Coca Cola meets kumkum – only in India…..
The red powder on the plate is kumkum – a powder that is traditionally a symbol of fertility. Married women in many parts of India use kumkum either as a round on their forehead or in the parting of their hair. traditionally,it is not worn by unmarried girls or by widows. Usually it is given as part of offerings at temples.
the crate at the bottom is coca-cola - considered, by many, to be the parent of Santa Claus…..
Technorati Tags: Coca Cola, kumkum, India
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Three very different articles related to women – which i kind of found amusing.
The first is by Maureen Dowd in the NYT , where she quotes a study conducted by 2 psychologists & 2 economists on pre – mating habits of human beings…and they found:
…intelligence ratings were more than twice as important in predicting women’s choices as men’s. It isn’t exactly that smarts were a complete turnoff for men: They preferred women whom they rated as smarter — but only up to a point … It turns out that men avoided women whom they perceived to be smarter than themselves. The same held true for measures of career ambition — a woman could be ambitious, just not more ambitious than the man considering her for a date.
Someone needed to undertake research to figure this out ? That too over two years ??? 
The second is an article from the New Scientist
The “monthly curse” may be anything but: menstrual blood appears to be a rich and easily accessible source of adult stem cells, claim two competing research groups.
Suddenly periods are going to be presented as God(ess)’s gift to mankind — which I suppose that it is
And the third, a study on feministsÂ
The news, for the terminally declining population of women who identify as feminists, is good. According to a study by researchers at Rutgers University, New Jersey, the classic New Yorker cartoon of two women discussing relationships in a coffee shop – “sex brought us together but gender drove us apart” – is plain wrong. Feminists are happier in love and better in bed.
Hmmmm………
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In the 60th year of being Independent and the 57th year of being a Republic, a different kind of May Day Story -
27-year-old Ratnamma, a garment factory worker, was forced to deliver a baby on the streets of Bangalore because her manager insisted on her filling out a leave application, despite the fact that she was in severe labour pain. The manager also insisted that no other worker accompany her to the hospital lest the production process be affected. Ratnamma delivered the baby just outside the factory. The baby did not survive.
More recently, 20-year-old Gayathri, another garment worker, was run over by the bus belonging to the same factory she worked, in front of her factory. Two others were also injured in the accident. While most factory workers were shocked at the incident, what outraged them was when the supervisors asked them to move on so as to not affect the production.
Those who are history buffs will recall that it was the dismal conditions in textile factories in the west that gave a fillip to 3 of the most equalising movements of the 20th century:
- Labour Rights
- Women’s Rights, and
- The curtailing and eventual banning of child labour
I wonder if such deaths, or indeed lives, really matter at all a hundred years later. Such stories don’t even make it to the MSM – and if it is not in the media, can it really matter. Afterall, a superstar’s quest to make a ‘manglik’ a non’ manglik (what ever that means) matters more than someone dying because they had a deadline to meet! I can understand deadlines, and i can understand deliverables, and I appreciate the importance of being economically competitive and the bottom line. But, the quest for being economically competitive cannot be at the cost of the individual rights of citizens. And, the comment that ‘they always have a choice to go and work somewhere else’ does not really hold water in a non welfare state. 60 years ….. how much longer?
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"All men who love their wives hit them" said Mrs. R to me – a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away. As I tried to pick up my jaw that had hit the floor, I argued that my father had never hit my mother …. Mrs.R sagely told me… "then he must not love her". Mrs. R was not an uneducated woman from rural India. She came from a ‘good’ family, was educated, had a career and ran her home with an iron fist. And she was not a resident of Patna or Itawa or Salem, but a posh postal address in London. I lodged with her family when my parents were transferred back from England. But given that she was 50 something when I entered my twenties … I put down her pronouncements to the fact that she came from another time and space and had a warped sense of morality. However, in the last dozen or so years that i have been back in India …. there are a number of female friends of mine who have told me more or less the same thing. While none of them linked up a loving husband to domestic violence, the overwhelming consensus was that it was ok to be hit once in a while. It happens everywhere, they told me. And, it is ok for a man to demand ‘conjugal’ rights even when the wife doesn’t want it. … they reasoned … afterall, that is the purpose of marriage. And most of my friends are ‘educated’ ‘professional’ women. None of them wants to take the matter further, in terms of reporting it to the police or womens’ support groups. "what will people say" and ‘these things happen’ seem to be the common response. So the results of the latest National Family Health Survey … whlich states that 37% of women in India face domestic violence … does not really come as a surprise to me. If anything I would think that the figure is low … I am sure that a lot of women have lied in the survey. Do you really want to tell a complete stranger that your spouse hits you? or worse, would you think that a slap or two is violence? While the Government’s legislation on Domestic Violence seems to be a step in the right direction, there is a far more fundamental battle to be won. And, that is to ensure that change happens at the societal level. Legislation of this nature, while it is to be applauded, will only work if society thinks that something fundamentally wrong. Unfortunately, in our society the role of women is so denigrated and so below that of men, that change in attitudes a major uphill struggle. Education is definitely one way, legislation is another. But, both are at a meta & macro level. Change like this has to start at the family unit. It starts from ensuring a basic level of equity — if not equlity — in dealing with the boy child and the girl child. It starts with husbands understanding that it is not ‘dharma’ to hit their wife. It starts with the wife not putting up with being slapped around. It starts with the extended family who intervene and show disapproval. And then moves on to a system that supports a woman who wants to walk out of an abusive relationship. We have the legislation in place, but none of the rest. Maybe it is time to look at the symptoms and prevention in addition to looking at crime and punishment. addendum : the reason why the ‘educated’ is in quotes is primarily because the survey believes that domestic violence is highest amongst women who are not educated and who reside in rural India.
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…. and seen to be done. Manu Sharma is guilty of Jessica Lall’s Murder. There were a flurry of SMS’s last night – mostly from women friends – and for all of us, at some level, it had become personal. It was almost as though, in India, a man could kill a woman and get away with it. I was talking online with KD yesterday, and he pointed out that the conviction was a good example of media activism. I would agree with him on this. The media played a stellar role in harnessing and focusing public opinion and outrage – sending a clear message to the system that we, the poeple, want to see justice in action. But, what about all the cases where the media does not pick up the story? What about Priyanka Bhotmange? Will there be justice for her? Is she ‘glamourous’ enough a cause for the media? I really do hope so. One of the things that is fairly evident from the whole spate of verdicts that have been handed out is that justice delayed is justice denied. And there is a lot of justice being denied. The time it takes to bring a case to trial is inordinately long. And it is about time the Criminal Justice System is completely overhauled. A 100% computerisation process across the board – and a plan to clear the back log of cases is absolutely necessary. There also needs to be a better form of compensation for those who are responsible for order and law – both the police and public prosecutors are badly paid.And finally, it is also time to seriously insist on separation of powers between the Government and all the Civil Services – including the Police. And ,crack down on any politician who abuses this. While Manu Sharma has been convicted the fact remains a lower court set him free. And that powerful family connections ensured that justice is subverted. The next step would be to bring all those who subvert justice to them, and literally throw the book at them. Examples need to be made. We have had a flurry of the ‘powerful’ being found guilty. Now, it is time that those who cover up for the powerful are brought to trial. The message needs to go out very loud and clear – you break the law, you pay the price.
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if this had happened to a ethnic group, a religious group, or a caste or indeed a tribe – there would be pandemonium. But, it happens just to women – and therefore it is excused under a variety of heads from culture to religion to lack of education.
Ten million girls have been killed by their parents in India in the past 20 years, either before they were born or immediately after, a government minister said on Thursday, describing it as a national crisis.
The UNICEF report is a stark read. There are rays of hope -but by and large it is bleak. And unless women’s rights are looked at the same way general human rights are looked at, i really don’t see any improvement. The home, the veil, religion, customs, caste, rituals, god, society, all combine to ensure that not much changes.
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I am ambivalent about the death penalty. I belive that it should exist on the statute books but used very sparingly, by the book, following the rule of law etal. But this is the rational me. When i read articles like this, somehow the rational me takes a back seat and something much more primevial takes over – something that says hang him by the b***s from the nearest tree. And, it is this feeling that scares the hell out of me.
This from today’s ToI:
An adopted girl was repeatedly raped in connivance with her foster parents by one of their relatives in New Bhangala area, police said on Wednesday.
The tenth class student, given for adoption to one Bidhi Singh a few years ago, was found to be pregnant by her father when he visited her recently, they said.
The girl’s father, a resident of Mehtabpur, said in his complaint that on inquiry he found out that Rinku nephew of Bidhi Singh used to rape his daughter, police said.
Police have registered a case.
Let me tell you what will happen. Rinku will marry the victim, to escape prosecution, – rape her every single night for the rest of her life. And the law will say – miya biwi ….. hum kya karen?
And finally, the editors at ToI really need to look at punctuation.
was found to be pregnant by her father when he visited her recently.
is different from
was found to be pregnant, by her father when he visited her recently.
The former implies that he got her pregnant, the latter that he found her pregnant !!
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I think that the Government has hit the nail on the head in asking religious leaders to intercede in stemming female foeticide.
The union ministry of Women and Child Development (MWCD) has written to Sri Sri Ravishankar, Mata Amritanandmayi, Dinkar, Asaram Bapu and even popular yoga guru Baba Ramdev to spearhead a campaign to save the girl child. The MWCD has also sought help from Radhasoamy Satsang, Nirankari Gurukul and Churches of North and South India. “Since religious gurus have a huge following, a campaign by them will surely help people change their mindset about having daughters,
In a country ruled by various forms of orthodoxy -? and a general dislike of obeying the law, the concept of committing a sin may deter people more than the concept of committing a crime. And it is about time religious leaders looked beyond their religious texts and preached about living life as good citizens – following the rule of law
Technorati Tags: female foeticide, rule of law
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Of all the forms of State so far, the modern Republic is the only one based on the consent of civil society. We are all supposedly participants in the state. And we abbrogate a lot of our responsibilities vis-a-vis the society we live in to the state. So for us to continue believing in this institution called the ‘state’ we need to see it delivering. Otherwise there is no reason for us to continue consenting to the existence of a monolith. This is not a revolutionary concept or even a treasonous one – it is simply a matter of fact. Those states that haven’t delivered have been washed away by society – just look at whole chunks of Eastern Europe to know what i mean. It is more than the fall of Communism, it represents the failure of the State. Just look at the nationalistic tensions within Russia, or the mutual anihilation tried out by the former citizens of Yogoslavia, or even the more civilized divorce of Czechlovakia. Western European state face tensions internally, but immersing themselves in the Superstate called the EC – has probably helped them maintain their states! I can see a whole lot of turbulence hitting western europe – just look at France, or the UK now. They aren’t really happy states. One of ways that a certain level of faith is maintained in the State, is to ensure that a commonly agreed set of laws are applied equally, and justice is delivered without bias within the State. And, this is where i think that the Indian state is massively screwing up. Society, as a whole, is taking a back seat to a few select power oligarchies – and the sense of failure of the ‘state’ is huge. The sense of a few getting away with it on mere legal technicalities is frustrating, to put it mildly. After the Jessica Lall Case where the guilty walked, with Satyendra Dubey‘s killers still at large, with Priyadarshini Matoo family still waiting for justice, with Manjunath’s family in the same state, it is common news to see the guilty go scot free. Either because they are never caught or because they get off on techicalities. If you are super rich or super connected you simply hire lawyers who flood the system with paper work and keep pushing the date of trial – till such time witnesses are dead, purchased or scared off. Add to it a whole bunch of Parlimentarians who think that they are above the law – just look at the blatant vioationof the election code by Arjun Singh – with no action being taken as yet – and it is little wonder that there is so little faith in either the system or the state. So, in this scenario, it was rather refreshing to see Salman Khan go to jail. We all know that he won’t serve even a tenth of his sentance. But, it was nice to see justice being delivered for a change. Maybe if the EC spanks Arjun Singh this week – my cup truly will overflow with joy
Technorati Tags: Jessica Lall, Satyendra Dubey, Priyadarshini Matoo, Arjun Singh, Salman Khan
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The Jessica Lal Case is yet one more where the accused have been given more ‘importance’ than the victim. An excellent panel of defence lawyers managed to get continuance after continuance – and in the 7 odd year that passed memories faded, witnesses recanted, police fudged procedure and the accused walked. Today after almost 2 weeks of public protest and outrage, the Delhi Police has filed an FIR against unnamed persons under:
Section 120 of the Indian Penal Code for criminal conspiracy, for destruction of evidence and tempering with the evidence
My very basic knowledge of law tells me that once a court has aquitted an accused of a particular crime they cannot be arrested for the same crime. If there are any lawyers who know their IPC inside out – do correct me if I wrong. So i guess the ‘system’ has decided to charge them with a ‘lesser’ crime. A few days ago? i was talking to a friend? civil vigilantiism? – where ordinary citizens seeing the system stack up against them – take the law into their own hands. A couple of years ago, I had blogged about the Akku Yadav case – where this man who raped & terrorised women was lyched by a mob of victims. How long before some one takes a gun and shoots the guilty dead. And worse, how much longer before someone takes a gun and shoots the wrong person. When the system doens’t deliver this is the Pandora’s box that we open up.
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