Free Rides For Women In Public Transport Is Part Of Delhi Govt’s Push To Make City Safe
Revolutionary, inclusive public policy or gender-appeasing vote bank politics? Since the Kejriwal government in Delhi announced free rides for women in public transport, almost everyone has had an opinion on it. In his column for The Indian Express this week, Jasmine Shah weighs in on the debate.
Jasmine Shah in
The Indian ExpressThe Delhi government’s decision solves an important part of this problem by making public transport the default mode of transport for the city’s women. Experts across the globe vouch that public transport is the safest mode of transport — there’s safety in numbers. In Delhi, a large fraction of women from poor and lower middle classes, often living at the margins of existence, are constrained to walk long distances or use unsafe modes of transport than buying a bus ticket. The metro is not even an option for most of them.
Assaults In Loos To Chest Stares...My Life Without GenderMen’s facewash, women’s perfume, men’s toothpaste, women’s razors.
Look around you and almost everything is compartmentalised into some gender binary. What does it feel like, therefore, to grow up gender-fluid or gender non-binary in such a society? It’s Pride Month and the best time, really, to try and understand the experiential struggles of gender-queer people especially in Indian society. You can start with this fascinating first-person account of a non-binary Indian by an author named Smita in today’s Times Of India.
Smita in
The Times Of IndiaUp until two years ago, I had long hair. Apparently, that was sufficient for me to qualify as a woman. Since I have started to actively identify as non-binary and appear non-binary, my relationship with public spaces has changed drastically, even, and sometimes especially, in the spaces which are deemed safe for women. In the past two years, I have been told to go to the men’s bathroom, the men’s security check lines at airports, malls, and theatres, and to the men’s changing room, numerous times. I usually ignore the instructions or correct them if needed and head to the women’s lines (because where else will I go?). Last year, at the Delhi domestic airport, I stood in the women’s security check line. The female security guard said that it’s the women’s line. I replied that I know and that I’m a woman, and walked into that little cabin where they do the checking. She then asked, “Kya aap pakka aurat ho?” (Are you sure you’re a woman?) as if my answer would change, and then proceeded to run the metal detector particularly hard against my breasts. I was shocked and then angry. I asked for the superior officer and filed a complaint against her for harassment. If a male security office cannot do that to me, why should it be okay for a female security officer to do so? As expected, the complaint didn’t go anywhere.
India Has Gone From False Hopes In 2014 To False Pride In 2019Not quite done with our election analysis yet, are we? Neither is Pranab Bardhan. In his column for The Indian Express, Bardhan tries to figure out what exactly worked for Modi this time around. He invariably comes to the conclusion that as opposed to the reach of the Modi government’s welfare schemes, it is the sense of national pride that he has evoked in people that won him this election.
Pranab Bardhan in
The Indian ExpressThese are early days to carry out a full analysis of the electoral data for deciphering the range of explanatory factors, but there are enough straws in the wind to venture some guesses. First, it is unlikely that the economic achievements of the Modi regime played much of a role, and it is not a coincidence that the ruling party campaigns, particularly in periods of apparent desperation, did not much emphasise them either. Some did talk about toilets (though the actual use of those toilets lagged far behind their bureaucratic targets of construction) and gas cylinders for the poor (though evidence suggests refills of those cylinders lagged far behind their initial acquisition), but their impact on voting behaviour was likely to have been marginal (as suggested by the opinion polls by mid-February). One, of course, did not hear much about the slaying of the dragon of corruption through demonetisation, the grand hoax of November 2016. The stories of agrarian distress, which led to the hurried start of the PM-KISAN scheme, did not melt away and with the current state of land records, the two-hectare limit in the scheme must have been a block in implementation in large parts of the country. The other economic concern about the lack of good jobs for young people remained uppermost in many a mind, a promise of 2014 obviously belied.
Justice That HealsAn aspect of our criminal justice system that has always been contentious and hotly debated is how those accused of rape, especially child rape, should be treated. Is life imprisonment the way to go or should nothing less than capital punishment be acceptable? In his piece for The Indian Express GS Bajpai argues that cases under the POCSO law should deploy restorative justice, arguing that many-a-times the idea of a “fitting punishment” stems not from the families of the victim but from political will to “show justice as being served”.
GS Bajpai in
The Indian ExpressDrawing from a survey conducted with the survivors and family members, as well as the accused, in child sexual assault cases in areas in and around Delhi, this study revealed that the meanings of “justice” tend to vary for the victim, offender, family, and community. The survivors or their families did not necessarily want the death penalty — or even strict punishment — for the accused. Rather, in many cases, they wanted the offenders to acknowledge their wrongdoing or tender an apology for their act.
These YouTube Kisans Make Farming EasyWhile we don’t know exactly how much of a success Digital India has been, we now know that digital farming is a reality. Young, tech-savvy farmers are taking to Youtube to share the tricks of the trade with fellow farmers and also garnering millions of views. The videos are so popular that one farmer from Madhya Pradesh got the chance to go on his first ever foreign trip after a Nigerian papaya farmer reached out to him after watching his videos. Read this column by Shobita Dhar in The Times Of India to know more.
Shobita Dhar in
The Times Of IndiaIt’s not just farmers but also wannabe farmers who are watching these videos. Gitanjali Sahu, 25, from Raipur, Chhattisgarh picked up the skills required for mushroom farming online and is now training other women in her village, Biroda. A masters in economics Sahu took to farming because she couldn’t find a job. “I used to ask people in my village about how to grow mushrooms but nobody knew about it.” Sahu then turned to an Internet Saathi, as rural women who are part of a digital literacy programme run by Google in association with Tata Trust are called. Today, she gets 3-4kg mushrooms from each of her 20 beds, and sells the produce at Rs 200/kg in market.
Social Media’s Lack Of Nuance Arises From The Medium’s LimitationsSpeaking of YouTube and social media, Keerthik Sasidharan, in his column for The Hindu this week analyses why most discourses on or around social media lack nuance. Algorithms, the unprecedented scale at which social media interactions happen and the skewed ‘language’ of social media contributes to the problem.
Keerthik Sasidharan in
The HinduWhile it is tempting to ascribe bad faith (justifiably, perhaps) on the part of technology companies to exacerbate this problem, the real issue speaks to limitations imposed by the very medium itself. The underlying model of human interaction as deployed by social media algorithms is shaped and constrained by three factors.One, the still evolving programmability into a code of a rich model of human interaction. Two, an assumption that human interaction with 10 people is the same as it is with 100 or 10,000 people. And three, a simple action (a ‘like’ or a ‘retweet’) is treated as a signifier of a pattern which, like a drug dealer inferring the needs of an addict, leads to further curated content that entrenches one’s a priori views.
Mamata Walking Mulayam Path, Bid To Suppress ‘Jai Sri Ram’ Will BackfireA running joke in Bengal these days is that saying ‘Jai Shri Ram’ can land you in jail faster than assaulting a doctor. Mamata Banerjee’s vitriolic temper tantrums every time she hears the phrase has drawn a lot of criticism. In his column for The Times Of India this week Swapan Dasgupta compares Mamata’s reaction to the Ram phenomenon to Mulayam Singh Yadav’s reaction to the same phenomenon in the 90s. Netaji was not quite successful in countering the BJP that time around, and Dasgupta says Didi won’t either if she sticks to the same strategy.
Swapan Dasgupta in
The Times Of IndiaMaybe it was an affectation or just seasonal fun, but in 1990 the then chief minister Mulayam Singh Yadav was on a secular overdrive, mobilising support against the emerging Jai Sri Ram brigade that had threatened a kar seva in Ayodhya. The secularist intelligentsia cheered him enthusiastically, arguing that the forces unleashed by Mandal could upstage kamandal. It was even argued that Ayodhya, rather than Varanasi and Mathura, had been deliberately chosen by the Hindutva forces because Ram was an upper-caste Kshatriya, whereas Shiv was tribal and Krishna a ‘backward’ Yadav.The intellectual-cum-political jousting was combined with petty repression. Many Ram temple supporters were put under arrest and the chant of Jai Sri Ram invited official disfavour. Consequently, the invocation to Ram was elevated beyond folklore — ‘Ram Ram’ was a traditional greeting in the Hindi heartland — and faith. It also became a political slogan, a chant of defiance against a government that presumed to tell people what to think and what to say. Mulayam’s district visits were often greeted with local bandhs and his cavalcades greeted with boisterous Jai Sri Ram chants. In some quarters, the chief minister was derisively dubbed Mullah Mulayam.
You Can’t Wipe Out History. Or Can You?Who’s more responsible for our freedom? Gandhi or Bose? Was Godse a ‘patriot’? Why is Bhagat Singh not accorded the importance that he should be accorded?
Over the last few years, a lot of questions have been raised on which or whose ‘history’ one should believe. “This is the history I learnt in school” started to have no meaning as it became more and more clear that history is a product of who is writing it...and in most cases, it is the ruling dispensation that is doing the writing. With the said dispensation changing (hopefully) every five or more years, history is changing too. In his column for the The Hindu this week Ruchir Joshi therefore asks, “If the books we have read are wrong, then what is left?”
Ruchir Joshi in
The Hindu“And Bhagat Singh! Look at how they’ve turned 14 February, the date of his hanging, into Valentine’s Day! They created that Valentine’s Day to bury his memory!” At this point I interrupted. “I don’t think that’s correct.” I hit Google quickly. “Actually, Valentine’s Day has been celebrated since 496 A.D. And then sometime in the 19th century, it turned into a sort of ‘Lovers’ Day’ in England and America, so well before Bhagat Singh was born.”The driver was silent for a while, then came back. “Well, why isn’t there a national holiday on that day for Bhagat Singh?” And after a beat, “And look how they’ve wiped out Subhas Chandra Bose!” I laughed. “Boss, I come from Calcutta. No one has wiped out Subhas Bose.” My new friend was unmoved. “The only reason we got Independence was because Bose told the Azad Hind Fauj, ‘Give me blood and I’ll give you freedom!’, which is when the British brought in Gandhi!”
Cricket And Religion Have Combined To Impose Disturbing Piety In Pakistan“Inshallah, boys played well.”
For those of us who started watching cricket in the ‘90s, this patent line by then Pakistan men’s team captain, Inzamam-Ul-Haq became synonymous with the Pakistani team. What we probably didn’t actively notice is that the period from Haq’s captaincy to now has been marked by more and more evocations of God or The Prophet by Pakistani players during and after matches. Piety seems to have become a part of the team’s unwritten code of conduct. Right before the much awaited World Cup fixture between India and Pakistan today, read Khaled Ahmed’s piece for The Indian Express where he explains the evolution of this piety in the Pakistani team.
Khaled Ahmed in
The Indian ExpressEx-captain and Christian Yusuf Yohanna secured himself against trouble by converting to Islam during his career as a batsman. He benefitted from conversion but many Christian men who tried to follow his example were not similarly rewarded. Though, leg-spinner and Hindu test-player, Danish Kaneria, usefully cultivated the habit of saying inshallah and mashallah as part of his conversation in a state increasingly hostile to non-Muslims, something like what India is in the process of becoming.
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