Fury to Friendships: Floods in Assam

Samhita Barooah

Last month I got a frantic call from an old friend in Longleng district of Nagaland asking, “How are the people in Assam coping with floods?”  I said situation is grim but people are battling hard. For us floods have been always a boon in Assam as it leaves alluvial layer of silvery silt which ensures a rich harvest for the season. But such promise of the floods has been broken by sand deposition and excessive land erosion in last few decades of floods in Assam. My own experience of floods is when our old house gets flooded every year during very heavy rains in Guwahati city and I float around to take refuge in another room.  Even though floods used to be rural phenomena, it has become a horrific urban reality in recent years in the context of Assam. Every year people keep aside clothes, food items and any other essentials including cash to donate for the flood affected population in different districts of Assam. Most of the election gimmicks are tried out with the flood affected people in different districts during this time. Most of the communities of Assam in flood prone districts of Dhemaji, Goalpara, Lakhimpur, Sonitpur, Barpeta, Nalbari, Jorhat, Golaghat, Nagaon and Morigaon have become resilient to coping with floods. Floods affect people differently. These days there is a growing trend of ignoring Assam floods as a national disaster by the national media and national Government authorities across social, television and print media. Floods in other parts of the country have either devastating impact or sudden impact which could be seen during Chennai, Jaipur and Uttarakhand floods. These areas are international tourist destinations and hubs of regional and national politics hence such places getting flooded makes it to the news channels and social media circles. But Rhinos, Buffaloes, Elephants, Deers, Monkeys dying and people living along the fringes of flood plains of Brahmaputra in Kaziranga, Manas, Pobitora, Dibru Saikhowa National Parks in Morigaon, Golaghat, Chirang, Barpeta, Baksa and Tinsukia districts does not bring votes, power and influence so such stories will not feature in National or International media.

In Majuli, people float on high raised bamboo stilts, banana stem rafts and in recent years on elevated platforms in makeshift relief camps but in Assam people do not show their angst, fury and discontents too easily. Resilience, tolerance and coping skills are ingrained into the psyche from a young age which becomes a regional trait during times of distress and disasters. The state has witnessed such diverse range of natural fury like earthquakes, erosion, floods and landslides apart from violent human induced disasters that people have become immune to such wraths in the last few years. It is an irony that such coping mechanisms and restraint is not regarded as human achievements while assessing the impact and outcome of perennial phenomenon like floods. Loss, grief and fury not only come with loss of human life during floods in Assam. It also penetrates into the social, psychological, emotional and cultural practices of the Assamese identity. Loss of implements, hand crated materials, textiles, livestock, fruit bearing trees, herbal plants, memories of common resources like ponds, lakes, wetlands, sandbars, forests, bridges, public and personal spaces can be devastating for any flood affected person in Assam.

Floods have immediate and long term impact of women and children in both rural and urban contexts. Mobility of women gets restricted with the imposition of relief camps and their work gets limited to unpaid care giving work which does not have any cash benefit. Most women gradually turn to door-to-door begging in urban areas of the nearest towns and cities where floods have affected. The post flood condition deteriorates further when children and at times women getting exploited in roadside relief camps. Most of the relief camps on the national highways become the last resort for flood affected families. Children sell fish, herbs, crabs, seasonal fruits in some pockets of flood affected highways. In Dhemaji, Majuli, Lakhimpur, Sonitpur, Vishwanath out-migration of adult males to IT hubs of India in Bangalore, Chennai, Kerala, Pune, Mumbai, Hyderabad in low paying security personnel jobs is a result of perennial floods, soil erosion and sand deposition in fertile agricultural lands. In such situations the women become the temporary land and farm custodians without any major earning source. Weaving skills of women become crucial to suffice the survival needs in flood affected areas but such activities hardly have any consistent earning source. Even in relief camps cultural constructs and patriarchy limits women from becoming productive workforce during natural disasters like floods. In Majuli, cooking in relief camps are done by male prayer hall-keepers called namghoriyas but women have to cut vegetables, clean and wash utensils and take care of the children, elders and ailing persons without any monetary remuneration. In Kokrajhar district of Assam also women suffer the brunt of natural disasters where cooked food is served once a day. Mostly women do not claim any remuneration also because it is distress time and they adhere to the socially accepted norms.

While speaking to volunteers, relief workers and community based women leaders in flood affected areas of Assam, most of them shared their personal stories of trials and triumphs. Women activist Rubi Gogoi from Sonari in Sibsagar district of Assam experienced floods in Barpeta, Goalpara, Sonitpur and Morigaon districts through joint collaboration of a local women’s group called North East Network and Oxfam India. She shared about her dilemmas of distributing relief materials to all communities including every affected individual whether they were Muslim migrants or ethnic communities. She struck chords of dissent and instant friendships with the local women and co-workers during such relief work. Even when some of my old students at TISS Guwahati volunteered to go for relief work during the Goalpara floods in 2014, I could notice that students from across India got together to participate in relief work. Even though some students never sat together in the same class but during the floods, they lived together for days and distributed relief materials and supported the most marginalised communities in flood affected areas of Assam. In fact some students collected sanitary napkins from their hostels and went to distribute them in the flood affected areas. Floods in Assam did connect youths from Kerala, Manipur, Meghalaya, Delhi, Rajasthan, Bengal, Gujarat, Maharashtra, Bihar and UP and such friendships amongst the young student volunteers and such friendships sowed the seeds of solidarity during the testing times of the state. Jamini Payeng from Majuli, Jorhat expressed her most heart warming experiences during floods. She shared about her association with communities in some of the most neglected pockets of mishing and deori inhabitant areas in Majuli when she shared some relief materials provided by AVARD NE and Oxfam in India in the 1990s. It was the first time that people received food packets, fresh clothes and basic utility kits for each family and sealed properly. There was a sense of dignity and respect for the flood affected communities which were established. She said those people still consider her as their friend in need even though she said that the materials were provided but external agencies. But for those community members, Jamini Payeng became their sole agent of survival during the floods. Even after almost 2 decades, Jamini remembers such friendships which grew during disasters.

Human dignity cannot change with disasters. In recent years, people tend to send discarded and sub-standard materials and food items for the flood affected persons which is inhuman and unfortunate. Natural disasters cannot rob away the self-respect, inherent skills, well-being and the elixir for life for any affected community. The restoration, admiration, acceptance and inclusion of flood affected community lies with those who are not affected by such disaster. These are the very minor nuances of endearing friendships despite the fractured fury of floods in Assam.

Any person willing to support flood affected people in remote pockets of Majuli and other parts of Assam do write to jaminipayeng.majuli@gmail.com.

Samhita Barooah is a Researcher and Travel Writer

Message from Ms Irina Bokova, Director-General of UNESCO on the occasion of the International Youth Day

Young people are not only our future -- they are our present. Our planet has never been so young, with 1.8 billion young women and men. They are the most connected, the most outspoken and the most open-minded generation the world has ever seen. They are powerful agents of positive change, essential to taking forward the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.
It is not enough to hope for a better tomorrow -- we must act now. Change is underway, and millions of citizens are already transforming the way we produce, consume, behave and communicate. Young people, such as our #YouthofUNESCO sustainable consumption advocate, Ms Lauren Singer, show us the way towards a zero-waste life-style, fitting all of her refuse produced over the past four years into one small jar! This is an inspiration for this year’s celebration -- The Road to 2030: Eradicating Poverty and Achieving Sustainable Production and Consumption.
There are countless initiatives like this, all giving shape to a new humanism, to new forms of solidarity and citizenship to combat poverty, marginalization and despair.
Optimism and confidence do not mean we minimize the challenges ahead. Most young people live today in least developed countries, and shoulder the heaviest burden of conflicts and poverty. There can be no sustainable development if they remain on the side-lines, and I call upon all Member States and UNESCO partners to support their initiatives, to give them voice, to let them grow, to shape together the future of dignity that we are building today.


Irina Bokova
Message from Ms Irina Bokova, Director-General of UNESCO on the occasion of the International Youth Day
12 August 2016

Need to protect the safety and civility of public discourse on the Internet

The democratisation of communication now brings the talk of the street into our homes and offices. As a result we can communicate without making a personal connection. The communications that actually reach our desktops or our smartphones tend towards the lowest common denominator of civility, a level that is unfortunately very low.

Therefore we have an epidemic expansion and exchange of hatred, anger and violence in our social media interactions. All we can say is that the ‘choice’ to subject ourselves to this lowest level of expression has now become a way of life.

Governments and political parties around the world are learning too. But the roots of these problems lie not in the State, but in the combination of private power in the ‘platform companies’ and our own burgeoning need to take advantage of their services, irrespective of our increasing vulnerability to the harmful speech directed at us by strangers.

There is no doubt that words aimed to wound or harm are appropriate subjects of regulation in any legal system.

There are many reasons why expecting public force to control these words will swiftly lead to disappointment. It is equally unsatisfactory to empower private companies to act as global censors in the interests of civility. This will give the private platforms undemocratic power.

Hence there is a need for a broad social dialogue. This is not just to restore systems of government or private censorship, but to protect the safety and civility of public discourse in a world of democratised communications. In India, we do not need the revival of section 66A or any other similar legislation, neither do we need to turn to the online giants such as Google, Facebook or Twitter for censorship. However there is a need for discussing the means by which both the government and these companies can help us protect our cultural environment. That dialogue should be based on the acceptance of some basic principles which are crucial to democracy and our society.

For instance, the providers of services that enhance democracy of communication must also devise measures to involve the communities they create in the moderation and protection of discourse.

Companies must not become censors in substitution for governments. Instead, they must create communities of civility maintenance, platforms for discussion and support people who are subjected to harm. We are building through the net a community as wide as humankind. How we carry our civility into that new space and how we deal with fighting words on the Internet determines whether we are building a better human civilisation.

Mishi Choudhary is legal director and Eben Moglen is chairman, Software Freedom Law Centre

Source: Hindustan Times, 12-08-2016

Rage or Outrage?

ANSHUL CHATURVEDI





Confucius advised, “When anger arises, think of the consequences“, and much the same has been retold in different words. The problem is that when we get enraged, we rarely think, we just react. Acting in anger can be injurious not only to health but might impact others adversely as well.However, the presumption that anger necessarily is something to be apologetic about needs to be questioned. While power often corrupts, the absence of power is not necessarily a purifying factor by itself.Equally , anger per se is not welcome, and rage -depending on how it is manifested -may be counterproductive.
But a complete inability to get angry at anything is not necessarily a sign of having attained nirvana; it often is a sign of nothing more profound than being passive or disinterested.It is nearly impossible to remain unaffected by what goes on around you. Is it really advisable then to remain indifferent?
Sometimes, it is our sense of outrage that reveals to us what really matters to us.
The concept of battling injustice revolves around the presumption that we are driven to outrage at what is not fair. If we are not upset with things going wrong, what will impel us to set them right? “How much more grievous are the consequences of anger than the causes of it?“ asked Marcus Aurelius. But, equally, there could be grievous consequences of not getting angry , as well. Let's keep our cool when nothing more than our ego is at stake, but let's not forget to get outraged at injustice.

60% of countries most likely to use slave labour'

London REUTERS





Almost 60% of countries are at high risk of using slave labour in their supply chains, according to a new global index launched on Thursday , which also ranked North Korea as having the worst record of slave labour.By assessing incidents of human trafficking or slavery , national laws, and the quality of law enforcement across 198 countries, risk analytics company Verisk Maplecroft found that 115 countries were at high or extreme risk of using slaves. “Few countries in the world are actually immune to modern slavery ,“ said Alex Channer, lead analyst for human rights research at Verisk Maplecroft.
Nearly 46 million people around the world are living as slaves, forced to work in factories, mines and farms, sold for sex, trapped in debt bondage or born into servitude, according to the 2016 Global Slavery Index by rights group Walk Free Foundation.
Modern slavery has become a catch-all term to describe human trafficking, forced labour, debt bondage, sex trafficking, forced marriage and other slave-like exploitation.
Channer said Verisk Maplecroft's index aims to help businesses identify countries most at risk of slave labour.
The issue has received in creasing attention in recent years with exposes in sectors as diverse as fishing, mining and textiles. Last year, Britain passed an anti-slavery law requiring companies with a turnover of 36 million pounds ($47 million) or more to report what they are doing to eradicate slavery from their supply chains.
After North Korea, the report ranked South Sudan, Sudan and Democratic Republic of Congo as countries with the most slave labour.
Heavyweight exporters India and China had an `extreme risk' of using slaves in their supply chains, along with DRC and Ivory Coast, a leading cocoa bean producer, the report said.
The European Union had a `medium risk' of using slaves, while Britain, Germany , Denmark and Finland were the only four major European economies that had a low risk of slave labor.

Source: Times of India, 12-08-2016

Mental illness made some leaders great?

Washington:





Study: It May've Helped Them Tackle Crises

Some of America's greatest leaders in history have had mental health problems and it may have helped in times of crisis, psychiatrists and psychologists said.Presidents Abraham Lincoln and John F Kennedy , along with Civil War generals Ulysses S Grant and William Tecumseh Sherman and civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr, all struggled with mental health issues, often depression, said Tufts University psychiatry professor Dr Nassir Ghaemi, who has written about historical figures' psychological issues. He also points to British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and India's Mahatma Gandhi as major historical figures who thrived while having emotional issues.
“Some of those mental health problems can, in fact, make for greatness,'' said Katherine Nordal, a psychologist who heads the American Psychological Association's professional practice program. Other professionals agreed.
Saying someone has psychiatric issues, “in my view...is a compliment,'' said Ghaemi, author of the book `A First-Rate Madness: Uncovering the Links between Leadership and Mental Illness.' He used medical and historical records to analyse historical figures. Manic depressive people are often more creative, more empathetic and realistic than the more mentally healthy , Ghaemi said.These people tend to succeed in times of crisis and fail in times of peace and prosperity , he said.
Two sets of leaders illustrate that. Sherman was severely depressed, reportedly suicidal, while Gen George McClellan was considered mentally healthy but not a successful general in crisis, Ghaemi said. Grant, who had a problem with alcohol, excelled during wartime but did not do well as a peacetime president, he said.
More recently , Churchill suffered repeated long bouts of depression which he was open about, calling it his “black dog“. His predecessor as prime minister, Neville Chamberlain, was of the same political party -conservative -but more mentally healthy and yet didn't see the threat of Adolf Hitler.
Churchill thrived in the crisis of wartime but failed in the postwar peace and prosperity , Ghaemi said.

Source: Times of India, 12-08-2016

Union Cabinet approves Maternity Benefit (Amendment) Bill, 2016

he Union Cabinet has given its ex-post facto approval for introducing the Maternity Benefit (Amendment) Bill, 2016 in Parliament The Bill seeks to amend the Maternity Benefit Act, 1961. The law protects the employment of women during the time of her maternity and entitles her of a ‘maternity benefit’. The ‘maternity benefit’ includes full paid leave from work to take care for her child. This law is applicable to all establishments employing 10 or more persons. Proposed amendments Increase Maternity Benefit to 26 weeks from 12 weeks for two surviving children and 12 weeks for more than two children. Mandatory 12 weeks Maternity Benefit to ‘Adopting mother’ and ‘Commissioning mother’. Facilitate Work from home for women during the time of her maternity. Mandatory for establishment having 50 or more employees to have Creche. Comment These amendments will help approximately 1.8 million women workforce in organised sector.  Maternal care to the child during early childhood is crucial for growth and development of the child. Background The Union Ministry of Women and Child Development had proposed this Bill to enhance Maternity Benefit to 8 months based on recommendations of the 44th, 45th and 46th Indian Labour Conference. The conference had recommended enhancement of maternity benefits to 24 weeks.

Source: http://currentaffairs.gktoday.in/