Mumbai gangrape: Little hope for women in India

                                                                                                                 AP photo

The August 22 Mumbai gangrape was shocking. What were more shocking were the reactions that poured in.
If anyone thought that women were safe in India after the massive protests following the December 16 gangrape in Delhi last year, I’ll blame the prince charming who kissed back to life these Snow Whites (they were better off sleeping). For various reasons, our public spaces are not going to be any safer for women in the near future, unless there is some drastic change — and frankly, nothing is in sight.
The administration has reacted in an almost textbook fashion. Maharashtra home minister RR Patil’s suggestion to send the police with every woman journalist working alone or in isolated places betrays an agonising lethargy shown towards an application of mind. Why can’t the home minister ensure that ‘isolated places’ are not the dens for anti-social elements? Why wasn’t the mills and surrounding area, notorious for its drug pushers, etc, not better policed?
The suspects are being pursued and in all likelihood they will be caught. What after that? Jayanto’s Tooingin in the August 24 Hindustan Times very succinctly conveys at least two things: One, the arrogance of the culprits who care two hoots for the ‘tough’ laws and know that the speed limit for ‘fast-track courts’ are not-above-20kms/hr. Second, the helplessness the reader seeing the cartoon.
The media also needs to get its act right. Reactions of horror, almost presuming that until then everything was hunky-dory, is being unfair to the many women who have to face various forms of abuse, perhaps on a daily basis, but do not reach the media’s ‘horror’ scale qualifying to be ‘news’.
Unfortunately, there is no magic pill or a spell that can get things bright starting tomorrow. But there are things that can be done, small steps that can lead to a greater change. The average politician who cries that things should change should lead from the front. For starters, let them come together and pass the Women’s Reservation Bill. This might not stop rapes or make public spaces safer for women but it will sure be a big step towards reaching that goal. There are more steps that can be taken: women’s safety is appallingly low not because for want of ideas, but for want of a will to do so.
Until then, it’s not a sunny day for women in India’s cities, towns and villages. To borrow from John Lennon (and tamper with a beautiful line): ‘You may say I'm a pessimist / But I'm not the only one’.

Media's love for 'branding' victims

The media — be it the print, broadcast or Internet — has a social responsibility to the general public it serves. While great care is often taken to ensure that this responsibility is maintained, there are times when they are flaunted with no apology.

The December 16 gang rape of a paramedic in Delhi greatly shook the nation and saw unprecedented protests in many parts of the country. The rape of a five-year-old in Delhi, a few days ago, along with other reports of rape and police insensitivity, has produced similar anger and protests. Posed with a dilemma of not being able to disclose the names of rape victims (as it is a punishable offence) and the challenge to highlight the above mentioned two cases — one does not understand why these two cases — media houses lining Delhi’s Bahadur Shah Zafar Marg and other places decided to ‘name’ the victim. Thus the December 16 gang rape victim got the names: Abhaya, Nirbhaya, Amaanat, among others and the five-year-old was christened Gudiya and Masoom. While on the face of it it appears to be an innocent and ‘helpful’ move, this nom de guerre is prompted more by news desk compulsions — a name, even an assumed one, makes good copy.
Section 228A of the Indian Penal Code and the Norms of Journalistic Conduct of the Press Council of India prohibits the publishing of the name of a rape victim; publishing it is a punishable offence. This anonymity of rape victims poses a great challenge to the media. This was fine as long as the number of rape cases being reported were far from few. But of late, with a sharp spike in the number of rape cases being reported and with media presence much greater than what it used to be a few years ago, this faceless, nameless identity posed a problem for the media.
The most essential aspect before getting a product out in the market, and one which plays a crucial role in its success, is its branding. A product with a catchy name is more likely to be a hit than a product with a stale, unexceptional name. When it comes to the reportage of news relating to incidents of rape, some media houses tend to take this approach. Often this ‘branding’ of a rape victim is done with the excuse that it will help in furthering the cause of the victim, sensitising the public about the issue and serves a greater purpose of bringing tougher laws. This is as poor an excuse as it can get. Such ‘branding’ or commodification of a victim might help in giving attractive headlines, snazzy news packages and help in boosting sales/TRPs.
By using such disingenuous euphemisms the media cocks a snook at the law of the land and more importantly dehumanises a person who has already been subject of brutality. It is altogether another argument on whether the name of a victim should be made public. Minister of state for human resource development Shashi Tharoor, after the December 16 Delhi gang rape, rightly wrote on Twitter that “she was a human being w/a name, not just a symbol”. He was arguing for naming the victim (if the parents were for it) and honouring the victim as a real person.Hewlett-Packard president and CEO Margaret Cushing Whitman’s view that “When people use your brand name as a verb, that is remarkable” might be good for a product and business. But to apply the same logic to sensitive issues like rape/molestation is unfortunate. To say that such a pattern of reportage is cruelly insensitive is an understatement. The fourth estate, as much as it is touted to be a mirror of the society, should be sensible enough to know where to draw the line. The difference between responsible journalism and sensationalism is blurred in these cases.
How naïve of William Shakespeare to have written: ‘What's in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.’
(An edited version of this appeared in the Hindustan Times on April 25)

No Country for Children

 Reports in the media of women getting raped and further being traumatised by an indifferent system is recurring with nauseating frequency. What is more disturbing is that there seems to be a rise in the number of minors being victims of sexual abuse. Last week a 45-year-old businessman was arrested for sexually abusing his 16-year-old daughter in Gurgaon. In mid-February three sisters — all minors — were allegedly raped and dumped in a well in Bhandara district, Maharashtra. Now comes the report of a 10-year-old girl being raped by an upper-caste man in Bulandsahr, Uttar Pradesh. What makes the Bulandsahr incident glaring is the reaction of the police to the victim and her mother. While in many cases the victims are pressurised by the police and local society to withdraw the complaint, here the police women in the Bulandsahr all-women police station ill-treated the victim’s mother and locked up the 10-year-old victim. The Supreme Court has taken suo motu cognisance of media reports and has sent a notice to the state government; but the fact that the court had to intervene shows that the system is cripplingly handicap to carry out even its basic duty of protecting citizens.

That this takes place only days after the president okayed an anti-rape law shows that stringent anti-rape laws will be rendered ineffective if our police force and hospital authorities — the initial points to which victims of abuse go to — are insensitive, and worse abusive, to the plight of rape victims. No amount of sermons about uplift of women safety and safety of children will help unless the authorities are sensitised to the delicate nature of such the situation and the importance of their role in giving the victim a sense of protection and comfort. Owing to public stigma, family pressure and the related trauma of being seem as ‘immoral’ seldom do victims of sexual abuse report to the police. And when they do muster the courage and complain it is the duty of the state to give them the support and protection that is required.
The February report by Human Rights Watch titled ‘Breaking the Silence: Child Sex Abuse in India’ highlights how the government’s response to children who are sexual abused fails to protect the victims. The Bulandsahr incident reiterates the HRW observation and poses the question: what is the level of sensitisation and preparedness of police personnel towards dealing with such an issue? Sexual abuse, especially of minors, is on the rise. Anti-rape laws with stringent punishment may be on the way but unless the attitude of the authorities concerned does not change ours is no country for women and children.
(An edited version of this appeared in the Hindustan Times)

A Big Fat Royal Wedding

On Friday the royal wedding between Prince William and Catherine Middleton was solemnised. One hopes that it will bring to an end the on-your-face coverage of an affair-proposal-engagement-wedding that the media, and this time its not just the Indian television media, has covered to the extent of regurgitating revulsion. The silliest and minutest of detail has been analysed threadbare that calling it ‘Wedding Trivia’ would be trivialising it — Where the couple first met, what was the colour of the skirt Kate was wearing then, what are Kate’s fears (this includes a wardrobe malfunction when she is the cynosure of more than two billion eyes at Abbey)... the list is long.

That having been said there are a few positives we can take from this jamboree which was telecast live around the world. Things have not been looking up for the Conservative-Lib Dem coalition from the time it came to office in May 2010. The economy is caught in a quicksand and rescuing it has pulled down every Briton’s spirit. So plagued is the country with cuts and reforms, add to that the wars it is fighting, that Blair-bashing and jokes on the Duke of Edinburgh have lost its edge. It is at this juncture that Prince William pops the question to which Kate blushes in response. And to adapt the infamous words of the ‘great princess’ in 18th Century France to today’s Britain, when it is hard to find bread, Qu’ils mangent de la brioche (Let them eat cake). And Britons are having that cake at a rumoured cost of around £50-80 million.

Another group that are benefiting are the bookies. Bets were placed right from the colour of the queen’s hat to the amount of time Kate would keep William waiting at the altar.

The economic slowdown caused by the sub-prime crisis has affected most countries in the world and if a wedding can lift the spirits of an emotionally and economically beaten Britain, it sure can be tested in other parts of the world. The royal families of other European countries are not as prominent as the British royalty and this space is taken by their illustrious politicians. In France, the latest news that has the nation excited is about whether First Lady Carla Bruni-Sarkozy is pregnant or not. The news has been overshadowed by the royal wedding but it is expected to soon gain prominence. To lift the spirits of Italians perhaps Silvio Berlusconi could marry. His current wife Veronica Lario has filed for divorce and once that’s through, the Italian prime minister can walk down the aisle for the third time. The only thing he would have to be weary of is that unlike his bunga-bunga exploits he should ensure that his bride is of marriageable age.

India can also do well with a wedding booster dose. And it is not sure if this will lift the morale of the aam aadmi plagued by a lack of governance, but the most eligible candidate for the wedding tamasha is the crown prince of the grand old party. The eligibility criteria here are the promptness at which the television media, especially the English media, is willing to pick up anything and everything done by the 40-year-old “amul baby”, to use the epitaph given by a veteran communist leader recently. I’m not sure about the intricacies of finding a bahu for him, but I’m placing my bet on the fact that the couple will go to a nondescript village in UP for their honeymoon.

Meanwhile, the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, as William and Kate will be known from now, can sigh in relief as the madness has just about begun.

Media and telegenic violence

The quality of a democracy is measured in the freedom its citizens enjoy, under the Constitution, to voice their views without fear. Productive discussion, constructive criticism and the sagacity to ‘agree to disagree’ should be the yardstick used to measure the maturity of a democracy. It is not a positive sign when the state fails to protect this freedom from being questioned or intimidated by power or might. On Sunday (October 31) this freedom was intimidated when around 100 BJP Mahila Morcha women gathered outside the residence of Arundhati Roy and indulged in vandalism in the pretext of protesting against the writers pro-azaadi stand on Kashmir. Without getting into the merits of her statement, it should be said that the right to express oneself cannot be usurped. If there is anything ‘seditious’ in her words it is the duty of the government to look into it.

It is a cause for concern that similar acts of violence are on the rise; acts which once were the generally associated with the Shiv Sena in Mumbai who resorted to high-handedness in the name of the Marathi manoos, but now is common, be it the Sri Ram Sene unashamedly bashing up girls in Mangalore or religious fanatics chopping the palm of a professor in Kerala.

The police and the television media should also be blamed for their ‘tacit’ encouragement to such forms of protests. That the incident occurred at 11 am in the morning in a high-security diplomatic enclave of Luytens’ Delhi leaves a lot of explanation from the side of the police, especially because this was the second such attack on the writer’s residence, the last one in June this year.

What is disturbing is that before the group gathered and resorted to violence three different TV news channel crews were present in full gear to cover the incident. The question is: Were the news channels intimated about the protests? If so, why were the police caught unawares? Did the presence of cameras and OB vans egg the crowed to resort to violence? It is a known fact that media presence, especially live coverage, is the much-needed oxygen for such trouble mongers.

It seems that in the rat-race for survival of TV news channels, it is not just people who are being ‘sacrificed at the altar of TRP ratings’, to quote Arundhati Roy, but so are the fundamentals of journalism. It should not be forgotten that the above mentioned June attack was a result of a false report that appeared in the media about the author. The violence resorted to by right-wingers, the callousness of the police (administration) and the insensitivity and irresponsibility of the media (particularly broadcast) is a deadly cocktail that we should avoid at any cost.

(The edited version of this has appeared in The New Indian Express. Link:

http://expressbuzz.com/opinion/editorials/the-media-should-introspect/220738.html)

Dasavaatharam – how Kamal and the media took us for a ride

What do you do when you are old (read 50+) and probably running out of steam? What would you do if you've delivered amazing characters early in your life and not matching them of late? You are a script-dialogue-screenplay, find a fat producer, cast yourself in all possible avathars (how I dread that word now) and call it Dasavaatharam.
For a person who has always rated Kamal Hasaan as a superior actor, especially when compared to his contemporary Rajinikanth, for various critical reasons, this latest offering by the 'Universal Hero' is nothing but a desperate show of glorified nothingness. Only if we had it, I would have dialled 911 to save me from the ordeal, torture and trauma that came in the form of 180-odd minute diarrhoea on celluloid. Not only is the actor a shadow of what he used to be but it seems that he has lost the ground beneath his feet. Often quoted by the mavericks of the industry as an all-season actor, his recent movies only glare one message – this is an actor who is in search of a genre which can befit his ventures, an actor who is trying to make a point, an actor who is desperately trying to make the audience gasp, tears roll down their cheeks, give that edge-of-the-seat feeling.
If his movies in the recent past were premonitions and signs of what were in the waiting, D-10 is the proof of the decline in the standard of cinema he chooses and is associated with.
This new movie, D-10, thanks to the new-age-marketing-gurus will be a hit. The regular talks in the media, the promos have over-satiated the audience that anyone and everyone would want to see the ‘magic’ in the ten-roles-rolled-into-one movie. It will be a hit, a hit to the scale that it would recover the invested money. Would this hold any relevance as a blip on the radar of Tamil cinema or in the actor’s personal profile? – I am sure not. For the best it can be cherished as a magnum opus that should not have happened. It is a blip on the radar – a sign of danger or an itch that is in the larger frame a sign of the times we are in. a time when marketing cacophony is good cinema and not performances.
For the industry this is just another movie which is in tune with the trend at the box office. Hyperbole media attention before the release, aggressive marketing and shrewd publicity is the underlying factor of any present day blockbuster-movie. Most of the movies are but the hero-action-songs-item numbers and D-10 has all of this. The technology is refreshing but not awe creating. There are a few scenes which can be counted as different but the difference ends there.
Kamal Hassan might be a happy man to have donned ten hats or perhaps nine different G-R-O-T-E-S-Q-U-E make-ups but sure not in the top few movies of his good movies. It seems that the actor came up with ten different characters – representing different countries, race, languages, and gender – and wove a movie around it. Or to a thread of a story got this brilliant idea of 10-roles-one-movie-first-time-in –history and made the movie. Except for two – being generous – three roles the others are but a glorified fancy dress competition. Probably Kamal got hooked to the Avaishanmughi routine of extreme-long-sessions-of-make-up and wanted to test it to the maximum in this ten-in-one.For an actor, a thespian of emotions, who has graced the silver screen for more than three decades, this is not just an amateur and uncalled movie but an uncalled and to-be-kind-to-the-movie – uncouth one.