Fellow IPS officer RB Sreekumar (Ex-DGP of Gujarat police) was head of intelligence during the 2002 Gujarat riots. He was given several instructions by politicians and police officers - "unconstitutional directives", with officials asking him to kill Muslims involved in rioting or disrupting a Hindu religious event - all of which he recorded meticulously in a diary. When summoned to testify, he gave affidavits and reports to the National Human Rights Commission, the Central Election Commissions and the Nanavati Commission going against the official government line; thereby angering the state government.
No doubt he suffered for it. Soon after, he was transferred to a position where he had no responsibility and no job to do. This did not deter him from taking on the Gujarat govt. to protect law and human rights.
Sreekumar believed that Muslims and Muslim businesses were specifically targeted during the 2002 riots in a pre-planned manner. That the Gujarat policemen’s actions and inactions led to tense situations and masacres.
He fought a legal battle against the Gujarat government and was promoted as Director General of Police after his retirement. Settled down in Gandhinagar, he now works actively for justice to the victims of Gujarat genocide.
He has written an open letter to BJP's Prime Ministerial candidate LK Advani asking him "Why Should Hindus Vote For BJP?". I am sharing it here for a wider viewership.
Why Should Hindus Vote For BJP ?
By R.B. Sreekumar IPS
30 April, 2009
Countercurrents.org
An open letter to Shri L.K.Advani Member of Parliament, Gandhinagar.
Most Respected Shri L.K.Advani,
Sir,I am a voter in Gandhinagar Loksabha constituency . I am a Hindu by birth and practitioner of the tenets of Sanatana Dharma, the eternal religion, popularly called –Hinduism, in my own humble way ,in personal life.
The conceptual and philosophical framework of Hinduism is enshrined in three fold treatises- Prasthanathrayam- namely, Brahmasutras, Upanishads and the Bhagvad Gita.
Equal adoration to all varieties of divinity and paths towards them and recognition of the right to salvation/liberation to all living beings , including plants and animals are deemed to be the most ennobling and elevating feature of Hinduism. Ill will towards even non –believers is also not permitted , not to speak of people professing non-Hindu faiths.
Any deviation or aberration by any individual or group of persons or an organisation of Hindus ,away from the four walls of these ideals make them unacceptable and condemnable for real Hindus. Applying this yardstick , BJP supported by its sister bodies in the Sangh Parivar would be quite undeserving for getting votes from Hindus, who are intrinsically practising quintessence of Hindu ontological ideals.
In the history of Hinduism there were only two most demoralisingly deplorable instances of sacrilegious crimes, which would make any self respecting and committed Hindu to bury his head in shame. The first was demolition of a worship centre, ( building for prayer ) Babri Masjid of Ayodhya in December 1992. The second was the anti-minority genocide in which over 2000 , mostly innocents were brutally killed. Both these Satanic acts were the handiwork of miscreants , owing allegiance to BJP, going by the presence of well known BJP leaders on the scene of these crimes.
The Bhagvad Gita is quite explicit about one's approach to any form of worship. In three slokas the relevant principles are unambiguously laid down.
In Chapter 4 Sloka 11 , Lord Krishna proclaims , " In whatever way men identify with Me, in the same way do I carry out their desires; men pursue My path ,in all ways "
Again in Chapter 6-30 , the Lord preaches , " He who sees Me everywhere and sees all in Me, he never becomes lost to Me , nor do I become lost to him"
Finally in Chapter 7-21 , the Lord promulgates , " Whatever form any devotee with faith wishes to worship , I make that faith of his steady."
The brigands who razed the 16th century mosque in Ayodhya to the ground actually acted against the letter, spirit and ethos of the above stipulations by Lord Krishna that is why those great Hindus , who lived and enriched my religion from 1529 A.D. , the year of construction of Babri Masjid to 1992, the year of demolition, did not care to move even their little finger against this monument, during their lifetime. We have a galaxy of Hindu giants , who left laudable foot prints on the sands of time , in this period, from Goswami Tulsidas to Mahatma Gandhi.
Can we consider the marauders and their leaders , who knocked down the masjid, by insulting even the pious name of Lord Shiva( those rogues shouted Jai Shiv Shankar, during demolition and the word meaning of Shankar is ' One who blesses everybody with peace, Sham Karoti Iti Shamkaram)', as greater champions and 'brave sons of Hinduism ' than those model Hindus like Mahatma Gandhi, whose life and deeds brought greatness and glory to the Sanatana Dharma.?
Honourable Advaniji , if there is scriptural justification for the liquidation of Babri Masjid, kindly convey it to all Hindus , so that they will not have any hesitation to vote for BJP.
In case the BJP views the bulldozing of the Babri Masjid as an unHindu act , why no legal or organisational penal action to punish those destroyers of the centre of worship- Kshetradwamshas, as prescribed for Aathathais(criminals) in the dharmashastras was taken so far ? Since no such move is visible from BJP it will be quite impossible for a Hindu voter to accept BJP as a party which adheres to the principles and practice of the scriptural ideals of Hinduism .
The story is similar in case of anti-minority genocide in Gujarat, in which over 2000 innocents lost their lives. Never in the history of Hindu Rajas, in the pre-histotic or historic times, the ruler did allow a set of his subjects (prajas) to freely kill another group- not even by notorious evil souls like Nahusha, Tarakasura, Ravana, Kamsa or Duryodhana. The word Raja etymologically meant to be a person who brings reconciliation and peace among the subjects – Prajanam Ranjanath Raja ( Brahmanda Purana ) . If there was an underworld active in the minority community, why Police was not used to neutralise them on 27-2-2002 , the day of the gruesome Godhra carnage, and subsequent days. Police records confirm that practically no anti-social headstrong criminals from the minority community were killed ,during the 2002 riots by the mobs, largely constituted by BJP supporters.
In case BJP was not backing the protracted pogrom in 2002 ,why no action against the perpetrators of heinous crimes , either at organisational level or through Criminal Justice System ( CJS ). Instead whenever accused in riot cases were released on bail, BJP arranged receptions to them on the pattern of commendation extended to our freedom fighters during the struggle for independence.
Can you kindly intimate your voters in Gandhinagar the slokas and suktas from Hindu holy books, in approval of the prolonged atrocities on the defenceless people and subsequent and currently on-going subversion of CJS, which prompted the apex court to characterise Gujarat State govt. officials as ' modern Neros '.
Kamandakia Nitisara, a well accepted authority on Hindu polity, in Chapter 5 Shlokas 82-83 , cautions the administrators/ Rajas to protect the citizens from the favourites of the King and his own greed . " The subjects require protection against wicked officers of the King, thieves , enemies of the King, royal favourites ( such as the Queens, Princes etc. ) and more than all, against the greed of the King himself. The king should secure the people against these fears.
Further, the Shanti Parva of Mahabharata ( 59-106/107) exhorts the ruler " You should take a pledge that by thought , word and deed, you will rule the world believing that creation is the very incarnation of the Creator". The question asked by the devout Hindus is thus , Were the minorities in Gujarat in 2002, who were victimised by the mobs, inferior creations ?
Sir, you may kindly clarify as to whether above components of Raj Dharma as per the real Hindutva of the Hindu religion were actualised by the Gujarat State Govt. functionaries from the highest to the lowest, during and after 2002 riots.
With due respect to your long innings in Indian politics , I appeal to you to kindly provide convincing clarifications to my aforesaid plebeian queries so that faith of Hindus in BJP's commitment to fundamental Hindu ideals can be restored.
Respectful regards,R. B. Sreekumar .
rbsreekumar71@yahoo.com
Thursday, 30 April 2009
Monday, 23 March 2009
090323. In The Line Of Fire
090323.toi.InTheLineOfFire
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Editorial/TOP_ARTILCE__In_The_Line_Of_Fire/articleshow/4300491.cms
The Times of India
Editorial
TOP ARTICLE
In The Line Of Fire
23 Mar 2009, 0000 hrs IST, MAXWELL PEREIRA
In Andhra Pradesh where Naxal activities and encounter deaths are rampant, a three-judge bench of the local high court clarified on July 13, 2007, that it is not mandatory for the police to register a case of murder when there is an encounter killing. This it did while disposing of a batch of writ petitions.
On February 6, 2009, a five-judge bench of the same court ruled it mandatory for the police to register an FIR whenever an encounter death took place. This was hailed as a landmark judgment by human rights organisations claiming it would end the practice of the police closing encounter cases on the plea of self-defence. Law-enforcement authorities, however, found the judgment disturbing.
In these times of terrorism, it exposed policemen to legal consequences, inhibiting best action to tackle the threat. In a major relief to the police, the Supreme Court on March 4 put a stay on this adversely impacting ruling on encounters, following an appeal by the Andhra Pradesh Police Officers' Association.
The HC judgment whose operative part does not use the term 'police encounter', fake or genuine, mandated compulsory registration of an FIR under Section 154 of the Criminal Procedure Code (CrPC) for a murder case wherever a police officer causes death, acting or purporting to act in discharge of official duties or in self-defence. It directs that such a case be investigated like any other offence. Even if the investigating officer's final report under Section 173 CrPC concludes that no case is made out, the magistrate is to critically examine the evidence and take cognizance if necessary.
There are far-reaching and serious consequences for uninhibited police action in extremist-infested areas spread across many states. Legal pundits are unanimous on several points. One, the law of private defence stands abrogated, and all Indian Penal Code provisions concerning right of self-defence become obsolete and nullified. Two, registration of FIRs against police officers is mandatory for death caused even during discharge of official duties, including encounters.
Three, police officers involved in thwarting the 2001 attack on Parliament and all National Security Guard (NSG) commandos who killed terrorists involved in the 26/11 Mumbai attacks could now face murder trials as also other police officers and army and navy personnel including the NSG chief, Mumbai police commissioner and army area commander who extended protection or guided them during the operation. Perhaps the entire home ministry, state and central, and all police chiefs can also figure as accessories to a large criminal conspiracy and face the same murder trial as conspirators. Four, this ruling could apply to other parts of India via other court judgments. Five, there could be confusion among field formations handling tough situations.
Six, it would be prudent for state police forces to disarm personnel, withdrawing all arms and ammunition considered a must in their operations. Seven, it could lead central forces like the CRPF to request the Centre against deployment for internal security duties in states faced with violence, riots and insurgency, and/or anti-terrorist duties or situations warranting use of firearms. Eight, because this judgment is to be implemented retrospectively, murder cases could even be registered for past police actions resulting in death. That means the prospect of cases being slapped on some of us retired policemen who supervised officers in encounter cases at some stage or the other.
Further, the next time a terrorist fires at a police officer, it would be advisable for the latter to either get killed or run from the scene and face charges of cowardice and dereliction of duty. Else, he would face a murder case for killing the terrorist.
It is a sad commentary that judicial pronouncements of late provide ample ground for criticism and debate. But didn't an eminent judicial personality observe, "Justice is not a cloistered virtue... it should allow the winds of criticism to blow about it"? So maybe there should be wider debate on this vital issue.
The police now feel stifled to effectively perform their statutory duties and assigned tasks, as forces in armed combat cannot function with the prospect of a murder charge hovering over them thanks to impractical or unrealistic judicial pronouncements. The morale for those facing bullets is hit. Courtroom logic does not cut ice for the underpaid, overworked jawan risking life and livelihood for lofty ideals. He cannot perform if he is not guaranteed security from prosecution for genuine exchanges of fire.
Human rights are sacrosanct. No one advocates fake killings, be it of innocents or criminals. Any operation's ultimate mission is to defend integrity and democratic sovereignty, not to destroy them. But the life and security of the forces fighting this battle must be equally paramount.
The country, its citizens and the courts need to be sensitive to extraordinary situations where the person in uniform is still a human being with same rights as other citizens, with some distinction made between he who fights for and he who fights against the nation. If the state perceives a threat from armed extremists and terrorists and feels the police should be armed, then legal safeguards have to be provided so that the courts do not throw the baby out with the bathwater.
The writer is a former joint commissioner of police, Delhi
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Editorial/TOP_ARTILCE__In_The_Line_Of_Fire/articleshow/4300491.cms
The Times of India
Editorial
TOP ARTICLE
In The Line Of Fire
23 Mar 2009, 0000 hrs IST, MAXWELL PEREIRA
In Andhra Pradesh where Naxal activities and encounter deaths are rampant, a three-judge bench of the local high court clarified on July 13, 2007, that it is not mandatory for the police to register a case of murder when there is an encounter killing. This it did while disposing of a batch of writ petitions.
On February 6, 2009, a five-judge bench of the same court ruled it mandatory for the police to register an FIR whenever an encounter death took place. This was hailed as a landmark judgment by human rights organisations claiming it would end the practice of the police closing encounter cases on the plea of self-defence. Law-enforcement authorities, however, found the judgment disturbing.
In these times of terrorism, it exposed policemen to legal consequences, inhibiting best action to tackle the threat. In a major relief to the police, the Supreme Court on March 4 put a stay on this adversely impacting ruling on encounters, following an appeal by the Andhra Pradesh Police Officers' Association.
The HC judgment whose operative part does not use the term 'police encounter', fake or genuine, mandated compulsory registration of an FIR under Section 154 of the Criminal Procedure Code (CrPC) for a murder case wherever a police officer causes death, acting or purporting to act in discharge of official duties or in self-defence. It directs that such a case be investigated like any other offence. Even if the investigating officer's final report under Section 173 CrPC concludes that no case is made out, the magistrate is to critically examine the evidence and take cognizance if necessary.
There are far-reaching and serious consequences for uninhibited police action in extremist-infested areas spread across many states. Legal pundits are unanimous on several points. One, the law of private defence stands abrogated, and all Indian Penal Code provisions concerning right of self-defence become obsolete and nullified. Two, registration of FIRs against police officers is mandatory for death caused even during discharge of official duties, including encounters.
Three, police officers involved in thwarting the 2001 attack on Parliament and all National Security Guard (NSG) commandos who killed terrorists involved in the 26/11 Mumbai attacks could now face murder trials as also other police officers and army and navy personnel including the NSG chief, Mumbai police commissioner and army area commander who extended protection or guided them during the operation. Perhaps the entire home ministry, state and central, and all police chiefs can also figure as accessories to a large criminal conspiracy and face the same murder trial as conspirators. Four, this ruling could apply to other parts of India via other court judgments. Five, there could be confusion among field formations handling tough situations.
Six, it would be prudent for state police forces to disarm personnel, withdrawing all arms and ammunition considered a must in their operations. Seven, it could lead central forces like the CRPF to request the Centre against deployment for internal security duties in states faced with violence, riots and insurgency, and/or anti-terrorist duties or situations warranting use of firearms. Eight, because this judgment is to be implemented retrospectively, murder cases could even be registered for past police actions resulting in death. That means the prospect of cases being slapped on some of us retired policemen who supervised officers in encounter cases at some stage or the other.
Further, the next time a terrorist fires at a police officer, it would be advisable for the latter to either get killed or run from the scene and face charges of cowardice and dereliction of duty. Else, he would face a murder case for killing the terrorist.
It is a sad commentary that judicial pronouncements of late provide ample ground for criticism and debate. But didn't an eminent judicial personality observe, "Justice is not a cloistered virtue... it should allow the winds of criticism to blow about it"? So maybe there should be wider debate on this vital issue.
The police now feel stifled to effectively perform their statutory duties and assigned tasks, as forces in armed combat cannot function with the prospect of a murder charge hovering over them thanks to impractical or unrealistic judicial pronouncements. The morale for those facing bullets is hit. Courtroom logic does not cut ice for the underpaid, overworked jawan risking life and livelihood for lofty ideals. He cannot perform if he is not guaranteed security from prosecution for genuine exchanges of fire.
Human rights are sacrosanct. No one advocates fake killings, be it of innocents or criminals. Any operation's ultimate mission is to defend integrity and democratic sovereignty, not to destroy them. But the life and security of the forces fighting this battle must be equally paramount.
The country, its citizens and the courts need to be sensitive to extraordinary situations where the person in uniform is still a human being with same rights as other citizens, with some distinction made between he who fights for and he who fights against the nation. If the state perceives a threat from armed extremists and terrorists and feels the police should be armed, then legal safeguards have to be provided so that the courts do not throw the baby out with the bathwater.
The writer is a former joint commissioner of police, Delhi
Sunday, 15 March 2009
090315: Intolerance just won't ebb in BJP-ruled Karnataka
Asha Rai's account in today's Times of India succinctly (concisely, pithily and tersely) sums up the current state of affairs in BJP ruled Karnataka. Dhikkaar to this current government.
The intrinsic (inherent, built-in, basic, fundamental, essential, central, native and natural).......and inane (silly, absurd, ridiculous, idiotic, stupid, frivolous, childish, immature and mindless) rabidity ingrained in the veins of the BJP and ethos, is speedily exposing the true colours of the party and the lumpen ideals what the Party stands for - driving it to its inevitable doom - does not the BJP realize this?
Citizens of Karnataka are not fooled, and realize that it took a fork-tongued, two-faced PM-aspirant of the BJP two months - after the infamous 'Muthalik' Ram Sene incident of assault on pub-visiting girls - to condedemn it. Is LK Advani's condemnation real, or his tears merely crocodilean? ...just an election ploy, swinging on public sentiment? If Advani really meant what he said, wouldn't the intolerant moral-policing goons not be in jail by now? With no more nonsense brooked, and no repition of such petty and prejudiced acts? Without appropriate grievance-redressal action, would the perfidious hypocrite Yediyurappa continue in his BJP Chief Ministerial seat even for a day? And would his shame-of-Udipi-lieutenant, Acharya, be sitting on his 'Home' portfolio chair so smugly smiling away his wily schemes?
090315.toi.KarnatakaIntolerance
Intolerance just won't ebb in BJP-ruled Karnataka
15 Mar 2009, 0229 hrs IST, Asha Rai , TNN
BANGALORE: Has BJP's nine-month rule in Karnataka created an atmosphere in which just about anybody with a very narrow, bigoted view of culture and religion, finds it not only easy to air their extreme and highly harmful views in public but also to act on it, to the detriment of society at large?
With amazing regularity, petty and prejudiced acts that rip at the social fabric of society are hitting the headlines. Less than a week after 100 people were rounded up and put in jail for days on end for the mere act of partying, comes the news that in a town near Udupi (state's home minister V S Acharya's home town), a few Hindu activists are objecting to the installation of a statue of Charlie Chaplin just because he was a Christian!
That the statue coming up next to a temple would hurt Hindu sentiments. Can things get more absurd that this?
What's worse is the impact it has had on those who wanted to erect the 67-ft statue of Chaplin at Baindur.
While the local administration as well as the local panchayat have given permission to Hemanth Hegde to go ahead with the Chaplin project, the man himself is reluctant, given the threat of violence and hatred he feels the protest has spawned. A few more incidents like this and people will start self-censoring, not knowing from which quarter the objection will come, and for what trivial reason.
In recent months, Mangalore and the area around it have had the misfortune of being at the centre of various kinds of moral policing and episodes of religious intolerance. It started with attacks on churches and places of worship
soon after the BJP came to power.
Then came the infamous 'Mutalik episode' when Sri Rama Sene activists barged into a pub and beat up girls for no rhyme or reason in the middle of the afternoon in full media glare. Even as the reverberations of the Sene attack were yet to die down, a Kerala MLA's daughter and her Muslim friend were beaten up.
The intrinsic (inherent, built-in, basic, fundamental, essential, central, native and natural).......and inane (silly, absurd, ridiculous, idiotic, stupid, frivolous, childish, immature and mindless) rabidity ingrained in the veins of the BJP and ethos, is speedily exposing the true colours of the party and the lumpen ideals what the Party stands for - driving it to its inevitable doom - does not the BJP realize this?
Citizens of Karnataka are not fooled, and realize that it took a fork-tongued, two-faced PM-aspirant of the BJP two months - after the infamous 'Muthalik' Ram Sene incident of assault on pub-visiting girls - to condedemn it. Is LK Advani's condemnation real, or his tears merely crocodilean? ...just an election ploy, swinging on public sentiment? If Advani really meant what he said, wouldn't the intolerant moral-policing goons not be in jail by now? With no more nonsense brooked, and no repition of such petty and prejudiced acts? Without appropriate grievance-redressal action, would the perfidious hypocrite Yediyurappa continue in his BJP Chief Ministerial seat even for a day? And would his shame-of-Udipi-lieutenant, Acharya, be sitting on his 'Home' portfolio chair so smugly smiling away his wily schemes?
090315.toi.KarnatakaIntolerance
Intolerance just won't ebb in BJP-ruled Karnataka
15 Mar 2009, 0229 hrs IST, Asha Rai , TNN
BANGALORE: Has BJP's nine-month rule in Karnataka created an atmosphere in which just about anybody with a very narrow, bigoted view of culture and religion, finds it not only easy to air their extreme and highly harmful views in public but also to act on it, to the detriment of society at large?
With amazing regularity, petty and prejudiced acts that rip at the social fabric of society are hitting the headlines. Less than a week after 100 people were rounded up and put in jail for days on end for the mere act of partying, comes the news that in a town near Udupi (state's home minister V S Acharya's home town), a few Hindu activists are objecting to the installation of a statue of Charlie Chaplin just because he was a Christian!
That the statue coming up next to a temple would hurt Hindu sentiments. Can things get more absurd that this?
What's worse is the impact it has had on those who wanted to erect the 67-ft statue of Chaplin at Baindur.
While the local administration as well as the local panchayat have given permission to Hemanth Hegde to go ahead with the Chaplin project, the man himself is reluctant, given the threat of violence and hatred he feels the protest has spawned. A few more incidents like this and people will start self-censoring, not knowing from which quarter the objection will come, and for what trivial reason.
In recent months, Mangalore and the area around it have had the misfortune of being at the centre of various kinds of moral policing and episodes of religious intolerance. It started with attacks on churches and places of worship
soon after the BJP came to power.
Then came the infamous 'Mutalik episode' when Sri Rama Sene activists barged into a pub and beat up girls for no rhyme or reason in the middle of the afternoon in full media glare. Even as the reverberations of the Sene attack were yet to die down, a Kerala MLA's daughter and her Muslim friend were beaten up.
Thursday, 5 March 2009
India Failing to Control Open Defecation Blunts Nation’s Growth
A must read for every Indian..........
Received as a forward on email:
India Failing to Control Open Defecation Blunts Nation’s Growth
By Jason Gale
March 4 (Bloomberg) -- Until May 2007, Meera Devi rose before dawn each day and walked a half mile to a vegetable patch outside the village of Kachpura to find a secluded place.
Dodging leering men and stick-wielding farmers and avoiding spots that her neighbors had soiled, the mother of three pulled up her sari and defecated with theTaj Mahal in plain view.
With that act, she added to the estimated 100,000 tons of human excrementthat Indians leave each day in fields of potatoes, carrots and spinach, on banks that line rivers used for drinking and bathing and along roads jammed with scooters, trucks and pedestrians. Devi looks back on her routine with pain and embarrassment.
“As a woman, I would have to check where the males were going to the toilet and then go in a different direction,” says Devi, 37, standing outside her one-room mud-brick home. “We used to avoid the daytimes, but if we were really pressured, we would have to go any time of the day, even if it was raining. During the harvest season, people would have sticks in the fields. If somebody had to go, people would beat them up or chase them.”
In the shadow of its new suburbs, torrid growth and 300- million-plus-strong middle class, India is struggling with a sanitation emergency. From the stream in Devi’s village to the nation’s holiest river, the Ganges, 75 percent of the country’s surface water is contaminated by human and agricultural waste and industrial effluent. Everyone in Indian cities is at risk of consuming human feces, if they’re not already, the Ministry of Urban Development concluded in September.
Economic Drain
Illness, lost productivity and other consequences of fouled water and inadequate sewage treatment trimmed 1.4-7.2 percent from the gross domestic product of Cambodia, Indonesia, the Philippines and Vietnam in 2005, according to a study last year by the World Bank’s Water and Sanitation Program.
Sanitation and hygiene-related issues may have a similar if not greater impact on India’s $1.2 trillion economy, says Guy Hutton, a senior water and sanitation economist with the program in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. Snarledtransportation and unreliable power further damp the nation’s growth. Companies that locate in India pay hardship wages and ensconce employees in self- sufficient compounds.
The toll on human health is grim. Every day, 1,000 children younger than 5 years old die in India from diarrhea, hepatitis- causing pathogens and other sanitation-related diseases, according to the United Nations Children’s Fund.
‘Sanitation Crisis’
For girls, the crisis is especially acute: Many drop out of school once they reach puberty because of inadequate lavatories, depriving the country of a generation of possible leaders.
“India cannot reach its full economic potential unless they do something about this sanitation crisis,” says Clarissa Brocklehurst, Unicef’s New York-based chief of water, sanitation and hygiene, who worked in New Delhi from 1999 to 2001.
When P.V. Narasimha Rao opened India to outside investment in 1991, the country went on a tear. For most of this decade, India has placed just behind China as the world’s fastest- growing major economy. Revenue from information technology and outsourcing jumped more than 300-fold to $52 billion a year as Tata Consultancy Services Ltd., Infosys Technologies Ltd.and other homegrown giants took on computer-related work for Western corporations.
Annual per-capita income more than doubled to 24,295 rupees ($468) in the seven years ended on March 31, 2008, before the full force of the financial meltdown kicked in. Even during the current global recession, India’s economy will expand 5.1 percent in 2009, the International Monetary Fund projects.
Hygiene Breakdown
Yet India’s gated office parks with swimming pools and food courts and enclaves such as the Aralias in Gurgaon, outside New Delhi, which features 6,000-square-foot (557-square-meter) condominiums, mask a breakdown of the most basic and symbolic human need -- hygiene.
Devi, who installed her neighborhood’s first toilet, a squat-style latrine in a whitewashed outhouse, created a point of pride in a village where some people empty chamber pots into open drains in front of their homes. Like most of Kachpura’s residents, more than half of India’s 203 million households lack what Western societies consider a necessity: a toilet.
India has the greatest proportion of people in Asia behind Nepal without access to improved sanitation, according to Unicef. Some 665 million Indians practice open defecation, more than half the global total. In China, the world’s most populous country, 37 million people defecate in the open, according to Unicef.
‘It’s an Embarrassment’
“It’s an embarrassment,” says Venkatraman Anantha- Nageswaran, 45, an Indian working in Singapore as chief investment officer for Asia Pacific at Bank Julius Baer & Co., which managed $234 billion at the end of 2008. “It’s a country that aspires to being an international power and which, according to various projections, will be the third-largest economy in 20-30 years.”
India has the highest childhood malnutrition rates in the world: 44 percent of children younger than 5 are underweight, according to the International Food Policy Research Institute.
“Malnourished children are more susceptible to diarrheal disease, and with more diarrheal disease they become more malnourished,” says Jamie Bartram, head of the World Health Organization’s water, sanitation, hygiene and health group. “If we collectively could fix the world’s basic water and sanitation problems, we could reduce childhood mortality by nearly a third.”
Half of India’s schools don’t have separate toilets for males and females, forcing young women to use unisex facilities or nothing at all. Twenty-two percent of girls complete 10 or more years of schooling compared with 35 percent of boys, a national family health survey finished in 2006 found.
Indignity, Infections
Devi says she was concerned that her 14-year-old daughter would suffer the indignity and infections she herself endured due to poor menstrual hygiene. That was a major reason she bought a toilet, taking out a 7,000 rupee, interest-free loan from the U.S. Agency for International Development, which enabled her to pay for her new latrine over 18 months.
The agency also gave her a 3,000 rupee grant and a 2,500 rupee-a-month job with its Cross-Cutting Agra Project, which promotes hygiene and sanitation in her village. Until then, she, like her husband, was unemployed. Her daughter’s situation has also improved, Devi says.
“When she has her period, it’s especially difficult for her to go out into the fields,” she says. “It’s better to have a toilet at home -- as it is for every female.”
Girls’ Education
Barriers that keep girls from equal education compromise the nation’s future, says Renu Khosla, director of CURE India, a New Delhi group that works to improve water and sanitation for the poor, including in Kachpura.
“We will have a less skilled population of youth,” she says. “Every year of schooling reduces household poverty by bringing down the family size and increasing skill levels.”
So far, companies looking to locate in India haven’t been turned off by the sanitation shortcomings, says Anshuman Magazine, chairman of CB Richard Ellis Group Inc.’s South Asian unit, which manages about 62 million square feet of property in the country. “India is a completely different planet,” he says.
As such, employees know not to drink tap water, and employers provide clean washrooms.
“As far as offices are concerned, I have never come across anyone raising these concerns. Businesses run on making money and opportunities. Since 2004, we have seen huge interest from foreign investors and businesses.”
Hardship Allowances
International corporations that set up branches in Mumbai and New Delhi compensate by paying hardship allowances of 20-25 percent of employees’ salary compared with 10-15 percent in Beijing and Shanghai, says Lee Quane, the Hong Kong-based Asian general manager of ECA International Ltd., a human resources advisory firm.
Some big Indian companies count on private utilities, bottled water and walled compounds with electric fences. Infosys’s resort-style campus on the outskirts of Bangalore has manicured lawns, a Japanese garden, a swimming pool, a golf course and a Domino’s Pizza in its multinational food court.
Unlike most households in the nearby city of 6.8 million, India’s No. 2 software maker’s headquarters doesn’t suffer water or power interruptions, says Bhawesh Kumar, its facilities manager.
Poverty Trap
Infosys stores water from the public network in three underground reservoirs that can hold 2.2 million liters (580,000 gallons), or two days’ supply. The water passes through sand and carbon filters and purifiers, making it cleaner than what’s available to local people, he says. Attendants clean the brown- tiled bathrooms and refresh supplies of paper hand towels hourly during the business day. Infrared sensors ensure that toilets are flushed after each use.
Outside such compounds, dirty water and poor hygiene can trap communities in a cycle of disease, malnutrition and poverty, Bartram says. Worldwide, 18 percent of the population, or 1.2 billion people, rely on open defecation and about 884 million drink unsafe water, according to Unicef.
Every year, more than 200 million tons of human sewage goes uncollected and untreated, fouling the environment. Each gram of feces can contain 10 million virus particles, 1 million bacteria, 1,000 parasite cysts and 100 parasite eggs, the UN found.
Fetid Waters
In Devi’s village, sewage and household wastewater flow along open drains that line both sides of narrow alleyways. The fetid water gathers in a shallow channel choking with plastic containers, discarded footwear and household trash. A woman carrying a folded mattress on her head steps deftly along a narrow bridge spanning the mire. A mechanical pump chugs on the bank, sucking up the liquid to dispense over a nearby vegetable patch. Children play around the edge, alongside tethered, cud- chewing water buffalo.
A man walks past, clutching a water-filled plastic bottle, presumably on his way to defecate. The rest of the slurry empties into a trench coursing along a feces-dotted path through a field of cauliflowers. A shoeless boy uses a long-handled spade to create a new sluice for the black sludge to ooze over the vegetable field.
What’s not drained from the trench empties into a cesspool on the flood plain of the Yamuna River, which flows through Delhi and then Agra before joining the Ganges at Allahabad, 1,370 kilometers (850 miles) from its pristine source in the Himalayan mountains.
‘Remorseless Drain’
“If you’ve got feces all around you, it will find its way into your mouth,” Bartram says. “Cholera and typhoid are always dramatic because they come through as outbreaks, and outbreaks catch the news. The real burden is this long, remorseless drain of straightforward, simple diarrheal disease.”
Like Devi’s village, less than a fifth of Agra is connected to a sewage system. The 1.3 million people generate more than 150 million liters of effluent each day. The city has the capacity to treat 60 percent of the sewage. There are plans to build three more treatment plants by 2012 with funding from the state and federal governments and the Japan International Cooperation Agency, according to the Agra Municipal Corporation.
The U.S. Agency for International Development-funded Cross- Cutting Agra Project and other programs are trying to bridge the sanitation gap. The project helped Devi and 39 other households in her village get toilets during the past two years.
Spurring Desire
The Indian government is also contributing. Rural families living below the poverty line are eligible for a 1,500 rupee subsidy to build household latrines under the Total Sanitation Campaign. The decade-old program focuses on educating people about the link between good hygiene and health to change behavior and spur their desire for toilets.
UN agencies such as Unicef provide technical information and recommendations on toilet systems.
Governments and aid groups have strived for decades to overcome India’s sanitation challenges. Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, who led the movement for freedom from foreign domination, grappled with the issue almost a century ago: “The cause of many of our diseases is the condition of our lavatories and our bad habit of disposing of excreta anywhere and everywhere,” Gandhiwrote in 1925. “Sanitation is more important than political independence,” he declared.
Taboo Topic
Gandhi focused on the Hindu caste system that subjugated the lowest social stratum to the unsavory realm of latrines. For some 4,000 years, so-called bhangis or untouchables earned a modest living by scraping “night soil” from the cavernous household toilet pits of higher castes and carrying it away in pans balanced on their heads.
“Culturally, it was taboo in Indian society to talk about human excreta, night soil and all these things,” says Bindeshwar Pathak, who started Sulabh International Social Service Organization, a Delhi-based group whose name means “readily accessible.” The organization has built public toilets and campaigned on human emancipation issues since 1970.
Pathak says the tradition of scavenging removed the impetus of society, and especially policy makers, to acknowledge and address the sanitation problem.
A.K. Mehta, joint secretary of the Ministry of Urban Development, says India’s close-lipped tradition is changing.
“If you have a legacy of thousands of years, you don’t expect it to go away in a decade or so,” Mehta says. “Progress is significant and in the right direction.”
Millions Waiting
Today, 59 percent of the people in India’s countryside have access to a toilet, compared with 27 percent in 2004, the Department of Drinking Water Supplysays. Ten million toilets have been built annually since 2007. More than 30 million households are waiting.
Urban dwellers aren’t spared substandard hygiene. In Mumbai, Delhi and other cities where billboards advertise the latest mobile phones and trendy young women sport Prada handbags, the water that’s piped into homes and apartments must be filtered before drinking. And in most homes it’s available only a few hours each day.
“Even the biggest cities still have that problem,” says Vishwas Udgirkar, 46, executive director of PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP’s government and infrastructure division in New Delhi.
More unsettling, 17 percent of city residents, or 50 million people, don’t have toilets. Fewer than 10 percent of Indian cities have a sewage system. About37 percent of urban wastewater flows into the environment untreated, where such pathogens as rotavirus, campylobacter and human roundworm can spread via water, soil, food and unwashed hands.
‘Huge Challenge’
“Not attending to this has a cost,” Mehta says. “Between 2001 and ’26, we would be adding another 246 million people to the urban system. How would we meet that huge challenge is the issue.”
India is still struggling to find the best way to clean up the mess.
“A lot of money has been given for constructing the infrastructure,” says Ajith C. Kumar, an operations analyst with the World Bank’s Water and Sanitation Program in New Delhi. “The predominant experience has been that none of this has worked.”
The southeastern state of Andhra Pradesh is a good example. Earlier this decade, the state government helped build 2.95 million household latrines in rural areas. Residents got subsidies worth about $16 in cash plus coupons for 100 kilograms (220 pounds) of rice. Half the toilets went unused or were being used for other purposes, a February 2007 World Bank report found.
Roomier Than Homes
In the western state of Maharashtra, 1.6 million subsidized toilets were built from 1997 to 2000. About 47 percent are in use.
Many toilets are designed without thinking about who’s going to use them, says Payden (who goes by one name), the WHO’s New Delhi-based regional adviser on water, sanitation and health. Some of the new toilets were roomier than homes.
“The toilets were much stronger and safer, so they used them for storing grain instead,” she says.
Now India is trying a different kind of cash reward to encourage toilet use. TheNirmal Gram Puraskar, or “clean village prize,” gives 50,000-5 million rupees to local governments that end open defecation. Thirty-eight villages qualified in 2005. A year later, 760 villages and 9 municipalities got the prize. In 2008, more than 12,000 awards were presented.
Toilets That Pay
Santha Sheela Nair, India’s secretary of drinking water supply, is assessing another monetary incentive. In a spacious New Delhi office with a white-tiled floor and white walls, Nair thumbs through a leaflet from a desk stacked with foot-high files and books on sanitation. She stops suddenly and points excitedly to a picture of a white toilet adorned with brightly- colored writing.
“This is the first toilet in the world -- in the world -- where you use the toilet and you get paid,” Nair says.
The public toilet, in the town of Musiri in the southern state of Tamil Nadu, gives users as much as 12 U.S. cents a month for their excreta. Feces arecomposted and urine, which is 95 percent water and has already passed through the body’s own filter, the kidneys, is collected, stored in drums and used as fertilizer for bananas and other food crops in a two-year research project by the Tamil Nadu Agricultural University.
“The day that I can use your toilet and you pay me instead of me paying you, that will be the day when we have really learned to reuse our waste,” Nair says.
Menstrual Hygiene
Nair, India’s eighth drinking-water chief in less than a decade, is passionate about her job. On this day in November, the sari-clad government veteran chimes in on baby feces, menstrual hygiene, the use of excrement as fertilizer and other topics few bureaucrats have dared to broach.
From 2001 to ’03, Nair was responsible for the water supply in Chennai, formerly called Madras, southern India’s biggest city. Then, as rural development secretary for Tamil Nadu, she helped in the aftermath of the 2004 tsunami.
Nair is challenging the accepted wisdom on everything from modern sewers to flushable toilets, to the value of human waste. She says Western-style toilets are inappropriate for India, especially in areas that lack fresh water and have limited funds for sewage treatment plants. Instead, she says, the country has to find cheaper, more efficient and environmentally friendly technologies.
Lunar Mission
Inspired by the successful landing in November of the Moon Impact Probe, India’s first unmanned lunar mission, Nair is looking skyward for ideas.
“In space, you have the most vulnerable situations,” she says, playing a 2-minute YouTube video of an astronaut explaining how to manage bodily functions 100,000 miles from Earth. “They are separating the urine from the feces and drying it,” she says, pointing to her computer monitor. “The urine is processed for re-drinking because they just can’t carry that much water.”
Nair says modern sewers aren’t the answer for India. The country can’t afford to waste water by flushing it down a latrine. Instead, she’s encouraging airplane-style commodes that are vacuum cleared or toilets that are attached to contained pits rather than systems that pipe the effluent miles away for treatment. In Nair’s world, recycling human excrement for use as fertilizer is preferable.
‘Our Own Devices’
“We need to invent our own devices which are cost- effective, environmentally sustainable and go with our people,” she says. “We cannot afford the things which are simply things that some civil engineer learned somewhere.”
Converting excreta that have been properly dried for 6-24 months into plant food uses less water than traditional sewage systems and is less likely to pollute waterways, Payden says.
Bartram says composted sewage that’s been handled correctly can be used in agriculture and for other beneficial purposes with negligible risk to human health. The challenge is to sanitize it so that disease-carrying organisms are eliminated.
“Different pathogens vary widely in terms of inactivation,” he says. “Large, robust parasite eggs like the human roundworm, Ascaris, tend to be the longest lived and can remain infectious for years in soil.”
Closing the Gap
The government has a goal of eliminating open defecation by 2012. Nair says it might happen earlier.
“It’s important for us to do it quickly,” she says. Right now, the number of open defecators is roughly double the number of India’s middle class. “This gap will keep widening,” she says. “That is the challenge for us.”
For the Devi family, one household in one of India’s thousands of villages, the gap has narrowed. The health and dignity of five people have improved. More of Devi’s neighbors are trying to emulate her example by installing a household latrine and washing their hands with soap.
“We have gone from home to home to talk about sanitation and cleanliness,” Devi says, standing on the bank of the Yamuna River as cattle drink from its fetid waters. “The solution to a thousand household problems is getting a toilet.”
As India strives to build on two decades of growth, the nation’s sanitation struggle reveals how complicated Devi’s goal remains -- and how damaging the failure to meet it may be.
To contact the reporter on this story: Jason Gale in Singapore atj.gale@bloomberg.net
Received as a forward on email:
India Failing to Control Open Defecation Blunts Nation’s Growth
By Jason Gale
March 4 (Bloomberg) -- Until May 2007, Meera Devi rose before dawn each day and walked a half mile to a vegetable patch outside the village of Kachpura to find a secluded place.
Dodging leering men and stick-wielding farmers and avoiding spots that her neighbors had soiled, the mother of three pulled up her sari and defecated with theTaj Mahal in plain view.
With that act, she added to the estimated 100,000 tons of human excrementthat Indians leave each day in fields of potatoes, carrots and spinach, on banks that line rivers used for drinking and bathing and along roads jammed with scooters, trucks and pedestrians. Devi looks back on her routine with pain and embarrassment.
“As a woman, I would have to check where the males were going to the toilet and then go in a different direction,” says Devi, 37, standing outside her one-room mud-brick home. “We used to avoid the daytimes, but if we were really pressured, we would have to go any time of the day, even if it was raining. During the harvest season, people would have sticks in the fields. If somebody had to go, people would beat them up or chase them.”
In the shadow of its new suburbs, torrid growth and 300- million-plus-strong middle class, India is struggling with a sanitation emergency. From the stream in Devi’s village to the nation’s holiest river, the Ganges, 75 percent of the country’s surface water is contaminated by human and agricultural waste and industrial effluent. Everyone in Indian cities is at risk of consuming human feces, if they’re not already, the Ministry of Urban Development concluded in September.
Economic Drain
Illness, lost productivity and other consequences of fouled water and inadequate sewage treatment trimmed 1.4-7.2 percent from the gross domestic product of Cambodia, Indonesia, the Philippines and Vietnam in 2005, according to a study last year by the World Bank’s Water and Sanitation Program.
Sanitation and hygiene-related issues may have a similar if not greater impact on India’s $1.2 trillion economy, says Guy Hutton, a senior water and sanitation economist with the program in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. Snarledtransportation and unreliable power further damp the nation’s growth. Companies that locate in India pay hardship wages and ensconce employees in self- sufficient compounds.
The toll on human health is grim. Every day, 1,000 children younger than 5 years old die in India from diarrhea, hepatitis- causing pathogens and other sanitation-related diseases, according to the United Nations Children’s Fund.
‘Sanitation Crisis’
For girls, the crisis is especially acute: Many drop out of school once they reach puberty because of inadequate lavatories, depriving the country of a generation of possible leaders.
“India cannot reach its full economic potential unless they do something about this sanitation crisis,” says Clarissa Brocklehurst, Unicef’s New York-based chief of water, sanitation and hygiene, who worked in New Delhi from 1999 to 2001.
When P.V. Narasimha Rao opened India to outside investment in 1991, the country went on a tear. For most of this decade, India has placed just behind China as the world’s fastest- growing major economy. Revenue from information technology and outsourcing jumped more than 300-fold to $52 billion a year as Tata Consultancy Services Ltd., Infosys Technologies Ltd.and other homegrown giants took on computer-related work for Western corporations.
Annual per-capita income more than doubled to 24,295 rupees ($468) in the seven years ended on March 31, 2008, before the full force of the financial meltdown kicked in. Even during the current global recession, India’s economy will expand 5.1 percent in 2009, the International Monetary Fund projects.
Hygiene Breakdown
Yet India’s gated office parks with swimming pools and food courts and enclaves such as the Aralias in Gurgaon, outside New Delhi, which features 6,000-square-foot (557-square-meter) condominiums, mask a breakdown of the most basic and symbolic human need -- hygiene.
Devi, who installed her neighborhood’s first toilet, a squat-style latrine in a whitewashed outhouse, created a point of pride in a village where some people empty chamber pots into open drains in front of their homes. Like most of Kachpura’s residents, more than half of India’s 203 million households lack what Western societies consider a necessity: a toilet.
India has the greatest proportion of people in Asia behind Nepal without access to improved sanitation, according to Unicef. Some 665 million Indians practice open defecation, more than half the global total. In China, the world’s most populous country, 37 million people defecate in the open, according to Unicef.
‘It’s an Embarrassment’
“It’s an embarrassment,” says Venkatraman Anantha- Nageswaran, 45, an Indian working in Singapore as chief investment officer for Asia Pacific at Bank Julius Baer & Co., which managed $234 billion at the end of 2008. “It’s a country that aspires to being an international power and which, according to various projections, will be the third-largest economy in 20-30 years.”
India has the highest childhood malnutrition rates in the world: 44 percent of children younger than 5 are underweight, according to the International Food Policy Research Institute.
“Malnourished children are more susceptible to diarrheal disease, and with more diarrheal disease they become more malnourished,” says Jamie Bartram, head of the World Health Organization’s water, sanitation, hygiene and health group. “If we collectively could fix the world’s basic water and sanitation problems, we could reduce childhood mortality by nearly a third.”
Half of India’s schools don’t have separate toilets for males and females, forcing young women to use unisex facilities or nothing at all. Twenty-two percent of girls complete 10 or more years of schooling compared with 35 percent of boys, a national family health survey finished in 2006 found.
Indignity, Infections
Devi says she was concerned that her 14-year-old daughter would suffer the indignity and infections she herself endured due to poor menstrual hygiene. That was a major reason she bought a toilet, taking out a 7,000 rupee, interest-free loan from the U.S. Agency for International Development, which enabled her to pay for her new latrine over 18 months.
The agency also gave her a 3,000 rupee grant and a 2,500 rupee-a-month job with its Cross-Cutting Agra Project, which promotes hygiene and sanitation in her village. Until then, she, like her husband, was unemployed. Her daughter’s situation has also improved, Devi says.
“When she has her period, it’s especially difficult for her to go out into the fields,” she says. “It’s better to have a toilet at home -- as it is for every female.”
Girls’ Education
Barriers that keep girls from equal education compromise the nation’s future, says Renu Khosla, director of CURE India, a New Delhi group that works to improve water and sanitation for the poor, including in Kachpura.
“We will have a less skilled population of youth,” she says. “Every year of schooling reduces household poverty by bringing down the family size and increasing skill levels.”
So far, companies looking to locate in India haven’t been turned off by the sanitation shortcomings, says Anshuman Magazine, chairman of CB Richard Ellis Group Inc.’s South Asian unit, which manages about 62 million square feet of property in the country. “India is a completely different planet,” he says.
As such, employees know not to drink tap water, and employers provide clean washrooms.
“As far as offices are concerned, I have never come across anyone raising these concerns. Businesses run on making money and opportunities. Since 2004, we have seen huge interest from foreign investors and businesses.”
Hardship Allowances
International corporations that set up branches in Mumbai and New Delhi compensate by paying hardship allowances of 20-25 percent of employees’ salary compared with 10-15 percent in Beijing and Shanghai, says Lee Quane, the Hong Kong-based Asian general manager of ECA International Ltd., a human resources advisory firm.
Some big Indian companies count on private utilities, bottled water and walled compounds with electric fences. Infosys’s resort-style campus on the outskirts of Bangalore has manicured lawns, a Japanese garden, a swimming pool, a golf course and a Domino’s Pizza in its multinational food court.
Unlike most households in the nearby city of 6.8 million, India’s No. 2 software maker’s headquarters doesn’t suffer water or power interruptions, says Bhawesh Kumar, its facilities manager.
Poverty Trap
Infosys stores water from the public network in three underground reservoirs that can hold 2.2 million liters (580,000 gallons), or two days’ supply. The water passes through sand and carbon filters and purifiers, making it cleaner than what’s available to local people, he says. Attendants clean the brown- tiled bathrooms and refresh supplies of paper hand towels hourly during the business day. Infrared sensors ensure that toilets are flushed after each use.
Outside such compounds, dirty water and poor hygiene can trap communities in a cycle of disease, malnutrition and poverty, Bartram says. Worldwide, 18 percent of the population, or 1.2 billion people, rely on open defecation and about 884 million drink unsafe water, according to Unicef.
Every year, more than 200 million tons of human sewage goes uncollected and untreated, fouling the environment. Each gram of feces can contain 10 million virus particles, 1 million bacteria, 1,000 parasite cysts and 100 parasite eggs, the UN found.
Fetid Waters
In Devi’s village, sewage and household wastewater flow along open drains that line both sides of narrow alleyways. The fetid water gathers in a shallow channel choking with plastic containers, discarded footwear and household trash. A woman carrying a folded mattress on her head steps deftly along a narrow bridge spanning the mire. A mechanical pump chugs on the bank, sucking up the liquid to dispense over a nearby vegetable patch. Children play around the edge, alongside tethered, cud- chewing water buffalo.
A man walks past, clutching a water-filled plastic bottle, presumably on his way to defecate. The rest of the slurry empties into a trench coursing along a feces-dotted path through a field of cauliflowers. A shoeless boy uses a long-handled spade to create a new sluice for the black sludge to ooze over the vegetable field.
What’s not drained from the trench empties into a cesspool on the flood plain of the Yamuna River, which flows through Delhi and then Agra before joining the Ganges at Allahabad, 1,370 kilometers (850 miles) from its pristine source in the Himalayan mountains.
‘Remorseless Drain’
“If you’ve got feces all around you, it will find its way into your mouth,” Bartram says. “Cholera and typhoid are always dramatic because they come through as outbreaks, and outbreaks catch the news. The real burden is this long, remorseless drain of straightforward, simple diarrheal disease.”
Like Devi’s village, less than a fifth of Agra is connected to a sewage system. The 1.3 million people generate more than 150 million liters of effluent each day. The city has the capacity to treat 60 percent of the sewage. There are plans to build three more treatment plants by 2012 with funding from the state and federal governments and the Japan International Cooperation Agency, according to the Agra Municipal Corporation.
The U.S. Agency for International Development-funded Cross- Cutting Agra Project and other programs are trying to bridge the sanitation gap. The project helped Devi and 39 other households in her village get toilets during the past two years.
Spurring Desire
The Indian government is also contributing. Rural families living below the poverty line are eligible for a 1,500 rupee subsidy to build household latrines under the Total Sanitation Campaign. The decade-old program focuses on educating people about the link between good hygiene and health to change behavior and spur their desire for toilets.
UN agencies such as Unicef provide technical information and recommendations on toilet systems.
Governments and aid groups have strived for decades to overcome India’s sanitation challenges. Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, who led the movement for freedom from foreign domination, grappled with the issue almost a century ago: “The cause of many of our diseases is the condition of our lavatories and our bad habit of disposing of excreta anywhere and everywhere,” Gandhiwrote in 1925. “Sanitation is more important than political independence,” he declared.
Taboo Topic
Gandhi focused on the Hindu caste system that subjugated the lowest social stratum to the unsavory realm of latrines. For some 4,000 years, so-called bhangis or untouchables earned a modest living by scraping “night soil” from the cavernous household toilet pits of higher castes and carrying it away in pans balanced on their heads.
“Culturally, it was taboo in Indian society to talk about human excreta, night soil and all these things,” says Bindeshwar Pathak, who started Sulabh International Social Service Organization, a Delhi-based group whose name means “readily accessible.” The organization has built public toilets and campaigned on human emancipation issues since 1970.
Pathak says the tradition of scavenging removed the impetus of society, and especially policy makers, to acknowledge and address the sanitation problem.
A.K. Mehta, joint secretary of the Ministry of Urban Development, says India’s close-lipped tradition is changing.
“If you have a legacy of thousands of years, you don’t expect it to go away in a decade or so,” Mehta says. “Progress is significant and in the right direction.”
Millions Waiting
Today, 59 percent of the people in India’s countryside have access to a toilet, compared with 27 percent in 2004, the Department of Drinking Water Supplysays. Ten million toilets have been built annually since 2007. More than 30 million households are waiting.
Urban dwellers aren’t spared substandard hygiene. In Mumbai, Delhi and other cities where billboards advertise the latest mobile phones and trendy young women sport Prada handbags, the water that’s piped into homes and apartments must be filtered before drinking. And in most homes it’s available only a few hours each day.
“Even the biggest cities still have that problem,” says Vishwas Udgirkar, 46, executive director of PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP’s government and infrastructure division in New Delhi.
More unsettling, 17 percent of city residents, or 50 million people, don’t have toilets. Fewer than 10 percent of Indian cities have a sewage system. About37 percent of urban wastewater flows into the environment untreated, where such pathogens as rotavirus, campylobacter and human roundworm can spread via water, soil, food and unwashed hands.
‘Huge Challenge’
“Not attending to this has a cost,” Mehta says. “Between 2001 and ’26, we would be adding another 246 million people to the urban system. How would we meet that huge challenge is the issue.”
India is still struggling to find the best way to clean up the mess.
“A lot of money has been given for constructing the infrastructure,” says Ajith C. Kumar, an operations analyst with the World Bank’s Water and Sanitation Program in New Delhi. “The predominant experience has been that none of this has worked.”
The southeastern state of Andhra Pradesh is a good example. Earlier this decade, the state government helped build 2.95 million household latrines in rural areas. Residents got subsidies worth about $16 in cash plus coupons for 100 kilograms (220 pounds) of rice. Half the toilets went unused or were being used for other purposes, a February 2007 World Bank report found.
Roomier Than Homes
In the western state of Maharashtra, 1.6 million subsidized toilets were built from 1997 to 2000. About 47 percent are in use.
Many toilets are designed without thinking about who’s going to use them, says Payden (who goes by one name), the WHO’s New Delhi-based regional adviser on water, sanitation and health. Some of the new toilets were roomier than homes.
“The toilets were much stronger and safer, so they used them for storing grain instead,” she says.
Now India is trying a different kind of cash reward to encourage toilet use. TheNirmal Gram Puraskar, or “clean village prize,” gives 50,000-5 million rupees to local governments that end open defecation. Thirty-eight villages qualified in 2005. A year later, 760 villages and 9 municipalities got the prize. In 2008, more than 12,000 awards were presented.
Toilets That Pay
Santha Sheela Nair, India’s secretary of drinking water supply, is assessing another monetary incentive. In a spacious New Delhi office with a white-tiled floor and white walls, Nair thumbs through a leaflet from a desk stacked with foot-high files and books on sanitation. She stops suddenly and points excitedly to a picture of a white toilet adorned with brightly- colored writing.
“This is the first toilet in the world -- in the world -- where you use the toilet and you get paid,” Nair says.
The public toilet, in the town of Musiri in the southern state of Tamil Nadu, gives users as much as 12 U.S. cents a month for their excreta. Feces arecomposted and urine, which is 95 percent water and has already passed through the body’s own filter, the kidneys, is collected, stored in drums and used as fertilizer for bananas and other food crops in a two-year research project by the Tamil Nadu Agricultural University.
“The day that I can use your toilet and you pay me instead of me paying you, that will be the day when we have really learned to reuse our waste,” Nair says.
Menstrual Hygiene
Nair, India’s eighth drinking-water chief in less than a decade, is passionate about her job. On this day in November, the sari-clad government veteran chimes in on baby feces, menstrual hygiene, the use of excrement as fertilizer and other topics few bureaucrats have dared to broach.
From 2001 to ’03, Nair was responsible for the water supply in Chennai, formerly called Madras, southern India’s biggest city. Then, as rural development secretary for Tamil Nadu, she helped in the aftermath of the 2004 tsunami.
Nair is challenging the accepted wisdom on everything from modern sewers to flushable toilets, to the value of human waste. She says Western-style toilets are inappropriate for India, especially in areas that lack fresh water and have limited funds for sewage treatment plants. Instead, she says, the country has to find cheaper, more efficient and environmentally friendly technologies.
Lunar Mission
Inspired by the successful landing in November of the Moon Impact Probe, India’s first unmanned lunar mission, Nair is looking skyward for ideas.
“In space, you have the most vulnerable situations,” she says, playing a 2-minute YouTube video of an astronaut explaining how to manage bodily functions 100,000 miles from Earth. “They are separating the urine from the feces and drying it,” she says, pointing to her computer monitor. “The urine is processed for re-drinking because they just can’t carry that much water.”
Nair says modern sewers aren’t the answer for India. The country can’t afford to waste water by flushing it down a latrine. Instead, she’s encouraging airplane-style commodes that are vacuum cleared or toilets that are attached to contained pits rather than systems that pipe the effluent miles away for treatment. In Nair’s world, recycling human excrement for use as fertilizer is preferable.
‘Our Own Devices’
“We need to invent our own devices which are cost- effective, environmentally sustainable and go with our people,” she says. “We cannot afford the things which are simply things that some civil engineer learned somewhere.”
Converting excreta that have been properly dried for 6-24 months into plant food uses less water than traditional sewage systems and is less likely to pollute waterways, Payden says.
Bartram says composted sewage that’s been handled correctly can be used in agriculture and for other beneficial purposes with negligible risk to human health. The challenge is to sanitize it so that disease-carrying organisms are eliminated.
“Different pathogens vary widely in terms of inactivation,” he says. “Large, robust parasite eggs like the human roundworm, Ascaris, tend to be the longest lived and can remain infectious for years in soil.”
Closing the Gap
The government has a goal of eliminating open defecation by 2012. Nair says it might happen earlier.
“It’s important for us to do it quickly,” she says. Right now, the number of open defecators is roughly double the number of India’s middle class. “This gap will keep widening,” she says. “That is the challenge for us.”
For the Devi family, one household in one of India’s thousands of villages, the gap has narrowed. The health and dignity of five people have improved. More of Devi’s neighbors are trying to emulate her example by installing a household latrine and washing their hands with soap.
“We have gone from home to home to talk about sanitation and cleanliness,” Devi says, standing on the bank of the Yamuna River as cattle drink from its fetid waters. “The solution to a thousand household problems is getting a toilet.”
As India strives to build on two decades of growth, the nation’s sanitation struggle reveals how complicated Devi’s goal remains -- and how damaging the failure to meet it may be.
To contact the reporter on this story: Jason Gale in Singapore atj.gale@bloomberg.net
Tuesday, 3 March 2009
Does media activism influencing judiciary result in travesty of justice?
Personal Notes
TV-ndtv.Big-Fight:
Recording for this weekend’s Big Fight anchored by Vikram Chandra:
Guest-desk coordinators – Suad Hassan: not really from the guest-desk – but a researcher, editor and co-producer of Big Fight with Vikram Chandra: telephone—9891436395: email— suadh@ndtv.com.
Topic: "Does media activism influence judiciary resulting in travesty of justice".
Co-panellists: Very high profile galaxy of panellists - that included...
**Ram Jetmalani - former law minister and the country's most high profile, prominent and very controversial lawyer;
**Retd Justice RS Sodhi of Delhi High Court who convicted the accused in most high profile criminal cases over the last two/three years - the accused who had been acquitted of murder charges earlier by the Sessions Court;
**me, Maxwell Pereira, retired from the police;
** KTS Tulsi – Legal luminary, prominent and livewire Supreme Court lawyer
**Colin Gonsalves – another prominent and articulate Supreme Court lawyer – a human rights activist too;
**Neelam Krishnamurty - who over the last twelve years relentlessly built up public opinion in the media to pursue the Uphaar Cinema fire tragedy case in which about 37 people (including two of her own two teenaged children lost their lives);
**Prof SAR Gilani – who was one of the accused in the 2003 terrorist attack on Indian Parliament, convicted and sentenced to undergo jail term by the Sessions Court, but later acquitted by the High Court;
**Sabrina Lal – the sister of Jessica Lal whose murder and then the acquittal of the murderers - both poiticians' sons - had shocked the nation enough for a public outcry and a sustained media campaign leading to his conviction in the High Court by the very same co-panellist Justice Sodhi; and finally.....
**Karandeep Singh – the son of accused on death-row, GS Pandher, in the most infamous multiple murder case of NOIDA where Pandher and his servant Koli lured, raped and butchered (also ate the flesh of victims) young girls and minors - lured for sex from the nearby slums; whose bones in gunny sacks were recovered from the adjacent nullah (gutter).... Total minors and girls killed estimated to be over 38.
The hour long discussions were vibrant, volatile and tense – with Sodhi and Jetmalani trapped in a ring with a one to one unhealthy spat that shd not have happened – with the media and the police under attack for alleged collusion and connivance to "send innocents" to the gallows – enough provocation to excite me appropriately. Enjoyed the challenge and was satisfied with my own responses, even though it's me that's saying it. Will have to wait till the weekend though, to see what the edited final package of this programme is, when it is finally telecast end of this week.
TV-ndtv.Big-Fight:
Recording for this weekend’s Big Fight anchored by Vikram Chandra:
Guest-desk coordinators – Suad Hassan: not really from the guest-desk – but a researcher, editor and co-producer of Big Fight with Vikram Chandra: telephone—9891436395: email— suadh@ndtv.com.
Topic: "Does media activism influence judiciary resulting in travesty of justice".
Co-panellists: Very high profile galaxy of panellists - that included...
**Ram Jetmalani - former law minister and the country's most high profile, prominent and very controversial lawyer;
**Retd Justice RS Sodhi of Delhi High Court who convicted the accused in most high profile criminal cases over the last two/three years - the accused who had been acquitted of murder charges earlier by the Sessions Court;
**me, Maxwell Pereira, retired from the police;
** KTS Tulsi – Legal luminary, prominent and livewire Supreme Court lawyer
**Colin Gonsalves – another prominent and articulate Supreme Court lawyer – a human rights activist too;
**Neelam Krishnamurty - who over the last twelve years relentlessly built up public opinion in the media to pursue the Uphaar Cinema fire tragedy case in which about 37 people (including two of her own two teenaged children lost their lives);
**Prof SAR Gilani – who was one of the accused in the 2003 terrorist attack on Indian Parliament, convicted and sentenced to undergo jail term by the Sessions Court, but later acquitted by the High Court;
**Sabrina Lal – the sister of Jessica Lal whose murder and then the acquittal of the murderers - both poiticians' sons - had shocked the nation enough for a public outcry and a sustained media campaign leading to his conviction in the High Court by the very same co-panellist Justice Sodhi; and finally.....
**Karandeep Singh – the son of accused on death-row, GS Pandher, in the most infamous multiple murder case of NOIDA where Pandher and his servant Koli lured, raped and butchered (also ate the flesh of victims) young girls and minors - lured for sex from the nearby slums; whose bones in gunny sacks were recovered from the adjacent nullah (gutter).... Total minors and girls killed estimated to be over 38.
The hour long discussions were vibrant, volatile and tense – with Sodhi and Jetmalani trapped in a ring with a one to one unhealthy spat that shd not have happened – with the media and the police under attack for alleged collusion and connivance to "send innocents" to the gallows – enough provocation to excite me appropriately. Enjoyed the challenge and was satisfied with my own responses, even though it's me that's saying it. Will have to wait till the weekend though, to see what the edited final package of this programme is, when it is finally telecast end of this week.
Monday, 26 January 2009
Talibanisation of Mangalore
Once again there has been an attack on ordinary citizens - young women in this case unwinding at a Mangalore pub - by an extremist group with no accountability, respect for the rule of law and rights of the citizen.
I repeat here from Ranjan Kamath's post on Facebook and C+ive _ Civic Society On The Web urging the Mangaloreans to "Silence the Moral Police Peacefully"
There is every likelihood that their actions are at the behest of mainstream organisations operating within the parliamentary process that can conveniently deny any association with such 'Senas' - although they are tarnished with the same hue.
Once this issue is off the front pages, the prosecution process proceeds lethargically enough to employ the lumpen to execute the next such operation with impunity - to protect 'their culture and heritage' against fellow Indians.
In the meantime, we shall develop amnesia, engage in similar knee jerk reactions to greet the next attack in Mangalore, Karnataka or, perhaps elsewhere in the country.
The extremists are confident with an arrogance that urban middle class India will bark much but never bite. There will be a profusion of electronic messages exchanged but thereafter the matter vanishes off the columns inches and public mind.
Such extremists treat our reactions with as much scorn as who we are and what we represent. Elections are around the corner and the same gentlemen shall soon be visiting our doorsteps seeking our votes with hands folded.
Yes, at the earliest opportunity Mangalore should and must organise a non-violent show of strength.
On the day the Shree Ram Sena calls a bandh demanding the release of Pramod Muthalik the people of Mangalore - particularly the young women should gather peacefully on the streets in an endless programme of song and dance from sunrise to sunset - defying the bandh with a vengeance
February 14th is another option when the young boys and girls should gather on the streets walking hand in hand in lakhs in a peaceful procession shouting no slogans but ensuring the highest standards of public decorum.
Finally, all the youngsters - especially the women eligible to vote in the forthcoming elections should demand an unconditional apology from the Shree Ram Sena and an unconditional apology from the Chief Minister of Karnataka for violating their fundamental rights and failing to provide the safety and protection of the state machinery respectively.
This is what I consider a pro active strategy; it is for the people of Mangalore to consider and execute. Perhaps, the citizens of other towns and cities might consider a similar strategy to silence the moral police?
I repeat here from Ranjan Kamath's post on Facebook and C+ive _ Civic Society On The Web urging the Mangaloreans to "Silence the Moral Police Peacefully"
There is every likelihood that their actions are at the behest of mainstream organisations operating within the parliamentary process that can conveniently deny any association with such 'Senas' - although they are tarnished with the same hue.
Once this issue is off the front pages, the prosecution process proceeds lethargically enough to employ the lumpen to execute the next such operation with impunity - to protect 'their culture and heritage' against fellow Indians.
In the meantime, we shall develop amnesia, engage in similar knee jerk reactions to greet the next attack in Mangalore, Karnataka or, perhaps elsewhere in the country.
The extremists are confident with an arrogance that urban middle class India will bark much but never bite. There will be a profusion of electronic messages exchanged but thereafter the matter vanishes off the columns inches and public mind.
Such extremists treat our reactions with as much scorn as who we are and what we represent. Elections are around the corner and the same gentlemen shall soon be visiting our doorsteps seeking our votes with hands folded.
Yes, at the earliest opportunity Mangalore should and must organise a non-violent show of strength.
On the day the Shree Ram Sena calls a bandh demanding the release of Pramod Muthalik the people of Mangalore - particularly the young women should gather peacefully on the streets in an endless programme of song and dance from sunrise to sunset - defying the bandh with a vengeance
February 14th is another option when the young boys and girls should gather on the streets walking hand in hand in lakhs in a peaceful procession shouting no slogans but ensuring the highest standards of public decorum.
Finally, all the youngsters - especially the women eligible to vote in the forthcoming elections should demand an unconditional apology from the Shree Ram Sena and an unconditional apology from the Chief Minister of Karnataka for violating their fundamental rights and failing to provide the safety and protection of the state machinery respectively.
This is what I consider a pro active strategy; it is for the people of Mangalore to consider and execute. Perhaps, the citizens of other towns and cities might consider a similar strategy to silence the moral police?
Wednesday, 31 December 2008
2008 – Round-up
2008 – Round-up
Highlights:
Indira is engaged to Manish
Daniel’s arrival – my status elevated to Grandfather
Stupendous Concert-Tour in Europe
Little Bharat scales new heights with three silver medals in Bali
2008 had its ups and downs, the highs and the lows – with enough and plenty to thank the Lord for. The year end has seen me with so much more than ever so many others who have less. With relentless tumult, turmoil and terror – ‘midst so much misery, violence and insecurity around the world, the Lord spared me and my near and the dear from adversity and want, and showered on me blessings I was not worthy of. This perhaps is the most precious heavenly gift to be remembered at this moment with eternal gratitude, as I look back in retrospect at the events that touched my life this year.
The highlights of 2008 included lots of travel and bonhomie with family and friends, and a greater and satisfactory productivity for self in the literary field (soon after the launch in November ’07 of my book “The other side of Policing” and the good reviews it got) and no less in the visual media – coupled with the stupendous experience of a multi-country Concert tour across Europe during summer as part of Delhi’s Capital City Minstrels. Between terrorism and atrocities there was neither respite nor a dull moment for my pen and laptop, not for appearances on television either, for impactful and fiery articles and debates.
On our maiden Concert Tour in Europe (May-June) we The Capital City Minstrels of Delhi performed in Hungary, Germany and France – sang jointly with two local choirs of repute, the Remsheid Vokal Ensemble (RVE) in Germany, and with the Suresnes Chorale Group in Paris; singing also in two historic castles – in Budapest at The National Gallery of Art in Buda Castle, and in Germany inside the Schloss (castle) Burg in Solingen... and in historic churches too – St Michael's in Budapest and Eglize St Elizabeth de Hongre on Rue Temple within Paris. We were felicitated at receptions hosted for us by the Indian Ambassadors in Budapest and Paris, and the French Ambassador in Hungary; as also by the Mayor(ess) of Remscheid (Germany) and the Mayor of Suresnes (Paris). Our performances attracted considerable interest and appreciation from European audiences and the media, making Werner Rizzi – composer and conductor of repute in Germany and Professor of Music at the University – declare in amazement to Gabriella Boda-Rechner our conductor that in all his 24 years of conducting choirs only on two occasions had he come across German audiences giving a standing ovation – the CCM being the second so privileged! Thank you Gabriela and fellow ‘CCM’ers for making this possible.
Though Paris was not new to me, other glorious touristic sights in Hungary, Germany and France were an added treat – including the ones in beautiful Budapest, Remsheid, Cologne and Paris, the awesome Cathedrals and Museums, places of historic and artistic interests, and the delightful boat rides over the three romantic rivers of Europe – the Danube, the Rhine and the Seine.... Thank you my hosts – Mechthild and Hans Dieter Hoffman (in Wermelkirchen/Germany) and Marie-Danielle & Jean-Louis Boivin (in Surenses/Paris). Thank you also Babby (Golak Chand Misra in Dusseldorf) for spending time with me.
Other travels saw me in Connecticut and California in January and February and again in June and July later – at daughters Indira’s in East Haven, and Sonal’s in Santa Clara/San Jose; also visiting family and friends on USA’s east coast and on the west coast. Though San Francisco was not a stranger, it was wonderful to experience its scenic splendour again with Sonal, thanks to whose energy and drive I could taste the wines of Napa Valley, gamble in Las Vegas over a crazy weekend, and also visit among others and see – Lake Tahoe (thank you David & Becky), Palo Alto and Stanford (thanks Rohan), Alamo heights (Aroon & Usha) Saratoga (Denis & Jennifer), Sunnyvale (Tina & Leslie, Asha & Roy), Stockton (Merlyn & Michelle) Sausalito, Muir Woods. Thank you Inidra for Mystic Aquarium and Gillette Castle, Trumbull (sister Marjorie & Bon), Poughkeepsie (sister Meera & Ted), Scarsdale (Neela & Ravi), Long Island (Ashok & Swapna), Fairfield (Sunil & Subasree) and Westport (Allan & Nirmala). Not to forget a delightful and restful sojourn in the Himalayan foothills at Nimi and Pawan Khanna’s Nandalya (thank you both) in Bhavali-Uttarkhand and a great holiday in our own Goa attending friend Estelle’s daughter Pia’s wedding (thank you Estelle and Rajiv) in Uccasain (Uskain) Mapusa, Betim, Candolim and Aguada. Thank you hosts Aneel & Nayen at Sur la Mer (Ashyem/Morjim) and Seby & Lourdes (Margao).
A landmark event of the year for me was when my status was at last elevated to grandfather when on Aug-4 son Prashanth (Anthony) and Sarah his wife were blessed with a bonny baby boy – my first grandchild and grandson, Daniel Ligoury Pereira (named partly after my dad Ligoury). There were other thresholds and landmarks too – among them, two more additions to the immediate family – baby Shona on Mar-19 to nephew Subash and his wife Bharati (third grandchild to my late brother Melville), and baby Benjamin – a grandson to my brother Manu, the second child to his daughter Arema and her husband Rodney.
Sister Meera and Ted’s youngest, Sheila – my godchild, graduated from school in June and traipsed off to Bryn Mawr College, while sister Bullu’s grandson Andrew entered College at the University of Pennsylvania and grand-daughter Adele with her musical troupe performed in Europe too.
And to Subash's son little 8-year-old Bharat (Melville's eldest grandson) in Bangalore goes the credit for being the youngest ever achiever in the family in an international arena, by winning three silver medals in Sport Climbing at The Asian International Youth Meet at Bali (Indonesia) in August.
On Dec-11 my Indira announced her engagement to Manish Chowdhary – her boyfriend of three years to fill our cup of joy no end. Manish, who studied in Panchgani, Bangalore, Mangalore/Manipal and in the US is currently an IT professional and entrepreneur with his own business in the USA.
This followed by Daniel's Christening and Baptism at the London Brompton Oratory on Dec-22 – at which I proposed the toast, and he had his entire paternal side of the family represented (on the maternal side we missed you Phil, Lee and Louise), was an occasion that called for celebration – which occasion obviously was a prelude for a family Christmas at Tony and Sarah’s in Putney, London. Thank you Tony and Sarah – the Lord be praised and thanked for making all this possible.
On the whole the Lord be praised for 2008 – the year that is gone, yet another year that He saw us through despite the surrounding adversities, with more to my lot to thank for than worry about. To mention the adversities that touched us during the year I am inhibited – if not personal, especially the ones on the front of atrocities against Christians that surfaced this year in our country, in Orissa’s Kandhmal and Mangalore – like the hydra-headed monster in real life – making us fear realistically for our future here. The Orissa carnage prompted a trip to Bhubaneshwar on the request of and accompanying Archbishop Vincent Concessao for a dialogue with the local constituents of the Sangh Parivar – leading to a bit more personal involvement than perhaps otherwise would have been. And on the financial front with the market crash and recession around the world which affected each of us in some way or the other, I suppose one can only try bury one’s head in sand Ostrich-style and pray for better times ahead. In conclusion, one would feel guilty claiming that the Lord saw me and my loved ones through it all comparatively unscathed as to feel any want or any physical hurt. (Much as it did hurt and cause concern, for the sheer ridiculous hilarity of it all now that it’s all over and done with, I do not rank my nephew Allan breaking both his arms this year in a single fall at tennis, in these categories of hurt!)
Thanks are also due to all family and friends (specially those in Delhi/Gurgaon and elsewhere – mentioned, not mentioned), without whose whole-hearted love, affection and active support, the year would not have been what it was! Thank you Lord for giving me such lovely family and friends! Make them last forever!
Tomorrow is a new year, and today on the last day of 2008, it is time to reflect and also to remember family and friends.... May we all be blessed with The Almighty's benevolence in 2009 too, the year that's next – with good health, productivity and progress, and a bit more prosperity to make our lives easier so we can thank Him more.
--------------------------------------------------
Highlights:
Indira is engaged to Manish
Daniel’s arrival – my status elevated to Grandfather
Stupendous Concert-Tour in Europe
Little Bharat scales new heights with three silver medals in Bali
2008 had its ups and downs, the highs and the lows – with enough and plenty to thank the Lord for. The year end has seen me with so much more than ever so many others who have less. With relentless tumult, turmoil and terror – ‘midst so much misery, violence and insecurity around the world, the Lord spared me and my near and the dear from adversity and want, and showered on me blessings I was not worthy of. This perhaps is the most precious heavenly gift to be remembered at this moment with eternal gratitude, as I look back in retrospect at the events that touched my life this year.
The highlights of 2008 included lots of travel and bonhomie with family and friends, and a greater and satisfactory productivity for self in the literary field (soon after the launch in November ’07 of my book “The other side of Policing” and the good reviews it got) and no less in the visual media – coupled with the stupendous experience of a multi-country Concert tour across Europe during summer as part of Delhi’s Capital City Minstrels. Between terrorism and atrocities there was neither respite nor a dull moment for my pen and laptop, not for appearances on television either, for impactful and fiery articles and debates.
On our maiden Concert Tour in Europe (May-June) we The Capital City Minstrels of Delhi performed in Hungary, Germany and France – sang jointly with two local choirs of repute, the Remsheid Vokal Ensemble (RVE) in Germany, and with the Suresnes Chorale Group in Paris; singing also in two historic castles – in Budapest at The National Gallery of Art in Buda Castle, and in Germany inside the Schloss (castle) Burg in Solingen... and in historic churches too – St Michael's in Budapest and Eglize St Elizabeth de Hongre on Rue Temple within Paris. We were felicitated at receptions hosted for us by the Indian Ambassadors in Budapest and Paris, and the French Ambassador in Hungary; as also by the Mayor(ess) of Remscheid (Germany) and the Mayor of Suresnes (Paris). Our performances attracted considerable interest and appreciation from European audiences and the media, making Werner Rizzi – composer and conductor of repute in Germany and Professor of Music at the University – declare in amazement to Gabriella Boda-Rechner our conductor that in all his 24 years of conducting choirs only on two occasions had he come across German audiences giving a standing ovation – the CCM being the second so privileged! Thank you Gabriela and fellow ‘CCM’ers for making this possible.
Though Paris was not new to me, other glorious touristic sights in Hungary, Germany and France were an added treat – including the ones in beautiful Budapest, Remsheid, Cologne and Paris, the awesome Cathedrals and Museums, places of historic and artistic interests, and the delightful boat rides over the three romantic rivers of Europe – the Danube, the Rhine and the Seine.... Thank you my hosts – Mechthild and Hans Dieter Hoffman (in Wermelkirchen/Germany) and Marie-Danielle & Jean-Louis Boivin (in Surenses/Paris). Thank you also Babby (Golak Chand Misra in Dusseldorf) for spending time with me.
Other travels saw me in Connecticut and California in January and February and again in June and July later – at daughters Indira’s in East Haven, and Sonal’s in Santa Clara/San Jose; also visiting family and friends on USA’s east coast and on the west coast. Though San Francisco was not a stranger, it was wonderful to experience its scenic splendour again with Sonal, thanks to whose energy and drive I could taste the wines of Napa Valley, gamble in Las Vegas over a crazy weekend, and also visit among others and see – Lake Tahoe (thank you David & Becky), Palo Alto and Stanford (thanks Rohan), Alamo heights (Aroon & Usha) Saratoga (Denis & Jennifer), Sunnyvale (Tina & Leslie, Asha & Roy), Stockton (Merlyn & Michelle) Sausalito, Muir Woods. Thank you Inidra for Mystic Aquarium and Gillette Castle, Trumbull (sister Marjorie & Bon), Poughkeepsie (sister Meera & Ted), Scarsdale (Neela & Ravi), Long Island (Ashok & Swapna), Fairfield (Sunil & Subasree) and Westport (Allan & Nirmala). Not to forget a delightful and restful sojourn in the Himalayan foothills at Nimi and Pawan Khanna’s Nandalya (thank you both) in Bhavali-Uttarkhand and a great holiday in our own Goa attending friend Estelle’s daughter Pia’s wedding (thank you Estelle and Rajiv) in Uccasain (Uskain) Mapusa, Betim, Candolim and Aguada. Thank you hosts Aneel & Nayen at Sur la Mer (Ashyem/Morjim) and Seby & Lourdes (Margao).
A landmark event of the year for me was when my status was at last elevated to grandfather when on Aug-4 son Prashanth (Anthony) and Sarah his wife were blessed with a bonny baby boy – my first grandchild and grandson, Daniel Ligoury Pereira (named partly after my dad Ligoury). There were other thresholds and landmarks too – among them, two more additions to the immediate family – baby Shona on Mar-19 to nephew Subash and his wife Bharati (third grandchild to my late brother Melville), and baby Benjamin – a grandson to my brother Manu, the second child to his daughter Arema and her husband Rodney.
Sister Meera and Ted’s youngest, Sheila – my godchild, graduated from school in June and traipsed off to Bryn Mawr College, while sister Bullu’s grandson Andrew entered College at the University of Pennsylvania and grand-daughter Adele with her musical troupe performed in Europe too.
And to Subash's son little 8-year-old Bharat (Melville's eldest grandson) in Bangalore goes the credit for being the youngest ever achiever in the family in an international arena, by winning three silver medals in Sport Climbing at The Asian International Youth Meet at Bali (Indonesia) in August.
On Dec-11 my Indira announced her engagement to Manish Chowdhary – her boyfriend of three years to fill our cup of joy no end. Manish, who studied in Panchgani, Bangalore, Mangalore/Manipal and in the US is currently an IT professional and entrepreneur with his own business in the USA.
This followed by Daniel's Christening and Baptism at the London Brompton Oratory on Dec-22 – at which I proposed the toast, and he had his entire paternal side of the family represented (on the maternal side we missed you Phil, Lee and Louise), was an occasion that called for celebration – which occasion obviously was a prelude for a family Christmas at Tony and Sarah’s in Putney, London. Thank you Tony and Sarah – the Lord be praised and thanked for making all this possible.
On the whole the Lord be praised for 2008 – the year that is gone, yet another year that He saw us through despite the surrounding adversities, with more to my lot to thank for than worry about. To mention the adversities that touched us during the year I am inhibited – if not personal, especially the ones on the front of atrocities against Christians that surfaced this year in our country, in Orissa’s Kandhmal and Mangalore – like the hydra-headed monster in real life – making us fear realistically for our future here. The Orissa carnage prompted a trip to Bhubaneshwar on the request of and accompanying Archbishop Vincent Concessao for a dialogue with the local constituents of the Sangh Parivar – leading to a bit more personal involvement than perhaps otherwise would have been. And on the financial front with the market crash and recession around the world which affected each of us in some way or the other, I suppose one can only try bury one’s head in sand Ostrich-style and pray for better times ahead. In conclusion, one would feel guilty claiming that the Lord saw me and my loved ones through it all comparatively unscathed as to feel any want or any physical hurt. (Much as it did hurt and cause concern, for the sheer ridiculous hilarity of it all now that it’s all over and done with, I do not rank my nephew Allan breaking both his arms this year in a single fall at tennis, in these categories of hurt!)
Thanks are also due to all family and friends (specially those in Delhi/Gurgaon and elsewhere – mentioned, not mentioned), without whose whole-hearted love, affection and active support, the year would not have been what it was! Thank you Lord for giving me such lovely family and friends! Make them last forever!
Tomorrow is a new year, and today on the last day of 2008, it is time to reflect and also to remember family and friends.... May we all be blessed with The Almighty's benevolence in 2009 too, the year that's next – with good health, productivity and progress, and a bit more prosperity to make our lives easier so we can thank Him more.
--------------------------------------------------
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