Untitled

By Ritambhara Agarwal (St. Stephen's College)

“Can you hear me?”

My voice echoed through the dark dark darkness

But no answer pierced the black curtain

And I stood there

Just as I had all my life…waiting,

Waiting…waiting in vain.

The outside had no answer

And the inside no voice

And I stood there

Just as I had all my life…waiting,

Waiting…waiting in vain.

And the answer waited too…bidding its time, bidding the wait, bidding the life.

The Cry of A Tortured Soul...

By Swati Thakur (St. Stephen's College)

WHAT am I?? ……the cry of a tortured soul!

Another horrific tale I was told,

Made me angry, made me cold;

It made me question my dignity,

WHAT am I? I was left in a quandary!

An individual, a person is that all?

Or a mere person meant to oblige monsters’ calls?

Am I the beauty that nurtures a life?

Or just a commodity used by some low life?

I am a woman-I scream out aloud,

With feelings, with emotions, and a heart that makes me proud.

I am a gift to be cherished,

To be respected, cared for and allowed to flourish!

I have grown in stature over time,

Yet I am subjected to maximum crimes;

Been to the moon and back, the world says,

Yet in their actions, these words give away!

Brutally slaughtered, broken and shattered;

That’s the fate I meet if a man I fail to oblige,

My own choices and decisions don’t matter,

Agree or DIE, is the decision conferred……

I am not a commodity to be owned,

My body, my temple, not some throne!

I deserve to be treasured, not butchered,

To be considered an equal, not a weakling!

WHAT am I? Again I question,

For I am considered far from human……

A Portrait of Allah I can never make

By Udit Bhatia (St. Stephen's College)

I would paint Allah nude
if I knew what he looked like

grant him enviable shapes
skin like marble from his mosques

and a peaceful smile
so that contradictory guns

shoot me.

A Return To Gandhinomics

By Subhashish Bhadra (St. Stephen's College)

The 2008 recession brought into limelight the argument about rampant consumerism in the US and other western economies. Citizens and Governments of these countries were accused of spending beyond their means. However, consumption and production of goods as a basis of welfare has been so deeply ingrained in our psyche that these have become fundamentals that have never been questioned.

While there are various schools on development – most prominently the socialists and the capitalists- most of them agree that more goods are better than less, that more consumption is to be preferred to less; the only questions that are left are the hows and whats. It is surprising, and may I say a bit disappointing, that the thoughts of Gandhi were not given serious consideration even in his own land. Gandhi, I am sure, would be appalled by our craving for consumption. As he said, ‘the world has enough for man’s need, but not enough for man’s greed.’ While drafting India’s five-year plans, the debate was always about the level of state control and freedom of trade, rather than about the basic question of what we are trying to achieve. Was Gandhi’s conception of welfare and economics not even worth an afterthought? This forms the theme for the rest of my article.

It is true that output, as measured by GDP, is an indicator of national welfare. Rank the countries according to per capital GDP, and chances are that you have actually ranked them in terms of development. However, do you value a 2,000 dollar increase in per capita GDP more than political freedom, or basic law and order? This is where the measure of GDP becomes ineffective.

My personal issue with GDP as a measure of growth is its linearity, i.e. 1 dollar worth of goods produced by a country with a per-capita income of 500, and another with a per-capita income of 30,000 are valued equally. This creates perverse incentives. As an economic planner of a country who must show results, I have an incentive to continue to produce indefinitely, because each successive unit contributed equally to my performance measured by GDP.

This is what I believe could be a mathematical expression of Gandhi’s problem with consumerism. Man’s needs are limited – food, clothing and shelter. Beyond these basic needs, consumption should not be given much importance. If our measures of welfare based on national output were designed such that every successive unit was valued less, then we get rid of this problem, because every unit of production beyond what is the ‘need’, would not count for much. Consumer fetishism will cease to be a problem because beyond a point, additional units of consumption would almost be worthless. The consumeristic mentality would break down, and we will finally be able to focus on the ‘soft’ aspects of life – political freedoms, economic equality and environment.

War, Peace and Myth-Making

By Rupam Sindhu Kalita (St. Stephen's College)


The one-eyed cleric Mohammed Omar, currently the chief of the Taliban Shura, the highest decision making body of the Taliban, justified the decision to blow up the Bamiyan Buddhas on the pretext that God had made holes on the feet/pedestal of the giant statues so that dynamite could be planted on them. He was referring to the pockmarked surface of the base of the statues resulting from physical wear and tear. Mullah Omar is himself surrounded by legends. Many believe that he had gouged out his eye with his own hands without using an anesthetic. The account is of course disputed. But the dubious distinction of the man has gone a long way in propelling him to a position of strength vis-à-vis the awe that surrounds his personality.

After the Soviets were thrown out of Afghanistan by the Mujahedeen backed militarily by the US, the civil war that broke out in Afghanistan proved to be a pointer to the events that were to unfold in the socio-politics of the country. The US dumped the Mujahedeen after their purpose to halt a Communist offensive was fulfilled in the wake of the Soviet defeat. The collapse of the pro-Communist Najibullah regime in 1992 gave way to the bloody civil war until the arrival of the Northern Alliance in 1996 led by Ahmad Shah Masood which united a number of political-military organizations and brought a semblance of government in Afghanistan. The subsequent rise of the Taliban and the US War on Terror that deposed the Talban is well-known.

The tendency to convert perceived threats to actual/real threats is very strong in today’s political narrative and hence the rise of terrorism and its concomitant of counter-terrorism. The Marxist critic Raymond Williams talks about the dangers of a tradition being seen in fragments, that is, the move from a tradition to a select tradition. The peril of a select tradition is that while it foregrounds certain aspects of history it completely ignores the rest. Mullah Omar didn’t know or didn’t bother to know that the Bamiyan Buddhas was the point where the Buddhist faith met the art of Greece and that the colossal statues of the Buddhas were the expression of the encounter between Buddhism and Gandharan art. Bamiyan was the place where the portrait of the Buddha in human form was innovated. The homogenization of a faith into a single cultural, sociological entity can be grossly misleading and the US committed the same mistake when after the fall of the Taliban in 2001 they thought that the Muslims in Afghanistan composed a single homogenous group who should be treated as such. But the Taliban, essentially a Sunni movement, was the near-perfect enemy of the many Shia groups who lived in the country. So much so that the Shia groups like the Ahmadas, Hazaras heaved a sigh of relief when the Taliban fell and the US military started taking control of the country.

Post Second World War, the United States appropriated global dominance to itself and unfurled the concept of the “Grand Area”, which referred to the region subordinated to the needs of the US economy. This region would include, besides Latin America, Asia Minor and the Far East, the former British Empire, and the exercise of ‘annexing’ the former British colonies would be called an exercise in “anti-imperialism” in the subsequent period. The memoranda of the US National Security Council in 1948 states that “ While scrupulously avoiding assumption of responsibility for raising Asiatic living standards, it is to the US interest to promote the ability of these countries to maintain…the economic conditions prerequisite to political stability.”

The concern boils down to “stability”, which is ubiquitous in US terminology aimed at the third world. Noam Chomsky points out that “stability” is a code word for obedience. James Chance, editor of Foreign Affairs, cites “our efforts to destabilize a freely elected Marxist government in Chile” illuminates the US Realpolitik “to seek stability.” The State Department believes in the policy of destabilization in the interest of stability. The reason for the State Department’s keen desire for “stability” is the US will to build a geographic-ideological space which secures its economic needs. The fear of a perceived enemy who would over run the country was accompanied by a similar fanatic, jingoistic lingua on self-defence. President Lyndon Johnson stated, during the height of the US aggression in Vietnam; “There are 3 billion people in the world and we have only 200 million of them. We are outnumbered 15 to one. If might did make right they would sweep over the United States and take what we have. We have what they want.” This sounds like a timid child whining that he/she needs a pistol to keep away the monsters that figure in his/her mother’s stories.

The ‘Rotten Apple Theory’ (a version of the Domino theory) was eloquently outlined by Dean Acheson, Secretary of State under President Truman, “Like apples in a barrel infected by one rotten one, the corruption of Greece would infect Iran and all to the east.” He fabricated a remarkable set of myths regarding Soviet pressure on Greece and Turkey and succeeded in convincing the Congress to support the Truman Doctrine. The alleged communist “infection” and its spread toward Western Europe were succinctly articulated by Acheson and it improvised the grounds for the Cold War. Under the rotten apple theory, the tinier and weaker the country, the less endowed it is with resources, the more dangerous it is. The ‘fear’ of the United States concerning alleged Soviet influence in Eastern Europe not only led the US government to set up anti-aircraft missiles in East European countries but also turned  many small island nations into navy bases with a massive military presence and virtually won them over and used them as launch pads to thwart any possible/probable threat. US military bases are scattered across the world with countries geographically as diverse as Grenada, Bahrain and Japan playing host to the world’s largest peace time war exercises carried out by the US military. “Benefits” of hosting a US military base was evident most recently in Bahrain where the killing of pro-democracy demonstrators by the monarchy was totally ignored and the focus of attention shifted to Libya. The brutal suppression of the majority Shia population by the Sunni monarchy in Bahrain received no currency and instead armed contingents were drawn in to Bahrain from Saudi Arabia across the border in a resolute effort to put down the uprising while the West went berserk with claims to oust the Libyan dictator through military intervention.

President Clinton propounded a doctrine in which he stated: “If somebody comes after innocent civilians and tries to kill them en masse because of their race, their ethnic background or their religion, and it’s within our power to stop it, we will stop it.” This was announced in the days leading up to the Kosovo war in 1999. Analyzing the unfolding events after the US intervention in Kosovo, political scientist John Mearscheimer observed that the Gulf War of 1991 and the Kosovo War of 1999 “hardened India’s determination to possess nuclear weapons” as a deterrent to US violence. A British diplomat wrote, “One reads about the world’s desire for American leadership only in the United States,” while “everywhere else one reads about American arrogance and unilateralism.” The security cover that the US threw over Turkey because of the perceived Soviet threat was extended to determined support for the Turkish government when it launched an all-out offensive against the Turkish Workers’ Party (KPP), a militant group representing the Kurds and fighting to secure a separate nation-state for them. The massive transfer of arms from the US to Turkey since the end of Second World War continued and increased during the Kurdish insurgency when virtually all US-imported weapons ended up being used against the Kurdish population. Journalist Jonathan Randal observed that the year 1994 was “the year of the worst repression in the Kurdish provinces” and the year when Turkey became “the biggest single importer of American military hardware and thus the world’s largest arms purchaser…”

However in 1999, Turkey lost the dubious distinction of being the largest recipient of US arms to Colombia. The pretext under which arms supply to Colombia was escalated was the drug war that was being fought in Colombia. But the more pressing concern for the US was the left-wing extremist groups such as the Revolutionary armed Forces of Colombia (FRCC-EP) that had been engaged in a protracted guerrilla war with the government of Colombia. The possible nexus between left-wing groups of Colombia and the government of neighbouring Venezuela was a more pressing concern for the US than the illegal trafficking of drugs that the extremist groups had been accused of. Hence the need for more US military hardware to the Colombian government. The “intentional ignorance” that the US puts on and its brilliant manoeuvring of that “ignorance” to fit policy into different circumstances has been a cornerstone of US foreign policy since the end of the Second World War.

From Mullah Omar’s avowal that the holes at the base of the Bamiyan Buddhas had been drilled by God just to enable the Taliban to plant dynamite therein to the US interventions in Vietnam, Kosovo, East Timor, apart from Iraq and Afghanistan, runs a common thread that has done violence to humanity. The long-standing US assertion that Iran has been purifying uranium to an extent that could be used for nuclear weapons might transform into a full-fledged US attack on Iran. We only need to wait till the US Presidential elections get over. 

Minister Karen Toh Sala Character Dhila Hai

By Arunoday Majumder (Department of Sociology, Delhi school of Economics, former television journalist)

The latest sensation which has just been served live and loud is that of ministers watching ‘pornography’ in state assemblies. The moot point is the nature of the content itself. But the intellectual calibre of journalists and the monophonic reactions from the news media stand explained. Droning hyperboles – ‘shameful’, ‘criminal’, ‘resign’, ‘expel’ – have been employed to articulate disgust and demand.

The instruction manual for manufacturing consent has been followed, opinion has travelled at the speed of light and with the force of gravity leaving information behind and buried. The Pied Pipers of television stations and newspaper houses are once again leading the targets of their speech and script to delusion. Their music fills the air not because of their mastery over the flute but because nobody else has access to the flute. Less metaphorically, they don the air of omniscience not because knowledge is at their disposal but because the means (the physical infrastructure) of producing it is. In this article the author revisits the information to attempt a sincere perspective of the event as opposed to the episode that has been performed on news soap opera.

The immediate issue is the nature of the clip which the media in its infinite wisdom has labelled ‘pornography’. The origin of the word can be traced to the Greek words – porne meaning ‘sexual slave’ and graphos meaning ‘description of’. So, no depiction of nudity or coitus is pornography unless it involves the depiction of coercion or violence. A little research which goes beyond Wikipedia and its ilk and even superficially into the domain of feminist literature will confirm the same. It is this distinction that accounts for the survival of the sculptures in Khajuraho. It also justifies the performance of the sexual in films like Gandu (2010) and Chatrak (2011) which have received rave reviews from the news industry for being ‘bold’.

Now, does the clip in question contain anything which is coercive or violent? It is difficult to ascertain because the images appearing on television and newspapers are blurred. The media may have considered that the clip is ‘pornographic’ but it has no right to impose its opinion on viewers and readers. Information with regard to the description of the clip could have been circulated in the form of lettered graphics which the media use frequently otherwise. In fact, disclosure of the content in this manner will help clear the air. The decision can then be made in the public sphere and not in a handful of buildings populated by individuals who time and again embarrass themselves.

The sketchy information available about the video which one James Bond shot from the visitors’ gallery is that of women clad scantily and dancing. There is some information on suggestive physical contact as well. But no element of coercion or violence has been reported. On this basis the media cannot label the clip ‘pornographic’. And in case they still do then they need to explain their promotion of ‘Chikni Chameli’ and the rest which is also about actresses clad scantily and dancing and engaging in suggestive physical contact.

So why is Sunny Leone ‘adult entertainment’ and the clip in question ‘pornography’ to the media? Is this indicative of a specific type of ‘colour’ blindness? The author makes no claim to omniscience and leaves it to the decision of the readers. But there is perhaps a political-economic logic to this deliberate hypocrisy. Suhel Seth appearing on a 9 pm debate on February 8 summed up the media’s opinion of politicians: “We elect absolute scoundrels, some of them. Some of them are rogues, they are criminals, they are rapists. What do you expect them to see on their mobile phones if they get a chance? ... Obviously they will see this yaar. This is what they have emerged from. That’s the dirt, quagmire from which they have risen.”

There is an obvious effort to discredit electoral politics and the political class. It was evident when the focus of reportage of the 2G scam was a politician with little reference to the involvement of the corporate sector.  It was also evident in the Anna Hazare tamasha where an otherwise ‘of democracy, by democracy, for democracy’ chanting media supported the demand for appointments to control corruption but only in politics. It was aware but chose to ignore that in almost every major case of corruption the corporate class and the political class share a symbiotic relationship.

Selective derision of the political class is an agenda of the media. Nothing else explains the acceptance of Sunny Leone and the rejection of the mobile clip. Such unidirectional criticism manufactures consent that seeks the exclusion of electoral politics from public life. The ground is thus prepared to extend the demand for further withdrawal of the state – much to the humour of the ‘free market’ ideology and its corporate cadres.

No matter how much news media practitioners consider themselves to be anti-establishment, they have very little idea about the identity of the establishment itself. The author suspects uncritical consumption of the ‘Rang de Basanti’ types for such unawareness. The establishment has hardly ever been just the state, the source of power is in the market. The anti-establishment oomph which journalists so often exhibit is thus misdirected. To conclude, an advertisement driven media cannot but be another cog in the political-economic wheel. Their reaction to elected politicians and electoral politics – as the 2G scam, the Anna Hazare tamasha and the video controversy demonstrate – will always be Pavlovian. 

NREGA : A Perspective

By Jalnidh Kaur (St. Stephen's College)

Distance perpetuates poverty. As I travelled from the centre of the Sriganganagar district in Northern Rajasthan to the fringe, that is what I discovered - a parallel movement of the people working under NREGA from the centre to the fringes of their economic landscape.

The MGNREGA under the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme is indeed a commendable act. Every family in the specified rural areas, measured by the number of chulhas serving a group of people is entitled to 100 days of assured employment within 5 km of their house. I chose to survey two NREGA sites in the district on the basis of the diversification of work in these areas and to record the work progress and gauge the success rate.

The first site we surveyed was Mirzewala, 12 kilometres from Sriganganagar where the road widening work was in progress from 16.06.2011. The road, I was told, was a State Highway. The labor force of 65 comprised mostly middle-aged women. A possible reason for this could be the job card. Since each family is allotted one job card, workers may choose to complete their stipulated 100 days of work in turns with their family members – each member in a family of four could contribute 25 days of work, working together or in different shifts over the year. The NREGA in Rajasthan where the minimum daily wage, at present is Rs 119 promises a wage of more than 10,000 per year to every family (contingent on the task performed by the group under the group system). However, the wage as we enquired from the women laborers at this site, varied from Rs 90 to Rs 100. NREGA permits wage payments on a daily rate as well as on a piece rate. Since Rajasthan has followed the piece rate system – wages are paid in proportion to the work performed; earning the minimum wage requires completion of the prescribed task for the group.

The rest 265 days of the year, the source of employment for this section of people is agriculture which by its basic nature is seasonal in nature but promises a daily wage of Rs 60-70 for each labourer. NREGA has undoubtedly raised the wage income of the people during the period of off-season agriculture (non-sowing and non-harvesting months). Direct personal interview with the laborers here revealed a significant level of contentment at the wages received, which had improved their living although no assets had been created using the additional income.

The progress towards the second site at Sangatpura located right at the international border through the desert landscape was a drive towards an economic desert. No toilets, no pakka houses, no implements supplied by the NREGA reached the region.

Poverty has become such a mechanical term in textbooks and classroom discussions. The abstract version of the term was what I saw in the eyes of the people here. Some of the ladies cried as truth slowly emanated out of some feigned responses by the bunch of old ladies there. I was surprised to see the change in their tone as the Sarpanch joined us. They veiled their faces and replied rather laconically thereafter. Only some brave old ladies took courage and spilled the beans.

The heart of the matter, as it came up, was that much of the consumption expenditure gets drained into feeding their alcoholic husbands. They were also victims of domestic violence by the husband.

“Bachat karte hain aap?” I asked amateurishly. They looked at each other and smiled at the irrelevance of the question – There are no savings, the income ends in feeding the family and does not translate into assets. “Paise aande baad cha a, asi tan pehla kadhaan nu karde haan”, I was told in a Punjabi accent. (We desperately wait for them to credit our account with the fortnightly wage, which we withdraw completely right off the bat).

So, while the policy framed by the government is excellent, and its promulgation is smooth, this is where it ends in the end. The social complexities in a region where illiteracy is rampant clog the channels for economic development. It ends in the pockets of their alcoholic husbands; drug addiction among the male members eats up the wage that is earned. While the constant and reliant stream of income from NREGA will help them survive, it is doubtful if it will lift them above the poverty line.

As per the act, the wage is supposed to be transferred within 15 days to the accounts of the laborers, the villagers told us sometimes it took about 2 months for the transfer to occur and that the bank was far – it took a “hefty sum of Rs 5 to the bank and back”.

The survey of the border regions at Sangatpura and Sahibsinghwala presents a paradox. While the NREGA implements are not reaching the area, the laborers are bringing their personal implements to level the ground which banks the H5 minor distributary – there is easy availability of rivers of alcohol. The statistics are encouraging, the work is encouraging but the condition of the laborers is not. You find a disproportionate number of ladies working on the sites, a cursory inspection of their pale hands and nails points to their anemic condition. While the nurse appointed visits the site regularly, she can do little to save them from the beatings of their drunken husbands.

As a first year economics undergrad student who was on her first ground visit, I discovered how these labourers could not be crystallized into mere statistics I held in my hand. The dupattas of the women labourers wet with tears had tales to tell while I could just be a mouthpiece of their woes.