Ill/Active

At Dubai airport, at Gate 209 waiting for the Flight EK 719. I try to think, my mind is clogged with the feeling that I don’t like this airport. Any thought would be better than this. In front of me, a Kenyan man of Somali origin finishes a conversation in Af Soomaali at the public phone and walks away. I try to think of his Kenyan passport which he was holding in the same hand that held the phone and circumstances that may have brought him to Kenya. Suddenly, a man with Bihari accent is screaming … well, almost,‘who leave money and card here?’. I look around but can’t see the Kenyan passport holder. He disappeared fast. I thought of volunteering the information about the direction that the Kenyan passport holder went in but my attention is caught by the Japanese man sitting next to me who is talking rapidly with his spouse sitting next to him. She nods and nudges him. He says something in Japanese but in a low voice, perhaps informing the man with Bihari  accent about the Kenyan passport holder. The man with Bihari accent can’t understand and asks, ‘your card, your card?’. The Japanese man and his spouse shake heads vigorously and gesture towards the direction that the Kenyan passport holder took. The man with Bihari accent tries to follow their gestures but fails, waits for a while looking around and then picks up the money counts it, more than 40 US dollars; lifts and looks closely at the card, it is a debit card. He is holding the money and the card gingerly at the end of a stretched arm as if bringing the money closer to his body will pollute him … may be he is afraid that he would be beaten up. He walks away holding the money and the debit card like that. A whiff of talcum perfume mixed with body odour hits me. My stomach reels back & I feel nauseated. A couple dressed in heavy clothing of all kinds, the carriers of this smell, occupy the seats next to me. I look back and find the man with Bihari accent entering a room with police sign next to the door. He is still walking with stretched arms with the money and the debit card dangling from his fingers. I can’t bear nausea any more, I run to toilet next to the Gate. All sinks are occupied. I look into two empty toilets, both add to nausea. I look desperately at the Philippina cleaner. She smiles, ask, ‘you want …’ she gestures the Indian type toilet seat with both her hands. ‘Uhhh … no’, I say looking at the sinks which are still occupied and then I take a refill pack of toilet sanitizer, a toilet roll and broom from her large trolley of cleaning supplies and enter one of the toilets. She runs after me but I have locked the door from inside. Nausea has filled me, I can’t speak. I tie my sweater around my face and clear up the mess fast. But I am unable to throw up; my mind doesn’t like that my hands are dirty from holding the broom and cleaning the toilet seat with toilet paper wet with sanitizer. I come out to find the Philippina cleaner standing in the way with anger in her face. She looks inside the toilet and the expression changes to confusion. I walk to one of the sinks, which is empty now and throw up. The Philippina cleaner is staring and others are looking at me with not at all pleasant expressions. I clean up and walk out to look for a place far from the perfumed couple. I find none and decide to walk around. The Philippina cleaner is walking next to me, ‘you ok’, she asks first and then adds, ‘baby?’ My mind is now occupied with dread of another kind - what if the perfumed couple sits next to me in the aircraft. I think she is asking if I have a child. I say, ‘one child … big’ and gesture a height taller than me. She looks confused. I say thank you to her for her concern and walk in another direction and realise that she was wondering if I am pregnant! I frown but it fades away fast. I see a vacant seat near the Gate 210. I take it and start thinking about illness and people’s perception, my own perception.

Two and a half weeks back I was hospitalised – my first real stay in a hospital. I had taken myself to the hospital after looking at myself in the mirror several times. I looked fine, no sign of illness. But the sense that ‘I am dipping down’ persisted and convinced me to call the hospital. I asked for an early appointment. The doctor’s assistant gave me an appointment for the next day. I asked to make it earliest possible. She asked me why and if it is so urgent why don’t I go to the emergency. I was in the emergency with a colleague two weeks back to take care of another colleague who was medically evacuated from a neighbouring country. The amount of paper work and the time it took there was scary. So I said I do not wish to go to the emergency. She gave me an appointment four hours later and asked me a few questions about symptoms. I told her. Ten to fifteen minutes later, there was a call from her asking if I can come earlier. I was glad and walked towards the office exit gate. The 5-10 minutes walk which I always enjoyed was painful and the wait for the taxi at the gate frustrating. My body was telling me to let it succumb; somebody will pick it and take it to the hospital. My mind told me not to be a public nuisance and not to trust a crowd to take care of my body. I listened, waited, got a taxi and took myself to the hospital. I was examined and told about a number of tests that need to be done. I was already feeling better. I asked the doctor if all that would be over today. He smiled and said no. ‘I intend to keep you here for a few days’, he said. ‘How many days’, I asked. ‘I can tell you only after I have seen all the test results’, he replied. ‘But I am feeling better’, I protested. ‘When were you admitted last in a hospital’ he asked. ‘When I was born’, I replied and further said, ‘I can come to the hospital on a daily basis’. He told me that my mind is controlling my body so I am feeling better. He asked if I drank water, I didn’t remember but I told him about tea and coffee I had that day. Dehydration is not a good things, I know.

I was admitted and another doctor, a nurse and an attendant tried hard to prick my veins to administer some intravenous fluid and injection. ‘You have thin veins, very difficult to prick’, said the doctor. She was cheerful and kept asking questions. My mind said that she is just trying to keep me talking to distract me as she pricks my veins. I looked carefully at my veins; they collapsed each time one was pricked. A few attempts and they finally manage to get one syringe needle inside my vein. They looked jubilant and the nurse told me that they are going to water me well so the veins can be regenerated. The attendant asked if I didn’t feel the pain. ‘I did but I want to be out of this place fast so I better let you do what you have to do’, I replied. They all laughed. ‘Good attitude, you will get well fast’, the nurse said. They hung three different size bottles to a stand and explained something about IV fluid, the flow regulator extension set and how it regulate the flow of IV fluid from IV infusion set into the IV catheter and what they are going to do next. Nothing registered in my brain and I told myself to calm down and let them do their work unhindered. For a while that was okay but suddenly I found them examining me further and my body cringed. I told myself to relax and I did ease a bit but the male attendant had noticed my unease and moved a little backwards. My body screamed at him, ‘you can’t become invisible just by moving a bit backwards’. I didn’t realise that I have actually said it aloud but to my own relief I said it smilingly and gently. They all laughed again. I was comfortable by then and watched impassively as they attached a few more things to my body. The doctor who examined me first walked in and after greeting me talked to the doctor who was doing things on my body and then to me. It was casual conversation about family and work. But I was not distracted because I found him looking at my body carefully. I didn’t like it at all and I was about to say that I don’t want a male doctor groping me either with his eyes or hands when the mind interjected and quietened me. He checked every insert and attachment and told me that he is going to fix me and asked me to be enduring. He told me about my body’s ailment and that I must have ignored the symptoms for a long time. I protested saying that I never felt any symptom before. He didn’t quiet believe me. He asked if I would prefer a drug to help me sleep. I said no and he said that is all right. He continued his chatter for some more time and then left. The nurse stayed on to hear me muttering, ‘I shall endure, holy man’. She asked if I believe in the God. I asked her what she thinks to which she replied that I look like someone who doesn’t. We laughed and she said that she will pray for me tonight and hopes that I wouldn’t mind. I told her to be a bit more charitable and pray for the God to prevail on the doctor to let me out of this place fast. She winked and said that she will.

By now, it was already late in the evening and my food arrived. I was hungry, very hungry. The food looked good. But I could feel the coolness of fluid in my veins better than the taste of the food. My mind kept going back to poking and peering into my body. I tried not to think about it but the aftertaste of poking and peering was worse than the time I was being poked and peered at. I felt resentment about being alone, angry with my body for not giving me any symptoms that would have saved me from poking, peering and inserts. ‘I do not like to be examined by a man’, my body kept shouting. It’s my body’s view which is not just hidden-from-public-knowledge but also rejected by my mind, ‘what difference does it make who examines the body, it’s just a piece of meat and bones for the doctor’, it retorted. An intimate exchange between the body’s account of bad feeling about being touched by a strange man and the mind’s rationale about the idiocy of such thinking went on. In between, a colleague had visited, the hospital pantry staff had removed the food tray and a nurse changed the fluid connections. All this while, the exchange between the body and the mind continued uninterrupted. Except for a short while, in between, when I remembered that my younger brother told me that some of his wedding rituals would begin today. I called up my would-be sister-in-law and spoke with her. My would-be sister-in-law was getting ready to receive the baaraat when I called her so when my brother didn’t pick up his phone I thought he must be in the middle of baaraati band-baazaa so he can’t hear me. For a while my thoughts lingered on our growing up years till the body and the mind exchange took over again. Around the middle of the night, a nurse came and asked if I would like to have a sleeping pill. She informed that the doctor has prescribed it but asked her to give it to me only if I want it. She informed me apologetically that she would have to come in several times in the nights to change fluids and so on and it would be good if I take the pill and allow my body to rest. I told her that I am fine and feel rested. I was really not feeling tired.

Towards the morning, the exchange between the body and mind had taken an interesting new direction. My mind had convinced the body that I must have resisted and ignored symptoms and allowed the illness to build the blocks to take over the body so in a way my body has not fallen ill but is actually a creator of the illness. My mind screamed at the body, ‘you are responsible for being volatile and have put yourself in this unpredictable condition’. My body was not happy so it digressed and moved away from the mind. It was still resentful but it could not annoy the mind. After all, the mind is needed to watch over the body. Now both the body and the mind were weaving together incidents and events of the last few years in my life, examining them critically, raw analysis and depiction of life from a perspective that told me how I have wasted myself – how I have allowed the material matters to take over ideal spaces in life; how I chose to feel content when I haven’t been content and how the denial of discontent has constrained the space in which I configure my life and my ideals.

With the body and mind now acting as one, I condemned myself for choosing to lead an ambiguous life where I have learnt to ignore things that bother me. Their thinking disrupted the sense of stability that I thought I had. I was now looking at the onset of factors that may have been stronger than the symptoms of illness and so blocking them out. I was into a diagnosis and discursive exploration of my recent life and I was naming and taking-on responsibility for many things that I chose to ignore or tried to live with. ‘What a hypocrite, accepting things you wouldn’t accept earlier, living with things you wouldn’t tolerate in the past or in the public’, I yelled at myself. Thankfully, my youngest sister or the elder sister-in-law called up to give me an update of the wedding. It was a much needed break from the involuntary mental work. But not for long. I would have liked some more distraction.

I preferred the exchange between the body and the mind than this leapfrogging forwards and backwards in my life. At least, it kept the attention away from myself, albeit, in a strange way. The body and the mind are part of my self but when they were exchanging arguments, I could hear them detached, as if I were another being hearing conversation between two other people. This pact between the body and the mind continued to corner me as I went through various examinations and talking to the colleagues who visited me the following day. May be it showed on my face because when the nurse came in to change the fluid connections, the previous day’s insert came off and I started bleeding but I didn’t notice anything. The nurse nudged and asked me to give my thoughts a little break and keep the vein pressed while she fetches a new syringe to prick me. I put my finger on the vein and continued with my thoughts. Pricking was not working and the nurse remarked that even my veins have a mind of their own. She called a doctor who finally managed to get one right prick and I was back on the drip of one or another kind. The IV insert kept coming off each day and each day I would be pricked a few times with some remarks, all interesting. Each time, a vein was pricked I could see it receding. May be the nurse was right that the veins have a mind of their own. The pricking process became an amusing interruption to my self-engrossed thinking process.

On the second evening, the doctor decided that I must have the sleeping pill after asking me for some information about the allergies. I took the pill and felt terrible pain in my chest and upper back and had difficulty gulping down water. Half an hour later the pain was gone but I was wide awake. The nurse was not happy that I didn’t call her when I felt the pain saying the pain must be a reaction to the drug and remarked that I have willed myself out of sleep. I informed her that I had taken sleeping pills in the past and it never worked on me but when she persisted to find out which drug which I didn’t remember but she wouldn’t believe I asked her if patients think of death when they are hospitalised. She told me that most do even when they are admitted for small little things. She assured me that I am fine and I told her that I must make a will to ensure my daughter is taken care if I am gone and to ensure that whatever I have goes towards things I would like to contribute to. The illness was redefining and reshaping my thinking about my recent life materially and discursively.

The body and the mind’s joint analysis continued the following day and the days after. I thought of my life and creation of my identity as a one-word-name-woman and laughed at the bewilderment that I come across whenever somebody of an urban background hears that I have one word name. I thought of the tiny frame that makes my body and tried to trace factors that have made this frame jump with joy or wince with repulsion and revolt. On the third evening the doctor prescribed an injection to help me go to sleep. I refused when the nurse came with the injection. I told her that I do not wish to be injected and said it so forcefully that she agreed immediately that it is not a good idea to have the injection. We agreed that I would tell the doctor the next morning that he must stop this business of trying to ‘put me to sleep’ and then we laughed about the term ‘put to sleep’. But I noticed that she took extra care to draw the curtains neatly, switched of all the lights, put a cover on the glass in the door from where the light from the passage filtered inside and tip-toed more deliberately each time she walked in and out of the room. I wasn’t feeling tired even now.

By now results of various tests were out and the medical actions based on the results were being taken. By now I was also comfortable with my self-dialogue about how I have engaged and negotiated my emotional, physical and social environment and its boundaries. Finally, on the fourth evening, I informed my youngest sister that I am hospitalised and when she and others called up late in the night, I told them to relax and let me go to sleep. I slept as soundly as I could with a nurse walking in and out. The nurse was pleased and the doctor visibly relieved. The body and the mind offensive about the need to rethink my well-being and remake my life didn’t feel as harsh anymore and was gradually beginning to follow the day and night cycle.

It is rather strange that it took a hospital to instigate the process of naming, redefining, and reconfiguring and bring out the need of reconnecting and remaking my social relations. The ambiguities, the losses, frustrations and resistance stand better understood and attempts at sense-making more real even though I fail to understand how the body and the mind felt so separate from my self.

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Regulation of Disabled Women’s Sexuality

Regulation of Disabled Women’s Sexuality

In general, women’s voices for their specific rights in the disability rights movement in India are hardly present. Voices of disabled women is almost absent in the mainstream women’s rights movement.

The politics of ‘normal’ or ‘able’ bodies and minds is further complicates disabled women’s identity. Societal norms with regard to the ‘ideal’ womanhood and the ‘ideal body’ render physically disabled and mentally challenged women invisible. They become objects to be hidden, never to be seen, heard or felt.

Since feminism is a politics of the oppressed against being pushed to the margins, disability, in my view, is a feminist issue. As an oppressed group, disabled women and men face challenges related to educational and training opportunity, inclusion, occupational attainment, economic status, and social outlets. But disabled women face particular issues of reproductive rights; control over their bodies; physical, sexual and emotional violence; and sexual rights and representations, which are considered taboo topics by the disability movement.

It is important, therefore, that feminisms in India change towards inclusiveness and support the disabled women in rejecting the traditional subservient and invisible role. There is a need for a new emancipatory politics for the disabled women, which is led by the disabled women from the centre of the Indian women’s movement.

The full article is posted at: http://bellbajao.org/legal-take/regulation-of-disabled-women%e2%80%99s-sexuality/

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Sexual Frivolousness and Innuendos: Freedom of Speech or Peddling Insensitivity in the Name of Humour of One Kind or Another?

I must admit that this blog is instigated by what I have been hearing recently, comments such as ‘It is too difficult to open my mouth front of you’, ‘I’m scared to speak in front of you’, and then the last night I read a frivolous insinuation/references to bestiality and drunken orgy. It angers me, fills me with disgust and tells me something about the person. For a while, it makes me doubt the people I associate with, work with or share my life with. All the more when it comes from people who are development workers or who speak of rights.


I have often heard people recounting second or third person account of trauma of rape or child sexual abuse that another person they know, has gone through. The retelling usually has the reteller in a saviour or compassionate role, somebody who lent support or is lending understanding and support. And the next thing I come across is completely casual or frivolous conversation replete with sexual desperation, titillation and filled with sexual innuendos. Such comments or way of communicating are meant to be about harmless fun, genuine humour, about making light of ??? and being able to talk in a relaxed manner.

Let me say that, in my view, sexual insinuation or jokes and communication filled with sexual similes are not funny. They are outright offensive and insensitive, to say the least. Do these people realize that when they are retelling another’s trauma, they are robbing that person’s right to tell her own story and tell it to the people she would like to tell and not some random individual or group? I think not. Do they realize that they may be triggering trauma to survivors of sexual violence? I think not. And when they talk in a sexually insinuating manner, do they realize that they are reinforcing insensitive stereotypes, myths, sexual perversion and indulging in cheap titillation. I think not; as I hear, it comes under the ‘freedom of speech’ and being able to be themselves. Being themselves, yes definitely, they are being themselves.

Do I object because I feel that nobody has a right to make light of or a casual conversation out of somebody else’s trauma? Yes, it is one of the reasons. Nobody has a right to expose somebody else's life and identity and put himself/herself in a do-gooder position by recounting something in second or third person. I do feel that the freedom of speech is being abused when language becomes the vehicle of transporting stereotypes and of sustaining perversion. I feel that nobody has a right to joke about sexual abuse when they no idea of what it means to be abused sexually.

I have been told that women of my kind are hyper sensitive about sexual jokes and innuendos. Yes, I am and I know so many others who are, even when they do not say it. Such language or communication is uncomfortable even when they appear funny to the person talking. For anybody with access to information sources, it is impossible not to be aware that vast numbers of women and children across the world are sexually abused and kept in sexual slavery. So why is it so hard for them to understand that they might be triggering further trauma or trying to make light of a widely prevalent form of human rights violation? And if they can’t mind their thinking and language, and reform their way of thinking and behaving for the sake of protection of women’s and children’s right to be free from sexual violence, what sort of belief do they have in human rights?! Just simple thinking of how they feel when they come across ‘making light’ of a behaviour that they had to face. If they do so, even if sexual abuse may not be something experienced by them, they can, at least, imagine how it would feel, because they would know how a similar behaviour when directed at them, feels to them.

Many women do not react to such sexualised communication and children fall in the no-right-to-speak zone. They may take it as a given way of talking and communicating but does that take away the need to change this way of thinking and talking? No, it doesn’t. A form of abuse or perpetuation of an environment that sustains abuse should not continue because the world is quiet about it or there isn’t enough ‘mainstream noise’ about it. One abuse is too many and calls for reform.

Sexual jokes and innuendos, whether coming from women or men, are not about things that are only matters of pleasure, they are not only about things that happens out there, somewhere unaffected by our own beliefs and conduct, to people who don’t really mind this kind of communication or are a good-sport-to-take-it-in-a-good-spirit (as I have heard sometimes). Sexual jokes and innuendos reveal the speaker, they are about me and many women and children around me who have seen sexual abuse day in and out, in public and private, and they are about how much violated and angry we feel about it. As a woman who has grown up being pawed in public transport and streets, ignoring sexual gestures from fellow commuters and others, dealing with the abuse faced by self and working with those who faced such abuse, I do not believe that sexual frivolousness or innuendos are about individual liberties or the freedom of speech.

I can’t even remember how often I have ignored such communication, often in public life and sometimes in personal realm. And I hate myself when I keep quiet. I feel my tiredness is letting me down, that I am being a person of acute double standards. And sometimes, this builds up and I jump with such revolt and anger that later I feel that I should have given the benefit of doubt to the offensive person, that s/he didn’t really mean to be a pervert or promiscuous. I feel that I could have tried explaining to the person that the joke/innuendos/behaviour was not funny. But experience also tells me that not all are willing to think that their way of thinking and the absolutist sense of their right to act and talk the way they want, makes them feel that it is an infringement of their individual freedom. Sometimes their resentment is quite obvious.

I just don’t understand how sexual frivolousness and insinuations can even qualify as humour or fun. Something that can violate a relationship of trust, care and protection or violate the bodily and mental integrity of another person, even in my wildest imagination, cannot count as wit. Crash crudeness, may be.

I wish, sincerely, that people would see this as an issue, first, of being aware of the abusive dimensions and sensitivity that awareness calls for, and second, of questioning that why jokes and titillation are usually at the cost of those who are socio-politically weak or rendered silent by the social structures. Why something that is atrocity and violence against some, can be normalised as a spicy way of talking?

Awareness means going beyond reading about abuse and meeting people who were abused. It is about understanding the extent to which their way of communication may contribute to the prevalence of an environment of abuse and in normalizing such behaviour and communication. They need to slap themselves hard in their brains, each time it tells them to behave or talk in a certain way that is offensive. Otherwise they would never see that they are part of the patriarchal pack; it would not cross their mind that their way of behaving or talking may be the norm but not necessarily right. Oversights and lapses are not meant to be reoccurring and if they tend to be, they reveal that the person is either abusive even when not accepting it or that the person prefers to keep clouded vision because they actually derive pleasure despite knowing that they are causing harm.

When people can make an effort to gain knowledge about how, for example, trade systems can aggravate poverty; I do not understand why they do not try to understand that their sexually frivolous behaviour and innuendos reinforce the patriarchal claim over women and children’s bodies? How is it possible that the people who study, decipher and advocate theories of poverty, development and change, peace and conflict, fail to see that the established norms of ‘personal’ or social behaviour and communication legitimize the option of not thinking, not understanding and not seeing the effects of their sexually insinuating behaviour and communication; that it gives them a choice not to change. Women and men, who behave or talk in this manner, may not be against women’s or children’s rights but they need to see the connection between their intentions and consequent actions.

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Elections & Votes … Are These All to Democracy?

Elections are commonly viewed as the key element of democracy. In deed, they are but they are one of the key elements. When democracy is understood in terms of democratic representation, it is easier to understand that it entails a far more complex process that extends well beyond elections. Citizens participate in governance through a multiplicity of activities - among them interaction with their chosen representative, and getting their chosen representatives and others influenced through participation in voluntary associations, social movements, interest groups, and nongovernmental organizations-all of which enable citizens to voice common concerns and influence public policy between elections. Through these they are able to have a voice in decisions that govern them. Representative democracy is therefore not just about the elected representatives but it is the broad framework of ‘mediated politics’. How the elected representatives will be influenced by mediated politics is not determined by their skills to read and write (it is good if they have these skills) but by their intellect, ability to analyse, ability to see the interlinkages and impact of their actions, ability to express in any medium that is understood by the key group whose interests they are representing and so on.

Since representative democracy can remain representative only by being in an environment of integrated multiple channels of interaction, what is needed is also that the chosen representatives are people who are part of multiplicity of activities or initiatives in which their electorate are engaged. That means they need to be people who are rooted (even by the process of transplantation/naturalisation/adoption/immigration) in their constituencies and so that they link the constituencies with the political system. The repercussion of a lack of this rootedness and all the other abilities that are mentioned in the first paragraph is the representatives cannot see the various interest groups in their constituency, do not hear different voices that would enable them to represent all interests.

If criteria like minimum education qualification becomes a minimum eligibility condition for contesting election, it runs the risk of pushing those out who have all the abilities to be a representatives but lack the reading and writing skills. It also runs the risk of further marginalizing the those who are educationally marginalized because they may prefer their interests to be represented by one of them. Usually the educationally marginalized are also socially, economically, and/or politically marginalized. Therefore, the imposition of the minimum education qualification as is sought, say in an employee in a public or private sector, runs the risk of not giving representation to, for example, women because in a country like India, majority of them are illiterate. This does not foretell well in a country where women’s interests and numbers both remain largely unrepresented. Such a requirement pushes back the representation of the disabled, dalits, and many other such interest groups.

Also there is a need to break the perception that only those citizens who take part in election and are interested in party politics are active citizens and keeping democracy alive. Citizens who identify with certain political parties do mediate the politics through their participation and opinions and therefore through the political parties play a role in the political process. But lack of engagement with on decline in engagement with in party politics does not signal the absence from mediated politics. Similarly non-exercise of the right to vote does not mean disengagement or social disinterest in politics. These citizens usually still influence politics through their engagement in media (including internet and traditional media), social and interest groups and many other forms of organized or informal interactions. Often, those who are ‘disgusted’ or ‘disappointed’ with the current day politicians or those contesting elections, they resort to other outlets, platforms, and means of engagement that influence or are a part of political mediations. Rise of protest and social movements and social accountability measures like gender audits and social audits, emergence and mushrooming of interest groups, creative ways to institutionalize participation like participatory development and budgeting, community policing, etc, are an example of ‘non-party political engagement’. This kind of situation does not symbolise decline in citizen’s political participation rather it means a decline in party and vote based politics and growth in 'personalised politics'. It is also a sign that the strength of political parties is going to decline gradually, particularly, in terms of their ability to mobilise electorate. This is already evidenced by the proliferation of the smaller political parties, regional parties, independents, and weakening of the major political parties in India. This also keeps democracy alive as these citizens may have chosen not to exercise their right to vote but by their 'personalised politics', they are still being effective citizens in the sense that they are still mediating politics of the place/region/nation.

Read a similar post: http://j-k.in/blog/2009/12/make-voting-mandatory/

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Unity in Diversity: Notion or Reality

Unity in Diversity is a reality that we must acknowledge and live with. Unity will not come by making everybody alike rather by agreeing on certain common values and principles and leaving the rest to the people. The first principle being equality and equity to enable people to achieve equality. Do we have unity in diversity? Not entirely, the Indian government and a large number of fellow Indians refuse to acknowledge caste discrimination because caste is different from race but they expect dalits to have the sense of unity. Same with women's rights; the state apparatus, society and families continue to kill female foetus, burn women, rape and molest women and girls and deny them basic rights in the name of religion, custom, traditions and so on but when women cry and make noise they are told that they have sold out to foreign ideologies as if only these inhuman practices are the foundation of the 'Indian ideology'.

The issue of unity cannot be left to nurture itself and remain a reality on its own unless the problematic of caste practice, the practices of abuse, discrimination, and violence against women and girls, and the inequality at large are consciously addressed. Do these practices threaten the concept of Unity in Diversity? Yes, if diversity is taken to mean and allow casteism, sexism, and so on even when these are to be ended says the Indian constitution. Citizens need to revisit the role of diversity that India holds in the national identity politics and construction of a national identity. The political ideology of a cohesive nation and national integration will not go far unless diversity based on the principles of equality and equity is given true meaning by the practice of it.

Diversity is a complex reality in India as a deconstruction of this reality will reveal innumerable sects, social groups and socio-economic segmentation by end number of castes, sub-castes, religious, regional and linguistic groups apart from further division and of these by sex. With this layered and amazingly complex reality of diversity within the nation-state, the concept of ‘one nation’ was and continues to be thrown away every time an effort is made to silence certain voices against discrimination, state led violence, caste and religion led violence and gender based violence. Or, the concept is thrown off by the unethical and unscrupulous political actors who use the issues raised by the voices to serve their vested ends. Demands for separate states and autonomous districts, mosques for women and so on are the symptoms of one or the other form of rejection of the notion of ‘one nation’.

The architects of the Indian Constitution were far-sighted enough to recognize this and sought to bring about a sense of an overarching Indian identity by ending the discrimination, inequality and violence and by recognizing the reality of diversity through inclusion of the fundamental rights and protection of dalits and religious, cultural and ‘habitation’ minorities (the last terms means certain forest habitats and those citizens who inhabit those habitats). The overarching national or unified identity has to bear the imprint of myriad political, social, religious, gender, and culture based lives in the country. It cannot be the other way round that these give way to accept national unity at whatever cost.

The notion and reality of an identity coming from Diversity is necessary not just from a patriotic sense of belonging to one geo-entity but also from the point of view of a mass of people being protected from the exploitative globalized forces, for the sake of economic advancement of a considerable chunk of humanity consisting of both women and men, for ensuring that identities of some do not swallow the identities of all, and for recognizing that diversity exists at all levels and in every social strata and segment.

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Up in the Air in Somalia

The Egal International Airport at Hargeisa in Somaliland
It has everything - a general waiting lounge, a VIP lounge, check in counters, a cafeteria, fuel depot, security check too!













Refueling over, aircraft checked, checked in baggage being loaded!

Passengers onboard! "Mind your head and keep your feet together", the Captain announces, "we are all set to go!"

Now at the Wajid International Airport ...
In case you missed it, look closely: The famous Tiki Lounge and all the directions for parking and entry - no entry without permission! If it is that lucky hour of the day, you may get a cup of nicely brewed chai in a little glass! 












The road from the UN compound. First round of checking before entering this gate is essential!

The aircraft arrives!

Time for security clearance and to check-in!

Multi-tasking! Refueling, loading and boarding ...

Garowe International Airport
This is the Old One, a new one has been in making ... may be already operating. Immigration used to have a room but the officer was always kind enough to go around collecting visa fee and stamping the passport, taking care not to use the whole page. If you were a frequent flyer to Garowe, you could get a discounted visa fee!

Passengers arriving at the airport and the aircraft coming to a halt ... arrivals are well synchronised!

Security check, ticket check, onboard!

And in the air again!

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The Education Catch

Education, now-a-days, is hardly being looked upon for educating the mind. Primary education, mostly as a means of acquiring the ability to read and write – to be able to read labels and signs, Higher education, increasingly, is seen as a means to acquire better jobs and to some degree set up businesses – an economic avenue. This way of looking at education is universal. Reading and writing may not have been required as a survival skill a century back and therefore treated as something important for the brain and intellectual growth. That is part of the reason why it used to be a pursuit of the wealthy, ruling classes and the like. With time and changes in the economic contexts education has become a commercial investment for individuals, families, institutions, and governments. A small woman farmer needs to be able to read the amount that she is signing in the account book of her self-help group or fill the form that the disgruntled staff member of a nationalized bank wants her to complete before s/he can tell her that she will get that little loan. Today, the critique of the commercial value of education is a privileged criticism. Education is no longer a delicacy to feed the brain or an ability to intellectualize the small matters of life that would make the person someone to whom the working classes would turn to for advice.

‘Social Returns’ or economic returns to the family or society against the investment made in a child/person’s education have become an important measure to assess effectiveness of education. And this is where the catch lies. Social significance attached to particular sex, class, caste, region (or location), etc influence the understanding of ‘who’ can bring higher Social Returns from education. This influence is critical, of utmost significance, as it is this understanding that makes a father or mother or the family determine who will receive education, who will receive what education, and who will receive education where. This understanding also influences social decision about which education will get prioritised and demanded and since society is a whole only conceptually, only those who hold power in a society get heard. The understanding also shapes the strategies of the institutions – governments, academic or otherwise who are capable of investing in education – as to who will constitute their ‘clientele’, what kind of education they would offer to whom, in which location they would offer the services and on what terms. Supposedly poor socio-economic worth of women, the supposedly lower castes and certain classes, forest dwelling communities or those living in remote areas where any form of economic development will require very high investment and would have a much longer gestation period, etc become disincentive to investment in their education by the families, institutions and governments.

Different types of education - primary, secondary, technical, higher education, etc – also pose different gendered challenges. The challenges that each type throws up require different responses. The situation is further complicated by the fact that although some problems cut across geographical barriers, education is a “State” subject in India and each state government has different legislations that affect education differently. The role of the family and society in making the changes in the state is of paramount but so is the orientation with which the party in governance comes to govern the state. For example in Kerala, higher level of literacy has been possible because of the communist elected government which forcibly introduced land and education reforms. But there has been a set back in the quality of education in Kerala in the recent years because the same government did not attempt to influence social traditions or practices and limited itself to reform as far as economics goes. This doesn’t meant that there have been no social change and reform processes going on. There have been but these have been led separately by individuals and groups who are concerned about gender inequality issues and caste issues. The poor synergy between the two or the state’s inability to go beyond economics contributed to what has been otherwise a smooth growth in literacy. Having said this, the fact that the communist government created a space to address these issues, which is visibly absent in other states, including the current day communist state West Bengal, made it possible for the individuals and groups to create a demand and desire for change.

The ‘Social Returns’ perspective needs to be continuously critiqued for its top-down approach as well as for being divorced from the socio-cultural analysis. It will benefit immensely by aligning itself with the social change and reform agenda and with the demand for reform in gender relations or the social allocation of roles and responsibilities to women and men and girls and boys in relation to each other and in the public space. Without this alignment, the claims made by institutions and governments that education will address and find responses to social issues will just remain a rhetoric without any value. Education cannot be looked at in isolation and it will bring ‘Social Returns’ for all only if we recognize and consciously work on the gender, class, caste, regional (or locational) and religious dynamics within families, societies and cultures.

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Multiplicity/Whole

Muddled in my thoughts
Erratic in my actions
I divide to be concealed and to be opened
And forget what belongs where

Not knowing the boundaries
Nor to break free
I time my existence
And lose track when to be where

A being of contradictions

Tell me
How to cross over
From multiplicity to a whole

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Violence in Religion or Violence with Religion?

A look at history is good enough to tell us that the history of religion is a history of violence. Not surprising; religion is indeed opium of the masses - quoting it even though it comes from a racist political philosopher - and the elite alike. Unlike any other aspect of life, this one offers a remedy for all, if you are willing to believe. People are taught to protect what can salvage them from any situation. When so much of ' the potential' is at stake, obviously it is easier to instigate those who are afraid for their well-being, vulnerable because everything else has not just failed but also told them that nothing can save them from the doom of one or the other kind. Unpredictability of the future scares all and each wants to minimize that unpredictability as far as possible. If a belief that offers some level of security to people is portrayed as under threat, people rise and react.

Religion has never been a private matter - practice of religion gives identity, the nature of that practice makes one visible or invisible in a larger whole. Religion therefore has to be a major tool in the hands of those who seek political power or clout. The element of power has created such close relationship between religion and violence. All major religions, Catholicism, Protestantism, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, Sikhism and Buddhism are tainted with violence.

Violence is said to be not part of any religion but when religion is the matrix within which identity is crafted, violence gets embedded in religion.

The sheer number of people - just in the sense of population - frightens humanity because humans have demonstrated consistent capacity to harm and destroy. The fear, therefore, is not unfounded. The fear then becomes the basis for social organizing, whether it is through the family or religion or any other institution which can assure the larger society that things will not go haywire and that they are not at each-other's mercy. Family, clan, religion, etc are some of the oldest institutions that have been set up to organize the society in a manner that the social as well as personal behaviours stay within certain agreeable boundaries. Since these are human creations, they can be used by humans to serve or dis-serve the humanity.

Since religion carries with what people regard as incomprehensible truths - truths which cannot be easily understood by ordinary beings and the only way to benefit from those truths is by placing their blind trust in them - even the state has often bowed before the power of religion. State and politics aim to command allegiance and compliance for the right or wrong reasons and religion has historically demonstrated its ability to galvanize allegiance and compliance. It is not surprising, therefore, that the state and politics use and abuse religion.

So while it can be said that religion does not carry violence, if eyes and ears are kept open, it can be seen that by its nature religion makes violence pursue it. And to say that religion and violence are completely divorced is not to recognise that many form of practices of religion condone violence when it takes place in form of animal sacrifice or identity politics killigs. Religion is what people practice, ie, the reality of religion lies in its practice, not in the texts that the majority have not read, cannot read or cannot understand. And religions, even in their purest forms, have tended to stand side by side with violence.

Since religion is so close to the core of human beings, the political and state machinery mix up with religions allow them to acquire much greater role. Since it is believed to have come from a supreme power, who all can trust and who can solve all problems of humanity and so on, it also gains the legitimacy to be the factor that should direct every day actions of human beings. Where that happens, it is not impossible to see how religion begins to influence practice of social justice, gender equality, rights, etc. And in societies where more than one religion exists, the competition among them is directly correlated with the level of religious involvement in violence and political involvement in religions.

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Globalization of Withering Weather, Dwindling Economies and Precarious Lives

The number of natural disasters and human-made disasters seem to be increasing manifold, each new year. Humanitarian response organizations are pointing out to the alarming ‘trend’ of increasing unpredictability of weather and seasons and to the fact that these are aggravated by climate change. And climate change has its deeper connections with economic globalization and increasingly lopsided and unsustainable energy consumption patterns. While climate change seems to have caught some attention, at least among the ‘intelligentsia’, media, and civil society organizations, economic globalization and perverse economic development of countries is hardly being taken up as an issue that is negotiable.

Humanitarian agencies across the globe are finding hard to raise resources to cope with old and new forms of disaster. Increasing number of disasters equal increasing demand for funds which practically means that funding is going to be more and more thinly scattered. The situation is becoming acute in the light of the fact that availability of the funds is also getting increasingly influenced by political actions of War on Terror and the like. Destruction of subsistence economies and destruction of forests, water bodies and other natural resources by the Corporates and haphazard development are turning large populations into internally displaced persons (IDPs) and refugees. These IDPs and refugees have to compete with IDPs and refugees created by the ‘democratisation army’ of the US of A and its associates and vice-versa. Often, the IDPs and refugees go through a cyclical process of being affected by impacts of both natural and human-made disasters. The line between the ecological or environmental IDPs and refugees and conflict/war IDPs and refugees is blurring at a faster pace.

Given that the political boundaries are becoming more and more stronger, the physical space that can accommodate the IDPs and refugees is shirking at a rate which is perhaps as fast as the change in climate. IDPs and refugees have become footballs to kick at all levels of politics. Scarcity of resources is further fuelling the tension that has always existed between the host communities and the IDPs and immigrants. IDPs and refugees are often attacked, murdered, raped, abused and denies basic right of movement because the host communities resent what they see as preferential treatment to the IDPs and refugees who get settled in their areas. Retaliation by the IDPs and immigrants also does similar harm to the host communities. The strain on the host communities’ resources leads to creation of newer IDPs and migrants from among these communities.

The globalized world has indeed succeeded in globalizing the natural forces and human lives. Is there a global will to accept that globalization would also imply owning the global responsibility for causing environmental violence and human tragedy and taking the global responsibility to remedy the situation? Or will the countries take individual responsibility in proportion to the damage caused by the country? We wait to hear from the negotiators in Copenhagen.

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