Editorials March (for Current Affairs – 25 August)
(Editorials from The Hindu 22nd -31st March 2013)
Caste, corruption and romanticism
Utsa Patnaik, a noted economist said in a small note that she circulated “Ashis
Nandy had earlier made approving remarks on the 1988 Deorala burning to
death of a young widow in the name of sati (terming it a courageous act in a
piece in the Indian Express ), and more recently has reportedly made a
factually baseless, highly offensive comment on Dalits and corruption. Given
the crudity of these positions one wonders how ‘nuanced’ and ‘ironic’ can an
academic get. There is nothing here to surprise us, for Nandy has always
projected a consistent intellectual position.
“His writings, starting from The Intimate Enemy clearly represent an
Indianised version of Romanticism, the much-analysed trend of thinking
which valorises pre-capitalist traditions, local cultures and subjectivities while
critically opposing the rationalism and homogenizing values of industrial
capitalism.” This is a perceptive observation of Mr. Nandy’s academic
romanticism. Such romaticisation of caste and culture has deeper scholastic
roots.
‘High against low’
Mr. Nandy is not alone in positioning the cultural character of Indian society in
a top down manner and romanticising the cultural ethos of ‘high as against
low.’ This has been the cultural morale of the so-called mainstream sociological
scholarship in India. The caste/class background of Indian sociologists, what
they see and study in Indian society, is presented as normative and the victims
of the social process are expected to affirm those theories.
This sociological methodology was invented by M.N. Srinivas who studied the
Indian caste system from his own cultural standpoint and designated the
process of perceived change as Sanskritisation. A systemic role was assigned to
an ancient Indian language, which was already dead. Yet he turned that into a
theoretical category. Its use was only in the Hindu ritual realm at that time and
no Brahmin family was using that language in day-to-day life. That linguisticcultural construction was deployed as positivist and modernist. He
romanticised the so-called ‘low castes imitating the high castes,’ so much so
that the whole academic discourse in India sought to be mesmerised; it was
also projected as a creative utopia.
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The Dalit-Bahujan life was essentially culturally inclusive as against the
Brahminic exclusionism. Srinivas picked up some common food practices
between Brahminic and Dalit-Bahujan (who ate vegetables alongside meat
foods historically and discovered many vegetarian food items) and asserted
that the lower castes were getting Sansrkitised. He discovered that
Sanskritisation among the lower castes was deterministic and transformative.
It was to suggest that no other forms of lower caste mobilisation were required.
Though sociologists like A.R. Desai disagreed with this pseudo-transformation
theory, they were ruthlessly marginalised.
Polygamy and divorce
Another noted sociologist, Andre Beteille, found Sanskritisation taking place at
a systemic level on a continuous basis. He said: “Divorce, separation, polygamy
etc., were common among the Dalits. The fact that they consider divorce bad is
the impact of Sanskritization.” What does he mean by saying polygamy was
‘common’ among Dalits? Does he mean every second Dalit man had/has more
than one wife? What about Brahmin men? Not even one in thousand was/is
polygamous? Was polygamy rare among Brahmins and Kshatriyas? Where did
he get his statistics about ‘Dalit polygamy’ being common and Brahmin
polygamy being uncommon or rare? One hopes that the census data would
include caste and polygamy relationship among all castes and religions.
His assertion that “they [Dalits] consider divorce bad” because of
Sanskritisation is believed to be normative. How would he theorise the
increased divorce rates among the upper castes — particularly among
Brahmins? Is there no opposite linguistic-cultural concept for that? Shall we
call it Palisation, as Pali was the mass language when Sanskrit was the court
language? Or if we say that the process of upper castes opting for increased
divorce or meat eating should be theorised as Dalitisation, what would they
say? Would they not ask: what is this concept called Dalitisation?
Yet another sociologist, Dipankar Gupta, studied the Indian caste system very
seriously and told the United Nations Committee on Elimination of Racial
Discrimination (CERD) examining ‘Discrimination based on descent’ in 2007,
that “Brahmins, Kshatriyas, Baniyas, Shudras and Dalits no more exist in
India.” Is this romanticisation or mesmerisation of Indian sociology?
Corruption not a commodity
Ashis Nandy, a noted social-psychologist, spread the theoretical net of
corruption to all the Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes and Other Backward
Classes. He discovered that the ‘most’ corrupt in Indian society came from
these social groups. Has he not followed in the footsteps of MNS’ theory of
“lower castes imitate the higher castes?” Does not such a statement
romanticise corruption? And does not such location of ‘corruption’ among the
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poorest of poor endanger the whole social science discourse? Corruption is not
a commodity that becomes accessible for every human being on the street. It
operates, as the Sanskrit language operated among the bhoodevatas , among
those who have money and power. Power among the upper castes of India is
like the thread in a garland. It connects with the other quite coherently. This is
not true of Dalit-Bahujan castes. A few here and there in real power (only
Mayawati was in that category) structures do not and cannot connect to the
most poverty ridden masses.
Several commentators, including Utsa Patnaik, pointed out that Mr. Nandy
supported Sati , the theory of Mohan Bhagawat that Bharat is ‘rape free’ while
‘India is rapist,’ as it was influenced by western capitalism. It was like saying
that ‘feudal rape is pure and capitalist rape is impure.’ Mr. Nandy is a
Gandhian democrat. He imbibed Gandhism through Nehruvian ideology. For
Gandhi, castes were necessary to maintain the balance of social system. For
Nehru, corruption was the necessary greasing oil for the state engine to run.
Mr. Nandy transforms this greasing oil theory into a theory of ‘social
equaliser.’
‘Republican Utopia’
For his mode of Indian sociology, SC/ST/OBCs travelling ticketless in trains is
equivalent to upper caste air travel with a stay in a five star hotel, without
spending money from their personal account. This theory resembles the
sociological theory of Andre Beteille that when Dalits eat vegetarian they get
equalised with Brahmins. Mr. Nandy discovered a majestic ‘Republican Utopia’
in the Indian mode of corruption.
If “Sanskritisation” and “corruption” become part of the “Republican Utopia,”
that republican utopia would match neither the ancient republican dream of
Plato nor the late medieval utopian dream of Thomas More. Caste is a concrete
thing at hand as slavery and class were in Europe. There is no positive sense in
the notion or practice of corruption. As death cannot equalise human life,
corruption cannot equalise castes. There is no way that the Dalit-Bahujan
theory or Ambedkarism could negotiate with this funny theory. Neither could
democratic or Marxist theory.
Equaliser theory
Since the upper castes are already corrupt, an equaliser theory is invented in
the very life of Dalit-Bahujan. As the Dalit-Bahujan have no theoretical
resource to counter such theories, some rushed to the police station to stop this
kind of theorisation. Mr. Nandy had an intellectual answer for that recourse. “I
will sit in jail and write a bigger theory.” He cites Gandhi and Nehru writing
their theories in jail.
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At this stage, the Dalit democratic movement cannot afford to send such
theoreticians to jail and give more credence to their theories. Let it not be
forgotten that there is no living Ambedkar among us to write better theory
without ever going to jail. Dr. Ambedkar overtook Nehru in a recent survey
with his unparalleled theory of ‘Dalit democracy’ as the equaliser. In due
course, he will also overtake Gandhiji in greatness. The best way to put this
kind of sociology in its place is to burn more midnight oil to write a better
theory of Dalit sociological imagination — not of utopia.
(The author is Director, Centre for the Study of Social Exclusion and Inclusive
Policy, Maulana Azad National Urdu University, Hyderabad)
The Dalit-Bahujan theory or Ambedkarism cannot negotiate with
funny theories of sociologists like Ashis Nandy. The best way to
counter them is to write a better theory
Innovate against child deaths
Among countries with comparable development indicators, India has the
potential to address many of its challenges with unique home-grown resources.
The information technology sector, for example, has transformed the country’s
economy and is currently helping expand access to a wide range of quality
services for some of the poorest in India. India’s space and atomic energy
programmes are outstanding examples of indigenous technical ingenuity.
As economic growth continues to decelerate, it is critical that we do not forget
the important role of indigenous scientific innovation, in particular, to improve
livelihoods and promote well-being. To reiterate what Jawaharlal Nehru said:
“It is science alone that can solve the problems of hunger and poverty, of
insanitation and illiteracy.”
Child health is one area where investments in innovation can result in
tremendous social and economic returns. India nearly halved child mortality
rates between 1990 and 2010. Improved health-care services and access to
simple health interventions, such as oral rehydration therapy (ORT) to address
severe cases of diarrhoea, have contributed to this encouraging reduction of
child deaths.
Link with malnutrition
However, in 2010, experts estimate that almost 17 lakh children less than five
years of age died in India. This is still far too many. Pneumonia and diarrhoea,
together, account for a significant proportion of these deaths. There are even
more hospitalisations and outpatient visits from these two diseases. They each
take a tremendous emotional and financial toll on Indian families and we need
to take these threats seriously. It is unacceptable that children die of
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preventable and treatable illnesses. All families in India deserve equal access to
health innovations that could help children and protect children.
Diarrhoea is caused by several different organisms and is most often spread
through contaminated food or water and person-to-person contact. Certain
types of diarrhoea are more serious than others. Acute watery diarrhoea is
associated with rapid dehydration that can last for hours or even days. If fluids
and electrolytes are not replenished, diarrhoea can be life threatening.
Children who suffer from malnutrition are more vulnerable to the causes of
diarrhoea. In an unfortunate twist, diarrhoea also in turn perpetuates
malnutrition and leaves children prone to infections.
To address an issue such as diarrhoea, safe water and sanitation do matter, but
require large-scale investment in infrastructure and in maintenance by the
government. For individual and community level management of diarrhoea,
you need to bring the lab to the field to understand what causes the disease.
Some of the first studies here aimed to determine the cause of severe diarrhoea
in India — the kind that causes life-threatening dehydration. Researchers
found that a viral pathogen called rotavirus was the most common cause.
Rotavirus is of particular concern because it is so ubiquitous, leaving nearly all
children — rich and poor — at risk. However, outcomes vary greatly depending
on the family’s circumstances. For a child of high socioeconomic status with
consistent access to care, the virus will likely cause only minor illness. For less
fortunate children, it could be a death sentence if appropriate care is not
provided or is provided late in illness.
Use this package
To reduce the burden of diarrhoea in India, we must try to reach all children
with a comprehensive package of proven interventions. This includes access to
ORT, zinc supplementation, exclusive breastfeeding for the first six months of
a child’s life, and improvements in hygiene, sanitation and drinking water.
However, because rotavirus is so contagious and resilient, these approaches
alone will not adequately prevent diarrhoea. Vaccination against rotavirus
offers significant hope for protecting children from this disease.
We know already that countries that have introduced rotavirus vaccines have
experienced major reductions in severe diarrhoea. Several academic and
research institutions in India, including mine, have been involved in the
development of indigenous rotavirus vaccines that could, if all goes well,
reduce the number of illnesses and hospitalisation due to diarrhoea.
If rotavirus vaccines were introduced at current immunisation levels, we could
save tens of thousands of lives, and even more hospitalisation and outpatient
visits. This could save India more than Rs.100 crore in annual medical costs.
The savings to families would also be significant.
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Having contributed significant funding, the government has been a terrific
supporter of developing new rotavirus vaccines in India. As with the rotavirus
vaccine development efforts, we have the resources and the capacity in India to
address our most pressing health needs, if we use a strategic approach that
prioritises problems and then makes a concerted effort to address them.
However, development of a product such as a vaccine is not sufficient. We
must also work together to develop and implement policies that ensure that
everyone has access to the fruits of our scientific endeavours.
(Dr. Gagandeep Kang is a professor in the Department of Gastrointestinal
Sciences at Christian Medical College, Vellore.)
As with the development of the rotavirus vaccines to combat
diarrhoea, India has the capacity and resources to address the
country’s most pressing health issues
Building it brick by brick
When they come together at Durban, the South African city that has hosted
mega conferences of hundreds of countries in the past, the small but
significant group of five leaders from Brazil, Russia, India, China, and the host
country will be completing their first round of summit meetings. South Africa,
itself a late entrant into BRICS in 2011, is conscious of what the event means to
it, a demonstration to its own people and also to the rest of Africa about it
belonging to a select transcontinental group: new, rich in promise and
potential, and worthy of attention. True to its political tradition of solidarity
with the rest of Africa, South Africa as the host is also leveraging the event for a
focus on all of the continent. Predictably the theme of the summit chosen by
the host is “BRICS and Africa — partnership for development, integration and
industrialisation.” The African Union is being invited as a guest. Interestingly,
the President of Egypt is also expected.
Diplomatic perspective
Apart from the symbolism and the ceremony, after five years of evolution, how
does one see BRICS as a grouping? What does it bring to the countries that are
members? What does it convey to the countries that are outside it, to the G-8,
the original rich man’s club, to other groupings? Here is a diplomatic
practitioner’s perspective based on some experience of summits hitherto.
It is by now well recognised that some factors underlying the creation a decade
ago of a clever acronym BRIC (without South Africa at that stage) have
changed. The BRIC ‘brand’ was the invention of an investment and marketing
guru Jim O Neill of Goldman Sachs. At a period of financial crisis and
economic collapse in the affluent West, he was looking to identify countries
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with high growth, rising demand in markets, and attractive yield for
investments. In the buoyant period of over 8-9 per cent growth in China and
India and more modest but still robust growth in Brazil and Russia, the logo of
BRIC as an investment destination was attractive. Today, seen from this solely
macro-economic perspective, the reality is different. There are questions about
the growth trajectories in India and Brazil to name only two; pointers to others
that are growing faster such as Mexico, Turkey or Indonesia, and larger
uncertainties about the economic scenario. BRICS sceptics, not confined to the
West, but also in our countries thus ask legitimate questions about the salience
of the grouping.
But to focus only on the micro or even macro economic issues is to miss the
point that BRICS has moved beyond that bandwidth. With it adopting the
character of a ‘forum’ with leaders meeting at the summit and others —
foreign, finance and trade ministers, national security advisers, apex business
organisations, academics, bankers — on the sidelines, it is acquiring an identity
as a different kind of mini multilateral platform. What is its evolving identity,
then?
Some features are easy to see. BRICS countries are all large, though largeness
in size or population is a relative attribute. But together they constitute 40 per
cent of the world’s population, 25 per cent of its land size and over 25 per cent
of the global GDP and thus by any standards have collective weight. Secondly,
though Mexico, South Korea, and Turkey have also shown remarkable growth,
they are members or aligned to the rich man’s club of OECD and have identity
and interests with the developed world. Broadly speaking, BRICS countries
regard themselves as developing (Russia being an exception) and it is still a
fact that the perspectives of the two groups are different on many international
issues. (The G-20, another mechanism, is a framework that brings together
both).
Third, the BRICS countries are conscious — although they may not proclaim it
— that the convergence in their political and security interests is limited, and
hence are not likely to spend too much time on these issues. Two countries are
already permanent members of the Security Council (China and Russia), and
India and Brazil are aspirants; two are acknowledged nuclear powers and India
is a claimant, and there are other divergences on strategic issues. All leaders
are sensitive to these differences and the summits take place despite these
divergences, and not to resolve them. Notwithstanding, with regard to some
international issues, there can be commonality of approaches and hence the
expectation that they may look at Syria, Iran or the Palestinian issue in a
nuanced way. BRICS leaders are also careful not to see or, in any way, project
their forum as adversarial to the U.S. or the West. That simplistic and headline
grabbing approach is only that of lazy commentators, both in the West and in
our own.
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Within the establishments of BRICS countries, it is recognised that BRICS is
essentially a work in progress. The expectations are modest and pragmatic. It
will be fair to say that the one-to-one meetings between the partners, all of who
are important, are a value in itself during the summits. BRICS does create an
opportunity, for example, for our Prime Minister to meet for the first time, the
new Chinese leader, Xi Jinping, in an intimate setting. Beyond this collateral
advantage, BRICS may also help share thinking on medium term global
governance issues. Current examples are the reform of the IMF and the World
Bank, a greater say for countries with our capacities in such institutions, state
of WTO or climate change negotiations and such agendas. There may not be
complete identity of views on these issues, but given their profiles and resource
endowments, a certain empathy among them is to be expected.
Substantive specifics
Looking at the forthcoming summit in Durban, some substantive specifics may
be noted. Engagement with Africa is important individually for India, China
and Brazil though their priority regions and models for cooperation have been
different. It will be interesting to see the competitive and the cooperative
dimensions come into play when they look at Africa collectively. The idea of a
BRICS bank, first discussed in Delhi, is being examined at technical levels, but
it may receive further encouragement. A notable achievement already is the
BRICS network of research institutions to pool together the intellectual capital,
easier to design than the pooling of financial capital.
Finally, for South Africa, Brazil and India, there is also the interesting question
of how to shape another forum of their own, IBSA, which brings together the
three large and vibrant democracies from the three continents of Africa, Latin
America and Asia. BRICS and IBSA have overlapping but distinct
memberships and identities and the three countries need to think of what they
can do together that is different from BRICS. This is also an issue that India
will have to address as it will host the IBSA process later in the year.
(B.S. Prakash is a former Ambassador, currently a visiting Professor at
Jamia Milia University and a contributor to Gateway House: Indian Council
on Global Relations)
BRICS summits take place despite divergences among member
countries. The expectations, therefore, are modest and pragmatic
New chapter, old challenges
President Xi Jinping is expected to hold his first meeting as China’s new leader
with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh this week, along the sidelines of the
March 26 BRICS Summit in South Africa. The talks — they are expected to be a
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brief event according to officials in Beijing, who cited the limitations of Mr.
Xi’s “tight schedule” — will mark India’s first major engagement with the new
Chinese leadership, which took over following the conclusion of the National
People’s Congress, or Parliament, on March 17.
China’s new leaders have, as yet, given little indication of how they plan to take
ties with India forward. Mr. Xi, in his first interview after taking over as
President, outlined a “five-point proposal” to improve relations with India,
when he met with a group of journalists from the BRICS countries (Brazil,
Russia, India, China and South Africa) in Beijing on March 19.
Mr. Xi’s proposal had little in the way of specifics, and did not offer new ideas.
The five proposals called for: maintaining strategic communication and
keeping ties on the right track; expanding cooperation in infrastructure and
mutual investment; strengthening cultural ties; increasing coordination on
multilateral affairs; and “accommodating each other’s core concerns” to
“properly handle differences.”
If anything can be gleaned from Mr. Xi’s remarks, it is that the new leadership
is yet to devote its full attention to ties with India. The “five points” Mr. Xi
listed were, in fact, almost entirely similar to the five-pronged proposal made
by his predecessor, Hu Jintao, during a visit to India one year ago, for the
BRICS Summit in New Delhi. Since taking over as the Communist Party of
China’s (CPC) General Secretary in November last year, it is clear that Mr. Xi,
and the top leadership, have been preoccupied with the transition at home. On
the foreign policy front as well, India does not figure high on the list of
Beijing’s current priorities.
Continuity
China’s present focus is largely on the United States – particularly, its “pivot”
or rebalancing towards Asia — and Japan, following recent tensions over the
disputed Diaoyu or Senkaku islands in the East China Sea. Analysts in Beijing
see the annual press conference given by the Chinese Foreign Minister as a
somewhat inexact indicator of China’s current foreign policy priorities. The
briefing given by outgoing Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi in Beijing on March 9,
a carefully choreographed affair in which the questions were arranged weeks in
advance, focused primarily on China’s relations with the U.S., Japan and
Russia, the destination of Mr. Xi’s first overseas State visit. Other areas that
found specific mention were the tensions on the Korean peninsula, ties with
Africa, the Syrian crisis and relations with Asean.
Chinese foreign policy analysts acknowledge that India may not be high on the
list of China’s present diplomatic priorities. This, they suggest, is not entirely a
bad thing, and is more a reflection of the increasingly stable nature of the
relationship rather than a lack of interest. Chinese officials point out that only
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three years ago, ties were persistently tested with recurring differences over the
boundary dispute and Tibet. In 2009, for instance, regular reports in India
described aggressive patrolling and “incursions” by the People’s Liberation
Army (PLA) in border areas, while in China, anger over exiled Tibetan spiritual
leader the Dalai Lama’s visit to Tawang cast a shadow on ties. Four years on,
both issues have appeared to have become less of an irritant, and relations are
certainly more stable. As Hu Shisheng, a leading South Asia strategic analyst at
the China Institutes for Contemporary International Relations in Beijing puts
it, “India-China relations are not [in a state of] disturbance,” even if they are
secondary to other more pressing concerns.
As a key partner
The CPC’s official newspaper, the People’s Daily , recently suggested there are
two areas where China now sees its main interests with India. A recent
editorial pointed to the border issue being “controlled effectively” and an
increasing focus on trade and multilateral issues as heralding “a new chapter”
in ties. The newspaper argued that a new focus on trade frictions was, in fact, a
welcome sign that a relationship historically burdened by strategic mistrust
was now becoming more “normal.”
For Chinese companies, India has certainly emerged as an increasingly
important destination for investment and project contracts, particularly in the
power and telecom sectors. According to the Indian Embassy in Beijing,
Chinese companies are executing $55 billion worth of projects in India — more
than in any other country. China also sees India as an important partner on
multilateral issues like trade and climate change. Coming under increasing
pressure from the West to take on more responsibility as the second largest
economy and single biggest emitter of greenhouse gases, China stands to gain
by aligning itself with other developing countries. Mr. Xi suggested as much in
his proposal: his third recommendation called on both countries to “jointly
safeguard the legitimate rights and interests of developing countries.”
Core concerns
Mr. Xi, in his proposal, also called for both countries to “accommodate each
other’s core concerns.” How both countries will do so remains to be seen: they
have recently followed an approach that has sought to “manage” — if not
simply ignore — outstanding differences on difficult core concerns, rather than
seek to engage on those issues. For China, the Tibetan issue ranks highest in
terms of its concerns. India’s crackdown on Tibetan protests in April last year
during the visit of Hu Jintao to New Delhi eased Chinese anxieties, even as the
heavy-handed approach by the police faced criticism from both rights groups
in India and from the exiled Tibetan community.
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China, for its part, has appeared less willing to deal with thorny issues such as
transboundary rivers or its continuing projects in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir
(PoK). China’s recent approval for three new dams on the Brahmaputra were
reported to have caught Indian officials by surprise, not finding mention in
recent talks, even if the projects are run-of-the-river dams that might not
significantly impact downstream flows. China has also appeared to continue
with its investments and projects in PoK, maintaining that its involvement was
without prejudice to India’s dispute with Pakistan. It has, however, sought to
mollify India’s concerns on Kashmir by quietly withdrawing its issuing of
“stapled visas.” Dr. Singh may not raise these contentious issues during his
brief meeting with Mr. Xi, which is unlikely to see the leaders engage on
specifics.
Next month’s expected visit of Defence Minister A.K. Antony to China will
provide a platform to mark the real start of engagement with Beijing’s new
leadership, and will shed some light on how a new chapter in ties will begin to
confront old challenges.
China’s new leaders have, as yet, given little indication of how
they plan to take ties with India forward
Caught in a web of misogyny
Is the online space as unsafe for women as the real world, especially if the
woman in question is outspoken?
The case of Adria Richards, a technology evangelist from San Francisco, has
been trending on social networks over the past week, bringing to the fore
issues ranging from the prevalent misogyny online to whether crude sexist
jokes no longer matter.
On March 17, Ms Richards, while attending a technology conference, tweeted a
photo of some men in the audience with the message: “Not cool. Jokes about
forking repo’s in a sexual way and ‘big’ dongles. Right behind me #pycon”.
By invoking the conference’s code of conduct, she ensured that the men were
removed from the auditorium. “Have you ever had a group of men sitting right
behind you making jokes that caused you to feel uncomfortable? Well, that just
happened this week but instead of shrinking down in my seat, I did something
about it,” she wrote on her blog, www.butyoureagirl.com.
One of the men who was removed is said to have lost his job. And in the
ensuing days, Ms Richards faced an online backlash with “dongle” jokes, crass
abuse and even rape threats. Groups of hackers launched DDoS (distributed
denial of service) attacks to bring down her blog and the website of the
company she works for.
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In a dramatic turn of events, her company, SendGrid, fired her. On March 21,
the company’s CEO Jim Franklin reasoned on the company blog: “Publicly
shaming the offenders — and bystanders — was not the appropriate way to
handle the situation … It has become obvious that her actions have strongly
divided the same community she was supposed to unite. As a result, she can no
longer be effective in her role at SendGrid.”
Since her firing, several people have shown their support to Ms Richards on
her Twitter handle, @adriarichards. A search on Twitter for Adria Richards or
the keyword “donglegate” throws up the polarised opinion online.
Misogyny is becoming a persistent problem online on forums and social
networks.
In September last, a Sikh woman from Ohio State University, Balpreet Kaur,
was the subject of a tasteless post on the Reddit social forum when a user going
by the name “European Douchebag” posted a candid photo of her commenting
on her facial hair.
Having discovered the post, Ms Kaur joined the conversation. “Yes, I’m a
baptised Sikh woman with facial hair. Yes, I realise that my gender is often
confused and I look different than most women,” she wrote and explained how
Sikhism propagated not altering one’s natural appearance. The person who
posted the photo eventually apologised.
Closer home too, Twitterverse does get uncomfortable for women. Active
Twitter users, poet Meena Kandasamy, actor Gul Panag and singer Chinmayi,
often have their Twitter timelines cluttered with abusive remarks. In some
cases, the anonymity that the Web offers seems to fuel the hatred more.
karthik.subramanian @thehindu.co.in
Support grows online for American woman who gets fired from
her company after tweeting about sexist comments
Time to hit the brakes on congestion
In January, the Ministry of Urban Development floated the idea of a
congestion charge on private vehicles that are increasingly choking city centres
and imposing a variety of costs on all classes of road users. The Ministry has
advised States to identify the most congested parts of cities and get a proper
study done prior to adopting a charging system.
The Ministry’s suggestion coincides with the completion of a full decade of
congestion charging in London, one of the most prominent examples of such a
levy. Although that system has not been able to expand for political reasons, its
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operation in the original area has reduced traffic volumes and produced net
revenues that are reinvested in public transport. Evidently, the case for some
form of restraint on private vehicles crowding city centres is strong today. A
recent study conducted in 25 cities including Singapore and Stockholm by the
International Association of Public Transport (UITP) found that the success of
a charging programme depends on the severity of the congestion problem and
presence of strong political will.
A charge on private vehicles in selected areas and at particular times of day
would be a reasonable response to externalities they create. Choosing to drive
one’s own car or other vehicle into a city centre puts pressure on limited road
space, contributes to pollution and global warming, and results in reduced
mobility for all. The cumulative time spent in traffic is a major economic loss.
Congestion charging schemes therefore levy a premium for the privilege of
using a personal car, and the funds thus collected should be ploughed back
exclusively into public transport options. This makes them robust, affordable
and sustainable. A number of technologies are available to implement a
congestion charging system. The challenge is to pick one that reduces
transaction costs, and is sealed against revenue leakage.
While the benefits of such a system appear to be obvious, two recent research
projects put the claims to empirical analysis and came up with interesting
insights on actual and potential social benefits.
Applying mathematical models to traffic patterns, transport economist Charles
Komanoff estimated that driving a car into specific congested areas of New
York City’s borough of Manhattan on a weekday produces a cost of $160 for
everyone else — a negative externality in terms of idling vehicles and lost
productivity. He therefore advocates a graded congestion charge on private
vehicles and a taxi surcharge based on place and time of day, with a similarly
calibrated reduction in urban train fares, and total elimination of fares for
buses.
The resulting model is revenue neutral, but one that adds tremendous gains in
time saved by everyone. That would do wonders for the economy — potentially,
a massive net surplus is generated.
Equally interesting is a piece of research by economist Rafael Lalive of the
University of Lausanne and his colleagues, who studied the effects of an
increase in railway service frequency on road traffic externalities in Germany.
Increase in service frequency results in fewer severe road accidents and less
pollution from carbon monoxide, nitrogen monoxide and nitrogen dioxide,
among other things, according to the discussion paper published by the Center
for Economic Policy Research in February.
13
Galloping vehicle numbers
Such evidence-based insights point to the need for a relook at urban transport
policy in India. In 1975, the number of cars sold in the country was a mere
23,000. But in a single year, 2011-12, the production of passenger vehicles
touched 26.18 lakh. Most of these clog urban roads, marginalising pedestrians,
cyclists and the disabled. The flood of vehicles has left the traffic police unable
to do its job with even a modicum of efficiency and local governments are
engaged in a futile race to create more and more road space.
Equally alarming is the impact of the rising tide of “automobility” on imports.
The Union Budget for this year takes note of the staggering burden imposed by
petroleum imports at $124.5 billion during April-December 2012, more than a
third of the total. A steady increase in oil imports merely to keep people mobile
is bound to contribute to higher demand-led oil prices and a worsening current
account deficit.
A congestion charge is therefore a pragmatic goal to balance traffic asymmetry
in the most crowded cities.
Moving to such a system will, of course, be feasible only when adequate
investments have been made in public transport infrastructure. Governments
are reluctant to incentivise citizens with comfortable bus and rail systems and
to charge those who insist on driving (exempting some users to ensure equity).
States today baulk at making investments in modern bus and rail systems of
scale. Even the six-year-old National Urban Transport Policy, which
emphasises the importance of public transport, walking and cycling is treated
merely as a discussion document. The policy gear is in reverse mode, and
needs to change quickly.
ananthakrishnan.g@thehindu.co.in
With the flood of vehicles growing, the case for imposing some
form of cost on private cars crowding city centres is strong
BRICS and mortar for India’s global role - The
Hindu
India is at a unique geopolitical moment. On the one hand its neighbourhood
and the larger Asian continent are being unpredictably redefined. The United
States has declared, if somewhat ambiguously, its reorientation or “pivot”
towards Asia, recognising the region’s economic force moving forward, or
perhaps merely countering enhanced Chinese power. India and China are
charting new geographies of contests, the Indian Ocean and South China Sea.
The “Arab Spring” has exposed the fundamental inadequacies in Middle
14
Eastern and North African governing structures but has also given rise to an
uncertain political future in an important energy-producing region. Last, but
certainly not least, China’s growing assertiveness in the Asia-Pacific region has
led to increased, if sometimes seemingly unnecessary, conflict with neighbours
in Southeast Asia and Japan.
On the other hand, the world is seeing a once-in-a-century churn. The global
board of directors that sit on the high table and define rules for conduct of
political and economic governance are now unrecognisable from the lot just
after World War II. India must seize the moment to shape these revisions of
rules devised by the Atlantic countries and defend its growth and development
interests in areas such as trade, Intellectual Property Rights (IPR), space,
climate, and energy policy, among others.
Regional order and global governance are both in flux and demanding India’s
attention. This is not unique by itself. What is different this time around is that
India has the capacity, increased capabilities and enhanced level of
demonstrated intent to engage with this dual external relations challenge. In
order to attain the global power status it desires, India must walk and chew
gum at the same time. It must tend to its immediate and extended Asian
neighbourhood while also engaging with the task of shaping a new rules-based
political and economic order. BRICS represents a uniquely appropriate
platform and flexible mechanism with which India can address this dual
imperative.
Role for three
Engaging with China and Russia in an environment free of the sharp edges
often wrought in bilateral negotiations will catalyse congruence over an array
of mutually important issues. Any stable Asian order must have at its core, a
certain level of accord among these three large continental powers. The past
would need to be defrayed and the path for future integration would need to
sidestep suspicion and history. Annual BRICS summit-level discussions on
political and economic matters allow the three countries such an arena of
tactical camaraderie. The current moment allows a unique opportunity for the
three to shape a new construct for Asia amidst the regional flux. Perhaps at
some stage it may be worthwhile having a summit level RIC meeting on the
sidelines of BRICS to discuss this Asian project.
On resetting and reshaping economic and political governance, BRICS has the
potential to be the new (and often criticised) game changer. The sheer size and
rate of growth of intra-BRICS trade and economic exchange will allow each of
these countries to exert their collective weight for their individual gains. Who
gains more should not matter, as long as every member benefits from this
dispensation and the order is visibly equitable.
15
There are a few benefits that India must seek through and with the BRICS.
First, there are many multilateral organisations within which a “BRICS-bloc”
can exert significant leverage. The U.N. and World Trade Organization are two
such forums. While geopolitical and economic thinking among BRICS is not
always in-sync, where there is consensus (and the areas are increasing rapidly)
BRICS could be a compelling voice. Like they did on the debates on noninterference and “Responsibility to Protect.” Similarly, India’s views on climate
change, financial norms, trade rules and so on could also benefit from BRICS’s
aggregate voice. Of course the UNSC membership issue strikes a discordant
note but it should not cannibalise the possible coming together on other
matters.
Barrier against slowdown
Second, as economic powerhouses and regional hubs, intra-BRICS market
integration can insulate these nations from western economic slowdown. The
Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) stagnation
is impacting BRICS growth, with multi-percentage point GDP dips in India
and China. BRICS market integration could leverage the economic power of
emerging world economies by sparking increased trade and foreign
investment, especially if done in local currencies. Only China is part of India’s
top 15 trading partners, making the BRICS forum an attractive stage from
which India can promote economic ties with other dynamic economies. The
BRICS development bank, option of holding each others’ currencies as
reserves, stronger trade facilitation and eventually a comprehensive BRICS
economic partnership agreement are all worthy possibilities.
For inclusive growth
Third, the BRICS are each experiencing rapid development with uniquely
national characteristics. However, despite growing middle class populations,
BRICS hold the lion’s share of the world’s impoverished population. These
nations must take increased responsibility for a new global development
agenda, incorporating inclusive growth, sustainable development and poverty
alleviation. BRICS is a platform not only to learn from each other’s
development experiences but also the instrument that can define new rules for
health care, education and IPR for the billions at the bottom of the pyramid.
The collective BRICS experience around social policy could be beneficially
shared with others as well. A forum (like the OECD) or clearing-house to
disburse this information would prove a relatively low-cost measure producing
substantial insight into development efforts, technology sharing, low-cost and
sustainable energy generation, information technology and manufacturing.
By drawing on collective BRICS brainpower, local development efforts will be
catalysed. For example, sharing China’s experience on infrastructure
16
development or poverty reduction or Brazil’s in clean-fuel generation could be
beneficial for India currently lacking the ability to take full advantage of its
economic potential.
Is BRICS just a catchy acronym masking the haphazard, slapping together of
five developing, yet ultimately incompatible, nations? India should respond
with an emphatic no. At this unique moment, when India faces a multitude of
challenges seeking its attention both towards the region and the global stage,
BRICS provides a flexible platform to respond to both.
(Samir Saran is vice president and Daniel Rubin is Henry Luce Fellow at the
Observer Research Foundation.)
New Delhi finally has a platform to assert its might and rewrite
the rules of global, political and economic governance
Everyone needs a place to go
Keo Samon, a rice farmer in southeastern Cambodia, had no toilet in her
home. Nor was there even an outhouse or latrine for Keo, her husband and five
daughters. Instead, they would defecate on land around the home, or in the
rice fields.
That changed after the Water Supply and Sanitation Collaborative Council, a
United Nations partner, began to work with her village. Keo’s family, along
with 30 others, attended community-led awareness sessions, built simple dry
toilets and joined the drive to make their village “open defecation-free.”
“In the past, I did not know the consequences of defecating outdoors. It was
simply my habit, like others in my village. We were not aware of the
importance of good hygiene. But now, I am very excited to have my latrine,”
Keo said.
What good does a toilet do? More than you may imagine. Adequate sanitation
prevents disease or malnutrition caused by contaminated water. Open
defecation, practiced by more than a billion people around the world, is among
the main causes of diarrhoea, which kills more than three quarters of a million
children, aged five or under, each year.
Sanitation is also a necessary path to ensure the protection and empowerment
of women and girls. When schools lack toilets, girls stay home when they are
menstruating. When adequate sanitation is unavailable, women and girls are
forced to take their private needs to the open, leaving them subject to sexual
abuse.
17
Finally there is the economic argument. Poor water and sanitation costs
developing countries around $260 billion a year — 1.5 per cent of their Gross
Domestic Product. On the other hand, every dollar invested can bring a fivefold return by keeping people healthy and productive.
So, it is difficult to understand why, in 2013, 2.5 billion people around the
world still lack access to adequate sanitation. More people have cell phones
than toilets in today’s world.
Millennium goals
Since the adoption of the Millennium Development Goals (MDG) in the year
2000, global poverty rates have been reduced by half. So has the proportion of
people without access to improved sources of water. Two hundred million slum
dwellers live better lives. Enrolment in school has increased dramatically. The
global mobilisation behind the MDGs has been a remarkable success that has
changed the world’s approach to development for the better. Yet, with just over
1,000 days remaining before the 2015 deadline for achieving the MDGs, we are
not even close to reaching the goal on proper sanitation. That is why I am, on
behalf of the Secretary-General and the U.N., launching a call to action on
sanitation as we mark the beginning of the International Year on Water
Cooperation.
Three ways forward
There are three things we can do to speed up progress on sanitation. First, we
should speed up the elimination of open defecation — country by country,
community by community, family by family. We need to talk about the
problem, and not turn our heads away from a subject many find
uncomfortable.
Second, we need to strengthen cooperation. The water and sanitation challenge
is everybody’s business. We need everyone to play their part. National
governments need to lead by making commitments. Local governments can
work with communities to help them to help themselves. The private sector
can invest in the health of their employees and the environment. And civil
society organisations can monitor progress and advocate solutions.
Third, we should scale up the projects that work. Simple, affordable actions
have already proved their worth. Between 1990 and 2010, about 1.8 billion
people gained access to sanitation, a significant achievement. Many countries
have tackled this problem within a generation.
Doing nothing is not an option. The social, economic and environmental costs
are simply too high. Let us commit now to end open defecation and provide
18
adequate sanitation and safe water for all, so women and girls can live with
dignity and our children can survive and communities can thrive.
Keo in Cambodia reports that all her family members are now using the
latrine. They are drinking safe water. “I ask all families in my village to start
building latrines for their use. This will help our village to end open defecation
and bring good health for everyone, especially our children.”
Keo has set an example. Let us follow — one community at a time. Nobody can
do everything, but everybody can do something.
(Jan Eliasson is Deputy Secretary-General of the United Nations.)
Community-led awareness in Cambodia proves it’s possible to stop
open defecation
Wake-up call for the Army
The recommendation made by an Army court of inquiry to impose wholesale
disciplinary action against 168 personnel involved in violent clashes at a
training camp should serve as an eye-opener for the Indian armed forces. What
happened in May 2012 was a virtual free-for-all by personnel of the Ladakhbased 226 Field Regiment. In fact, there have been at least four such alarming
breaches of discipline in the Army in recent times. Such a failure of the
command and control structure warrants a review of training and operational
aspects. While the Army can be justifiably proud of its apolitical, secular and
disciplined ethos, better rapport and cohesion among different levels seem to
be a crying need. This will require a training regime that factors in changing
values and rising career aspirations and expectations of the members of a
modern army. Measures to inculcate a new level of sensitisation will need to go
hand in hand with this to remove any trust deficit among the different “classes”
in the force. There should be a premium on morale in the forces. Significantly,
a study on the high suicide rate in the Army by the Defence Institute of
Psychological Research held last year that “perceived humiliation and
harassment” at the hands of superiors often served as the final “trigger” for
jawans to take their own lives. The demands and pressures faced by the officers
should also be taken into account.
In the specific context of the Ladakh incidents, the continuance of the colonialera institution of the sahayak , or valet, has a particular resonance. It was one
of these sahayaks , Sepoy Suman Ghosh, who was thrashed by some officers
for complaining about the behaviour of the wife of a Major at the camp.
Although the Army announced last year that it was considering doing away
with the system, thousands of enlisted men continue to serve as sahayaks ,
ensuring that the creases on the officers’ uniforms are sharp enough and their
19
epaulets shine through. They take children to school and help with Army wives’
domestic and shopping chores. The system was long abandoned in the British
Army. Understandably, this remains a cause of unhappiness for men enlisted
to serve the country. The degree of professionalism that is required of a
modern army to meet heightened challenges needs to be recognised across the
ranks. The officer should lead from the front, and the soldier should be able to
hold his or her head high. “My priority would be to … strengthen [the] Army's
work culture and core values,” Lt Gen Bikram Singh said ahead of assuming
office as the Chief of the Army Staff just a few weeks after the Ladakh
incidents. It seems he has his task cut out for him.
Tankers and the economy of thirst
Thirst is Marathwada’s greatest crop this season. Forget sugarcane. Thirst,
human and industrial, eclipses anything else. Those harvesting it reap tens of
millions of rupees each day across the region. The van loads of dried-out cane
you see on the roads could end up at cattle camps as fodder. The countless
“tankers” you see on the same roads are making it to the towns, villages and
industries for profit. Water markets are the biggest things around. Tankers are
their symbol.
Thousands of them criss-cross Marathwada daily, collecting, transporting and
selling water. Those contracted by the government are a minority and some of
them exist only on paper. It’s the privately-operated ones that are crucial to
rapidly expanding water markets.
MLAs
and
Corporators-turned-contractors
and
contractors-turnedCorporators and MLAs are vital to the tanker economy. Bureaucrats, too. Many
own tankers directly or benami .
Water commerce
So what is a tanker? Really, just sheets of mild steel plate rolled into big drums.
A 10,000-litre water tanker consists of three sheets of 5 ft x 18 ft, each
weighing 198 kilograms. The rolled drums are welded together. These can be
carried by trucks, lorries and other large vehicles, mounted on them in
different ways. Smaller carriers transport cylinders of lower capacity. A 5,000
litre container can go onto the trailer of a big van. It comes all the way down to
1,000 and 500-litre drums that move on mini-tractors, opened-up auto
rickshaws and bullock carts.
As the water crisis deepens, hundreds of these are fabricated across the State
each day. In Jalna town of Jalna district, there are about 1,200 tankers, trucks,
tractors, auto rickshaws flitting about with containers of different sizes. They
shuttle between their water sources and desperate sections of the public. The
20
drivers bargain with clients on cell phones. However, the largest amount of
water goes to industries that buy in bulk. “The tanker owners transact between
Rs.6 million to Rs.7.5 million in sales each day ,” says Laxman Raut of the
Marathi daily Loksatta . “That’s what this single sector of the water market is
worth — in this single town .” Raut and his fellow reporters have tracked this
region’s commerce in water for years.
Tanker technology
Container sizes vary. But in this town “their average capacity works out to
around 5,000 litres. Each of these 1,200 does at least three trips a day. So they
carry in all some 18 million litres of water in 24 hours. At the going rate of
Rs.350 per thousand litres, that works out to over Rs.6 million a day. The costs
can go up depending on whether the use is domestic, or for livestock, or
industry.”
Scarcity drives the tanker economy. Tankers are being made, repaired, rented,
sold and bought. One busy spot we hit en route to Jalna is Rahuri in
neighbouring Ahmednagar district. It costs roughly Rs.30,000 to make a
10,000-litre tanker body here. It sells for twice that sum. In Rahuri Factory, a
small industries area, we get a crash course in tanker tech. “Each 5 ft x 18 ft
sheet of MS Plate is 3.5 mm thick (called Gauge 10),” explains Shrikant
Melawane who owns a fabricating unit. He shows us the “rolling machine” on
which each plate has to be manually rolled.
“The 10,000-litre one weighs close to 800 kg,” he says. The three sheets of
mild steel it requires cost roughly Rs.27,000 (at Rs.35 a kg). Labour charges,
electricity and other expenses total a further Rs.3,000. “It takes a whole day to
make one 10,000-litre tanker,” he says. “This season has been busy. We’ve
made 150 (of differing sizes) in three months.” There are four units like his
within a radius of one kilometre, churning them out at the same pace. And 15
within a three-kilometre radius of Ahmednagar town, on the same job.
“The biggest ones — 20,000-litre tankers, go to cattle camps and industrial
units,” says Melawane. “The 10,000-litre ones go to the cities and big towns.
The smallest ones I’ve made carry just 1,000 litres.” The little ones “are bought
by small horticulturists. Mostly tiny pomegranate growers who cannot afford
drip irrigation. They take these drums on bullock carts and I’ve seen them do
the watering manually.”
From wells, tanks, reservoirs
So where’s the water coming from? From rampant groundwater exploitation.
From private borewells — some newly drilled just to exploit the scarcity. These
could run out as the groundwater crisis worsens. Speculators have purchased
existing dug wells that do have water in order to cash in. Some bottled water
21
plants in Jalna town bring it all the way from Buldhana (in Vidarbha) — itself a
high water-stress district. So the scarcity should spread to other regions fairly
soon. Some are looting water from public sources, tanks and reservoirs.
The tanker owner buys 10,000 litres for between Rs.1,000 and Rs.1,500. He
sells that quantity at Rs.3,500 — pulling in up to Rs.2,500 on the deal. If he
has a captive source like a working borewell or a dug well with water, then his
costs are even less. And close to nil if he is looting public water sources.
“More than 50,000 (medium and big) tankers have been made across the State
this year,” says former Member of Parliament (and ex-MLA) Prasad Tanpure.
“And don’t forget the existing thousands from previous years. So it’s anyone’s
guess how many are in action now.” Tanpure, a political veteran here, knows
the water scene well. Other estimates place the new tanker numbers at one
lakh.
Even 50,000 new tankers would mean that fabricators in the State have done
close to Rs.2 billion worth of business over the past few months. Of course,
some have taken a hit on other fronts as “construction work stands suspended.
No grills, beams, nothing else,” says Melawane. But there are also those
jumping into this lucrative market. Back in Jalna, Suresh Pawar, a tankermaker himself, says: “There are over 100 fabricators around this town. That
includes 90 who had never done this work before but are doing it now.”
In Shelgaon village of Jalna district, farmer (and local politician) Deepak
Ambore is spending around Rs.2,000 a day. “I get five tanker-loads of water
daily to my 18 acres, including my five-acre mosambi orchard. I have to
borrow from a sahucar .” Why spend so much when the crop seems doomed?
“Right now, just to keep my orchard alive.” Moneylending rates here can be 24
per cent a year or higher.
Things are awful but not at their worst. Not yet. Many in Jalna have lived off
tankers for years now. Only the dimensions of the crisis and the numbers of
tankers have exploded. The worst is a long way off yet and it isn’t just about
rainfall. Except for some. As one political leader puts it cynically: “If I owned
ten tankers, I’d have to pray for drought this year, too.”
sainath.p@thehindu.co.in
The water markets of Marathwada are booming. In the town of
Jalna alone, tanker owners transact between Rs.6 million and
Rs.7.5 million in water sales each day
India and America, batting together in Asia
22
On a table in the office of a senior Indian diplomat sits an unusual piece of
memorabilia: a baseball bat. It is signed not by members of the official’s
favourite baseball team, but by the U.S. officials who participated in the
inaugural session of the now well-established consultations between India and
the United States on East Asia, in 2010. This bat and the similarly adorned
cricket bat kept by the Indian diplomat’s American counterpart are an apt
symbol of how the United States and India have deepened their common
understanding of the strategic stakes in this critical region. Now they need to
deepen their economic ties across the Pacific.
The geopolitical shifts that shaped the expanded U.S.-India relationship
changed the way both related to East Asia. India’s Look East policy expressed
New Delhi’s intention to expand its footprint in East Asia, after decades of thin
relations with China and relative neglect of the rest of the region. India’s
economic opening to the global economy made its Asian orientation a tangible
reality. India has signed three free trade agreements, all with East Asian
partners: Japan, Korea, and ASEAN. Participation in several ASEAN-centred
institutions underscored the political dimension of India’s Asia-wide ties.
Three indicators
The Obama administration has intensified a decades-long shift toward Asia in
U.S. economic and foreign policy. The heart of U.S. Asia policy traditionally lay
in the military anchor in Japan, the security challenge of China, and the
enormous economic relationship with both. These factors are still important.
But with the “pivot” or “rebalancing” that administration spokesmen have been
talking about for the past two years, look for three new markers: deeper U.S.
engagement with Asian regional institutions; a modest shift in the centre of
gravity of U.S. military assets toward the Indo-Pacific region; and,
significantly, the decision to treat India as part of a larger Asian region, a
decision made more important by the growing prominence of U.S.-India ties.
When the U.S. and India started their East Asia dialogue in 2010, both sought
peace and prosperity throughout South and East Asia. They saw China as the
most rapidly changing regional power, with which engagement and
cooperation are essential. Neither wanted China to become the sole East Asian
power centre. While neither has explicitly articulated this as policy, both would
like to foster a network of strong relations among the region’s major players as
China’s economic and military power expands — including India, Japan,
Korea, the United States and China itself. Both seek an open, inclusive
institutional architecture, and are increasingly involved with East Asian
organisations, including the security-oriented ASEAN Regional Forum. Both
are comfortable having ASEAN continue as the heart of most of the region’s
institutions. And for both, freedom of navigation throughout the Indo-Pacific
area is absolutely critical.
23
Freedom of navigation
After almost three years of regular consultations, we have come to expect that
India and the United States will respond to regional controversies touching
their strategic interests independently, but will do so in ways that reinforce
each other. The South China Sea is a good example. China’s claim to control
virtually the entire sea has drawn the objections of its ASEAN littoral states.
China insists on dealing with the ASEAN countries separately, brushing aside
their preference to work together. Within ASEAN, there have been differences
over how to manage their dealings with China on this issue. The organisation,
unusually, was unable to reach a consensus on a statement on the South China
Sea at its July 2012 summit.
Both India and the United States have given carefully crafted support to
ASEAN on the South China Sea, calling for peaceful resolution of disputes and
self-restraint without taking a position on the merits of the disputes. U.S.
statements have mentioned the possibility of allowing ASEAN to work as a
group. The United States has endorsed the ASEAN-China Declaration on the
Conduct of Parties in the South China Sea, calling it a good first step toward
the code of conduct favoured by ASEAN members. India put the dispute in the
context of the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea. Both have stressed
freedom of navigation; one Indian statement noted that half of India’s
seaborne trade comes through the South China Sea.
India has had its own issues in the South China Sea. China has challenged
India’s drilling on an oil concession bloc awarded to it by Vietnam, and the
Chinese navy has confronted or escorted Indian naval vessels passing through
these waters. India made its position publicly clear; the strong U.S. position on
freedom of navigation was already on record in the background. These
separate but parallel policies underline the similarities between Indian and
U.S. interests on regional security.
It is time to take the next step: Indian membership in Asia Pacific Economic
Cooperation (APEC), the region’s broadest economic institution. When APEC
was founded in 1989, India’s economic policies were inward-looking,
contrasting with the organisation’s goal of “free and open trade and
investment.” Since then, India’s economy has taken giant steps toward
integrating with the region and the world, and its growth has rivalled, and in
some cases eclipsed, that of the “East Asian Tigers.” India is now the third
largest economy in Asia, and could be the second largest in another decade.
APEC “economies,” in the term members prefer, have links beyond the purely
governmental. APEC coordination mechanisms between economic regulators
and among private companies could strengthen both India’s economic
integration into the region and its export competitiveness, to everyone’s
benefit. APEC includes not just East Asian economies but several trans-Pacific
24
ones, in tune with India’s emerging interest in economic ties with Latin
America.
The next move is up to Washington. The United States was for years reluctant
to bring in India. APEC began a moratorium on new members around the turn
of the century, but that has now ended. India, whose application got caught in
the moratorium, is understandably not interested in putting forward another
unsuccessful application. It is time for the United States to change its position.
Like any expansion of international economic integration, membership would
also involve some important policy steps for India. These would reinforce the
strategic and economic interests that its Look East policy has long recognised,
interests that are also foundation stones for the new relationship with
Washington.
This is a worthy objective — even if Indians and Americans cannot agree on
what game ought properly to be played with a wooden bat.
(Teresita and Howard Schaffer are former U.S. ambassadors, with long
years of service in South Asia. They are co-founders of southasiahand.com .
Howard Schaffer teaches at Georgetown University; Teresita Schaffer is a
non-resident senior fellow at Brookings Institution.)
As the U.S. ‘rebalances’ toward Asia and New Delhi ‘looks East,’
it’s time for Washington to help India enter APEC and integrate
closely with Asian institutions
The past & present of Indian environmentalism
On the 27th of March 1973 — exactly 40 years ago — a group of peasants in a
remote Himalayan village stopped a group of loggers from felling a patch of
trees. Thus was born the Chipko movement, and through it the modern Indian
environmental movement itself.
The first thing to remember about Chipko is that it was not unique. It was
representative of a wide spectrum of natural resource conflicts in the 1970s
and 1980s — conflicts over forests, fish, and pasture; conflicts about the siting
of large dams; conflicts about the social and environmental impacts of
unregulated mining. In all these cases, the pressures of urban and industrial
development had deprived local communities of access to the resources
necessary to their own livelihood. Peasants saw their forests being diverted by
the state for commercial exploitation; pastorialists saw their grazing grounds
taken over by factories and engineering colleges; artisanal fisherfolk saw
themselves being squeezed out by large trawlers.
Social justice and sustainability
25
In the West, the environmental movement had arisen chiefly out of a desire to
protect endangered animal species and natural habitats. In India, however, it
arose out of the imperative of human survival. This was an environmentalism
of the poor, which married the concern of social justice on the one hand with
sustainability on the other. It argued that present patterns of resource use
disadvantaged local communities and devastated the natural environment.
Back in the 1970s, when the state occupied the commanding heights of the
economy, and India was close to the Soviet Union, the activists of Chipko and
other such movements were dismissed by their critics as agents of Western
imperialism. They had, it was alleged, been funded and promoted by foreigners
who hoped to keep India backward. Slowly, however, the sheer persistence of
these protests forced the state into making some concessions. When Indira
Gandhi returned to power, in 1980, a Department of Environment was
established at the Centre, becoming a full-fledged Ministry a few years later.
New laws to control pollution and to protect natural forests were enacted.
There was even talk of restoring community systems of water and forest
management.
Meanwhile, journalists and scholars had begun more systematically studying
the impact of environmental degradation on social life across India. The
pioneering reportage of Anil Agarwal, Darryl D’ Monte, Kalpana Sharma, Usha
Rai, Nagesh Hegde and others played a critical role in making the citizenry
more aware of these problems. Scientists such as Madhav Gadgil and A.K.N.
Reddy began working out sustainable patterns of forest and energy use.
Through these varied efforts, the environmentalism of the poor began to enter
school and college pedagogy. Textbooks now mentioned the Chipko and
Narmada movements. University departments ran courses on environmental
sociology and environmental history. Specialist journals devoted to these
subjects were now printed and read. Elements of an environmental
consciousness had, finally, begun to permeate the middle class.
Changing perception
In 1991 the Indian economy started to liberalise. The dismantling of state
controls was in part welcome, for the licence-permit-quota-Raj had stifled
innovation and entrepreneurship. Unfortunately, the votaries of liberalisation
mounted an even more savage attack on environmentalists than did the
proponents of state socialism. Under their influence the media, once so
sensitive to environmental matters, now began to demonise people like Medha
Patkar, leader of the Narmada movement. Influential columnists charged that
she, and her comrades, were relics from a bygone era, old-fashioned leftists
who wished to keep India backward. In a single generation, environmentalists
had gone from being seen as capitalist cronies to being damned as socialist
stooges.
26
Environmentalists were attacked because, with the dismantling of state
controls, only they asked the hard questions. When a new factory, highway, or
mining project was proposed, only they asked where the water or land would
come from, or what the consequences would be for the quality of the air, the
state of the forests, and the livelihood of the people. Was development under
liberalisation only going to further intensify the disparities between city and
countryside? Before approving the rash of mining leases in central India, or the
large hydel projects being built in the high (and seismically fragile) Himalayas,
had anyone systematically assessed their social and environmental costs and
benefits? Was a system in which the Environmental Impact Assessment was
written by the promoter himself something a democracy should tolerate?
These, and other questions like them, were brushed off even as they were being
asked.
Steady deterioration
Meanwhile, the environment continued to deteriorate. The levels of air
pollution were now shockingly high in all Indian cities. The rivers along which
these cities were sited were effectively dead. Groundwater aquifers dipped
alarmingly in India’s food bowl, the Punjab. Districts in Karnataka were
devastated by open-cast mining. Across India, the untreated waste of cities was
dumped on villages. Forests continued to decline, and sometimes disappear.
Even the fate of our national animal, the tiger, now hung in the balance.
A major contributory factor to this continuing process of degradation has been
the apathy and corruption of our political class. A birdwatcher herself, friendly
with progressive conservationists such as Salim Ali, Indira Gandhi may have
been the Prime Minister most sensitive (or at least least insensitive) to matters
of environmental sustainability. On the other hand, of all Prime Ministers past
and present Dr. Manmohan Singh has been the most actively hostile. This is
partly a question of academic background; economists are trained to think that
markets can conquer all forms of scarcity. It is partly a matter of ideological
belief; both as Finance Minister, and now as Prime Minister, Dr. Singh has
argued that economic growth must always take precedence over questions of
environmental sustainability.
An environmentally literate Prime Minister would certainly help. That said, it
is State-level politicians who are most deeply involved in promoting mining
and infrastructure projects that eschew environmental safeguards even as they
disregard the communities they displace. In my own State, Karnataka, mining
barons are directly part of the political establishment. In other States they act
through leaders of the Congress, the BJP, and regional parties.
In 1928, 45 years before the birth of the Chipko movement, Mahatma Gandhi
had said: “God forbid that India should ever take to industrialisation after the
manner of the West. The economic imperialism of a single tiny island kingdom
27
(England) is today keeping the world in chains. If an entire nation of 300
million took to similar economic exploitation, it would strip the world bare like
locusts.”
The key phrase in this quotation is ‘after the manner of the West.’ Gandhi
knew that the Indian masses had to be lifted out of poverty; that they needed
decent education, dignified employment, safe and secure housing, freedom
from want and from disease. Likewise, the best Indian environmentalists —
such as the founder of the Chipko movement, Chandi Prasad Bhatt — have
been hard-headed realists. What they ask for is not a return to the past, but for
the nurturing of a society, and economy, that meets the demands of the present
without imperilling the needs of the future.
In the 1980s and 1990s, the finest minds in the environmental movement
sought to marry science with sustainability. They sought to design, and
implement, forest, energy, water and transport policies that would augment
economic productivity and human welfare without causing environmental
stress. They acted in the knowledge that, unlike the West, India did not have
colonies whose resources it could draw upon in its own industrial revolution.
In the mid-1980s, as I was beginning my academic career, the Government of
Karnataka began producing an excellent annual state of the environment
report, curated by a top-ranking biologist, Cecil Saldanha, and with
contributions from leading economists, ecologists, energy scientists, and urban
planners. These scientific articles sought to direct the government’s policies
towards more sustainable channels. Such an effort is inconceivable now, and
not just in Karnataka. For the prime victim of economic liberalisation has been
environmental sustainability.
Corporate interests
A wise, and caring, government would have deepened the precocious, farseeing efforts of our environmental scientists. Instead, rational, fact-based
scientific research is now treated with contempt by the political class. The
Union Environment Ministry set up by Indira Gandhi has, as the Economic
and Political Weekly recently remarked, ‘buckled completely’ to corporate and
industrial interests. The situation in the States is even worse.
India today is an environmental basket-case; marked by polluted skies, dead
rivers, falling water-tables, ever-increasing amounts of untreated wastes,
disappearing forests. Meanwhile, tribal and peasant communities continue to
be pushed off their lands through destructive and carelessly conceived
projects. A new Chipko movement is waiting to be born.
(Ramachandra Guha’s books include How Much Should
Consume? He can be reached at ramachandraguha@yahoo.in)
28
a
Person
Polluted skies, dead rivers, disappearing forests and displacement
of peasants and tribals are what we see around us 40 years after
the Chipko movement started
Mission accomplished
In what counts for one more extraordinary achievement in space science, the
Mars Curiosity rover launched by NASA scientists has found strong evidence of
habitable conditions that once existed at the Yellowknife Bay area in Gale
crater. These reconfirm that certain regions on Mars have had favourable
conditions that could have supported life some three billion to four billion
years ago. This is a step closer to discovering the Holy Grail — a planet capable
of supporting life. A week ago, the rover’s mast camera found evidence of
water-bearing minerals in veins that cut across the Knorr rock at several
places. The finding comes close on the heels of the March 12 major discovery of
smectite clay mineral by chemical analysis of a John Klein rock specimen
drilled by the rover. The presence of smectite clay, which constitutes nearly 20
per cent of the sample analysed, is a definite indicator of the presence of liquid
water on Mars long ago. The chemical analysis revealed many other details of
the paleo-environment. For instance, the absence of abundant salt suggests “a
fresh-water environment,” and the presence of calcium sulphate reinforces the
non-acidic depositional conditions. The John Klein rock did reveal certain
clues even prior to drilling. The rock was grey and the powdered sample had
the same colour. Together, they indicate the absence of iron compounds, and
hence the non-acidic depositional environment. The discovery of other
elements — sulphur, nitrogen, hydrogen, oxygen, phosphorus and carbon —
through chemical analysis reinforces the possibility that the planet could have
harboured life. After all, these elements are considered the “key chemical
ingredients for life.” Chemical analysis of another rock sample that will be soon
drilled will confirm these findings.
Mars is today a cold and dry place and has conditions that are decidedly hostile
to life. Even if slim, the possibility that Mars once harboured life cannot be
ruled out, particularly after the latest discoveries. Behind this achievement are
a series of firsts and remarkable technological milestones. The safe landing of
the rover, a self-contained science laboratory on six wheels, using an
“outlandish” design was the first. But by drilling into Martian rock to collect a
sample, Curiosity became the first rover ever to fructify the ideas that were
once in the realm of science fiction. Together with its ability to grind and sieve
the sample before chemically analysing it using a suite of advanced
instruments, the discoveries it has made so far underline how far we have
come in using technology for studying the wider universe of which we are but a
small part.
29
Gender justice, interrupted
The adoption of the Criminal Law Amendment Act 2013 by the Indian
Parliament is a moment to be neither celebrated nor mourned. It is a moment
to pause and reflect over what exactly has been achieved ever since the Delhi
gang rape and murder of the 23-year-old student, and what has been lost. The
Act converges with the recent global spotlighting of violence against women,
including the adoption of a declaration on the elimination and prevention of
violence against women and girls at the recently concluded U.N. Commission
on the Status of Women in New York. Both these interventions highlight how
the safety and security of women and girls around the world remains an elusive
goal.
Two formulas
The specific question that arises is just exactly how state and non-state actors
achieve this goal. There are at least two dominant formulas that have emerged
in this arena over the decades. The first is a rights agenda, where the rights of
women and others oppressed by sexual violence are specifically recognised and
then a legal and policy agenda for protecting these rights formulated. The
rights to equality, bodily integrity and sexual autonomy, freedom of speech,
including sexual speech, and safe mobility, would be amongst those rights to
be foregrounded and secured. The Verma committee, mandated with the task
of recommending legal reforms to ensure women’s safety, in part adopted this
approach. The right to consensual adult sexual relations was the key area to be
protected from discrimination and infringement through the adoption of a
broad array of legal, policy, and educational initiatives.
The second approach is to foreground the state’s role in ensuring the safety of
its citizens by strengthening its security apparatus, including border controls,
intensifying the sexual surveillance of citizens, disciplining the sexual
behaviour of individuals and regulating and monitoring sexual conduct
through law enforcement agencies. While autocratic states already pursue this
route, there is a worrying trend of liberal democracies also adopting such an
approach, including India. The move towards equating justice with the
imposition of the death penalty or stringent prison sentences constitutes the
lynchpin of this approach.
At least two factors have facilitated this approach towards security. Ever since
the global war on terror, states have been accorded a justification for curbing
human rights in the interests of the security of the nation and its citizens.
Rendition, water boarding, incarceration without due process, have all been
justified on this ground. A second factor is that non-governmental
organisations, including those women’s groups with a zealous focus on the
issue of sexual violence against women, have not paid sufficient attention to
30
the promotion of women’s sexual rights, except for some forays into the area of
reproductive rights. This focus on violence against women has been warmly
welcomed by dominant players in the international legal arena. Global violence
against women has been recognised as a human rights violation; rape has been
incorporated as a war crime in the Rome Statute; and sexual violence in
conflict and post-conflict has been specifically addressed by Security Council
resolutions. While the focus on violence is important, the mechanism through
which it has been addressed has not necessarily been empowering for women.
These interventions have not destabilised the dominant understanding of
women as victims and female sexuality as passive; nor have they toppled the
gender stereotypes that inform all of these initiatives.
The constant justification for a focus on the criminal law to address violence
against women has been that prevention will take time. However, criminal law
initiatives that further entrench a sexually sanitised regime fail to distinguish
between sexual speech and unwelcome remarks, and target all sexual
behaviour that does not conform to a sexually conservative script as
reprehensible, make the battle to centre rights all that much harder. The new
law in India retains the language and provisions dealing with the “outraging of
the modesty” and chastity of a woman and then simply expands the range of
activities that threaten or blemish this antiquated understanding of female
sexuality. This approach cannot be a recipe for empowerment nor foster
progressive change in thinking on matters of sex and sexuality.
Perhaps the most significant and pervasive issue left unaddressed by the new
law is the everyday sexism that pervades the workplace, the public arena, the
media and the educational system. No amount of censorship of sexual images
can address the problem of sexism, the performance of which was on full
display in the Indian Parliament during the debates on the new law. While
sexual harassment, including unwelcome sexually coloured remarks, is
criminalised, a focus on deterrence does not eradicate sexism nor produce
respect for women. It merely empowers the state and the criminal law.
Unchallenged stereotypes
Leaving sexism and gender stereotypes unchallenged is likely to have a
boomerang effect. The new laws will be used to go after individuals and
communities who transgress or challenge established norms, or are already
sexually stigmatised, marginalised, and viewed with suspicion. Sex workers
rights groups have criticised the new anti- trafficking provisions that treat
every sex worker as trafficked. Merely extending the tentacles of the criminal
law into their everyday lives without affording them rights with which to fight
the violence and the exploitation they experience will force these women into
more clandestine and exploitative situations and, ironically, increase their
vulnerability to being trafficked. Similarly, gay men might be left with little
31
protection from the sexual violence they experience as they have not been
accorded the right to consensual sexual relationships. In fact, the new sexual
regime will leave them more vulnerable to allegations of criminality,
perversion and continued stigma. Muslim men might continue to be targeted
as being more rapacious and lascivious especially in the States ruled by the
Hindu Right. Female migrants will be targeted as trafficked victims and
continue to be incarcerated in the name of protection; and young people will
continue to have “pre-marital” sex, clandestinely, and often under unsafe
conditions, now that the age of statutory rape has been retained at 18.
The exclusion of marital rape from the purview of the new law reinforces the
sexual prerogative of husbands, leaving some women wondering why they
should get married if it means they would enjoy fewer rights. And the
fundamental question remains whether this expanded legal edifice will be able
to stop the kind of attack that occurred on the Delhi bus last December.
The reactions to the U.N. Declaration and debates on the new criminal law in
India furnish telling insights on the extraordinary levels of resistance to the
very idea of the right to sexual autonomy and gender justice on the part of
dominant groups, and the subsequent scramble to reinforce the rights of an
already overprotected male elite. In New York this was evident in the debate on
the declaration. The Muslim Brotherhood claimed that the declaration would
lead to a “complete disintegration of society” and decried the possibilities of
allowing women to prosecute husbands for rape or sexual harassment. Others
such as the Vatican were concerned over references to access to emergency
abortion, and sexually transmitted diseases.
In India, the new law represents a trend in South Asia to equate justice with
the death penalty and stringent imprisonment terms. Yet empowerment for
women cannot lie in merely attaching a death sentence on to the crime of rape,
or increasing the mandatory minimum sentences for rape. How will these
measures act as deterrents when indeed such changes will see the already low
conviction rate for rape plummet even further? Empowerment rests in the
ability of women, sexual minorities, and religious minorities to be able to walk
on the streets free from the fear of sexual violence, sexual harassment and
rape.
The young women and men born in the crucible of globalisation and neoliberal economic reforms are unlikely to be discouraged from demanding a
gender-friendly and egalitarian workspace. And there is still a possibility that
the new law in India will be challenged in the Supreme Court for violating
women’s right to equality as well as excluding sexual minorities from its
protection. The protests after the Delhi rape were demanding justice in the
form of more freedom not autocracy, respect not fear, and a more egalitarian
society, not a reaffirmation of the established gender and sexual hierarchies of
32
power. The old order has definitely been shaken, and its values based on
exclusion and prejudice have undoubtedly passed their expiry date.
(Ratna Kapur is Global Professor of Law, Jindal Global Law School)
Death or longer prison terms for rape under a new law will not
empower women; what they need is the safety to walk on the
streets free from the fear of sexual violence
Picking friends, influencing neighbours
Events in the neighbourhood — Mohammed Nasheed’s foray into the Indian
Embassy in Male, the dilemma over the issue of war crimes in Sri Lanka, the
Shahbhag protests, and violence against Pakistan’s minorities — have sparked
off long overdue reflections in the Indian public sphere about New Delhi’s
policy in South Asia.
There have been suggestions that India must reward “pro-India parties” while
punishing the “anti-India” forces in neighbouring countries to force them to
realign their incentives as a part of a regional doctrine. Others have
despairingly written about how a drift in India has eroded its authority and
diminished the instruments at its disposal to implement policy goals outside
its borders.
The region is indeed in a state of ferment. Most countries are in the process of
drawing out a new social contract and institutionalising democracy. Nepal will
have elections for a new Constituent Assembly (CA). It will only be the second
time Bhutan will vote under a quasi-democratic constitution. This is the first
time a civilian government in Pakistan would have completed a full tenure.
And the Maldives will seek to get back on democratic track after a
constitutional and political breach if elections are free and fair. Marginalised
and excluded social groups are fiercely asserting themselves in some instances,
like Nepal, while, in other cases, the conservative majoritarian backlash has
trampled on minority rights, like Sri Lanka and Pakistan.
But the specific junctures at which these countries find themselves cannot
force one but to ask – is a regional doctrine possible? Can it cope with the fluid
political dynamics? And given India’s complicity in creating the domestic
churning in these states (New Delhi was an active player in 1971 in Dhaka, in
2006 in Kathmandu, in 2008 in Male, and in the run-up to 2009 in Colombo
— the consequences of which we see today), is it correct to see India as the
virtuous power and others merely as troublesome immature allies? This is an
attempt to search for an answer by looking at India’s experience in a country
where it has been deeply enmeshed — Nepal.
Simplistic binary
33
In 2003, the Nepali Maoists were waging a war, and rallying against Indian
“expansionism.” New Delhi was pumping in equipment and resources to the
Royal Nepalese Army (RNA) in its anti-Maoist campaign.
But quietly, the Maoists had approached the Government of India through
Professor S.D. Muni of Jawaharlal Nehru University. The then National
Security Adviser (NSA), Brajesh Mishra, asked for a written commitment. The
Maoists sent a letter, emphasising that they would not hurt Indian interests.
Indian intelligence agencies then established links with the Maoist leaders. The
Maoists told India they would accept a multiparty system. India constantly
emphasised that the giving up of violence, accepting democracy, and sensitivity
to Delhi’s security interests were non-negotiable points.
The conversation had major implications when the king took over in a coup in
2005. The Maoists now pushed for an alliance with the democratic parties, and
asked for India’s support. Indian facilitation enabled the two to come together.
A war ended, democracy was restored, the monarchy abolished, the Maoists
and Naxalites were delinked, and the conflict’s spillover effect to India ceased.
If one had gone by the public posture, the Maoists were an “anti-India” force. If
India had not engaged with them, and adopted a black and white prism, would
Nepal be at peace today? Which force, in contexts where there is a huge gap
between public rhetoric and actual political line, and where positions rapidly
evolve, is pro- or anti-India? Who judges it, and how?
Fast forward to 2009. India supported the Nepal Army chief, when Maoist
Prime Minister Prachanda sought to dismiss him. Prachanda resigned, and
stepped up the rhetoric against Indian “intervention.” India, led by a
particularly aggressive ambassador in Kathmandu, invested enormous political
capital in keeping the Maoists out of power, despite the former rebels being the
biggest party in Parliament.
New Delhi’s bottom line was clear. Unless the Maoists gave up their army, who
were in cantonments under U.N.-supervision as a part of a peace process, they
would not be allowed to come back to power. The Maoists reached out to India
with a one-point message. “Once we are back in power, we will wrap up the
peace process.” But the Indian “hard line” persisted, strengthening Maoist
radicals who argued that aborting the revolution was a mistake.
New Delhi paid a high political price, and got a lesson in the limits of its power.
India’s role generated resentment among a sizeable section of the Nepali
public. The Maoists backed a leader of another left party, who was also in
India’s bad books for engaging with the former rebels, as Prime Minister in
February 2011. New Delhi was confronted, for the first time in years, by a
government in Nepal which was not “friendly.” This forced New Delhi to
recalibrate its policy; personnel change in the Ministry of External Affairs and
34
the Research and Analysis Wing helped; and it did not block a Maoist Prime
Minister coming to power in August 2011.
The Maoists too had to give up their anti-India rhetoric and recognised the
benefits of being on Delhi’s good side, but India too had to live with the fact
that the former rebels cooperated on the peace process only after returning to
power. Renewed engagement worked, and as seen in a recent conclave, the
Maoists have now fully embraced democracy, and given up violence and
revolutionary goals.
The point here is that as “realistic” and macho a prescription of “punishing”
seemingly hostile forces sounds, it ignores the point that forces which are
“anti-India” may have sizeable domestic bases. It blurs the line between forces
critical of a set of Indian policies with those who actively damage Indian
interests and places them under a common category. It awards excessive
powers to bureaucrats on the ground who may send cables back home
declaring who is pro- or anti-India without adequate basis and get away in the
absence of close political supervision. It discounts the benefits of a policy of
engagement rather than isolation to realign incentives. And it presumes that
only neighbours need India, and India can afford to turn away when a
neighbouring regime is not completely pliant.
Intention or capacity
On May 27, 2012, India decided to stay out as Nepali forces fought over
federalism as the CA’s tenure was about to expire. The new republic’s president
and conservative forces asked Delhi to tell the Maoists and Madhesis to give up
the demand for federalism “for now.” Federal forces asked India to convince
the Opposition to accept their model of state restructuring. If New Delhi had
invested all its might to push one side or the other, Nepal may have had a
constitution. But it did not, for it concluded that such a statute will not have
the buy-in of a large segment of the population. It had the capacity but it did
not have the intent to get involved in a debate which had divided Nepali society
sharply.
New Delhi’s diplomatic, intelligence, military and political arsenal will
continue to expand. But a deeper issue that policymakers have to grapple with
is whether to use the leverage they do possess, at what moments, and its
implications. Should New Delhi let domestic political processes play out in
neighbouring countries to ensure a more sustainable outcome? Does India
want to remain an active domestic political player in South Asian countries and
live with its attendant consequences, or is it willing to do business with
whoever is in power as long as its core interests are protected? Does the Indian
state’s imagination, and interests, allow it to intervene decisively to shape
human rights debates? And in a fragile post-conflict setting like Nepal which
would shake up the leadership and structure of the country’s two most
35
powerful forces, the Maoists and Nepal Army, which are friendly with India at
the moment, for war crimes?
A regional doctrine may be a good idea. But specific experiences show this
cannot be based on a shallow reading of who is friend and foe. Nor can a normbased regime be created unless India radically overhauls its own internal
apparatus, imagination and interests, and has the appetite to get further
enmeshed in messy neighbourhood transitions.
prashant.j@thehindu.co.in
India has been pursuing an ambitious regional doctrine, but it has
often failed because of a shallow reading of who its friends and
foes are
Martyrdom does not help Sri Lanka’s Tamils
I read with much sorrow that Vikram, 30, set himself on fire and died in a
hospital. He was the second such victim of the new campaign in Tamil Nadu
for Eelam. The first was Mani, 41, from Cuddalore who set himself ablaze on
March 4. Mani and Vikram will be remembered only when the numbers have
to be counted if there is another self-immolation.
But wait, where do they want this Eelam established and for whom? The
separate State cannot be for Tamil Nadu. It cannot be for anybody there, nor
for those students who are fasting and agitating.
The Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) raised a separatist demand for a
“Dravida Nadu” many decades ago, but had to give up its call as, after the
creation of linguistic States, there were no takers for Dravidian separatism. In
1963, the DMK officially dropped its demand. Murasoli Maran had said, “I am
Tamil first, but I am also an Indian. Both can exist together, provided there is
space for cultural nationalism.” A leading theoretician in the DMK, Era
Sezhiyan, had said it was more practical to demand a higher degree of
autonomy for Tamil Nadu, instead of a separate State.
The “Eelam” demanded by students, activists and political groups in Tamil
Nadu, in the name of Tamils in North-East Sri Lanka, has no takers in postwar Sri Lanka. It was a group of U.S. citizens, “Tamils who have settled in the
U.S. or who were born in the U.S.,” as they introduced themselves, who first
appealed for a referendum in Sri Lanka, supervised by the U.N., as in East
Timor. Calling themselves, “Tamils for Obama,” they argued that “genocide”
against Tamils living in Sri Lanka can be prevented only through creation of a
separate Tamil State.
36
Genocide is a much abused word in protests and rallies in Tamil Nadu on Sri
Lanka. In the U.N. Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime
of Genocide, it is explained in Article II: “...acts committed with intent to
destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group....”
amount to genocide.
Census, election facts
According to the 2012 census, post-war Sri Lanka’s first, there are 2.27 million
Sri Lankan Tamils (excluding Tamils of Indian origin) living permanently in
the country; in 2011, within Colombo city, there were 7,53,000 (almost 29 per
cent) Sri Lankan Tamils, with another 2.2 per cent Tamils of Indian origin. It
could be more now with internal migration. Over 2,07,000 out of the total
Tamil population, about 10 per cent, live in Colombo and adjoining DehiwalaMt. Lavinia alone. Can that be, in a genocidal situation?
In post-war North and East, Tamil people, like Sinhala and Muslim people,
have been voting in presidential and parliamentary elections. In the 2010
parliamentary election, the people of Jaffna voted 48 per cent for the Tamil
National Alliance (TNA) and elected five out of nine MPs, while in the Vanni,
where there is a Muslim vote of about 26 per cent, Tamils voted 38.9 per cent
to the TNA and elected three out of six MPs. They have also voted at local
government elections to have their own third tier of governance. The TNA won
24 out of the 32 local government bodies for which elections were held in 2011
in Jaffna, Kilinochchi and Mullaitivu districts. And in the East, they have voted
in Provincial Council (PC) elections twice — in 2008 and 2012. In the recent
PC elections in the East, where the demography is Tamil 40.2 per cent, Sinhala
22.3 per cent and Muslim 36.5 per cent, the Tamil people almost voted en bloc
for the TNA to emerge a strong opposition with 11 Councillors.
Heavy militarisation
Can all that happen in any society that is being ethnically eliminated or
cleansed? Can it happen if there is any “genocide” of the Tamil people in the
north-east?
What the Tamil people are living through in Sri Lanka is not genocide. Rather,
they are living through the atrocity of heavy militarisation. What is not taken
note of in Tamil Nadu is that this militarisation is extending beyond Tamil
society and is a common factor for both the Northern Tamils and Southern
Sinhalese. In about three months, 4,000 out of over 7,000 schools in the South
will have gazetted military officers as principals. The whole of Colombo is
being taken care of by the military. The Urban Development Authority is now
under the Defence Ministry, which is now the Defence and Urban
Development Ministry.
37
For democratic space
There is now no validity or possibility for a separate Tamil State in Sri Lanka.
What is valid is the demand that Tamil people should have their own civil and
voluntary organisations in their own areas. In a land where war has torn the
entire social fabric apart, what political mechanisms, what social structures
could take up the challenge of establishing a new State? What is now valid is
the demand for democratic space for participation within the State that could
be restructured for sharing of political power; political power for “Tamil
Nationalism” as interpreted by the DMK in 1963, perhaps even for “Internal
self determination” interpreted by Dr. Anton Balasingham, when the LTTE
agreed to the “Oslo Declaration” in December 2002.
The recommendations of the Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission
should be given political weight and a devolved mechanism put in place. The
Final Report of the All Party Representative Committee (APRC), a committee
appointed by President Rajapaksa, has for the first time gained a southern
Sinhala consensus for power sharing. All constituent parties in the ruling
United People's Freedom Alliance (UPFA) have agreed on the APRC’s Final
Report, which proposes devolution far beyond that in the 13th Amendment,
with a bicameral parliament, accommodating provincial representation in the
upper chamber. It also proposes nationally elected Committees for Muslims
outside the East and for Tamils of Indian origin, to represent them in matters
of cultural importance.
The diaspora groups have their own agenda and their politics has nothing to do
with their kin in Sri Lanka. If the people of Tamil Nadu want to be in sincere
solidarity with the Tamils in Sri Lanka, they need to tag their demands to those
being politically debated in Sri Lanka. Solidarity is not about outsiders
coercing their own governments to impose their demands on the Tamil people
in Sri Lanka. Therefore, Tamil Nadu should shed its extremism and demand
that New Delhi get President Rajapaksa to table the APRC Final Report in
Parliament. A broad consensual formula on power sharing, with the TNA being
allowed to sit in the Parliamentary Select Committee, would be the only
constitutional process to have a permanent solution to the Tamil conflict.
The present extremist anti-Sri Lanka campaign in Tamil Nadu does not help
achieve any solutions for the Tamils and makes no martyrs out of innocent,
self-immolating victims in Tamil Nadu. Giving space for a healthy, intelligent
debate on how to move ahead is the responsibility of the mainstream Tamil
Nadu media.
(Kusal Perera is a Sri Lankan journalist and political commentator based in
Colombo.)
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The energy of Tamil Nadu’s Eelam backers would be better spent
demanding that New Delhi find ways to push the domestic Sri
Lankan debate on power sharing
Motion and emotion
Is it right for Indian legislators to advocate a referendum for the break-up of a
neighbouring country? Politicians in Tamil Nadu spearheading the campaign
against Sri Lanka for human rights abuses by its military in the final stages of
the war with the Tamil Tigers seem to think so. India is deeply involved in the
efforts for the resettlement and rehabilitation of Sri Lankan Tamils displaced
by the war. But, going by the resolution adopted by the Tamil Nadu Assembly
demanding a referendum on Eelam and calling for economic sanctions against
Sri Lanka, regional political parties in Tamil Nadu are keener to score points
off each other than aid India’s purposive, if somewhat limited, attempts at
bettering the lot of the Sri Lankan Tamils, many of whom are still without
homes and means of livelihood. The legislators want India to move the U.N.
Security Council seeking a referendum among Tamils living in Sri Lanka and
the Sri Lankan Tamil diaspora on creation of a separate nation of Tamil Eelam.
Apart from the sheer bad taste and bad judgment involved — India would
violate every principle it has stood for were it to approach the Security Council
with such a demand — the motion can only do more harm than good to the
Tamils of Sri Lanka. A partition will doubtless create more displacement and
inflict more pain on a battered people already suffering from the effects of a
decades-long ethnic conflict that ended only in a war that appears to have
killed more civilians than armed combatants. Indeed, any position that makes
the assumption of irreconcilable differences between the Sinhalese and the
Tamils is doomed to failure.
The Assembly resolution further wants India to stop calling Sri Lanka a
“friendly nation.” What good that would do is unclear. In effect, what Tamil
Nadu’s politicians seem to want is for India to surrender its leverage, cut off
economic and cultural links with Sri Lanka and leave for itself no means of
influence other than that of armed might. But if its Sri Lanka policy is not to
merely tail or turn away from the agenda-setters of Tamil Nadu, India must
push Colombo to honour its past commitments and do more for devolution of
powers, including financial and police, to the Tamil areas in the north and east
on the basis of the 13th amendment to the Sri Lankan Constitution. India has a
responsibility to ensure that Sri Lanka delivers on this commitment quickly
and sincerely. Elections to the Tamil-majority Northern Province, which are
supposed to be held this September, present an opportunity for Sri Lanka to
expand on the 13th amendment and end the inequalities and injustices that
formed the original basis for the ethnic conflict.
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Aakash is no silver bullet
The last few days have brought the Aakash tablet back into the media limelight.
Last Friday, Human Resource Development (HRD) Minister M.M. Pallam Raju
said that troubles with the manufacturer could doom the project. But the next
day, former HRD Minister Kapil Sibal, who started the project, denied Mr.
Raju’s comments. He further added: “I want public services to be delivered
through Aakash. I want Aakash to be a platform for 1.2 billion people.”
Before Mr. Sibal sets more ridiculous targets and spends taxpayers’ money on
them, he needs to be stopped. His fanciful ideas are wrong. First, there is no
evidence that a tablet can solve any of the problems that he claims it can.
Second, it is not clear how it will ever be able to produce a laptop that costs less
than $35.
Root of the idea
The idea for the Aakash tablet and troubles that the project brings with it have
both been inherited from the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) project launched in
2005 by Nicholas Negroponte of Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
OLPC’s hope was that empowering children in the developing world with
computers connected to the internet will help them learn faster, develop better
skills and reach their full potential.
But there were problems with the idea right from the start. First, it hadn’t been
tested on a large enough population to make a reasonable cost-benefit analysis.
Second, the project claimed that scaling up production will reduce the cost of
each laptop below Rs.5,400 ($100), though they weren’t sure how. Third,
OLPC thought better education was the panacea to all problems irrespective of
a country’s needs.
Despite these issues, OLPC received backing from the United Nations
Development Programme in 2006. With this stamp of approval, its large-scale
implementation began. About eight years after its launch, the results are in and
OLPC hasn’t done so well.
Tested in Peru
Peru was the site of the largest experiment. More than 850,000 laptops were
given out at a cost of Rs.108 crore ($200 million). In treatment schools where
the number of laptops per child was increased from 0.12 to 1.18, a report by the
Inter-American Development Bank found that OLPC failed in its goals. Test
scores in languages and maths remain dismal. Enrolment isn’t higher than
what it was before.
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A 2010 study in Romania, another middle-income country, found that those
children who were given laptops were, not surprisingly, more proficient in its
use. But they did not score anymore in exams than those who didn’t have
computers. Even in a low-income country like Nepal, a small-scale study
produced the same results. Furthermore, the price of each laptop, up until
2010, remained at more than Rs.10,000 ($200).
More than 20 lakh laptops have been handed out so far. Berk Ozler, senior
economist at the World Bank, argues that OLPC is a mess. A report by Mark
Warschauer and Morgan Ames of the University of California Irvine, says:
“Unlike Negroponte’s approach of simply handing computers to children and
walking away, there needs to be integrated education improvement efforts.” It
is not clear how governments all around the world fell for the scheme that is
backed by little evidence.
OLPC’s latest victim is India, even though Aakash is not a laptop. Mr. Sibal,
like Negroponte, considers Aakash to be the panacea to all problems. It’s not
just that. Mr. Sibal also wants Aakash to be the cheapest tablet. This has
proved to be a major hurdle. Datawind, a Canadian company, won the tender
to provide tablets at a cost of less than $35. Its first version failed miserably
because of poor hardware. The newer version seemed more promising, but it
looks like Datawind will default on its promise to deliver 1,00,000 units by
March 31.
Even if the government somehow, however difficult it may seem, is able to get
access to cheap tablets, they are not going to help achieve its aims. Can a
laptop overcome the negative impact of a bad teacher or poor school? Can it
make children smarter despite the lack of electricity, water, toilets or
playgrounds? Can it overcome the limitations of stunted growth among the
malnourished? Can Aakash increase productivity of the workforce to
counterbalance the money invested in it?
There is no evidence that it can do any of these things. And yet, the National
Mission on Education through Information and Communication Technology
“strongly hinges around a low-cost device through which the content created
can reach the learner.” This adoption of OLPC’s main idea is fraught with
problems. Warschauer and Ames rightly argue that handing out laptops, or in
India’s case, tablets, ignores the local context and thus avoids solving any of
the targeted problems.
Right now when government officials are themselves confused over the future
of Aakash, it is important to step back and analyse the reasons for pressing
forward with a hopeless idea. Without concrete evidence, it would be foolish to
continue.
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(Akshat Rathi is a science and technology journalist based in the U.K. Email: rathi.akshat@gmail.com )
The government needs to open its eyes and realise that the
technological utopia it envisions in the low-cost tablet is no cure
for poor education, poverty or inequality
Starving to live, not die
Over the past 12 years, Irom Sharmila Chanu has carried on an inconceivable
hunger strike, which has seen her body wither and her skin turn pale. During
this period, she has emerged as the face of the civilian resistance to the
immunity, and impunity, granted by the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act to
the army in Manipur. The Indian state has done its part to disfigure that face,
by exhibiting either an inability or unwillingness to meet Sharmila’s demands.
Today, it is impossible to think of Sharmila without recalling images of the
feeding tube that has been forcibly thrust down her nose to keep her alive.
However, the repeal of AFSPA and justice for the 10 civilians who were shot
dead in November 2002 by the Assam Rifles in supposed retaliation to an
attack by insurgents in Malom, Manipur — which triggered Sharmila’s protest
— still remain elusive. Instead, Sharmila’s dissent expressed via her fast unto
death has repeatedly been viewed as criminal.
Sharmila has put the Indian state in a peculiar position, by reconfiguring the
dynamics of power through a public sacrifice of her body. Should the state, as
it has done so far, view her indefinite fast through the lens of criminality and
consider it “an attempt to commit suicide,” when Sharmila has unequivocally
asserted her love of living? Or is it incongruous to do so, especially when the
Supreme Court, in its recent and much-hailed intervention in the Ram Lila
Maidan protests against corruption, has recognised that “hunger strike is a
form of protest which has been accepted, both historically and legally in our
constitutional jurisprudence”? In fact, Sharmila’s hunger strike is an area of
stark legal vacuum. When there is a conflict between her freedom of expression
and the Indian state’s interest, and perhaps duty, in keeping her alive, can a
balance between these conflicting ends be struck without criminalising
Sharmila’s actions?
The history
Examples of hunger strikes used as an expression of dissent are copious; the
suffragettes used them in their campaign seeking the vote for women in
England during the early 20th century. Hunger strikes around the world have
typically, though not exclusively, been waged by prisoners. Such was the case
when some imprisoned Irish Republicans famously went on a hunger strike in
1981 to protest British rule of Ireland, leading to the death of Bobby Sands and
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nine others. Prisoners tend to use hunger strikes as a mode of protest, either to
advocate a cause disagreeable to the state or to express their dissent against
what they believe to be a wrongful conviction. In the former category fall cases
like that of Marion Wallace Dunlop, a pioneering suffragette who was sent to
prison for printing an extract from the Bill of Rights on the wall of St.
Stephen’s Hall in the House of Commons. In prison, Dunlop commenced a
hunger strike to continue her protest seeking the right of women to vote. In the
latter category fall prisoners like William Coleman, who has been on a hunger
strike lasting almost five years in a jail in Connecticut, U.S., to protest what he
believes to be his wrongful conviction. Since the global trend has been for
persons already imprisoned to resort to a hunger strike, this mode of protest
has usually been viewed abroad as a prisoners’ rights issue. The state’s
response of force-feeding prisoners has been considered by some as being
tantamount to torture and an unacceptable intrusion in the autonomy of the
prisoner, akin to rape.
However, India’s own experience with hunger strikes, which has been very well
documented, has shown that viewing the issue through a prisoners’ rights
framework is ill-advised. Our freedom fighters, Mahatma Gandhi in particular,
developed and perfected this non-violent form of protest as a facet of
satyagraha, and although several hunger strikes were carried out by freedom
fighters during periods of incarceration, the resort to this mode of protest has
never been an exclusive domain of the imprisoned. For instance, Potti
Sreeramulu, a freedom fighter and Gandhian, fasted to his death, in seeking
the creation of a separate State of Andhra Pradesh in independent India. The
Narmada Bachao Andolan movement witnessed hunger strikes in 2002 to
protest the construction of dams over the Maan River in Dhar, Madhya
Pradesh.
More recently, Anna Hazare and his associates carried on hunger strikes
against corruption. All of these protests were, and continue to be, carried on
for the large part, outside the walls of prison. For this reason, a prisoners’
rights framework may, by itself, be insufficient to view the legality of hunger
strikes in India.
Attempted suicide?
An alternative way to analyse hunger strikes, especially fasts unto death, is
through the framework of a constitutional right to die. In India, not a little
morbidly, this argument seems to have reached a “dead end.” Although the
Supreme Court in P. Rathinam v. Union of India (1994) initially asserted that
the Indian constitutional guarantee of a fundamental right to life carries with it
a fundamental right to die, subsequent decisions in Gian Kaur v. State of
Punjab (1996) and Aruna Shanbaug v. Union of India (2011) overruled that
view, and it is now conclusively established that Indian citizens do not have a
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fundamental right to die. InGian Kaur , the Supreme Court upheld the validity
of Section 309 of the Indian Penal Code, which criminalises the “attempt to
commit suicide” (i.e. the provision under which Sharmila has been charged,
and previously convicted). In Shanbaug , the Supreme Court allowed only for a
highly circumscribed right to approach courts to seek withdrawal of life
support systems for patients in a permanent vegetative state. Thus, it appears
futile to argue that Indian citizens have a right to fast unto death when,
according to the apex court, they have no right to die. However, this does not
automatically mean that the undertaking of fasts unto death is criminal or that
one does not have a fundamental right to hunger strike of a definite period
where there is no danger of death being caused. One may not have the right to
do something, but to do it nonetheless needn’t be criminal.
In independent India, the resort to hunger strikes has usually, though with
some exceptions (such as the hunger strike by prisoners within a jail), not been
viewed through the lens of criminality. For instance, Potti Sreeramulu was
never considered criminal or suicidal by the Indian state for his fatal hunger
strike. Anna Hazare likewise has undertaken several indefinite hunger strikes
for various causes, but has never been perceived as a criminal on this account.
The most prominent example of the Indian state criminalising a fast unto
death per se is that of Sharmila’s. If we really believe rape is as vile as we have
recently claimed it to be, then would it be just to treat Sharmila’s strike against
AFSPA, a law that shields rapists from prosecution, differently from Hazare’s
strike against corruption? More importantly, would it be just for a society’s
laws to selectively criminalise hunger strikes depending upon the objectives
such strikes seek to achieve?
This brings us to the question of whether Sharmila’s case, and more generally
fasts unto death, are appropriately viewed as “attempts to commit suicide”
under Section 309 of the Indian Penal Code. Any criminal offence, barring
certain exceptions, requires the proof of a mens rea , or the existence of a
guilty mind. Sharmila has been fasting not with an intention to die, but with an
intention to achieve a desired result from the state. Her refusal to consume
food or water can be criminalised only if she has acted in furtherance of a
conscious endeavour to commit suicide. In the absence of such conscious
endeavour, to accuse and prosecute her for an offence under Section 309 is
misconceived.
Freedom to express
The questions of whether to treat Sharmila as criminal and whether the state
should be allowed to force-feed her are distinct. As misguided as Sharmila’s
prosecution may be, the question regarding the legality of nasally force-feeding
her to keep her alive still remains open. The Supreme Court has, on the one
hand, held that the threat of going on a hunger strike extended by Baba
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Ramdev at Ram Lila Maidan, cannot be termed illegal. Presumably, this right
that the court spoke of flows from a citizen’s right to freedom of expression.
That right is subject to “reasonable restrictions” in the interest of the
sovereignty and integrity of India, public order, decency, morality, or in
relation to contempt of court, defamation or incitement to an offence. If
Sharmila’s fast unto death is essentially an exercise of her fundamental right to
freedom of expression, the state, in force-feeding her, may presumably be
acting in furtherance of its right to impose reasonable restrictions as permitted
by our Constitution. However, force-feeding, even if conducted in a humane
and largely non-intrusive manner, has been widely considered to be
tantamount to torture. Even though the state might merely be imposing
restrictions that are reasonable within the meaning of Article 19 of the
Constitution, the measure might nonetheless be a violation of Sharmila’s right
to life and personal liberty under Article 21.
In our opinion, fasts unto death occupy an area of legal vacuum that offer no
easy solutions. Should the state allow Sharmila to die and, in the process,
abdicate its duty to protect life? Or must it resort to force-feeding her, even
though such actions hit at the core of her bodily integrity? While neither offers
a perfectly tailored legal solution, what is certain is that a balance ought to be
struck between these starkly conflicting ends without criminalising Sharmila’s
actions. For, to do so would be tantamount to stigmatising an exercise by a
citizen of her right to freedom of expression in advocating a particular cause
when other citizens have used the freedom in exactly the same manner without
suffering prosecution, simply because they advocated causes of a different, and
less complex, nature.
(The authors are advocates practising in the Madras High Court)
When the Supreme Court has recognised the right to go on hunger
strike, why is Irom Sharmila’s protest against impunity of the
armed forces a criminal act?
Reinventing libraries
More than the spread of e-books, poor infrastructure and pathetic services are
endangering the future of libraries in India. The role of public libraries in
particular is fast shrinking and they hardly meet their community objectives.
In a recent written reply in the Lok Sabha, the government tried to provide
some hope by pointing to the creation of the National Mission on Libraries and
the enhanced allocation of Rs 400 crore in the Twelfth Five-Year Plan to
strengthen the library movement. The National Mission, which was set up a
year ago, is a welcome initiative and its ambitious objectives could help
rediscover the importance of libraries. But the question is how the new mission
would succeed where earlier initiatives and committees failed. For the last four
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decades, the government had tried various projects to modernise libraries,
introduce information technology to improve services and interlink libraries. It
even established the Raja Rammohun Roy Library Foundation, a central
autonomous institution to build a national system and provide assistance to
libraries across the country. Though these initiatives ushered in some progress,
there is still a lot left to be done.
The state of the National Library in Kolkata is a case in point. The Comptroller
and Auditor General's report (2010) severely admonished this premier and
Centrally funded institution for its lack of professionalism and poor service.
Inordinate delays in the processing of procured books denied users the benefit
of reading three lakh books and in 40 per cent of the cases, the library did not
issue books to readers despite these being available on the shelves. In the past
10 years, the library has digitised only about 9000 books and, worse, damaged
many of them in the process. Funding is not a major impediment to improving
libraries as is usually made out. Most local bodies levy a library cess as part of
property tax and collect large sums of money. Unfortunately, they do not
transfer the amount towards library improvement. There are instances in
States such as Andhra Pradesh where concerned citizens have often moved the
courts to ensure local libraries get their due share. The shortcoming is in
providing service and demonstrating commitment. Hence, the priority has to
be on finding ways to improve our libraries rather on creating new rules and
hierarchies. Equally important is the need to reinvent libraries as public spaces
that host multiple functions such as art exhibitions and small assembly areas.
As a community node, they could offer free and easy access to more digital
content and help bridge the knowledge divide. This would enhance their
importance and social role, and keep them relevant for decades to come.
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