The impoverishing Common "wealth" Games2010

The country’s capital is getting cleaner, greener and all set to show off its beauty and splendor at the Commonwealth Games 2010. Bigger roads and better roads, greener parks, better metros and what not! The Commonwealth Games scheduled to begin on October 3, 2010 is seen as a promise to leverage India's stock in the world. It is viewed as an opportunity to showcase the “shining” India, and establish the country as one that can host an event of “global standards.”

This cleaner and greener is happening at the cost of Delhi’s urban poor, who are evicted to make space for the Commonwealth Games infrastructure. Very shortly, let me outline the reasons for evictions. First, the construction of the games village on the banks of River Yamuna requires slum clusters residing in that space to be evicted. Secondly, Delhi feels it is important to show the world a clean, systematic and beautiful city. This calls for beautification projects and development of infrastructure like metro, buses and roads. Thus, the helpless urban poor of Delhi are swept away and hidden, to save the city the embarrassment of displaying its poverty. Who would want to see the hungry and homeless? Don’t people like that stop existing in a country that can spend close to 2000 crores on a 12-day event?

In November 2009, (while the “aam aadhmi” were struggling with a 14% inflation of food prices), the Indian Government doubled budget of the 2010 New Delhi Commonwealth Games from Rs. 767 crore ($163 million) to Rs. 1,620 crore ($344 million). Several reasons were pointed out, justifying the need for a bigger budget. Despite doubling of budget, not a single rupee was allocated towards rehabilitation and resettlement of the evicted poor of Delhi. It seems like everybody is pretending like the evictions and demolitions aren’t happening.

The 12-day event that is changing the landscape of Delhi is doing it, at the cost of several lives, literally and figuratively. Late last month, Municipal Corporation of Delhi demolished a temporary night shelter at Pusa Road, leaving 250 people out in the cold, which allegedly resulted in two deaths. The Delhi High Court on January 7 requested the immediate restoration of the shelter and the protection of the uprooted families has fallen in deaf ears. In reality, the number of shelters for urban poor have reduced from 46 to 24 at Delhi. The Common Wealth Games is allegedly a reason for several shelters being closed down. The whimpish United Nations has made (muffled) noises about how the preparations for the Commonwealth Games should not be the reason to force the poor to live under the open sky. All of this does little to the great conviction displayed by the State to do full justice to this opportunity to conduct this world class event.

While such atrocities are orchestrated against the poor, what we see in the media is the honorable president assuring us that ‘every effort will be made to ensure a befitting and successful conduct of the Games’ or a worried Sheila Dikshit, afraid of failing to conjure a magic “world class city” for the Commonwealth Games. The concern centers on the “prestigious” game, and not about the shameful acts of violence the city is inflicted upon its poor.

The “cleaning and beautifying” of the city, is an euphemism for demolitions and destruction of the “filthy” aspects of the city. It is a case of developing a world-class city, angering its own citizens. It is not that displacements don’t happen otherwise—India today houses maximum number of internally displaced people than ever before. But when so many lives are sacrificed for a 12-day event, it is more problematic. It is not that the displaced people are provided resettlement. A very small population is resettled and the resettlement quarters are so poor, that it brings with it tons of other problems.

Cities tend to present a hierarchy of legitimate citizenship and the poor are treated as illegitimate occupants of urban space. The policy and legal regime doesn’t stand by the urban poor, nor are their services given due recognition. The bourgeoning middle class is only too comfortable to believe that the urban poor are illegal occupants of the urban space, and remain apathetic to displacements. This makes it easy for the poor to be evicted (and if they are lucky enough, be resettled) according to the whims and fancies of the State. If at all evictions must happen, there is still a possibility to carry it out in a more reasonable and humanitarian fashion.

It is hard to believe that resettlement will happen- for there people who were evicted to make space for the Asian games in 1982 at Delhi, still waiting to be resettled. Come this October, international dollars will pour into India, celebrities will add glitz to newspapers and magazines and the media will celebrate and congratulate this Great Indian “success”.

All of this, reminds me of lines from good old AbbA…

“Winner takes it all…

The loser standing small…...”

It is immaterial who the winners are, at the Commonwealth Games 2010, for we already know who the losers are- the hundreds of the homeless, deprived and displaced whose lives are changed forever....

The India I love...that inspires...

In my head, I could hear voices of the Indian pledge or the slogans we shouted in school for several independence days, of the songs we sang in praise of the great India…. “India is my country… All Indians are my brothers and sisters…”… and some more….. in lines of how proud I am about my India- But, I am not able to see what is the India we are talking about? I wonder why was I made to speak those words, without telling me what it is that I am proud of ? What is it that I must love? What is the reality that I am proud of?

There can’t be two realities…

But, today we are being shown two realities—One reality is the “Shining super power (read nuclear power) India”… one where political entrepreneurship has expanded into making education, real estate and shopping malls its successful ventures… The India that can afford to spend Rs.120 for a movie at Inox without having to think twice……we are talking about an India where everybody has cellphones and two wheelers… we talk about BPO’s and job creation.. of tall offices and taller arrogance of money and power….and of hurriedly climbing ladders to be world’s “best”…world’s “first”...world’s “largest”…

Then there is this India, the “Dying super poor India”… where farmers produce to export, and stay hungry as they can’t consume what is being imported to eat… where 78,000 mothers die every year without seeing the face of the child she just delivered…and there are 2.1 MILLION mothers who live to see their child die, of hunger and starvation within 5 years… this moment as you read this..as I write this.. there are millions of children who are hungry and malnourished (I can safely say that, for India is the third largest malnourished country!) ..this is real.. it’s more real than Shahrukh Khan’s movie release facing obstacles; its definitely more real than the IPL cricket matches…

I find it hard to join the jingoism about shining India or the “aam admi ki jai” kind of India…! This India is about numbers… Of course !Only about those numbers(like 8% economic growth) that are glamorous and orgasmic… and NOT about numbers that scream that 46% of children suffer from malnutrition or about the 8% SC/ST population that is being vulnerable targets for internal displacements…. I find it hard to digest these numbers and find the energy to love…

When I ask myself, then what is it about this country that I love….

… I love this country ... for all those people, who fight eviction and sit in their homes, fighting for their rights….

For all the parents who send their children to government schools with little or no infrastructure, and hope to see their sons and daughters as doctors and IAS officers…

I love the wilderness that still lives in the country…

I love the expression of anger of an entire village boycotting elections, in a forgotten democracy…

I love the anarchic spirit of the struggles in the country this very moment-- that successive governments have been able to do little about…

I love the voices of dissent that may lose their battles, but remind the State that they have to fight them before executing their acts of injustice…

I am in awe of the spirit of farmers, who still continue to produce; unaware that the commodities and futures market decides whether they perish or survive…

It is this I love about my country… This gives me space to hope that the dissent coming from injustice, engineered by the “democratically” elected state can’t be silenced… or commoditized and outsourced… It is this space that I love about this country…that I wish will grow in strength… this space that I wish more people would belong to…

It is this India that touches me..that inspires me...

(P.s: Thanks Divya! It is the conversation with you… that got me thinking… and popped into the blog as a post… I dedicate this post to you:)!)

This is what happens when there is work to do... and there’s truth to say...

“There’s no love on earth; there is no happiness on earth.. there is only the mind and its evil ways of working...there’s no love; there’s no happiness” .. I am chanting this to myself as I pull out two slices of bread to toast .... I am hungry.. for food.. for love.. for answers... for poetry.. for a good book.. for the right music.. for time.. But the hunger for food was easiest to satisfy... and I was pulling out bread to toast..chanting to myself...” there’s no love; there is no happiness...”

By global standards, I fall into category of those” loved and adored “ ones...I have photos that look like they would burst with laughter...I have held hands and whispered faith and made smiles...I have messages in my phone that talk of love of all kinds....I have smiles to smile into when I walk down corridors...I have bunches of phones numbers to call if I need to be rushed to a hospital... I can count at least ten people who would remember my birthday even if facebook and orkut died suddenly...I live in a campus that a hundred other young hearts would kill to live in...I can find five missed calls in my phone if I am not back at home by eleven at night...I have a fair share of envy..and broken a few hearts through all of this..I have been spoken to, about loves and lives together..and here I am sitting between an apple and sandwich telling myself “there is no love; there is no happiness... there’s only the mind..and its evil ways of working”...

Strange it may seem..But most truthful things are strange.. it is the strangeness that makes one sit up and recognise truth from the untruth... truth has come to be out of ordinary.. and strange...

Strange or not... “there is no love; there is no happiness... there’s only the mind..and its evil ways of working”... I kept chanting as I munched the bread.. and worked my way through the apple.. The evil apple that fell off the tree on Newton’s head, helping him give gravity its name and make comical formulae out of it( I still don’t know how I ever learnt them or passed those exams)... before I could remember anything about those exams, I finished the apple- eating in the memory of the falling apple...complicated newton..and those draining hours of physics classes...and of love and happiness...

Love is memories that are breathed to life by pain... and pain breathed to life by memories...and then there is this idea of happiness, which is the marketing strategy for us to buy love... Happiness!!!!- I laughed...Happiness is the most marketed commodity on earth... overpriced...over rated.. and yet..most easily bought..and even more easily lost.. only to buy it all over again...

Well...

Here’s to more love...and happiness... and more thoughts over breads and apples...

Lol!!

“ I have been warning Pakisthan not to play games with us. The last game should be Mumbai attacks. Stop it there.... If terrorists from Pakisthan try to carry out any attacks in India, they will not only be defeated, but be retaliated against”........ Our honourable home minister, P.Chidambaram spoke these words earlier this month.

Today’s Hindu (dated Nov 26) thought it was important enough to carry it in the editorial page. I must thank Hindu Group for providing me comic relief and a rush of nostalgia.
I was reminded of how, when we were kids, we would be told by teachers, “Stop playing the fool। Let this be the last time you come late to class। Next time you do this, you will be thrown out of school”। None of us ever got thrown out of schools-not that we never repeated our mistakes।

I frankly just don’t find any difference between these two threats।

Enough and more literature has been written about the 26/11 Mumbai attacks। I wouldn’t be writing anything new, or asking new questions if I were to use this space to wonder aloud some realities of the whole episode.

However, I do wish to gently remind the home Minister that, there’s a lot of cleaning that needs to be done in our own home, before we point fingers at the other। We’d rather have a home minister (and hence the media) flashing reports reflecting lessons we have learnt from the attacks.

We still read about poor training for policemen... we still hear about poor security checks.....we can still walk into any shop and buy any number of sim-cards with flimsy proof of identity....
What have we really done at our own home is a more pressing question than threatening our neighbour।

Till such a time...

Anything that is said is a sinister joke, and all we can do is- Lol!!*

(*Lol: Laugh out Loud)

“You can’t plug round holes with square plugs”

“Operation green hunt - the fancy name given to the offensive against Naxals” has become the brand new nutritive supplement for the insatiably hungry media. The words and phrases that are used with reference to Naxals makes one cringe-“We need to flush out people”…. “Cold blooded murderers”…. Since when are “people” “flushed” out?

… I am not saying Naxals are right, or the State is right – not taking any moral stand or branding of good and evil-. My issue is the lack of debate about this issue- It seems like most people are willing to buy what news channels and papers say! The ‘Great Indian Apathy’ works just fine for the State and the media. Bunches of people who haven’t stepped down from the (urban educated, English speaking) pedestals talk about the issue and (read justify the state’s great idea of the operation green hunt)I would be unfair if I don't make a special mention of Arnam Goswami of the Times Now

("…….On the night of September 22, discussing Kobad Ghandy, a top Naxal ideologue, Arnab Goswami said “Terrorist or ideologue?”.

“Six thousand innocent Indians have been killed on Mr Ghandy’s ‘watch,’” he said (as if Kobad Ghandy was some Idi Amin figure presiding over a banana republic), “and yet human rights organisations and NGOs are asking for his release.” (Mr Goswami always reserves special scorn for human rights activists, as if they are a uniform sub-species of anti-national humankind, rather than men and women with differing and individual views.) “What about the 12-year-old girl the Naxals killed in Jharkhand?” he thundered. “What about the 15 CPM cadres they killed in Bengal last night?” Every time one of his panelists tried to introduce the larger political context behind Naxalism or a more complex argument, Mr Goswami swatted them down… "
To read more : http://www.mail-archive.com/marxist-leninist-list@lists.econ.utah.edu/msg09205.html )

The insensitivity of the media in handling this issue (that is the “gravest threat to the country”) is obscene and reflects clear insensitivity and apathy… If anything, the media (with its moral stands of good and evil) and it’s handling of the whole Naxalite issue is a far greater threat to the country.In a democracy, shouldn't people engage a debate? Shouldn't media facilitate such a debate?

I need to admit at this point that I don’t know enough to comment about the issue, or have an opinion- I am no leftist, communist or a naxalite activist or any such “ist”!! It is the human being in me feels miserable to see beasts in action. If the issue of naxalism is about a neglected section screaming for attention, how can killing them be a solution? Shouldn’t addressing their needs be an issue? This is like saying, I will rob you off your belongings- the moment you raise an issue about it- I will make sure you are silenced!

I read somewhere that over 600 villages in Chattisgarh have been cleared under Salwa Judum and the areas are given to private firms for private mining activities. Labeling this as development and expecting tribals to feel a part of this “development” is ridiculous, illogical and irrational. Roads, powerhouses, mobile phone etc are investment-attractors and not development for the tribals.

A political issue can’t be solved by force.

A socio economic issue can’t be solved by “flushing” people out and spinning myths like inclusive growth, equal opportunities.

Operation green hunt can’t be a solution to a deep rooted problem such as neglect. The operation can kill people, but can do little to the anguish of being practically missing in the world’s largest democracy’s development curve. It is simply not possible to plug round holes with square plugs…..

Perils of Privatised Indian Higher Education

I was reading in the newspapers that our honourable Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in his address at the Punjab University recently raised the issue of higher education in India. Talking about the need to enhance the quality of higher education, the Prime Minister spoke about the government encouraging private participation in higher education to make it available at an "affordable cost".No!!! That's not a typos!! You read it right..-P..r..i..v..a..t..i..z..e..d e..d..u...c...a..t..i..on at "a..f..f..o..r..d..a..b..l..e C..o...S..T" ?!! Only that Mr Prime minister forgot to mention who are the people who can afford it !!!

In India, deregulation and privatisation of higher education has been pursued by successive governments with zeal in the last two decades. “Direct” privatisation of higher education has led to thousands of private colleges mushrooming in the late 1990s that run the risk of disappearing as quickly as they arise. This situation reached its extreme in 2002 in Chattisgarh, where over 150 private universities and colleges came up within a couple of years, till the scam got exposed by a public interest litigation and the courts ordered the State government in 2004 to derecognise and close most of these universities or merge them with the remaining recognised ones.

Education is essentially a public good that has to be served by the government. Recently the Director of National Council of Education Research and Training in an extremely lucid article in the Economic and Political Weekly endorsed this view by saying that inviting private sector participation in education is not the correct solution to the poor quality education. The mistrust is deep rooted that the corporates would soon turn it into a for-profit activity and accentuate social inequality in India.

In 1999, Mukesh Ambani and Kumarmangalam Birla were commissioned by the government under the Prime Minister’s Council on Trade and Industry, to suggest needed reforms in the education sector( Mukesh Ambani?!! Education sector?!!) . The committee’s report, submitted in 2001, strongly suggested that government should leave higher education altogether to the private sector and confine itself to elementary and secondary education.( The report coudn't care to provide a rationale behind such a proposal!)

Further, the report urged the passage of the Private University Bill and also suggested that the user-pay principle be strictly enforced in higher education, supplemented by loans and grants to economically and socially backward sections of society.

The recommendations are essentially de-democratising by nature. The core of democracy lies in the elected representatives being accountable to its people. In a scenario of privatised education, who is accountable to whom? and India is still a democracy.. ain't it? (Oh! yes!! the exorbidantly prices election rituals keep happening....testifying that we are democratic!)

Absence of a long-term and coherent policy has made regulating the private sector in education an unmanageable task. Ad hoc policies and lack of a centralised control has led to the emergence of several actors of higher education. Internationalisation of education by allowing foreign universities to open franchisees in India has added to the confusion. There is a culture of “deemed universities” catching up now. A few universities, for example, the Guru Gobindsingh Indraprashta University in Delhi consists only of affiliating private self-financing colleges (Experience of Privatization of Education in India by Naraginti Reddy- http://ezinearticles.com/?Experience-of-Privatization-of--Education-in-India&id=1398246) .

In addition to this there are States where government-aided private institutions are converted to private self-financing institutions. Entry of private funds into higher education is not a case for the State to withdraw from the education sector. If anything, it is a call for the State to deepen its involvement and give it a different shape.

The State has lessons to learn from what it has done to school education in the past three decades. By encouraging privatisation of elementary schools and forgetting to expand and strengthen its own education infrastructure, the State has ensured that children who can afford only government school education have a defunct system thrown at them.

The Government of India has allocated Rs 850 billion for higher education in the 11th Five Year Plan. However, considering that the Planning Commission has identified a resource gap of Rs. 2.2 trillion, it is unlikely that the Government alone can address infrastructure needs in the higher education sector in the near future. This begs attention to private public partnerships (PPP). PPP’s are very different from “private” ventures, as the government does not lose control in a PPP. Relationship between the private corporate and academia must be developed in tandem with the government.

For Indians, higher education has been, in Stanley Wolpert’s (an American historian who specializes in the history of India and Pakistan) evocative words, “the swiftest elevators to the pinnacles of modern Indian power and opportunity”. These words make a case for the state to stop mindless privatisation and look at more desirable and feasible PPP models for the education sector- unless of course, the country is prepared to see the day when private educational institutions list themselves in the stock market-- all in the name of catering to the insatiable demand for “quality” education.

Greater Common Good?(!)

Life has its own language of talking to you... giving you answers, or more questions, at times it offers solace, other times it reminds you to count your blessings, and at times it wakes you up to some truths- only if one has the time to stop to listen to it......

Diwali is fast approaching and my mind has been filled with memories of Diwali। The only thing that comes to my mind when I think about Diwali is the celebration and fun I have had in a home that I grew up in. For the first time in my life, this year I would be celebrating Diwali elsewhere as we no longer live in that home where I grew up. My mind has been blank every time somebody spoke about Diwali, because it seems beyond me to imagine how it would be to live elsewhere during Diwali. This has been weighing on my mind for quite some time now.
Today, I walked into a library and picked up a book to read- a collection of essays on various social issues. I settled down comfortably with the book and I leafed through the contents. I chose to read a piece ‘Greater common good’ by Arundathi Roy.
The essay is set in the backdrop of a Pandora’s box (grandly called the Sardar Sarovar Dam construction). Arundati Roy in the essay, articulates why the idea of the dam must be trashed and how the ‘displaced’ millions struggle for a home even today. I found those words moving something in me. It was a journey that I undertook. As I read her essay, I admired the power of her language, was enraged at the insensitivity of Government towards the ‘displaced’, disagreed (and was angered) with her cynicism about Indian democracy, dumbfounded by the statistics (that claims that over 50 million people have been robbed of their homes to acquire land for dam construction), and taken aback by how we couldn’t care less about the faceless, voiceless (and now homeless) tribals and Dalits. The journey through the essay was intense and thought provoking. As I finished it and put the book down, the only thing that remained was an irrational guilt- about how I have been feeling bad about having moved into another home, when there are these millions who have nothing to call a home.
How precious is the idea of home to all of us?! I shudder to imagine how I would react if I were asked to move out of my home, because somebody decided that it is good for the nation to build something else in the place of my home.
Suddenly the new over bridges and the broad roads that decorate the city ceased to be glamorous. They seemed to be a reminder of how somebody has been robbed of their space to make it public space. The idea of expansion and displacement of people that we often read about in papers suddenly seemed to make more sense than before.
I have nothing against development and infrastructure building। But it is problematic if it involves unfair means, however “pure and noble” the ends maybe। This whole experience of reading the essay has opened my eyes to the truth of how significant the space of home can be for an individual. Something that we tend to take for granted. In a larger sense, reading this essay at this point of time, has had an meaningful impact on me. The unsettlement about moving away to a different home for me has quietened and replaced by a larger anger about insensitivity we breed in our country. Life has quietly reminded me to count my blessings for having a space to call a home, in a country where my home too could be taken away for a ‘greater common good’.

P.S: The following link takes you the essay, The Greater Common Good- http://www.narmada.org/gcg/gcg.html