Opinion

Corruption

A decade after the Satyam scam, despite positive changes in the corporate ethics space, it is plagued by malpractices albeit in the higher echelons.

KS Sabarinadhan

Facebook/KS Sabarinadhan

Ubiquity is a feature that differentiates today’s civilisation from the erstwhile ones. Gone are the days when information could be limited to a few oligarchs or bad news easily brushed under the carpet. A revolutionary change in the Information Technology sphere gets us connected to practically everything – be it the shockingly funny news of a regional road transport bus being manoeuvred by a langoor comfortably seated on the driver’s lap (shot on an amateurish mobile camera, of course!) or the zoomed-in images of the likes of Emmanuel Macron and Angela Merkel being subjected to Donald Trump’s not so warm handshakes. Most politicians fear trial by social media today where one cannot risk facing the wrath of youngsters armed with mobile phones loaded with high-speed internet connections. I personally try to stay clear of major controversies but still get embroiled in a few political ones, which I presume is part of the job description. I was on a ‘social media high’ when someone posted a candid photograph of my attempt to save a dying dog that had been hit by a vehicle on a state highway. However, I found this good karma phase to be short-lived when a viral screenshot of my vehicle found parked on the wrong side of the road for a couple of minutes started doing the rounds on various platforms. A positive aspect of this instilled fear is that it reduces one’s chance of intentional wrong-doing. Ideally, the solid frame of The Right to information Act, a vigilant media and crores of mobile phones playing Big Brother should make us more hardworking, professional as well as ethical. But one needs to ponder if that translates into reality in diverse domains of our society. One of the sectors where professionalism and work ethics is touted to have attained newer desirable standards is the corporate world. The wave of internationalisation and entry of multi-national companies created higher degrees of standardised systems and processes in the Indian corporate sector thereby making its employees less likely to be erroneous or prone to corruption. Having worked in a corporate job for close to a decade, I still dread those Internal Audits and Change Reports, fondly called as CRs, for their scrupulous nature of scrutiny. The corporate “vigilantism” ranges from an Annual General Body Meeting attended by the who’s who of the company and all the shareholders to an Internal Management Committee headed by the CXOs and senior officials. The systems are seamlessly interconnected and tightly controlled. My corporate colleagues will vouch for the fact that getting a travel approval or a performance rating is no mean task that it almost crosses the gold standard of sarkari bureaucracy on many occasions. However, in spite of these checks being in place, India is currently facing its worst corporate dilemma in a long while, with cracks in the corporate systems unravelling. Even a decade after the infamous Satyam scam, despite several positive changes in the corporate ethics space, we continue to be plagued by similar malpractices albeit in the higher echelons. Of late, some of the biggest names in the banking sector in the country have come under the shadow of disgrace. The fact that these names were once synonymous with the positive benefits of globalisation and rise of the Indian middleclass worsens the gravity of the issue. These organisations and leaders adorned the front pages of pink papers and business magazines besides topping every survey for long – Best places to work/ Best Corporate practices/ Best business ethics/ Best workspaces for women. Panoramic shots of gleeful employees with their corporate leaders in brightly lit office spaces became the norm of the day. When news of these banks wilfully breaking rules to open their bounties to the high and mighty (and now absconding), one cannot but lament over what had happened to the celebrated corporate systems and practices. Did the mid-level manager who had to process the loan as per the internal guidelines err? Did the superior in charge of the portfolio overlook the systemic warnings? Did the bankers sitting in those swanky Bandra Kurla Complex offices overlook the data? Did the external auditor and big consultant cherry-pick data as per the organisation’s convenience? Did the nosey Independent Director who brings in multiple years of wisdom and is supposed to play the devil’s advocate turn into silent mode? Didn’t the newspaper analysts and business pundits who chew on company data to give us stock market updates daily in the morning spot these discrepancies too late? Well-educated youngsters turned citizen journalists with considerable social media presence seem to be critical of every visible entity (from price rise to actors’ performances to political riffraff) but observe an uncanny yet cosy silence in matters pertaining to the corporate world. This indirectly enables enterprises with mala fide intentions to cover up their follies and miss the big picture in their organisations. Do all of us prefer “public vigilantism” restricted only to certain walks of life? Or are we ready to pan our phone cameras and television mics towards the larger-than-life organisations as well? The skeletons have to be flushed out of the boardrooms, idols need to crumble, as did Harvey Weinstein in Hollywood. Perhaps a #metoo type of campaign about the corruption in the Indian corporate sector wouldn’t be a bad idea. KS Sabarinadhan MLA, a former management professional, is one of the youngest members in the Kerala Legislature.

Blog

Often, we're not in a position to retaliate but here are two instances when I was able to do it and it felt great.

Preethi Nagaraj

So much pain across the internet and social media. About the times one was hushed into silence and exploited or almost rendered defenseless. Innumerable stories, scary and concerning. It’s not like some of us escaped unhurt or something. Only, sometimes, we managed to get the situation under our control. Much to the chagrin of the predator. Those lessons were valuable. Every woman who has travelled by night buses or trains will tell you about men who feel you up, or follow you. We hold our pee because we don’t want go into strange dark toilets, or use one on a moving train in the dead of the night. We hold our breaths. We basically hold everything. And if we could make ourselves invisible in the face of a brazen predator, we’d have thanked the forces that be. Alas but that’s not the case. In the face of pain, I wanted to share my two moments of glory, stories of resistance in my #MeToo moments. I am not deriding those who had to suffer (including myself on many other instances), but just thought I wanted to share the times when adroitness helped. Again, in all humility, I shall submit these stories, read on. The first incident of harassment was with my photography professor at the University where I was pursing my final year of journalism Masters. He already had a reputation by then. So when he began to call me to the ‘dark room’ that was part of the photography department, at late afternoons when there would hardly be anybody on the campus, I was alarmed. I avoided it a few times citing random reasons. My dissertation was to be submitted to him, and he withheld it forcing me to decide either way. Not accepting his advances would mean my Masters degree would be in jeopardy. My two years away from home gone, and my dream of becoming a journalist would be shut off forever. Exams approached and I was right under his tentacles. I was mostly in tears all the time wondering who to share this with and HOW! I confided in a few classmates. A good number of them came together and said they’d stand guard outside the dark room when the exam was going on, and would break in, if need be if I cried for help. And for me, I used a shimmery brown lipstick that was almost of muck colour, to ensure the colour would stay on his clothes/hands or body if he tried coming close. The professor was smart to see the solidarity and didn’t act funny. “That lipstick is revolting” he said. I pretended to be deaf and developed the pictures on the tray. It didn’t end. One evening, prior to written exams, he saw me walking and stopped his vehicle next to me. He insisted on dropping me and I continued to walk. He said he could get me question papers and make me a topper if I went with him. “Wife and kids not in town so you can study overnight at my house if you come now!" he said. Like wow! That simple he made it sound. I murmured about having to return to hostel right away. He then threatened, "Your results will be withheld if you don’t adhere to this." Something hit me hard. I turned around and told him, almost shouted even as passersby could hear. “Sir, I left home and comforts for this degree. If you make it difficult for me, I will surely stay on and do whatever it takes to get that degree and make life difficult for you. Want to try? I will sit on a dharna right here if you speak one more word…” He was embarrassed and ran away from there since people stood there watched me shout at him. Later, my marks were compromised in his subject, but that’s besides the point. This however gave me immense confidence. In another incident, many years later, I was working with a hospital as Corporate Communications Manager when the newly appointed Sales and Ops Manager kept making passes. He even had a senior lady pimp out for him. She’d ask if I wanted to go with him to ghazal nights, club or pubs or to meetings where I wasn’t even required. Since he was the favourite of the management, I couldn’t complain. The man was in his late 40s (me in late 20s) senior, balding and unmarried. Obviously, he had power and wielded it to see if he could get some free romping may be. I kept dodging all these signs. I was humiliated and ridiculed before many people. Meetings turned miserable. I was living alone and would cry almost every evening. Some friends suggested that I quit. “Stay, else you’ll face the same fate everywhere else. You may not be interested in office politics that does not mean office politics won’t happen with you. Face this and win,” a single parent of a head nurse told me. Something changed within me and I turned around, began to play the exact games he was playing with me. Find fault with his plans, out him for being autocratic, and feign ignorance about projects that had to involve me (genuinely). My theatre skills, I must say, helped me great deal. He got desperate and made bad moves. He even told me once, “You are in the periphery, you need to get into the pool to play well” while staring (politely?) at my breasts. He often spoke to women’s breasts only, except if they were in very high positions or seniors by qualification. I took this sentence to the higher-ups, gave a complaint. He was affected and made even more mistakes. Sales began to drop since he suffered a loss of face and his team had spread the word about this in the market. I was to get married in the next one month. Just as I was wrapping up work for the day, on a cold December evening, the man came to me and shook hands. “It was a pleasure working with you,” he smiled. “I cannot say the same thing about you, sir,” I said. I was emboldened by then. He shook his head and left. Another colleague told me that day was his last in the organisation. Eventually I left the organisation too, since I got married and shifted cities. But these two successes taught me the most pertinent lesson. Resist and fight. One may not have such choices all the time during #MeToo moments. But the taste of these two successes was heady. Never after. If being brave is something you can do, go for it. This is to enable our daughters to work in far balanced environments tomorrow, than we do in our todays.

MeToo

This collective conscience is one that is #woke to gender inequity – a space that does not allow for sexual harassment of women, men, or children to be normalised.

Radhika Ganesh

Image for representation only

Friends and fellow citizens, In a diverse country with cultural history that spans several millennia, a shift in collective conscience is a continuum. India has lived through such awakenings many a historical time. With changing times, society evolves. Evolution demands tremendous growth. Today, we stand at one such juncture - a time for deep reflection and concerted effort to reposition lost empathy within the human-constructed societal fabric. Equality is illusive. It continues to stay as an ideal that we strive to achieve. An ideal that has held us in focus, like a carrot at the end of the stick. However, equity is achievable. It is a reality that we taste and soon lose sight of, time and again. For the marginalised, equity is their fight and equality their dream. The past week has seen loud echoing of #MeToo; words that are resonating through corridors of power, shattering every normalised glass ceiling. Voices of seemingly powerless people when rallying together can shake the foundations of society, questioning the power of power itself. This organic oneness can potentially cause a shift in social paradigm, making the subjugator extremely uncomfortable within the world they have meticulously crafted, through layers of culturally accepted exclusion. It is through this exclusion that the hierarchy is formed, often misunderstood as top down but with a closer look, it is the digging out of the labouring bottom, leaving only a select few as a posh skeletal façade with hollow insides. Culture is the highest form of existence and people who churn out performance from this culture are custodians of a society’s collective intellect. It is through the arts that the human mind communicates and it is practitioners of these arts, people of great standing and presumable social responsibility, who have today been called out. This alone is good enough to cause churning in our stomach. The responsible have been extremely irresponsible. But what has caused our society even more incredulity is that they are being called out by the nobodies. In this sense, can #MeToo be seen as a somewhat subaltern uprising? It is after all “random”, “innocuous”, “women” who inadvertently set this in motion. Throughout its expansion, it has only managed to gather more insignificant nobodies; young girls, boys, women and men all meek because they have ‘allowed themselves to be preyed upon’. What the powerful ignored has come back to bite them in the backside. Today, the innocuous is infuriated. The meek have mustered their strength to speak up because we are at that point in time when the human is meant to grow. Stagnated in social crises of horrendously normalised sexually predatory behaviour, we have allowed for equity to rot. Individual accounts of survivors of sexual harassment and abuse seem to easily puncture this culture-fed, tradition-bred, carefully knitted veil of morality. There is outrage over “baseless accusations,” rather than over this vicious culture of harassment – more like a plot of a social satire than reality. A righteous society should be indignant of this mass unveiling of deep-seeded moral turpitude. The powerful sexually abusing ones who are less powerful than them. It should not be afraid to question this violence, even perpetrated by members in the highest social order, or shy away from demanding complete accountability. Individual accounts should be shown due respect and solidarity as they become tools to identify the larger vacuum. They will soon be elevated from being one-on-ones to the steering wheels of a collective conscience. I would like to believe the marginalised have become that steering wheel. Women, men, and children who were abused and harassed by power are today spearheading the paradigm shift in de-normalising sexual violence. This is a moment to solemnly celebrate for, we are awake. We are not beyond redemption. The land has its laws, and the laws its strengths. But it is the people who have the spirit. #MeToo is bound to monumentally grow in proportion to take into its fold survivors through the virtual into the real. Once solidarity is found, it is hard to live without. Survivors who have come to a realisation that sexual harassment is not okay, have spoken up within the fortress of camaraderie. This fortress will expand and slowly accommodate all the dug out and excluded masses. So, to all those who have been called out, you have one of two things to do. Either, get off the throne of privilege and repent your way to reformation – justice will be served or fight an unjustifiable, falsely righteous fight and be dethroned by the arriving collective conscience. This collective conscience is one that is #woke to gender inequity – a space that does not allow for sexual harassment of women, men, or children to be normalised. (The author is a social-cultural-political activist and the founding member of Ek Potlee Ret Ki. Views expressed here are the author's own.)

Sabarimala

In our obsession with the Sabarimala issue, we are letting down an entire generation of young people. There is need for urgent action to counter all the misinformation being spread.

Dr Beena Kayaloor

Image courtesy: Korah Abraham

On social media, I would often get annoyed at Malayali men who claimed Kerala was some sort of a heaven for women compared to North India. As a woman who has spent most of the last three decades here, I knew that this was far from the truth. Misogyny and sexism are rife here, just as everywhere else, but nothing prepared me for the ‘Save Sabarimala’ deluge. Suddenly, the conversation became vitiated by thinly veiled threats even in previously secular spaces, and women who wanted to go to Sabarimala were being threatened with physical violence. But I am writing this out of concern for the children. We are letting down an entire generation. Instead of striving towards a more inclusive society, we are saying that those who bleed should not be allowed into the temple, perpetuating the idea of untouchability. The damage will take years to mend. We are going to be stuck with a generation caught in a time warp between the modernity and a longing for regressive traditions, however barbaric they might have been. Palakkad, my sleepy town is suddenly bracing itself. People are trying to save Lord Ayyappa and Sabarimala from women. As if videos of how the floods were a result of women wanting to go to Sabarimala were not enough of an assault on our senses, we now have a Malayali cardiologist from New York Dr Nisha Pillai who has come up with fraudulent pseudoscientific claims as to why women should not be allowed to go. Without any evidence, she claimed that women will suffer from endometriosis if they go. It’s been disheartening to see these videos shared so widely, even by doctors. The ‘Save Sabarimala’ followers tell us that the celibate god needs to be protected from menstruating women. If you ask how a god would be powerless against puny humans, you are offending beliefs. Never mind that our atheist sensibilities are being insulted all the time. Taking offence is a privilege only afforded to the believer. As a child, I remember being on my vacation in Kerala and seeing my cousin trying to avoid contact with other people. I remember the story of a little girl in a posh Delhi Colony who had lost her mother and her conservative grandparents who kept her away during her periods. These were stories that just added to period shame. I considered myself lucky my parents were progressive, but can we rely on just luck when our future is at stake? I think we need to wake up and stop being complacent. Studies suggest that 66% of girls know nothing about menstruation until confronted with their first period, making it a negative and often traumatic experience, exacerbated by cultural taboos, discomfort in discussing the topic and lack of information provided to them. There are also the myths and taboos around menstruation, many of which are routed in religion. Women are considered ‘dirty’ in most cultures during menstruation and are socially segregated: they are not allowed to enter the kitchen or to handle food. They’re not supposed to bathe, which can itself lead to health problems. Puberty is the time when adolescents increase their intellectual capacities and experience moral development. But many problems related to self-image can arise during puberty. In light of the discussions that are happening in Kerala, the already-delicate situation around period shaming can be aggravated. Add to that the sexualization of a girl’s bodies because even gods can’t control themselves around them. Can you even imagine the shame that these kids will forever associate with their bodies? What sort of a self-image is a child going to have as a result of this? When modern science is breaking frontiers in every field, why should women be forced to confine themselves within an 18th century bubble? The way forward Bodies like IMA should actively conduct puberty education that will help in combating taboos around menstruation and spread of misinformation. There is a need to educate children at an early age, from 5-8 years old, and to continue to do so until 15-18 years of age. As of now, there is limited inclusion of sexual and reproductive health and life skills in the school curriculum. Boys and men must also be included in the conversation, and educating parents on how to talk to their children about puberty is a must. Breaking Silence is a project aimed at empowering women and adolescent girls by addressing Menstrual Health Management (MHM). There is a need for more consolidated work in this area. It is appalling that as our country is seemingly headed towards greater inclusivity in gender and sexuality, Kerala is moving in the opposite direction. Maybe those who love traditions so much should stay on in the 18th century so the rest of us can move on. Views expressed are the author's own.

Sabarimala

There’s never a good reason to strive for the lowest common denominator of freedom and dignity. We should always try to raise our political standards and demands to the highest that we possibly can.

Sharanya Gopinathan

When asked her opinion about the Sabarimala temple women’s entry debate on Tuesday, at an event ironically called the Young Thinkers’ Conference, Union Minister Smriti Irani said, “It’s just plain common sense. Would you take sanitary napkins steeped in menstrual blood and walk into a friend's home?” Short answer: no. Long answer: To be fair, that wasn’t really her whole comment, but providing some context doesn’t make it much better. She began her comments by correctly stating, "I am nobody to speak of the Supreme Court verdict because I am a current serving cabinet minister.” Unfortunately, she disregards her own suggestion here and continues, saying, “I believe I have the right to pray but I don't have the right to desecrate. And that is the difference that we need to recognise and respect. It’s just plain common sense. Would you take sanitary napkins steeped in menstrual blood and walk in to a friend's home? You could not. And would you think it is respectable to do the same thing when you are walking into the house of god?” You can only hope that Smriti deployed this strange analogy because she believed the (false) rumours that Rehana Fathima, one of the women who attempted to reach the Sabarimala shrine on Friday, was carrying blood-soaked sanitary pads in her irumudikettu (the bag of holy offerings Sabarimala devotees carry on their heads). What’s much more bothersome is the really problematic point Smriti tries to make next, which can only be read as an assertion that women being denied entry into Sabarimala is “not that bad”, because similar things happen elsewhere. She shares an account of what she faces as a Parsi woman at fire temples. “I am made to stand outside. I stand either on the road or sit in my car […] When I took my newborn son to a fire temple in Andheri, I had to give him at the temple, I gave him to my husband, because I was shooed away and told, don't stand here.” Now what Smriti attempted here is a common rhetorical device, and a remarkably dangerous one at that. It’s the same thought behind that other WhatsApp forward you may have received from overzealous relatives in recent days, about the Ominesanji temple in Japan also not allowing women to cross its threshold, accompanied by a picture of the sign there saying the same. Or the thought that motivates your mother and aunties to tell you that they had it much worse when you complain of the gender discrimination you face today. Or the one that inspires men to shame urban women for sharing their #MeToo stories of workplace harassment because at least they don’t have to carry water on their heads for miles. I remember when a friend of mine, a professor of Constitutional law, came to my women’s college in Bengaluru to take a guest lecture on, well, the Constitution. He said, picture this, a college lets boys come back in to the hostel at 12 AM, but girls must be back by 9 PM. Do you think the boys should be asked to return by 9 PM too? Yes sir, the class chorused gaily, until he metaphorically smacked them in the brain, and told them to raise their damn political standards, that they shouldn’t be striving for equality at the lowest common denominator, and should really be fighting for no curfew at all. It made a deep and lasting impression on the entire class, and I keep the memory of that lesson, and the phrase “raise your damn political standards”, very, very close to my heart. Because there’s never a good reason to strive for the lowest common denominator of freedom and dignity, and as women, we should always try to raise our political standards and demands to the highest that we possibly ever can. Smriti Irani and other Parsi women being asked to remain outside fire temples doesn’t make the ban on Hindu women entering Sabarimala legitimate or okay, it should only serve to remind us that there’s so much more to fight for across the board. Smriti Irani being happy to wait outside a fire temple doesn’t mean that Bindu, Manju, Madhavi, Kavita, Rehana Fathima, Mary Sweety, and all the other women who attempted to enter the Sabarimala shrine this week but were turned away shouldn’t be hurt or angry about it. A sick man being told that someone else is sick too doesn’t make either of them any less sick. Pointing out that someone else is suffering more than you are, or that unequal conditions exist elsewhere in the world, or that some woman somewhere has it much worse than you do, shouldn’t inspire you to be simply content with your sorry lot. Not to sound too much like your drunk Commie uncle on Christmas, but sisters, Smritis and everyone else, let’s fight for all the dignity we deserve. Let’s raise our damn political standards, and compare ourselves always, only, to the best of us, aiming for the highest standards of political freedom that we can possibly get. Views expressed are the author's own.

Sabarimala

The BJP President Amit Shah's game is straightforward. He is eager to do a Tripura in Kerala.

IANS

By Saeed Naqvi My own experience of Sabarimala causes me to rub my eyes with disbelief at the spectacle of what poet Niaz Haider called "badsoorat siyasat", not quite the same as ugly politics. I owe my visit to Sabarimala in 1982 entirely to Bob Murari, the distinguished IAS officer of Tamil Nadu cadre who, along with his brothers, undertook the pilgrimage annually to wash off his sins. Would the faith into which I was born be an obstacle? Not at all, said Bob, quite the contrary. The Sabarimala deity, Lord Ayyappa's favourite was a Muslim devotee named Vavar Swamy whose shrine, before Ayyappa's, is visited by most pilgrims. The Murari brothers and I obtained our share of Vibhuti or holy ash from a Muslim priest, his long beard coming virtually up to his navel. The trek from the base of the hill across Pamba river is through lush forests reverberating to the sound of Vavar Swamy songs sung by Yesudas. That a pilgrimage so all-embracing of religions should be transformed into a battle ground between devotees, the state and the Supreme Court is because of the very special talent for mobilisation which is patent to the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) alone. Multiple strands harmonised in Sabarimala. But the pilgrimage has been transformed into a cauldron bubbling over with mischief with political intent. The BJP President Amit Shah's game is straightforward. He is eager to do a Tripura in Kerala. The Tripura results were the biggest shock I had experienced in 50 years of covering politics. I have on my shelf a book, "Tripura's Bravehearts" by B.L. Vohra, former Director General of Police in the state. It is an unbelievable document. Never will you find a decorated police officer shower praise with such enthusiasm on a serving Chief Minister. Vohra's successor in Agartala took my breath away. He reported a solitary case of domestic violence as the only breach of law and order in the state capital in the past year. The state had the highest rate of literacy. It held a record for implementing central schemes in the shortest possible time. It was a dream government. The greatest achievement of the Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M) government over the past 30 years had been the end to the country's fiercest insurgency. The tribal-non tribal harmony was an architectural achievement. The BJP campaign excavated along this faultline, pouring huge sums of money in the process. This extended narration on Tripura is with one purpose: To demonstrate the BJP-RSS will to win against impossible odds. In this chase, all means are kosher. Kerala is by comparison, an easier citadel to conquer because the Congress and the BJP are, on the Sabarimala issue, broadly on the same side. Amit Shah has chastised the Supreme Court for having ruled that young women, whose entry to Sabarimala was banned so far by ancient custom, be allowed entry. The state Congress has in fact taken an even tougher stand. Ramesh Chennithala, the Congress leader in the Assembly, is insistent that the BJP at the Centre bring in an ordinance to nullify effects of the court's judgement. BJP state President P.S. Sreedharan Pillai throws up his hands. "It is a state subject -- the Centre is helpless unless the State Assembly makes the demand." His target is the CPI-M-led Left Front."Rubbish", shouts Chennithala. It is in the concurrent list and does not require the State Assembly's certificate. The implication is that the BJP government at the Centre is unwilling to open the ordinance route in such matters because the party would then come under pressure to bring an ordinance elsewhere -- Ram Mandir, for instance. This one upmanship on Sabarimala casts both the parties as hardliners, opposed to the Supreme Court directive. The Congress is, in fact, following a folksy, Awadhi saying: "Tum daal, daal to hum paat, paat." (If you climb the branches; I shall climb the leaves). The Congress' Chennithala says Ayyappa devotees be given the status of a religious sect under Article 26, immunised from any legal interference. "My party is with the believers," he asserts. Since the late K. Karunakaran's Chief Ministership, the Congress has always been BJP-neutral, largely because its biggest political opponent is the Communist-led Left Front. The BJP never entered the Assembly, but it consolidated 0.5 to one per cent vote across the state. Whenever this one per cent vote was injected into the election process, the Congress-led United Democratic Front generally wins. Margins of victory in Kerala are thin. The post-Sabarimala bonhomie is in a different context. The scales are different. An aggressive BJP at the Centre has, by sheer will to power, achieved the near impossible in Tripura. It is eager to repeat the performance in Kerala. Even if the BJP takes an electoral dip in the 2019 elections over all, Kerala by itself will be a great trophy. It was the first state in world history that brought Communists to power through the ballot box in 1957. Salvador Allende came to power in Chile democratically much later, in 1972. While the Congress in Kerala has been tactically soft on the BJP, it has had to fight the BJP tooth and nail in Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan. Diverse experiences institutionalised two broad Congress approaches to the BJP -- the Karunakaran model and the Arjun Singh model, shaped by their politics in their respective states. One of Karunakaran's great ambitions was to remove any doubts about Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi's caste, since his father Feroz Gandhi was a Parsi. He escorted a bare bodied Rajiv Gandhi several times to the Guruvayoor temple. These visitations must have had the appropriate effect. For this reason, Congress spokesman, Randeep Surjewala, was able to assert in the course of the Gujarat campaign that Congress President Rahul Gandhi is a 'Janeudhari' (Thread wearing) Hindu, which means a Brahmin. Rumours are now afoot that itinerary for Rahul Gandhi is in the works to enable him to undertake the pilgrimage to Lord Ayyappa's shrine in Sabarimala when the temple opens this month. Who knows the BJP may field Prime Minister Narendra Modi in the spirit of competitive piety. (A senior writer on political and diplomatic affairs, Saeed Naqvi can be reached on saeednaqvi@hotmail.com)

Interview

In this interview with TNM, journalist Nikhila Henry speaks about her book 'The Ferment: Youth Unrest in India' and how the discourse of youth politics in the country has changed in the last decade.

Priyanka Richi

Journalist Nikhila Henry’s book The Ferment: Youth Unrest in India is an attempt to capture the youth revolution that is spreading across the breadth of the country. Nikhila’s debut book covers youth struggles from Kerala to Manipur and Kashmir where youth have been raising their voices to restore freedom in democratic spaces. It also talks about youngsters who have taken up arms against the existing societal framework, where caste, religion, race and economic inequalities have caused widespread unrest. The book begins with the aftermath of the suicide of PhD scholar Rohith Vemula in the University of Hyderabad and travels across the country, to academic spaces like JNU, Osmania University, and the red corridor of India till the Kashmir Valley. The book offers its readers an in depth view of the simmering anger that stems out of the angst among the surging young population of the country. In an interview with TNM, Nikhila, who now works with The Hindu as a special correspondent in Hyderabad, speaks more about the book and how the discourse of youth politics has changed in the country in the last decade. There have been many instances of campus suicides and agitations before and after the suicide of Rohith Vemula. But why do you think the Rohith movement was the tipping point of student agitation in the country? Why did the protest grab national headlines? Rohith Vemula was not yet another student leader. His was the quintessence of the 'million mutinies'--caste, economic inequalities, race and even political unrest--which rage in a young democratic country like India. Rohith’s self, politics and writing gave a context and legitimacy to the stories of others. Rohith's story brought to light the stories of many others who would have remained in the shadows even after their death. The agitation was also the first time after the left wave of the 1970s and the 1990s Mandal agitations that the students in India's heartland challenged the discriminatory fabric of Indian society other than challenging entrenched discrimination in educational institutions they studied in. The Rohith Vemula agitation gave voice to and added on to other struggles in this country -- be it that of women who are raped, Muslims who are lynched or the Adivasis whose lands are taken over. In The Ferment, you begin the book with the Rohith agitation, then you talk about India’s youth in the country’s Red Corridor. You talk elaborately about the death of Burhan Wani in the Kashmir Valley and you even mention the rise of the Malayalam Dalit actor Vinayakan in another section of the book. What is the common thread that connects all of them? Our country is undergoing a youth bulge currently. At a time when our youth population has reached a historic level, there is also a widespread unrest among this segment of the population which they have voiced in diverse ways, be it in HCU or JNU or in a place like Kashmir where Burhan Wani was killed, where thousands of people gathered and attended his funeral. So, we can’t just dismiss these people saying they are militants or students who are idling away their time. All these stories of people from Kashmir to Kerala have repercussions in the larger societal framework. If you ask me why speak of Burhan Wani, who was considered a militant, there are thousands of people belonging to different age groups in the Valley who rally behind him. He is referred to as ‘Burhan Bhai’ by the people there who are not bothered by the fact that he was someone who had taken up arms. We need to understand this sentiment that is driving more young people towards someone like Burhan. So we aren’t judging what is right or wrong, my point here is to present the stories the way they are happening. Vinayakan was introduced in the book because he is a youth icon who nobody is recognising.Vinayakan himself knows that he is a youth icon and that is why, unlike any other star, he mentioned the youth who are part of social movements in the media conference he addressed after he won the State Award. From multiplexes to single screen theaters in slums, Vinayakan has young followers who are eager to listen to every other rare interview he gives. So what connects all these stories broadly are the discourses that come in a country like India, representing an angst that is there amongst the youth today. It was a book that was waiting to be written. It was a book that was waiting to be written. In the course of past 4 years, do you think there has been a change in the way the country’s youth perceives the word ‘patriotism’? I wouldn't restrict it to four years alone. During the last decade, young people in India were instrumental in rekindling a discourse on patriotism. The youth today have collectively challenged the idea of a pan-Indian identity. India, currently, is grappling with what is patriotic and what is not, thanks to the millions of young people who engage with the idea of nationalism. When Virat Kohli tells a lay cricket critic that he should leave India if he does not like Indian cricketers, and when Rohith Vemula protesters, holding blue flags, try to reach Jantar Mantar walking through a visibly irritated and hostile Lutyen's Delhi, they are both defining the limitations of this nation, albeit differently. When a gun was pointed at Umar Khalid, it is patriotism which is being violently defined. In the past decade, the forgotten idea of patriotism has been resurrected from the ashes of the independence struggle, state declared emergency, and the wars with Pakistan and China. Being a mediaperson yourself, do you think the media in this country has added fuel to the youth unrest here? The media has given voice to a lot of people during the youth movements in the country. Another section has also tried to suppress or misrepresent their voices causing the youth unrest to flare-up further. I look at it as a positive development because it revealed India's 'collective conscience'. The media hasn’t said anything that is already not there in the national psyche. It’s a general notion that people who pursue PhD or similar courses, especially in art colleges, are simply whiling away their time, living on the tax payers' money. What the media has ultimately ended up doing is to give a fillip to certain slogans and discourses in universities which were considered dying or dead. When people who were born in the 1960s and 1970s watched the different television debates on JNU, what they actually heard were all the Lal Salaam slogans that were popular during a time when they were in campuses irrespective of whether they like it or not. I think these debates and discussions also created an immediate divide in the political spectrum in the country - the right wing and the left wing - that generated a debate on whether these two binaries are the only way to conduct politics. In one of the concluding chapters in the book, you say that “it became apparent that India’s youth uprising will essentially remain a fractured phenomenon”? Can you elaborate? Why is it a ‘fractured phenomenon’? Indian youth, despite attempts by students and political leaders, are not a unified community. For example, when a young person who hails from India's heartland reaches Kashmir, perhaps the first question they face would be: "Are you from India?"--meaning the youth in Kashmir do not identify with an Indian identity. How do you make alliances then? Another example is the Rohith Vemula agitation and the JNU agitation. While the former was an anti-establishment struggle, the latter was an attempt to safeguard the freedom in democratic spaces. In more than one way, these two are two potent, energetic but often opposing struggles. The differences within the young demographic cohort make the "uprising a fractured phenomenon" even as I have said in the following line--"Collectively, thanks to their rigour and frequency, these agitations had troubling consequences for the nation. India’s unity came under question, globally".

Blog

Lend a ear, be supportive and let them know that they're not alone.

Siddarth Parikh I, like many, was a quiet-yet-supportive bystander as the #MeToo hurricane inevitably hurtled its way onto our shores. If the aftermath it had caused in the West was anything to go by, the Harvey Weinsteins of India were sure to scurry to assemble their battalion of lawyers. As a spectator, I vastly under-estimated the effort and courage required to ‘come out’. But things changed when I got the chance to have a closer look at the nuances of the movement through Sruthi Hariharan - a leading actor of the Kannada movie industry and a sister-like figure to me whom I have known for the best part of 15 years. I witnessed a first-hand account of an embattled movie star, daughter, wife, and sister on one hand and the gross insensitivity and detestable ignorance of those unwittingly involved, on the other. It is the latter I wish to focus on. More often than not, ‘publicity’ is the cliche bandied around by the #MeToo cynics. The logically inclined - riddle me this: In what universe is trading a flourishing acting career and a relatively stable life for social disenfranchisement, family insecurity, financial burden, physical and mental exhaustion and a temporary slot in the headlines, a profitable one? I am not naive to rule out the existence of those who might have ulterior motives, but they are the exception - not the norm. I cannot help but think - justice is the headline; publicity is merely the unwanted footnote! Severity of the incident is another bone of contention in such situations. We are conditioned to think that a gentle, uninvited rub on the back or thigh is more acceptable than groping or rape. This leeway of perception might apply to a thief who steals a pencil as opposed to a diamond. However, the scenario in question requires a deeper understanding of the common denominators which render the severity of crime inconsequential - Power and Entitlement. Reputation, patriarchy and masculinity feed power and entitlement which are adorned as ‘crown jewels’ by all men who have been rightfully accused or convicted of such acts. Lamentably, these men find themselves hopelessly obligated to showcase them from time to time for the fear of losing control. These ‘jewels’ have become a weed so thick that their eradication has become more essential than ever, and this is the battle we really should be focusing on. Of course, the eventual penalty should and will be in proportion to the degree of crime, but the collective societal condemnation ought to be as vociferous for the lower decree as it is for the higher. Imagine walking into a battlefield as the sole general against an armed cavalry of aplenty. Can you now envision just how psychologically daunting it could be for a victim pondering to ‘come out’ given that she is already sinfully handicapped by the preset notions and stigma of the general society? I implore you, the next time your acquaintance decides to take such a step - lend a ear, send a supportive message and let them know they are not alone, irrespective of the charge, the accused or the outcome. Empathy is a lost virtue and evolution demands we re-find it. We might not be able to alter the rules of the game of chess but maybe we need to be the soldiers that devote our collective wit and resources to rally for the queen, and not the king. It is time we paused, phased the noise out, reflected, and reasoned!

Voices

Child undernourishment rates are now worse in India than in Ethiopia, This is despite the fact that Ethiopia has only a quarter of India’s per capita income and has suffered many famines in the 20th century.

Image for representation

Ivica Petrikova, Royal Holloway Despite India’s fast economic growth and poverty reduction over the past few decades, food insecurity remains very high. This puzzle has been named the “South Asian enigma”. Some indicators of food insecurity, especially child undernourishment rates, are now worse in India than in Ethiopia. This is despite the fact that Ethiopia has only a quarter of India’s per capita income and has suffered many famines in the 20th century. A comparison of how the governments of these two countries manage food insecurity suggests that the key to resolving the South Asian enigma lies in the nourishment and sanitation of children in their first 1,000 days of life – from conception to their second birthday. Support for pregnant women The malnutrition of Indian children often starts in the womb. Just over half of adult Indian women are iron deficient, compared with 23% of Ethiopian women. Iron deficiency in pregnancy can lead to the child having a low weight and health problems. One reason for the difference is the lack of support for poor pregnant women in India. India’s National Food Security Act, passed in 2013, ruled that all pregnant Indian women should receive a stipend of 6,000 rupees. But the money usually manages to cover only the costs of delivery. It is also given only in a woman’s first pregnancy, excluding more than half of India’s annual births. Many poor Indian women bear heavy workloads throughout their pregnancies, which compromises both their own and their unborn children’s nourishment. In contrast, poor Ethiopian women receive support from the government-run Productive Safety Net Programme from the fourth month of pregnancy until their child’s first birthday. Infant nutrition As a result of the nutritional deficiencies in pregnancy, proportionally more children in India than in Ethiopia are born “very small”. This difference in average weight widens with age. While 36% of Indian children under five years old are underweight, only 24% of Ethiopian children are. Different trends in child weaning in these countries contribute to the growing gap. The World Health Organisation (WHO) recommends supplementing infants with solid or semi-solid food after six months of age when breastmilk alone no longer meets their nutritional needs. But almost a third of Indian one-year-old children still consume only liquids. Ivica Petrikova, Author provided The Ethiopian government made nutrition education for parents an important part of the latest version of their Productive Safety Net Programme. Government-funded childcare centres, called Anganwadi centres, have traditionally provided nutrition education in India but their workers, mostly women, are severely underpaid and their service consequently poor. Clean India As well as unbalanced diets, children’s undernourishment across the world has been increasingly linked to sanitation. Both India and Ethiopia have suffered from high rates of open defecation, associated with frequent diarrhoea and slower growth among young children. Indian governments have tried to fight the practice by building toilets. As part of the latest Swachh Bharat (Clean India) campaign, millions of new latrines have been constructed. But many Indian families refuse to use the toilets, often for reasons to do with caste. Sanitation work in India has traditionally been reserved for the lowest (“untouchable”) caste, as a result, many people from other castes are unwilling to clean or empty their own toilets and would rather defecate outside. Unlike the Indian government, the Ethiopian government approached open defecation as a public health problem and focused on providing sanitation and hygiene education. The approach was widely praised by the WHO as Ethiopia reduced open defecation rates from 92% in 1990 to 29% in 2015. India’s reduction in that time frame was much smaller, from 70% to 46%. But even in the most recent sanitation campaign, India’s government devoted only 1% of the campaign’s budget to providing sanitation education to communities. India sees itself as an emerging world power, but doubts about the direction of its development remain. The country’s global image would undoubtedly improve if it finally managed to overcome the South Asian enigma and substantially improved its food security. Ethiopia’s recent success in this respect indicates that focusing on the nutrition and sanitation of pregnant women and young children may be the most effective way forward. Ivica Petrikova, Lecturer in International Relations and Development, Royal Holloway This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Opinion

Many cities across the world experienced exponential growth like Bengaluru, but they have also realised that the real solution isn’t in building expressways and flyovers, writes an activist.

Srinivas Alavilli

A number of citizen activists have voiced their opposition to the elevated corridors project in Bengaluru that was recently announced by the Karnataka government. One among the groups is Citizens for Bengaluru (CfB), which has promise to oppose the project by forming an umbrella association of groups from all socio-economic levels. This piece is written by Srinivas Alavilli, who is co-Founder of Citizens For Bengaluru. Is opposing the 102-km elevated corridor in Bengaluru considered ‘anti-development’? Absolutely not. Because the project estimated to cost Rs 25,000 crore is not ‘development’ by any logical definition unless you are the contractor or someone who clears the bills. Karnataka Chief Minister HD Kumaraswamy had last week given his approval for six elevated corridors, which will be spread over 102-kilometre. While the aim of the project is to “ensure safe, fast and congestion-free connectivity to different parts of the city”, the government plans to begin construction in 2019 and estimates that it will be completed in 8-10 years. It is indeed true that building infrastructure is a measure of development. But infrastructure for mobility in an ever-exploding city like Bengaluru means much more than building flyovers. Especially now, in 2018, when we have already spent thousands of crores of public money on road widening, one ways, flyovers, magic boxes and multiple elevated corridors. Yet there is no empirical or intuitive evidence that traffic congestion has reduced as a result. In fact, there is solid evidence that flyovers encourage even more private vehicles. We have more traffic congestion now than ever before. Nobody can deny that. Our city now has 79 lakh vehicles (just 6500 of them are buses!) and 40% of the pollution is due to vehicular emissions. Therefore, it is imperative to review our understanding of ‘development’. Many cities across the world experienced exponential growth like Bengaluru. They also built expressways and flyovers and over time realised that doesn’t scale and the real solution is in designing cities to move people, not moving vehicles. For several decades no one understood the dangers of smoking and second-hand smoking. Today everyone does and governments design policies and spend enormous resources to discourage people from smoking. Same goes for plastic, fossil fuels. It is time we reset our understanding of development in terms of roads and cars based on overwhelming evidence. Once the core design principle “move people, not vehicles” is accepted and internalized, you will think different. If you provide viable public transport options for people to go from A to B and make it comfortable, they will take it happily, as many of them feel compelled to use private vehicles. Similarly, if car ownership and maintenance become an expensive proposition, people tend to use less of them. This is not rocket science; every other city has done it. The reason Bengaluru roads resemble a parking lot most of the day is not because there aren’t enough roads (the areas outside the ring road do need better road infrastructure), but because the share of public transport is not good enough. There are too many private vehicles and too little mass transport. We need better balance and we need it now. Our policy makers did not prioritise public transport, even as they watched the city explode, for reasons best known to them. While Mumbai, Chennai and even Hyderabad have local trains, Bengaluru never delivered on the suburban train promise. Official reports and plans existed for more than 30 years but the petty politics of state and Centre (always different parties) denied this option. It is extremely bewildering and frustrating that some of the most highly congested areas like Outer Ring Road, Sarjapur and Electronic City, Whitefield, Airport, all have train tracks and stations for decades but have not been leveraged. We are paying the price for bad governance. The only real public transport system in Bengaluru is the BMTC bus. With merely 6500 buses, they carry half the traffic of the city (45 lakh daily passengers). And yet, the government doesn’t buy new buses and doesn’t give priority to buses on the roads giving lame excuses like ‘where is the space for bus?’ when every single day 1500 new vehicles get registered in our city. There is magical space for them but not an inch for buses! Bus is the Baahubali of Bengaluru and yet the narrative on traffic doesn’t include it, may be because bus is for ‘those poor people’ and not considered ‘development’. Namma Metro is showing a lot of promise, and we should do everything to make it faster. When we have two big projects like Namma Metro and suburban train in the works, that can clear a lot of congestion and change the dynamics of mobility in our city for the better, we should not undertake elevated corridors at least until these are fully ‘developed’. Among the barbs frequently thrown at activists is ‘beda brigade’, and ‘always opposing’. This again is a blatant lie, deliberately used to paint a negative image and discredit the rational argument. Citizens for Bengaluru (CfB) did start with the #SteelFlyoverBeda but followed it with a series of Beku campaigns #ChukuBukuBeku#BusBhagyaBeku, #NadeyaluBidi Footpath Beku, and most recently #NammaSamitiNamagaagi which is about solving local issues within the urban governance framework of the constitution, the ward committees. CfB has always asked for due process and public consultation that is fair and open and nothing more. All of us are proud of Namma Bengaluru – politicians, officials, entrepreneurs, construction workers, pourakarmikas, software engineers, garment makers – all of us call it home. All of us are going to have to deal with the silent killer called pollution. We cannot afford to waste time with petty arguments and rhetoric that won’t do any good to anyone. We need to come together, agree on what sort of development we want and make it happen. Views expressed are the author's own.

Opinion

Cancer has made me realise every minute, every hour and every day that people who are fortunate to have access to treatment have so much to be thankful about.

Chitra Subramaniam

Representational image

My acquaintance with cancer started abruptly like almost everything in my life, in the middle. I was in a slew of projects in India and Switzerland. One fine morning in Delhi in the summer of 2011, I was unable to get up from the bed and go to the bathroom to brush my teeth. The distance was four steps. Our daughter Nitya, who had returned late from a modelling assignment, was still asleep. I crawled to the bathroom to brush my teeth. Standing up to find the brush, toothpaste and water hurt so much, I cried. Strange, I thought, telling myself I needed to do some yoga to get skinny me – I had become skinny – to build muscles and endurance. I am born lazy. I rang Dr. Sanjiv Jain at NIMHANS in Bangalore. He is a psychiatrist but for all of us in the family and friends circle, he’s the go-to person for any ailment we have. Get an MRI done he said. He saw the MRI results and asked me to get on the first plane to Geneva and show my results to the doctor with his diagnosis – Multiple Myeloma. Behind the scenes, Nupur Basu and Revathy Ashok in Bangalore, Coomi Kapoor and Jaya Jaitly in Delhi ensured that I was on the first plane. “Look over your right shoulder,” my former boss and best friend Coomi Kapoor told me as I left her home for the airport. Strange, I thought - I had never known her to be either religious or superstitious. So much drama I decided as I settled into my seat in the plane. Good heavens, my lower back was hurting rather badly – so badly that I could barely sit. Back home, Giancarlo my husband and Nikhil our son rang our family doctor even as I was heading back in urgency. From the airport to home, I was telling them it was a sprain and would be fine after a little rest. What I did not know was that I had a tumour in my spine and the family doctor had advised that I be taken immediately on arrival in Geneva to Génolier, a clinique close to where we live. I wasn’t looking forward to a ride in an ambulance with flashing lights. My doctors in Switzerland would tell me later they knew Indian doctors were brilliant but Dr. Jain diagnosing MM with just an MRI was in another league. We came home. I couldn’t walk even as I pretended I could. I am tall, so the hunch was obvious. Giancarlo and Nikhil said I had no choice – they had already prepared my bag to go to Génolier. The world-renowned haematologist and oncologist Dr. Volker Kirchner came to see me at 10.30 pm the day I was admitted. “It’s a serious diagnosis, but we can fight it,” he said. I imagined a boxing ring and me as chief clown. The worst thing you can do when you have a difficult diagnosis is to go to the Internet. Which is what I did. Dressed in hospital clothes, I went with my computer to the nursing station to ask what the brouhaha was all about as I had Melanoma. No, they told me. I had Multiple Myeloma (MM). Back to my room, some more Internet and major panic hit me. The next morning was long before the doctor arrived, my questions were ready, faster than any rapid fire round you can imagine. The day was full of visits by doctors who told me they were going to help me fight MM and they have what it takes to do so. I called Coomi Kapoor, worried about Nitya. She told me Nitya was safe and I must stop giving instructions from a hospital bed in Switzerland. In the fall of 2011, I had an autologous stem cell transplant. Different from an analogous stem cell transplant where a member of the family or donor donates blood and stem cells to you, technology and science has developed procedures where people with an MM diagnosis can, if possible, use their own stem cells. Here’s a 101 on what stem cell transplant means: Our bone marrow is the organ that produces our blood cells. The marrow and our blood cells constitute our hematopoetique tissue. These tissues are white and red blood cells and platelets. These are produced and liberated in our blood circulation throughout our lives. Stem cells are mother cells for all blood cells. They live in the bone marrow. These are harvested when you have an autologous stem cell transplant and maintained in a freezer. Before this harvest and ‘cleaned’ stem cells are introduced back in my blood-stream, I went through an intensive chemotherapy that, unfortunately also destroyed the healthy cells. To speed up the reconstruction of my bone marrow after chemotherapy, my cleaned up stem cells were introduced back into my blood-stream – this is what is called an autologous transplant. The cleaned up stem cells migrate naturally and reconstruct the bone marrow. That transfer period is critical for survival. I had zero immunity, the supply of oxygen was up and down and contracting infections was a major concern as was fatigue. Here I am, eight years later supported in no small measure by my family and a small circle of friends key among which is Lisa Ray, herself an advocate for MM. I read her Yellow Diaries as I lay in a hospital bed, telling myself if she could do it, so could I. Here’s why going public is important. Here’s where we in India need to speak about cancer and mental health, vitiligo and diabetes without stigma and fear. Lisa I have developed a close bond over the years, not only because we live with MM but also because in more ways than one, our diagnosis has set us free to appreciate what is real and what false. I also have a small group of friends where I live – more women than women – where we can laugh, cry and joke about our cancer. I am lucky to live in a country where my health insurance takes care of my expensive treatment. I am fortunate it is Dr. Kirchner who is my doctor – the first treatment he made me go through was the best. I advocate for access and treatment in situations like in India where people don’t even want to speak about their diagnoses, much less reach out or help. I am thankful for American advocacy especially that of Kathy Giusti (herself an MM survivor) of the Multiple Myeloma Research Foundation (MMRF) that has reduced the time from molecules to treatment significantly. Cancer has made me realise every minute, every hour and every day that people who are fortunate to have access to treatment have so much to be thankful about. I dare say they have a responsibility to push politicians and policy-makers to make treatment available to all people, wherever they live and however remote their situation is. We speak about this often at home. Nitya who is a mechanical engineer now reading law and Nikhil, who is a policy and market analyst with a focus on public health speak about access and responsibility more often than before. We in India do not speak out about our medical diagnoses. Irrfan Khan and Sonali Bendre speaking out about their cancer and Deepika Padukone and Anupam Kher explaining their encounter with mental health issues render yeoman service to public health. I know of so many cases in my country where people call me for advice on cancer pretending it’s for someone else. The details of their questioning and depths of fear leave me wondering if they just want to speak to someone who publicly speaks about cancer to address their own diagnosis. It was not until recently that my doctors told me I had arrived in a pretty bad condition in 2011. It was touch and go they said. It was even more recent when Coomi told me Parsis believe that looking over your right shoulder when you leave a place means you will return to that place. Faith has so many ways of speaking to you if you believe, as Lisa says, that the universe is your friend. Grief shared is grief halved. Think how much easier it would be for you if you share your grief. Cancer is not a death sentence if you can afford treatments. In some cases, it is being treated as a chronic diagnosis, much like diabetes. So many of our ministers in the central cabinet and state governments live with non-communicable diseases (NCD cancer, strokes, diabetes, chronic respiratory diseases etc.). India’s double disease burden, NCDs and communicable diseases (HIV/AIDS, Malaria, TB, diarrhoea etc.) are claiming lives faster than solutions can be reached. India’s development agenda will be incomplete till it refuses to address its public health crisis head-on. That means fewer speeches and press releases and more resources on the ground. This has been republished from Republic World. You can read the original article here.

Blog

I don’t know for sure when my early symptoms of bipolar disorder started. But I never experienced full-blown mania until I was 31, seven years ago.

Saravana Raja

Image for representation

It all started seven years ago, on a December night. Or maybe two decades ago, when I night-wandered the streets of a small town. Or perhaps earlier, when I doubted someone else has gotten into my mother’s body and that’s why she is shouting at me. Or maybe even earlier, when I tried rewriting Mahabharata during my third-grade holidays. I don’t know. I don’t know for sure when my early symptoms of bipolar disorder started. But I never experienced full-blown mania until I was 31, seven years ago. I vaguely (probably by choice) remember the racing dots I connected for three days and nights, and the psychosis grew into a huge, dark cloud eating me. I didn’t realize it was a psychotic episode then. Even my doctor had the same opinion - an oversight in hindsight. I thought it was due to the disillusionment with a political organization in which I spent more than a decade and its ideas that were close to my heart. I got more and more depressed for the next two years. Since depression has been my everlasting companion right from my childhood days, I really couldn’t see what was coming. I decided to move on, forgetting the episode as an exception. Then came a December. And, the mania came like a roaring whirlwind that tossed me in the air. This time, my doctor confirmed that it is mania and I got admitted to a psychiatric hospital. I still remember the grand delusions when I was sitting before the new doctor. He was explaining what bipolar disorder is all about. And I was wondering if he was part of the state and that's why he is attacking me, by putting up a large religious deity image on his wall. I did certain painful things during the brief hospital stay that I had to regret for years to come. Did I say, “I did”? Does someone really “do” everything when they’re undergoing a manic psychosis? If not, how come we remember certain things while certain things are completely blacked out, without a trace of memory? Maybe my consciousness was at times swinging, and at times flipping, between on and off states. That’s the only logical explanation I could arrive at in all these years. It was the worst period of my life. Some people who loved me got estranged, my colleagues got to know about my condition, my marriage went downhill, I couldn’t live with my child. I cried (boys do cry) for days. Nights. There was no hope in sight. And one day, G, a dear friend asked me to watch ‘The Secret’ and pointed out how my negative imagination has been pulling me down forever. I was frantically searching for a log to swim across the sea while that video came as a lifeboat. I composed myself, went back to my job and started visualizing getting reunited with my wife and son, every day. Months later, one fine afternoon, my wife suddenly wanted to talk. And the talk led us to reunite. That made me realize the power of positive imagination, the law of attraction and how positive thoughts can help you realize positive things. But old habits die hard. After some years, I was slowly moving away from positivity and the urge for negative attention from the in-built poisonous tree was tempting. And due to various reasons, my sleep pattern started changing and I didn’t realize a storm was brewing. And, as expected, it was Déjà vu, and the mania hit me this time with much more intensity. It was (must have been) a testing period to everyone who was close to me. When I got discharged from a different hospital this time, I sat at home for two long weeks and all I did was watching Romedy Now for the whole day. Or should I say stared? I didn’t want my brain to think. I didn’t want to say anything to anyone. Hear anything from anyone. I guess I went numb. Eventually, one question started bothering me. Why the heck did I have a manic episode even when I was taking my pills religiously? I decided it’s high time to sleep with the enemy than naively believe that it will never appear again. I started reading articles, watched videos, joined forums, and charted out my manic episodes (with dates and details). I noted down my early warning signs and triggers and shared it with my closed ones. Restarted my everyday mood journal, started tracking my sleep pattern and mood states. Bottom line, Lithium Carbonate, Divalproex, Quetiapine, Clonazepam, and Olanzapine weren’t some weird chemical names to me anymore. I know who they are and how they care for me when I need them. Terms like altered behaviour, rapid cycling, hypomania got added to my vocabulary. Also, I understood that identifying your own symptoms, triggers and sticking on to the circadian rhythm is equally important in tackling the disorder along with the medicines. And the learning curve still goes on. It put mania in check, but depression needed therapy. I was able to find the right therapist after a few months of searching, as therapy is not given its due in India. Therapy helped me resolve my childhood issues and I started making progress in changing my Life Script (Courtesy: Eric Berne) once for all. Meanwhile, I met a caregiver mother whose story pushed me to form a peer support group in Chennai. I felt we’re a community need to come together for support, exchange thoughts and ideas, and fight against the stigma. For some it’s asthma, for others it’s diabetes, for us it’s bipolar disorder or schizophrenia or major depressive disorder. It’s as simple as that. So, we are not “mental”, “psycho”, “loosu”, “nutcase”, “crack” or any derogatory label in any language. We are real people who can learn, love, care, work, and f***, just like any ‘normal’ person, despite our challenges. We have successfully conducted meet-ups every single month for more than a year now and have grown into a small community who try our best to help each other. We have shared our secrets, our fears, our vulnerabilities, our pain, our endurance, our hope, our success and we are slowly becoming the best pals, beyond the barriers of age, gender, colour, caste, race, sexuality, politics, and religion. Thus, I made a tryst with bipolar disorder almost two years back and I have been redeeming a pledge to myself till date. I won’t run away from you. I won’t deny or pretend that you don’t exist. You’re there walking with me, waiting to push me down. But you know buddy, I know your tricks. I know how to protect myself and where to hit you. Finally, I am here writing this piece only because of the wonderful people in my life. My wife, who stands by me in her own ways and fights the battle courageously. My little son, who loves me with his whole heart. My sister, who identifies whenever I slip, even across thousands of miles. My friend G, who knows how and when to help me. My friends P, who always stood by me literally no matter what, SN and KR, who patiently heard me during the dark days. And last but not least, my mom, who still won’t utter the name of my disorder but asks me whether I take my pills properly. One day I may write my journey in full length. Wish me luck. Views expressed are the author's own.

Trans Bill

The Bill in its present form will become a tool of oppression and institutionalise the violations already being faced by the transgender community.

Dr Sylvia Karpagam

Image: PTI

The Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Bill, 2018, as passed by Lok Sabha on December 17, 2018, claims to “provide for protection of rights of transgender persons and their welfare’. However, instead of addressing the daily oppressions and indignities faced by the transgender community, this Bill seeks to further institutionalise these very same violations. The relationship of the transgender community with the healthcare system has been less than satisfactory. The healthcare system in India generally does not have a good history of diagnosing or treating persons from marginalised communities. While the private healthcare system is exploitative, unduly commercialised and contemptuous of any poor patients, the government healthcare system is underfunded, understaffed and overworked. Neither of these systems are equipped to even meet the basic psychological needs of a transgender person, leave alone make decisions about a person’s gender. Horror stories abound of healthcare staff asking unnecessary questions around sex, reproduction and genitalia, even when a transgender person goes for unrelated health issues. This plays dangerously close to being classified as sexual harassment, voyeurism, and sexually inappropriateness. In the absence of role models and support systems, there could be confusion about the gender identity that the child or adult identifies with as opposed to one imposed by social norms. The Psychiatric Diagnostic and Statistical manual of Mental disorders (DSM 5) in its fifth edition in 2013, took cognisance of the fact that a mismatch between one’s birth gender and identity were not necessarily pathological, and shifts focus from ‘treatment of an abnormality’ to ‘resolving distress over a mismatch’, dropping the loaded term ‘gender identity disorder’ to the more objective ‘gender dysphoria’. In India, this view was echoed by the Supreme court in the National Legal Services Authority (NALSA) vs Union of India case, 2014. However in the Transgender protection Bill, Chapter III, Clause (2) and (3) contradict each other. If a transgender person has a right to ‘self-perceived gender identity’, then what is the need to “make an application to the District Magistrate for issuing a certificate of identity as a transgender person…. with such documents, as may be prescribed”? The section 6 details how such applications will be referred to a District Screening committee for the purpose of recognition of transgender persons. Why should a person’s gender identity change with a surgery? Why should a ‘revised’ certificate be issued? It only shows that the policy makers feel that one is a ‘real’ transgender person only after undergoing surgery. This goes against the very basis of what the transgender community wants. A transgender person can grow through several processes before deciding on a sex reassignment surgery, if at all. The health system should play a role in facilitating all these processes and cannot be given the status of a gate keeper without responsibility. Power to determine gender should lie with the individual concerned. All systems should be in place to support this process rather than take over decision making. The Bill also directs the government to “set up separate human immunodeficiency virus sero-surveillance Centres to conduct sero-serveillance for such persons”. This is another step to stigmatise a vulnerable community. There are certainly some groups that are at higher risk of contracting HIV, but that doesn’t mean that ‘separate surveillance’ should be set up to further stigmatise them. This only means that at a policy level, resources are set aside for more intensive health education and efforts are made to ensure that healthcare facilities that are accessed by everyone are also made accessible to high risk groups. Any targeted intervention for a stigmatising illness is archaic, traumatises the individual and his or her family and shows the poor understanding of those who drafted the Bill. The clause “Where any parent or a member of his immediate family is unable to take care of a transgender, the competent court shall by an order direct such person to be placed in rehabilitation centre” completely dispenses with the agency of the transgender person. It, in effect, states that the person is not an adult in his or her full senses and is incapable of independent living. It puts a transgender adult perpetually in a state of dependence on a narrowly defined ‘family’ or rehabilitation centre. The trauma that this can inflict is unmeasurable. By defining family in the context of the transgender community as “a group of people related by blood or marriage or by adoption made in accordance with law”, there is a wilful attempt to eliminate the unique kinship and bonds that operate within the transgender community. Having a community that one can identify with and that one is accepted in, is crucial for a sense of belonging and self-esteem, and has been documented with other marginalisation around gender, class, caste, religion, colour, race, ethnicity etc. Many persons from the transgender community have expressed a sense of relief at finally meeting someone ‘like’ them, who accepts them and different from socially acknowledged cis persons. Media reports of transgender persons being rounded up, even pulled out of their homes, and being forcibly imprisoned in ‘beggar’s homes’ is fairly common. The government, with all its organised instruments, has often treated the transgender community either as victims without agency and in need of rehabilitation (read arrest), or as criminals who should not exist in a ‘decent, civilised’ society. The pathetic condition of shelter homes in India have been highlighted over the last two years. Women have been incarcerated for years in prison like inhuman conditions of ‘shelter homes’ without access to healthcare, ‘rehabilitation’, law, family or any other form of support. This is the kind of ‘shelter’ and ‘rehabilitation’ that is now being envisaged for the transgender community by a Bill that claims to ‘protect’ them. Just this one clause shows the absolute failure of policy makers to understand simple things like rights, dignity and agency of an adult. The clause “No suit, prosecution or other legal proceeding shall lie against the appropriate Government or any local authority or any officer of the Government in respect of anything which is in good faith done or intended to be done in pursuance of the provisions of this Act and any rules made thereunder” reeks of authoritarianism and hands over total impunity to the government on a plate. When the Act itself is not drafted in good faith, it is dangerous to hand over unregulated power to a state government under a vague umbrella of ‘good faith’. In a patriarchal, casteist, class biased system such as that operating in India, the discriminations meted out to the marginalised such as the transgender community will not only be excessive, but also completely protected under the over-arching umbrella of impunity. The clause “Whoever harms or injures or endangers the life, safety, health, or well-being, whether mental or physical, of a transgender person …..shall be punishable with imprisonment for a term which shall not be less than six months but which may extend to two years and with fine” at once minimises the punishment for real offenders, while opening the door to penalise friends, well-wishers, adopted family and supporters of the transgender communities’ chosen ways of life. Any lawyer or activist who fights for a transgender persons individual rights, stands to be punished by this clause. It can effectively take away even the minimal and fragile support systems that transgender communities have built over years. Section 19 (a) under Offences and Penalties, Chapter VIII of the Act states that “Whoever compels or entices a transgender person to indulge in the act of begging or other similar forms of forced or bonded labour…shall be punishable with imprisonment for a term which shall not be less than six months but which may extend to two years and with fine”. It has been argued repeatedly by the transgender community that in the absence of reservations in education and employment, begging is often the ONLY option available in a hostile society. While begging can hardly be considered an occupation, the social dimension of why a transgender person chooses to beg is completely ignored, and it is instead converted into an offence. The intolerance of society to anyone it perceives as different manifests in several ways ranging from discrimination in employment, education, housing, social security, healthcare etc. to blatant abuse, slurs, physical violence, rapes, threats, harassment, assault, lynching and murder. A progressive Bill would read, “The increased rates of begging among Transgender persons highlights their difficulty in accessing education and employment and the high rates of discrimination and crime faced by them. In view of this, State governments shall make available loans, grants for self-employment and reservation in government and private educational and employment sectors.” The transgender community has made their needs clear several times. If protection of this community is indeed the agenda of the government, then it makes sense to take the recommendations of the very community it sets out to ‘protect’. It is as bizarre as bringing out a women’s protection bill without consulting women, or a bill to protect Dalit rights without consulting Dalit communities. All groups working on education, human rights, healthcare, livelihood should oppose this Bill and demand that it should not be passed by the Rajya Sabha, otherwise a Bill to protect will in reality become a tool of further oppression and institutionalise the violations already being faced by the transgender community The writer is a public health doctor and researcher who has worked closely with transgender communities. Views expressed are the author’s own.

Sabarimala

Rather than choosing to join progressive forces, the state party leadership has opted to align itself with Sangh Parivar elements.

Nasirudheen Kollathodi

Dear Rahulji, This is to invite your attention to a very serious issue that has the potential to jeopardise the cherished social fabric of Kerala and render the life of millions into chaos and ruin. As you are aware, the honourable Supreme Court of India passed a verdict on September 28, 2018 lifting all bans on women of any age entering the Sabarimala temple. The verdict was hailed and appreciated by a wide variety of people who espoused the values of human equality and gender justice. Not least among which was the All India Congress Committee under your prestigious leadership, which in a statement described the verdict as “a welcome and progressive move towards gender equality by Supreme Court” and welcomed it wholeheartedly. Unfortunately, your party leadership in Kerala has miserably failed to stand up for these progressive values or the underlying ideological notions behind the verdict. Rather than choosing to take this as an opportunity to propagate gender justice and join the progressive forces in the state, it opted to align itself with Sangh Parivar elements who have openly embraced a highly misogynistic and retrogressive stand in the issue. True to its long tradition of betrayal and hypocrisy, the Parivar had initially welcomed the verdict but later engineered one of the worst communal campaigns in the history of the state to sabotage the implementation of the verdict. The campaign has been marked by its feudal and patriarchal slogans and a horrendous magnitude of violence. Being Sangh Parivar, this is understandable and expected. But the stand taken by the Congress state leadership has been absolutely shocking, to say the least. Rather than supporting the efforts taken by the government in the implementation of the verdict and pointing out the shortcomings as a responsible opposition, its leaders have been fuelling the hate campaign led by the Parivar outfits. Instead of supporting the call for renaissance, it played second fiddle to the retrograde elements that targeted women in an inhuman way. When many women devotees and activists made courageous attempts for the implementation of the verdict, the Congress leadership en masse joined Parivar leaders in disparaging and insulting those brave women. All though there were some rational voices in the Congress like that of VD Satheesan, they remained an exception and were largely ignored by the party leadership. What is even more bizarre is the explanation and rationale put forward by the leadership for this ridiculous stand. These leaders claim to be following the feelings and emotions of the devotees in the issue. Nothing can be farther from the truth. The results of the recently held bye-elections show that the ruling party has made significant gains and, along with the BJP, the Congress has lost ground. The spectacular success and record-breaking participation in the recently held ‘Women’s Wall’ further shows that the people on the ground, especially women and the new generation, are hugely against the vicious campaign carried out by Parivar groups, that has been largely supported by Congress leaders. Kerala has always been at the forefront of carrying the torch of progressive values. The renaissance movements witnessed by the state in the past have been unparalleled and pioneering in their nature and scope. A hugely diverse set of leaders and social reformers have played a significant role in this. The need of the hour is to have coordinated efforts from everyone who believes in plurality and progressive values for renewal of this renaissance movement. When the country is going through one of the most challenging moments in its history, this is extremely significant. As you are very well aware, the pillars of our beloved country, such as the Constitution and Parliament, are at serious risk. Democratic and progressive values are under systematic attack. Heinous attempts are going on to disrupt communal harmony and polarise our society. Needless to say, the Sabarimala issue needs to be addressed in this backdrop. The context here is of utmost significance. It’s the same forces who are challenging the core values of our country who are behind this violence in the name of Sabarimala. And unfortunately, the state leadership of the Congress has fallen into this trap. Since you, along with your party, are leading the fight against these evil elements across the county, your party in Kerala needs to be in the same boat. So, we, the people of Kerala who appreciate all your efforts in this regard tremendously, request you to take immediate action in this regard and get your party’s state committee and leaders aligned with the party’s stated values and principles. The state leaders should be urgently brought back from the agenda set by Sangh Parivar elements. We are scared that failing to do so would result in the erosion of your party’s credibility and integrity as a secular and progressive organisation. What is even more worrying is the huge repercussions such a failure can have beyond party lines. The emergence and growth of the Congress party in the state has been the result of the renaissance. When attempts for renewal of the renaissance are ongoing, the Congress is expected to be in the forefront of it, not among those retrograde elements who are opposing it. The state is witnessing the emergence of a new generation of young people who are hypersensitive about gender justice and the concept of equality. As you are someone who have always been heedful to these new voices and thoughts, we expect your immediate intervention in this matter too. Views expressed are the author's own.

Opinion

The moment she receives the summons, the difficult memory work she has performed in a desperate attempt to delete the violence she has suffered disintegrates.

Malini Bhattacharya

Fatema (name changed) speaks with reluctance of her imprisonment in a Budhwarpet brothel. She was prostituted to over a dozen men everyday, often beaten, and confined to her room. A rescue team raided the place one night, released the girls, and Fatema was taken to a shelter home. The authorities registered an FIR, put her through medical tests, traced her family, and soon after this, she was sent home. Fatema’s struggles with reclaiming her personhood continue to this day, three years after her repatriation, even as she has been through the proverbial rehabilitation mill. She has been assigned a social worker who has been supportive in the wake of her trauma - a period when she sank into deep depression, and felt friendless and cut-off from the world. Within months of her homecoming, her parents arranged her marriage with a man from a neighboring village. Nothing was said about the incident of trafficking. This is customary practice in West Bengal, which is the biggest source area for trafficking crimes in India, with 53,645 missing persons on the record in 2016, according to the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB). Girls are lured away from their homes - their families are low-income and lack livelihood resources, let alone access to opportunity - with assurances of remunerative work or marriage, both being lucrative choices for victims. Those who are rescued and repatriated are more often than not married off, with the new husband none the wiser about his wife’s traumatic history. In her marital family, the survivor has to work to keep this secret from her relatives and harbour a constant tension that somehow they might find out, and if they do, she will have to deal with a tremendous backlash, despite the fact that she was not culpable in the episode of trafficking. Her victimhood continues in insidious ways, and the social system is liable for this. While it is not the ideal method for a sex trafficking survivor’s reintegration, most women choose the approach of clamping their mouths down on their stories to avoid reliving their trauma. Domestic strife and the ensuing stigmatisation and shaming are dispelled with this strategy. Many married survivors go on to have children and settle into family life, and establish stable routines of work, and manage to push their damages to the back-burner. By keeping silence about what happened to them, they rewrite a different narrative for themselves, in which erasure of trauma may not be possible, but forgetting it might be. Except when ghosts from that troublesome past come to their doorsteps as uniformed policemen, years after they were rescued from the sex trade. They bring a summons issued from a court in that region, and stipulate without prelude that the survivor must go with them to depose at that court, where their cases against their trafficker or brothel manager or pimp (or some or all of them) have come to trial. The police will usually deliver this summons twice, and then return with a warrant to escort the survivor from her home to the courtroom for mandatory deposition. The first appearance of police personnel in a presumably traditionalist rural household can set in motion a chain of events that are standard judicial procedure, but a nightmarish ordeal for the survivor who has been called to depose. The moment she receives the summons, the difficult memory work she has performed in a desperate attempt to delete the violence she has suffered disintegrates. Her old trauma resurfaces, because she knows that the sense of disgrace associated in public perception with sex work will threaten her marriage if she is exposed. She becomes frantic with worry. While she is awake, memories of assault and violation attack her again; she might experience returning symptoms of clinical depression, anxiety, or post-traumatic stress disorder. “My in-laws and the people at their village have no idea that I was trafficked to Pune,” Fatema says. “I am afraid. If they find out, that’s the end of my marriage.” Fatema fights sleep every night to avoid the off chance that she might talk in her sleep and risk her husband listening and knowing. She can reach out to her social worker to discuss her new, unexpected vulnerability, but even this must be done cautiously so she cannot be overheard, or by making some excuse to meet the social worker in person, doubling the deception already weighing on her conscience. For Sarika (name changed), who is not married, receiving this same summons is calamitous for slightly different reasons. The police team queried villagers for directions to Sarika’s home, and word spread like wildfire that she was wanted for deposition in Pune because she was involved in “dirty work” there. “Every time I leave the house, I can see people laughing and pointing at me. I know they talk about me. They have said horrible things to my parents, and I feel guilty about disgracing them,” she says. Sarika’s parents are trying to arrange her marriage quickly so she can be sent away from this space of turmoil, but she knows that with marriage, her dreams of being educated will have to be sacrificed. She also knows that given what happened to her, she has very little bargaining power to postpone or stave off marriage. With the visits from the police team, Sarika has lost liberty and opportunity in yet another instance of the continuing re-victimisation of a trafficking survivor. After the summons is given, the social worker must counsel the survivor and prepare her for court proceedings. Now, there is a new problem to contend with. In an overwhelming majority of incidents, the trafficking case is lodged at the destination with the victim as the main witness for the prosecution. Since repatriation is done as quickly as possible, most victims return to their home states before their cases come to trial. They return with no certified copies of their case documents - FIR, judicial statement, chargesheet, and evidence-related papers. Their contact with their legal representative at the destination dwindles or completely shuts down, and many survivors show very little interest in keeping up with the progress of their cases, asserting that they want to move on. It is reasonable to assume that in those instances the survivor imagines, if mistakenly, that her past will not come back to disturb the new life she has built. Therefore, she is psychologically disconnected from the events that make up her case. She loses her grasp of small but crucial factual details; she feels unprepared to depose with confidence. Moreover, even when case documents are acquired after painstaking coordination processes, they are nearly always in the regional language of the destination area, and this again interferes with easily accessing information that would let her give robust evidence to convict the trafficker; a translator’s help becomes necessary. These factors combine to create conditions where the survivor is revictimised by the judicial system, which must shield her, but at this point intensifies her vulnerabilities and insecurity. At least 25 survivors from West Bengal are presently in this situation. More than half of these cases are at least two years old. A majority are waiting for their victim compensation applications to be filed. These women have been connected with a Pune lawyer who is working to retrieve certified copies of case documents so the survivors can be trained to depose confidently. This process is time consuming and judicial red tape imposes unexpected delays that cannot be planned for. A number of cases could not be traced at all as the survivor could not supply the names of the accused or police station information; in these cases, an FIR is usually filed at the source so the survivor can at least claim victim compensation. Also, since a single advocate is handling all 25 cases, managing time and priorities becomes a separate problem to contend with. Advocate Abhijit Patil, who is representing these survivors, asserts the importance of deposition if traffickers and brothel managers are to be convicted. “At one level, silence shows consent or at any rate complicity with the criminal dealings, even if you acknowledge that the trafficked person is a victim,” Patil says. “With a majority of repatriated sex trafficking survivors failing to show up in court to depose, traffickers are not identified and no evidence is given against them in the presence of a magistrate, therefore we have an abysmally low conviction rate - less than 1%.” Mercifully, there are provisions for survivors to depose through video conferencing. The lawyer must make an application to the magistrate and cite strong reasons as to why she is unable to attend the hearing in person. For many, travelling to the destination is unaffordable and logistically unviable; their absence from their homes would have to be explained through stressful subterfuge and evasion. Being back at the site of exploitation and meeting the accused in court also brings with them the risk of being triggered and relapsing into some form of mental illness. Most magistrates will allow the trial to be held via video conferencing; this is a saving grace, excepting occasions when technical problems interrupt proceedings and postponements have to be made. “Deposition through video conferencing is definitely a step ahead,” Patil confirms. “As long as the survivor’s identity documents are in order, there should not be any problems with conducting the trial this way.” Social workers and lawyers are also working to protect survivors from the acute humiliation of unforeseen police visits or the prospect of court-ordered arrest. Soma Sarkar, a caseworker from the Barasat Unnayan Prostuti - a community-based organisation (CBO) for survivors in the North 24 Parganas - says that several CBOs have brainstormed ways to pre-empt this. “We thought that having the summons delivered to a CBO near the survivor’s address was a better approach. The survivor can either collect it, or her social worker can deliver it, without a lot of attention being drawn to the process. This way, her privacy is not compromised.” Sarkar adds that some CBOs in the region had planned to organise a sensitisation program for police personnel in the district to train them in ways to interact with repatriated survivors in a sensitive, discreet, and non-threatening manner, but this has not happened yet because of a resource crunch. The new Trafficking of Persons Bill 2018 has provisions that can make deposition a more comfortable experience for survivors. In addition to a video conferencing facility, the Bill allows for quick trials at fast-track courts, and a scheme for victim and witness protection, so that the survivor can depose without fearing for her safety. Essentially, this is movement towards higher conviction rates and better justice, which may have been delayed, but will not be denied. Malini Bhattacharya is a communications specialist for Kolkata-based human rights organization Sanjog, and a rapporteur of human trafficking issues. Views expressed by the author are personal.

Controversy

The claims made by some speakers at the congress were termed ‘scientifically completely untenable’ by the Principal Scientific Adviser to the PM, Dr K VijayRaghavan.

Rajani KS

PTI

Let me begin by saying that the just concluded 106th Indian Science Congress (ISC) at Lovely Professional University, Punjab is an event that progress and promotion of science and research in India really needed. The participation of a galaxy of scientists and researchers, including Nobel laureates, from 60 countries was truly impressive. The focal theme ‘Future India: Science & Technology’ was very relevant and the topics on agriculture, forestry, veterinary and fishery sciences, anthropology, archaeology, psychology, chemical and material sciences, information and communication, medical and physical sciences, ‘New Biology’, etc., were apt. The concept of a ‘Time Capsule’ – a collection of objects representing today’s technology buried 10 feet deep for posterity – was a first in the congress. In fact, it shows the hard work and thought labour that went into organising this congress. In his inaugural address, Prime Minister Narendra Modi rightly recalled the rich legacy of the ISC due to its association with some of India’s finest minds including Acharya JC Bose, CV Raman, Meghnad Saha and SN Bose. It was a dream start. Then something happened on January 5, the third day of the conference. Something that the General President of Indian Science Congress Association (ISCA), Dr Manoj Kumar Chakrabarti, was evidently embarrassed about; something that the Principal Scientific Adviser to the PM, Dr K VijayRaghavan, termed as ‘scientifically completely untenable’, something that he was worried could cause harm if it makes its way into state policy; something that prompted Bharat Ratna Prof CNR Rao to dissociate himself from ISC. That something concerned a few claims made by some speakers at the congress, including Andhra University VC Prof G Nageshwara Rao and independent researcher Dr KJ Krishnan. The claims are as follows: Kauravas were born with the help of stem cell and test tube technologies. Lord Rama used ‘astras’ and ‘shastras’ while Lord Vishnu sent a Sudarshan Chakra to chase targets. This shows that the science of guided missiles was present in India thousands of years ago. Ravana didn’t just have the Pushpak Vimana, but had 24 types of aircraft and airports in Lanka. Theoretical physics – including the contributions of Newton and Einstein – is totally wrong. Gravitational waves will be renamed as ‘Narendra Modi Waves’ and gravitational lensing effect will be renamed as ‘Hashvardhan Effect’. Lord Brahma discovered the existence of dinosaurs on earth and mentioned it in the Vedas. One may point out three things: What’s wrong with that? A scientist has spoken his mind, you may accept or reject it. The ‘colonial mindset’ of the ‘science establishment’ in India takes whatever the West says as science but ignores, and rather feels a sense of shame about, the rich heritage of our own land. Where’s the evidence that these were not real happenings? Those who ask for evidence should, on the contrary, provide evidence that these things did not happen. I would have been happy not to be writing this article and rather focus on the positives that emerged from the congress. But what follows below convinced me, and probably would convince you too, that it was simply not possible to ignore this something. Firstly, the speakers did not bother to provide any evidence or cite any authentic scientific study to back their claims – I would hardly doubt that the speakers, given their grooming in science, don’t know that evidence is the cornerstone of scientific process; the bedrock on which all scientific and technological advancement made by humankind rests. Would you consider subverting a basic tenet of scientific process an acceptable act? Secondly, most of these claims were made in the Children Science Congress section of the ISC where the audience was largely comprised of teachers and young students. They were young students who, you’d agree, eagerly lap up whatever scientists of such repute speak in a science congress and in the name of science; young students who are yet to develop and mature their faculty of critical thinking, so badly missing in our curriculum. So, this ‘Meet the Scientists’ session of the Children Science Congress was not the occasion for a scientist to air his untested views, in front of an audience who wouldn’t really be able to critically distinguish what to accept and what to reject. Would those who ask question 1 above prefer their children to sit through this session? Thirdly, we Indians can justifiably be proud of our varied and colourful cultural history spread over two millennia. Our contributions to philosophy, art, music, literature, astronomy, mathematics and medicine are renowned the world over. In fact, Einstein said gratefully: ‘We owe a lot to the Indians, who taught us how to count’. Our great philosophies of yore viz., Sankhya, Mimamsa, Vaisheshika and, of course, Lokayata contain wondrous elements of scientific thought. For instance, Sankhya declared that matter cannot come out of non-matter. Mimamsa saw the universe having no beginning or end. Lokayatas saw natural phenomena as consequences of material processes without intervention from any supernatural agent. The legacy of Indian tradition is a legacy of conflict of thought between different schools of thought. To question and to seek, an integral part of scientific temper, was ingrained in this legacy. The richness of our culture is the direct outcome of the openness with which our ancestors welcomed and assimilated the essence of other cultures. The result is a wonderful collage that we have come to recognise as our cultural legacy. In fact, the past presidents of ISC – Acharya Prafulla Chandra Ray (1920), Sir Ram Nath Chopra (1948) and Prof P Parija (1960) – dealt with Science in India in an objective and educative manner while giving due recognition to the achievements in science in ancient India. But when grand and outlandish claims are made without backing them up, at a science congress, using the language of science, it does not help the cause of this rich heritage. On the contrary, it damages this heritage. In the words of Prof Jayant Narlikar, a foremost cosmologist of our times, “…even the West recognises the knowledge of mathematics held by the Indians. If we start making outlandish claims, the scientific community of the world will not look up to us as it does now”. So such grand claims don’t help; they harm. Even if the intention of the speakers was genuinely to help. Fourthly, the scientific enterprise is a self-correcting quest to understand and explain natural phenomena based on critical observation, experimental evidence, universal verification and constant advancement. Stem cell research, in vitro fertilisation, science of ballistics and guided missiles, theory of relativity, quantum mechanics etc., have evolved in this process. It is important to note that no technological accomplishment can be made without the relevant scientific theoretical foundation. For instance, construction of guided missiles requires electricity, metallurgy, mechanics, projectile motion, radars, optics, motion sensors, wireless communication etc., and there is no evidence for the existence of most of these underlying pillars of scientific knowledge in ancient India. Metallurgy did develop in ancient India. Apart from the usage of brass, copper and iron, there were some innovative works. Zinc was extracted as early as in 4th century BC. The first form of crucible steel, Wootz, was developed in India around 300 BC. But, would this suffice to develop guided missile technology? It would help cookware or primitive weapons. That was really impressive for those days. No more was possible and no more could be expected. Fifthly, to be fair, Prof Rao did cite Ramayana and Mahabharata. I cherish, as do most scientists, puranic verses and epics. They are poetic, enjoyable, rich in moral elements and imagination. But they are not scientifically constructed or validated theories. That’s why it is wrong to mix mythology and science. To claim that such innovations already existed in ancient India citing these sources is not only wrong but, as I mentioned earlier, an affront to the real achievements in science in ancient and medieval India. Lastly, if you make a claim, the onus is on you to provide the evidence. Not on the rest of us to scurry around gathering evidence for or against your claim. That’s how science works. And when you provide the evidence, the rest of us try to verify i.e., test your claim and check whether the result is the same as yours and falsify i.e., try to find ways of proving your claim wrong. If every such attempt ends up strengthening your claim, then and only then your claim is considered true. That’s the rigour of science. You can’t simply make a claim and expect others to prove you right or wrong. You’re accountable for your claim and no one else. I rest my case here. I hope you would agree why it was necessary to put things in proper perspective. But make no mistake. This is not the first time this has happened. In ISC 2015 at Mumbai, similar claims on the existence of aircraft in ancient India were made. In ISC 2016 at Mysore, claims were made that sitting on tiger skin would reverse the aging process. No wonder that Nobel Laureate Venki Ramakrishnan termed the ISC a ‘circus’. But it also brings into question the selection process followed by the ISCA to review the presentations and ensure quality at ISC 2019. ISCA has to review how this oversight happened and how such blatantly unscientific presentations made their way on to the ISC platform. ISCA is accountable to the science community and people at large. We hope they will review and make public their findings, including steps they will take to prevent recurrence of these unfortunate episodes in the future. Darwin cautioned us long back: false facts are more dangerous than false views. They could lead one to lose his head in grand illusions rather than have one’s feet on the firm ground of scientific endeavour. A recently compiled list by an analytics firm suggests that only 10 out of 4,000 of the globe’s most influential researchers come from India. You would agree we need more names from India in this list. And that requires a firm footing and not grand illusions. It requires the ISC to make a course correction and focus on its stated objective – to advance and to promote the cause of science in India. As a research scholar and a science activist, I look forward to it with optimism. There is a reason for this optimism. After the massive outpouring of anguish from the science community, the ISCA passed a resolution on the concluding day of the congress seeking declarations from all invited speakers to ensure that they would not make any irrational and unscientific claims. Another resolution was passed to seek an advance copy of the summary of speeches from all invited speakers. I am happy that the ISCA has taken due cognisance of the blatantly unscientific presentations made from the platform of ISC 2019. I hope that the lapses in the selection process that led to this fiasco will be thoroughly scrutinised and any possibility of recurrence would be avoided going forward. In conclusion, I believe that the spirit of true patriotism today demands every citizen to promote the cause of science and, more importantly, scientific temper and to defend the cause of science in India in the face of unscientific claims, especially those made in the name of science and more so from a platform meant to promote science. This is the real tribute that one can pay to the rich scientific heritage of this land. Rajani KS is a research scholar and member, All India Executive Committee, Breakthrough Science Society. She lives in Bangalore. Views expressed are the author’s own.

Opinion

We cast our votes for caste, religion, money and muscle power. We voted for the party symbol and not the person who is seeking our vote to represent us, writes Srinivas Alavilli.

Srinivas Alavilli

Voters of Karnataka are feeling angry, cheated and stricken with guilt after days of #ResortPolitics #MLAsBrawl #OperationLotus playing out in national media. The collective feeling can be summed up in one word: shame. But I think there is nothing here to be shameful of. Absolutely nothing. Because we never elected these MLAs that are now on sale and being ferried state to state, resort to resort, in the first place. Contrary to popular perception, we did not vote for them. Don’t get me wrong, we did cast our vote but not for any of these ‘elected representatives’. We cast our votes for caste, religion, money and muscle power. We voted for the party symbol and not the person who is seeking our vote to represent us. We voted for some big national leader who might lead the state or country, not the person whose name is actually on the ballot. We voted for some party that is supposed to represent the best interests of “our caste". How can any other caste get dominant position in our politics? That would hurt our future so instead of evaluating the merits of various candidates, we ensured the remarks “India votes caste” holds good even in 2018. We voted for a party that will take care of “our religion” and makes sure the “other religion” doesn’t get political power. Never mind what the Constitution says, we made elections about spreading religious hatred. We happily voted for criminals and money bags who we very well know didn’t make their fortunes legitimately because we are too focused on getting our party in power. We avoided even looking at the face of an actual candidate leave alone his or her track record, skills and capabilities to be a legislator in the state Assembly. We were eager to support even a lamp post that got the ‘ticket’ never mind deserving candidates that are independents or from small parties trying to change the system. We pressed the button next to names who we won’t ever invite home for tea or trust with our children for five minutes because we believed these names have been “selected” by party and they are “winnable”. We played along. We never voted for these people in the first place. So why should we feel ashamed? The great leaders of our party and caste will “take care” of the situation. Soon. Life will be back to normal, we will vote again for the same MLAs that are currently in resorts throwing stuff at each other, negotiating their price to defect, seeking positions of power where there is scope to make a killing. Who cares if they didn’t make any positive difference as legislators.That stuff is not nearly as important as our loyalties to the caste, religion and party! Srinivas Alavilli is co-Founder of Citizens For Bengaluru Views expressed are author's own.

Finance

Farm loan waiver, although criticised by economists, is the only subsidy that directly reaches the hands of distressed farmers.

Sudhakar Gummula

Image for representation

Farm loan waivers, although not a recent phenomenon, has attracted the interest of all political parties irrespective of their economic ideology, after the Congress-led coalition returned to form the government post the 2009 general election and announced the then largest waiver scheme. It has now become the flagship poll promise of almost all political parties. On the other hand, there are economists and bankers who criticise it saying that it destroys the credit culture among farmers and that it does not reach the needy. As per RBI data, collected from scheduled commercial banks (public and private), foreign banks and Regional Rural Banks (RRBs) through basic statistical returns (BSR-1), the total amount of loans outstanding through direct financing to the agriculture sector in rural areas as on March 2017 is Rs 4.25 lakh crore, with the total number of accounts taking such loans being 4.21 crore, leading to an average of just over Rs 1 lakh per account. The number of accounts availing direct finance for agricultural purposes in rural areas has steadily declined in the 1990s, from 1.82 crore in 1992 to 1.24 crore in 2001. Nevertheless, this number has grown thereafter especially from the year 2005, coinciding with a steady growth in agricultural commodity prices. The average outstanding amount of loan per account grew to Rs 1 lakh in 2017 from Rs 20,000 in the year 2002. There was a marginal decline of 0.3% in the number of accounts during the year 2009, which was the year in which the loan waiver scheme was introduced, but the average growth remained significantly high thereafter. Comparing this data with the number of agricultural households in India, as estimated by the National Sample Survey Office (NSSO), shows an interesting fact – the number of bank accounts availing direct finance for agricultural activity has seen a significant boost post the farm loan waiver in the 2008-2009 union budget. The average of the number of accounts as percentage of agricultural households – which can be used as an indicator for measuring the extent of banking – was 17.8% eight years prior to FY 2008-09 which more than doubled to 36.7% in eight years post that year. Based on the 2017 data, southern states like AP (including Telangana) and Tamil Nadu maintain a lead in this statistic while Chhattisgarh, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Gujarat lag far behind the rest of the states. From this, we can infer that the loan waiver scheme is at least providing a boost to formal banking activity in rural India while driving out informal money lenders – to that extent – from the business of lending to agricultural activity in rural areas. Scheme benefits must reach only the needy For the loan waiver scheme to be more successful, it is necessary to ensure that the scheme benefits reach only the truly needy, that is, the most distressed farmers who are affected by the vagaries of weather, pest attacks and other crop damages. The leakage of scheme benefits and other forms of loans, especially those taken for non-agricultural purposes, should be prevented at the bank and branch level. For instance, the number of accounts that availed direct finance for agricultural purposes in metropolitan cities issued by private banks shot up to 25.49 lakh in 2008-09 from 5.13 lakh in the previous year. A year later, the number reached the normal level of 3.65 lakh. Paralleling the same, loans taken for professional and other services came down to 2.07 lakh in 2008-09 from 36.09 lakh in the previous year and went up to the level of 20.8 lakh a year later. This could be a possible indication that private sector banks in metropolitan areas diverted the scheme benefits to write off non-performing assets in non-agricultural sectors by just changing a few digits of the code assigned internally to the respective category of accounts. To avoid leakages, the RBI must play its part to ensure that the benefits reach only the needy. Limiting the waivers only to loans issued by branches located in rural areas and/or designating only certain branches in metropolitan and urban areas for issuing agricultural loans and avoid giving all other types of loans with similar credit structure from those branches is necessary to avoid manipulation and leakages at the branch and bank level. Views expressed are the author’s own.

Data Security

Think defensively about how you can protect yourself from an almost inevitable attack, rather than assuming you’ll avoid harm.

W. David Salisbury, University of Dayton and Rusty Baldwin, University of Dayton It’s tempting to give up on data security altogether, with all the billions of pieces of personal data – Social Security numbers, credit cards, home addresses, phone numbers, passwords and much more – breached and stolen in recent years. But that’s not realistic – nor is the idea of going offline entirely. In any case, huge data-collection corporations vacuum up data about almost every American without their knowledge. As cybersecurity researchers, we offer good news to brighten this bleak picture. There are some simple ways to protect your personal data that can still be effective, though they involve changing how you think about your own information security. The main thing is to assume that you are a target. Though most individual people aren’t specifically being watched, software that mines massive troves of data – enhanced by artificial intelligence – can target vast numbers of people almost as easily as any one person. Think defensively about how you can protect yourself from an almost inevitable attack, rather than assuming you’ll avoid harm. What’s most important now? That said, it’s unproductive and frustrating to think you must pay attention to every possible avenue of attack. Simplify your approach by focusing on what information you most want to protect. Covering the obvious, keep your software up-to-date. Software companies issue updates when they fix security vulnerabilities, but if you don’t download and install them, you’re leaving yourself unprotected from malware such as keystroke loggers. Also, be smart about what links you click in your email or when browsing the web – you could inadvertently download malicious software to your phone or computer, or allow hackers access to your online accounts. In terms of online data, the most important information to protect is your login credentials for key accounts – like banking, government services, email and social media. You can’t do much about how well websites and companies safeguard your information, but you can make it harder for hackers to get into your account, or at least more than one of them. How? The first step is to use a different username and password on each crucial site or service. This can be complicated by sites’ limits on username options – or their dependence on email addresses. Similarly, many sites have requirements on passwords that limit their length or the number or type of characters that they can include. But do your best. The reason for this is straightforward: When a bunch of usernames and passwords fall into malicious hands, hackers know it’s human nature to repeat usernames and passwords across many sites. So they almost immediately start trying those combinations anywhere they can – like major banks and email services. A chief information security officer we know in the banking industry told us that after the Yahoo breach of a few years ago, banking sites were hit with multiple attempts to log in with credentials stolen from Yahoo. Use long passwords There has been a lot of research about what makes a strong password – which has often led to many people using complex passwords like “7hi5!sMyP@s4w0rd.” But more recent research suggests that what matters much more is that passwords are long. That’s what makes them more resistant to an attempt to guess them by trying many different options. Longer passwords don’t have to be harder to remember: They could be easily recalled phrases like “MyFirstCarWasAToyotaCorolla” or “InHighSchoolIWon9Cross-CountryRaces.” It can be daunting to think about remembering all these different usernames and passwords. Password management software can help – though choose carefully as more than one of them have been breached. It can be even safer – despite conventional wisdom and decades of security advice – to write them down, so long as you trust everyone who has access to your home. Use a third line of defense To add another layer of protection – including against troublesome housemates – many sites (Google, for example) let you turn on what’s called multi-factor authentication. This can be an app on your smartphone that generates a numeric code every 30 seconds or so, or a physical item you plug into your computer’s USB port. While they can afford at least some protection, be wary of sites that send you a text with a code; that method is vulnerable to interception. With these straightforward steps – and the new mindset of thinking like a target who wants to avoid getting hit – you’ll be far less worried when news breaks of the next breach of some company’s enormous data files. Bad guys may get one of your usernames, and maybe even one of your passwords – so you’ll have to change those. But they won’t have all your credentials for all your online accounts. And if you use multi-factor authentication, the bad guys might not even be able to get into the account whose credentials they just stole. Focus on what’s most important to protect, and use simple – but effective – methods to protect yourself and your information. W. David Salisbury, Sherman-Standard Register Professor of Cybersecurity Management, Director Center for Cybersecurity & Data Intelligence, University of Dayton and Rusty Baldwin, Distinguished Research Professor of Computer Science; Director of Research, Center for Cybersecurity and Data Intelligence, University of Dayton This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Body 2:

Opinion

While it is true that globalisation has put some downward pressure on middle-class wages, it has also helped lift millions of people above the global poverty line.

Swedish academic Hans Rosling has identified a worrying trend: not only do many people across advanced economies have no idea that the world is becoming a much better place, but they actually even think the opposite. This is no wonder, when the news focuses on reporting catastrophes, terrorist attacks, wars and famines. Who wants to hear about the fact that every day some 200,000 people around the world are lifted above the US$2-a-day poverty line? Or that more than 300,000 people a day get access to electricity and clean water for the first time every day? These stories of people in low-income countries simply doesn’t make for exciting news coverage. But, as Rosling pointed out in his book Factfulness, it’s important to put all the bad news in perspective. While it is true that globalisation has put some downward pressure on middle-class wages in advanced economies in recent decades, it has also helped lift hundreds of millions of people above the global poverty line – a development that has mostly occurred in South-East Asia. The recent rise of populism that has swept across Western countries, with Trump, Brexit, and the election of populists in Hungary and Italy, among various other factors, is thus of great concern if we care about global welfare. Globalisation is the only way forward to ensure that economic prosperity is shared among all countries and not only a select few advanced economies. While some people glorify the past, one of the big facts of economic history is that until quite recently a significant part of the world population has lived under quite miserable conditions – and this has been true throughout most of human history. The following seven charts show how the world has become a much better place compared to just a few decades ago. 1: Life expectancy continues to rise Even during the Industrial Revolution, average life expectancy across European countries did not exceed around 35 years. This does not imply that most people died in their late 30s or even 40s, since it was mostly very high levels of child mortality rates that pulled down the average. Women dying in childbirth was obviously a big problem too. So were some common diseases such as smallpox and the plague, for example, which now have been completely eradicated in high-income countries. 2: Child mortality continues to fall More than a century ago, child mortality rates were still exceeding 10% – even in high-income countries such as the US and the UK. But thanks to modern medicine, and better public safety in general, this number has been reduced to almost zero in rich countries. Plus, developing economies like India and Brazil now have much lower child mortality rates today than advanced economies had at similar income levels about one century ago. 3. Fertility rates are falling Even though many are concerned about the global population explosion, the fact is that fertility rates have fallen significantly across the globe. UN population estimates largely expect the global population to stabilise at about 11 billion by the end of this century. Moreover, as can be seen from the chart, many developing countries such as Brazil, China and a number of African nations have already switched to a low-fertility regime. While this transition took many advanced economies almost 100 years, starting with the Industrial Revolution, many others have since achieved this over just two to three decades. 4. GDP growth has accelerated in developed countries Technological leaders, the US and Western Europe, have been growing at about 2% per year, on average, for the past 150 years. This means that real income levels roughly double every 36 years. While there were many long-lasting ups and downs, like the Great Depression or the recent Great Recession, the constancy of the long-run growth rate is actually quite miraculous. Low-income countries, including China and India, have been growing at a significantly faster pace in recent decades and are quickly catching up to the West. A 10% growth rate over a prolonged period means that income levels double roughly every seven years. It is obviously good news if prosperity is more shared across the globe. 5. Global income inequality has gone down Max Roser, CC BY-SA While inequality within countries has gone up as a result of globalisation, global inequality has been on a steady downward trend for several decades. This is mostly a result of developing countries such as China and India where hundreds of millions of people have seen their living standards improve. In fact, for the first time ever since the Industrial Revolution, about half of the global population can be considered global middle class. 6. More people are living in democracies Throughout most of human history people lived under oppressive non-democratic regimes. As of today, about half of the human population is living in a democracy. Out of those still living in autocracies, 90% are in China. While the country has recently moved in the other direction, there is reason to believe that continued economic development might eventually lead to democratisation (according to modernisation theory). 7. Conflicts are on the decline Max Roser, CC BY-SA Throughout history, the world has been riven by conflict. In fact, at least two of the world’s largest powers have been at war with each other more than 50% of the time since about 1500. While the early 20th century was especially brutal with two world wars in rapid succession, the postwar period has been very peaceful. For the first time ever, there has been no war or conflict in Western Europe in about three generations, And international organisations including the EU and the UN have led to a more stable world. Julius Probst, Doctoral Researcher in Economic History, Lund University This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Body 2:

Corruption in corporate sector must be flushed out, writes Kerala MLA Sabarinadhan

Giving it back to sexual harassers: My moments of glory in 'Me Too'

An open letter on MeToo: The arrival of a 'woke' collective conscience

How the Sabarimala issue has promoted period shaming among young girls

Smriti Irani’s rhetoric is a reminder that women should raise our political standards

Sabarimala: BJP stirs religious cauldron while Congress stokes the fire

Rohith Vemula was the quintessence of 'million mutinies': Author Nikhila Henry to TNM

'Me Too': Why we must shift focus from the survivor to society

What India could learn from Ethiopia about food security

Why opposing the 102-km elevated corridor in Bengaluru isn’t ‘anti-development’

A For Apathy, B For Blabber And C For Cancer – Say Cancer, it will set you free

My tryst with bipolar disorder: How I fought through several bouts of mania to embrace it

Why Transgender Persons Bill 2018 is a healthcare nightmare for the community

Open letter to Rahul Gandhi: Your Kerala leadership has failed miserably on Sabarimala

How sex trafficking survivors in India undergo re-victimisation by the judiciary

Outlandish claims at Indian Science Congress: A 6-point rebuttal by a science activist

Confessions of a Karnataka voter: Don’t blame us for the MLAs we never voted for

Why farm loan waivers may be helpful to farmers in the short term

Data breaches are inevitable – here's how to protect yourself anyway

Seven charts that show the world is actually becoming a better place