Theft of the Commons

Last night, as I watched the television drama , Foyle's War, the realisation struck me with great force that human greed has ensured that the theft of the commons continues unabated, notwithstanding the widening and deepening of  liberal democracy. The episode I was watching is set in post World War II England. War has devastated parts of the country and an enormous program to reconstruct infrastructure, funded by the State but driven by private enterprise, has been undertaken. In a small town, this has taken the shape of a corporate entity, appropriately addressed by several denizens of the town as " profiteer" , is trying to sell the dream of a new town centre. It will be studded with  shops and offices and will have new homes on both sides of the new roads leading to the town centre. Since the project will subsume an enormous parcel of common greens, some residents are up in arms. Why can the damaged homes not be repaired/rebuilt ? Do we need new shops when most of us do not earn enough to make purchases there ? Do we even need the ware that will be displayed in these shops ? Where will cattle graze when the common greens vanish ? Where will our children play ? Where will our dogs chase butterflies and race after sheep ? Where will we spread our blankets on a balmy day and savour home made food packed in picnic baskets ? The " profiteer" has no answer to these and similar questions. He only keeps repeating mindlessly, Don't you want progress ? Isn't that what we fought the war for ? Isn't that why our young men sacrificed their lives ? 

Happily, this particular commons eludes the grasp of those who only see " profits" where we see rolling lands, meadows, natural water bodies, ancient trees, and a multitude of flora and fauna. Unhappily for most of us, the battle has been lost time and again in independent India. Commons , including water bodies, have been sold to land "developers". Sky high towers with basement parking, glittering facades and manicured lawns have sprung up in their stead. Sometimes, these parcels of land , including "reclaimed" land, are dotted with row houses, vaingloriously described as villas. How will rain water  flow and where it will collect if  the natural slope and paths that water followed are built over and the water bodies filled up ? The town planning authorities  elect to not answer the question because they are in cahoots with the developers aka profiteers. 

Perhaps if it were mandatory to place the layouts of all large, planned residential complexes in the public sphere, people with  domain knowledge would be able to point out such gaps and the developer and administration would be compelled to make appropriate changes. It is mostly a fond hope rather than a realistic outcome, of course, but sometimes activists and conscientious citizens do manage to steer projects in the right direction. 

More importantly, we need to continuously talk more about this aspect of  the " progress" that gives the Indian middle class its luxurious homes. As a member of that class, I plead guilty to having given no thought to the environmental impact of the residential complex that I moved into more than 15 years ago.  It was only several years later, when I had woken up to issues such as rural distress, internal displacement, forest rights etc that largely go unreported in the print media and tv news, that I realised that most ongoing residential and commercial projects in India's major cities are being pushed through with an eye on the enormous profits and the " benefits" flowing to the political class and the bureaucracy, with no regard for the long term impact on our soil and water resources. This was the time when someone shared with me a comprehensive study that CSE ( Centre for Science & Environment ) had carried out in Gurgaon. They had identified scores of natural bodies that had either been filled up and built over or were choked with construction debris or whose catchment area had been completely concretised with 20 storey high buildings. Shockingly enough, no one in  the district administration was inclined to even accept a copy of the report. They had obviously no interest whatsoever in taking any remedial action, as recommended in the report. For a few weeks, I tried my best to get the report at least formally accepted by the administration. I failed miserably, and often wonder whether it ever made any headway. The only good that came out of the entire experience was that I became aware of an issue that I had hitherto been completely ignorant of. 

There is no guarantee whatsoever that prospective buyers will pause , if made aware via noise in the mass media and /or social media , that their dream home stands where once the expanse of a water body performed a critical function  or where trees, scores, even a hundred years old, abounded, or which was rich in wild life and in an avian population . The possibility can not, however, be ruled out.  

If we care at all about the legacy we are leaving behind for our children and their children, we must do what we can to take back the commons. 

As 17th century English folk poem says: 

" The law locks up the man or woman

Who steals the goose off the common

But leaves the greater villain loose

Who steals the common from the goose." 

We must not let the "greater villains" get away with the theft of the commons. 

Consequence

 peḌ ke kāTne vāloñ ko ye mālūm to thā 

jism jal jā.eñge jab sar pe na saaya hogā 

( Kaifi Azmi ) 

those who slashed the trees were not unaware 

bereft of shade, earth will be scorched , when bare

( translation: Priya VKS )

8/9/2022

Rehnumaa

 रहनुमाओं की अदाओं पे फिदा है दुनिया

इस बहकती हुई दुनिया को संभालो यारो

Dushyant 

get them back on their feet, they totter

in the intoxicating artifices of their wily leader

( translation : Priya VKS 4/9/22) 

Har ghar tiranga

As a people , we were no less patriotic when we did not fly the tiranga outside our homes . No one wore their patriotism on their sleeve . No one needed to proclaim  in loud, sometimes strident, sometimes aggressive, sometimes truculent tones that one is a patriot .  No one needed to be asked whether they loved their motherland. We all did, and we were secure in the knowledge that our compatriots did too. What has changed now ? Why have we become insecure ? 

Or is the Har Ghar Tiranga ( and similar spectacles)  a manifestation of the contemporary phenomenon of everyone proclaiming their love for their parents, children, spouses, friends, teachers, co workers and , of course, the nation , on social media, as if it needed to be publicly said or to be publicly applauded and validated . 

I have been guilty of it myself, sharing on Facebook the poems I wrote on my sons' birthdays or my husband's. I can advance the defence that the posts were meant to be read only by my family and friends who were also my FB friends. I did not have a wide audience. Also, what I was sharing was not so much the sentiment as the artistic endeavour ---- the poem that I had so enjoyed writing because the words gushed forth, of their own, requiring  little or no effort to be strung together. 

But it is a weak defence. I can not deny that I enjoyed the compliments, whether they were directed at the poem or at the photographs that I shared along with the poem. Possibly, that is why I chose social media to tell my children and my husband of my love for them. It was more about me than it was about the love that was proclaimed or its object. 

Such public proclamations aren't needed, are they ? 

We  need only tell those whom we love that we love them. The whole world need not be told. More importantly, we most often speak to the people we love through  our actions. We wake up early to cook them their favourite breakfasts or hold their hand when they stand at the edge of the road, too scared to cross. We Google reference material for them when an assignment deadline looms large and the work is incomplete, and we accompany them for health check ups. We lovingly listen to the story that has been related a dozen times before, and we brace ourselves without visibly wincing when they choose to play loud music. We let them bring street dogs home , and we uncomplainingly get out of bed at 2 am to make tea because they have to stay up all night, preparing for the exam the next day. We laugh at their jokes, we weep when they suffer, we wipe their tears and sometimes lend them a shoulder to cry on. That's how they know they are loved. 

The many ways in which we can speak to our motherland of our love are as numerous as they are simple. 

Every street, every neighbourhood has its share of potholes, non functioning street lights, blocked storm drains, barren soil, plastic heaps, stray cows and dogs, wrongly parked vehicles and road side vendors. Demand from the municipal authorities that they fix the potholes. Agitate for functioning street lights. Get the storm water drains cleared. Do you see the depleted soil in the road medians ? Get together with a few friends and neighbours, begin adding compost that slowly strengthens the soil. Compost your kitchen waste. If you lack space, ask your RWA to set up a community compost plant. Segregate plastic and paper and ensure that it enters the recycling chain. Stop throwing plastic sachets and wrappers and single use bags on the roadside. Are the trees on the verge getting suffocated by concrete ? Ask the district forest department to get them de concretised. Stop parking your cars outside designates parking areas. Stop honking the horn. Why are you always in such a mad rush ? Leave for school/college/office 15 minutes earlier. Better still, demand public transport. 

We depend upon road side vendors for fruits and vegetables, flowers and corn on cob. The makeshift tailoring arrangement is where we get clothes altered/repaired. The mochi is where we get shoes and bags and jackets repaired. talk to them.  Get to know of the harassment they face at the hands of multiple government agencies. Help them earn their livelihoods with dignity. 

Does your domestic help have medical insurance ? Can they be helped to subscribe to a pension scheme ? 

The dhobi may have set up his makeshift table beneath a tree. Does he not suffer when the summer sun is unbearably hot or the winter winds are biting cold ? Help him make a better arrangement. 

This isn't even a millionth part of the long, long, perhaps unending ,  list of the actions that speak of our love for our motherland. 

Why would we elect instead to fly crores of tirangas, most of which , being plastic, will end up in garbage heaps and landfills  and pollute our soil and water  ? Perhaps this is the least inconvenient option, asking for very little effort, and with the advantage of letting us post Instagram selfies and garnering appreciative comments from others like us. It achieves little, though much noise is made. The shreds of guilt that we may feel for leading self centred lives and never expanding the circle of our concern to include the wider community drown in the din, and we happily get on with our lives, enveloped in the soft glow of  social media approval. 

                                                                              *****

Farmers matter

http://www.indiaresists.com/fadnavis-farmers-suicide-deepika-padukone-can-address/

It has been more than a couple of days since the Maharashtra Chief Minister made the stunning announcement that he had asked Deepika Padukone to help farmers deal with stress. I am still to recover from the sense of shock and disbelief.

One reads about the plight of farmers and turns a blind eye to it. One hears about their suffering and chooses to pay no attention. One takes no action whatsoever —-minor or significant —to ameliorate their suffering. One does not even spare a fleeting thought for the farmer ‘s misery when one sits down at a food laden table or throws away a half eaten pizza. One decides that one is dealing with enough stress living a fast paced metropolitan life to bother about farmers’ issues, and in any case, one is doing one’s bit by talking about corruption and planting trees and composting organic waste at home and volunteering money or time to schools for under privileged children etc etc.

Or one does talk about farm policy —— perhaps in social media —— and refers to the need to rapidly industrialize so that farmers can make the transition from being impoverished, monsoon and subsidy dependent “entities” to those integrated in the industrialized economy. One does not delve into the question whether such integration is indeed possible for the huge numbers of small and marginal farmers and farm labour that we are grappling with. One does not look at the statistics which reveal that our so called growth story is all about GDP growth, and bereft of growth in employment opportunities. Or the statistics which say that the job opportunities have arisen only in the unorganised, services sector so that when a distressed farmer migrates to a city, he finds a job only as a construction site worker or a security guard or a delivery boy, with no safeguards regarding conditions or benefits of work. One forgets that when a farmer migrates, he leaves his family behind, and lives a lonely and loveless life. If he brings his family along, they struggle to survive in an alien environment , are over whelmed by an entirely different culture which makes them feel small and under values their traditional knowledge and skills and mocks at their values. One forgets that migration in large numbers invariably results in a very material loss to the culture, dialect and way of life that perhaps had been sustained by agriculture for centuries, including loss of crop and animal varieties, traditional remedies for illnesses, folk lore, stories and ballads passed down through oral tradition etc.

Perhaps the ignorance of city dwellers is forgivable, or one might take the view that they ought to make more effort to educate themselves since they have the time and the resources —-the farmer is, after all, more important than the chap who builds your cars or the one who arranges your foreign vacations.

What is completely unforgivable is a statement from a Chief Minister, ascribing farmer suicides to an inability to cope with stress, and doling out a Bollywood actress as the antidote. The statement makes a trifle of the myriad challenges that farmers face, none of which are of their own making. It mocks at their inability to get loans at reasonable rates ( while multi billionaires happily walk away with write offs of bad loans which loans had been extended at easy terms) and their consequent dependence on money lenders. It mocks at their inability to get fair prices for their produce because the government ensures that food prices are kept low. It mocks at their inability to switch to crops more suited to the topography because the little institutional support that is forthcoming is targeted at crops that benefit not the farmer but the traders and mill owners. It mocks at their inability to question why the government has not drought proofed agriculture despite thousands of crores having ostensibly been spent on irrigation facilities.

What does the Chief Minister envisage? A helpline that an impoverished farmer will call when a sudden hailstorm destroys his crops? A letter to Deepika Padukone when strong winds lay flat a crop ready to harvest ? A text message when the money lender knocks at his door? A Facebook post when he can no longer feed his family or educate his children? A tweet when the monetary compensation that the government had promised fails to arrive or is such a paltry sum as to make him despair? And Deepika Padukone will graciously give some Zen like answers, soothe frayed nerves, make the problem momentarily disappear so that the farmer forgets that he is in dire financial straits and postpones death by suicide to another day ?

I would laugh at the Chief Minister’s proposed solution if the fate of the Indian farmer were not so tragic.

If this is the manner in which the political establishment is treating our annadaata, do you not agree that it is time that we, the privileged middle class, took up cudgels on behalf of our beleaguered brethren? Is it not time that we educated ourselves as to what ails Indian agriculture and what the solutions are? Is it not time that we succumbed to a twinge of conscience when we sit down thrice a day at tables heavy with nutritious, life giving food that has been grown, perhaps, at the cost of someone’s life?

Freedom matters

Is there any less freedom of expression today than there was, say, a year ago? Is there more pressure to conform to a cultural “norm” dictated by some ? Is there greater danger attached to speaking one’s mind regardless of whether or not what one says is acceptable to the “monitors”?

My own reluctant but honest answer to these questions is a resounding Yes. I, at least, am much more circumspect today in what I say in the public realm. I will not say that I have completely crumbled, but without a shadow of doubt, I am not as careless of the consequences as I once was. It happens often that I begin writing a Facebook status, and then delete it —-lurking somewhere is the apprehension that I or my family may have to pay a heavy price for my forthrightness. I am ashamed to confess that I have begun to moderate what I write, and it is something that fills me with self abnegation.

When I first began to write blogposts and Facebook status critical of the government policy or laws or programs or particular Ministers or the bureaucracy, I was warned by many well wishers that I could run afoul of the Conduct Rules and could face disciplinary action for such outspokenness. Let the government try, was my quick response. I write in my capacity as a citizen of India, not as a government employee. The government cannot snatch the fundamental right of freedom of expression, guaranteed by the Constitution, by citing the Conduct Rules which apply only when I express an opinion in my capacity as a government employee. Any other interpretation of the Conduct Rules would mean that effectively speaking, crores of government employees do not enjoy a very basic fundamental right. I was convinced that my interpretation of the Conduct Rules was right and determined that I would go to the court, if I needed to, and seek clarification. I still am confident that the Conduct Rules are not intended to deprive government employees of their fundamental right of freedom of expression , but I am far less certain today whether the only consequence of outspokenness I will face is initiation of disciplinary proceedings. Could it be a mob outside my home? Could it be someone who decides that I ought to be punished by waylaying my son? I live in a secure, upscale neighbourhood —–and yet, I confess that I am a little scared.

My thoughts then turn to those who do NOT live in the midst of such security. How can they possibly have the courage to speak out? Would they not fear for their homes and families? Would they not decide that discretion is the better part of valour? Would such involuntary surrender to the cultural police not make them seethe inside and erode their capacity to be good citizens?

Why should I speak of a mob alone, as if the illiterate, or the impoverished, or the dis empowered alone are snatching at the opportunity to assert superiority and crush dissent ? Even my educated friends and colleagues have decided in large numbers that we must re discover and re live the past and if in order to do so, certain communities must face suppression then so they must. Humanity as a notion, brotherhood, universal peace, tolerance —– these seem to be fast becoming out dated notions, to be replaced by an aggressive and strident tone: we WERE the best culture there ever was, we ARE the best culture there is, so fall in line or else. It is discomfiting, to say the least —–but still, a far cry from the actual threat to one’s life and property that many in this nation are today facing if they disagree with this line of thinking.

In the nearly two months that I have been back in office, I am growing more and more convinced that my calling lies elsewhere and that I cannot waste the remaining productive years of my life pushing files and attending futile meetings. It seems almost certain that I will seek voluntary retirement and devote my time and resources to actual nation building. That near-decision has made me even more circumspect in my speech because the procedure of quitting the government can be painless or long drawn out and infinitely painful, as the government pleases —– and so I must , I sub consciously feel, please the government till the procedural requirements are wrapped up. I had not entertained that anxiety a couple of years ago when the government’s obduracy in not processing my application for leave had made me seriously consider the option of voluntary retirement.

Upon careful reflection, therefore, I conclude that there IS something in the air which is vitiating an a common Indian’s fundamental right of freedom of expression. It is not a figment of the imagination of the 50 or so writers who have returned their honours and awards.

http://www.indiaresists.com/not-about-those-50-writers-the-air-around-us-is-vitiated/

The Poverty of Hearts

About a fortnight ago, I read a Facebook status about an initiative by a group of Gurgaon residents to launch in Gurgaon what they called a Food Bank —- a place where home made meals pledged by residents would be collected and then distributed to slum children on a daily basis.

The idea is simple.

Gurgaon is , by any standard, an extremely affluent city, but in the midst of all the affluence are pockets of heart rending poverty —-urban slums that house those who have migrated from villages in search of a livelihood and have found employment as construction site workers, household help, gardeners, security guards, trash collectors, rickshaw pullers etc. They live in tiny spaces, and do not have access to either safe drinking water or proper sanitation facilities. Many of them get to eat just one proper meal a day, one, because they cannot afford to spend more on food ( they have to send money back home ) and two, because their long hours of work and cramped living spaces mean that they do not have the time or the inclination to cook. The children of such migrant workers sometimes attend NGO run schools ( government schools are non existent or non functional) but are mostly to be seen either whiling away their time in slums or begging on the roadside. These children, deprived as they are of safe drinking water, proper sanitation facilities, education, and nutritious food are an integral part of our nation’s future. If they are not educated/skilled and healthy, does the nation’s future not look bleak? Or do we imagine that the nation will be run by the handful of children who graduate from IITs and IIMs and land jobs in MNCs? Will they even know what the real issues are that confront the large part of our population? Equally important, when a large majority of children are neither well fed nor schooled, do we expect them to have any sense of belongingness or pride in the nation? Can we look to them for the task of nation building when we have let them down so badly as to keep them deprived of the very necessities of a dignified life? Are they not vulnerable to taking up lives of crime ? Is that the kind of urban reality we wish to create where affluence is constantly threatened by anomic crime?

I am not privy to the thinking which went into the food bank initiative, but i was happy to read about it and to immediately pledge at least two freshly prepared meals every day. With a great deal of enthusiasm, I shared details of the initiative on Facebook —–on my page, and in groups ( some of which have members running into 1000s). I wrote to the group e mail id of the plush neighbourhood where I live and where none of the 1000 odd families has less than two cars per familyand many are billionaires many times over.

When I found that the response was disappointing, I shared again —-and again, and again. The number of meals pledged in a rather upscale area of Gurgaon with roughly 10 neighbourhoods varies between 60 and 70 every day. The minuscule number is enough to break one’s heart. This is a geographic area where literally thousands and thousands of families live, order their pizzas and ice cream cakes, buy Audis and BMWs, splurge on designer wear and expensive watches, send their children to schools that charge 3 to 4 times the tuition fees of an average’ school .

Yet, their response to a plea to pledge a meal ( just one meal) is nearly absent. It is not as if the lady of the house would even have to cook the extra meal. Most of these are households that employ household help. An extra meal will not be an expense that cannot be borne. The meal does not even have to be transferred anywhere,Food Bank’s volunteers pick it up every morning and visit slums where children now eagerly await their arrival. Photographs are shared every day so we know we are not being duped and that the food is reaching the intended recipient. The look of joy on the faces of the children who get a wholesome, stomach filling meal would gladden any heart. I would think it would make even the hardest heart melt melt enough to resolve to pledge a meal. If that happened, no one would sleep hungry in Gurgaon.

For several days now, I have tried to figure out what explains the indifference, the apathy. It is not as if we were talking of the distress of farmers living hundreds or thousands of kilometres away. We are not talking of the hardship that adivasis undergo —-we neither understand their way of life nor their culture, are prone to treating both as inferior”and therefore easily dismiss their problems from our mind.

These children, however, we encounter everyday —-on the roadsides, outside shopping malls, near the Metro, rag picking in empty plots. They are right there in front of our eyes, and we know they belong to the men and women who build our houses, keep them clean and green and secure, take away the trash, and perform a hundred other services such as plumbing and painting and telephone connection repairs and tailoring and fruit vending. The list goes o and on. Yet we are not moved enough by the hungry stomachs of these children to take the baby step of pledging a meal.

Is it that no matter how rich we may be, we suffer from poverty of hearts ?

The Poverty of Hearts