India's Polls Cool War Fever

By Siddharth Srivastava

The unexpected performance of India's ruling Congress party in this month's state assembly elections has gone some way towards dampening the likelihood of armed conflict between India and Pakistan, which had peaked since the November 26 terrorist attacks on Mumbai.

Government officials have said the New Delhi government, led by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, could be in pause mode following the party's surprising victory in three of the five provincial elections. The poll results seem to indicate that the electorate is more concerned with the government's performance on development and governance issues than its ability to tackle terror.

The opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) had strongly attacked Congress over its failure to prevent recent terrorist attacks in India, particularly the Mumbai strike, in the lead-up to the election. But the ruling party successfully defeated it in Delhi, the northwestern state of Rajasthan, and Mizoram in northeastern India.

Many commentators had predicted a backlash against the government's failure to prevent the Mumbai attack, which left 171 dead, and even Congress leaders admitted privately they were surprised with the results. The BJP's electoral charge, led by stalwarts such as L K Advani, Narender Modi and Rajnath Singh, had focused on the government being "soft on terror".

But rather than reacting to the government's security lapses, the electorate has chosen to reward Congress chief ministers in Delhi, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh who have bucked strong anti-incumbency trends and delivered on basic promises to improve water and electricity supply, roads, and law and order. The electorate appears to have been reluctant to single out the Congress for negligence on terror, which is fair considering there were also major strikes in India during the BJP's tenure of 1998 to 2004.

The Pakistan origins of the militant group behind the Mumbai attack initially provoked the Indian government into threatening "hot pursuit" into Pakistan-administered Kashmir, the disputed mountainous region which has twice led the nations to war since their independence from Britain in 1947. India warned it was planning strikes on militant training camps there ran by the Lashkar-e-Taiba (LET), the group widely thought responsible for the plot, and handed Islamabad a list of 20 terror suspects, including LET leaders, with demands for their arrest and extradition.

"If Congress was defeated in the elections it is almost certain that India would have conducted precision strikes to dismantle terrorist camps [in Pakistan], as Pakistan has refused to hand over any of the known terrorists that Indian wants,'' said one senior official who declined to be named. "New Delhi would have needed to obliterate charges it is soft on terror before the general election next spring."

Sources have indicated that India's military commanders had advised the government it would take just two weeks to launch an attack on Pakistan. The initial plan was to send unmanned aerial vehicles, possibly with the help of Israel, if Islamabad did not take concrete action against the terrorism suspects in Pakistan. The list of 20 suspects handed to Pakistan includes the notorious gangster Dawood Ibrahim, Masood Azhar, the leader of the Jaish-e-Mohammed - LET's parent organization, and Hafez Mohammed Saeed, the LET chief suspected of masterminding the Mumbai attack.

While the election results seem to have postponed the plans for "hot pursuit", it has not been ruled out entirely, as New Delhi has managed to convince Washington of the need to take out the terror infrastructure on Pakistan's border with India.

Since a US ultimatum on December 6 which gave Pakistan 48 hours to act, it has reportedly arrested top LET commander Zakiur Rehman Lakhwi, and struck at the group's camps in Kashmir. Pakistani Defense Minister Chaudhary Ahmed Mukhtar said on Tuesday that Masood Azhar had been put under house arrest. Intelligence sources have told Asia Times Online that most of the terror camps along Pakistan's Kashmir borders have been dismantled. But officials in New Delhi and Washington have been skeptical of the strikes, viewing them as token efforts aimed at easing global pressure.

"How is it that these terrorist leaders have been arrested so easily? India's top commandos needed more than 60 hours to neutralize 10 foot soldiers in Mumbai,'' said one Indian official. "They know that they are going to be mollycoddled and have no fear due to protection by the army. House arrest means nothing - Masood Azhar will continue to have access to every communication tool to continue with his activities and access his people.''

If Pakistan is merely trying to appear strong on the militants until international attentions shifts elsewhere, this may be a high-risk charade, given the high-profile nature of the Mumbai attacks. America is breathing down Islamabad's neck and has given New Delhi the go-ahead to strike targets beyond its borders. At the same time Washington has said it would not tolerate war breaking out between the two nuclear-armed neighbors.

Pakistan has made it clear that it will not hand over any of its recently captured terrorist suspects to India, however, its defense minister has suggested it is prepared for joint interrogations or probes with India. This could be a significant step but this depends on wether the Pakistan government's control of the country is as tenuous as has been suggested. Also, even if there is a joint probe, Pakistan's army could use the opportunity to drum up nationalistic fervor against India.

Meanwhile, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has recently said that the main impetus of the attacks could have been to stir up a Pakistan-India conflict. "These terrorists are undoubtedly unnerved by the increasingly good relations between Pakistan and India, really going back before the civilian government" but certainly since President Asif Ali Zardari came into power, she said in an interview on CBS News Radio on Wednesday.

What's General About a General Election?

By M H Ahssan



There is nothing general about a general election. It is the sum of a set of particular elections in separate but contiguous and occasionally overlapping geographical and demographic spaces.



The Indian electorate lives in concentric circles. The federal state is one definition of such a circle, but not a comprehensive one. Identities can overlap into national space, as well as shrink into regions within a state. The case of Jharkhand yesterday and Telangana today might be obvious, but even newly-formed Chhattisgarh, which offers only 11 MPs to Parliament, has voters with different priorities, as we witnessed in the recent Assembly elections. Raipur, the old haunt of veteran V.C. Shukla, went largely to the party he has rejoined, Congress. But the tribals of Bastar gave the decisive tilt to the final tally, putting the BJP way ahead with an enthusiastic endorsement of the Salwa Judum programme, in which the state Government armed tribals against Naxalites.



This was greeted with palpable despair by urban liberals. But if they want to add to their despair they should note an almost imperceptible reversal of voter-preferences. Till the leadership of Rajiv Gandhi the Congress vote was secure among tribals, Dalits and the poor; the middle classes and the rich would abandon the Congress when they wanted to. After fifteen years of Narasimha Rao, Dr Manmohan Singh and Mrs Sonia Gandhi, the BJP has made serious inroads into the affections of the underprivileged in central India. This is a serious pointer to the growing perception that the Congress has become the party of the rich.



I can think of only two elections which were fought on a single issue: the one in 1977, after the Emergency; and the one in 1984, after Mrs Indira Gandhi’s assassination. Generally, there are a handful of concerns that determine the voter’s decision. But there is always a primary issue, and many secondary ones. Every one of the recent Assembly elections, from Delhi to Mizoram, was a referendum on the Chief Minister rather on the party of the CM. Mrs Sheila Dikshit won re-election in Delhi, not the Congress. The BJP was ahead of the Congress, but Mrs Dikshit was far, far ahead of the man who sought to replace her, Vijay Malhotra.



The Indian voter is more mature than the Indian politician. He was not distracted by emotion, even one as powerful as terrorism inspired by forces hostile to India. He concentrated on what mattered most in an Assembly election, good governance, and he knew that this is provided by an individual, a leader. Equally, the leader is responsible for mismanagement and corruption, where that prevails. He placed terrorism also within the matrix of good governance, for it is the duty of the state to provide security to the citizen. But his judgment was remarkably honest. He would not blame Mrs Dikshit for the collapse of authority in Mumbai. Those who failed in Mumbai, whether at the state or Central level, will be held culpable when their time comes.



Narendra Modi made an interesting point when campaigning for tougher anti-terrorism laws. He told Gujaratis during last year’s Assembly elections that he could assure them a better life, but what was the point of the assurance if they were left with no life to enjoy? He could make this an effective claim only because he had delivered on development. In Delhi, Mrs Dikhshit had the record, and the attacks on her looked like gamesmanship because they were not backed by either a fresh face or fresh ideas. Everywhere, people are tired of politics at the expense of development. And they do not care if development comes wrapped in a tricolour or saffron. The voter is now colour-neutral.



Of course victory and defeat in a state do impact the fortunes of a party. And so the advantage in the next general elections will lie with whichever coalition offers the better collection of Chief Ministers. Or, to put it in another way, which team has fewer disasters in its ranks. The Congress is in serious trouble in the two large states where it is in power. It has been forced to replace its Chief Minister in Maharashtra; unwisely, it shifted merely from a callous face to a lacklustre one. In Andhra, the extraordinary rise of Chiranjeevi is a warning to both the Congress and the Telugu Desam. He is soaking up the gap between anger and what might be called lukewarmth. Its principal ally, the DMK, has become synonymous with corruption, hobbling in the process Prime Minister Singh, who has tolerated putrid partners in order to remain in office. The Congress should feel happier about its prospects in Punjab, to tick off one of its potential assets in the general election balance sheet. A political party might be a broad church, an alliance a broader faith, but every church needs a pastor.



The team must be led by someone who can display authority, and a programme that encompasses a nationwide horizon. Manmohan Singh and L.K. Advani will be their respective team-leaders, of course; but the Third Front will be hampered if it cannot offer a candidate for Prime Minister.



The Delhi result might just be the best thing to happen to the BJP. If it had won, its leaders might have forgotten precisely why they were re-elected in Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh. Media’s fixation on its urban base can be mesmerising, driving out facts from analysis. The BJP presumably has realised that the voter will not pick up anything thrown in its way. Both the slogan and the leader have to be credible. All politicians are prone to get stuck in the treacle of smugness at the first hint of success. The split decision should have sobered all parties. There was a welcome sobriety in the commentary from spokesmen of both the Congress and the BJP following the results. It should have also reaffirmed to both parties that the general election is going to be won by whichever has the better allies. Neither is strong enough to march too far ahead of its partners. This will also have an ameliorating effect on the formation of the next Government in Delhi.



December 2008 was a wake-up call. This should ensure that all political parties go into the general election with their eyes open, and common sense intact.

Exclusive: Spot The Indian!

There is a big, wide, glossy world out there benchpressing our idea of what it means to appear Indian. The writer maps its elaborate rulebook

In Delhi, Anu Thomas, a mother of three children, was horrified when her five-year-old daughter, Meenal, came home from school one day and asked her, “When I grow up, will I have to be a maid?” Meenal’s largely upmarket north Indian classmates had told her that day that someone who was her colour must be a streetchild and would grow up to work in someone’s house. Thomas knew that there was no one in these children’s lives who was dark, who was Meenal’s colour and held a position of power. Neither were there figures in popular culture that her curly-haired daughter resembled or could look up to. If you imagined a globalising India would bring Meenal a greater range of rolemodels, you are wrong. Globalisation has only amplified many of the old biases in India, such as the one that values fair skin. It has also created an army of clones.

In our electronic cocoons, increasingly, we each seek and understand reality through the media and not through our windows. Under these conditions, if all our exposure is to People Like Us, our ability to accept difference shrinks, our discomfort with those even marginally different from us increases. As it stands, in our world, those who can join the army of clones feel smug. Those who cannot, feel anxious.

This was easy enough to see in January in a Lucknow mall. While other stores in the mall stand near-deserted, in one clothing store the racks are teetering with the press of journalists, their skins grey from late nights and poor nutrition. In the centre of this mob are a dozen beautiful, young Amazons — the girls shortlisted for the Lucknow round of Miss India 2009. They are all dressed in white t-shirts and jeans. Only a couple are from Lucknow, the others are from nearby Meerut and Kanpur. Shard-sharp laughter and strangely automaton lines in careful English and rattling Hindi can be heard: “I want to rock the world! I am a perfect package of beauty and brains.” A journalist asks a stunningly pretty girl what her weaknesses are. She responds with a gesture sweeping up and down her body, “Look at me, can you see any flaws?” It is a remarkable, peacock display of confidence.

The beauty contest is a rare occasion when these girls are allowed, encouraged even, to talk about their bodies to (often hostile) strangers. While they wait for their interviews, their sidelong glances assess each other as competitors in a corporate deal might, with smiles and sharp pleasantries. A couple of hours later, the contest is over. Three girls are picked out of the dozen for the next level of the competition.

One of them is a 19-year-old from Lucknow. Manisha (name changed) is one of the tallest in the group, easily the fairest, her lipstick scarlet on her white face. She bears a striking resemblance to Kareena Kapoor. Later, in her mother’s perfectly appointed living room — replete with Jamini Roy prints, — she tells us it is this resemblance that people constantly remarked on which started her on the idea of beauty contests. She shows us pictures of herself, a few years younger and a bit rounder.

Manisha’s mother is a surprise. A senior civil servant, she urges us, “Write in your magazine that girls should think of things other than looks. They should think of their careers, of developing their minds.” While the affection between mother and daughter seems genuine and deep, Manisha comes off looking bad in comparison to her articulate, intelligent mother. Manisha, that evening, understandably could think of nothing except her first beauty contest. But she also seemed genuinely unable to stop thinking that her skin colour had conferred a special destiny upon her, that she was made for greater things. The opposite of what Meenal felt.

Beauty queens are encouraged to think of themselves as role models so it was easy to ask Manisha what she would do when she was one. What would she advise people who were short or dark? Very seriously she replied, “Not everyone can be beautiful but they should try.” Manisha clearly equated short and dark with ugliness. We waited to see if she will qualify this line of thought. She didn’t.

Watching Manisha and her fellow contestants one would imagine this is a nation of identically tall, pale women with pin-straight hair. All but one had been startlingly fair. The lone exception, a girl a half-shade darker, had been visibly unhappy, no journalist kneeling at her feet, no camera flashing in her face. She felt herself outside the magic circle, outside where existed the dark, short and hence, ordinary.

Our eyes are naturally tugged towards the beautiful and the grotesque. No political correctness can change that. Trouble is, the media is now training us to look at more and more people as grotesque, fewer as beautiful. This is one of the dangers of the clone wars.

Dr Partho Majumdar, Human Genetics Department, Indian Statistical Institute, Kolkata says that India has over 100 distinct genetic groups — one of the widest gene pools in the world. From Arunachal Pradesh to Lakshadweep to the Andaman and Nicobar Islands to Himachal Pradesh, Indians look extremely different from each other, our lives are extremely different from each other. But if you were a Martian trying to understand India through popular media you would not see this abundance, and you certainly would not believe Dr Majumdar. A Martian would assume from advertisements that Indians are a nation of tall, fair, Hindu, affluent people who live in cities. A Martian would assume that most Indians are only a hair’s breadth away in appearance from white people.

In a political climate that is increasingly intolerant of difference, a world where our selves are shaped by the image, the shiny surfaces of popular culture are important, and not just for the Martian. It is the shiny surface that is creating our understanding of who an Indian is. And it is on the shiny surface that you see the image of the Indian being homogenised. Santosh Desai, media commentator, says, “I think we are seeing two trends. One, a narrowing of the range of appearances towards a templated look. And two, a seemingly opposite trend where all those who look different are set up as deliberately funny or strange. These ‘funny’ faces are advertising’s stock of ‘real’ people. In effect, this reinforces the template.”

Last year America’s stated desire for diversity saw its biggest challenge. Would it elect a biracial president? In late 2008, when Barack Obama was in the middle of his campaign, an apocryphal story began to do the rounds. A volunteer canvassing for Obama in western Pennsylvania asks a housewife which candidate she intends to vote for. She yells to her husband to find out. From the interior of the house, he calls back, “We’re voting for the nigger!” The housewife turns to the canvasser and calmly repeats her husband’s statement. Liberal raconteurs told this story as a hair-raising but amusing one. Obviously, blatant bigots were voting for Obama. But for liberals themselves, Obama’s colour and race were unavoidably front and centre.

In India, religious and linguistic identity deeply defines political life. The idea of pretending blindness to identity is absurd. However, Indian popular culture does not reflect our wide differences and is increasingly forcing us to present a uniform formulaic face to the world. And to ourselves. Here are some basic rules to understand who the cloned Indian of popular culture is.

RULE 1: All Indians are north Indian unless proven otherwise
Filmmaker Navdeep Singh once said: “The problem for Bollywood is this. Who is its natural audience? Who speaks Hindi? Nobody does. When I had two minutes of Hindi as it’s spoken anywhere in Rajasthan in Manorama Six Feet Under, people complained that it’s a dialect they couldn’t understand. So we have movies about nowhere for people from nowhere.”

While ‘place’ is arriving at a glacial pace to Bollywood scripts, Desai points out that Hindi cinema’s default centre of the world has always lain in fair north India, and old Hindi films were always populated by people called Vicky Arora or Rahul Malhotra.

Of the 28 states and seven union territories of India, the people we see in popular culture are broadly from the Hindi-speaking states. South Indians in advertising land — that fictional universe that dominates our imagination and designs our emotions — speak Brahmin Tamil, bear lavish sandalwood paste marks and speak exclusively in a comic manner. In a country where it is a tired cliché that everyone south of the Vindhyas is Madrasi, large swathes are simply invisible. When did anyone see a character in popular culture from the Andamans or from Lakshadweep? Actor Nandita Das says, “I have met so many Oriyas who don’t tell anyone that they are Oriya because they are tired of explaining what that is. They just pretend to be Bengali until I catch some inflection or accent. When I tell them I am from Orissa, they relax. But lots of people don’t know about the state, don’t know what we speak, what we eat.”

Prahlad Kakkar, ad filmmaker, says, “In advertising the standard Indian male is tall, hulking, north Indian and laddoo-faced. There is a strongly conditioned response to that type of appearance as an ideal. So even exceptionally handsome men of another type, such as Danny Dengzongpa or Kelly Dorjee will either have shortlived careers or careers as villains. The Aryan model: the chikna gora (smooth and fair) is the only thing that is considered aspirational. Cricket is maybe the one area from which young men who look different still make it into advertising. Look at MS Dhoni for instance.”

Jaideep Sahni’s script for Chak De! India was an unprecedented act of courage in Bollywood. His gallant young female hockey players came from states across the country. His hero, a shockingly subdued Shah Rukh, only took to the soapbox to emphasise the need to bury regional squabbles for the sake of the nation. In movie halls across the country audiences applauded the scene in which the men who harassed Mary and Molly (the players from Manipur and Mizoram) were beaten up by the whole team. But this was Chak De! India’s only narrative for Mary and Molly, their eventual acceptance as ‘not foreign’ by the rest of the team.

As for Soi Moi and Rani, the players from Jharkhand, their lines were limited to saying, ‘Ho’, ‘Yes, yes’ and ‘Happy Diwali’ because ‘they were from a jungle school’. Love, pride, rivalry, parental expectations — all these possible motivations do not exist for these four characters. It would be interesting to reimagine a Chak De! India where the bulk of the narrative action is not held by girls from Punjab, Haryana, Chandigarh and Maharashtra.

Twenty-four-year-old Sushila Lakra is a real-life hockey player from Ranchi distrct who plays fullback for India. She says she is still waiting to find her people’s faces on celluloid screens in India. “We tribal players fail to fit into contemporary ideas of glamour,” she says. After a moment, she snaps: “And I don't want to make my skin fair to be considered glamorous and counted as a mainstream Indian.” Her teammate Sarita Lakra says her childhood years were spent wondering how the movies could always be about happy and beautiful people. Sarita says, “They made me feel little and nonexistent. They still make me feel little.”

RULE 2: All Indians are Hindu unless proven otherwise
Hindi cinema has always had a bit of a tough time with its hearty representation of minorities. Christians are pious, calling out to the Lord as they drink themselves steadily into a stupor, while wearing strange frocks. Parsis, until very recently, always drove large vintage cars, and always appeared in time to save the hitchhiking heroine. But from the time it was part of the nation-building project to its current navel-gazing stage, Hindi cinema’s great wrestling match has been with the portrayal of the good/bad Muslim. Few movies have escaped falling into this steely trap, despite hugely influential stars in Bollywood being Muslim.

In advertising, these epic struggles are avoided by neatly avoiding Muslim characters. It is unimaginable that the character who is refreshed by a cup of coffee, buys a new car, insurance or diamond jewellery is anyone other than Rahul Malhotra. He cannot be Rafique, for instance. And this is taken for granted. Subaltern historian MSS Pandian points wryly to the hole you can fall in while trying to portray minorities. “When the government tried to do those national integration ads, it created new problems. How do you show a Muslim? The ads dressed the Muslim man in a fez. But Muslims in India have never worn a fez.”

Policing — official, moral and otherwise — depends largely on what looks ‘normal’. Nithin Manayath, a college lecturer in Bengaluru, talks of being accosted on the street by the police every time security is tightened. His straggly beard and long, narrow kurta has made him suspect in recent times. Last year, human rights activists and liberal circles were outraged when Muslim boys arrested as suspects for a series of blasts were paraded by the police with the kuffiyeh — Arab headgear — over their faces.

RULE 3: All Indians are fair, except when they don’t try
In the last few months, a photoshopped image of Barack Obama in a parodied Fair and Lovely ad became a popular internet meme. The milky white Obama was disorienting. While colour discrimination has been periodically debated in Indian media, the debates are getting quieter. “What about Bipasha? What about Konkona?” comes the quick response if one asks where the dark actors are. Actor Nandita Das says that 30 movies down the line, people still clumsily attempt to compliment her by saying, “I told my niece that she can also do movies. Doesn’t matter that she is dark.” Das says she has rarely been discussed in an article without a phrase addressing her colour.

Dusky is the word of choice, because dark would be pejorative. (It is similar to the American fashion business calling women curvy when they want to say fat. To have a sense of who has been called curvy lately, look up Jessica Alba.) Das is one of the few women in Bollywood who can actually be called dark. For the most part, any heroine darker than a hospital bed is called dusky. In recent times, Chitrangda Singh, Mugdha Godse, Deepika Padukone, Sonali Kulkarni have all been called dusky by the media, in gushing self-congratulatory appreciation of the sultry beauties ‘breaking conventions.’ A comparison to Smita Patil is also inevitable in most cases. If these pale girls are set up as the dark outsiders, where does it leave a young Indian girl whose inky black skin is a real and vital part of her, not a disease to be cured? She has no chance in the movies.

Baradwaj Rangan, film critic for the New Indian Express, points out, “Actors like Seema Biswas are always on the fringes simply because of their colouring. I am not saying that when I go to see a big Karan Johar film I want to see ordinary looking people. Bring on the beautiful people! But in movies where there is no such requirement, can’t we have ordinary people? That Prachi Desai who plays Farhan Akthar’s wife in Rock On!! — it is assumed that someone who looks like her would live in a penthouse. All fair people are rich and all dark people are only servants.” Desai brings up Saat Phere, the hit television show whose protagonist Saloni’s fatal flaw is that she is dark. “The idea that there is a story because she is dark is very strange in a country full of dark people,” he points out.

Ask Prahlad Kakkar a quiz question: If there are two young men of equally good looks and one is dark, the other fair, which would be picked for an ad? “The fair one for sure,” he says frankly. “I often fight with clients if I think one is a better performer, but clients are very open about not wanting to take what is seen as a risk.”

Filmmaker Paromita Vohra says it is common to hear loud discussions in the television and film world where the kaali is rejected as not heroine material. But she points to a strange twist to the colour prejudice, where dark can be acceptable if coded ‘exotic’. “Suddenly dark-skinned is being discussed as ethnic chic. So you hear about a dark, pretty girl as having a Mexican or Latin American look. Not that she is Telugu and looks Telugu.”

The fact is that in the wide spectrum of shades Indians are made in, only a tiny segment appears in popular culture as Indian. The arrival of the dark person always signals someone oppressed or villainish. The fact that the fair and green-eyed Aditya Pancholi is playing Ravan in the new Ramayan by Mani Ratnam is food for much thought. You could be comforted that, for a change, Ravan is not being played by someone dark. Or you could worry that with even the space for evil ceded to the fair, we may not see dark people on screen at all.

Rangan talks of how the obsession with fairness is played out even in contemporary Tamil cinema. “Tamil cinema sells a particular dream where someone like Ravi Krishna in 7G Rainbow Colony or Dhanush in Kadhal Kondein can have the fair, tall, thin and toned heroine.” Ravi Krishna and Dhanush are heroes who made their debuts as the unimpressive, socially awkward loser. They are dark, ravaged, hungry-looking young men. It is assumed that the male viewer would identify completely with them and applaud when they aspire for fair, strapping north Indian trophies.

Rajiv Menon’s film Kandukonden Kandukonden, a Tamil adaptation of Sense and Sensibility, starred Aishwarya Rai and Tabu. Ironically, the very first dialogue in the film is an exasperated off-screen voice cursing all Hindi film heroines who come to work in Tamil cinema. In 2009, even that fragment of exasperation is gone. South Indian cinema now strongly associates gloss, glamour and high production values with the acquisition of fair north Indian heroines for their casts.

Outside of cinema, the fairness obsession leads to some misadventures. Journalist P Sainath has some biting stories about urban scribes venturing into the hinterland. “Television journalists drive into a village and see a dark, shirtless man and assume he is the quote from the poor they are looking for. If you drive into the centre of a village, you are likely to encounter the upper castes, not the dalits consigned to the periphery of the village. But just because the man is dark, they miss the fact that he is the Thakur.”

Where there is an anxiety, there is money to be made. Or is it the other way round? In Jharkhand, among Adivasi communities, the desire for fairness is wide-spread, feeding India’s huge (Rs 950 crore) fairness creams market. This market has been growing at 15 to 20 percent per year. A major earner for FMCG companies, fairness creams are always looking for new segments. Men and older women are the newest baits, who have got their own ‘speciali sed’ fairness cream in the last few years.

RULE 4: All Indians live in cities and are rich
The world of Indians in popular culture is highly aspirational. From the breakfast counters of advertising land’s imagined kitchens to the models walking down streets with French loaves sticking attractively out of shopping bags, much of Indian advertising is hungry for a global romance.

In the last decade, this has meant that the poor and the rural have been completely sidelined in popular culture. Airbrushed by a class allergic to remembering we are still a poor nation. Nandita Das says, “People constantly ask me, why do you always play village women? As if all rural characters are the same. Nine out of 10 Hindi movies are set in south Mumbai, and we are supposed to find a world of difference there, but a story set in rural Rajasthan is the same as one in rural Andhra Pradesh.”

It is true over the last decade, the poor have only appeared before us in extremely troubling ways. As street people banging on car windows made of special glass, as women in haats (local markets) longing for the soft hands of the woman customer who uses hand-cream, the outsiders who makes us value our strange pleasures more through their envious gaze.

One of the most troubling ads in recent times was a State Bank of India (SBI) debit card campaign run in 2006. The print and television ads were both shot in documentary style. The television ad had a series of black and white sequences where a man is shown doing backbreaking, manual labour. Beautifully shot, it makes you wince first in sympathy and then gasp, when in the final shot the text explains this is Bholu — the pickpocket now forced into hard labour because people have stopped carrying cash. The utter crassness of the ad created by Mudra was only matched by the complaint that led to the ad being pulled off air. The Advertising Standards Council of India held up a complaint “that the ad by implication tends to incite people to commit crime by conveying that the advantage of being a pickpocket far outweighs the hardships of physical work.”

RULE 5: Indians look exactly like Caucasians
Many of our products and music videos today are given an instant ‘international’ look with ads featuring models from South Africa and East Europe. Over the last decade, in fact, our celebrities are being slowly transmuted into white people. Our own models and actors are being coloured, moulded, depilated and smoothed into the closest simulacrum of white people that can be created. Hence Dhoom 2, Tashan and the phenomena called Katrina Kaif. It is a mutation that other countries with complicated colonial histories have also participated in.

To see the extremely troubling direction in which India can go, one needs only to look at Brazil. According to cultural historians such as Mary del Priore, co-author of The History of Private Life in Brazil, Brazil has ‘upgraded to international standards of beauty’ in the last three decades. The bottom-heavy, guitar-shaped figure that was widely admired in its culture has been abandoned in favour of supermodel Gisele Bundchen, a tall, slender blonde whose racial heritage is shared by less than 10 per cent of her nation. Today, anorexia deaths and the world’s highest consumption of diet pills coexist in Brazil with the 8 percent of its 185 million people who are malnutritioned. After the US, home to 5,000 registered cosmetic surgeons, Brazil comes in second, with around 4,000.

Plastic surgery, coloured contact lenses, hair extensions and dye are common practice, proudly flaunted as status symbols. “In Brazil, nobody wants to be black because the mass media equates black with poor and stupid,” Cristina Rodrigues, a black cultural activist, told a magazine. The same magazine reports that the chief of an Indian tribe in the Amazon is also reported to have had plastic surgery because, “I was finding myself ugly and I wanted to be good-looking again.”

Turning once more to America, earlier this year, Chris Rock, the standup comedian with the sharpest, most unfettered commentary on race, was in the news for his documentary Good Hair. In this film Rock investigated the politics behind the African-American’s desire for soft, straight hair. Rock wanted to know why his daughter hated her hair. Why do African-American women support a $9 billion dollar industry which promises to change their hair? The timing for Rock’s documentary was perfect. A minor debate was already on about Michelle Obama, America’s newest fashion icon. What if she had had braids or weaves, a more obviously black look than the smooth coif she currently possessed?

Writers such as Bell Hooks wrote decades ago about the world of black women in which the straightening of hair was an intimate ritual. Rock tells the obvious fact that black Americans desire a cultural standard of beauty that is more European than African. For us, a country just as gripped with anxiety and self-hatred, is it amusing that Rock’s investigation led him to India? Every year tonnes of Indian hair makes its way to America, where black women use it to make extensions to their own hair. The Tirupati temple is reported to earn between $2 and $4 million a year from the proceeds of the 25,000 heads that are shaved every day and the 450 tons of hair sold each year.

Across the world, hair is one of the first (and easiest) characteristics that is being corrected to meet a global aesthetic. It is a rule of thumb for young women wanting to go to Bollywood that they must straighten their hair. Television journalism is another and rather unexpected site for the hair iron.

Other changes are more subtle. Says Santosh Desai, “There is no space for the round-faced hero any more. No Rajesh Khanna or Arvind Swami. We are now even looking at the male body as a site of the erotic. The male torso in Bollywood was like a grassy lawn, animals could have grazed on a body like Anil Kapoor’s. Now the male body has hardened, been depilated. Post-Hrithik the gaze at the male body is almost like the one directed at the female body,” says he. Desai also compares the experience of Indian models with those of South East Asian models in ads. “They are Caucasianised during filming. There is a certain pallor that comes with colour correction, almost erasing the features to look more Caucasian.”

What explains India’s abject need to look Caucasian? Desai says, “Underconfidence is a simple explanation for a complex reality. I would say we are becoming more confident but there is an impatience to be seen as peers of the First World. We want it all corrected now. We want to drink wine and not be reminded of the poor. We are constantly evaluating ourselves through the eyes of the West. Why else would we want to win the Oscars? What do 100 retired Ameircans know about our cinematic conventions? When the 26/11 attacks happened, why were people constantly asking about the damage to Brand India?”

The panic desire for sameness breeds bigotry. And while some aspects of India’s diversity debate have come up occasionally in the last few decades, these debates are increasingly muted. Often, bigotry is now passed off as pragmatism. Vohra expresses great concern about this. “I think under the guise of pragmatism what is being promoted is unkindness and huge narrow- mindedness. With this, your ability to have empathy, to comprehend a set of experiences very different from yours reduces. It makes you regressive and politically stupid. At the other end, if you are not represented in mass media, if in your entire life no one who ever looks like you is seen on television, it could generate extreme anger.”

Thomas and her daughter Meenal’s predicament is, in a sense, something particular to north India, where fairness and caste and class have a kind of simple equation. If Meenal were growing up in other parts of India, her experiences might have been different. As Shashi Tharoor once pointed out in The Great Indian Novel, in south Indian families, siblings can look so wildly different from each other in colouring and features, it is impossible to imagine they came from the same womb.

In the absence of a readymade role model, Thomas hoped that Meenal’s school would help with her crisis. “Little children ask Meenal, why are you so dark and your brothers so fair? That’s okay because they are just voicing prejudices which can be addressed. I wanted the school to start talking to the children, explaining that people and families come in all shapes and colours. But they have refused saying the children are too young for such conversations. But why should the children be protected from this as if Meenal’s skin colour is some dirty family secret?”

Meera Pillai, an education policy expert, talks of why India needs diversity education. “Let me compare this to the context of disability. It is idiotic to talk about inclusive education for a child with disabilities when the school system is not ready for such a child. Diversity education is something the government has to back with resources. I don’t think the situation in America is perfect and I’m sure a lot of people voted for Obama because of their complete disillusionment with Bush. But the old America would not have got Obama at all! For a few decades, multicultural education has been in full swing in America. At the risk of sounding clichéd or tokenistic, schools celebrate Hannukah and Kwanza, not just Christmas. Our government needs to talk about disability, homophobia, communalism — recognise it as an educational requirement, put money behind it. Otherwise where is the sense of self for a young Munda girl within a pan-Indian image?”

Vohra talks of earlier decades when India’s diversity was protected by what might now be seen as corny tropes: in the deliberate celebration of every festival, in pledging that all Indians are our brothers and sisters. “That is the difficulty of political correctness. There is always a tension between addressing our existing prejudices through political correctness and our desire to be irreverent and shirk political correctness. But that tension needs to be maintained so that we can keep fighting for politically correct ideas and oldfashioned ideals, without being suffocated by political correctness.”

In a country as complicated as ours, acceptance of difference ought to be the goal of our waking hours and dreams. Not dismissed as impossible. Not erased in image and sound. Into the realm of schmaltzy but charming ideals weighs in the genetic scientist Dr Majumdar who says, “It is the diversity which makes us beautiful. It would be so boring if we all looked alike.”

(Article Courtesy: Tehelka)

Why Myanmar Refugees Are Struggling For Survival, And Why ‘Atithi Devo Bhava’ Meant Only For Political Stunt?

By Kajol Singh in Delhi

People have had to flee their home countries for any amount of reasons, from state-sponsored violence, ethnic clashes, to wars, natural disasters and devastating economic conditions. Strong laws are required to address the movement, settlement and safety of such large displaced populations. 

In 1951, the Refugee Convention was introduced to define refugees, their rights, and states’ legal obligations to them. In 1967, it was amended by the Protocol on the Status of Refugees. There are 19 states which are signatories to this Convention, and India is not one of them.

The Democracy Tax is Rising

By M H Ahssan

Indian politics is becoming ever more labyrinthine

To get the measure of India’s political class, picture this. On July 21st Manmohan Singh convened an historic gathering at the Sansad Bhavan, India’s rotund parliament building. The government had been abandoned by its Communist allies, putting Mr Singh’s great achievement, a civil nuclear co-operation deal with America, in jeopardy. The government had been reduced to a minority. If it folded, the deal would die with it, so Mr Singh asked parliament for its support.

Over two days a few brave politicians debated the nuclear deal. The rest of the house jabbered and yowled, in many tongues, for the television cameras. A convicted murderer stretched out on a backbench; he and four other jailbird members (all pro-government) had been freed for the vote. Shortly before it took place, three members of the main opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) produced bricks of rupee notes: part of a bribe, they said, given by government supporters for their votes. By hook or by crook the government won, by 275 votes to 256.

In a coup-ridden region, Indians are justifiably proud of their democracy. It has been interrupted only once: in 1975, by Indira Gandhi’s 21-month state of emergency. At their next opportunity India’s voters threw out Mrs Gandhi and her Congress party, for the first time in its history. Thereby they issued a message about the importance of timely elections that India’s leaders have never forgotten—and if they did forget, India’s Election Commission would issue a reminder. It is strong and independent: it can—and does—remove any official it suspects of undue bias. This ensures that, every five years, over a period of a few weeks, India holds a reasonably orderly and fair election. Its 29 states do the same, according to their own electoral calendars. For a vast and somewhat unruly nation, where the state is often partial and corrupt, these are tremendous accomplishments.

If only the election commissioners could decide which Indians are fit for election. The country’s politicians are mostly an unsavoury lot. Of the 522 members of India’s current parliament, 120 are facing criminal charges; around 40 of these are accused of serious crimes, including murder and rape. Most Indian politicians are presumed to be corrupt, which is less surprising. In India’s poor and fractious society patronage politics is inevitable. But Indian politics has got much muckier in recent years because of two factors: the rise of regional and caste-based parties, nakedly dedicated to delivering patronage; and the mutinous coalitions this has led to.

In 2004, after eight years in the wilderness, Congress returned to power after winning 145 seats in parliament. The BJP, which had run a fairly competent coalition government under Atal Bihari Vajpayee, won 138. To form a government—for which 272 seats are required—Congress put together the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) with 12 other parties. Ruling in this arrangement would have been hard enough, but the UPA was still short of a majority. So Congress recruited “outside ” support from another five parties, the most important of which was a coalition of Communist parties, the “Left Front”.

Suspended animation
This absurdly complicated and unrepresentative government has turned out to be more enduring than many expected. For Congress’s leaders, indeed, its survival is a formidable achievement: the party had never managed a coalition before. With competent managers in the main economic ministries, the government can also take some credit for India’s strong economic performance. But it has failed to pass almost any of the reforms India will need to keep up that performance. The Communists were the most obvious blockage; they opposed every liberal proposal on principle. But more broadly, like India’s vast bureaucracy, the government has expended far too much energy merely to sustain itself.

The nuclear deal epitomised its weakness. As a bilateral agreement, signed by Mr Singh and President George Bush in 2005, it did not need parliamentary approval. But because of opposition from the Communists the government was unable to seek the necessary approvals for the deal from the International Atomic Energy Agency and the Nuclear Suppliers’ Group, a club of 45 nations. All last year this stand-off dominated the government’s business. The deal was said to be off, then on, then off again. Pranab Mukherjee, a senior Congress leader who is close to the Communists, mediated between them and Mrs Gandhi. This left regrettably little time for his other job, as India’s foreign minister.

In September 2007 Congress’s regional partners urged Mrs Gandhi to forget the nuclear pact rather than risk an early election. She agreed. The deal was resurrected in June only after Mr Singh allegedly threatened to quit. The Communists walked out. But the government survived by recruiting a new ally, the low-caste Samajwadi Party (SP) from Uttar Pradesh.

The hope had been that the government, relieved of its Communist allies, might push through a few financial-sector reforms. In the event, reduced to a minority, now squabbling with the SP and with an election season coming, it has felt too weak even to try.

This is troubling. It indicates the risks India’s governments will increasingly have to take to get support for any bold policy. Reaching a consensus is becoming impossible, so fragmented is the polity. In the 2004 election Congress and the BJP mustered only 283 seats between them, a record low and only 11 more than is needed for a majority. Both parties saw their share of the vote decline. Congress’s shrank more, to 26.7%, almost a record low. Yet it increased its share of seats, partly because the BJP’s vote was spoiled by smaller parties. Congress nonetheless got the opportunity to form a government, for a reason beyond either party’s control: the BJP’s allies fared unexpectedly badly.

All that can confidently be said about India’s next government is that it will be a coalition, probably led by Congress or the BJP. If neither party can make the necessary alliances to get a majority, there is a slim third possibility: a government led by a regional, caste-based or conceivably even Communist party, with “outside” support from one of the two national parties. Such an arrangement could make the current government look positively united and progressive.

Elections this month in three important northern states, and six states in all, should offer clues as to which scenario is the most likely. As this special report went to press, results were pending from Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh, which are all currently held by the BJP. A sweep for either of India’s main parties would be a big boost, though not conclusive, as the BJP found in 2004. It called that general election six months early, on the back of poll victories in those same northern states, and lost. Results are also due from elections being held this month in Delhi, which Congress has ruled for a decade; in Mizoram, a small north-eastern state; and in troubled Jammu and Kashmir.

The general election will be an important test of Congress’s ability to reverse its long decline. Since 2004 it has scored some modest hits. Besides survival, its government has a number of lavish welfare schemes to boast about, including a programme of public works that it claims will provide work for 30m households this year. But the recent turn of events in India, including last month’s terrorist attack in Mumbai, will make such things hard to boast of. And because Congress’s state-level machinery is weak, it is not good at advertising even these small successes.

This reflects the party’s highly centralised leadership structure, based on the cult of the Gandhi family of which Sonia is the current representative. The Italian-born widow of Rajiv Gandhi, a fourth-generation leader of Congress and of India who was murdered in 1991, Sonia was persuaded to take over the party in 1998. She, like this government, has done a bit better than expected. But even if Mrs Gandhi was better than she is, she could not restore Congress to anything like its former power.

The Gandhi factor
For almost four decades it ruled India by relying on three main groups for support: Muslims, high-caste Hindus and Hindu dalits (formerly “untouchables”). The fragmentation of Indian politics is partly a consequence of these groups turning to other parties. Congress’s performance in general elections does not fully reflect this: it actually does better at the centre than in the states, where patronage politics is more intense. That may be because of a residual fondness for the Gandhi family. But it will not restore the party’s lost base.

Congress knows this. But having no strong ideology to unite its squabbling factions, the party’s leaders remain forlornly faithful to the Gandhi dynasty. This was painfully obvious last year when the party charged Mrs Gandhi’s 38-year-old son and heir apparent, Rahul, with restoring the party’s fortunes in UP, India’s biggest state. It is the ancestral seat of the Gandhis and also the birthplace of India’s most powerful low-caste parties. Under Mr Gandhi’s well-meaning but unimpressive leadership, Congress got 22 out 402 seat in UP. A party for dalits, the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP), won a big majority.

In difficult times it would be reasonable to suppose that Congress is in for a hiding in the coming election. Even in good times Indian voters tend to be disappointed with their governments. Indeed, that was another reason why the BJP lost in 2004. The terrorist attacks in Mumbai should also improve the chances of the security-obsessed BJP. But it is not clear to what extent the Hindu nationalists can capitalise on this.

During the 1990s the BJP built a base of perhaps 15% of Indian voters—typically high-caste and from the north—who liked its Hindu-chauvinist creed, known as Hindutva, or “Hinduness”. In power, from 1998 to 2004, the party tried to expand its base into a broad temple of right-of-centre nationalists. To avoid offending its allies, many of whom had Muslim followings, it also placed less stress on Hindutva. But after its 2004 defeat the party fell to feuding. Its modernisers were demoralised. Its Hinduist ideologues, a more powerful group, attributed the election defeat to insufficient Hindutva. In 2005 they forced the party’s prime ministerial candidate, L.K. Advani, to resign as its leader.

The BJP’s fortunes have since improved. In the past two years the party or its allies have won six out of 11 state polls. Congress has won in only three minor states. A victory for the BJP in May in Karnataka—its first in a southern state—was especially impressive. Mr Advani, an octogenarian bruiser, has also been reinstated as the party’s prime ministerial candidate and unofficial leader. He has restored some of the BJP’s old sense of purpose.

But this momentum may not take it very far. Badly as it did in 2004, the BJP performed well in a few populous northern states, including the three currently awaiting election results. If it loses ground there, as the anti-incumbency tick suggests it might, it is not obvious where it can make it up. In the past, when times were hard, the BJP responded by lambasting Muslims. But to do that, even after the outrage in Mumbai, would be a mistake—not least because the BJP urgently needs to recruit new allies.

A BJP-led government would offer India a better prospect of reform than the current arrangement, but possibly not much better. Compared with Mr Vajpayee’s government, the BJP would probably be a smaller component of the coalition. And Mr Advani is not the deft coalition manager that Mr Vajpayee was. Whether Congress could make a better fist of bringing change, given another chance, would depend first on whether it was again shackled by the Communists.

Mayawati thinks bigOf the other possible coalition leaders, one, the BSP, which is led by an autocratic former primary-school teacher called Mayawati, has captured India’s imagination. The dalit party’s victory in UP was a stunning achievement. Until then, caste-based parties had struggled to attract much support from outside their narrow base. The BSP succeeded, through skilful negotiations, by recruiting leaders of other castes, including brahmins. Thus it aped Congress’s own historic strategy. If Mayawati can replicate this success in the general election, she could play a big part in deciding the composition of the government. UP alone commands 80 seats in parliament. And Mayawati is trying hard to increase her reach outside the state: in February she drew 80,000 people to a rally in Delhi. She has declared her ambition to be India’s first dalit prime minister.

That would be truly inspirational for members of a still downtrodden group. But it might be disastrous for India. Mayawati has a reputation for egomania and gross corruption (though this has never been stood up in court). Newspaper reports, working from her tax return, have estimated her personal income at $12m, twice the figure for her party. Her support for an unsuccessful scheme to append a shopping mall to the Taj Mahal, which is in UP, does not speak well of her judgment. India’s democracy tax, like Mayawati’s income tax, is rising. But so, at least to some extent, is its ability to pay.

Hyderabad Elections 2009 - Women Psyche

By Samiya Anwar

From the public lavatory to lanes, at every passage and wall we find the big pictures of bade bade neta, their posters with symbols of palm, flower, etc. Off course the rallies of Praja Rajyam not to forget is a part of every ones breakfast table with a hot cuppa of tea early morning. Well known today’s aam janta everyone is talking about the forthcoming elections, it is been more than sixty years of independence India is a free country. First it was poor and underdeveloped. Now it is counted as a developing country. We have traveled a long way. And it won’t be anonymous to say government builds the road we are traveling. The government will always affect our lives.

An election means a call upon to elect a new government. It is no joke. Election is a serious stuff, not fluffy and downy. The rich have been harvesting the benefits of progress, while the gigantic mass is in the dumps into poverty and hunger. It is every one’s primary right to exercise vote if he/she has attained the age of 18 or above. But how many of them actually do it. There is less percentage of people who is enjoying this right in reality.

For some women when it comes to elections it is very different to get the head around, like my mother always voted the person my dad opted. Why the question is always troubled me. When I turned 18, I felt an adult. I thought I am grown and can vote to any person of my choice. My parents and I had a different person to choose. They want me to vote for the candidate they wish. It was not only with me but also to most of my friends. There parents want them to vote accordingly. With the passage of time, things changed when I realized the power of vote

With the present elections in the state there are many women who dare not talk about elections at all. What we are seeing is deeply worrying. But they are confused and disoriented because the aspirations of the people remain unfulfilled after elections. The bag-full of promises seems to be nothing today in their eyes. Should Naidu be given a second chance is the question of many. As we see that the current government failed to maintain the quality of all that Chandrababu Naidu has done for the city and has done nothing for the urban population strongly feels some women in Hyderabad.

As election race shifts further women find it a brutal joke .it is like multiple choice questions for many to answer the best of the option given. It is a number game to many. Whosoever comes into power there is less development than what is being promised to them. It is no mindful decision, some vote blindly and some don’t, especially rural women. They need active encouragement to be dragged to the polls

It is no same mind frame of all women. A recent study shows that women are on par with men while excising voting rights. According to 2009 electoral polls women voters are in majority in six states namely Andhra Pradesh, Meghalaya, kerala, Manipur, mizoram, puducherry. Andhra has 2.86 crore women voters as opposed to 2.80 crore men. It has been witnessing a steady increase in the number of women voters

Today’s women are independent and free like India, our country. They are not dependent on men in decision and voice their opinion openly. The urban women run their life on their own. The traditional India has transformed to more advanced and globalize country going the west way. Women play a decisive role in the polls. They exercise it in much greater numbers and greater percentages than men. The vote of women - individually and collectively - can make or break elections, candidates, and outcomes.

Women walk the talk while men just talk and walk away. Women are the ultimate decision makers. They are doing great in every field. It is women who know a lot about what their families and their communities need. They have equal power to men in taking political decisions. As election fever has gripped the city. Who better tell the government what does community needs than women? How do you expect things around you to change when you don't cast your valuable vote thinks Manisha, my friend and a call center employee?

There are more women issues than men to be addressed. Isn’t it? First, it is the safety of women in society she dwells in. many women in the Old City do not trust police. They go through domestic and physical violence and don’t complain. We need a system where women can approach cops fearlessly. The issues like water shortage, frequent power cuts, road accidents and physical abuse of women at workplace should be given first thought.

The self-realization and self-confidence are absolutely essential. Education and work will bring real freedom to the rural woman and Child labor and kids begging at traffic signals are serious issues. The price increase of several commodities and economic slowdown has affected many families. The young college graduates have no job openings and the rest working is fired at any moment. There is no security and safety. What does the future hold for the children is worrisome by women.

The college students especially women are trying to spread awareness about the election campaigns held in Hydrabad and important of “one vote” to save the life of many. Every vote is a precious. We are the tax-payers and only our vote decides the party coming into power. Women’s vote is for the betterment of family and community. So we should think twice before casting vote. Our vote is valuable and so should be our decision.

Nevertheless the world needs more cool brains than hot heads. We need to have a collective effort to select the right candidate. The woman in Hyderabad expects very responsive governance from the future government. Women HOPE for a change.

'ARUNACHAL' TOPS IN HANDLING 'CHILD NUTRITION'

By M H Ahssan / New Delhi

The problem is likely to be less severe than UN statistics indicate, given faulty yardsticks. If asked to name the state with the lowest incidence of child malnutrition in India, readers will overwhelmingly pick one of Kerala, Goa, Himachal Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra, Punjab or West Bengal. But they will all be wrong by a wide margin: none of these states appears among even the top five performers. 

Focus: The Tibetan Special Forces – 'Unsung Heroes of 1971'

By Aneeta Chakrabarty (Guest Writer)

Nobody knew about them. Nobody. Not even many generals of the Indian Army. Their voices were muted and their bodies were like swift-moving shadows. On November 14, 1971 as sullen winds moaned on the encroaching night, the silent shadows sprang to life moving with a lightning speed to surround, overwhelm, and destroy the Pakistani posts one by one. All along the hills and valleys of the Chittagong district they immobilized the Pakistani army and allowed a wide zone for Indian troops to march into East Bengal with little or no resistance.

They are the Tibetan Special Forces (TSF). They fought for a cause that was not their cause and for a war that was not their war. When the war ended, in addition to 190 wounded, they had lost 56 of their men including one of the toughest, CIA-trained Tibetan guerilla leaders Dhondup Gyatotsang. Yet their towering courage went unrewarded, and their heroic saga is forgotten and lost in the mists and sands of Time.

How they fool us, the outraged

As long as we engender a society that allow law enforcers to get away with their own crimes, law breakers will only be emboldened. We must make Police Complaints Authorities around the country meaningful.

Outrage is a good thing, when it is against injustice. It shows that society does have a line it does not want crossed. It also puts pressure on the system to respond. Here's the problem with it though, it tends to ignore what is already unclear. No new clarity emerges from either the outrage or the response. Media coverage of outrage does not help with clarity either, unless the media is looking deeper.

So it will be with the entire rape debate in India. In fact even before public fury over the Delhi gang-rape has quietened, as it inevitably will, media has already started breaking more rape stories from around the country. More accountability will be demanded, as will the death penalty.

Yet, if there is one government authority that is laughing all the way to the bank, it's India's police. Here is why.

The Delhi HC has reportedly asked the local police to show it the chargesheet before initiating proceedings in the gang-rape. Why would a High Court do that? Chalk it up to experience. For years the accused in rape cases have not been sincerely prosecuted, and people have been let go with lesser charges or sentencing than was to fit the crime. The Delhi Police has a particularly soiled reputation already, and responding to this week's outrage as it were, the High Court stepped up the ante.

If a High Court in the capital territory of the nation does not trust the police's due process, what does that tell you? Let me come back to this question in a different way.

Each day in India, in buses, trains and crowed public places, women are groped, fondled, teased and made the subject of lewd remarks. Eve teasing is so common, women have simply resigned themselves to it. Women just try to avoid being in situations where they will be groped. They do not hope for much else. They do not bother going to the police. Such is the reputation our police have in handing their cases.

The police need to first accept complaints from women. Instead, as is widespread in India, they dilute complaints, humiliate the victims, and eject them from the stations. Their starting point is a judgement of the victim. And much of the problem lies here. When it comes to women, most policemen are part of the original problem. Sexual harassment of any kind - the most violent kind or a lesser kind - is about the power that one sex wants to show it can wield over the other. Usually it's men over women.

Still, the outrage in the nation is missing what the police and the governments are hoping will not come up.

Police Complaints Authorities

In 2006, the Supreme Court ordered the state governments to create one PCA per district in every state and a PCA at the state level headed by a retired judge. Human Rights groups called it landmark order. The apex court of the nation wanted PCAs to look into complaints citizens had against police misconduct or abuse of power. It could be everything from custodial torture or death or rape to not accepting FIRs to falsifying evidence.

The SC had wanted policemen to be penalised for not doing their job. It also wanted to reduce government-interference in police transfers. It wanted PCAs to act against errant officers after hearings and investigations.

Imagine this: The Supreme Court of this nation believes, that unless there was an authority to check the police, India's police would not serve its taxpayers. It would continue to operate to 'control' and 'keep order', for its political masters at state and centre, the way the British had setup the system.

Just from the woman's point of view, here is how PCAs with teeth, had they come into force, would have made an impact in bringing down rape and crimes of lesser nature. Women today would be able to file complaints against police officials with the PCA when they do not act in fairness with them at a police station. They would able to walk into police stations with dignity after a crime to get protection, not further abuse.

If errant officers were penalised quickly, police would not themselves not behave with the kind of impunity they do now.

Yet, the majority of India's states have ignored the SC's order. Only six states setup so-called "PCAs" and mostly toothless ones, and with shady appointments that violated the principle of independence the SC wanted. Delhi set up its public grievance commission as its PCA, precisely what the SC did not order. India Together reported on all this in August 2012, as a review on whether states had complied with the SC's order. In the few states with PCAs, police officers ignore hearings and go about their business as usual. State governments themselves do not follow their own PCA verdicts to act against abusive officials. Television media have mostly let this story go.

Have you even once heard of action against police official for not investigating a complaint by a woman? Are the police who mangle charge sheets, FIRs,and file false charges every prosecuted? 

In the meantime, thousands of men freely roam around the country to grope and molest women at will in public places. It takes a lot of force and pressure to get a complaint registered, even with witnesses. It is no one's case that PCAs will fix all our problems. There is much else in our society's attitude to women itself that needs attention.

But if police do not act on the most basic violations, it is a free ride for men. It sends a message of what the real social rules in the country are, not the ones on the books. The culprits feel that it is a natural order for them to be able to do what they want and get away with it. And if PCAs with teeth kept a watch on the police, it would send out the opposite message that as a society we will uphold the dignity of our women.

I do not buy the death penalty argument. From outrage to revenge is a short hop. You can sentence as many losers as you can to the gallows. More will appear, especially from amongst those who have little to lose, with a very low sense of self-worth and self-esteem.

As long as we engender a society that allow law enforcers to get away with their own crimes, law breakers will only be emboldened. This is why corruption is such a problem in this country. Like our other authorities, our police system does not have an integrity of its own to justify doing the right thing, or to remedy a wrong done to restore public faith. The PCAs will not fix all the problems but they would have sent a message to outraged women that someone would listen to them and dispense justice. That is one course-correction our society needs.

The Delhi gang-rape case is also chance for the media to get its act right. For all the coverage that rape cases get (read: ratings), very little coverage if any has been given to how state governments everywhere from Delhi to Tamilnadu have said 'we don't care' to the Supreme Court.

It is easy to drive up fury. The illumination really needed is on what the governments and police do not want you to know, and therefore not demanded. The demand for death penalties in fact is a lovely distraction for our babus and cops. 

Complaints? Who's listening? 
Six years ago the Supreme Court issued a detailed order listing the steps needed to insulate police work from politics, and to make it more accountable. But the progress since then has been slow. 

Last November, the Bangalore city police booked a case against three citizens, charging them for assaulting a traffic police officer. The main accused was Amulya Somashekhar, a volunteer of the civil society movement India Against Corruption (IAC). Amulya, her mother and friend were charged. Amulya, in turn, said that the officer had assaulted her for refusing to pay a bribe.

The local IAC volunteers asked for an independent inquiry, only to realise that there was no independent body which accepts complaints against the police. The police, instead, were preparing to conduct their own internal inquiry into the matter.

It was in 2006 that Supreme Court ordered that every state and district should have an independent authority to handle citizens' complaints against the police. This body, named Police Complaints Authority (PCA), is to be headed by a retired judge and can hold hearings on allegations of police misconduct and atrocities. Its final order would be binding on state governments. Karnataka still does not have a functioning PCA; although the government has - under pressure to comply with the SC order - appointed a head of the Authority, it does'nt have any staff or office yet!

Other than setting up PCAs, the SC ordered six key measures for police reform, in its 2006 judgment in Prakash Singh Vs Union of India. The reforms include establishing minimum tenure for senior officers and a procedure for appointing DGPs, setting up a body to make policy decisions on policing, and another to decide on promotions etc., so that political interference decreases in routine police work. Since police is a State subject in the Constitution, the states were supposed to bring these reforms.

Around the same time as the SC order, the central government-appointed Soli Sorabjee Committee prescribed a Model Police Act for states to follow. This committee was among the many that successive governments had set up since 1977 to recommend police reforms. Most states were following the archaic Police Act of 1861. The new state Police Acts were to have provisions for PCAs as well.

Only a few states have Police Acts now; those that have PCAs are even fewer. Six years after the SC order, only six states have PCAs - these are Assam, Haryana, Tripura, Uttarakhand, Goa and Kerala. Of this, only Kerala has district-level PCAs, in addition to a state-level PCA. Meanwhile, cases of illegal detention and custodial torture by police continue to be reported across the country.

Five Union Territories - Pondicherry, Chandigarh, Delhi, Daman and Diu, Dadra and Nagar Haveli - also have PCAs. Of these, Chandigarh's has been the only well-functioning PCA. Pondicherry's PCA has been defunct since its Chairman's retirement in June 2011. Delhi does not have a separate PCA; instead its existing Public Grievance Commission (PGC) - an independent body that accepts complaints on all government agencies - was given additional responsibility as a PCA. A single PCA has been set up for both Daman and Diu, and Dadra and Nagar Haveli.

Existing PCAs ineffective

State governments have done much to tweak the composition and powers of PCAs. The court order had clearly prescribed how PCA members should be selected, and how investigations should be carried out in response to complaints.

Each PCA is to be headed by a retired High Court/Supreme Court judge, selected by the state government from a panel suggested by the serving HC/SC Chief Justice. Other members should be similarly selected from among members recommended by the State Human Rights Commission, State Public Service Commission, or Lokayukta. Appointments should never be done directly by the state government.

But so far, all state governments have made only direct appointments, which are perceived as political appointments. The directions on the composition of the PCA have been blatantly ignored, like in the case of Haryana, where the PCA has only a single member, the Chairman, who is a retired IAS officer.

PCAs are supposed to have only one retired IAS and IPS member each, and no serving officers are allowed. But Kerala state PCA has two serving officers - Principal Secretary and Additional DGP - as members. Its district PCAs have the Collector and district SP as members. Having serving officers, especially from the police, defeats the purpose of an independent, approachable public authority. It also violates the court's order that all members should work full-time for PCAs.

In the case of Kerala and Haryana, the violation of the court order is written to the state laws itself. Their state Police Acts prescribe the current composition. Tripura Police Act has followed the SC order in principle, but violated it in practice. Tripura has two retired police officers in its PCA, as opposed to one such officer allowed as per the Act. Goa is yet to its Police Act; the PCA in that state was set up based on a Government Order.

The SC order also prescribed that at least one member in the PCAs should be a woman. But only four PCAs - Uttarakhand, Pondicherry, Tripura and Chandigarh - have women members. This is as per the NGO CHRI (Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative), which was an intervener in the Prakash Singh case, and has been following up on the SC order implementation.

Another problem that makes PCAs ineffective, is the investigation process. Only Assam has its own independent investigators, as mandated by the court order. All other PCAs forward complaints to the police department, asking it to investigate its own officers. Most complaints  are on illegal detention, refusal to file FIRs, custodial torture, filing of false cases, and extortion. The CHRI report says that many complainants reported being threatened by police, on filing the complaints.

In most cases, the police report would say that the officer is not guilty, and PCA would dismiss the case. Retd Justice T A Wilson, Chairman of seven district PCAs in Kerala, says that 95-97% of cases get dismissed based on police reports. "It is only in remaining cases that any hearing happens."

"Police Acts/GOs have no provisions for independent investigators. So PCAs cannot demand these from the government," says Devika Prasad, Senior Programme Officer for police reforms at CHRI.

PCAs also have no power to take action against police officials who do not cooperate. Often police officers do not attend hearings, and cases may lag for years.

Hardly any police officers punished so far

The number of complaints to PCAs is high, but action against officers is rare. In many cases where PCAs ordered punitive action, the order was ignored by the government. PCAs can order either a departmental inquiry or filing of FIR against officers, and government is bound to follow this. Governments ignore the order using a provision in State Acts/GOs that allow them to 'disagree' with PCA orders. The Acts say that "recommendations are binding unless the state disagrees with the order."

Devika Prasad says that this loophole is often used. "Even if government disagrees with an order, a departmental inquiry should be held before closing the case. But cases are closed or neglected. There have been hardly any cases in which action was taken," she says.

Chandigarh PCA, one of the more active authorities, had recommended suspension of many officers. According to Chandigarh administration's official website, the PCA received 237 complaints from September 2010 (when it started) till June 2012. It disposed of 204 of these, recommending disciplinary action in 50 cases, against 90 policemen.

But no action was taken against these officers, and a PIL came up for hearing in the Punjab and Haryana High Court this June, saying that the PCA should be given more teeth. At the hearing, Chandigarh Administration clearly responded that PCA was already exceeding its jurisdiction by ordering suspensions and transfers. It said that PCA was only a recommending body, and that government could disagree with its recommendations.

Lack of government support also prompts PCAs to pass weak orders. It took Haryana PCA one-and-half years to pass its first order for punitive action. Most PCAs also choose to recommend departmental inquiry, rather than filing of FIR. Since departmental inquiries are easier to ignore, most have been lagging for years.

There is no clear data on what action was taken on PCA orders; most often PCAs themselves are not kept in the loop. Only Goa PCA has been proactively asking police to submit action-taken reports.

Justice Wilson says that he has recommended action in 10-15 cases since May 2010 (for all seven districts combined), but was not informed of action taken. "I only heard some rumours;  the concerned officials have not informed me. The problem is that government does not want to take action," he says. Even then, these district PCAs continue to get cases, some of them as much as 30-40 new cases per month.

The CHRI report quotes some complainants as saying that the PCAs'Â weak orders were not worth the risk of complaining against the police, and that such orders would work against them if they went to court later.

No funds, no rules

Many PCAs do not have well-equipped offices, staff or funds. Police Acts and GOs do not mention anything about funding of PCAs, and sometimes no allocation is made. For instance, Kerala's district PCAs still function from the offices of each Collector, who also gives them discretionary funds. There is no state government funding, and the Chairmen are not given vehicle allowance to travel across districts.

Also, the rules for daily functioning of PCAs have not been made, making it difficult for the public to understand or question them. The format for filing complaints, communication on hearings etc., are randomly prescribed. When a case is dismissed, the reason for dismissal is not clearly mentioned in the orders. PCAs themselves are supposed to make the rules and get them approved by government. Only Uttarakhand PCA has sent draft rules to state government so far. PCA sent the draft in 2008, but the government returned them without approval in 2011.

States like Assam and Haryana have laws that make it difficult to file compaints - in these states complainants have to file a sworn statement against the accused, along with a fee. If the complaint is judged frivolous, the complainant can be punished with a fee or penalty.

Other states stuck

According to CHRI, five states - Andhra Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Mizoram, Tamilnadu and Uttar Pradesh - have ignored the SC order completely. Others have drafted Police Acts, or passed notifications on PCAs, but will have PCAs with similar problems as the existing ones.

Gujarat PCA, for example, is to have serving police and government officers in state PCA; its district PCAs will have district SPs as Chairmen. Himachal Pradesh's Lokayukta will act as its state PCA.

The Supreme Court had set up a committee earlier to monitor implementation of its order. This committee, headed by retired SC Justice K T Thomas, submitted its final report in 2010. The report blamed states for their unwillingness to set up PCAs. The SC then sent notices to some states asking for explanation. Prasad says that there have been no hearings of late.

Existing PCAs too are facing more hurdles, while some are becoming more proactive. The Goa government now plans to dissolve its PCA through its new Police Bill. The Bill, yet to be passed, says that Lokayukta will act as the PCA. On the other hand, Assam and Tripura PCAs recently published their performance reports. The Tripura authority has outreach programmes now to create awareness. The Haryana PCA has a website and accepts complaints online.

The autonomy and routine functioning of these bodies, as envisaged in the Supreme Court order, remains a distant dream.