The Supreme Court order to ban tourism in core tiger reserves, and decisions to shoot poachers at sight find favour with some conservationists, the middle class and media. But what will their impact be on the people who live in and around the tiger reserves, ask Tarsh Thekaekara

Tiger numbers are on the rise. Not so much in the wild, where they continue to be threatened, but in India’s English media. The mobile phone company Aircel has jumped onto the tiger bandwagon and runs ads on commercial TV channels encouraging people to save tigers and use Aircel. NDTV, in partnership with Aircel, ran a 12-hour star-studded ‘tiger telethon’ recently, where people like Amitabh Bachchan supposedly lent his charisma to the cause of tiger conservation. The show was filled with suggestions mostly aimed at tackling poaching, endorsing the ‘shoot-poachers-on-sight’ idea. Maharashtra, like Assam before it, in response to the spate of tiger deaths in its celebrated reserves has authorised forest guards to shoot tiger poachers. The gruesome images of butchered tigers leave very little sympathy for poachers. So, though shooting seems drastic, consistent reports of poaching on the rise leave wildlife enthusiasts convinced that only harsh measures will work.

Alongside this comes India’s Supreme Court interim ban, at the end of July 2012, on tourism in core area tiger reserves in response to a petition by a wildlife conservation group.

The wider conservation fraternity and media are alive with debate. Some argue that good ‘eco-tourism’ initiatives provide important funding for tiger conservation and are hugely beneficial to forest-dwellers; others say there is no such thing as eco-tourism that benefits local communities and the crass commercial exploitation of tigers is harmful to them and their habitat.


So what are the issues that threaten tigers? And will this added public awareness about tigers and the urban consensus on tiger tourism and poaching have a significant impact on tiger conservation? There are no straightforward answers, of course, but the historical processes in conservation should play a more prominent role in these discussions. Tiger conservation in India, and forest management before that, has a chequered and turbulent history, the crux being the estimated 200-250 million people who live in and around India’s forests.

The Indian forest department was founded by the British government under a German officer in 1864, as the Imperial Forest Service. Its mandate was to oversee the ‘orderly exploitation’ of India’s forest wealth, primarily timber. All forests were taken over by the state. In 1947, the nascent independent Indian government made no effort to reverse this view of forests, as the state still needed such mechanisms to hold all the autonomous indigenous communities and kingdoms together as a country. People who had been living in forests for centuries, relatively unconnected to the outside world, were considered outlaws in the eyes of the state, unknown to them.

In response to the rampant poaching and decimation of wildlife, India launched its flagship conservation programme Project Tiger in the 1970s. India’s then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi constituted the first taskforce of specialists to create a blueprint for tiger conservation. Though it recognised the issue of people in parks, the 1972 report was primarily about better protection and policing of tiger reserves. It called for only the smaller ‘core’ zones of 300 sq km to be devoid of human habitation, within the larger (average 1,500 sq km) tiger reserves.

In 1983, another taskforce on ‘public support for wildlife conservation’ was constituted, and it noted that while conservation measures were increasing, there was also a “growing degree of apathy and indeed, antipathy, towards wildlife among different classes and sections of the public”. The report focused on people living in and around tiger reserves, and recommended more funds for their development. Around the same time, two UK-based organisations, Tiger Trust and Environmental Investigation Agency released widely publicised reports — ‘The Big Cat Cover-Up’ and ‘State of the Tiger’ — severely criticising Indian conservation efforts and calling for more stringent armed intervention by the government to curb poaching and have better protection. Caving in to international pressure, the Indian government went into damage control mode, strengthening the guards-and-guns approach, ignoring its own internal assessment of tiger conservation priorities.


By the end of the 1980s, protected area coverage had increased eight times from 1970, to about 4% of India’s land area. Tiger numbers rose significantly. H S Panwar, the then director of Project Tiger, wrote a self-congratulatory article titled ‘What to do when you have succeeded’. Project Tiger may have played a crucial role in preventing the charismatic cat from being pushed to extinction, but things got much worse for forest-dwellers as many of them were forcibly evicted from tiger reserves.

The success was shortlived. Around 2005, two well-known tiger reserves in central India — Sariska and Panna — were discovered, shockingly, to be devoid of tigers, despite official figures showing healthy tiger populations. Another high-profile tiger taskforce was constituted to examine how this had happened and to review India’s tiger conservation programme. It travelled across the country to understand the issues surrounding tiger conservation and what had gone wrong. Not surprisingly, the blame was placed largely on the government’s previous anti-people, guns-and-guards approach. They noted: “The protection of the tiger is inseparable from the protection of the forests it roams in. But the protection of these forests is itself inseparable from the fortunes of people who, in India, inhabit forest areas.”

The report found that forest-dwellers did not benefit in any way from tiger protection (or tourism), and were constantly being harassed under the guise of conservation. As a result, locals were happier assisting poachers and loggers in their activities than protecting tigers. The report called for a more democratic and inclusive approach. This led to a change in India’s conservation laws, with the ‘tiger’ amendment to the Wildlife Protection Act in 2006. While people could still be ‘voluntarily relocated’ out of ‘critical tiger habitats’ or core zones of tiger reserves, there had to be scientific evidence that the people’s activities had a detrimental effect on tigers. And communities had to be satisfied with the compensation they were being offered. More importantly, people living in the buffer zones of these tiger reserves had to be a part of and benefit from the conservation effort. Alongside this came the Indian Forest Rights Act that recognises the rights of indigenous people living in forests and attempts to correct “an historical injustice”, recognising forest people as “integral to the survival of the forest ecosystem”. The thrust of India’s current conservation laws, therefore, is about working with local people and pushing the ‘coexistence agenda’.

In this historical context, it is clear that the most under-represented area of tiger conservation (and all other conservation) in India is the issue of people living in forests. While conservationists disagree on what should be done — help people move out or let them stay there and attempt to develop sustainably — there is broadbased agreement that the fate of people is a key issue.

So how do the two new initiatives sit within this historical context? And do they interact with the people living in and around parks?

First, tourism. While the general perception is that the Supreme Court order has popped up out of the blue, the idea has been around for a while, even in the National Tiger Conservation Authority’s (NTCA) draft guidelines published in June 2011. There is a simple underlying notion of justice — if people have been moved out of a reserve, tourists cannot be allowed in. Since it is not easy to refute this basic reasoning, a wider set of questions related to wildlife tourism is brought in — does tourism harm wildlife, benefit local communities, or provide income for conservation? No one claims tourism by itself is beneficial to tigers; the question here is how the detrimental effect can be minimised, keeping in mind the other two supposed positive aspects.

Does tourism really benefit local communities? A recent survey by scientists Karanth and DeFries (2011) suggests that communities don’t get a fair share of the profits. Organisations like Equations, working on equitable tourism, as well as a host of other tourism studies all suggest the same — communities gain little or nothing from tourism, eco or otherwise. In response to this, the NTCA guidelines ask for 30% of tourism revenue to be shared with local communities, something the tourism industry is vehemently opposed to. Vishal Singh, the head of Tour Operators for Tigers, was quoted as saying: “Thirty per cent is too much for us. We cannot share more than 5% of it with the communities.” While there is little evidence that revenue generated from the private tourism industry is used for conservation except through the circuitous route of taxation, the government-run facilities do generate some revenues for the reserves.

Despite the fact that there is very little gain for either conservation or local communities from tourism, the fact remains that this could change with more stringent regulation, and tourism could be beneficial in some ways. This is exactly what the NTCA is attempting to do with its guidelines and the Supreme Court stay order, which still allows tourism in buffer zones. But going by my experience of living and working around the Mudumalai Tiger Reserve in Tamil Nadu, it’s going to be a real challenge. There is a huge tourism industry in Mudumalai; almost all conservationists agree that it is excessive. The place gets over 1,000 visitors every day, most of them en route to Ooty. The majority come with no real interest in wildlife or nature, carrying their urban baggage with them (music, dancing, movies, alcohol and sex). They consider it extra fun doing all this in a ‘natural’ setting.

The tourism industry, like any other capitalist venture, is driven by short-sighted quarterly profits. Conservation and local communities always come second. Going by the news reports, the situation is much worse in central India.

A key reason this issue is so hyped up is that many of India’s celebrated tiger-defenders occupying key positions of power in Delhi also own various tourism facilities in our tiger reserves. The irony of throwing tribal people out and bringing urban tourists in is completely lost on them.

Next is the ‘shoot-poachers-at-sight’ issue. Despite a more people-inclusive change in the forest laws, local forest staff’s attitudes have remained the same. Conflict with the forest department is well known, since people living inside parks used to be considered encroachers and all basic livelihood activities illegal. Since the law no longer deems them illegal, the forest department now brands dissenting tribals ‘poachers’ or suspected poachers, and the dominance continues. The issue is primarily one of power — they have enjoyed their ruling position for over 100 years and are in no rush to hand over to locals.

Some argue that every society has its share of criminals, and a shoot-at-sight approach is the only way to deal with them. But as Dr Madhav Gadgil, one of India’s best-known ecologists points out, corruption and criminals within the forest department is a huge problem. People getting into the forest department at the junior-most level have to pay large bribes — amounts as high as a full year’s wages — to secure a coveted permanent government job. The only way for them to recover this money is through extortion or collecting bribes to turn a blind eye to illegal activities. So you have an almost completely criminal force put in charge of stopping another set of criminals from entering parks. There was a recent report from the Bandipur Tiger Reserve of an anti-poaching watcher sitting near a waterhole and shooting a leopard dead. This, while on official duty and with a state-sponsored gun. The matter was hushed up like hundreds of other such cases that never come to light.

In this context, will empowering officials to shoot anyone they consider a ‘poacher’ really help the situation? The scope for misuse is enormous. Anyone collecting firewood or honey could very easily be called a poacher and shot dead. The forest department has an extremely bad track record of dealing with people; the power to shoot at sight is going to make it considerably worse.

Taking a step back, I would argue that neither of these discussions is likely to make or break tigers. With the targeted branding and marketing of tigers over the last few years, the large cats have captured the hearts of the Indian urban middle class. Accordingly, tiger issues that middle class people are able to relate to have become central issues in tiger conservation. Habitat loss driven by overconsumption of natural resources by this very class of people is conveniently ignored. That tigers are not an end in themselves, but should be seen as a flagship for all forests and natural systems is also forgotten. And so there will continue to be more ‘tigerthons’ and more celebrity action. My hope is that the democratic processes of decision-making in India are not overly influenced by the media buzz, and that those involved in nature conservation are not impeded by the middle class. Tiger conservation issues directly affect thousands of people who live in and around the reserves. Both tourism and powers-to-shoot-poachers will have a considerable impact on these people, yet their voice is never heard.

(Tarsh Thekaekara works with The Shola Trust in the Nilgiris and is trained in biodiversity conservation from the University of Oxford)

Originally published by: Infochange News & Features, August 2012

Re-published with permission

The post What does it take to save India’s tigers? appeared first on NGOBOX.

It seems likely that the 12th Plan will also incorporate the same old gendered assumptions that have effectively invisibilised women — particularly working class women — from urban policies in India, writes Kalyani Menon-Sen

The 12th Plan has been in the pipeline for a while now. In a significant departure from earlier exercises, the Planning Commission made an effort this time to broaden the base of consultations and solicit suggestions from 20 different categories of interlocutors on how to address various strategic challenges. Respondents included several NGOs under the umbrella of Wada Na Todo Abhiyan; members of online discussion groups; people who wrote in on the 12th Plan website and  Facebook page; students who participated in an essay competition organised by the Tata group and online discussion groups managed by the UN system; as well as the usual suspects like CII, FICCI, FISME and NABARD. The outputs of these discussions have been collated into an impressive document (1) summarising the issues and recommendations with respect to the 12 strategic challenges identified by the Planning Commission.

For the Planning Commission to go outside its traditional charmed circle of advisors and experts to solicit inputs from ordinary citizens is no small step. Whether motivated by the increasingly public critique of its positions on issues such as the poverty line, or by a genuine rethinking of its hitherto ivory-tower approach, we cannot but welcome the opening up of the planning process to public involvement. We must also applaud the fact that women’s organisations and people working for gender equality and women’s rights were represented in every sub-group and contributed inputs on a range of issues.


Can we then look forward to a 12th Plan that is significantly more pro-people, gender-just and inclusive than its predecessors? Although the answer to this question must await the unveiling of the final document, the indications are that there may not be too much to celebrate, at least for those who are concerned with urbanisation and urban issues.

‘Managing urbanisation’ is one of the 12 strategic challenges identified by the Planning Commission. The report of the consultations provides an exhaustive list of issues raised by the various interlocutors, most of whom seem to agree on “the un-inclusive and unsustainable nature of Indian cities”. Increasing rural-urban migration, poor infrastructure and services, neglect of the unorganised sector, homelessness, problems in accessing services for “invisible people”, rising violence against women, lack of appropriate structures for planning and governance, poor convergence and lack of expertise in the implementation of schemes, resource constraints, environmental concerns — the litany is not new, but no less valid for being oft-repeated.

The proposals for addressing these challenges are equally well-worn. Even without the attributions, it is easy to see who said what. The civil society groups voiced a demand for basic facilities — water, electricity, healthcare, childcare, education — for the urban poor. Population control, urban land reforms, encouraging PPP for urban infrastructure provision, operation and maintenance were raised by CII. The gender people called for gender-sensitive planning.

How is the Planning Commission going to deal with this long and rather messy collection of concerns and ideas, many of which stand in direct contradiction to each other?

Although we still do not have a 12th Plan document, the cabinet-approved version of the Approach Paper is now on the Planning Commission website (2) and provides sufficient evidence of how the data gleaned from the consultations has been used. Chapter 12 (‘The Challenge of Urbanisation’) does indeed list many of the challenges identified during the consultations — increasing population density in urban areas, poor infrastructure and inadequate services, weaknesses in institutions of governance, the situation of those working in the informal sector, environmental concerns. The proposals for action include many of the suggestions made by NGOs and civil society groups — a “whole city” approach to urban development, decentralised and participatory planning, subsidised basic services along with security of tenure and affordable housing for the poorest, increased investment in public transport systems and creation of opportunities for formal employment as well as “productive and dignified self-employment”. At the same time, the concerns of industry bodies and corporate players have not been ignored. Increased investment in infrastructure and maintenance of assets, continued pursuit of public-private partnerships including in the health sector, privatisation of services such as water supply and waste disposal, increased pressure on local bodies to mobilise private capital, opening up of land markets and investment in emerging cities — all these are bound to gladden the hearts of corporate India.

However, there is one significant omission. Nowhere does the Approach Paper reflect any awareness of the differential situations, needs and concerns of women and men of different communities and occupations. Nowhere is there any acknowledgement of issues such as women’s role in the care economy, their lack of access to housing and sanitation, their vulnerability to violence in public spaces — all of which were specifically highlighted by Wada Na Todo sub-groups and the Solutions Exchange Gender Community during the consultations. As a matter of fact, the text of the chapter on urbanisation does not contain a single specific mention of women.


To be fair, this gender blindness is not confined to the discussion on urbanisation alone. The Planning Commission’s “challenges matrix” that provides the structural framework for the 12th Plan does not identify gender inequality as a cross-cutting challenge. One would have no quarrel with this, if there was a recognition of women’s vulnerabilities and of gender as a mechanism for social discrimination and exclusion. While glimmers of this understanding may be found in some other sections of the Approach Paper, women are not listed among the “historically disadvantaged groups” for whom focused interventions are needed — an unexpected omission, considering that hitherto ignored and invisible categories such as “LGBT groups” and “differently-abled persons” are included.

The Planning Commission is following a time-honoured bureaucratic (and patriarchal) tradition in using the term “people” as if it were inclusive, rather than a cloak of invisibility that hides yawning gaps and inequalities not just between women and men, but between people living in different areas of the city, migrants and ‘insiders’, people of different castes and religions, people in different occupations… the list could go on.

The Approach Paper does talk of “slums” and “slum-dwellers” but, again, as an undifferentiated homogenous population that can be conveniently lumped under the label of “the urban poor” who are “largely employed in the informal sector and suffer from multiple deprivations and vulnerabilities that include lack of access to basic amenities such as water supply, sanitation, healthcare, education, social security and decent housing (and) are also not sufficiently represented in the urban governance process” (3). The only specific groups mentioned are street children and old people.

Improving “the ability of urban aggregations to gainfully accommodate migrants from rural India” is listed as the first of the outcomes of the urbanisation strategy proposed during the 12th Plan. However, the next few points leave no doubt about the rationale for this. “The urban centres and their peripheries should become the launch-pads for expansion of manufacturing and modern services. Economies and innovations within them should provide the country with the desired global competitive edge in larger numbers of products. Such economies of agglomeration would also enable the country to take full advantage of its diverse production base.”

Needless to say, a major element of the “diverse production base” is the availability of a large labour force, willing to work at a fraction of global wage standards. How convenient then, to have this pool of workers agglomerated within cities rather than scattered randomly across the countryside. To quote the report of the Planning Commission’s Working Group on urban poverty and slums (4): “Slums are an integral part of the phenomenon of urbanisation, and are contributing significantly to the economy of cities by being a source of affordable labour supply for production both in the formal and informal sectors of the economy.”

The Approach Paper suggests a “massive push” by urban local bodies to attract private investment in all areas of urban infrastructure, not only for large infrastructure projects (as  earlier in the first phase of the Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission), but also for drinking water supply, waste water recycling, treatment of solid waste and urban sewerage. The Approach Paper proposes an “extended ‘4P’ framework of People-Private-Public Partnerships as experience across the world indicates that in urban renewal and management, the role of ‘people’ in the design of projects and partnerships is crucial, much more so than in large infrastructure projects such as highways, airports, power, power plants, etc, in which ‘people’ have a relatively limited role in the ongoing governance of the projects and their outcomes.” And just in case the addition of the “people” still fails to persuade private players to fork out their money, there is a handy solution: “Subvention from property and other urban taxes is imaginatively used to meet any financial gap in the projects where felt necessary.” In other words, PPPP (like its precursor, PPP) will continue to be parsed as “Public Paisa in Private Pockets”.

Despite the acknowledgement of the existence of “the poor” scattered here and there throughout the text, the 12th Plan Approach Paper seems to have taken several steps backward from the 11th Plan. Where the 11th Plan document at least listed “reduction of urban poverty” as an element of the strategy for urbanisation, the 12th Plan Approach paper speaks of “socio-technical considerations” in determining urban form. Where the 11th Plan includes “protection of the economic interests and safety of women and other vulnerable sections of society” among the objectives of the urban poverty alleviation strategy, the 12th Plan Approach Paper offers nothing more than the vague assurance that “people” will be consulted wherever appropriate.

It seems clear that the focus in the 12th Plan will continue to be on urban infrastructure, with social infrastructure also being brought into the PPPP embrace. Despite serious criticisms of both intention and implementation during its first phase, JNNURM seems well set to continue — the Approach Paper proposes merging it with the Rajiv Awas Yojana to create a brontosaur of a programme that will continue to peddle the agenda of monetising and marketising public land and the urban commons, thinly disguised as urban “reforms”.

It could be argued that the Approach Paper is not the Plan, and too much should not be read into it. In fact, the document itself mentions that a special sub-committee on urbanisation has been set up by the National Development Council, which will review the recommendations of the High-Powered Committee on Indian Urban Infrastructure and Services and “hopefully also deliberate on the issues raised in the Approach Paper”. The outputs of these deliberations are expected to inform the 12th Plan document.

The report of the Steering Committee on Urbanisation — intriguingly forward-dated November 2012 and marked ‘Confidential Working Draft Not For Circulation’ — is also available on the website of the Planning Commission (5). This document reads like a preview of the Plan document and contains detailed proposals for schemes to be rolled out at national, state and local levels. Although the members of the committee are not listed, one suspects that they included some “povertywallahs”, since the document contains several pages of detailed analysis of urban poverty data and proposes some major policy changes. These include formalising and unionising informal sector workers, supporting street vending and informal markets and launching a comprehensive national urban livelihood programme with components for social protection, enterprise development, capacity development and access to credit. However, the overarching conceptual framework for urbanisation remains unchanged — the goal is to make cities “engines of economic growth” through creating world-class infrastructure and professional management of urban services, with PPPPs backed by a “robust land monetisation framework” as the main drivers of change.

Given this scenario, it seems likely that the 12th Plan will also incorporate the same old gendered assumptions that have effectively invisibilised women — particularly working class women — from urban policies in India. Despite being repeatedly challenged and disproved by feminist scholars and women’s rights activists, our urban planners continue to operate on the assumption that what is good for families is (and should be) good for women; that male-headed households and nuclear families are (and should be) the norm; that all women have (and should have) the same needs and aspirations. These assumptions not only provide the justification for programmes that few, if any women can access and benefit from, but this is only one side of the problem. They also serve to hide the widening gaps and disparities between women and men and between different groups of women. The ongoing discussion on the poverty line is an excellent example of how this system operates.

Given this situation, one may well ask if there is anything to be gained by advocating for the insertion of gender-responsiveness into the urbanisation strategy of the 12th Plan. What does it matter whether women — or dalits, or minorities, or homeless people, or daily wage workers — are named or ignored in such documents? Has the more gendered language of the 11th Plan made any difference on the ground? Can it not be argued that insertion of gendered language is actually a form of containment, with even small concessions — a word here, a sentence there — seeming like  major victories that then have to be defended against attrition?

But these are questions for those who are engaging with and trying to influence the 12th Plan — they need not concern the Planning Commission, which continues to demonstrate its commitment to “listening to India”. The 12th Plan website still invites “stakeholders’ suggestions”, with a montage of happy faces eager to “voice my opinion”. The page is also running an online poll. The question: “Should the PDS be universalised again?” Clicking on a button allows you to vote but not to see the results — a reminder that even participation has limits set by those who, even as they invite people to speak up, can exercise the power to decide what to hear and what to ignore.

Endnotes

1. Planning Commission of India. 2011. Listening to India. A Conversation of Citizens with the Planning Commission Regarding the 12th Five-Year Plan. April 2011
2. Planning Commission of India. 2011. Approach Paper to the 12th Five-Year Plan. Faster, Sustainable and more Inclusive Growth. October 2011. http://planningcommission.gov.in/plans/planrel/12appdrft/appraoch_12plan.pdf
3. Approach Paper to the 12th Five-Year Plan. Page 109
4. Planning Commission of India. 2011. Steering Committee on Urbanisation. Report of the Working Group on Urban Poverty, Slums and Service Delivery System. October 2011.   http://planningcommission.gov.in/aboutus/committee/wrkgrp12/hud/wg_Final_Urb_Pvt.pdf> Accessed April 6, 2012
5. Planning Commission of India. November 2012 (sic). Report of the Steering Committee on Urbanisation. 12th  Five-Year Plan. http://planningcommission.gov.in/aboutus/committee/strgrp12/strrep_urban0401.pdf Accessed April 6, 2012

Originally Published by: Infochange News & Features, April 2012

Re-published with permission

The post Urban development in the 12th Plan: Who’s in? Who’s out appeared first on NGOBOX.

India is the fastest-growing aviation market in the world. But only 2% of people travel by air. High-speed rail networks for distances upto 600 km could cut emissions by 90%, while also being more efficient and affordable to the common man

A study conducted by the Centre for Asia Pacific Aviation (CAPA) shows that domestic air travel in India is on the rise, thanks to a booming and consistent economy. In December 2011, the number of people travelling by air was 5.63 million. This took the number of domestic flyers in 2011 to just past the 60 million mark, up 16.6% from the previous year’s figure of 52 million, averaging out at 5.1 million passengers per month, and up 74% from 2006 levels. India is going to remain the fastest growing aviation market in the world, with the 2011-12 fiscal year likely to record a growth of 17-18%.

But for a few in the aviation industry, the news isn’t good. India’s premier aviation company Kingfisher, owned by high-profile tycoon Vijay Mallya, recently filed for bankruptcy, a move that was decried by many on hints that the government might offer financial help when the banks refused to lend the company any more money. Now, lenders have threatened to put Mallya’s personal property and office on the block to recover debts amounting to Rs 7,000 crore.

National carrier Air India has been in the red for a long time and is still experiencing financial and labour problems. It has to be restructured and infused with a Rs 22,000 crore high-cost working capital debt if it is to survive.

The largest standalone carrier, Indigo, with a 19.5% market share, is the fastest growing carrier simply because it’s the cheapest.

Considering all this, it is worth exploring why a developing and poor country, where less than 2% of people travel by air, has no efficient and cheap high-speed railway system.

Peter Head, recipient of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) for his contribution towards the development of sustainable cities advocates in his report on the creation of ecological towns that in low- and middle-income countries, new airports should be focused on international/ regional travel over approximately 600 km, and that they should be located on high-speed rail routes and connected to local urban areas with mass transit systems. Citing the example of Europe, he writes that Europe now has a viable high-speed rail network which is an attractive alternative to regional air travel for distances up to 600 km.


When high-speed rail was introduced, rail user numbers doubled and on some routes like the 300 km Paris-Brussels route, air travel dropped to a negligible level. This experience has also been confirmed in Japan. High-speed railway investment along with the capacity for rail freight movement with links built directly to city edge consolidation centres is an efficient way forward. Indeed, this is the one area where the ecological footprint of urban centres can be reduced.

Scientific studies have predicted that air travel emissions are going to be one of the biggest sources of carbon emissions in the atmosphere. One has only to look up on a clear day to see crisscrossing contrails (vapour trails that are long thin artificial clouds that sometimes form behind aircraft) being formed in the wake of high-flying planes.

Taking a train instead of a plane could cut almost 90% of carbon emissions. In a study, Eurostar — the high-speed railway service connecting London with Paris and Brussels — shows that taking the train to Paris instead of flying cuts CO2 emissions per passenger not just by a measly 10% or 20%, or even 50%, but by a staggering 90%! That’s not to mention time saved in avoiding stringent post-9/11 security checks where it could take two hours to check in for an hour’s flight.

Incidentally, the environmental benefits of taking the train instead of a plane may be greater than 90%. Planes emit their CO2 directly into the upper atmosphere where it is likely to do over twice the damage the same quantity of CO2 emitted at ground level could do (estimates vary between two and three times the damage, but 2.7 is the factor normally used). This factor isn’t included in the Eurostar findings.

The Indian scenario is interesting because, despite being a developing country, India has leapfrogged to air travel without offering efficient high-speed rail travel as an economically viable alternative that could take the pressure off the aviation industry. Considering the fact that the four metros and 41 other million-plus cities which are business class destinations lie within 600-800 km, researchers and urban planners recommend that high-speed rail investment should be given equal priority with roads. There must be greater emphasis on efficient travel within a 300-600 km radius, as this does not just make business sense, it’s also sustainable. To have ground transport that is efficient, cheap, environment-friendly and sustainable will allow commuters to avoid costly air travel.

Over a decade ago there was talk of improving the 500 km track between Mumbai and Ahmedabad, a lucrative business travel corridor, at a cost of roughly Rs 3 crore per km. There is also renewed talk of a ‘golden rail corridor’ that could possibly travel upward of 200 km/hour. Currently, travelling the roughly 1,400 km from New Delhi to Mumbai takes almost 15-17 hours; with the new trains, travel time will be cut to just six or eight hours. Not only will this divert a huge chunk from air travel, it will also be accessible and convenient for everyone, will cut greenhouse gas emissions, and will help business in these times of recession.

Kolkata has had a metro network for a long time; Delhi for over a decade now. Similar projects have been completed in Bangalore, and the one in Mumbai is underway. We should have had these almost a decade ago (at least in all metropolitan areas) as neither technology nor finance for such projects has been wholly indigenous and has been carried out with foreign or multilateral institutional funding and imported technology. Especially considering post-liberalisation growth, rising incomes, and the possible effects of climate change. And, if not all this, to save foreign exchange on petro-products, reduce pollution and congestion, and improve access for ordinary people.

(Bholenath Vishwakarma is a Ford Foundation International Fellow and Columbia University graduate)

Originally Published by: Infochange News & Features, August 2012

Re-published with permission

The post Trains instead of planes appeared first on NGOBOX.

Mumbai is possibly the city worst-affected by radiation from cell phone towers, with roughly 80% of its 10,000 towers allegedly illegal and unsafe. An aggressive campaign by citizens has finally brought attention to the serious health risks and the transgressions of the law

This column begins on a personal note. I have cell phone towers atop a building directly behind me and, incidentally, diagonally opposite the newly-constructed multi-storeyed residence of Mumbai’s newest Rajya Sabha MP, who knows a thing or two about wielding a willow. I lost my sister-in-law to brain cancer in 2008 and, since August last year, have myself been treated for leukaemia. While we cannot say that this was caused by radiation from the cell tower, by the same token the possibility — particularly of contracting brain cancer — cannot be ruled out either. The Bandra West Residents Association has written to Anjali Tendulkar, who has qualified as a doctor, but has not had a reply.

Mumbai is probably the worst-affected city in the country, due to its extremely high population density. In fact, at one stage in the ’60s, areas like Bhuleshwar had the highest densities in the world, but, with the current predilection for nuclear families, young couples have moved to the northern suburbs. Even so, whether it is the ultra-rich enclave of Malabar Hill, which has witnessed the first successful people’s campaign against such towers, as has the north-eastern suburb of Kanjurmarg, the propensity for Mumbai to grow vertically and have high-rises cheek-by-jowl with each other should never be under-estimated.

In a press release on September 13, the Department of Telecommunication (DoT), headed by Mumbai MP Milind Deora, told seven operators of cell towers on top of buildings in Mumbai to dismantle them immediately. These were at sites adjacent to a cooperative housing society in Kanjurmarg (East), which had as many as 11 licensed base transreceiver stations (BTSs) in the vicinity. They belonged to major reputed operators: Tata Teleservices (Maharashtra) Ltd, Reliance Communications, Aircel, Idea Cellular, Airtel and Loop Telecom.

From September 1, the DoT has brought down the permissible nationwide limit, emulating the International Commission on Non-Ionising Radiation Protection (ICNRP) standard, from 4.5 Watts per square metre (W/m₂) to 0.45 W/m₂. The reduction to (not by) one-tenth of the original radiation permissible limit might appear safe but, according to experts, the actual limit should be 0.0001 W/m₂. No wonder that there have not been howls of protest from the Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI). Its spokesperson, who also appeared in NDTV’s ‘We the People’ programme on Sunday, September 16, said after the crackdown in Mumbai: “It was only one multi-tenant tower for which radiation was found to be marginally, at 1.1 W/m₂ (sic) compared with 0.92 W/m₂ required by the guidelines. The tower has been shut. Most of our members are fully compliant with the rules.”


According to activists like Prakash Munshi and actor Juhi Chawla, who live in neighbouring buildings on Malabar Hill, the COAI is being economical with the truth. Of the roughly estimated 10,000 cell towers in Mumbai, they allege that as many as 80% are illegal. A recent Municipal Corporation survey itself found that half the 3,705 towers scrutinised were unauthorised. The Municipal Corporation’s building proposal department wrote to Idea Cellular Towers Infrastructures Ltd in June this year, in reply to a complaint by Jennifer Fernandes, a first-floor resident of Ravi Shakun Apartments in Santa Cruz (West). It clarified that the consent of all the occupants of the building required to be obtained, and Idea was asked to remove the antennae in 15 days.

Residents of Peddar Road, one of the main north-south arteries of the city, are about to take the authorities to court for permitting a building to erect such towers in their midst. They have already tasted blood, with the backing of renowned residents like Lata Mangeshkar (who threatened at one stage to shift to Dubai) and Asha Bhosle, in stalling the construction of a flyover through the length of the road.  Residents and activists note, however, to their dismay that some of the best-known names in the legal fraternity are representing the COAI members, just as most of them did a few years ago for mill owners in a much more controversial case regarding the public share of city cotton mill land which was being redeveloped.

According to information put together by Sangeeta John from the recently formed citizens’ group called Action Against Cell Towers (AACT), of which this columnist is a founder: “Continued exposure to radiation shows incidence of biological effects such as cancer and genetic damage. Some of the serious health concerns are certain types of cancer like leukaemia, bladder cancer, impaired memory, hearing loss, skin infections. People living near the towers have complained of headache, dizziness, fatigue, weakness, insomnia. The biological effects are because of multiple resonances resulting from localised heating due to radiation.”

“Usha Kiran building is a classic case study,” she writes. “One of the oldest and most prestigious residential towers, Usha Kiran (ironically named in retrospect: freely translated as ‘The Dawn’s Rays’) is directly affected by cell tower radiation. It is on Carmichael Road and is facing the cell phone towers installed on Vijay Apartments’ terrace, directly opposite. There have been six cancer cases, including one death, in four floors (fifth, sixth, eighth and tenth).”  The fatality was that of the wife of Vijay Gokhale, who was arrested as the top manager at Union Carbide when the Bhopal pesticide factory leaked toxic gas in December 1984. There are 10 other cancer cases in the vicinity of Usha Kiran.

At a meeting at Juhi Chawla’s residence recently, Jayshree Patel from Pali Hill, the one-time abode of most of Bollywood, related how her husband has shifted from the bedroom to the drawing room at night because of disturbance to his sleep, since the bedroom was in line of sight of a tower. Another member of AACT, Thanush Joseph, has barred his young children from entering his balcony for fear of being exposed to radiation. At the other end of the social spectrum, traffic policemen at the busy Mahalaxmi intersection have asked to be relieved from the site, which is in full view of cell towers, after complaining of ill health.

Minister Deora told Chawla in 2011: “We wouldn’t want that 20 years down the line we have an entire population of young children, young adults, old people suffering from serious health effects due to our negligence, our inaction, or our ignorance.” And to health and telecom ministers Ghulam Nabi Azad and Kapil Sibal respectively he wrote: “I am aware of the importance of spreading the telecom network in the country for the all-round development and future expansion of our nation. However, in view of the susceptibility of Indian citizens to possible health risks, I suggest the use of lower-power micro-cell transmitters with inbuilt solutions instead of the present trend of using high-power transmission over mobile towers or high-rise buildings. A number of studies have reported a correlation between exposure to radio frequency radiation and occurrence of disorders in cells, DNA, immune system, hormones and reproduction.” The Cancer Patients Aid Association is surveying suspect buildings throughout Mumbai.

Chawla herself achieved the unimaginable after noticing that her building was surrounded by 14 towers, some of which were only 40 metres away. The average price paid by operators for a tower is Rs 5 lakh a year. The presence of a cluster implies that, in such cases, residents do not have to pay for outgoings every month — they may, on the contrary, sometimes even be shoring up the society’s capital. Chawla had her building’s radiation levels checked, and found that it was well over the limit. She wrote to the chief minister (the state guest house, Sahyadri, lies directly opposite her), the municipal commissioner, health minister, and so on; she was fobbed off at every stage.


She then put up banners in her compound alerting neighbours as well as passersby to conditions such as dizziness, Parkinson’s, forgetfulness and so on. The curiosity of passersby and the media (who often congregated for official press conferences at Sahyadri) was aroused and the press came to interview the actor. An RTI application revealed — in a characteristic response by the sluggish and insensitive municipal bureaucracy — that her complaint file was missing and, on other occasions, “damaged”. Eventually, however, her persistence paid off and possibly due to her celebrity status the operators dismantled the towers.

The corporate think-tank Bombay First has written to the state environment and health secretaries about these hazards. There are two technical issues involved regarding cell towers which people understandably find difficult to comprehend, and the operators take full advantage of such lack of knowledge. One is the power which the towers use to send out signals for cell phones. The other is the electro magnetic field radiation (EMFR) emitted by the towers. As Munshi observes, while the EMFR emitted by towers can be controlled by remote switches, and the standard has now been reduced to one-tenth of the former, the power usage “goes up and down, depending on the frequency of use of cell phones during the day”. Inspectors in this country are known, as was brought to common knowledge especially after the Bhopal gas tragedy, to helpfully inform owners of industrial or other environmentally sensitive sites of a prospective visit, in return for a well-stuffed brown envelope. When anyone is monitoring the radiation of a cell tower, operators can easily control such radiation at a flick of a switch, only to turn it on again after the inspection is over.

The problem is that there are regulations only for radiation per tower, but there are no standards for clusters, from which radiation emanates from all sides. There should also be heights prescribed for cell towers, transmitters and receivers. The distances at which these devices are installed away from residences, schools and hospitals should similarly be laid down. Only recently, the environment ministry banned these towers within national parks — it would thus seem that animals are more fragile than humans!

In many instances, there is complete ad hocism in the laws pertaining to the use of towers. The COAI, represented by Dr Abhishek Manu Singhvi, the former Congress spokesperson who fell from grace, took the Municipal Corporation of Delhi to the high court over its restrictions on usage in 2003. In a pathbreaking order, judges cited how the lieutenant governor of the Delhi Capital Territory had ruled that such towers could only be installed with the permission of the resident welfare associations (RWAs), the Mumbai equivalent being the advanced locality management societies, or ALMS. The court went on to state: “Operator should be asked to put up signboards/warning signs at the base station antenna sites, which should be clearly visible and identifiable. A warning sign should be placed at the entrance of such a zone. The ‘warning sign’ should discourage longer stay in the zone, even for the maintenance personnel. The signboard may contain the following text: ‘Danger! RF radiation. Do not enter!’” It prioritised the selection of sites as follows: “a) All municipal buildings including community centres, except schools, hospitals and dispensaries. b) Other government buildings. c) Other non-residential buildings ie industrial, commercial and institutional buildings… Erection of cell tower on residential buildings shall only be allowed in those cases where no alternative is available.”

In Mumbai, however, the action of the Municipal Corporation to restrict the operation of as many as 1,000 towers has been stayed in the high court by the operators, who were represented by Iqbal Chagla, son of India’s best-known judge M C Chagla. All thousand sites are listed in the case, which is a minefield for activists to scrutinise. According to Munshi, Vodafone has had its towers removed in its parent country, the UK. In Jaipur, he says, there was a virtual “mutiny” by housewives, who were instrumental in removing power lines. One brother of the Kasliwal family, who appeared in the NDTV show, cited how his brother as well as his pet dog died of cancer in that city.

Even well-informed and concerned viewers have been expressing doubts about the dangers of cell towers after listening to the COAI spokesperson on NDTV waxing eloquent about the safety of these devices. With 3G and 4G on the horizon, the hazards of cell towers can only magnify several-fold. The minimum distance for a 4G cell antenna from a residence is estimated at 100 metres, which is difficult in a city like Mumbai unless these are restricted to non-residential areas. With public concern growing by the day, if not by the hour, the possibility of operators obtaining buildings for 3G is growing more problematic. As Munshi concludes, as with the environmental and health concern over tobacco, asbestos, gutka, DDT, dyestuffs and other substances which are either consumed or have humans living close to and took up to half a century to bring under the law, the precautionary principle applies. It is better to err on the side of caution in such cases — to be safe, before one is sorry.

This year, ironically enough, marks half a century since the publication of Rachel Carson’s pioneering book Silent Spring which, for the first time in 1962, revealed how pesticides were leaching into the soil and water and killing birds in the wild in the US. Asked by a US publisher to write a chapter in a world-wide compendium on how different countries have responded to the threat of pesticides entering the animal and human systems, I titled my chapter ‘India’s not-so-silent springs’, focusing mainly on the careless spraying of cashew nut plantations in Kerala with endosulfan. Here too, in the initial years two decades ago, pesticide manufacturers and plantation owners said that these were irrational fears voiced by the public. Today, the maimed bodies of the victims, mostly children, stand in mute testimony to the criminal negligence of these vested interests.

Around 1925, US oil companies, aided and abetted by the all-powerful automobile manufacturers’ lobby, introduced lead in petrol to stop engines from ‘knocking’. As can be well understood, even the word ‘environment’ was unfamiliar, if non-existent, in those days. In answer to queries by concerned citizens, the two vested interests, acting in tandem, argued that the amount of lead introduced in the fuel was far too small to cause any damage to humans. Now, in retrospect, the addition of lead singularly has been responsible for damaging the brains of millions of young people throughout the world for nearly 90 years. It was only relatively recently that India banned the use of lead, typically falling in line several years after such environmental curbs were introduced in the West.

Originally Published by: Infochange News & Features, September 2012

Re-published with permission
 

The post Towering infernal radiation appeared first on NGOBOX.

Baran is one of 22 districts in Rajasthan designated ‘food insecure’. The Sahariya tribals who have a per capita income of roughly Rs 7 a day live in the shadow of hunger, with not enough money to buy even BPL rations. Children are brought up on little more than bajra rotis with salt and chillies and, not surprisingly, child deaths from hunger are reported every few months

The unpaved road twists and turns over a barren rocky escarpment as we make our way to the village of Baseli. The tree stumps and brush are interspersed with occasional patches of green. Eventually we reach a cluster of mud huts. Outside one of them is three-year-old Piyo. She clings to her sister’s hand as she tries to stand. Her frame is so wasted that she barely has the strength to cry. Her oversized dress only serves to emphasise her withered body. “I don’t know about nutrition and malnutrition,” says her mother, Radha Sahariya. “I just know my daughter cannot walk, she is too weak.”

Why don’t they take Piyo to the mother-child centre located on the nearby hilltop? “Even if we spend precious time and money to take our children to the ma-baari centre, they will be in the same situation soon after their treatment finishes,” says Piyo’s father, Ishwarlal. “Our crop is fed only by the rains, and we live a hand-to-mouth existence.”

Baseli, in Shahbad block of Baran district in southeast Rajasthan, is populated by the Sahariyas, categorised as a ‘primitive tribal group’ by the government. Even though they represent approximately one-third of the population in the Shahbad and Kishanganj blocks, the Sahariyas remain marginalised.


Health of tribals in Rajasthan

Tribals represent 8.2% of the country’s population, but 14.8% of them were in poverty in 1993-94, increasing to 17.5% in 1999-2000 (1). In Rajasthan, the numbers are 28.8% in 1993-94, increasing to 36.5% in 1999-2000. Just 47.1% of India’s tribals are literate (2) (the all-India figure is 64.8%).

According to the District-Level Household Survey on Reproductive and Child Heath, 2002-2004 (3), more than one-fourth (28%) of children in Rajasthan are severely underweight and nearly three-fifths (58%) are underweight. The proportion of undernourished children increases rapidly with the child’s age, up to 6-11 months, and shows a decrease thereafter. More than two-fifths (42%) of children in the age-group 12-23 months are severely underweight, whereas more than three-fifths (71%) of children in the same age-group are underweight. By age 48-71 months, the corresponding figures for severely underweight and underweight children stabilise at 18% and 50% respectively.

Twenty-two of Rajasthan’s 32 districts are designated ‘food insecure’ in a report of the United Nations World Food Programme and the Institute of Human Development. Baran is one of these, a ‘hot spot’ designated as ‘most food insecure’ (4). In 1998, the Department of Women and Child Development published a report on India’s nutrition profile covering 18 states and union territories. It found that 44% of rural children in the age-group 1-5 years were underweight in Rajasthan compared to about one-third in Punjab, Haryana and Himachal Pradesh (5). The Sahariyas are the worst-off among an already marginalised population.

The 700,000-strong Sahariya tribe is scattered over 11 districts in Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh. Originally self-reliant forest-dwellers, they were dispossessed by the Forest Conservation Act, 1980 and reduced to unskilled landless labourers. A study by the Centre for Tribal Development in 2002 (6) reported that the annual per capita income among Sahariyas was Rs 2,691, or about Rs 7 a day — less than one-third of the official poverty line figure of Rs 26 a day in rural areas. They face social discrimination at the hands of sarpanches, upper-caste villagers and government officials. Longstanding neglect by the state has ensured that they remain largely bereft of the benefits of development. Just as their dwellings are isolated from the rest of the village, the Sahariyas seem to exist on the periphery of society.

Child deaths are not uncommon among the Sahariyas. Angoori Bai lost her five-year-old son Vishal last year; she had already lost her two-year-old daughter the year before to “anaj ki bhookh”, or “hunger for grain”. Guddi Bai lost her five-year-old son Chander Bhan to chronic hunger as well. Guddi Bai struggles to feed her children. “I give them bajra rotis with a chutney of chana plant leaves; we cannot afford oil so I just boil the leaves with salt and chilli.” The family certainly cannot afford milk, pulses or vegetables. Her husband earns Rs 70-80 per day as an agricultural labourer on the few days he gets work on land mostly owned by the Kerada(agricultural caste).

The anganwadi is as good — or bad — as their home

The two pillars of early childhood care – ma-baari centres where children 6-12 years are provided primary education along with free school clothes and midday meals, and anganwadis or government-run creches for children under 6 – have failed to address the widespread undernourishment crippling the community.


Under the government of Rajasthan’s programme exclusively for the Sahariyas, parents of Sahariya children identified by either the auxiliary nurse midwife or the accredited social health activist as malnourished are brought to nutrition rehabilitation centres for 10 days of treatment, for which they are paid Rs 100 as incentive. But taking children like Piyo to the centre in Shahbad, 35 km away, is “not an option,” says Ishwarlal Sahariya. “Travelling to the hospital costs Rs 15 for each person — after walking 3 km to the main road from our village. Even if one of us goes, we lose Rs 100 per day as wages. And though we are promised an incentive of Rs 100 when we go to the centre, we get paid only Rs 30. Moreover, they treat us like dirt, taunting and chiding us.”

“Most anganwadis are dysfunctional or semi-functional, and anganwadi workers either poorly trained or uninterested,” says Ramesh Sahariya, former president, Kasba Thana panchayat, Shahbad block. “There are no proper utensils, no toys and games, inadequate stocks of foodgrain and nutritional supplements. Many do not even have proper floors, ventilation or painted walls. For the children, the anganwadi is as good — or as bad — as their home.”

Parents also complain that children do not like the soya bean kurkure (soya puffs) that are given as part of the nutrition package. “The taste is alien; they prefer something akin to what they eat at home,” says Angoori Bai of Kasba Thana village. Similarly, ghooghri, a gruel made of wheat andjaggery, which is the midday meal served by the anganwadi, “looks and tastes so unappetising that most children prefer to go hungry rather than eat it,” says Guddi Bai. There is no milk, even for those who are willing to buy it from the market. This is ironic, since Rajasthan is the third largest milk producing state in the country (7).

‘Do you think we like to live like this?’

Sahariya habitations are usually located outside the main village, called seharana, a cluster of ramshackle stone-and-mud homes with stone slab roofs. In some villages, the mud structures have tin roofs. Brick and concrete are rare, and even these homes are shoddily built one-room tenements with no toilets (the logic being that water is scarce and the Sahariyas will not flush this precious commodity down the toilet). Indeed, in Kasba Thana, the seharana had no drainage, sanitation or paving. It is surrounded by overflowing drains close to open wells. Ram Pal asks: “Do you think we like to live like this? When government officials come, they are more concerned with holding a handkerchief to their noses; what will anyone say with a handkerchief to his nose?”

The door to the tiny ten-by-five-foot structure that Guddi Bai calls home is so small you have to get down on your knees to enter. It is pitch black inside, and I bump into the roof. As my eyes adjust to the dark, I notice I am standing on a floor of crudely plastered mud. The walls are made from a mix of jungle brush plastered with mud. There is no electricity or drinking water source. Vegetable oil lanterns are the only source of light at night (kerosene is not cheap or freely available). The roof is improvised with paddy or wheat straw, thatch grass, and a sheet of old plastic to keep the rain away. The kitchen occupies a tiny corner of the hut; it comprises a small mud chullah, an iron kadhai and a few aluminium pots and pans for eating or storing water. A small stone slab, used to grind masala or make vegetable paste, stands against the wall. Bags of foodgrain occupy another corner of the hut. The remaining space is taken by a worn cotton mattress for a bed; a jute rope on which to hang clothes runs from one corner to another. The worldly belongings of Guddi Bai and her family are, quite literally, on a string.

“Food is cooked twice daily, around 11 am and then in the evening before it gets dark. Chapattis made of bajra or wheat are eaten during the day. In the evening we usually cook gruel or porridge; it requires less grain, allowing more family members to eat. His family shares about half-a-cup of boiled pulses or vegetables, says Arjun Sahariya, who lives in another part of the village. “When things are really bad, we eat lapti of wheat flour and gur(jaggery).” The morning meal, for those who can afford it, is roti and one vegetable or onion, or a thin buttermilk, or tea, or daldiluted with water, and with lots of red chillies. Intake of vegetables is very low and seasonal. Usually, leaves of plants like chana (gram) are added to boiled lentils or just boiled into a paste and eaten with chapattis. Milk is rare because the Sahariyas do not domesticate buffaloes or cows. To that extent, milk and milk products are denied to infants and small children. The only milk that is consumed is in tea, which is also given to children. Meat is eaten rarely, only on ceremonial and festive days.

Sahariya women are back at work a day or two after delivery. The only ‘special’ diet they get is gur or wheat rotis, with some milk if it is available. Compare this to theKerada women who get milk every day, nutritious food made with cooking oil, as well as gur, nuts, etc.

No work, no money, no food, no healthcare

The arid, rocky landscape means that most Sahariyas have little land to cultivate. “Many still have not been issued below-poverty-line ration cards, which would make them eligible for subsidised grain at the rate of Rs 2 per kg (35 kg per month) through the public distribution system (PDS). The Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS), a central scheme, promises — especially for the Sahariyas — 200 days of employment to every poor rural household. However, either the job card issued to some Sahariyas like Ram Singh under this scheme is kept with the village head or the wages are never received. Many are yet to get their job cards allowing them to register for work under the MGNREGS,” says Chittarmal Jat of the Centre for Community Economics and Development Consultants Society (CECOEDECON), a non-government organisation working in the area.

Even when PDS grain is available, the capacity of the Sahariyas to buy food or clothes is limited, and barter is used to buy essentials like oil, sugar and salt, exchanging either a portion of grain stored at home or firewood collected from the forest. Everything — even the humble gutkha which costs Rs 2 — is bought by bartering grain.

People like Kumar Pal and Ram Singh have an Antyodaya Anna Yojana card that is issued to the poorest of the poor living below the poverty line. But most times they can collect only a small amount of the 35 kg earmarked for them; sugar and rice are perpetually “out of stock” at the ration shop.

Curative health in tribal hamlets is almost absent. There are not even private hospitals to be found. This means easy pickings for the ‘Bengali doctor’, or quack. Most ‘Bengali doctors’ charge Rs 50-100 for each visit, including medicines, the favourite being bottles of intravenous glucose for every ailment. “Long distances, unaffordable fees and the callous attitude of health staff at health centres means that the Sahariya is forced to rely on quacks when illness strikes – and strike it does, with regularity. “We rarely know what is being prescribed, but the medicines usually cure us, even if temporarily,” says Kumar Pal, a labourer in Kasba Thana village, Shahbad block. “Most doctors do not come to the health centre. The nurse or compounder prescribes the same white tablets for every ailment. If we ask for better medicines, they write a prescription and tell us to buy the medicines from the market. Because we cannot afford it, we go back to the‘Bengali doctor’ to seek relief.”

Is there hope?

Poor land quality, gradual loss of community resources such as water, land and forests, dependence on manual labour and outdated agriculture skills, inadequate knowledge of natural resource management, and poor outreach of government schemes and programmes — all this has meant that the Sahariyas have limited livelihood options, and these too have shrunk over the years. Non-government organisations like CECOEDECON are chipping away at the problem through broad-based interventions including education, agriculture, natural resource management and mobilising community-based organisations.

Compared to other taleti (lowland) areas, Ogad village in Shahbad block looks green and relatively more prosperous, thanks partly to the availability of water. While the problems facing the Sahariyas here are as daunting as anywhere else, some people feel that the difference here is that solutions are being explored and newer ideas taking root. One such idea is that of a grain bank.

“The grain bank was set up in this village to overcome the chronic shortage of foodgrain that forced most families to go to bed on an empty stomach. Twenty families came together to start it three years ago, with a loan of Rs 18,000 from CECOEDECON, and Rs 500 as membership fee from each member. Since then, it has been able to ‘bank’ 29 quintals (1 quintal = 100 kg) of foodgrain, primarily wheat. Anyone — whether or not a member — who faces a shortage of foodgrain can borrow so long as s/he returns the borrowed grain along with ‘interest’ in kind; the amount is determined on a case-by-case basis by those who run the grain bank, says Chittarmal Jat of CECOEDECON. Kesri Chand Jatav, a member of the grain bank, says: “The PDS grain is not enough for a family of six to eight members. Also, we never get the PDS grain on time. Sometimes, it is two months late. Will hunger wait?”

While the interest in the grain bank is lower than the usurious rates charged by moneylenders, it still represents a substantial amount to the borrower. The grain bank can work only if members are in a position to return the grain they borrow. This is now a reality, thanks to better yields made possible by water harvesting. In Sanwada village, 23-year-old Bajwal Sahariya’s 3 bigha patch of land is covered with ripening stalks of wheat. “The land was on a rocky slope. A small stream flowed through it, eroding the soil during the monsoons and dwindling to a trickle in the hot summer months,” he says. CECOEDECON helped construct an anicut, a micro-reservoir to store run-off water. Aboundary wall was built to stop animals from grazing on the crops. Bunds and other inexpensive techniques ensured that water was retained on the land without stripping it of soil cover. The arid landscape was transformed into a patch of green and a much-needed source of income and food for the Sahariyas.

Says Kanhaiya Sahariya: “The availability of water allows us to harvest at least 15-20 quintals of wheat. This can be sold in the market at Rs 1,500 per quintal. Even otherwise, the grain can sustain a small family for a few months.”

A local saying goes like this: “Do bigha Mali ka, nau bigha Jat ka, aur bees bigha Rajput ka.”What the Mali (agricultural class) grows in two bighas, the Jat grows in nine, and the Rajput in 20. There is no mention of the Sahariya. Perhaps it is time the Sahariya is finally allowed to correct this historical aberration by coming out of the shadow of hunger.

Note: The field visit for this article was facilitated by Chittarmal Jat, programme coordinator with the Centre for Community Economics and Development Consultants, Jaipur (Rajasthan)

(Aditya Malaviya is a researcher and journalist based in Bhopal)

Endnotes

1 Report of the Steering Committee on Rapid Poverty Reduction and Local Area Development for the Eleventh Five-Year Plan (2007-2012), Government of India, Planning Commission, New Delhi. www.planningcommission.nic.in/aboutus/committee/strgrp11/str11_rpr.pdf
2 Annual Report, Ministry of Tribal Affairs, Government of India, 2008-9.  www.tribal.nic.in/writereaddata/mainlinkfile/File1155.pdf
3 Nutritional Status of Children and Prevalence of Anaemia Among Children, Adolescent Girls and Pregnant Women, District-Level Household Survey on Reproductive and Child Health, India 2002-2004.  www.rchiips.org/pdf/rch2/National_Nutrition_Report_RCH-II.pdf
4 Food Security Atlas of Rural Rajasthan. World Food Programme, Institute for Human Development, 2009. http://www.wfp.org.in/displaymorePub.asp?itemid=81&subchkey=11&chname=Publications
5 National Human Development Report, 2001, ‘Health Attainments and Demographic Concerns’. www.igidr.ac.in/conf/ysp/nhd2001.pdf
6 Mentioned in the eighth report of the commissioners of the Supreme Court, August 2008, available from: http://www.righttofoodindia.org/comrs/comrs_reports.html
7 Department of Animal Husbandry, government of Rajasthan. http://animalhusbandry.rajasthan.gov.in/about_us.asp

Originally Published by: Infochange News & Features, July 2012

Re-published with permission

The post The shadow of hunger appeared first on NGOBOX.

In Kuira, effective people’s planning and monitoring at the panchayat level has ensured the completion of several useful public works under MGNREGS, quick payment of wages, and a substantial fall in distress migration from the village

Nirasho Gope, a landless labourer, and her daughter have worked for 70 days under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) this year. At one time Nirasho used to detest working under the MGNREGS because payments were always delayed. Now her top priority is to finish her 100 days of work by March, which is a right under the MGNREG Act. The Rs 8,400 she has earned thus far has helped her family steer clear of the abject poverty cycle. Like Nirasho, there are many people in Kuira who see the scheme as a way to earn money and improve conditions in their village.

Although the present state of the MGNREGS, a massive social welfare scheme from the government, is not very encouraging in Jharkhand, a slow and steady revolution has been taking place in the tribal village of Kuira in Jaipur panchayat, Hatgamharia block, West Singbhum district.

Corruption in MGNREGA implementation is a stark reality in Jharkhand. Lack of accountability at all levels of governance and implementation has resulted in so much cynicism that people have stopped questioning the system. Years of exploitation of tribals has taken away their voice. Middlemen (bichaulias) are an integral part of the system and everyone, including the people of Kuira, had got used to the nexus of middlemen and corrupt bureaucrats. They knew that work would never be completed and that they would not get their wages on time. They also knew that to get any work they had to hand over their job cards to the middlemen. No one questioned the bichaulias and mates about discrepancies in wages or lack of worksite facilities. “NREGA toh marega,” was how they dismissed the scheme. To them, it was just another government scheme for the creation of large ponds, wells and kutcha roads.

In the absence of any panchayati raj institution in Jharkhand, planning and implementation were carried out by the local bureaucracy. The entire process was top-down.

Then, in 2010, Jharkhand witnessed panchayat elections after a gap of 30 years. The biggest challenge was to decentralise the decision-making and financial authority. Indeed, the devolution of decision-making powers from the local bureaucracy to panchayati raj institutions (PRIs) has not been smooth.


The MGNREGA aims to make asset-creation demand-driven and to strengthen decentralisation. The gram panchayat is the pivotal body for implementation at the village level. Following an awareness campaign by the NGO PRADAN, the people of Kuira realised that they had the power and right to decide the nature of MGNREGS works undertaken in their village. Participatory planning by people around the available land and water resources led to the formation of a comprehensive village-level plan.

The villagers of Kuira have come a long way since then. Indeed, equations have completely changed in the village. People now have the confidence to seek accountability from the system. If workers do not get entitlements such as a first-aid kit at the worksite, they confront the mate or the rozgar sewak. Similarly, if there is a delay in issuing cheques by the panchayat, mates immediately ask the mukhiya for reasons. All mates are questioned about expenditure and work progress at monthly gram sabha meetings. “Na lok sabha, na rajya sabha, sabse upar hai gram sabha!” says village dakua Arjun Pan at the start of every gram sabha meeting.

One of the major reasons for the poor state of the MGNREGS in Jharkhand has been the absence of strong gram sabhas. Kuira’s gram sabha is attended by a large audience of labourers, mates, landowners and other villagers. Extension workers and PRI representatives also attend meetings. Mates maintain ledgers to track the weekly expenditure of MGNREGS works, and present work and financial reports to everyone present at the meet. Strong monitoring and supervision by the gram sabha has ensured optimum utilisation of funds at the grassroots level.

Kuira is showing the way to panchayats and villages that complain of small numbers of labourers at MGNREGS works. A hundred or so people have been working on various schemes, on a regular basis, in the village. The local bureaucracy and PRI representatives have worked hard at mobilising people and creating awareness about the scheme. It is not uncommon here to see the BDO, mukhiya and rozgar sewak conducting regular tola sabhas around the MGNREGS.

Kuira is the only village in West Singbhum that boasts a series of completed MGNREGS works. The expenditure vs completion ratio is pretty skewed for the district as a whole. In the last five years, only 40% of all works have been completed, with 70% of sanctioned funds spent. Completion of most water-harvesting structures exists only on paper. In Kuira, on the other hand, 90% of water-harvesting structures started after the monsoons last year have been completed. The key has been a healthy collaboration between the local bureaucracy, PRI and villagers. A strong platform for the three has been built, which meets weekly to ensure smooth implementation.

Steady work and regular payments have helped reduce distress migration. There has, in fact, been an almost 40% drop in the number of people migrating to cities in search of work. “If we keep getting regular work and payment in the village, why would we go outside for work? I used to migrate to Chhattisgarh for work in the tower line. But now I can earn Rs 12,000 in the village itself,” says Chunnu Pan who works at one of the many MGNREGS worksites in Kuira.

Earlier, middlemen used to withdraw money from the bank and distribute it to the workers as wages after taking their share. Many labourers did not even know about the existence of these bank accounts. Embezzlement has been a critical issue in MGNREGS implementation. Although recently, the district has allowed cash payments for all panchayats that are at a distance of 3 km or more from the nearest bank or post office to avoid delays, the people of Kuira prefer payment through banks. Withdrawing wages from the bank has been a new experience for many men and women here, giving them a sense of empowerment and confidence that no one can take their entitlement away from them.

Surja Purti, a physically-challenged man, had lost all hope of getting unskilled work in the village. After becoming aware of his rights under the MGNREGA, however, he wrote out a job application and asked the panchayat for work. He was given the task of providing drinking water to workers, and monitoring the on-site crèche. He became the first disabled man in the entire block to have asked for work under the MGNREGA, and got it.

The villagers have now started viewing the MGNREGS as a rights-based government scheme, not just another asset-creation scheme. Workers get in touch with mates or the rozgar sewak and demand work. A comprehensive shelf of work ensures that everyone gets something when they need it.

The MGNREGS has traditionally been male-dominated, with local contractors and bichaulias ruling the system. For the first time in this district, self-help groups (SHGs) have been involved in implementation and supervision of schemes in Kuira (they are implemented by SHG representatives who have been selected as mates by the gram sabha). This was a totally new concept in West Singbhum district, causing immediate unrest among male mates and bichaulias. Despite repeated attempts to intimidate the women mates, however, the SHGs and villagers remained united. Now, thanks to tremendous improvements in quality and timeliness of implementation, the middlemen have been driven out of the system.

MGNREGS implementation depends greatly on extension workers like the rozgar sewak. An area of concern in West Singbhum was the irresponsible attitude of many extension workers towards their duties. Today, the people of Kuira are aware of each person’s role and responsibilities. This has brought about upward pressure on the system to deliver. It is not uncommon to see the rozgar sewak of this panchayat busy at the worksite, issuing job cards to new labourers. In the words of the rozgar sewak: “Agar sarkari tantra zameeni star par kaam kare, toh koi bhi kaam ho sakta hai”.


Kuira has also streamlined muster roll-wage workflow. The women mates measure the work at the end of each day, filling in the daily measuring book and muster roll. At the end of the sixth day, they complete the muster roll and get it signed by workers at the worksite itself or in a public place like a school, etc. This is then submitted to the rozgar sewak who checks it and forwards it to the panchayat mukhiya/secretary the next day. A cheque is issued the very same day and deposited at the local bank. Labourers get their wages at the bank within 10-12 days.
The impact of the MGNREGA in Kuira can be seen at multiple levels, the most important being the safety net it provides to wage labourers. The scheme has helped many families tide over the lean agricultural season. And distress migration, which is at its peak at this time, has visibly reduced. A major focus of the Act is the creation of land-based assets for families and the village. As village plans are made taking an integrated natural resource management approach, created structures will help harvest rainwater and check soil erosion. Families will be able to shift from mono-cropping to double-cropping, along with crop diversification. Another major visible impact has been the empowerment of villagers, and strengthening of the gram sabha.

Kuira has demonstrated that healthy collaboration between the bureaucracy, the PRI and aware citizens around the MGNREGA can turn the fortunes of a village around. If Kuira can do it, other villages in Jharkhand surely can.

(Siraj Dutta is with the NGO PRADAN whose work is described in this story)

Originally Published by: Infochange News & Features, March 2012

Re-published with permission

The post The potential for transformation through MGNREGS appeared first on NGOBOX.

A chronicle of the civil society action that exposed the shocking scam in Karnataka which saw government functionaries colluding with industry to supply inedible food packets to children in anganwadis, regardless of the fact that children are dying of malnutrition and starvation in the state

The minister for child development in Karnataka became (in)famous for watching porn on a mobile phone in the legislative assembly even as babies in his state starved to death. He was not the only one playing Nero. His officers in the department of women and child development (DW&CD) were buying gold, silver and diamonds, opening numerous bank accounts and lockers, buying land and houses, and riding around in lavish cars with money meant for food for starving children. The contractor appointed by the DW&CD to supply food to anganwadis and take-home rations to mothers and children was no better: the food he supplied was of such dubious quality that women sold it as cattle fodder (Deccan Herald,April 5 and 6, 2012).

When the prime minister said recently that the level of malnutrition in the country was a “national shame”, he might well have been thinking about the siphoning of crores of rupees meant for the supply of pre-processed food packets to anganwadis in Karnataka, a state that is otherwise a model for neo-liberal growth (see story on malnutrition in Raichur and other districts of Karnataka,
http://infochangeindia.org/children/features/anatomy-of-child-starvation-deaths.html).

The issue would not have come to the public’s attention but for the fact that Ambanna Arolikar and J B Raju, activists from Samajika Parivartana Janandalona, led reporters from TV9 to the homes of severely malnourished children in Raichur district in September 2011. After witnessing horrifying scenes of the dying children on television, B L Patil, an advocate and member of Athani Vimochana Sangha, in Belgaum, wrote to the Karnataka High Court on September 23, 2011, asking the court to initiate action. The high court converted the letter into a public interest litigation (WP38157/2011) and issued notices to the government on October 4, 2011. It directed the DW&CD, on October 21, 2011, to set up an inquiry committee comprising government officials and civil society representatives.


A number of officials tried to dismiss the deaths as the result of consanguineous marriage despite information provided by the DW&CD itself that 11,35,000 children, out of those attending anganwadis, are malnourished in Karnataka. Of these, over 70,000 are acutely malnourished. Karnataka ranks 11th in the India State Hunger Index. According to the third National Family Health Survey (NFHS-3), the infant mortality rate in the state for children below one year is 43 deaths per 1,000 births and 55 deaths per 1,000 births for children under the age of five. More than half the women in Karnataka (52%) have anaemia; 63% of pregnant women have mild anaemia. The state economic survey report of 2012 reveals that poverty in Karnataka is the highest among the southern states.

Reports on malnutrition in the state by Clifton D’Rozario, state advisor to the Supreme Court Commissioners in the Right to Food case in early-2011, confirmed the dismissal of state officials of the plight of undernourished children. Details of the scam surrounding pre-packaged food have only now come to light through Lokayukta officials, although complaints were sent by the parents of children and workers of the contractor supplying food to anganwadis to the Karnataka State Commission for Protection of Child Rights (KSCPCR) in 2010. The KSCPCR forwarded the complaints to the Lokayukta, which ordered an investigation into the issue.

According to some parents of children at anganwadis, the food packets supplied to anganwadis by Christy Friedgram Industries (CFI), the private company contracted to supply food, was often so stale that children would complain of stomach ache, diarrhoea or vomiting after eating it. Supply of the packaged food was itself in violation of a Supreme Court order that fresh food should be served in anganwadis. The private company flourished even as the public sector Karnataka State Agro Corn Processing Ltd (KSACPL),  which supplied energy foods to anganwadis until 2006 , was shut down in March 2012 following declared losses; its employees were asked to go home. Significantly, KSACPL started making losses in 2001 , after the DW&CD handed over 50% of the energy food supply contract to CFI.

CFI was given a five-year monopoly contract for Rs 600 crore by the DW&CD in 2007 to produce packet food for all anganwadis through self-help groups — again, in violation of a Supreme Court order that contractors should not be involved in supplying food to anganwadis. The company set up Mahila Supplementary Nutrition Production and Training Centres (MSNPTCs) in 139 of the 176 talukas. Company workers say that illiterate women were deliberately hired for the job so they could be duped and paid only wages, despite also being entitled to a part of the profits. The company reportedly manipulated the quantity of food supplied and charged the DW&CD extra money. Unnamed Karnataka Lokayukta officials stated to a magazine, in April 2012, that several DW&CD officials, from the taluka-level upwards, would unerringly collect money, often as much as Rs 15-20 lakh per month, from CFI’s office in Bangalore, turning a blind eye to the company’s misdemeanours. A more egregious chain could not have been built from top to bottom to steal food from the mouths of babes.

The high court’s directive to the DW&CD, as a result of the PIL, set in motion a unique process of civil society engagement with the state government to stop the organised loot of food and money meant for starving children. The committee, formed on October 26, 2011, set up three sub-committees on October 31, 2011: one on health and nutrition, the second on reaching and bringing all underprivileged children under the scheme, and the third on convergence and monitoring . Each of them completed their work in record time and a consolidated report was submitted on January 14, 2012 .

The first sub-committee outlined a fine protocol asking for immediate identification and creation of a database of all malnourished children across the state and their referral for appropriate feeding and medical treatment. The second sub-committee stressed the need to establish anganwadis in all SC/ST colonies and tribal hamlets in line with the Supreme Court ruling; the need to identify all disabled mothers and children and ensure them access to anganwadis and supplementary nutrition; to establish anganwadis for migrant and construction workers using funds from the construction workers’ welfare fund, etc. The third sub-committee outlined steps to bring in a convergence between various departments — agriculture, food and civil supplies, health, labour, etc — to find long-term solutions to malnutrition by addressing the crisis in agriculture, redefining the poverty line to cover all basic needs, universalising and enhancing public distribution system (PDS) entitlements, ensuring a living wage in order to increase people’s purchasing power, etc .

The committee deliberations, of which this writer was a part , exposed the stark divergence between the perspectives of civil society activists and that of government functionaries on the issue.

Activists highlighted the paucity of anganwadis in several SC/ST colonies and inadequate coverage of anganwadis in urban areas, especially Bangalore, despite Supreme Court orders calling for universalisation of the ICDS (Integrated Child Development Services) programme. While accepting the shortfall in Bangalore (the 1,873 anganwadis here cover 36,115 or a mere 18% of children, according to the Bangalore Urban DC) , government functionaries claimed there was no need for anganwadis in certain areas, as “mothers here do not send their children to anganwadis”. Civil society activists pointed out that the anganwadi timings did not suit many working women. That was the reason they made an older girl-child stay at home to look after her younger siblings. Activists also stressed that unless all anganwadis are converted into anganwadi-cum-daycare centres that stay open until working women return from work, the erroneous notion that there are enough anganwadis will continue.


Till recently, the state government was spending about Rs 4 (Rs 2 by the state plus Rs 2 by the Centre) per child per day in an anganwadi. And the food included pre-packaged food of dubious nutritive value. Activists demanded that fresh milk, eggs, fruit and vegetables be included in anganwadi meals if a dent is to be made in levels of child malnutrition. And that a budget high enough to fulfil this requirement be sought from the finance department. In reply, the joint director in charge of the ICDS asked: “Shall we ask for a raise of Rs 2 from the finance department?” That amount would not be enough even to provide a glass of milk, an egg or a banana let alone all three, given today’s prices. Another senior bureaucrat questioned: “Can we provide fruit and vegetables in all anganwadis? Is it feasible?” This, when 72% of fruit and vegetables grown in the country is wasted (according to a secretary in the Department of Agriculture and Cooperatives, Ministry of Agriculture, at a CII conference , reported in DNA, May 12, 2008).  Nutrient-rich fruit and vegetables are being ploughed back into the soil instead of being fed to children who are stunted and malnourished from lack of micronutrients. If officers entrusted with the responsibility of ensuring that children are fed nutritious food and grow up healthy, have such a mindset, how can we expect them to plead the case for more funds for children to the finance department?

Another senior bureaucrat claimed: “There are strict central guidelines which have to be followed under the ICDS and these cannot be changed at will by the states.” The states are happy to invoke the sacrosanct nature of central guidelines when it is to their advantage financially, and harp on the ‘federal’ character of the nation and the ‘freedom of states to frame their own policies’ when it doesn’t suit them, as in the case of the Lokpal bill. This official had to be told that the neighbouring states of Tamil Nadu and Maharasthra supplement the Centre’s contribution of Rs 2 per child with their own funds,  spending Rs 9-11 per child — much more than the Karnataka state government does.

Though children in anganwadis are supposed to be weighed every month, at a meeting of the committee on January 11, 2012 , department officials demanded 45 days to weigh all children coming to anganwadis and six months to weigh children not attending anganwadis. Though the DW&CD claimed to be providing eggs and milk to severely malnourished children after reprimands from the high court at almost every hearing, civil society members proved that this was not happening. An altered menu, including rava laddu (sweetened semolina balls) , puliyogare (rice laced with tamarind ) and lemon rice was introduced for children in anganwadis across the state . When asked what micronutrients these calorie-rich foods contained, officials shouted the questioners down calling them eternal cynics who never appreciated anything the government did. Meanwhile, the department which had stated that there were about 70,000 severely malnourished children in Karnataka suddenly claimed that the figure had come down to 61,000!

Civil society organisations such as those belonging to the Samajika Parivartana Janandolana, Right to Food Campaign and the Janaarogya Andolana-Karnataka (JAAK) took on the task of weighing children in anganwadis in their work areas . They surveyed a total of 577 children in 12 districts of Karnataka. Shockingly, they found that there were no weighing scales for children aged three to six at the anganwadis. Even zero-to-three-year-olds were not being weighed regularly. Even when they were, several anganwadis did not have charts to plot the children’s growth. If they had the growth charts, they either did not plot the growth curves on them or they did not have sufficient training or knowledge on how to plot them. So much for monitoring this most essential indicator to determine malnutrition! These children will never receive the medical attention they need or the additional nutrition at nutrition rehabilitation centres (NRC) under the Balsanjeevani scheme.

What was also highlighted was the fact that doctors from primary healthcare centres (PHCs) did not visit anganwadis due to lack of vehicles at the PHC.

After the consolidated recommendations of the three sub-committees were submitted to the DW&CD, the high court again rapped the government, on April 3, 2012, for filing a ‘political speech’ as its affidavit instead of a ‘report of action taken’ on the recommendations. The court set up a nine-member committee under the chairmanship of Justice N K Patil to prepare and submit an action plan to the high court by June 15, 2012 . The committee submitted its interim report on June 11, 2012.

Before submitting the report, the Justice N K Patil Committee conducted divisional-level meetings to which all district collectors (DCs) and CEOs were invited. At one such meeting in Bangalore, on April 30, 2012, DC after DC reeled off statistics on the number of malnourished children in their districts and the number of anganwadis without buildings, separate kitchens, worktops for cooking, toilets, drinking water, electricity, etc. Now that anganwadi timings have been extended to 4.00 pm, with only one meal being provided during this entire period, the DC of Chitradurga district wondered whether the department itself was not abetting malnutrition! He also openly called the allocation of Rs 4 per child “a joke”, and asked how he could be held responsible for malnutrition in his district when all the decisions on what, how, and how much to give children were being taken in a highly centralised manner by the heads of the DW&CD in Bangalore. He was being given only the responsibility, with no powers to decide anything.

Meanwhile, as serious deliberations continue over the survival of Karnataka’s children, the party in power in the state is busy squabbling over who should be chief minister and is engrossed in strategising its own survival. It is only the whip of the high court and the push for positive action from civil society that have forced the modern-day Neros to stop ‘fiddling’ while children lie dying. The minister who was watching porn was forced to resign. Bribe-taking officials have been suspended and the gold, silver and diamonds they had amassed have been seized by the Lokayukta. And CFI has had to give up its lucrative contract of supplying ‘fake’ food .

(Kathyayini Chamaraj is executive trustee of CIVIC Bangalore and a member of the Right to Food Campaign-Karnataka)

Originally Published by: Infochange News & Features, June 2012

Re-published with Permission

The post Stealing from the mouths of babes appeared first on NGOBOX.

More than 1,500 marble mines are operating in the Aravallis in Rajasthan, destroying the hills and ecology, depleting groundwater and leaving mountains of waste and slurry on pasturelands and riverbanks

If you’ve been to southern Rajasthan during or before the 1980s and plan to go again now, you will find yourself in an altogether different terrain. And if, back then, you happened to take a spiritual bath in the Gomatiriver,known as the ‘Ganga of southern Rajasthan’,you should count yourself lucky for being among the last few to take a dip in this dying river.

In the two decades, the landscape of southern Rajasthan has completely altered. Streams and rivers that were the lifeline of the hills for centuries have ceased to exist. The hills stand naked; the panoply which once adorned them is quickly disappearing.

In their place: a new manmade range of marble overburden and slurry. Google Earth and other satellite images confirm the change. The Aravallis is turning into a monotonous white range as if it has got a new marble floor that is yet to be polished!

Rajasthan boasts almost two-thirds of India’s mineable marble reserves; it is responsible for around 85% of the country’s total marble production. Indeed, the entire stretch of the Aravallis in lower Rajasthan is a vast depository of marble. Rajasamand, Udaipur and Banswara districts contribute over half the state’s marble output.

The last two decades have seen demand for Rajasamand marble soar to incredible heights. In fact, Makrana marble which shines in the Taj Mahal is now considered flat compared to Rajasamand marble.


Demand for this white-and-green mineral has been at the expense of the Aravallis ecosystem. Until 1985, the hills were covered in dense green forests. In the two decades since, the number of marble mines multiplied rapidly. Till 1980 there were only nine mines in southern Rajasthan; today more than 1,500 mines operate in the region.

Although the marble industry provides employment to thousands of people, and contributes substantially to the economy of the state, no attempts have been made to evaluate and table the social and environmental costs of marble mining. The death of the Gomati is just one example of how mammoth the ecological cost can be. It has come about through careless and unplanned marble mining in the river’s catchment and the blocking of rivulets through the dumping of marble overburden and slurry. The river has been reduced to a narrow, seasonal stream that comes alive only during the monsoon.

The Gomati is not the only victim. The Banas river too has lost its way in southern Rajasthan, and wetlands that used to be breeding or resting grounds for migratory birds from Saharan and sub-Saharan regions are now covered in huge mounds of marble waste. Kumbhalgarh Wildlife Sanctuary in Rajasamand has been the most seriously affected by mining activity; use of heavy machinery, transportation, and pollutants have had disastrous effects on the sanctuary’s wildlife.

In 1988-89, a researcher from the Honduras visited the forests of the Aravallis in Udaipur region and recorded that the climax species were teak (Tectona grandis) and bamboo (Dendocalmus strictus). Today, bamboo has been reduced to a domestic plant species and teak has almost vanished from the area.

Marble mining is opencast mining, which means the topsoil and vegetation have to be removed in order for the area to be mined. This process generates huge waste. Gang-saw units, which cut marble blocks into slabs, also generate a lot of waste and slurry apart from utilising vast quantities of water. A single gang-saw unit consumes 43,000 litres of water per hour. Together, the 340-odd such units in this part of Rajasthan consume almost 117 million litres of water a day — enough for the daily needs of half the population of Pune! Water levels in Rajasamand district have gone down by eight metres in just 10 years.

To add to this, marble mine owners often ignore the permissible limits of size, time, and depth of mines. A mine lease is issued for a certain period and for a specific size and depth. Most mines flout these limits. According to the rules, at least one-third of every mine must be under tree cover; none of the mines in and around the Aravallis adheres to this.

Then there are rules and procedures for the dumping of marble waste and slurry. This too is largely ignored by both the business community and the authorities. Dumping waste on pastureland, hillsides and on the banks of rivers and waterbodies has caused ecological disturbances, especially to the region’s hydrological system. The drop in agricultural productivity is just one of the consequences of this. Marble mining and processing generates huge amounts of dust and particles, negatively affecting soil morphology in nearby areas. Dust accumulates on standing crop or on fertile soil leading to changes in the soil structure and a decrease in yields. Its impact on microbial activity is harder to quantify.

At Rishabdeo or Nathdwara, or any other religious destination in the vicinity, you are greeted by huge marble mounds on either side of the road emphasising the fact that you have entered a (w)holy white world! In many instances, the marble mounds are higher and bigger than the hillocks of the Aravallis! It is indeed a parallel Aravallis in the making — an Aravallis of human desire. Artificial ponds of marble slurry lie scattered along National Highway 8, close to both the Rishabdeo-Obri and Rajanagar-Kelwa mining belts. In the monsoon, the slurry is carried away to rivers, drains and waterbodies, affecting water quality, reducing storage capacity and destroying aquatic life.


Taking note of the situation, and prompted by a PIL by a local NGO and other environmental organisations, the Supreme Court ordered a complete ban on marble mining in 2002, over the whole of Rajasthan. The ban did not last long; lobbying and affidavits by the state government, lobbying by the media for development activity, fear of unemployment, and changes in policy and permission regimes all ensured that it was lifted a mere two months later.

Last year, the Rajasthan High Court ordered the closure of 474 marble mines in Makrana that were found to be flouting the rules with impunity. No action has been taken on mines in the southern part of Rajasthan whose owners are in a hurry to extract as much as they can before the court wakes up or the department realises that the time to take appropriate action has come.

Studies have shown that marble mine workers are exposed to numerous health risks. Though many mines post notices stating proudly that all legal and procedural requirements for work in the mines have been met, this is far from the truth.

The marble industry generates less than 2% of Rajasthan’s total revenue, but its negative impacts are far-reaching and irreversible. Indeed, the financial returns from mining are low compared to the future cost in terms of loss of natural resources, decreasing agricultural productivity, loss of soil and vegetation cover, disturbance to the hydrological system, loss of wetlands and decreasing catchment area, and slow death of rivers and waterbodies. That’s apart from the expenditure on health arising out of mining and subsidiary activities.

Researchers and environmental organisations have long been warning the state government about the increasing threat of desertification. The situation is so bad that in many parts there is no pastureland for cattle to graze and no productive farmland to plough. The tribals of Obri village in Udaipur district, for example, now have no common pastures left for their cattle or farmland to grow food. The entire area is an intense marble mining zone. Fifty-five-year-old Hukma Bhai from Obri says: “Tees saal pahle hamne mines ka swagat kiya lekin ab hum apne jungle or zamin sab kho chuke he. Jo kuchh bacha he wo kisi kam ka nahi he.” (“Thirty years ago we welcomed the mines but now we have lost our forests and our land. Whatever is left is useless.”

(Bhomik Shah works with WWF-India as senior programme coordinator. He has done his Masters in Forestry Management from the Indian Institute of Forest Management and has worked as a journalist for over three years. Aakash Mehrotra is a social researcher working as project advisor at Sambodhi Research and Communications. He has done his Masters in Forestry Management from the Indian Institute of Forest Management) 

Originally Published by: Infochange News & Features, November 2011

Re-published with permission

The post Mountains of marble waste appeared first on NGOBOX.

A tribal perspective from Jharkhand describes how the creation of the state, ostensibly for the welfare of tribal populations, has only led to their exploitation and displacement

Almost a century ago, Katherine Mayo published a book titled Mother India that criticised the Indian way of living. Such were the author’s views that even Gandhi described it as “the drain inspector’s report” which examined only the drains of the country. Conflating with Mayo’s discriminatory work was another contemporary piece by Rudyard Kipling titled White Man’s Burden. Things would have been different had these works been considered the mere fancy of creative minds. But they were perceptions that became the paradigms of the western perspective, veiling the ground realities and on-going brutalities and actually making people believe that what the colonisers did was in the best interests of the colonised. As a result, most westerners were alienated from the plight of the colonised. Purpose well served — unopposed exploitation.

Years later, India seems to walk the same line that it once so bluntly lambasted. Tribal communities in central areas of Jharkhand, Orissa and Chhattisgarh have been exploited, displaced and dispossessed of their resources by the state. But the government has successfully created an illusory perception of ‘development’ that has alienated the middle class from the plight of the tribals. As a result, the government ruthlessly exploits tribal populations, and does so almost unchallenged by other sections of society.

Placating tribals

On November 15, 2000, tribals, mostly from central India, had something to rejoice about. A demand articulated for over a century saw the birth of the state of Jharkhand.

Demands for separate statehood for Jharkhand were first raised in 1914 by tribals, as mentioned in the State Reorganisation Committee Report 1955-56. Tribal politicians vigorously took up the cause, supported by other indigenous communities. For long, the mineral-rich areas of Chota Nagpur and Santhal Pargana had been exploited and the tribal people displaced in the name of development. Racial discrimination of tribals by outsiders, referred to as dikus in the tribal tongue, was rampant. The demand for separate statehood was not merely to establish a distinct identity but also to do away with years of injustice.


However, the creation of Jharkhand has only increased the vulnerability of tribals. The token concessions of a tribal chief minister and a few reserved constituencies were deemed a green signal to displace tribals for so-called ‘development’. According to reports of the Indian People’s Tribunal on Environment and Human Rights, a total of 6.54 million people have so far been displaced in Jharkhand in the name of development. The ongoing land acquisition at Nagri village (near Ranchi, Jharkhand) for the Indian Institute of Management (IIM) and National University of Study and Research in Law (NUSRL) may seem like development projects in the eyes of the educated and the affluent. But these elite educational institutes have displaced over 500 tribal villagers. The displacement in the name of dams, factories, mining, etc goes largely unreported.

In a place where displacement and development have become synonymous, the strategic reasons for such oppressive measures go beyond monetary gain. One senses, quite palpably, consistent attempts by various corporate firms to exert control over the policy formulation process. This political-corporate nexus was very apparent when 42 MoUs were signed as soon as Jharkhand came into being. According to a human rights report published by the Jharkhand Human Rights Movement (JHRM), the state government of Jharkhand has so far signed 102 MoUs which go against the laws of the Fifth Schedule. Vast tracts of land will be required to bring these MoUs to fruition.

People’s opposition and various constitutional laws against land acquisition have always been impediments to the corporations. In 2011, a people’s movement forced Arcelor Mittal to pull out of a proposed project in Jharkhand. The corporate sector has been trying hard to change the status quo in its favour, and in doing so has adopted some dubious means. The Chota Nagpur Tenancy (CNT) Act is one of several laws provided by the Constitution to safeguard tribal interests. It was instituted in 1908 to safeguard tribal lands from being sold to non-tribals. The law was meant to prevent foreseeable dispossession, and preserve tribal identity. Loss of land would naturally lead to loss of tribal identity as the issuance of a community certificate requires proof of land possession.

The private sector seems to have taken a special interest in drastically reforming or abolishing the CNT Act. Corporate-owned newspapers like Prabhat Khabar and Dainik Bhaskar have campaigned vigorously for reforming the Act to make transfer of land from tribals to non-tribals more flexible. Needless to say, any reform in this direction would directly benefit corporations that own mines in the tribal lands of Jharkhand, and pave the way for future land acquisition.

The state government, irrespective of party banner, has been part of such threats to tribal interests. Non-inclusion of the Sarna religion in the religion category of census data has drastically downsized tribal populations. There have been lapses on the part of the administration to provide accurate data on tribal populations, many of which are underreported.

With the never-ending displacement, the tribal population figure has dropped to a mere 28% on paper.

The dark side of anti-Naxal operations

There is little doubt that the Naxal menace has increased over the years. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has good reason to declare Naxalism the biggest internal security threat. In Jharkhand alone, since its formation, a total of 4,430 cases of Naxal violence have been reported so far; 399 police personnel, 916 Naxalites, and 395 common people have lost their lives in such violence. The brutal way in which Naxal violence is perpetrated — beheading, mutilating body parts, slitting throats — has greatly amplified people’s fears. Splinter groups like the People’s Liberation Front of India (PLFI), Jharkhand Liberation Tiger (JLT) and Tritiya Prastuti Committee (TPC) have further intensified the problem and led to the  administration using counter-violence.

The security forces deployed in Maoist infested areas face constant threat to their lives. While the terrain here is conducive to guerrilla warfare, the local police finds itself inadequately armed and trained to engage in such warfare. Hence, central forces armed with superior firepower and equipment and better training are called in.

People are told that the Naxalites wish to overthrow the government by violent revolution and undemocratic means, and that they need to be stopped to sustain India’s ‘bright future’. But some facts go unheard. According to a report by JHRM, since the creation of Jharkhand a total of 4,372 people have been arrested on the charge of being Naxalites. Of these, 315 are hardcore Naxals for whom the government had announced prize money. The remaining 4,057 have no record of any criminal offence; even the police has been unable to establish their Naxal involvement (1). In an extreme case, sources claim that the government was instrumental in sustaining the PLFI during the initial days of its formation, to counter the CPI (M). The move backfired and the PLFI became a prominent terror group in Jharkhand.

In other instances, countless innocent people (mostly tribals) have been killed during anti-Naxal operations. The incident that occurred on April 15, 2009 at Latehar, Jharkhand, exposed the dark side of these operations. Five tribals were picked up from their homes by the CRPF and district police, taken to a nearby place and shot dead. The initial police investigation tried to cover up the act, claiming the tribals were Maoists. Following protests, the Jharkhand police finally accepted that they were ordinary villagers who had no links with Naxalites.

The recent exposure of anti-Naxal operations in the Saranda jungle, home to over 125,000 tribals, is even more disturbing. Central and state forces deployed here under Operation Monsoon and Operation Anaconda destroyed homes and killed innocent people, not sparing even the food the tribals had. As revealed by JHRM, during Operation Anaconda, 33 villagers were arrested on charges of Naxal involvement. The police has been unable to provide any evidence to support this claim.


The problem with an over-hyped ‘Red Corridor’ is that it justifies the actions of the security forces: they are seen as deployed in enemy terrain to ‘protect’ India’s ‘bright’ future. And so, a ‘few’ innocent casualties at the hands of the security forces are deemed inevitable. The victims are labelled ‘Maoist supporters’. As the Red Corridor mostly falls under tribal areas, a general, albeit fallacious, perception exists that the tribals in these areas are Naxalites or Naxalite supporters. What worsens the situation is the exclusion of such areas by the concerned state administration which, after 64 years of independence, has failed to establish any communication with people living in these areas. A district mostly falls in the Red Corridor zone not because the people here support the Naxal ideology, but because the administrative units in these areas are nowhere to be seen, giving a free hand to the Naxalites. It is the failure on the part of the state administration to reach out to rural tribal areas that has provided ample opportunity for Naxalism to flourish.

Decades after their exclusion, the government is trying to bring tribal societies out of their so-called ‘museum culture’ into the mainstream. But the methods being adopted are displacement, and the giving away of lands to multinational companies to set up factories, thereby reducing even the most affluent farmer to a petty labourer. The fact that abundant mineral resources sit beneath these tribal lands hardens the government’s stance, making it determined to counter any opposition with a heavy hand.

There is a dual strategy behind the tag ‘Red Corridor’. Multinational companies and mining corporations have incurred huge losses, mostly in tribal areas: firstly, as levy amount to several Naxalite outfits amounting to hundreds of crores in a single year; secondly, uncertainty over land acquisition even after signing MoUs with the concerned state government due to tribal laws and people’s opposition. By declaring districts Maoist zones, the government clears the ground for future operations to be conducted by the security forces. The mission: to ‘liberate’ such zones from the evil clutches of Naxalites and ‘anti-developmental’ forces. The ‘anti-developmental forces’, as termed by the government, are tribals whose protests are solely aimed at retaining their land; they have no intention whatsoever to topple the government. Several cases of tribals protesting against forcible land acquisition and being killed or imprisoned for allegedly being Naxals have been reported across the state of Jharkhand.

Tribals stand on a thin line between Naxalites and the government, exploited and destroyed by both. In areas where the Naxalites have a presence, not following their orders could result in gruesome killings. Thus, any meeting called by any of these outfits is an unspoken compulsion for the village, not an option.

In such a scenario, resorting to indiscriminate firing and blaming Naxalites for using innocent villagers as human shields is not only a failure on the part of the security forces but also on the state to provide safety to its citizens. The illusion presented to the common man has entwined tribals and Naxalites in such a complex manner that any number of killings in tribal areas fails to generate much sympathy among the people. The recent killing of 18 alleged Naxalites at the hands of the security forces in Chhattisgarh, and its aftermath, is evidence of the general perception that even if these people are not Naxalites, they are definitely supporters.

All in the name of ‘national interest’

In an interview with Shoma Chaudhary from Tehelka, in 2009, Home Minister P Chidambaram made the following comment: “No country can develop unless it uses its natural and human resources. Mineral wealth is wealth that must be harvested and used for people.” But who are the ‘people’ for whom mineral wealth must be harvested? The middle class and elites who own multinational corporations.

The mineral resources have more to do with profiting private firms than national growth. For example, the royalty fixed by the central government for iron ore is just 10% of the value of mined iron ore, extraordinarily benefiting private mining firms. Tribals have always remained outside the loop of beneficiaries. This was evident in the non-implementation of the PESA Act until recently, for more than 10 years, in scheduled areas of Jharkhand even after a 2010 directive from the Jharkhand High Court. Adding to this was non-implementation of the Samatha judgment across areas under the Fifth Schedule, which would have hugely benefited tribals.  Tribals have repeatedly been exploited, displaced and ruined in the name of ‘national interest’.

Jawaharlal Nehru once exquisitely explained the meaning of ‘Bharat Mata Ki Jai’, or ‘Victory to Mother India’, as victory to millions of people spread across the vast tract of India. The privileged classes who are fervently nationalistic must understand that their fellow nationals are being bludgeoned into a war-like situation. These wars are not only perpetrated by the juggernaut of so-called ‘development’ but are sustained by false myths that have blinded the general public. In a brilliant piece by George Monbiot, published in the Guardian, the author speaks about the injustices of the British Empire and the myths so well established that “we appear to blot out countervailing stories even as they are told”.

In order to sustain an actual inclusive growth, people need to do away with such false perceptions and not let exploitative action go unchallenged. Only then will the true essence of ‘Victory to Mother India’ materialise. National development is not just about showcasing the country’s economic growth on paper. A massive GDP growth rate is meaningless if tribals and other underprivileged peoples continue living underdeveloped lives. As a tribal, I expect the government to set aside its false perceptions of development that encourage exploitation of tribal communities, and bring about real meaningful growth.

(Richard Toppo is a researcher based in Ranchi, Jharkhand)  

Endnotes

1 Jharkhand Human Rights Report 2001-2011. Published by Jharkhand Human Rights Movement

Originally Published by: Infochange News & Features, July 2012

Republished with permission

The post Jharkhand: The failed promise of an adivasi state appeared first on NGOBOX.

Suspicion and contempt for female victims of sexual violence permeates the criminal justice system. A victim of rape or molestation, for instance, must pass the test of the ‘good Indian woman’, and the ‘good woman’ cannot be one who wears revealing clothes or goes out late at night

Certain forms of sexual violence against women are still not prohibited, proscribed, penalised or even condemned. An attitude of suspicion and contempt for the victim/survivor of sexual violence permeates the criminal justice system. We readily castigate the police for their biased and sloppy investigation, but there is very little comment on how lawyers or the judiciary respond to this issue. Perhaps this is because not many people are conversant with the actual functioning of the legal system and the conduct of trials.

I conducted a training programme for the legal aid panel of lawyers on the rape law. It was a largely male group, with women constituting about a tenth of its strength. I began by asking them how they understood the growing number of rape cases that came for trial. Almost 90% of these lawyers promptly retorted that most of the cases that came to court were false; that the women were lying about rape. This was the near-unanimous answer, at a time when there is a high-decibel discussion going on about the severe and widespread sexual violence faced by women across the country.

But all these reports about women saying they feel unsafe, insecure and vulnerable, is there no truth to them, I probed. The lawyers replied: “Women are filing so many false cases of rape, dowry, domestic violence.” I drew their attention to the fact that, according to official records, a large number of minor girls were being sexually assaulted. This was conveniently sidestepped with the reply: “Yes, those children are not lying, but such crimes are committed by psychopaths — that is a separate category altogether.” The rest of the cases of rape are false, maintained the lawyers.


These are views held by practising lawyers who know the law and legal system and are familiar with its intricacies and manipulations. I moved the conversation to a related aspect and asked them how easy it was for any person, particularly for a woman, to walk into a police station and have an FIR registered. The lawyers readily agreed that the police were corrupt and often refused to register the complaints of ordinary people. Then how come all these women were managing to get their false cases registered? Grudgingly, a few conceded that not all allegations of rape were concocted and the system is to an extent biased against victims of sexual assault. But the majority continued to hold that most cases of rape were false, as those women wanted/agreed to/invited/asked for ‘sex’, and later filed false complaints of rape. This is the mindset that the survivor of sexual violence seeking justice has to combat in court.

A woman victim is likely to find it less intimidating to narrate her evidence before a woman judge during the trial. However, a woman judge is not necessarily more sensitive or cognisant of the dynamics of sexual violence. Despite judgments of the Supreme Court to the contrary, judges of the trial court, including women judges, look for injuries on the victim’s body as signs of non-consensual sexual intercourse. It is extremely difficult to get a conviction in a case of date rape or where the woman or her conduct does not conform to that of the ‘good woman’. The test that the survivor of sexual assault has to pass is not that of a ‘reasonable woman’ but rather that of the ‘good Indian woman’.

Here I am talking only of rape cases — the gravest of sexual crimes. But we have seen decisions of trial courts setting the rapist free and advising the rape victim to marry the accused rapist, to “forgive him” as he has offered to marry her! Clearly a court that passes such an unlawful order does not view rape as a crime at all, certainly not one that violates the woman’s bodily integrity and dignity.

If this is how the legal system responds to grave crimes of sexual violence, what happens when we look at other forms of sexual assault, like molestation or even sexual harassment? It is simply not part of our social understanding or judicial theorisation that women have the right to bodily integrity, sexual autonomy and dignity.

Recently, I heard many people say that they were “shocked” by the incident of July 9, 2012, when a mob sexually assaulted a young girl on a busy Guwahati road. Why the shock and surprise? Such incidents of grave sexual assault occur with alarming regularity across urban and rural India. This case was highlighted because of the video footage that was telecast. The full recording shows the brutality and brazenness of the sexual assault committed in full public view. But if you sit down and talk to people, you do not hear much outrage. The inquiries are all about the girl victim. “Why was the 16-year-old in the pub?” “Was she drinking?” “Who was she with?” “Who were the boys with her?”

So I am not sure that we as a society condemn the sexual assault of women. This definitely encourages the impunity with which sexual assault is committed and the accused acquitted. Let us not forget that impunity is not new for Assam and the Northeast, which is ruled by AFSPA and not the Constitution. The impunity enjoyed by the Assam Rifles when they raped and killed Manorama in Manipur, the disappearances and extrajudicial killings in Assam and Nagaland, are now embedded and entrenched there. We were complicit in condoning that impunity, and it has come back to haunt us now.

In the 1980s, following a strong nation-wide campaign by the women’s movement after the Supreme Court judgment in the Mathura rape case (State vs Tukaram), the concept of custodial violence was introduced through Section 376 (2) of the Indian Penal Code, with respect to sexual violence. This amendment for the first time made a crucial link between state authority, control, exercise of power and sexual violence.

However, this category of custody and control needs to be enlarged now. In the ’80s, it was the police that was viewed as the main aggressor and therefore the custody regime in law enumerated police stations, jail hospitals, and women’s institutions as spaces where women were more vulnerable. These continue to be sites of violence, as is evident from the serious complaints of custodial sexual torture by Soni Sori whilst in custody of the Chhattisgarh police. But today, Kashmir, all of northeast India and large parts of central India are under the command and control of the armed forces and other security forces. Even the police dare not question, interrogate, or lodge an FIR against these security personnel. Serious complaints of sexual assault of women by security forces from these areas have never been addressed. The Shopian rape and murder of two Kashmiri women, covered up as a case of drowning by the CBI, points to the impossibility of even a fair probe and investigation in ‘disturbed areas’ under army rule. Interestingly, the recently notified Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act, 2012 included the armed forces in the category of custodial violence. Similar amendments must be made in the IPC for women. Also, the law needs to acknowledge the specific targeting of women during communal, caste and ethnic violence.

The present definition and description of sexual violence in the law is not only inadequate it’s also regressive. The law, that is, basically, the IPC, only penalises the ‘penile penetration of the vagina’, which is rape; and ‘outraging the modesty of a woman’, which is molestation. But what is ‘outraging of modesty’? There is actually a case where it was argued that a seven-month-old baby girl did not possess modesty and so the same could not be outraged. Thankfully, the Supreme Court rejected this argument. That is exactly the problem with this kind of formulation. It is not a legal definition of a crime, but rather the expression of a subjective social opinion that actually burdens the complainant to measure up to a prescribed standard of conduct before the law will treat her as a victim. So, will a girl walking out of a pub, wearing a short dress, qualify as ‘modest’ at all? Has the police ever registered a complaint of a sex worker alleging sexual assault? The other problem is that all forms of sexual assault other than rape, regardless of their nature or gravity, are categorised as ‘molestation’ in law. From the insertion of a stick in the vagina, to stripping and parading women naked, to the pinching of a woman’s breast, it is all the same in law: an offence under Section 354 of the IPC. This is one of the reasons why the law today is so ineffective.

Let us go back to the Guwahati incident of aggravated sexual assault. The young girl must be extremely traumatised and will need support in recovering. Regardless of the spotlight on this incident, the accused persons will be released on bail, immediately upon arrest. That is the law: Section 354 of the IPC (‘outraging the modesty of a woman’) is a bailable offence. There are no systems in place to provide psycho-social counselling or protection to the victim/witness. What does this signal to those who want to stand up and fight? Everybody is ostensibly outraged by the Guwahati case, but I am willing to wager that when this girl has to appear in court to give evidence — I am of course assuming that the police will actually investigate the case and file a chargesheet against the accused persons — she will find herself alone, except for a few women activists standing by her side. It is unlikely that the National Commission for Women will be there, or the Legal Services Authority, or a special public prosecutor appointed by the state government. None of these statutorily mandated and well-resourced institutions will have the time or the inclination to support the young girl and monitor the trial. Where is the short-term and long-term support which every survivor of sexual violence needs, particularly when she goes to court? And remember this is a very hostile legal process.

We often hear cries of ‘Hang the Rapist!’. This kind of rhetoric is very unhelpful. Even in pure pragmatic terms, we must understand that the more stringent the punishment the more careful the court will be in handing out a conviction. I recall attending a candlelight vigil when Dhananjoy Chatterjee was hanged in 2004, sentenced to death for raping a schoolgirl. My daughter and I carried a placard that read ‘Women Against Rape and Death Penalty’. Demonising a few will not make the violence disappear. It stalks every road, street, bus, office, factory, field, and home. We are dealing with a very complex and entrenched issue, which the law can only partially answer. Public hysteria against an incident of sexual assault is usually followed by the imposition of complete social control over women’s lives and their sexuality. When we seek recognition of bodily integrity, we also mean the sexual autonomy of women, including their freedom to choose their sexual partners. Sexual violence is intimately linked to the Indian fetishisation of virginity, the obsession with marriage, segregation of the sexes and our notions of ‘good women’ and ‘bad women’.


For over 20 years, the women’s movement has been asking for the law relating to sexual violence to be amended. But for the government it is not a priority issue, since women are not a votebank — no political party is about to win or lose an election because of the high incidence of rape or sexual assault of women.

In 2010, when the complete subversion of justice by Haryana’s top cop, S P S Rathore, who had sexually assaulted and driven the young tennis player Ruchika Girhotra to suicide, came to light, the government in a typical knee-jerk reaction came up with the Criminal Law Amendment Bill, 2010. We in the women’s movement seized the opportunity, organised two national consultations and presented an alternative draft bill to the union home ministry. We were assured of a discussion. Of course we never heard from the home ministry again. It would seem that widespread sexual violence or the threat of it, which dictates the lives of all women and others in the country, is not a ‘security’ issue worthy of the home ministry’s time and attention.

Now that the Guwahati sexual assault has ignited some public debate, there are again some rumblings in the government. Of course, law reform will not make sexual violence disappear or even lessen it dramatically, and the prejudices and biases will remain, but right now we don’t even have a toehold to stand and fight. So the law on sexual assault definitely needs to change, and this would be just the beginning of the battle. There are many other factors that come into play, like education, the media, trainings, socialisation, and so on. The question is, when there is so much law-making going on in the country, why does neither the government nor any other political party have the time to amend laws which impact the very existence of women?

In early-August, we learnt from the newspapers that Cabinet had approved a gender-neutral sexual assault Bill. This is the Criminal Law Amendment Bill, 2012. Neither the contents nor the concepts and principles underlying this Bill have been discussed with women’s groups or any others. So much for the government’s avowed principles of transparency and democratic pre-legislative consultation. After hectic activity, we were able to secure a copy of the Bill from the government.

There are many serious concerns with this Bill, which seems to have been hastily put together without an understanding of the issues involved.

Firstly, it is encouraging to see that our longstanding demand to enlarge the crime of penetrative sexual assault beyond the present definition of rape, that is, peno-vaginal penetration, is reflected in the inclusion of other forms of non-consensual penetrative sexual assault. Sexual assault would include non-consensual penetration of other parts of the body by objects, etc, which is equally violative of a woman’s bodily integrity.

Secondly, the 2012 Bill does not view sexual crimes as a continuum of offences. Crimes of sexual violence must encompass the entire range, from penetrative sexual assault to sexual harassment. These offences must be formulated using the notion of violation of bodily integrity and dignity causing harm, injury, and degradation. The Criminal Law Amendment Bill, 2012, however, only codifies an expansive description of penetrative sexual assault and the only other provision dealing with sexual assault is the present Section 354, with the archaic and problematic phraseology ‘outraging the modesty’. What this means is that if the government were to pass the 2012 Bill it would bring about no change insofar as the Guwahati sexual assault is concerned. The incident would still be treated as a minor or trivial offence as it involved no penetrative sexual assault. It seems that two decades of written and oral communication with the government have been completely ignored.

Thirdly, new provisions defining crimes of sexual violence have to be added to the penal code. For example, except in the state of Madhya Pradesh, stripping, disrobing and parading a woman naked is not codified as a crime. This humiliating form of sexualised violence is routinely inflicted to degrade and humiliate women, particularly those belonging to disadvantaged groups or transgressing social norms.

Fourthly, as I said earlier, the categories of aggravated sexual assault need to be increased to include the armed forces and ‘coercive circumstances’ such as communal or caste violence.

Fifthly, the present definition of ‘consent’ has proved very problematic. Consent needs to be redefined anticipating the prejudices inherent in the system to exclude the interpretation of the victim’s conduct as consensual. It is very disappointing that there is no mention of the changes required in medical examination of victims of sexual assault, or the introduction of procedural amendments that may support a disabled victim/survivor. Nor is there any reference to introducing a victim/witness programme, despite a report of the Law Commission and judgments of the Supreme Court recommending this. The Bill is also completely silent on reparative justice for victims and survivors of sexual assault. Indian law must recognise reparation as a right of the victim, without any link to criminal trials and conviction.

Lastly, the most radical departure that the 2012 Bill makes is to introduce a gender-neutral sexual assault law. What this means is that, under the 2012 Bill, both men and women can be victims and perpetrators of the crime of sexual assault, as now defined. This requires serious deliberation. My view is that the law on sexual assault could be gender-neutral insofar as the victims of the crime are concerned. There is increasing evidence that not only women but others too, including transgender persons, are subjected to sexual assault. However, I do think that the accused/perpetrator should be gender-specific, that is, only men can be accused of sexual assault. Neither experience, nor data, nor studies in any way demonstrate that women are perpetrators of sexual assault. On the other hand, the proposed gender-neutral definition of aggravated sexual assault merits our serious consideration. We cannot deny the participation of women in inciting, abetting and conspiring to commit sexual violence, particularly in times of communal pogroms and caste violence. Perhaps when a person — man or woman — occupies a position of state power or other forms of authority, it is power that is determinative of their actions, and the gender identity of the perpetrator is subsumed under this exercise of power, privilege and dominance.

A last issue that must be mentioned here is Section 377 of the IPC, which criminalises homosexuality. The 2012 Bill makes no mention of it. The Delhi High Court has already read down 377 of the IPC and the matter is awaiting judgment in the Supreme Court. Now that a specific law has been passed for child sexual offences, and if the victim of sexual assault is made gender-neutral as proposed by the 2012 Bill, then there really can be no rationale for retaining 377 in the penal code.

Given the deep and abiding biases women face within the criminal justice system, it is only to be hoped that the government shows seriousness in addressing them. Is that too much to ask for as citizens?

(Vrinda Grover is a Delhi-based lawyer working on issues of human rights and impunity. She is National Legal Advocate for the International Commission of Jurists. She has represented survivors of the 1984 anti-Sikh pogrom, the 1987 Hashimpura police killings and the 2008 anti-Christian attack in Kandhamal)

Originally Published  by: Infochange News & Features, December 2012

Re-published with permission
 

The post Gendered violence and biases in the criminal justice system appeared first on NGOBOX.