NACO uses an algorithm to calculate the HIV burden using sentinel surveillance data. The algorithm uses the following information: HIV prevalence among pregnant women, prevalence among STD clinic attendees, percentage of men and women, between the ages of 15 and 49, in urban and rural areas, ratio of HIV prevalence among men and women, ratio of HIV prevalence in the urban population to that of the rural population, etc. This requires using certain assumptions that could result in large margins of error in the final result. From time to time NACO also makes changes in the algorithm taking new evidence into account to help make a better estimate.

These official calculations by NACO are made by a select team of experts including people from the World Health Organisation (WHO) and UNAIDS.

Only NACO does surveillance in India on a national level. All the other estimates being discussed by various individuals and organisations today are projections based on NACO's sentinel surveillance data. Using different assumptions and algorithms result in different estimates.

Actually it matters little if we have more HIV cases than South Africa . Comparisons should be based on proportions -- per capita or a fraction of the population -- not absolute numbers. South Africa has an adult HIV prevalence of about 21.5% and an estimated HIV burden of 53 lakh. In India , 0.91% of adults have HIV, which is a relatively low figure; our estimated burden is 51.3 lakh. India 's huge population means that even an increase of 0.1% in prevalence will add 5 lakh more infected people. So this controversy over whether or not we have overtaken South Africa , which has an HIV burden of 53 lakh, is pointless.

In India , which has an overall low HIV prevalence and a non-uniform spread, when we make projections with only 400 samples from each site there are bound to be uncertainties in the final estimate. No one can be sure about the margin of error. But since 1998, when sentinel surveillance was first done on a national level, a number of states have registered only marginal increases in HIV prevalence. Many large states such as Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Bihar , etc, have only 0%-0.25% prevalence levels. This indicates that HIV is not spreading as rapidly as we once thought it would in our country.

In any case, why be sensitive about HIV estimates? A large estimate does not necessarily mean that the AIDS control programme is failing.

The picture today

I was able to take a look at a considerable portion of the surveillance data for 2004. There is surprisingly little increase in prevalence. Many states have remained at the same levels for years. Among the high prevalence states, Andhra Pradesh has worsened. Karnataka and Maharashtra also have major problems. Tamil Nadu, which has been hovering at a prevalence level of 0.7% among pregnant women for the last three years, should no longer be considered a high prevalence state.

How do we reconcile this with the opinions of civil society organisations that claim that the country's HIV burden is much higher than that claimed by NACO?

Civil society organisations generally see only a small part of the whole picture. They tend to see people who are symptomatic or have AIDS. The number of symptomatic people and people with AIDS is certainly increasing, since those infected years ago are now developing symptoms/AIDS. There is no doubt that doctors and civil society organisations are seeing more people who need care. But a spate of AIDS cases does not mean an absolute increase in the number of people infected. All it means is that the epidemic is becoming more visible now since the proportion of symptomatic patients has increased.

There is another factor as well. AIDS is now a big industry. Civil society organisations (and states too) become uncomfortable when surveillance and other data show that the HIV epidemic is not increasing as rapidly as was expected. This means that expected levels of funding will not materialise. So it is in their best interests to propagate a high HIV level myth.

The quality of surveillance is improving every year. Also, the algorithm for making estimates has slowly been modified based on improved information. The algorithm used for 2003 was better than the one used in 1998. Both are available on NACO's website.

With an effective anti-retroviral therapy (ART) programme the number of people living with HIV will increase. Therefore the burden will go up instead of coming down. But it would be inaccurate to say that the ART programme has resulted in reducing HIV prevalence. The ART programme was started only on April 1, 2004 , while the annual sentinel surveillance got over by September 30, 2004 . By this time only a few hundred people in the country had received ART and so the programme cannot be said to have had any effect on the HIV burden as estimated for 2004.

InfoChange News & Features

HIV: The numbers controversy

2006-04-18T22:06:00.000-07:00

Do we have 2 million or 20 million HIV-positive in India? Or is there a plateuing of the epidemic? Speculative and alarmist figures about the number of Indians affected by HIV/AIDS have added to public confusion and affected the programme's credibility. This is the first in a series of articles on the issues and controversies surrounding HIV in India

HIV and AIDS have been the centre of controversy since the early-1980s, when immune-deficiency illnesses were identified in otherwise healthy men in the US. The controversies have continued over the last two decades to the present day, even as huge amounts of money are being spent, internationally and in India, on prevention programmes, vaccine research and drugs believed to keep infection under control without cure.

This series of articles on HIV and AIDS will examine all these controversies and place several questions in perspective. The first big controversy has to do with the numbers. How accurate is the method by which official estimates and predictions of HIV infection are made? What is their relative significance when compared to other health problems in India? And does it make a difference? Other articles in this series will ask whether HIV prevention and treatment for AIDS should be a vertical programme or integrated into the health services; whether research into a vaccine will benefit India or whether Indians will be used as guineapigs; whether mandatory premarital testing is possible and ethical, and whether patients have the right to treatment or the right to refuse treatment. There are other issues too, but first, the numbers controversy.

In November 2002, a US government report predicting that India would have 20 million people with HIV in a couple of years received much press publicity as well as a lot of flak. This was only the latest in a series of speculative and alarmist figures that have added to public confusion and affected the programme's credibility. For some years now, India has been mentioned in international reports as leading in the number of people with HIV, sometimes the first in the world, sometimes the first in Asia. In 1996 we were told there were between three and five million people with HIV in India. In 2000, up to three lakh were said to have died as a result of AIDS in India. Indian government sources have announced figures disputed by international organisations, and vice versa, and all of it has been confusing. For most of us average readers, this would make our eyes glaze over.

Estimates of HIV infection are based on screening at designated sentinel surveillance sites in the country. The number of sites has grown over the years from 55 in 1994, to 180 in 1998 and 232 in 2000. As of August 2001, there were 320 sentinel testing sites under the supervision of the National AIDS Control Organisation (NACO). These include STD clinics and prenatal clinics, as well as other sites to look at the prevalence of HIV among injecting drug users, sex workers and men who have sex with men. The testing is meant to be anonymous and unlinked - the test results cannot be traced back to any individual.

Blood samples collected at these centres are tested for HIV. Based on various calculations - agreed upon by epidemiologists and bio-statisticians at NACO, WHO and UNAIDS -- estimates are arrived at on the prevalence of HIV among populations with high risk behaviour as well as the general population. The prevalence of HIV among the pregnant women surveyed is used to estimate the prevalence of HIV in the general population in that particular geographical area. All these figures are used to estimate the number of HIV infections at the national level.

All that sounds very good, but there are a number of problems. For one, even NACO admits that the surveillance machinery needs improvement. Does the testing at these sites present a reasonably accurate picture of HIV prevalence in the population in various parts of the country? If it is bad now, it was worse earlier when there were fewer centres, and what do we make of the figures from those years? Third, who knows about the quality of data collection in states with abysmal health infrastructures and related facilities? And finally, the estimates have a low, medium and high estimate and the official estimate is always the high estimate. We must presume that the models and calculations by which the estimates are arrived at, are appropriate.

Estimates for the last four years might also raise further questions. According to the National AIDS Control Organisation's website, the estimated number of adults living with HIV was 3.5 million in 1998, 3.7 million in 1999, 3.86 million in 2000 and 3.97 million in 2001.If those figures are reasonably accurate, one might wonder what they mean. The number of new infections each year was 0.2 million in 1998-99, 0.16 million in 1999-2000, and 0.11 million in 2000-2001. So is there a gradual decrease in new infections? One might argue that the decrease is even more significant since the country's population has gone up over this period. NACO suggests that "over a period of time, the new infections may reduce to a negligible number, which is an indicator of the plateauing of the epidemic."

If indeed there has been a drop, should we believe that an effective AIDS prevention programme is responsible? Or should we believe that this is the result of a natural decline in the epidemic? How accurate are these figures anyway? It is interesting that the government acknowledges the limitations of the information from its existing surveillance system.

Others might argue that all this quibbling about numbers is irrelevant, that it doesn't matter whether there are 2 or 20 million people with HIV -- surely the problem is obvious enough, and we should be concentrating our energy on preventing more people from getting infected, on providing treatment to those who are already HIV-positive, and on addressing the many associated socio-economic, ethical, and legal dilemmas that HIV has created.

It is also argued that HIV should not be compared to other illnesses because it affects all other diseases. So, for example, more people will die of TB because of HIV. Also, as a virus transmitted mostly by unprotected sex, it affects young people at the most productive stage of their lives. This will have enormous economic consequences, to families as well as the overall economy. Incidentally, the prevalence of HIV in India is relatively low but the large population results in a high overall number which could have a big impact.

There are many reasons why numbers are relevant. For one, inflated figures can be used to take resources and energy away from other equally important public health programmes. At the same time, underestimates can result in a problem being ignored. When inaccurate figures are challenged and proven wrong the programme can backfire. Finally, people have a right to accurate estimates of all health problems and their relative burden - on people's health, the health care system, individuals' finances and the economy. They also deserve access to health and welfare services that meet their needs. It is not a good idea to quote high numbers without ensuring accessible and affordable health services to all who need them.

InfoChange News & Features

White asbestos: A ticking time bomb

2006-04-18T00:08:00.000-07:00

While 40 countries worldwide have banned the use of asbestos, the Indian government is actually discussing lifting the ban on asbestos mining imposed in 1986

With the media’s attention focussed on the Clemenceau and the dangers of dealing with asbestos in the ship-breaking process, we seem to have forgotten the dangers posed by asbestos to asbestos miners, construction workers who break up asbestos cement roofs and pipes, and ordinary people whose homes have asbestos roofs. Epidemiological research shows that even in countries where asbestos is banned, earlier exposure could be causing around 30 deaths a day.
According to the International Labour Organisation, asbestos continues to be the Number 1 carcinogen in the world. In its report titled ‘Asbestos: The Iron Grip of Latency’, the organisation says that the dumping of asbestos on developing countries will “prove to be a health time bomb in these countries in 20 to 30 years’ time”.

India has been using asbestos for more than 70 years. It consumes about 125,000 tonnes of asbestos every year, of which 100,000 tonnes are imported from Canada, Russian, Brazil and Zimbabwe. Demand is expected to grow by 15% over the next few years.

The industry seems to enjoy state support. On January 1, 2006, production began at an asbestos cement factory in Rae Bareli, Uttar Pradesh, Sonia Gandhi’s constituency. The factory belongs to Visaka Industries, one of India’s largest asbestos groups, which has asbestos cement factories in Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, West Bengal and Karnataka. The chairman of Visaka Industries is G Vivekanand, son of an MP. Visaka Industries runs asbestos plants in Midnapore, West Bengal, as well, where the major trade unions have called for a ban on asbestos and have written a letter of protest to the prime minister. States like Assam, Uttar Pradesh and Tamil Nadu even run their own asbestos factory units.

On February 27, 2006, Minister of State for the Environment, Namo Narain Meena, stated in Parliament: “No complaints have so far been received regarding its (asbestos’) carcinogenic content and its hazard to health and the environment.”

How can the political establishment fail to acknowledge that over 40 countries around the world, including Europe, have banned all forms of asbestos including chrysotile (white asbestos) because of the health risks they pose?

In an August 2005 paper published in the American Journal of Industrial Medicine, titled ‘Occupational Asbestos Exposure and Predictable Asbestos-related Diseases in India’, Dr S K Dave, senior deputy director, National Institute of Occupational Health

(NIOH),concludes:“Based on knowledge of past and current exposure to asbestos in industry, we can predict a future occurrence of clinical asbestos-related diseases -- pleural changes, pulmonary fibrosis, bronchogenic carcinoma, and diffuse malignant mesothelioma. These cases of asbestos-related diseases are expected to occur in asbestos-exposed workers from mining, milling and manufacturing as well as in those with secondary exposure to asbestos-containing materials, including construction and maintenance workers, users of asbestos-containing consumer products, and occupants of asbestos-containing buildings.” Dr Dave’s surveys of asbestos-exposed workers reveal significant occupational exposure.

Although all this clearly implies that asbestos is a serious health hazard, astonishingly, officials and ministers still object to proposals of it being phased out and banned completely. The Ministry of Mines and Minerals has, in fact, proposed lifting the ban on chrysotile asbestos mining. On April 29, 2005, Minister of State for Coal and Mines, Dr Dasari Narayana Rao, in a written reply to the Lok Sabha, stated that an Indian Bureau of Mines study “has recommended that the ban imposed on grant and renewal of mining leases and expansion of mining may be lifted”. The ban on mining asbestos was imposed in phases in 1986 and 1993; there is, however, no ban on its use, manufacture, export or import.

On March 10, 2006, the Ministry of Mines and Minerals issued a statement saying: “The Indian Bureau of Mines (IBM) has been asked to work out necessary safeguards/measures in consultation with the Central Pollution Control Board subject to which chrysotile asbestos mining can be permitted so as to ensure workers’ safety.” The press release asked the IBM to assess the feasibility of lifting the ban on the expansion of asbestos mining by conducting a scientific study of pollution levels in asbestos mines and processing plants in Rajasthan and in Andhra Pradesh. And to suggest appropriate mitigation measures.

Subsequently, the Industrial Toxicology Research Centre (ITRC), Lucknow, carried out a series of detailed studies on asbestos-based industries in the organised and unorganised sectors. The project, sponsored by the Central Pollution Control Board, included 18 units in Beawar and Deogarh in Rajasthan (unorganised), and five units in the organised sectors of Mumbai and Aurangabad in Maharashtra. In both Beawer and Deogarh, where the technology used is poor and laws and regulations simply do not exist, there were extremely high fibre concentrations at the milling and grinding units. None of the workers used gloves, masks or protective clothing. They used the primitive manual way of grinding. Fibre concentrations here were 2-18 times higher than the Indian standard of 0.5 fibre/cc. It was also observed that in these units, not only workers but infants and children too were exposed to high amounts of asbestos, as they were found playing on heaps of asbestos. Clinical studies conducted at both types of units revealed significant lung function abnormalities among factory workers. Further, lung function tests among female workers in the unorganised sector showed greater damage than among their male counterparts, possibly due to exposure to both unprocessed biomass fuel in the home and asbestos fibre at work.

Radiological examinations revealed the prevalence of a large number of asbestosis cases in both the organised and unorganised sectors. The prevalence of asbestosis in less than five years is alarming. Asbestos bodies in the sputum of workers were detected as a mark of exposure. Cytogenetic analysis revealed a greater number of micronuclei formations in the workers’ blood – this is a biomarker for cancer.

Dr Qamar Rahman, senior scientist with the ITRC and visiting professor at Rostock University, Germany, says: “On the basis of the report and recent studies conducted at the milling units, the ban on asbestos mining should not be lifted. Mining and processing are interrelated, and conditions need to be improved at both places simultaneously. In the milling or grinding areas, fibre concentrations are very high and workers do not use gloves, masks or protective clothing. They employ primitive manual ways of grinding. The housekeeping in the units is also very bad.
“At the moment, unauthorised mining of asbestos is going on in Rajasthan and workers are heavily exposed. If the ban is lifted, conditions will further deteriorate. Keeping in view the above facts, the ban on asbestos mining should not be lifted,” said Dr Rahman in her comments to the government in a report on lifting the asbestos ban.

But the Ministry of Mines and Minerals chooses to ignore such suggestions in the same way it has ignored the plight of victims of chrysotile asbestos mining in the Roro hills, Chaibasa, Jharkhand, abandoned by Hyderabad Asbestos Cement Products Limited (now known as Hyderabad Industries Limited).

In fact, following a Supreme Court order, the Ministry of Labour constituted a special committee, under the chairmanship of S K Saxena, director general, Directorate of General Factory Advice Service and Labour, on the issue of medical benefits and compensation to workers affected by hazardous waste. The committee submitted its report in May 2004, which mentions lung cancer and mesothelioma having being caused by exposure to asbestos. But the environment ministry says it has not received any complaints so far. The Ministry of Mines and Minerals is undoing the good it did in the past by proposing to lift the ban on asbestos mining.

A short history of asbestos Asbestos is a proven carcinogenic substance. Asbestos is the generic term for a number of naturally occurring fibrous minerals. Commercially, the most important of these are the white, blue and brown varieties, otherwise known as chrysotile (a serpentine asbestos), crocidolite, and amosite (both amphiboles). Asbestos is widely distributed, but the largest deposits are found in Canada and Russia.

The first medical article on the hazards of asbestos dust appeared in the British Medical Journal in 1924. Following inquiries, the British government introduced regulations to control dangerous dust emissions at asbestos factories in the United Kingdom. Only in the 1960s, following the revelation that mesothelioma was an asbestos-related disease and that all workers, not only those employed in the dustiest parts of asbestos factories, were also at risk were the nature and scale of the hazard re-assessed.

In Europe, America and elsewhere new and increasingly strict regulations were enacted to control the hazards of asbestos. When these did not work, country after country started banning it.

Environmental monitoring and health surveys since 1984 have conducted in-depth studies on asbestos-based industries in India, highlighting vulnerable populations. It was noticed that workers occupationally exposed to asbestos have maximum impairment in their pulmonary function tests. Besides consumers, workers employed at cement-asbestos factories also suffer from exposure to asbestos. The incubation period is long; it takes as many as 25-30 years for asbestos fibres to make their presence felt in the human body. When it does, the condition is incurable. In developed countries, insurance companies have stopped covering workers employed in asbestos factories and mines.

By the mid-20th century, asbestos was an ingredient in all manner of things including motor cars (in brakes, clutch linings and gaskets), buildings (for insulation and fireproofing), warships (again, for insulation and fireproofing), domestic products (such as ironing boards) and electrical distribution systems.

Asbestos is widely used in India in the manufacture of pressure and non-pressure pipes used for water supply, sewage and drainage, packing material, brake linings and joints used in automobiles, heavy equipment, nuclear power plants, thermal power plants, etc. To meet the country’s requirements, chrysotile asbestos was imported during 2002-03, 2003-04 and 2004-05, to the tune of nearly 100,000 metric tonnes a year.

InfoChange News & Features, April 2006

Communal Polarisations: Shirdi is losing its Sufi traditions

2006-04-17T23:14:00.000-07:00

In the temple town of Shirdi, Moharrum is no longer celebrated alongside Ram Navami, a practice begun by the Sufi saint Sai Baba. The cracks in the town’s legendary amity between Hindus and Muslims are beginning to show

A stone’s throw from the bustling shrine of Sai Baba in Shirdi, 200 km from Mumbai, priceless chronicles detailing the life and sayings of the Sufi saint are crumbling to bits.

More than 200 pages of hand-written manuscripts written by Haji Abdul Baba between 1895 and 1918 -- the year Sai Baba passed away -- are lying at his former cottage which has been turned into a shrine by his descendants.

“Abdul Baba used to write down the utterances of Sai Baba that dealt with the unity of the Hindu and Muslim faiths,” says his grandson Hameed who manages the shrine. The text of Abdul Baba’s manuscripts draws parallels between the teachings of the Prophet Muhammad and the Hindu legends associated with Vishnu, Shiva and Brahma.

Sai Baba’s discourses, as chronicled by Abdul Baba, also dealt with the prevalent Sufi traditions of the time, in parts of Deccan Maharashtra and northern India. According to Hameed, his ancestor’s notes are a blend of Deccani Urdu and the now-extinct Modi script that was widely used in Maharashtra until the mid-1950s.

With little assistance from the Shirdi Sansthan, Maharashtra’s richest shrine, which has annual revenues touching Rs 100 crore, Hameed has been forced to dump the precious notes into a cupboard along with the tattered effects of Abdul Baba. “It would help if the authorities helped preserve these documents,” he says, showing the papers encased in ordinary polythene bags.

Only a small fraction of Sai Baba’s devotees who throng the magnificent shrine next door make their way to the still-humble cottage of Abdul Baba. But Hameed dutifully allows everyone to handle the parchment and other effects of his ancestor, regardless of the resulting wear-and-tear.

The managers of the Shirdi Sansthan are disinterested in Sai Baba’s chronicles. “It is the private property of his descendants,” says Bhausaheb Watchure, government-appointed administrator of the shrine.

Hameed himself is reluctant to hand over the manuscripts to the trust, saying he is worried about their safety. “It would help if private bodies came forward to preserve these papers,” he says.

Delhi-based researcher Yoginder Sikand, who has studied the evolving worship of Sai Baba, warns that Maharashtra’s politicians who control the shrine are uncomfortable with the saint’s Muslim origins, as depicted in the chronicles. “The Sai Baba shrine is completely Brahminised and all traces of Islam are being erased from here,” Sikand says.

For instance, says Sikand, the trust has abandoned the practice, started by Sai Baba, of celebrating Moharrum along with Ram Navami. Now only Ram Navami is celebrated in Shirdi though the trust’s museum clearly documents the two festivals being celebrated together here.

As he emerges from the little mosque, 85-year-old Ghulam Habib Abdul Rehman Pathan seems an unlikely candidate to sing paeans to Bollywood. A devout Muslim sporting a luxurious beard, Pathan remembers a time when Sai Baba’s shrine at Shirdi was humbler and devotees came in tongas and bullock carts to pray.

“After Manoj Kumar made his movie on Sai Baba, life changed entirely here,” says Pathan. The cult film of the 1970s has paid rich dividends to Shirdi’s residents. With pilgrims flocking from across the country, the simple mud huts of Sai Baba’s early devotees have transformed into brick-and-mortar structures housing small businesses.

Even the dilapidated mosque that Sai Baba made his home has given way to an elaborately carved stone structure. “The mosque gradually crumbled and the place got several facelifts in subsequent decades,” recollects the wizened Pathan who, as a boy, earned Rs 1.50 a month as a watchman.

Working on a project for the National Foundation for India, I am eager to find traces of the legendary amity that saw groups of Hindus and Muslims worshipping side-by-side here. Instead, I find middle-class India swaying to tunes from tinsel town. “You will identify the Muslims in the queue as they usually donate a chador at the mazaar,” says Razzaq Shaikh, a local leader.

On the face of it there is little discernible difference between the worshippers clad uniformly in western-style shirts and trousers for the men, and churidars for the women.

Eastman Colour has touched up even the images of Sai Baba sold at wayside stalls. “Few people buy photographs of the real Sai Baba clad in tattered robes leaning against the walls of his mud hut,” admits the owner of a local photo studio. “People have forgotten that Sai Baba lived a simple life,” says Shivaji Bhaskarrao Shinde, an employee of the Shirdi Trust. His family heirlooms include coins, notes and photographs of his great
grandmother Laxmibai with the Sufi saint.

Old-timers say Sai Baba used to hold langars, or community kitchens, where Hindus and Muslims were served food out of the same pot. “Baba himself used to serve non-vegetarian food to his devotees,” says Shinde. Now, the Maharashtra government has banned the sale of meat near the shrine, to the consternation of local Muslims and dalits. Even the Moharrum procession at Shirdi has been abandoned, in sharp contrast to the opulent Ram Navami celebrations, even though Sai Baba himself insisted on observing the rituals of both communities.

The Maharashtra government’s move to placate the rich mercantile Hindu castes has paid off, with the Shirdi Trust earning Rs 90 crore last year.

As murmurs of discontent grow in Shirdi, the trust has come up with a brainwave. “We have enough land in this town to recreate a model of old Shirdi to educate and entertain pilgrims,” says Bhausaheb Watchure, the bureaucrat who manages the Shirdi Trust. s

(These articles are part of a series on ‘Communal Polarisation and Threat to Shared Traditions in India’, supported by the National Foundation for India. They first appeared in the Tribune)

InfoChange News & Features, April 2006

The power of video for change

2006-04-17T22:56:00.000-07:00

For the poor illiterate women of the Self-Employed Women’s Association (SEWA), Video SEWA has become a tool for change. What started as a sensitisation programme soon turned into a mechanism for protest and marshalling public opinion

As we walk down the dusty lane beside the colonial Ellisbridge, we have only a vague idea of where we are headed. Walking past herds of goat and motley groups of hens, we have no idea that our steps will lead us to the gates of a one-of-a-kind film cooperative in Asia. A cooperative that runs on the basic values of democracy and equity. Where everybody gets a chance to express his/her concerns through video.

The people working in a semi-lit room inside the old building that houses Video SEWA have innumerable anecdotes to offer; more anecdotes perhaps than the many tapes piled on wall-to-wall shelves.

In an adjacent room, on a red satranji, Video SEWA members are busy. In one corner, an old woman checks a tape in the VCR. She has on a yellow khadi sari, and her grey hair is tied back in a knot. When we ask her what she is doing she replies that she’s sorting out an old shot that she plans to use in a film she is currently editing.

The woman’s name is Leela Datania. She’s 65 years old and used to be an illiterate vegetable vendor. She lived in a slum with limited access to drinking water and no electricity. And she used to face constant abuse by the police. Today, she’s a confident filmmaker, handling complex broadcast equipment and capturing issues that concern her.

Leelaben says: “Now I can collectively raise and reach the voices of thousands of working women whose concerns and problems never reach the policymakers. Video SEWA is the best thing to have happened in my life.” Her wrinkled face shines as she talks.
How did she effect this remarkable turnaround?

In 1984, Ela Bhatt, a Gandhian and leader of the women’s trade union movement in India, went to Mali for a conference. There, in a remote, dry, dusty village that had no electricity or safe drinking water, she observed a group of poor farmers, mainly women, learning a skill that was completely unfamiliar to them. They were receiving hands-on training in video-filming. The teacher, Martha Stewart from Martha Stewart Communications, New York, was leaving no stone unturned in explaining to them the basics of digital filmmaking.

Bhatt was totally sold on the idea. With support from the United Nations Development Programme and USAID, she managed to bring the Martha Stewart team to Ahmedabad. Twenty women from SEWA were given an intensive three-week training. They were all women from the unorganised sector who were unfamiliar even with basic electrical stuff, let alone digital technology. There was Leelaben, the vegetable vendor, Shubhadraben, the bidi-roller, Taraben, the incense-stick-maker…

Leelaben recalls: “I was dying every day and living every day. As a vegetable vendor I used to sit in Manek Chowk market with two baskets of vegetables. But the police always abused us, displacing us whenever they wished to.”

For Shubhadra, the bidi-roller, protesting against unjustified wages or insufficient security measures in the workplace was difficult before she learnt how to record her demands.
It’s been a long journey since 1984. For the poor illiterate women of SEWA, Video Sewa has become a tool for change. What began as a sensitisation programme has turned into a mechanism for protest and marshalling public opinion. From simply depicting poor women’s concerns, it has become a canvas for information-dissemination, awareness-building and policy advocacy.

But for the users of this technology, there’s no jargon-spewing. The day Leelaben understood the hidden powers of the video she knew immediately what she had to do.

Neelam Dave, coordinator Video SEWA, joined SEWA in 1981. She was among the first group of 20 members to be trained. Although Neelam was a trained photographer she was not exposed to the digital media and she found the training immensely useful. Explaining the effectiveness of video as a communications tool, Neelam says: “Video footage can make the authorities sit up. Leelaben and Shubhadraben both recorded the deplorable conditions of vegetable vendors and bidi-rollers. Armed with the footage, we visited the Ahmedabad civic authorities that responded faster than ever before.”

On a different occasion, the bidi workers of Anand district united to agitate against their employer who had illegally sacked them from their jobs. They had no testimony to back them up, but they had recorded their experiences, which were used as evidence in the Supreme Court, resulting in a favourable judgment and compensation for the women.

Neelamben explains that this is not an isolated incident. “We went to Lucknow some years ago, to organise women doing chikankari embroidery. After the core training programme was over we screened some footage of a rally we had shot in Ahmedabad. The footage related to the demands of readymade garment workers for minimum wages. The Lucknowi women were enthused. They immediately decided to organise a similar rally in Lucknow. Such is the power of video,” says Neelamben.

With over 100 films completed, Video SEWA is now a movement. Somewhere down the line it became more than just a protest tool. It is also a space to discuss and negotiate macro issues like food security, water and sanitation, labour rights and women’s rights.