Don’t call me a goddess, I am a farmer

A Dalit women farmers’ collective demonstrates the power of Rs10 in empowering the community and achieving food security for their families.

My name is Seema Mahila Kisan Samiti,” she said.

“Seema Mahila Kisan Samiti?” I repeated after her.

“Yes,” she nodded.

“Seema Devi,” I addressed her.

“Not Devi. Why Devi? Devi is that goddess we worship under the tree over there. I am no goddess, I am a kisan, a farmer.”

Seema, the farmer, is a member of the Saraswati Mahila Kisan Samiti, a women farmers’ collective in Sahar tehsil, district Bhojpur, Bihar. She is also the elected ward member from her community, the first woman from the Mahadalit caste to hold this position in their area.

“We have always been farmers,” Krishna Devi explains to me. We are standing in a group in the shade of a tree on the edge of rice fields. All around us is lush green standing crop. The only work the rice fields demand at this time is weeding.

Seema, Krishna Devi, Ganga Devi and Dukhni Devi are women who have emerged as leaders within the Dalit and Mahadalit community of Vishnupura village in Sahar tehsil, ever since landless women here formed a self-help collective to lease land and grow their own crops.

Seema Mahila Kisan, an elected ward member and farmer from the Mahadalit community demonstrates how she has learnt to sign on documents.

Today I am witness to a strategy and forward planning meeting in this open-air conference room. There is talk about seeds, fertilizers, soft loans and farmer welfare schemes that must be accessed. What they would like to do better in terms of soil preparation before they sow the next crop. There is exchange of information about cultivation of pulses in smaller plots and vegetables in their own kitchen gardens.

Some women have infants balanced on their hips. Toddlers are playing in the mud nearby. Older children are jumping into the irrigation canal repeatedly, squealing with delight. Childcare at the workplace is an accepted norm here.

“It is just that only men have been considered to be farmers, because they own land,” Krishna Devi tells me. “We have always worked in the fields, but we have never had access to money and resources. All through my life, I have cooked for everyone at home and gone to the fields. Women have always been in charge of seeding, sowing, transplantation, weeding, harvesting and storing the grain.”

“Now we do our own farming on our own land,” adds Ganga Devi. We get money in our own hands and we are able to save some of it. We can decide how to spend it.”

“Our families eat better now,” says Dukhni Devi, her voice tearing up. “When my children were small, they slept hungry. We were crushed under loans. Today I grow so many vegetables, I have to sell some of them in the market.”

Seema Mahila Kisan has a dramatic flair for storytelling. She narrates the story of the transformation in their lives using Rs10 to illustrate her point. The Rs10 that she didn’t have when she worked as farm labour in the fields of upper-caste men in the village.

“We got together and contributed Rs10 each every month. Slowly we collected enough money to lease a small plot of land. Why shouldn’t we work for our own selves?” she asks rhetorically. “The next year we leased a bigger plot. Slowly we began to grow potatoes and dal as well.”

Seema holds up her wrist and shows me two dozen green glass bangles on her wrist. “Today I have Rs10 to buy bangles for myself. You think I could afford this earlier? I didn’t even have the guts to sit on a dhurrie with people like you. I would have peeped from my window and hidden till you had left.”

This women farmers’ collective near the town of Ara is one of many such groups in Bihar that have been created through the efforts of the Pragati Grameen Vikas Sansthan (PGVS), a Patna-based organization that works for the land rights of underprivileged communities. Some of the most successful stories of women farmers’ collectives are to be found in Kerala, Punjab, Assam and the North-Eastern states.

“It is a reasonable estimate that 65-75% of the work involved in growing crops is done by women in India,” says Prem Kumar Anand, who is programme officer, economic justice, at Oxfam India. “What has been historically denied to women is ownership of land and the stature of a farmer. Less than 10% of women own land.”

Sindhu Sinha is a much beloved Didi (older sister) among the women of Vishnupura. She is the regional coordinator for PGVS and visits the community regularly to help with the logistics of running a collective. “When we first came to this village, no girl here was educated. None of them went to school. That is where we started from. Today five-six girls from this village have completed their matric studies.”

“I used to put my thumbprint on all official documents earlier. Since I became a ward member, I have started putting my signature,” says Seema Mahila Kisan, making a gesture of signing with her right hand on her left palm. “Today we know how to claim our Indira Awaas fund, disability allowance, widow pension and old age pensions. We receive fertilizers and seeds for wheat, onion and dalalso. It was hard to make people at the district headquarters take us seriously as farmers. But now they do.”

In the social and economic structure of the village, a person’s status, honour and identity is linked intrinsically to land ownership. Claiming land rights is also critical towards sustaining livelihood and food security for families of the poor.

“When a woman owns a piece of land, however small it may be, it raises her social status. This has influenced the government too. The land that is being distributed to the landless now includes the woman’s name in the legal deed. This is a big success for us,” says Sindhu Sinha.

Seema Mahila Kisan is a mother of four. She sends two daughters to school regularly. She is pleased with the uniforms the children have received from school. The midday meal is an added bonus.

“Where all have you travelled?” I ask her.

“I have travelled a lot now,” she tells me. “I have seen many other worlds that I had not seen earlier. Earlier, when I left home, I would go to Barahi bazaar or Sahar. Now I have seen Ara, Delhi, Gwalior, Ranchi, Bodh Gaya.” She turns around her to see who all have surrounded us to hear her words. Her laughter rings with happiness.

Natasha Badhwar is a film-maker, media trainer and mother of three. She tweets at @natashabadhwar and posts on Instagram as natashabadhwar.

Pushback against civil liberties

The sense of impunity that drives discrimination against Dalits is at the heart of recent demands for the dilution, or even repeal, of the Act for prevention of atrocities against SCs and STs

It is the sense of impunity nurtured by caste hierarchy that prepares the social ground for the “shockingly cruel and inhumane” crimes against Dalits called atrocities. It is this impunity that the Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes(Prevention of Atrocities) Act (henceforth PoAA) criminalises. And it is the desire to defend the same impunity that motivates recent demands for the dilution or even repeal of the PoAA. To examine the validity of these claims, we must first understand the very different relationships that caste has with the Constitution, society, and state.

Caste and the Constitution

The Constitution is a portrait of the nation as it would like to be rather than as it actually is. Therefore, it is obliged to regard aspirations as achievements, uncertain journeys as assured arrivals. Beginning with the Preamble, where it presumes that “we, the people” are indeed a unified and homogenous collectivity, the Constitution proceeds to treat hoped-for outcomes as though they were established facts. This is not a defect — the Constitution is required to reflect the republic in the best possible light, and is at its most majestic when doing so. However, this also means that the Constitution is unable to directly confront obstinate realities like caste that flout its fundamental tenets, because acknowledging caste amounts to confessing that the republic is more desire than reality.

So, when the Constitution is forced to deal with caste, it does so with an averted face, allowing it only an inferential, shadow-like presence. But it also manages to be obliquely eloquent about what it cannot face. For example, caste makes its first entry in Article 15 rather anonymously, as one among many sources of discrimination. But this is compensated by Sections 2(a) and 2(b) which prohibit discriminatory restriction of access to (respectively) “shops, public restaurants, hotels and places of public entertainment” and “wells, tanks, bathing ghats, roads and places of public resort…”. Why is it necessary to explicitly prohibit discrimination in access to both modern and traditional facilities already declared to be for the public? Or take Article 17, which abruptly announces that “Untouchability” is abolished and its practice in any form is forbidden. What does this capitalised word stand for and why must it be quarantined in quotes? The answer, of course, is caste, which is an absent presence in the Constitution, addressed only as an exceptional or special circumstance.

Discrimination as dominance

The PoAA, 1989, and its older sibling, the Protection of Civil Rights Act, 1955, are “special laws” located at the strategic sites where the Constitution’s default setting of caste-blind formal equality must be changed to address the reality of substantive inequality. All citizens are not equally at risk of being subjected to the acts specified in the sub-sections of Section 3(1) of the PoAA, such as being forced to “drink or eat any inedible or obnoxious substance” (i); have “excreta, waste matter, carcasses or any other obnoxious substance” dumped in their premises or neighbourhood (ii); or being paraded “naked or with painted face or body” (iii), and so on. If there exist specific groups of citizens who have repeatedly suffered such gross violations of the fundamental right to dignity, then surely the republic owes them the protection of special laws like the PoAA.

But why do such groups exist in the first place? They exist because of the social relations promoted by caste. The atrocities that invite interventions such as the PoAA are made possible by caste society’s ability to sustain specific types of relationships, or mutually oriented attitudes and conditions. On the one hand, Dalit castes are forcibly invested with an enduring social vulnerability vis-à-vis castes higher up in the hierarchy, especially those dominant within a region. On the other hand, dominant castes are allowed to acquire, and to eventually take for granted, a socially sanctioned sense of impunity with respect to Dalit castes. When the dominant caste feels it has little prospect of economic and social mobility, its self-esteem and identity become increasingly dependent on the unequal relationships it maintains with subordinated castes. In such situations, the Dalit-dominant caste relationship turns into a zero-sum game where any real or imagined improvement in the lives of Dalits is seen as a reduction in the social distance separating the two groups, thereby implying a decline in the status of the dominant castes.

The caste-state relationship

The state is simultaneously the child of law and society as well as the mediating link between the two. Because of its idealistic orientation, the Constitution — mother of all laws — is external to society and has a largely exhortatory relationship to it. The state depends on the Constitution for its legitimacy, but the Constitution also depends on the state for the actualisation of its ideals. Since it is regulated by politics which in turn is rooted in society, and since its personnel are themselves members of society who embody the prevalent social prejudices, the state is strongly influenced by society. But because it is institutionally bound to obey the Constitution, the state cannot always be guided by the dominant social prejudices of the day; rather, it must at least occasionally rise above these prejudices to perform its constitutional duty. In sum, the caste-state relationship is necessarily ambiguous because the state is itself a differentiated and plural (rather than homogenous or monolithic) entity, capable of acting in a wide variety of ways with respect to caste.

Returning now to the demands for restraining or removing the PoAA, we can begin to decipher what is happening. Both in Tamil Nadu and Maharashtra, the two States where it has been voiced, the demand is coming from political parties representing regionally dominant castes. Both States have seen the emergence (or re-emergence) of Dalit assertion following some upward mobility. This has enraged the dominant castes, leading them to argue that the PoAA is being “misused”. The misuse argument is so popular that it can be called a syndrome, or “a characteristic combination of opinions, emotions or behaviour”. It has been used against every special scheme or law intended to empower vulnerable groups, including reservations, laws against dowry, sexual harassment and rape, and even theMahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA). In each case, it is alleged that the “genuinely deserving” never benefit and that the “vast majority” of cases are fake.

Underdogs and predators 

Since any law can be “misused”, it is not the potential for misuse but its actual occurrence and frequency that matter, and this needs to be established through credible evidence. No such evidence-based claims have been made as yet. On the contrary, reports from activist groups show that it is hard for ordinary Dalits to get cases registered, and extremely difficult to get them placed under the PoAA. But to be fair, the misuse argument is not always meant to be taken literally; it also acts as proxy for the more general perception that Dalits are no longer underdogs and may be turning into predators. This impression is confirmed when we recall that the Pattali Makkal Katchi leader, Dr. S. Ramadoss, reinforced his demand for dilution of the PoAA with the allegation that Dalit boys were luring non-Dalit girls by wearing “jeans, T-shirts and fancy sunglasses” (The Hindu, December 3, 2012). In Maharashtra, recent calls for reviewing the PoAA issued by the Shiv Sena and the Nationalist Congress Party have intensified after the rape-murder of July 13 in Kopardi (Ahmednagar district) in which the victim is dominant caste and the accused are Dalits.

While there is no reason to doubt that Dalits, like any other caste group, could become efficient oppressors if given the chance, the obvious question is if they are in fact getting the chance. Going by the nationwide evidence on the frequency of atrocities on Dalits, the shoe still seems to be firmly on the other foot. Ahmednagar district alone has witnessed three atrocities on Dalits in the past three years (Sonai, Kharda and Javkheda). Meanwhile, as the first anniversary of the Dadri lynching approaches, let us also spare a thought for vulnerable groups who do not have, and will probably never have, the constitutional protection of special laws.

Satish Deshpande teaches sociology at Delhi University.

Keywords: Crime agaiinst Dalits, SCs, STs, 

Source: The Hindu, 24-09-2016

We live disconnected lives as our connection to virtual world increases

Even if you haven’t read Andrew Sullivan’s longish article called “I Used to be a Human Being” in New York Magazine, chances are you might recognise his Internet addiction.

Sullivan, an author, editor and blogger, talks about his “personal crash” following years of what he calls a web obsessive lifestyle, publishing and updating blog posts multiple times, seven days a week.

The rewards were a profitable new media business, an audience of 100,000 people a day and a “niche in the nerve center of the exploding global conversation”. Yet, as his health began to suffer, as vacations became occasions for catching up with sleep, and as “the online clamor became louder”, he realised, “This new way of living was actually becoming a way of not-living.”

Most of us aren’t as deeply immersed in our online lives as Sullivan but it’s a difference of degree. A 2014 study by AT Kearney Global Research, for instance, found that 53% of Indian respondents said they were connected to the Internet every waking hour — higher than the global average of 51%.

Easier Wi-Fi access and the proliferation of affordable tablet and mobile devices, including Reliance Jio’s aggressive 4G plans that include free voice calls and rock bottom data price, has deepened this connection.

What does this mean to the way we live, communicate and interact?

The borders between the virtual and real world are now blurred. Look around you. That couple at dinner at a restaurant checking their mail. Holidays spent posting pictures on Snapchat and Instagram. The desperation for validation in the form of “likes” and retweets. At the doctor’s clinic, people swiping their phones rather than rifling through dog-eared back issues of Readers Digest.

The human race has never been better connected — earlier this year, I watched the coup in Turkey unfold in real time on my twitter feed — and yet, I find that my mails are increasingly perfunctory — send itinerary, read this story, free for dinner? — staccato bursts with no space for communicating ideas or even concern. Thumbs up emojis responding to reposts of articles I’ve not yet had the time to read. Facebook reminding you to send birthday greetings to “friends” you can’t remember.Some call this an age of mass distraction. I pick up my phone to make a call and before I know it I’m swirling down the rabbit hole of pings and updates, phone call quickly forgotten only to be substituted by a hastily remembered text message much later. I struggle with information overload. That guy whose book I read and loved six months ago? I need to Google his name.

Even as we lose focus, it is useful to remind ourselves of the many gifts of the online world. Fund-raising for small causes, online petitions, the ability to interact one-on-one with politicians, democratisation of news. But this comes at a human cost. And here’s the irony, our increasing connectivity is making us less connected to those we still meet physically. How do you make eye contact with the dad at the bus stop dropping off his daughter, when he’s immersed in his phone? If you’re going to buy books online, how can you receive recommendations from the erudite bookshop owner who has, in fact, now gone out of business?What we lose in the name of efficiency is an older, more relaxed way of life, a way of life where people mattered because they were humans not data in some complex algorithm.

Some talk of a weekly day off away from our smartphones. Others reserve family time with phones switched off, even if it’s just an hour a day. The idea is to recognise the need to inhale, the need to switch off but switch on elsewhere.

A friend once tried to explain the marvels of modern technology to his father. “Think of all the time you’re saving,” he exclaimed. The father remained unimpressed. “Time saved for what? To send another message?” There’s a lesson in there for all of us.

namita.bhandare@gmail.com

Source: Hindustan Times, 24-09-2016

An Eclectic Faith

SHATRUGHUN JIWNANI





According to Baha'u'llah, every age has its own problem, and every soul its particular aspiration. He advised that we should be anxiously concerned with the needs of the age we live in, and centre our deliberations on its exigencies and requirements. Members of the Baha'i community are from all religious and national backgrounds, living and working together in harmony and peace.We believe in the principles of oneness of mankind, oneness of God and oneness of religion.To Baha'is, the prophets and manifestations of God receive guidance from the same source and their purpose is none else than to exhort humanity to follow the path of righteousness.
Followers never differentiate in the rank or status of the various prophets and accept all past manifestations of God -Krishna, Buddha, Zoroaster, Jesus or Muhammad -and hold their revelations as sacred as the writings of Baha'u'llah, whose vision of a united, peaceful world reflects an understanding that humanity is creating a society founded on justice and expressing trust, collaboration and compassion.
Baha'i teachings discourage any conflict or dissension in the name of religion and they believe that the purpose of true religion should be to unite Abdu'l-Baha, son of all hearts. ` Baha'u'llah, goes to the extent of saying, “If religion becomes a cause of dislike, hatred and division, it were better to be without it, and to withdraw from such a religion would be a truly religious act. Any religion which is not a cause of love and unity is no religion.“

Are We A Caring Society?

Pavan K Varma





Gulzar's institute for the differently abled and the episode of Dana Manjhi offer differing perspectives

Gulzar Saheb, arguably one of India's finest poets, and i have been friends for many years.I have translated several volumes of his poetry into English, and he has translated some of mine.We were recently together in Bhopal for the Great Indian Literature and Film Festival. But for me, the visit to Bhopal was far more memorable for another reason. I accompanied Gulzar to Arushi, an institution for the differently abled, that away from the arc lights of Mumbai, he has helped to lovingly nurture for several decades.
The visit was an eye opener. Every child there, notwithstanding his or her conventional disabilities, brimmed with confidence and joy , and each had a personal bond with Gulzar. In fact, one of the girls, who was earlier deaf but can now hear because of an operation that Arushi facilitated, called Gulzar `Dadu'.
Gulzar had gone straight from the airport to buy her a badminton racket for her birthday , and she proudly showed it to me. Arushi has greatly expanded its footprint over the years, but, strangely, very few people know of Gulzar's involvement with it. I asked him why.
He said that this kind of work was best done quietly , without any fanfare.Were funds a problem? He said no. Every time Arushi seemed to be running out of resources, somebody would come forward to help. There was never any need to ask the government for assistance.
Indians, he said, were capable of love and compassion. Such emotions only needed to be tapped. Such a generous view surprised me. Observable patterns of behaviour show that the relatively privileged Indian is an exceptionally insular being with little or no interest in anything beyond his immediate and personal ken of interests.
Slums proliferate at the threshold of five star hotels, and Indians drive past them as if they don't exist. There seems to be a cynical and deliberate withdrawal from a constructive interface with society based on the conviction that there can be no interest higher than one's own.
Foreigners, who are otherwise great admirers of India, have said to me that the one thing they find difficult to understand is the amazing imperviousness of intelligent and educated Indians to the appalling poverty and deprivation often literally at their doorstep. It almost seems that they don't notice the needy , leave alone taking the initiative to do something for them.
I told Gulzar Saheb that there are identifiable reasons for this social insensitivity . First, in a highly competitive society , where the ratio between opportunity and aspiration is exceptionally adverse, those who succeed, even marginally , do not want to be distracted by larger community issues. The attitude becomes one of each for oneself and the rest be damned to their karma.
Second, there is a genuine ­ and legitimate ­ disenchantment with those who claim to speak for the cause of social altruism. In particular, the `idealism' spouted by our political class is seen to be hollow and opportunistic. What is promised is not implemented, and what is implemented is riddled with corruption.
This leads to a generic devaluation of the entire project of social good, so that even when a public welfare organisation is above board, its intentions are seen to be suspect.
Third, while Hinduism is at the level of philosophy one of the most profound religions in the world, in practice it breeds an individualism that privileges personal salvation over public good. A pious Hindu will take a dip in the holy waters of the Ganga oblivious to the filth and garbage on and around the bathing ghat.
Temples in India will have their coffers overflowing with donations, but few of the donors would want to spend the same money to help the thousands of needy around them. In the Hindu's quest for personal moksha, the countervailing moral imperative to identify his own spiritual growth with the welfare of the community has increasingly become dormant.
Gulzar Saheb listened to me with attention. But his belief in the good inherent in all human beings did not change. Indians may appear to be callous, he said, and often are, but below the surface, there is a deeply embedded conviction in the importance of dana, of giving, and of `paropkar', of giving back to society a little of what it has given to us.
Once people believe that their contribution will actually reach the intended beneficiaries, their diffidence becomes easier to overcome. And then, the floodgates open. Big and small amounts come in. People come out from the blue to volunteer. Good Samaritans crawl out of the woodwork. Support comes from the most unexpected quarters.
I was influenced by Gulzar's transparent idealism. But i remembered too that only recently , Dana Manjhi, a penniless tribal in Odisha walked for miles with his dead wife on his shoulder because neither the hospital nor anybody else would help him to transport her body to the cremation ground.
That image, symbolic of so much of what is wrong with us, is difficult to erase. I hope Gulzar Saheb is right, and i am wrong. But we still need to ask: are we really a caring society?
The writer is an author and member of JD(U)
Source: Times of India, 2409-2016

Aadhaar not required for UGC scholarships

The University Grants Commission (UGC) has declared that Aadhaar card is not a mandatory requirement to avail its scholarships.

 “Any student who has applied or wishing to apply for scholarship/fellowship shall not be denied benefit thereof due to non availability of Aadhaar card,” UGC deputy secretary Dr Sunita Siwach said recently in a statement.

 The applicants, however, will have to provide an alternate means of verification of identity and concerned bank account to the satisfaction of the competent authority.

The statement came months after the UGC had issued notices to all the universities, colleges and institutions directing the students to provide Aadhaar card number for availing scholarship at the time of application.

“The MHRD has instructed the UGC to ensure that from the financial year 2016-17, the Aadhaar number will be used as a mandatory identifier for disbursement of all scholarships/fellowships, which are to be disbursed directly to the account of individual beneficiaries. The universities are requested to seek the details of the beneficiaries and put all information on universities/institutions website and email a copy of the same immediately to UGC deputy secretary Dr Sunita Siwach,” UGC secretary Jaspal Sandhu had said in that directive.

The notice also stated that since all scholarships that are disbursed through UGC are not under the DBT mode, it would be switched over to DBT mode for which the requisite data would be filled and verified by the host institution.

The commission even requested that in case some the beneficiaries who do not have Aadhaar cards are required to enroll themselves immediately in the Regional Offices of Unique ldentification Authority of India (UlDAl) Government of India for obtaining the same.

Source: digitallearning, 16-9-2016

Managing the Cauvery dispute

Judicial intervention often resolves questions that the executive finds too sensitive to handle. By directing the Centre to constitute a Cauvery Management Board within four weeks, the Supreme Court has created space for the water-sharing dispute to be handled in a scientific and responsible manner by a legally constituted technical body. The board, assisted by a regulation committee, is the mechanism prescribed by the Tribunal in its final order for implementing its award. It will be a technical body consisting of irrigation engineers and agronomists, and will have independent members as well as representatives of the basin States. It can formulate the manner in which water should be shared in a season of distress. The court’s intervention also exposes the helplessness of governments at the Centre in handling inter-State issues. It is part of a long historical pattern. It was at the instance of the Supreme Court that theCauvery Water Disputes Tribunal was formed more than a quarter century ago; and again, it required court orders to pave the way for an interim award to be passed in 1991, and for it to be notified in the Gazette of India later. It took another order for the Tribunal’s final award of 2007 to be notified in 2013, six years later. The court has done a significant service in nudging the Centre to provide a legal and technical framework for the equitable distribution of water.

This is not the first attempt to create an institutional mechanism. In 2013, the Centre notified the formation of a ‘Supervisory Committee’ consisting of the Secretary, Union Water Resources Ministry, as chairman, and the Chief Secretaries of the basin States as members. That the latest decision of the Supervisory Committee, which directed the release of 3,000 cusecs of water for 10 days to Tamil Nadu, did not find favour with either State shows the difficulties involved in managing inter-State disputes even through an institutional mechanism. The Supreme Court, too, has intervened to double the quantum of water to be released. All this shows that apart from permanent mechanisms, technical panels and seasonal adjudication, a spirit of accommodation is required among the basin States. Also needed is a clearer appreciation of the fact that the entire water yield in the Cauvery basin is not enough to provide for the requirements of both States. It is time for Karnataka and Tamil Nadu to take a hard look at their agricultural economies: the area under cultivation, the number of crops per year and the water-intensive nature of the crops. Unless these are adjusted to suit the water availability, such disputes will keep surfacing.

Keywords: Cauvery dispute, Cauvery water issue, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu

Source: The Hindu, 22-09-2016