Press
Socially relevant soap operas?
Let me state, at the very outset, that I hate soap operas with a passion. I rarely watch any and the few that I have come across make me want to scream. On that note, I quite agree with Rashmi Bansal when she says that soap operas need to be responsible to society. The soap in question is titled "Balika Vadhu" and is aired on Colors. It deals with an 8 year-old bride who is put to sleep by "Sasuma" with stories about Rajkumars and is forced to eat after her husband and the other elders of the house and on the plate used by her husband.
The reactions to this are surprising. I am rather shocked to see viewers defend the serial on the grounds that child marriage still happen in India despite the fact that they are banned. Of course it happens in India. But to say that it is acceptable on television because it is a fact is stupid. Let me extend that logic a bit. Bride burning happens in India. Would you accept it if the protagonist in a serial planned to kill the bride? I would not. The fact that something happens does not make it right. What I find even more galling is the fact that the serial is sponsored by the Women and Child Development Ministry, as Rashmi points out in her subsequent post on the issue. The Ministry allegedly wants to create "awareness" about the plight of child brides in India. I doubt portraying a child as a normal bride with normal adjustment problems amounts to spreading awareness. In addition, the protagonist is a child. Ever heard of the rights of children? How can you even think of portraying a child as a normal bride? A child is supposed to enjoy her childhood under the care of a parent and a loving family. What exactly was the Ministry thinking when it decided to extend its support to a serial like this? Sigh!
My grouse is not just against this serial. I hate all serials, as I stressed a while ago. All of them uniformly treat women as some sort of Sati Savitri. Those who are not are the villains of the piece and spend all their time planning to take revenge on other women for some assumed wrong. And if the likes of Ekta Kapoor are to be believed, all good women take all that bullshit lying down and emerge victorious. During my many brief encounters with the K-serials, I came to one, albeit rather comical, conclusion. That all good women wear unpretentious round and red bindis. They wear sindoor in their maang and worship even philandering, corrupt and abusive husbands as God himself. the vamps on the other hand, wear highly elaborate, Sudha Chandran style bindis, in designs ranging from the sun to snakes. They may wear sindoor in their maang too but their husbands are normally hen-pecked and do everything their wives tell them to. Trust me, I have done my research. All K-serials are like that. Now, you must be wondering if I spend all my time watching these serials. The answer is no. You don’t need to. Just pick any random soap opera and watch it for 30 seconds. You will find proof for my thesis. To summarise, I think that the goodness of the television character is inversely proportional to the level of complication of the bindi. I call it Amrutha’s inverse proportionality law. Howzzat??
You are not Brahmin? Stay away!
That’s the message a Hyderabad-based company is sending out to the millions of normal people out there in the world. I came across this post by MumbaiGirl on Blogbharti. This company, called Dhanwantri Foundation, proposes to develop a gated community exclusively for Brahmins. I am just so outraged and disgusted that I don’t know how to go about this post any more. DNA published a report on the gated community, as did the Deccan Herald. I could not find the original article on the Herald’s site and so I am linking to the Sulekha forums. I am shocked and surprised that no news channel picked it up and reported it as the illegal act it is. They had better things to talk about, didn’t they? Like Shah Rukh Khan’s six-pack abs and the millions our cricketers made?
The "Agraharam" as it is called, derives from the traditional meaning of the word, which was a Brahmins-only area, prevalent until the mid twentieth-century. The abolition of untouchability, Indian independence and social revolution meant that these Agraharams started disappearing in the late 1950s. Now, this Foundation is acting as if they are the saviours of Brahmins all over the world, by recreating a concept that has no place in a modern, egalitarian world. What the hell? And they wonder why nobody likes them? The site claims that,
"Since the traceable history known, Brahmin Community has led a Serene & Sacrificial life wishing welfare of entire Society irrespective of Caste, Religion and Region etc. Leading mostly spiritual life they have not given much importance to materialistic gains. Bestowed with intellect & working for Spiritual elevation of entire society, they were respected & nurtured by rest of Society in reciprocation. However, Western Culture, vote bank based democracy of India leading to Caste-based selfish motivated politicians have cornered the Brahmin community, leaving majority Brahmins in pathetic condition irrespective of their position. Added to above external threats & adverse situation, the feeling of ego and so-called intellect has not allowed the community to function as a systematic organization leaving individuals to suffer."
Serene and sacrificial life? Who are they kidding? And what the f*** do they mean, "bestowed with intellect"? It is precisely this attitude, a disgusting and unpardonable superiority complex that led to the anti-Brahmin revolutions of the 1930s, and the Dravidian movement with a total negation of caste-identity. Let’s make one thing clear. Intellect and intelligence is not the exclusive domain of the Brahmins, as they (or should I say we?) like to believe. The motives of the Foundation are certainly not as noble as they may seem. It claims to promote "mutual understanding". Tell me, just how do you promote mutual understanding when you exclude about 98% of the Indian population?
What nobody seems to get, on the Sulekha forums or elsewhere, is that the very act of building a gated community that excludes people on the basis of caste is illegal. Article 15 of the Indian Constitution clearly states that,
- The State shall not discriminate against any citizen on grounds only of religion, race, caste, sex, place of birth or any of them.
- No citizen shall, on grounds only of religion, race, caste, sex, place of birth or any of them, be subject to any disability, liability, restriction or condition with regard to-
- access to shops, public restaurants, hotels and places of public entertainment; or
- the use of wells, tanks, bathing ghats, roads and places of public resort maintained wholly or partly out of State funds or dedicated to the use of the general public.
- Nothing in this article shall prevent the State from making any special provision for women and children.
- Nothing in this article or in clause (2) of article 29 shall prevent the State from making any special provision for the advancement of any socially and educationally backward classes of citizens or for the Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes.
What the Dhanwantri Foundation is doing is precisely this: discriminating on the grounds of caste and creed. While a private enterprise has every right to do business the way it deems fit, it cannot deny the right to buy a plot there on the grounds of caste alone. The registration form alone is enough to make me see red. Gotram indeed! Well, I refuse to acknowledge that I have one. Unless we start protesting against this kind of casteist and discriminatory bullshit, we will never really progress. Let’s face it. The society we live is definitely caste-based. But that does not mean we deliberately exclude people on the basis of something as unacceptable as caste. This attitude of the Brahmins simply sucks.
Plagiarism, cyber-stalking and crime
I was pointed to this post via Neha’s blog. To say I was appalled would be the understatement of the century. To steal content is one thing. That, in itself, is condemnable because it amounts to, as Inji Pennu puts it, daylight robbery. But, to threaten bodily harm and heap abuse on a blogger because she dared to complain about it, is quite another. While the first is a violation of intellectual property, the second is criminal intimidation. How exactly can we, as bloggers, netizens, or even common people take such abuse lying down?
There are several initiatives out there on the Web to counter this kind of cyber-theft. The least we can do is to support the cause, write about it, and make as much noise as possible. Bloggers like Inji Pennu deserve all the support they can get. It is not easy to handle intimidation and it is our duty, as fellow bloggers to give support, albeit moral. These two sites are dedicated to fighting copyright violations. Check them out for further information.
The IPL, cheerleaders and cricketing sense
I was pointed to an exemplary article on Washington Post, by a post by Amit Varma. Before you think I am beginning to go crazy, let me explain. The article is exemplary in showcasing American ignorance to the world. What else can I say? Sample this.
“In many corners of the world, cricket is seen as slow-moving and stodgy, a vestige of British colonialism that is a cross between baseball and napping.”
Excuse me, but cricket is truly an international game. We don’t conduct an inter-club tournament and call it the World Series. A cross between baseball and napping? WTF? Also, we don’t create some vague game and insist on calling it football when, to the rest of the world, football is what the Americans choose to call soccer. Ok, forget the language issue, we happen to be a billion in number. And India obsessively follows the fortunes of their national cricket team through the year. One loss, and the nation is depressed. One victory, and it’s euphoric. We don’t really need a bunch on American cheerleaders to bring people back to the game as Wax claims. They never went anywhere in the first place. And yes, Wax also says this of cricket.
“The league is also trying to win fans over to a shortened format of the game that is formally called “Twenty20,” known colloquially as “cricket on crack.” It condenses nearly a week of match play into three hours, with shorter “overs,” which are similar to innings in baseball.”
We shortened overs? When did that happen exactly? And cricket on crack? Are you sure she was not smoking pot when she wrote this? Unless I turned into a frog overnight, cricket’s shorter version was originally the limited overs one-day internationals introduced in the mid-1970s. What the heck is all this shit about condensing a week of play into three hours? It’s not a sudden development is it? The Boxing Day test at the MCG in Melbourne did not have any cheerleaders. It lasted five whole days. And yet, it was filled to capacity every single day, and no thanks to skin-showing American cheerleaders. It was cricket at its pure and simple best.
Wax’s ignorance is not limited to cricket alone. It seems as though she was stoned throughout her trip to India. Consider this.
“The American women’s presence has caused a stir across India, a conservative, Hindu-dominated country where even at the beach, women often shun swimwear in favor of saris, which are made of at least six yards of billowing fabric that covers everything from the neckline to the ankles, sometimes leaving the belly exposed. It’s a country where the top female tennis star, Sania Mirza, who is Muslim, is often criticized for wearing short skirts on the court. Some TV pundits pointed out that the Redskins cheerleaders are showing more skin on the cricket pitch than most Indian men will see before marriage.”
The sari is six yards of billowing fabric that covers everything from neck to ankle? Ask any Indian man. He will tell you that the sari can reveal more than it hides, if the lady in question chooses to reveal it. It is one of the sexiest garments a woman can wear, albeit difficult for the inexperienced. Also, criticism of Sania Mirza is done by a bunch of mostly jobless, religious fundamentalists who deserve no mention or respect. That’s not the opinion of the general public, educated or not.
And these cheerleaders are showing more skin that most men will see before marriage? Are you sure she visited India in 2008? Indian men, and women, are not as prudish as they are made out to be. I have said this before, and I say it again. India is probably the most hypocritical country in the world. Everything from pre-marital sex to homosexuality exists, but away from the public eye. This excellent write-up by Nita sums up the issue quite well.
Frankly, I expected a certain quality from the Washington Post. Next time they get someone to write about India, cricket or anything else for that matter, they must at least try to verify facts. I find the article both judgemental and patronising, apart from being belittling of a game many countries in the world passionately follow. I love cricket. So does my boyfriend. And most other Indian men I know. Cheerleaders or no, they will continue to monopolise the TV remote to watch a vague test match between New Zealand and Kenya on a warm Sunday afternoon. The presence, or lack thereof, of some American women showing skin isn’t going to make much of a difference.
Cheap garments and irresponsible reporting
I have an idea. Let’s take six well-to-do Indian teenagers to London and make them work at street-corner bakeries for a month. Guess what? It’s horrible, they will say. “They make us wake up at 4 in the morning to knead the dough, make the loaf and bake the bread, ready to open shop at 7. As if that’s not enough, they expect us to knead dough and make bread all day. This is how we imagined a sweatshop to be: dirty, smelly – it’s absolutely horrible. It’s my idea of hell.” Think it ridiculous? Then sample this. The Daily Mail UK takes it upon itself to report conditions in garment factories across India. It might have been a hard-hitting revelation on the condition of India’s workers slogging away at garment factories for less than $5 a day. If, and only if they had bothered to check their facts and not make some grossly unacceptable errors in the process.
Many things are wrong with the way the story has been reported by the Mail. For example, they take six, virtually unskilled, teenagers to India from Britain. They make them work in a garment factory and stitch, lo and behold, collars. My mother and aunts have been in the industry for as long as I can remember. I grew up in garment factories run by my aunt and others for nearly 15 years of my life. As far as I know, and my mother corroborates the fact, collars are the most difficult to stitch in shirts or tops. Collar-stitching, or cuff-stitching is never given to an amateur. The articles claims that the tailors are made to stitch a collar a minute. But elsewhere, it claims that a 4000-strong workforce turns out barely 10,000 garments a day. From what I know, two and a half pieces per worker per day is pathetic. No garment factory worth its salt would allow productivity to slip so low. Least of all, the illustrious Shahi Enterprises mentioned. The means one of two things. Either the first statistic is false, or the second.
Next, it claims that the teens were demoted from the position of tailor to a lowlier-paid position of shirt-ironer. First things first, ironing is not an easy ask. It comes under the category of garment-finishing, and is one of the most important things in the garment-making process. Second, finding a competent ironer is no mean task and they are often paid much more than the tailor who makes the garment in the first place.
Finally, the salary levels. They are blatantly made up. In the early 1990s, the average salary of a competent tailor used to be between 250 and 300 rupees a day. In pound terms it amounts to somewhere between three pounds and five pounds at the current exchange rate. Wages have undoubtedly gone up since then. So, the Mail’s claim that workers survive at less than 2 pounds a day is false. If I am the one who is mistaken, then I would like them to substantiate the values with actual figures.
What exactly is the Mail trying to accomplish? Telling the world that the clothes they buy from H&M and Marks&Spencer’s supports human rights abuses in India by forcing workers to work 18-hour days? I am sorry, but no garment factory can sustain 18-hour workdays. It’s practically impossible to force workers to work such long hours six days a week, especially in an industry that is so labour-intensive. In India, labour laws and worker-friendly, sometimes even called draconian by entrepreneurs. Will the workers shut up and agree to being treated like slaves in such a context?
To me, the attitude of the Mail reflects one of two things. 1) Irresponsible reporting without verifying facts and looking at the other side of the picture. 2) An obvious and disgusting attempt to portray Indian workers and factories in a bad light. For the sake of my peace of mind, I am willing to give them the benefit of doubt and assume it’s simply irresponsible reporting.