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. 

Thoughts, Actions, Intentions, Outcomes

By Rajvir Patel

There is a Gujarati saying – Putra naa lakshan parnaa maa thi ney ne vahu naa lakshan barnaa maa thi. It translates that the future behavior and nature of a newborn can often be predicted from its first days in the cradle and that of a new daughter-in-law in a joint patriarchal Indian family, from the early moments when she steps into the home of the in-laws.

If one overlooks the nature of the patriarchal joint family Indian society, the adage is a decent predictor the future.

Another fable is that of a monkey and an alligator who become friends while dwelling on a tree on the river bank and the river. The monkey often tossed sweet berries into the river and the alligator learned to love the sweetness thereof. After some time the alligator offered the monkey a ride on his back along the river.

The initially hesitant monkey succumbed to repeated affectionate offers and accepted dependence and interoperability. When the alligator reached the middle of the wide river, he said to the monkey, “Since you eat these sweet berries all the time, your heart must be even sweeter”. The monkey being smarter than Manmohan Singh, promptly replied, “It is very sweet, but I left it back on the tree to prevent it from getting wet. Would you like to see it”? The alligator’s predatory nature triumphed over his guile and he said, “Sure, I wouldn’t mind even licking it to taste its sweetness. The monkey asked him to return to the bank and promised to show him the heart and let him lick it. As soon as the alligator reached the bank, the monkey jumped on to the bank and up the tree and sighed with relief.
The thoughts, words and actions of any agent can often be used to predict the correct outcomes of interactions between two or more parties. For what happens when idiotic puppet leaders act without thinking, and are incapable of figuring out intentions, see my article of a modified version of an old Hindu fable – Educated Fools and Illiterate Nemesis. Below are some examples in developmental embryology and international relations.

Lewis, Nusslein-Volhard and Wieschaus were given the 1995 Nobel Prize for Medicine for their work on genes controlling development. There are a set of genes called Hox genes which are arranged serially from head to neck to thorax to abdomen in an anterior to posterior order even on a chromosome. A gene named Hox-c8 determines the boundary of development between the cervical (neck) vertebrae and the thoracic vertebrae which have a rib attached on each side. A vertebral level where this gene is expressed develops as a thoracic vertebra with a rib on each side. Human beings have seven cervical (without ribs) and twelve thoracic vertebrae (with ribs). Since many Indian politicians are more mice though looking like men, it is not surprising that mice also have seven cervical vertebrae, but they have thirteen thoracic ones. Since Indian leaders sometimes are chickens, it is important to know that chickens have fourteen cervical vertebrae and seven thoracic ones (long neck, short body).

It so happens that the Hox-c8 gene is expressed exactly in the same distribution as the number of thoracic vertebrae. The gene is more or less identical in the chicken, mouse and man. All these animals have the same number of genes which are mostly similar, but their genes have different promotional and inhibition switches and are turned on at different times and sites giving a dessert (halwa or cake), salad and vegetable entree from the same carrot, with different spices added at different times. Occasionally in humans, a mistake occurs and the gene is expressed in the last or seventh cervical vertebral level and these persons have an extra cervical rib on each side. Oh incidentally, in some animals the Hox-c8 gene is expressed in all vertebrae due to a generalized mutation in the switches of all vertebrae. The result is an animal with all vertebrae having a rib on each side and the total number of vertebrae varying in number from individual to individual. If you guessed American Democrats have variable backbones, you are close. The answer is snakes and pythons. They are also venomous or crush their victims like your guess.

Knowing the thoughts, words or location of gene expression should alert a smart thinking person to intentions and outcomes. As the Latin saying goes “Premonitus premunitus”, forewarned is forearmed. In an arms race analysis, the Soviet Union was mortally scared after Truman nuked Japan. In fact one of his reasons for doing so was to warn the Soviets not to engulf more countries and extend the iron curtain. The Soviets by efforts and espionage got their own atom bomb in just a couple of years. American political hawks and scientists like Edward Teller, lobbied to get a fusion weapon (hydrogen bomb). The Soviets were aware of the effort and got their own hydrogen bomb shortly and much quicker after the Americans.

The Soviets then beat the US in the Sputnik satellite, but America’s efforts soon caught up and overtook them. It had more ICBMs than the Soviets and that is why Kruschev tried to put nuclear missiles into Cuba to counter the larger number of US missiles and those closer to Russia, based in Turkey. After that nuclear standoff, the Soviets vowed to and caught up with the US missile numbers on land. The US then led in nuclear submarines and the Soviets made a heroic effort to equal America as documented even in an American movie K-9, starring Harrison Ford.
Eventually, the two sides reached a second strike capability and achieved MAD (mutually assured destruction). Reagan with his star wars pushed the Soviets into breakup and the US on the way to the same. But madcap Bush Jr. Opted to renege on the ABM treaty and started building up a ballistic missile defense.

It is a major offensive not defensive weapon because it allows one side to neutralize and counter missiles attacking it, while leaving its own missiles intact and the other side vulnerable. No wonder Russia and China are upset. The reality is that experts have serious doubts about the effectiveness of a BMD system. This and the attack on Iraq and Libya explains why North Korea and Iran are going nuclear to counter the US and Israel (both for Iran and only US for North Korea). It also explains why India went nuclear to counter China and Pakistan went nuclear to counter India. India’s development of BMD is pushing Pakistan to develop or borrow from China, nuclear tipped cruise missiles, which are invulnerable to BMD because of their low altitude trajectory and short distance between Pakistan and India.

This is why India is more interested in Israeli BMD technology as Israel also faces hostile neighbors immediately adjacent, and needs to neutralize that threat. This also raises an important point about foreign policy and the conflict between principles and realpolitik. For decades after 1947, India under the stupid policies of Nehru tried to pander to its own Muslim minority and other Islamic states even though some of the first and most of the second constantly favored Pakistan on the basis of a common religion. As a matter of truth and justice, it supported the Palestinian cause. It took a long time before the fluorescent light in the minds of its leaders finally lit up and it played the Israeli card to improve its military strength and technology.

The problem India faces is the one that the US falsely applies to Iran by claiming that its government is fanatic and irrational and will nuke Israel or America. The real fanatic irrational and crazy ones are Pakistan, its government, armed forces and population, with its lighted nuclear missile replicas in major cities and suicide bombers and terrorists bent on dying and killing. A joke widely circulated on the internet describes a depressed suicidal American worker bankrupted by the economy and job loss, calling the suicide hot line for help. Unbeknownst to him, the local city government in the US has outsourced the service to a Pakistani call center. The depressed American tells the Pakistani psychologist that he wants to die by committing suicide. Instead of supportive sympathy, the American hears a chuckle and laughter and a query from Pakistan asking whether the American can drive a truck?

There is another US military strategy from which the world can draw worrisome conclusions. The US is buying hundreds of the newest Global Hawk reconnaissance and armed drones at 220 million dollars a piece. This is substantially more than the price of most of its current combat aircraft and almost equal to the F-22 price. These newer Northrop planes can be controlled from Nevada but need to take off near to the target zone, like the Pakistani airbase for Afghanistan and FATA, and Saudi Arabia and Kuwait for Yemen and Somalia. It is also developing a similar plane which can take off from a carrier or a ship, which could be placed in the Persian Gulf near Iran in case it is unable to get an agreement for bases in Afghanistan and Iraq. It already has long range stealth bombers at Diego Garcia in the Indian ocean. It is also spending nearly ten billion dollars a year to equip and maintain a JSOC (joint special operations command) force of over 60,000 which is currently carrying out night raids in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

These forces are of no use within the US or in Europe or in any war against a regular army of any nation. Thus it will be used to fight insurgencies and terrorists and thus mainly in the Middle East and North Africa. This explains the US strategy of a thousand foreign bases and lily pads. Any country whose neighbor has given the US such military facilities would be vulnerable to aerial assassination or assassination squads. Pakistan which has given the US such facilities is itself not immune from such attacks. India has nothing to fear from all this at present, but should be wary of a closer embrace and the risk of alienating Russia, which is helping it with the FGFA and nuclear ATV. India should be friendly with the US as the two have many common interests, but a suffocating embrace would only hurt India because the US is hell bent on world military dominance and its own caliphate, even at the cost of economic meltdown, bankruptcy and impoverishment of its own citizens.

A final example and analysis is that of China’s strategic foresight. While America was still reeling from a stalemated war in Korea following WW2, China smartly took over Tibet, betting that the US and Britain were unlikely to open another front in another war. By doing this it markedly increased its landmass, got a border next to Afghanistan and Pakistan. It made Pakistan cede a portion of Kashmir. By these actions it achieved a control over the headwaters of its own rivers and those of India and Pakistan (Indus), Bangladesh, India (Brahmaputra), Vietnam, Cambodia (Mekong), Burma (Irawaddy) and Thailand (Salween). Then when the US and the Soviet Union were involved in a nuclear standoff, it attacked India in 1962, knowing that they would be too preoccupied to help India. It then went nuclear in 1964 and got grandfathered as a nuclear state and NPT founding member, while foolish Nehru turned down the American offer to India for China’s permanent seat on the UN Security Council.

In timely fashion it abandoned and alienated the Soviet Union which was threatening it, by cuddling up to America under foolish Nixon. It used the new relation to build up a three trillion dollar reserve and convert America to a bankrupt debtor. It gave Pakistan arms and nuclear weapons to stunt India’s growth and ambition and now claims Arunachal Pradesh, gives separable visas to Indian Kashmiris, challenging India’s claim to Kashmir.

It is going to build a rail line to Gwadar from Sinkiang and may develop a string of pearls naval bases to surround India. It has begun deep ocean mining in the Indian ocean. It has built rail lines right up to the Indian border and even in Nepal. Our idiot leaders did not even build roads or rail lines in the northeast and failed to maintain airbases along the Chinese border. Their insanely idiotic strategic thinking was that such roads or rails would allow a Chinese offensive to thrust even deeper into India after a successful invasion, as they had failed to adequately provide defensive capability to our armed forces. The current UPA government delayed purchase of aircraft, ships, tanks and instead spent money on enriching the ministers. Our foolish present prime minister announced that China’s building of a dam on the Brahmaputra would not hurt India, as the fluid in his brain would more than compensate for any water loss. Furthermore the prime minister wants to concentrate on appeasing Pakistan by open borders, to ease any inconvenience to those terrorists who desire to blow up the cities of India.

In the meantime China is flush with money to rescue the sinking periphery of Europe and US economy, buy technology and hack and steal what it cannot buy (recent McAfee report) and it is time for the bamboos to flower in Mizoram (when every 48 years there is a rat proliferation induced famine).

The modified version of the eighth verse in the fourth chapter (adhyaya) of the Gita – "paritranaya pakistananam (sadhunam) vinasaya ca murkham (dushkrutam) adharma-samsthapanarthaya (no a) sambhavami yuge yuge" - Whereas the original Verse from the Gita reads as: "paritranaya sadhunam vinshaye cha dushkrtaam dharma-samsthapanarthaya sambhavami yuge yuge".

A Famished Franchise

What is a vote to a starving man? What does the world’s largest election mean to the world’s largest group of forsaken people? HNN finds out.

A VOTE IS often a product of mixed motives — the result of generations of unshakeable loyalty, or the last-minute epiphany of a frustrated finger hovering over multiple EVM buttons. A vote sometimes rewards jobs provided, children schooled, identities recognised. Other times, it punishes pleas unheard, bulbs unlit, bruised faiths. It is a bargaining chip that negotiates a better life for you.

But what if you were forgotten? Even in the shower of attention that elections bring, what if the convoy drove past your village for the nth time? What is a vote to you, if for the third time, a child in your family was dying of hunger, and you had no hospital to take her to, and no earnings to buy her food with? From places that governments have long ignored come shocking stories of the complete failure of government and unbelievable deprivation. Not a morsel to eat, not a drop safe to drink. What does the world’s biggest election mean to the largest group of forsaken people in that country? What is a vote to a starving man?

It takes a stinging swarm of mosquitoes to wake little Maya from her tired sleep. Immediately, she bursts into tears. She thrashes her bony legs; her ribs visible under her skin. There are angry rashes and bleeding sores all over her body. Exhausted from crying, Maya’s eyes shut again. The wailing is now soundless, the tears flow quietly.

Maya looks about one year old, but is actually three. “She doesn’t seem to grow,” says Rasali, her mother. “She hasn’t been able to walk or crawl and most of the time, just lies in an unconscious sleep.” Maya has Grade-4 malnutrition, the severest degree, which means that she has only a few months left to live. She is from Nichikhori village in Madhya Pradesh’s Sheopur district, where locals recognise villages not by name, but by the number of children that have starved to death there in the past few months. Nichikhori is known by the number 6. Not one of the children here who stare at us shyly from behind walls and trees looks well, let alone well-fed. Without exception, they are underweight and have distended abdomens, reed-thin limbs, bulging eyes. Almost all have had a sibling starve to death.

Every four minutes, a child is born dead in Madhya Pradesh. Of those that survive, over 14 per cent die before they turn six. In the seven months from July 2008 to January 2009, 676 children died here of malnourishment. That’s three a day. Empty kitchens, leafless trees and ration shops that are as barren as the landscape are visible proof that there is precious little to eat in northern MP. A chronic, pervasive hunger that lay hidden till a few years ago now screams for attention in newspaper headlines. It is not surprising that, in December 2008, the BJP’s Shivraj Singh Chauhan became Chief Minister against a poll promise of subsidised rice. With no actual food to be had, the mere hope of food is what people subsist on. Lok Sabha aspirants have realised that here, the promise of food security is a profitable one to make and a convenient one to break.

RN Rawat, a Congress MLA from Shivpuri is contesting the Morena Lok Sabha seat, with “eradicating starvation deaths” as his primary agenda. When asked why he did not raise the issue in the years he was an MLA, Rawat says, “I may be raising this just before elections, but someone has to do it sometime.” The MP administration denied reports of malnutrition until 2007, when a wave of hungerrelated deaths brought criticism from across the world. Today, Central and state governments recognise the problem, but underplay its scale. Nutrition and Rehabilitation Centres (NRCs) were started to treat malnourished children in remote villages, but they admit only severely malnourished children, who are already too sick to respond to treatment. The other hungry children are left to the Centre’s anganwadis, which are supposed to provide a daily meal to children under six. In Shivpuri district, however, women say these meals come only once a week.

“Why do these people depend on the government for everything?” asks Ganesh Singh, the BJP parliamentarian from Satna, who is contesting the seat again this year. “The government helps those who help themselves,” he declares.

In Singh’s constituency, long years of drought have forced many families to mortgage their land to moneylenders for food. Non-agricultural jobs are scarce and pay poorly. Entire villages bear insurmountable debts but still have no food. It is at this point that people look to the government. And when even children die of starvation, it is usually a sign of the most abysmal hunger.

Hari Singh, a labourer in Sheopur, lost his one-year-old son three weeks ago. “Sonu was always very weak,” says Singh. “When he was just over 14 months, he suddenly got boils all over his body and his skin started peeling. He became sookha (dry). He couldn’t even digest breast milk and then got diarrhoea. Towards the end, a rotting smell came from his body. That’s when I knew it was over.” The experience left Hari blaming himself. But what it reveals is an absolute breakdown of government welfare schemes.

IF THERE is food from anywhere, the child is sure to be fed. Universally, parents feed their child first,” says Sachin Jain, a member of the Right to Food campaign in Madhya Pradesh. “If children are starving, it means the entire community is on the brink.”

Starvation deaths are often downplayed by governments as transient aberrations, ones that might merit a cure but never prevention; aberrations that can be dealt with after they occur. The Mizoram government, for instance, has camouflaged chronic hunger among its other anti-famine measures. The state witnesses a unique phenomenon called mautam, literally, ‘bamboo death’. Every 48 years, a particular species of tropical bamboo flowers. A temporary surfeit of rich bamboo seeds leads to an explosion in the population of rats, which soon overrun paddy fields, causing a famine. The last famine was in 1959, and it took on political colour as it became the genesis for the militant Mizoram National Famine Front.

Since late 2004, Mizoram has been going through another devastating famine. There are clear manifestations of the onset of famine in eight districts. It seems bizarre that an entire people live perennially on the verge of starvation, but mautam remains a non-issue this election. CL Ruala, the Congress candidate says that the famine does not feature in the party manifesto because its repercussions are limited. C Rokhuma, founder of the Anti-Famine Campaign Organization, believes that Mizoram is a victim of politicised and badly tackled hunger. “The 2007 mautam was manipulated by politicians,” he says. “They let people starve and then brought rice for them from outside, so as to be seen as solving their problem.”

The snag in approaching hunger as a famine-like phenomenon is that the solution is often short-sighted. The Central government accumulates an emergency stock of food grains by buying directly from farmers, a cache meant for famine relief. It has been hoarding this for so long that it now has four times the required stock. As development economist Jean Dréze puts it, if these sacks of grain were lined up in a row, that array of futile, wasted food would stretch for more than a million kilometres, to the moon and back. Grotesquely, though India has the largest unused stocks of food in the world, it also has more people suffering from hunger than any other country.

ALOOK AT the states that have lost the most people to starvation — Madhya Pradesh, Jharkhand, Rajasthan, Mizoram and Orissa — reveals a more silent and misunderstood killer: chronic hunger, the kind that is caused by an utter disability to buy any food. With no land to grow food on and no earnings to buy even subsidised food, families grow hungrier by the generation.

Kalahandi in Orissa has become an icon of Indian poverty. Visited repeatedly by Congress bigwigs and development journalists, the district still remains an unfortunate, living stereotype. A ricesurplus district, yet a district with one of the highest mortality rates (140 per thousand) in the country. The poorest state, yet one voting for 27 crorepati candidates, seven of them from the hungriest Kalahandi-Bolangir-Koraput region.

When the residents of Pengdusi village in Kalahandi are asked what they do for a living, one man bursts out laughing, “We’re boatmakers, fishermen or farmers. At least until we become patients.” In September 2007, 16 people died of diarrhoea here in just 15 days, most of them adults. No one was taken to the hospital because it is 45km away, and there was no bus, no ambulance, and no road. “If you fell sick in this village, you died,” says 30-year-old Madan Nayak, who lost his wife and, one day later, his one-month-old daughter. Diarrhoea is the most common symptom of hunger death — a body’s final rejection of any food or water, an inability to digest anything because of being unfed for too long. Even today, the Primary Health sub-Centre set up 5km from the village following media and NGO pressure, lies locked, with no doctor or health worker appointed. Two years after people died of neglect, no lessons have been learnt.

Yet, instead of despondence, there is still talk of political change. “We all campaigned for Pushpendra Singh of the BJD in the 2004 assembly elections, because we thought he would help us get our BPL cards,” says Haladar Majhi, “But after he won, when we went to remind him of his promise, he asked us who we were.” This year, the popular parliamentary candidate seems to be the Congress’ Bhakta Charan Das, the first politician to visit the village at its worst time in 2007. “He came on a motorcycle, with a doctor riding pillion,” says Haladar, “He ensured that the road is paved. He responds to us, at least for now.”

NEARBY, PREDOMINANTLY tribal Kashipur has been facing the wrath of failed crops. Everyone seems to be at work in lush paddy fields for most of the day, but in their homes, there is commonly just half a pot of dilute rice gruel for a family of five for three days. It is a simple difference between the haves and the have nots. In the last 50 years in Orissa, big farmers have been buying fertile land and cheap labour for throwaway prices. Adivasis work for foodgrains on lands they once owned. When there is no harvest in the rainy season between May and October, they find themselves jobless and too poor to buy even the Rs 2 rice from ration shops. Those with a few acres of land manage for a month or two before hunger strikes them too. Everyone seems to have an NREGA card, but instead of a guaranteed 100 days a year, people in Kashipur get an average of 20 days’ work. Most of that is unpaid.

The staple diet is mango kernels, which lie drying in front of every house. They will be ground and eaten, even though it was these very poisonous fungus- ridden kernels that caused rampant diarrhoea a year ago. “We know this isn’t very good for us,” admits Kaluna, who now raises four children belonging to her sister who died of starvation last year in Kashipur. “But there’s not enough farm produce,” she says. “We need something to quieten the growling stomach.”

The still-robust will to vote among the most neglected is striking. “In the absence of food, land, work, and good health, my vote is the only privilege I have left,” says the 67-year-old Dhiru Kaka, who lost his son, daughter-in-law and wife to starvation last year in Kashipur, Orissa. Playing with his voter ID card is his 2-year-old grandson, the only family he has left. When Dhiru Kaka made the trip to the polling booth on April 16, it was to cast his vote for the 17th time. “At least for a few months after the election, the winning politician will bring us food,” he says, hugging his grandson. “That is the best we can ever expect.”

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.

Are X-rays, CT scans ignoring patient safety?

By M H Ahssan

Before prescribing an xray, does your physician ask you when you last underwent a radio-diagnostic test? Is he willing to accept test reports done at the suggestion of other doctors? If your answer to both questions is no, you may be among the growing number of Indians who get unnecessarily exposed to harmful radiation emitted by diagnostic machines.

According to guesstimates by industry insiders, demand for x-rays and CT scans have gone up by 50% in the past five years. This poses a clear danger of radiation over-exposure, especially for the seriously ill who are often asked to repeat diagnostic tests each time they consult a new expert. The absence of a watchdog or set treatment protocols only makes matters worse.

What’s worse, doctors often may not have a clue about the dangers of exposure. According to a study done by AIIMS in Delhi in 2006-07, 80% of physicians were found to be ignorant about the levels of radiation exposure in radio-diagnostic tests. “When awareness is so little, over-prescribing is inevitable. X-rays are the most over-prescribed tests. It is estimated that nearly 100 million x-rays are performed each year in India,’’ said Dr Pratik Kumar, assistant professor, medical physics, AIIMS, who conducted the study.

For a person, 1 milli Sievert (mSv) per year radiation exposure is considered within permissible limits. Limited x-ray exposure is considered “safe’’ as each test results in a 0.02 mSv exposure. “It is safe but should be judiciously prescribed,’’ said Dr Kumar.

According to the Radiation Protection Act, 2004, all x-ray machines have to be registered with the Atomic Energy Regulatory Board (AERB). CT scan machines, too, should have an AERB licence. Nearly five years after the Act was revised, AERB is still in the process of registering equipment and says that those bought before 2004 are “very difficult to trace’’. S P Aggarwal, director, radiology safety division, AERB, admitted that x-rays and CT scans are being overprescribed. “But, it is not our job to monitor this. Doctors have to be cautious,” he said.

Dr Omprakash Tavri, who formerly headed the Indian Radiological and Imaging Association, said it was difficult to estimate if x-rays were being over-prescribed. “It depends on what a patient is suffering from. There is an accepted radiation dose per person per year and patients should see that they don’t exceed that.’’

The Medical Council of India (MCI) says it’s not possible to monitor overuse as there are no standard treatment guidelines. The health ministry had tabled the Clinical Establishments (Registration and Regulation Bill) in the Lok Sabha in 2007 to bring all clinical facilities under one umbrella. Legislatures of four states (Arunachal, Himachal, Mizoram and Sikkim) have started the move by passing resolutions requesting Parliament to enact a comprehensive law to regulate both government and private sector medical services. “The Centre can’t force states to adopt this Bill as health is a state subject. We need stringent laws to stop the misuse of these diagnostic facilities,’’ said Dr C M Gulhati, editor, Monthly Index of Medical Specialities (MIMS-India).

But the MCI says it is difficult to monitor over-prescription of these tests. “There is no set rule or guidelines to diagnose a disease. It has to be left to the physicians to decide how many tests are needed,’’ said Dr Ketan Desai, president, MCI.

Doctors privately admit that many physicians have “arrangements’’ with diagnostic centres that give them a commission for every referral.

The advent of sophisticated machines has popularized CT scans, too. “Earlier, it used to take nearly 30 minutes, but now it is done in a few minutes. People think that less time under the machine means less exposure, but that’s not true,’’ said Dr Kumar. “The demand for CT scans has gone up drastically. Today, doctors don’t want to take a chance and are writing CT scans even for headaches.,’’ said a radiologist.

Said Dr Veena Choudhary, HOD, radiology, GB Pant hospital, “These tests tell you the real picture and no doctor wants to take a chance. In court, evidence counts and these tests are hard evidence.’’

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)