Breaking the stranglehold

There is scant focus on India’s secret shame: bonded labour

Last year, on December 22, an incident of bonded labour reached the national headlines, even if only for a fleeting moment. BJP president Amit Shah tweeted on the subject. A week earlier, 52 trafficked labourers had been rescued from a ginger farm in Karnataka where they had been made to work inhuman hours with little pay. Yet, for the most part, both the mainstream discourse and social media commentary miss the underlying phenomenon: bonded labour, India’s secret shame.

The practice was abolished under the Bonded Labour System (Abolition) Act, 1976 after the issue found a place in the Emergency-era’s 20-point programme. Four decades on, independent surveys and State government-led committees still point to its myriad forms. The Global Slavery Index 2016 estimated there to be 1.8 crore Indians in modern slavery, including bondedness, while the International Labour Organisation said there were 1.17 crore bonded labourers in 2014.

However, there has been no government-led nationwide survey since 1978, despite each district having been given Rs. 4.5 lakh for such surveys. Instead, the government relies on rescue and rehabilitation numbers: Since 1976, over 3.13 lakh people have been rescued, with Karnataka topping the list (nearly 66,300 people). This does not reflect the extent of the prevalence of bonded labour, as most labourers are not aware of the Act and turn to the authorities only when it becomes overtly violent.

Moreover, National Crime Records Bureau data show that not all cases are reported by the police. Between 2014 and 2016, they recorded just 1,338 victims, with 290 police cases filed — a stark difference from 5,676 rescues reported by six States in this period.

This becomes important given the structure of the disbursal of rehabilitation funds: Rs. 20,000 is given as immediate relief while the rest (which depends on the case) is given only after conviction of the accused. In these three years, only 28 cases (of the 334 in trial) saw judicial resolution, resulting in a conviction rate of just 32%. It is no surprise that the Centre has had to spend just Rs. 7.65 crore on rehabilitation in this period. Some patterns emerge. Traffickers continue to source labour in socio-economically backward districts, an example being Bolangir in Odisha. Tribals and Dalits remain vulnerable. Advances and small loans accompanied by promises of steady pay are tools of entrapment. Brick kilns, quarries, horticulture farms, shoe and plastic factories in metropolises are venues for this practice.

The Ministry of Labour says, “The root of the problem lies in the social customs and economic compulsions,” before listing a “multi-pronged” strategy which focusses solely on rescue and rehabilitation processes. However, a preventive measure, which must start with a survey, is missing. Creating financial access for vulnerable communities/vulnerable districts could help. Further, regulatory attention must focus on trafficking rings and sectors.

The writer is a Principal Correspondent at The Hindu’s Bengaluru bureau

Source: The Hindu, 3/01/2019

Religion vs religious nationalism

The starting point for anti-Hindutva politics must be the distinction between Hinduism and Hindutva. Else, it’s doomed

Any rigid secular approach, unrestrained by considerations of electoral politics, could only lead to disapproval of Congress president Rahul Gandhi’s demonstration of his religious faith and his characterisation of the Congress as a “party of Hinduism”. His approach has been widely termed “soft Hindutva”, and as an attempt to compete with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in its game. Those who deride Hindutva and those who swear by it both consider Mr. Gandhi a poor imitator of it. Centrist politics by definition is vulnerable to criticism from radical perspectives of different hues — for instance, Marxist M.N. Roy, Dalit leader B.R. Ambedkar and Hindutva proponent, and later his assassin, Nathuram Godse, were all critical of Mahatma Gandhi’s ideas of Hinduism. What is worth a closer analysis in the current context is the suggestion that the invocation of Hindu symbols for electoral gains is Hindutva, albeit a softer version.

A clear trajectory

Mainstream Indian nationalism and Hindu nationalism shared a range of symbols and personalities during their formative decades, and distinguishing one from the other can appear a challenging task often. Consolidation of the Hindu society was a preoccupation of several reformists and leaders of the struggle for independence, who were not linked to Hindutva. In a classic essay written in the 1990s, at the peak of the Ram Janmabhoomi movement, historian Sumit Sarkar marked the stages of the evolution of Hindu nationalism in two distinct phases: first from the use of the word Hindu as a geographical marker to ‘Hinduism’, an attempt to codify the cultural and religious practices, and then to Hindutva. Swami Vivekananda was the seer of the first shift. “Of the Swami’s address before the Parliament of Religions, it may be said that when he began to speak it was of the religious ideas of the Hindus but when he ended, Hinduism had been created,” wrote Sister Nivedita, the Swami’s closest disciple. Three decades later Veer Savarkar, who invented Hindutva, did not merely seek to unify Hindus, but tried to achieve it by imagining the other as those who do not consider India their sacred land. While secular nationalism’s adversarial image was imperialism, the edge in Savarkar’s Hindutva was against Muslims and Christians. Vivekananda’s Hinduism had no enemy figure.

The political rise of Hindutva has been directly proportionate to the success of its proponents’ attempts to equate itself with Hinduism.

The Gandhi-Nehru way

For Gandhi, Hinduism was the essence of his existence, but even the avowedly secular Jawaharlal Nehru was not dismissive of faith and tradition. The Discovery of India draws from sacred texts and beliefs; “though I have discarded much of past tradition and custom… yet I do not wish to cut myself off from that past completely,” he wrote in his will, asking for some of his ashes to be immersed in the Ganga.

The vertical rise and the horizontal spread of Hindutva challenge its opponents to devise new political idioms. A puritan view is that Hindutva can be challenged only with an unyielding secular paradigm, devoid of Hindu symbols. Those leaders and parties that are directly involved in electoral politics are more conflicted on these questions than those who have the convenience of a quarantined approach. In the early 2000s, when critics began to use the neologism saffronisation to describe the A.B. Vajpayee government’s policies that advanced Hindutva, within the Congress there was a debate on the wisdom of it. A.K. Antony and Digvijay Singh vehemently opposed the expression, arguing that it amounted to legitimising the Hindutva agenda given the cultural association of the colour saffron with sacrifice and renunciation. The Congress discontinued use of the word.

Other parties too have used Hindu symbolism and terminology. Rashtriya Janata Dal leader Lalu Prasad, whose mastery of electoral politics broke the Hindutva momentum in Bihar, connects his community to Lord Krishna. “Haathi nahin Ganesh hai, Brahma Vishnu Mahesh hai (this is not merely an elephant, but is Lord Ganesh; and Brahma Vishnu Mahesh)” was the Bahujan Samaj Party’s 2005 slogan referencing its election symbol, the elephant. Groups associated with the Communists Party of India (Marxist) in Kerala recently organised events around Ramayana month. “The Sangh has created a particulate image of Ram, that a majority of the faithful do not relate to,” said V. Sivadasan, CPI(M) State committee member, who was closely associated with the programme. “Given this context, it is the duty of the secularists to come in support of the believers who understand Ram different from the way the RSS (Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh) tries to make him. All secular people have this responsibility to help protect the plurality of faith that exists among religious people.”

Whether or not these attempts add up to a robust and credible challenge to Hindutva is an open question. However, the notion of ‘soft Hindutva’ is detrimental to anti-Hindutva polemics and mobilisation.

For one, it ignores the tactical components of electoral politics, which the moralist might dismiss as opportunism, for good reasons. What is more critical is that the notion of expressive faith as ‘soft Hindutva’ is an inadvertent endorsement of the Hindutva claim that it is equivalent to Hinduism. The proponents of Hindutva also acknowledge the existence of ‘hard’ and ‘fringe’ elements within its fold. Categories of soft and hard, being relative terms, trick moderates and offer an alibi to opportunists to side with the softer versions — Vajpayee against L.K. Advani, Mr. Advani against Narendra Modi, and who knows, perhaps Mr. Modi against Yogi Adityanath in the future?

Any equivalence between Hinduism and Hindutva, conversely, is taken to mean that any criticism of Hindutva is an attack on Hinduism. That one could be accused of being anti-Hinduism for questioning the logic of building a temple on the site of a destroyed mosque at Ayodhya draws from the logical premise of likening Hinduism to Hindutva. To take another example, the Hindu American Foundation claimed recently that even the questioning of ‘Brahminical patriarchy’ is a an act of Hindu-phobia.

To Hindutva’s advantage?

And most consequentially, any polemical negation of the wall between Hinduism and Hindutva makes the transition from the first to the second easier. It could even encourage believers to consider Hindutva their natural political abode, if they sense hostility in the anti-Hindutva camp. If non-Hindutva platforms expect temple-goers to explain their conduct, that is not an enticing recruitment pitch. The fact is that there are numerous people who visit temples and even believe in vastu, astrology, tantra, etc. while still being secular in a political and public context.

The only politics that benefits from associating Hinduism to Hindutva is Hindutva. The practice of Hinduism, even when it is exhibitionist and for political ends, is not Hindutva — soft or hard. Hindutva stands out for its conceptual clarity, leaving little scope for a spectrum within it. A manifesto for any durable anti-Hindutva politics is still a long way away, but its singular starting point is an assertion of the distinction between Hinduism and Hindutva. Anything else is doomed.

varghese.g@thehindu.co.in

Source: The Hindu, 3/01/2019

Think Big, Act Wisely And Show Results

At different times, we face different problems. At the individual level, they relate to health, emotions, relationships, marriage, children and career. At the national level, they pertain to poverty, unemployment, social unrest, education and corruption. These problems often bring us sorrow and pain. Yet, when honestly analysed, we find that their root cause is almost entirely a lack of proper thinking and acting. Wrong thoughts lead to a defective world vision and a chaotic relationship with it. The result is false expectations and disappointments at every step. If only we improve our thinking, we can mend our homes and make the world a better place to live in. Alas, many choose to suffer rather than to think! Caught up in the mesh of wrong thinking, their mental states are often coloured by prejudices and narrow-mindedness. The solution is to think big, act wisely and show results. The foremost need is for right thinking, leading to a clear vision of life. We should remove all barriers of pettiness and think big. Big things are achieved by first daring to mentally conceptualise them. Man dared to think that he could fly like a bird and the first flying machine was invented. He dared to think that he could reach the moon, and behold ... he landed there! Nothing is impossible for the one who thinks positive. Our thoughts can either bind us and make us small, or free us. So why not think big? This pertains not only to the individual but to the nation as well. Think about what is beneficial for the nation, what will bring forth national good. Swami Chinmayananda learnt the scriptures from his teacher. He turned his mind to how he could pass on this knowledge to people of the nation and the entire world. This is “Thinking Big”. Swami Vivekananda spent restless nights in America thinking of the welfare of India and the world. After “Thinking Big” through proper vision, one should then strive hard to act wisely. Swami Chinmayananda said, “Plan out your work, and work out your plan.” To act wisely is to act with proper understanding and a good attitude. The famous Serenity Prayer by Reinhold Niebuhr presents this beautifully: “God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.” Sri Rama knew which situations to accept and where to take action. Without complaint or mental agitation, he accepted his exile in the forest for 14 years as the call of Dharma. However, when his wife Sitaji was kidnapped, he made a huge effort to get her back. Keep your head calm and balanced and act efficiently to show results. Strive to become a better human being and let the results be seen in the transformation of your personality. Purity, efficiency and wisdom should steadily grow. The result of our work should reflect in our environment and lead to harmony, beauty, and prosperity in society. Use all available opportunities to harness this inner potential, learn to break all barriers in thought. Use every opportunity to learn the secret of right action. Finally, get inspired and achieve greatness in the world within and without. We can. We must. We will. The writer belongs to Chinmaya Mission.

Source: Times of India, 3/01/2019

What is inflation targeting in economics

This refers to an approach to monetary policy where the primary mandate of a central bank is to manage the rate of price inflation in the wider economy. Economists who support inflation targeting believe that a stable inflation rate is essential to keep the economy fully employed while protecting the value of the currency at the same time. Central banks with an explicit inflation targeting mandate usually have a target range of inflation. They try to keep inflation within the target range by adjusting the economy’s money supply. The policy of inflation targeting, which was first introduced in some European countries in the 1970s, became a popular approach in the 1990s.

Source: The Hindu, 2/01/2019

People no country wants

Assam is sitting on a volcano of suffering and conflict. On test is the mettle of India’s democracy.

When the sun went down on 2018, the doors closed for one million residents of Assam who were unable to file their claims to prove that they are Indian citizens. The claims of the three million who were left out of the National Register of Citizens (NRC) will now be examined by the Foreigners’ Tribunals.

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Assam, meanwhile, continues to battle the throes of a uncertain tumult. Through a complex and tortuous process with no parallels in any other part of the country — and few if any in the world — millions of Assamese residents were called upon to produce documents that prove that they are Indian citizens.

It is not often remembered that not just Punjab and Bengal, but also Assam, was partitioned in 1947, when after a referendum, Sylhet district was transferred from Assam to Pakistan. Migration from Sylhet and other parts of Bengal to Assam had continued until then for two centuries, fuelled by land-hunger and the attraction of creating farm-lands in the vast virgin forest tracts and river islands, and encouraged by the state. The cataclysms of Partition and the Bangladesh Liberation War of 1971 spurred fresh migrations into Assam.

From the late 1970s, a sporadically violent movement against “foreigners”, by people who saw themselves as “original inhabitants”, rocked the state. The current updating of the NRC is in fulfilment of the agreement reached by the agitators with the Union government, that persons who migrated after 1971 would be identified and deported.

The Supreme Court in 2007 ruled that it was not the duty of state agencies which charged a person with being a foreigner to prove their claim. Instead, it was for those who claimed citizenship to prove that they were citizens. This turned on its head natural law that a person is innocent until proved guilty. Resultantly, impoverished and often unlettered people were required to garner official documents — such as of birth certificates, land-ownership and voters’ lists — to establish their citizenship credentials. The majority of indigent rural people anywhere in the country would be unable to prove their citizenship because birth-certificates were rare; many did not attend school and migrated for work or were married as children; land records are poorly maintained, and in any case, many are landless, or unrecorded tenants or encroachers on government land; and voters’ lists are replete with omissions. The underlying chauvinism of the process was exposed also by official orders, again ratified by the SC, which exempted “persons who are originally inhabitants of the State of Assam” from any “further proof or inquiry” for automatic inclusion in the NRC. The “original inhabitant” is nowhere defined, but in practice original inhabitants are taken to exclude people who speak Bengali, Nepali, Hindi or Santhali, even if they have lived in Assam for generations.

The labyrinthine NRC authority is not the only agency empowered to identify non-citizens in Assam. In fact, three parallel processes, mostly dependent on low-level bureaucratic and police discretion, run side by side in what poet Manash Bhattacharjee aptly describes as the “sniffer-dog” idea of the state, hunting down “foreigners”.

One of these “sniffer-dog” processes began in 1997 when, on the pretext of extensive revision of electoral rolls, the Election Commission, without any due process, marked 3.70 lakh voters as doubtful, or “D-voters”. This stripped them of voting rights, and their cases were referred to the Foreigners’ Tribunal. Election officials continue to identify persons they regard to be “doubtful”. The Assam Police Border Organisation deputes police officials in many police stations who also identify people they regard to be possibly non-citizens, and refer their cases to Foreigners’ Tribunals.

People who don’t speak Assamese, and are not from indigenous tribes, are in this way beleaguered from all sides. They do not know when challenges to their citizenship may come, from the NRC executives, election officials or the local policeperson. In 2006, the Police Border Organisation referred Ajbahar Ali, a small farmer in Kheluwapara village in Bongaigaon district of western Assam, to the Foreigners’ Tribunal. When he answered the summons from the tribunal he learnt that the tribunal in an ex-parte judgement had already declared him a foreigner. He was whisked away from the tribunal directly to a detention centre inside a jail. His wife Balijan Bibi sold their farmland, cattle and the only cell-phone they owned to pay a lawyer to challenge the order to get her husband released from detention. Their older son, Moinul Haque, travelled to the Guwahati High Court to hear the judgment, while his mother waited anxiously at home for his news. He returned the next morning only to inform his mother that the court has rejected their plea. Balijan Bibi didn’t speak much, just asked her son to take rest. After a while, he found her hanging from the ceiling.

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Months later, our Karwan e Mohabbat team visited their family. The children’s father was in a detention centre with no prospect of his release, their mother was dead, and their land and all they owned sold. There are at least 28 suicides of people who had lost hope of proving that they were citizens of this country, and found no reason to live.

This is the collective tragedy of millions of religious, linguistic and ethnic minorities in Assam. No light is visible even in distant horizons, because the Union and state governments are silent about what the fate will be of those who in the end are declared to be foreigners? Over a thousand are housed indefinitely in hellish detention centres, in flagrant violation of constitutional guarantees and international law. But if the numbers tomorrow run into possibly millions, where will they be detained?

The Indian government is not even negotiating an extradition treaty for the return of these persons with the Bangladesh government. If they are to continue to live in India as non-citizens, are we not manufacturing a Rohingya-like situation, forcing people to live without rights or security in the country which refuses to own them?

At stake, however, is not just their destinies. On test is the mettle of India’s democracy, its sense of justice, its inclusiveness and its humanity.

Written by Harsh Mander, Abdul Kalam Azad |

Source: Indian Express, 2/01/2019

Women in science are made to feel like impostors

An absorbed fear that you are not good enough might look like the smallest of the obstacles women in STEM fields face. The All India Survey on Higher Education 2017-18 estimates that 40% of the undergraduates in science and engineering are women, but women make up only 14% of scientists, engineers and technologists employed in research and development institutions.

When I introduce myself to people outside the worlds of science and engineering, I often joke that I am a rocket scientist. It’s not untrue: I studied aerospace engineering both in college and graduate school. Some ask why I am not a rocket scientist anymore. I have an arsenal of responses ranging from poetic (“I was fascinated by flight, by the poetic idea of overreaching and escape”) to witty (“Studying aeronautics because you are fascinated by flight is like becoming a gynaecologist because you like watching porn”).

Buried underneath the banter is an unspoken conviction that I was not good enough to continue. Let’s pause and consider the evidence: I graduated as the department topper. In graduate school, I had a perfect 4.0 GPA. Professors and mentors told me that I had the temperament for research. Yet, I found the idea of a career in research laughable. I would have done it if I were smarter, I believed. To have a meaningful career as a researcher in science or engineering one had to be a genius, but I thought I was only an aberration.

It was in graduate school in the US that I learnt of the impostor syndrome, a psychological pattern where one believes, in spite of evidence to the contrary, that one is a fraud, that one’s successes are sheer flukes. Impostor syndrome, huh, I remember thinking. Trust the Americans to come up with big names for the weight of bad decisions. Like the decision to pursue science or engineering when one is not cut out for it.

Back in college, I was an aberration: I was the only woman in my class of around 40. In my third year, I was working on a homework assignment with some of my classmates. At one point I got stuck and one of the men explained to me how to proceed. It was a perfectly normal interaction, but when I excused myself to use the bathroom, I came back to overhear this classmate sagely pronouncing that girls might get better grades, but they just don’t get the fundamentals of maths and science. All I heard was that I did not understand those fundamentals. It wasn’t the first such pronouncement. I had heard that girls do well in school only because they work harder, only because teachers favour them, only because boys aren’t serious about their futures yet. The real geniuses — like Einstein, like Edison — were, in a way, too cool for school. Yes, I did work hard. Yes, teachers liked me. But did I know everything, could I answer every question? No. Hence, not good enough. I never stopped to ask why a man could so easily extrapolate one woman’s wrong answer to a weakness of the whole gender, and why, just as easily, a woman could believe that she was the specific subject of every loose judgement on women (unless, of course, she declared that she was not like other girls.)

I am still learning to probe my self-doubt and shed the parts of it that are inherited. I am still learning to question my own biases. When I wanted to examine my professional experiences in my first novel, I instinctively wrote a male character. In Milk Teeth, it’s the male protagonist Kartik who is a brilliant student, who goes to an elite engineering college. It’s the man who grapples with the sting of unfulfilled genius. And it took two drafts for me to even question this choice, and the voice in my head said at once: “But it feels more universal this way. With a female character, this struggle will feel too specific, too narrow.”

The All India Survey on Higher Education 2017-18 estimates that 40% of the undergraduates in science and engineering are women, but women make up only 14% of scientists, engineers and technologists employed in research and development institutions. An absorbed fear that you are not good enough might look like the smallest of the obstacles women in STEM fields face – like sexism and discriminatory practices, an uneven distribution of childcare and chores at home, weaker peer networks, fewer female mentors and far fewer women in decision-making positions – but let’s not forget the young man who thinks women “just don’t get the fundamentals of maths and science”. Even if we don’t listen to him, as things stand today, he will be the professor, the manager, the supervisor of tomorrow.

Amrita Mahale is the author of the novel, Milk Teeth (Westland Context, 2018)

Source: Hindustan Times, 2/01/2019

South Asia is a dangerous place to be born

In 2018, one million newborn babies died before they reached one month of age. My wish for 2019 is that we will see many more South Asia babies getting the urgent attention and quality care that they need and deserve.

Right now, as you read this, babies that have just been born here in South Asia are battling for their lives. The lucky ones are in a special newborn care unit with doctors and nurses working hard to keep them alive – keeping them warm; giving them oxygen and antibiotics if they need them. For too many, the battle will be lost before their lives even properly begin.

South Asia is a dangerous place to be born. In 2018, one million newborn babies died before they reached one month of age. Every one of these deaths is a tragedy for the family. And the sheer number of deaths is an outrage. This number – one million newborn baby deaths – is 40% of all newborn deaths if we look around the globe. The risk of dying is the same for a South Asian newborn as it is for a baby in Sub-Saharan Africa.

The availability of clinics and hospitals is still an issue in some places, as is transport to get to them on time. But this is no longer the main problem. The key issue is how good, or how bad, the care for pregnant mothers and newborns is. When we know that every year, one million babies here in our region will be dead within the first month of being born, we have a strong indication that the quality of care is simply not good enough.

The good news that I can share is that mothers and families actually can do a lot themselves to counter the threat of poor care. They are far from powerless and they are crucial to improving this situation. They can start by looking critically at the care they get when a new baby is on its way. There are very visible signs of quality care to look for at their clinic or hospital. It starts with the fundamentals: Is the place clean? Look at the health care workers: are they able and willing to answer your questions? Are they washing their hands before they touch you and the baby? You don’t need a medical degree to look for these signs and they will be a good indicator of how well the mother, the birth and child will be handled.

What can you do if you do not feel comfortable with the quality? The answer is to speak up! Bring to the attention of the director of the clinic or hospital. Post your concerns about the quality on social media. Or talk to a journalist who might be able to write a story about it. Each one of us may have very little power, but together we are powerful. And if more mothers and families complain about the lack of appropriate care, we have better chances of improving the situation for the next newborn. You really do have a crucial part to play in creating change.

At home, mothers and families can also help ensure that a baby has the best chances of survival. Making sure that no girl becomes pregnant before she is 20 years old and her body can sustain a healthy pregnancy and is fully developed to give birth will help improve South Asia’s grave newborn death statistics. Families can help make sure that an expecting mother gets her first medical check within the first 12 weeks of pregnancy. That way, she can be given advice and problems can be detected before too long has passed. And, by choosing to breastfeed and to start breastfeeding right after the baby is born, the mother is giving her newborn the best chances to survive that first month when the new baby girl or boy is extremely vulnerable.

So, there is plenty that mothers and families can do to help protect their newborns. It is not all in the hands of doctors, nurses and birth attendants.

My wish for 2019 is that we will see many more South Asia babies getting the urgent attention and quality care that they need and deserve. Every child has the right to survive – and I wish for joy and happiness in every new family with a healthy and thriving newborn.

Jean Gough is regional director, Unicef for South Asia

Source: Hindustan Times, 2/01/2019