The Straits Times Blogs - P. Jayaram

Mrs. Sarkar gets her house back

2009-11-03T09:16:00Z

P. Jayaram recaps the story of an old lady in India, her house, and her court case.

IN INDIA

REMEMBER Mrs. Lotika Sarkar, the elderly widow who was divested of her two-storey house in an upmarket neighbourhood in New Delhi by a scheming police officer and his family? (Reduced to a spectator, Jan 22, 2009).

The old lady, 87, is finally getting her house back thanks largely to a concerted media campaign.

Mrs. Sarkar is not some illiterate rural woman who could be conned by a trickster. She is a former head of Delhi University's Law Faculty and a social worker. Her husband Chanchal Sarkar was a leading journalist and a former chairman of the Press Institute of India.

That such a person could be deprived of her "old-age insurance" by foul means is a reflection of the problems elderly people face in India. Social activists say that that with India's population set to touch 137 million by 2021, such problems will multiply.

To recap Mrs. Sarkar's story, a few years after her husband's death, Mr. Nirmal Dhaundial, a police officer who was a family friend of the Sarkars, moved into her house along with his wife Priti and occupied the ground floor "to look after her." Their employed son Nitish had already been living with Mrs. Sarkar.

Though few of Mrs. Sarkar's relatives remembered seeing them when her husband was alive, Mr. Dhaundial claimed "I am like a son to Latika Sarkar. She has no one to look after her. My son has been living here for six years, and after my elder brother's death, my wife also shifted here to take care of aunty."

The Dhaundials were not the only ones who had their eyes on Mrs. Sarkar's property.

Her maid, Rangita Bharati, who had been thrown out of the house, bag and baggage earlier by the Dhaundials, also forcibly re-entered the house and occupied a room upstairs, saying it had been rented out to her by the old lady.

Mr. Dhoundial, who had used his police powers to throw her out of the house, could not do anything this time because a tenant cannot be evicted without a court order.

A statutory tribunal, set up under the Maintenance and Welfare of the Parents and Senior Citizens Act and which heard Mrs. Sarkar's story, was hard on the police officer in its order last week.

"She has been divested, at the age of 87, of her right to life with dignity through fraud by the Dhoundials who took advantage of her age and poor health," it observed.

It also declared as "void" a gift deed that Mr. Dhoundial, had produced as evidence that Mrs. Sarkar had "gifted" the house to his wife, a claim the old lady resolutely denied in a signed affidavit.

Mrs. Sarkar, who had shifted to a relative's house, said she could never have knowingly given the property away because it was her "old-age insurance."

Mr. Dhoundial's response was that he would return the house to her provided she spent 10 days with his family. Apparently, he thought that would give them sufficient time to work on the the frail, old woman to change her mind.

The tribunal, in its order, said the three Dhoundials (father, mother and son) "may not think of themselves as part of the criminal elements of society but their systematic actions over a period of time have put to shame even skilled professional thieves who make their living by burglary, loot, larceny and robbery etc.

"In this case, the Dhoundials used not gas cutters or house breakers to take over the house of Mrs. Sarkar but used 'nice paper work' as a tool in the property crime."

The news brought cheers to her friends and well-wishers, who have been following the case. It will be their fervent hope that the old lady would be allowed to spend the rest of her life peacefully.

Difficult questions to answer

2009-10-27T11:23:00Z

P. Jayaram questions India’s ‘soft’ attitude to recent Maoist terrorism.

IN INDIA

THIS is something we Indians don't like to be told, don't want to hear, that India is a 'soft' state when it comes to dealing with terrorism.

But a senior state official in West Bengal did exactly that — threw it on our face, so to say, to our utter embarrassment last week.

Of course, the official, Home Secretary Ardhendu Sen, said it to justify the state government's action and probably to save his own skin.

It was Sen's unpleasant task to carry out the communist government's decision to release over 20 Maoists in exchange for a police officer abducted by the rebels.

"Release or ..." was the threat by the Maoists, who hold sway in a large swathe of the country – over 200 administrative districts out of over 600.

The threat had to be taken seriously because only days before they had beheaded an abducted police officer in the neighbouring Jharkhand state after the central government refused to give into their demand for the release of three top rebel leaders in police custody.

The West Bengal government lumped its own decision not to talk to the Maoists "unless they eschewed violence" and released the Maoist suspects, many of them tribal women from one of the most impoverished regions of the state, in exchange for Atindranath Dutta, officer in-charge of a police station, who had been abducted by the rebels in an attack on his police station on Oct 20.

Armed rebels had raided the police station, shot dead two other police officers and looted the armoury and a nearby bank before taking Dutta away.

While the government quietly released the Maoists in custody by not opposing their bail applications when it came up before the court, the rebels made it a point to gain maximum publicity to show how they successfully arm-twisted the government to concede their demand.

The Maoists took a large group of media personnel, TV cameras et all, to a hideout in their jungle stronghold ringed by heavily armed rebels to witness the release of the police officer.

After keeping the journalists waiting for about three hours, a group of gun-totting Maoists brought the police officer with a large prisoner-of-war tag hung round his neck before them.

After warning the state and central government of dire consequences if they continued their clamp down against the rebels, a Maoist leader removed the tag from the officer's neck with a flourish and declared him free.

"The decision of not talking to the Maoists unless they eschewed violence is a long-term process but when you are placed in such a situation you have to make a compromise," Home Secretary Sen told reporters later.

Did it not amount to meekly giving into the rebels' demand and demonstrate the weakness of the government, he was asked.

"We had to make a choice between getting the officer alive and freeing some Maoists."

Then, he went on to say that India had behaved liked this always in such situations.

He referred to the release of three Pakistan-based terrorists in a exchange for 176 passengers of an Indian airliner after it was hijacked to Kandahar in Afghanistan in December 1999 and that of five Kashmiri militants in exchange for the release of the daughter of then federal home minister in 1989, an incident that observers say marked the escalation of separatist violence in the Himalayan state.

"India is a soft state. We have seen these instances earlier in the 60 years since independence," Mr. Sen said.

And, he drove home the point, saying India is not Israel.

"There is a difference between the Indian government and the Government of Israel. We cannot do what they can do."

Is that good or bad, to be not able to do what the Israelis would do in similar circumstances?

Bomb the hell out of the rebels, no matter whether innocent civilians get annihilated and their properties destroyed or not?

These are difficult questions to answer.

Like the state Chief Minister, Mr. Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee, under fire for the swap not only from the media and the central government but even from his own party colleagues, said: "This was an exceptional decision taken on humanitarian grounds."

He also said that the government would not repeat the mistake.

Until next time, he should have added, perhaps, going by his home secretary's pronouncements.

While the debate about the right or wrong of the swap will continue, the picture of the released police officer's reunion with his smiling wife, relief writ large on her face, their infant child in her hands made one realise the importance of human lives and that the Maoists cannot be the role model.

Maybe for all the bluster, we Indians think with our hearts even at the risk of being dubbed "darpok", Hindi for "cowards."

"Vote for no Western music!"

2009-10-02T04:51:00Z

P Jayaram looks at one of the more outrageous election promises in India.

WHEN it comes to wooing votes, political parties in India seem to go to any lengths. And making outlandish promises during election time, seems to be one of them.

On October 13, states of Maharashtra, Haryana and Arunachal Pradesh will go to polls, giving political parties a chance to attract voters with their manifestos and a catalogue of promises. But instead of offering more jobs, better infrastructure and subsidised rations, parties will now be appealing to the voters' cultural and ethnic identities.

Take, for instance, the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which got it all wrong in the May parliamentary elections and was made to sit on the opposition benches for second consecutive term.

The BJP in Haryana has promised the voters that if they were to replace the incumbent Congress government in the state, the party would, hold your breath, ban western music!

“Western music and vulgarity in the name of culture will be banned,” declared a party leader at a press conference in this largely agricultural state.

Incidentally, Haryana is also home to Gurgaon, the swanky city near capital New Delhi that has a large concentration of malls, towering apartment blocks and is home to some of the biggest multinational companies, with a large number of expatriate employees.

"Looks like they have Mullah Omar as their political adviser...,” wrote R. Kumar on website JatLand.com, refering to the Taleban leader.

“Music has no boundaries... In today's world every second thing is adapted from some other culture. What if you wear a traditional dhoti (loin cloth) and travel in a jet plane (invented in the West), talking endlessly on cell phones (again invented in the West),” wrote another blogger Ajay Kundu.

But, BJP is not the only party to make such outlandish promises.

In the May parliamentary elections, Samajwadi Party, the main opposition party in northern state of Uttar Pradesh, promised to ban computers and close down English medium schools. Party leader Mulayam Singh Yadav, a former defence minister and a former state chief minister, argued that closing down English medium schools and providing education in Hindi, the state's language, would provide a “level-playing field” for all students.

He blamed computers for replacing manpower and promised to bring the salaries of the corporate world at par with that of the government employees. He also promised to stop mechanisation of agriculture to provide employment on fields.

The communists, in the late 70s and 80s, had opposed computerisation of banks arguing that it would result in job losses. Now, the Communist Party of India (Marxist) flaunts its website.

Asked about the party's past "short-sightedness", senior party leader Sitaram Yechury said, “We never opposed the technology. We only opposed job losses due to computerisation.”

And he claimed that adapting to newer technologies which can be utilised for the welfare of the people was an integral part of communism.

Probably, the BJP in Haryana will some day say that enjoying western music, perhaps with the headphones firmly in place, has been an integral part of the party's Hindu philosophy as music has no boundaries or religion.

The sauna that has no exit

2009-06-29T21:56:00Z

P. Jayaram explains how outages are powering tempers in India.

IN NEW DELHI

FOR the last few days, I have been locked up in a sauna that has no exit. My skin is burning; I'm perpetually thirsty.

Water, that elixir of life, is all that you want. Beer, of course, is preferred to the elixir. Food? Oh, No... But lots and and lots of fruits, please, particularly water melon and mangoes, though nutritionists say that the two work at cross purposes. One cools the system, the other exactly the opposite.

The searing summer heat has been beating down mercilessly and I and the teeming millions that share this city are trapped in our saunas that we till recently used to call our homes and offices.

Luckily for me, I work from home. But the few times I ventured out for pressers and meet up with some friends, I cursed myself. It felt like fire-walk.

Not that being at home is much better. Prolonged power cuts have rendered air conditioners useless. Luckily again for me, the housing society where I live has back-up generators; so at least the fans runs, though grudgingly. But with intermittent power cuts, the automatic switch-on system to the generator has been messed up, which means one has to seek the help of the society electrician repeatedly to check the trip switch.

Nights are the worst. That's when the walls radiate the heat that they have absorbed all through the day. And that's exactly when power outages are acute. You don't know whether more heat is being generated from the walls and the ceilings or from the mattress you are trying to sleep on. Even when the power comes on, often only to go again, it takes time to cool the room.

There have been attacks on the power distribution company offices in different parts of the city by angry residents, who stoned and ransacked the offices and damaged the cars parked outside. An angry group gathered outside the house of Delhi's Finance Minister A.K. Walia in east Delhi's Laxmi Nagar locality because they thought he was still in charge of power, the portfolio he held during the government's last term.

“Two groups of people, about 200 each, arrived at my house. The area has been facing a very grim situation for the past week, especially at night. They were desperate and I assured them that we are looking into the matter,” Mr Walia said.

The popular Chief Minister Mrs. Shiela Dikshit admits that power outages of 8-10 hours “can't be tolerated”. She said the central government has assured her government 150 MW of additional power and the situation would improve in the next few days.

Promises, promises... Haven't we heard all this in the previous summers too, ask the cynics.

Mrs Dikshit says the central government would give an additional 40,000-50,000 MW of power to the capital from alternate sources likes hydro and nuclear-based plants in the future.

“Ha!” snorts the cynics.

Everyone knows that the immediate and perhaps the only remedy to the killing heat are the rains. And the city, mind you only parts of it, received what the weatherman calls “pre-monsoon” showers” on Sunday and Monday to the utter relief of the people as the temperature dipped from the sweltering 44 degrees Celsius to still steamy a few degrees below.

The good news is that the monsoon is expected to set in by next week, though the rains have often belied the weatherman's predictions.

While man can somehow deal with the summer heat, what about animals and birds? One blazing afternoon last week, when no humans, animal or birds stirred, we spied a member of the mynah family that daily forays among the plants on our balcony sill peeping in with its head cocked to one side, beaks wide open and literally gasping. My wife immediately put water in a stoneware and kept it out. And soon, the entire family of three were quenching their thirst.

Now they know where to get water. But even after several helpings, the father mynah kept its beaks wide open and keeps on looking at us. I wonder he is thanking us or holding us responsible for messing up the climate.

Read the P. Jayaram's story Tempers fray as Delhi reels from heatwave in Tuesday's edition of The Straits Times.

An illusion of a judicial system

2009-05-12T22:20:00Z

P Jayaram says a verdict delivered in 10 days is a miracle for an Indian court.

IN DELHI

AN INDIAN court has delivered a guilty verdict within ten days of murder charges being framed, a record speed for delivering justice in a nation known for prolonged judicial delays.

A district court in northern India found Sunil Kumar guilty of brutally killing his wife, Kiran on February 17 after just three hearings. Kumar was convicted on the basis of the statement of his eight-year-old son, who said he saw his father hitting his mother with a rod.

The case drew front-page attention in national newspapers because the Indian judicial system is notoriously slow and cases go on for years; decades in worst cases.

Take, for instance, the cinema hall tragedy in the national capital over a decade ago. In 1997, the famous Uphaar Cinema in a posh south Delhi neighbourhood caught fire broke due to a short circuit leaving 59 people dead and 103 injured.

It took 10 years before a trial court pronounced judgement, convicting 12 people, including the owners of the theatre, millionaire brothers Sushil and Gopal Ansal, for negligence, causing death and not ensuring safety of the theatre.

The corrupt municipality, electricity department and Delhi police officials, who gave the no-objection certificate to the theatre without proper inspection of safety norms, were also found guilty.

Even this conviction, despite the long delay, was achieved because the relatives of the victims came together under the banner 'Association of the Victims of Uphaar Tragedy' to fight for justice. Their opponents were the mighty people — the Ansals, Delhi police, Municipal Corporation of Delhi and the Delhi Electricity Board.

"We knew the Ansals could manage the police investigation and hire big lawyers. So we had to be united," said Mrs Neelam Krishnamurthi, who lost her 17-year-old daughter and 13-year-old son in the tragedy.

For 10 years, Mrs Krishnamurthi attended the court cases on each hearing regularly. She recalled: "Their goons used to threaten me. They used all kinds of abusive language in the court premises. Even a lady lawyer who happens to be the president of the bar association threatened me not to come to the court."

The threatening stopped only after she complained to the police.

Or take the case of model Jessica Lal murder. An upcoming model, Lal, who was tending bar at the upmarket Tamarind Court in Delhi, was shot dead in April 1999 by Manu Sharma, son of a former state minister, when she refused to serve him liquor after closing time.

A trial court had acquitted all the nine accused in early 2006, but the police were forced to challenge the acquittal after a public outcry. The High Court, which re-opened the case, sentenced Sharma to life term.

The long delays in dispensing justice has seriously eroded the faith of the public in the the country's legal system. Many say that only fools approach courts as the only beneficiaries are the lawyers.

The Asian Legal Resource Centre (ALRC), a non-governmental organisation, in a written statement to the National Human Rights Commission, said: “A decade of waiting is not much time in deciding a case in India. It is equally applicable to civil and criminal trials. The legal process in India is always protracted, with parties being made to spend an unlimited amount of money and to run from one place to another in pursuing their claims in court.”

According to Law Minister HR Bharadwaj, the Supreme Court has approximately 48,800 pending cases while the High Courts across the country have a backlog of nearly 3.9 million cases.

The lower courts, he added in a damning statement about the legal system in response to a question in parliament in December, has nearly 25 million cases.

The Delhi High Court, the capital's top court, for instance is so far behind in its work that it would take up to 466 years to clear the enormous backlog, the court's Chief Justice AP Shah said in his annual report release in February.

The Delhi High Court rushes through each case in an average of four minutes and 55 seconds but still has tens of thousands of cases pending, including upward of 600 that are more than 20-years-old, according to the report.

"It's a completely collapsed system," Supreme Court lawyer and leading civil rights activist Prashant Bhushan said. "This country only lives under the illusion that there is a judicial system."

Minister Bharadwaj attributed 29 reasons for the huge backlog of cases, including long-winded judgements, un-punctual judges and vacancies.

"We are grappling with the problem of pendency. I have no power to tell a judge to write a short judgement or this or that," he said, adding, "A judge and his judicial conviction determine a judgement. I can't whisper in his ear. A judge is left to function on his own."

With pressure mounting for speedy justice, the government has initiated various steps, including setting up of fast-track courts, evening courts, 'Lok Adalats', or courts set up by legal services committees to amicably settle cases between two parties, and conciliation and mediation centres.

While these measures have helped to some extent in the speedy disposal of justice, they have still not made a dent on the huge backlog of cases because of thousands of new cases being filed every day.

In that background, the Chandigarh judge has indeed set a record.

"It is a ray of hope for thousands of victims and a warning for those who exploit the loopholes in criminal justice system," a local criminal lawyer NK Nanda, was quoted as saying in The Times of India.

But more such speedy judgements are needed if people's faith in the country's judicial system is to be restored.

Dousing out 'bride burning'

2009-03-05T08:54:00Z

P. Jayaram on young Indian women's fight back against the horrific practice.

IN NEW DELHI

BRITISH medical journal, The Lancet, recently confirmed what the Indians know already.

Thousands of young women, aged mostly in 15-34 age group, are killed in fires in the country every year. The "fires" refered to in the article are mostly a result of blatant domestic abuse.

"Domestic abuse is a serious problem in India. Women are sometimes killed in disputes over dowries; often in such disputes the victims are doused with gasoline and set ablaze, and their deaths are claimed as kitchen accidents," the journal said.

It put the figure of such deaths at 100,000 a year.

"Dowry Deaths" or "Bride Burning", where the daughter-in-law is doused in kerosene, set ablaze in the kitchen and the incident reported to authorities as an accident have been shamefully common in the male-dominated society.

Most of the time, the perpetrators of the crime get away due to lack of evidence. In rare cases, the victims have survived to make a dying statement accusing the in-laws for the atrocity.

Even though the Dowry Prohibition Act of 1961 makes give or take of dowry a punishable offence from minimum seven years to a life sentence, it has not acted as a deterrent in the country, where corrupt officialdom and loopholes in law have mostly favoured the offenders.

According to official data, on an average, one Indian woman commits suicide every four hours over a dowry dispute.

The National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) lists a total of 2,276 female suicides due to dowry disputes in 2006, that is six a day on an average.

Now, the Law Commission has recommended increasing the minimum sentence from 7 to 10 years in dowry death cases.

It has, however, declined the suggestion by the National Commission for Women and women’s rights groups to increase the maximum punishment from life imprisonment to death.

Marriages in India are usually arranged by parents and the young bride moves in with the in-laws soon after.

The newly wed is expected to switch her affections overnight to her husband's family and the girl's parents have limited say in her personal life after her that.

The woman often finds herself at the mercy of the new family members. Her conduct, expected to be perfect, influences their treatment of her, but it is not always reciprocrated in kind.

Strict traditional boundaries make it impossible for her to complain of ill-treatment, which is why the offenders get a free hand at ill-treatment.

In most cases, greedy in-laws start placing demands with the girl's parents for anything from an apartment to jewelery, to cars and cash.

This is in return for a "happy future" of their daughter.

Most parent's relent, those who can not meet the demands often get a phone-call informing them about their daughter's "accidental" death.

Lack of evidence usually lets the groom go scot-free, to try his luck in the marriage market again.

But, all is not lost.

A few years ago, Ms. Nisha Sharma, 23, a computer science student in Delhi cancelled her own wedding just before it was to take place and reported the groom and his family to the police for demanding dowry.

She became an instant celebrity across India.

Her photographs, sitting before unopened cartons of brand new air-conditioners, refrigerators and washing machines to be given as dowry to the groom and his family, were splashed in newspapers.

The incident brought home the evil of dowry system in the Indian society, but it also kindled hope that the new generation of women are not going to be treated as mere 'for sale' commodities with an expiry date.

Nisha’s example was followed by some other young brides too.

And if the trend catches on, that would be a different kind of blaze which will set the country on fire.

The fire of revolution.

What price for Gandhi's glasses?

2009-02-20T06:52:00Z

P. Jayaram wonders why it took an auction for India to reclaim his things.

In New Delhi

IT TOOK an upcoming auction for India’s politicians to assert that ‘Father of the Nation’ Mahatma Gandhi’s meager personal articles are a historical national heritage that rightfully belongs to the country.

They have strongly reacted to New York’s Antiquorum Auctioneers’ move to put under the hammer the Mahatma’s round, metal wire-rimmed spectacles, which were at one stage in the last century as recognizable as Winston Churchill’s cigar and Joseph Stalin’s moustache.

The trademark spectacles, which once Gandhi said gave him "the vision to free India," will be auctioned on March 4th and 5th, along with a pair of his sandals, his Zenith pocket watch, made in about 1910, a bowl and plate.

Source: AFP

Now, the politicians, who hardly share any of the values that Gandhi stood for, including simple lifestyle, say that the government should have made efforts to acquire the articles before.

The sudden interest in India in the articles, initially expected to fetch 30,000 pounds, is sure to push up their prices.

That coupled with the fact that Gandhi’s ascetic lifestyle meant he had few worldly possessions could trigger wide interest in the auction.

As Ms. Michelle Halpern, a spokesperson for the auctioneers, put it, "Of course, he didn't have much so whatever comes up for sale is worth that much more."

The Indian politicians want the articles to be brought to India to be placed at the Gandhi Smriti, or memorial, at Delhi's Tees January Marg where he spent the last days of his life.

"I think the government must enter the auction if possible. It is important to bring back Gandhi's memorabilia as it is part of our heritage. It would be a pity if these items were to pass into private hands abroad and leave India bereft of an important part of his legacy," minister Mani Shankar Aiyer was quoted as saying in The Times of India.

Even Hindu nationalists, not always great admirers of Gandhi, want the articles back in India. Gandhi was assassinated in 1948, aged 78, by a Hindu radical.

Mr. Manohar Joshi, a former speaker of parliament and a leader of a pro-Hindu regional party, asked the government to explore all means to bring back the items belonging to the father of the nation.

"The persons who own these articles should be contacted to see if they are willing to give them to India, perhaps for a price. Otherwise, the government should consider being part of the auction and even contact the US government in this regard," he said.

Mr. Tushar Gandhi, great grandson of the leader and head of the Mahatma Gandhi Foundation in Mumbai, had been quoted as saying in news reports that several Gandhi admirers had offered to donate a month’s salary to acquire the memorabilia.

He said one Peter Ruhe, a German collector, had gone around the world collecting Gandhi’s personal possession for business.

"It is all very sad. It is immoral and must be stopped,” he said. “It would be a grave insult to the nation if these items were just sold off. While my great-grandfather attached little importance to his possessions and lived a simple life, they are hugely sentimental items for the people. They are priceless to India. I would absolutely hate it if they ended up enriching the life of some wealthy businessman in America or Britain. They belong here."

What is surprising is that, till the auction was announced, not many Indians had lost sleep over these items all these years.

In 2007, India managed to obtain another piece of Gandhi memorabilia - a manuscript of an article he wrote - after persuading the auctioneers to withdraw the document from sale.

Gandhi's modest lifestyle, epitomised by his simple white robe that prompted Churchill’s contemptuous remark about “that half-naked fakir,” helped to inspire a generation of Indians to follow him in a non-violent struggle to end the British colonial rule of the subcontinent.

Sadly, despite the sudden nostalgia about Gandhi and interest in his memorabilia, India has not shown due care in protecting and preserving what it had.

Five years ago, the priceless Nobel prize medal of renowned poet and author Rabindranath Tagore went missing from a museum dedicated to him in the eastern city of Calcutta. The medal and certificate as well as some personal possessions were taken from a locked showcase in the museum.

In 1913, Tagore became the first non-Westerner to be awarded the literature prize.

In 2007, following reports that the stolen items could have been smuggled to neighbouring Bangladesh, police in that country had conducted searches in a posh locality in Dhaka and interrogated the owner of a handicraft store. But to this day the medallion has not been recovered.

It was liquor baron Vijay Mallya, who brought back the sword of Tipu Sultan - the 18th century Indian ruler of the southern province of Mysore who stoutly resisted the British – from a London auction four years ago.

Reduced to a spectator

2009-01-21T23:00:00Z

P. Jayaram describes the helplessness of an old lady in the fight for her property.

In New Delhi

THE plight of the aged often strikes you on the face when you open the newspapers - old parents thrown out of their homes, ill-treated or deserted at bus terminals or railway stations.

But a story broke here last week made the burning problem of the aged all the more poignant.

Latika Sarkar, 87, a former head of Delhi University’s Law Faculty and a noted social worker, was a mute spectator to a raging dispute between her maid and a “family friend”. This was over who has the right to her property in the Tony Hauz Khas Enclave of the capital that is estimated to be worth Rs.100 million (S$3 million).

The name Sarkar rang a bell and I realized that she is the widow of noted journalist Chanchal Sarkar, a former chairman of the Press Institute of India.

Way back in the ‘70s, I had done a feature writing course conducted by the institute in collaboration with the Thompson Foundation of London. We had occasion to interact with Mr Sarkar many times during that two-week course and found him a thorough gentleman who always had time for a chat with you.

The newspapers had carried the picture of a forlorn-looking Mrs Sarkar as she watched a posse of policemen descending on her house as the maid and the family friend quarreled out front.

Mrs Sarkar was the first Indian woman to go to Cambridge. She was also the first woman to earn a doctorate in law from the University. As head of Delhi’s University’s law faculty, she would have taught many of India’s legal luminaries. Yet she was all alone when two greedy people, who were not her blood relations, fought over her property.

Some time ago, the maid, Rangita Bharati, had been thrown out of the house, bag and baggage, by the family friend Nirmal Dhaundiyal, a senior police office in the eastern state of Bihar. But the maid had barged into the house last week, armed with a court order, and occupied a room upstairs by force. Apparently, Mr Dhaundiyal, who now occupies the ground floor of the office, used his police clout to get her evicted.

Then, she changed her story. She claimed to be a tenant of the Sarkars and not the maid. "I have been living here since 1973 and pay 50 rupiahs for the room. I have never worked as their servant. I run a garment unit to make a living," she said.

The police couldn’t do anything because a tenant cannot be evicted without a court order. Those who know the Sarkars are skeptical of her tenancy.

But Mr Dhaundiyal maintains she is only a servant. He said: "I am like a son to Latika Sarkar. She has no one to look after her. My son has been living here for six years, and after me elder brother's death, my wife also shifted here to take care of Aunty."

Meanwhile, Bharati also claims that she was “very close” to Mrs Sarkar. She said: “She used to have fish and curry from our house and would sit with me for hours. Chanchalda had even promised to help me buy a house at the cost of Rs 18 lakh (1.8 million)."

It's clear that neither the maid nor the so-called family friend are concerned about Mrs Sarkar. They seem like vultures waiting for her to die so that they could feed on her property.

What is surprising is that even though the Sarkars had a large circle of friends and relatives in the city, nobody has bothered to visit the widow regularly or to inquire about her welfare. Neighbours said since her husband’s death three years ago, she had rarely been seen or heard.

Some of her relatives now say they stopped visiting her as they were "not made to feel very welcome'' by the Dhaundiyals. “Maybe his idea was to leave her with no option but to leave the property to them.”

Neighbours do not recall seeing the Mr Dhaundiyal when Mr Sarkar was alive.

"When we went to condole his death, we had this distinct feeling that he was muscling his way in and the house was being taken over," said one.

The episode reminded me of visit to a home for the aged some time ago. The inmates were all well-to-do and the home was comfortable and well-equipped.

But as I left, I could not help feel an overwhelming sense of loneliness that they must feel, spending day after day re-living the memories accumulated in treasured photo albums.

Now, they pine for Sundays so they can hear the voices of their children and grandchildren calling from some distant land, muttering: “Hi, dad, mom, love you…”

I suppose, in that sense, Mrs Sarkar is lucky because the Sarkars had no children and she doesn’t have to wait for that weekly call.

A dog's life in Mumbai

2009-01-05T09:23:00Z

P. Jayaram explores the debate on how to control Mumbai's dog 'nuisance'.

In Mumbai

Mumbai, India's financial hub, has an estimated 70,000 stray dogs and every year, they leave more than 25,000 city dwellers nursing dog bites.

The growing problem has left many residents fuming, but not animal lovers.

In fact, the issue has gone all the way up to the Bombay High Court, which ruled by a 2-1 majority judgment late last month that dogs which were a “nuisance” can be killed.

The court gave the ruling in response to a public interest litigation filed by a Mumbai-based non-governmental organisation (NGO), In Defence of Animals, challenging the validity of certain provisions of a law that permits killing of dogs under certain conditions. It said animals had as much constitutional right to life as humans and had a “right to expect compassion from Indian citizens”.

The judges held that apart from putting to sleep stray dogs that are incurably ill, mortally wounded, rabid or perennially violent, the municipal commissioner could use his discretion to order the killing of dogs that are causing “public nuisance”.

The court interpreted “nuisance” in this instance as “anything that endangers life or is injurious to the health of the public at large”.

While it noted that mere barking could not be cause for killing a dog, “dogs that have the habit of chasing moving vehicles, especially two-wheelers, may be treated as a public nuisance as they could lead to accidents”.

Is canine culling legal?
ST Photo: Rakesh Sahai

The killing of dogs is not permitted under the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act except under certain conditions, and the court’s ruling drew opposition. The NGO, In Defence of Animals, has secured a six-week stay of the court’s order, to appeal to the Supreme Court.

In the meantime, other activists have begun a campaign to save the strays.

Former Baywatch star Pamela Anderson, a self-avowed animal lover and prominent international animal rights campaigner, may join Bollywood stars at a planned rally to protest against the court’s order.

The People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (Peta) said the rally would also include Bollywood actors like John Abraham and Raveena Tandon.

Peta’s India head, Anuradha Sahwney, said killing the stray dogs was not a solution. “If you kill a dog, another one will come. You have to encourage people to adopt them and remove their food source from the roads and sterilise them,” she said.

“We plan to launch a fully focused attack to raise awareness among the people about the importance of cleaning the garbage (on which the stray dogs feed) and sterilisation of the dogs.”

The stray dog problem is not confined to Mumbai. Almost every city has a huge stray canine population, and there have been cases of such dogs attacking children, necessitating, in some cases, hospitalisation.

Residents of some parts of Mumbai, angry with the civic authorities’ failure to check the stray dogs menace, have also reportedly poisoned the animals.

In 1999, the Bombay High Court had stopped local civic bodies from killing stray dogs and ordered sterilisation drives to control their population after several NGOs petitioned it describing the killings as “barbaric and inhuman”. The latest order reverses that decision.

Opinion on dealing with the stray dogs remains divided.

“Every night, when I return from work, a pack of dogs come barking and chasing my rickshaw,” Mr Andre D’Souza, a resident of Mumbai’s Bandra area, told the DNA newspaper. He added: “I want a solution to this problem soon because I do deserve to move in my locality freely as and when I wish to.”

Faced with protests over the court order, the Mumbai municipal corporation has decided to set up a “euthanasia committee” to recommend a “humane way” to kill the stray dogs.

“We will inject them with phenol barbipone which will kill them in a more humane way,” a municipal health officer said.

Earlier, the civic body used to kill the animals by putting them in water and electrocuting them. According to some NGOs, some 400,000 stray dogs have been killed in Mumbai since 1994, but that has not brought down their number.

Sterilisation may be a more "humane" way to deal with the strays, but the question is how do you round up 70,000 of them?

Find us if you can.
Source: AP

Beware the eerie Delhi fog

2008-12-29T15:30:00Z

P. Jayaram warns travellers about the bad weather in India.

IF YOU are planning to visit India, particularly eastern and northern India, at this time of the year, you may be well advised to choose flights within the country that land and take off in the afternoons.

Otherwise, there is a good chance that your entire travel schedule and your booking may be upset.

During winter, northern and eastern India regularly get enveloped in a thick blanket of fog that reduces visibility to just a few metres.

That throws flight and train schedules out of gear and the usually crowded airports and railway stations become more so, with angry, muttering passengers cursing the weather, the airlines and themselves for choosing to travel on such a day.

A Delhi metro rail worker controls the traffic amidst morning fog, in New Delhi, India, Monday, Dec. 29, 2008. Normal life in capital New Delhi and parts of northern India was affected Monday with rail and air traffic being hit due to dense fog and cold wave conditions.
Source: AP photo

Take today, for instance. According to the Meteorological department, the visibility was just 50 metres.

I didn’t need the Met chaps to tell me what was in store. I knew it when I went out for my usual morning walk to the nearby park at 5.30. I could not see the street lights till I was almost near the lampposts. And though there were fewer walkers in the park, one had to take extra care not to collide with those coming from the opposite direction.

The Delhi fog is peculiar. It has an eerie quality. It virtually blinds you, particularly if you are driving. The headlights of your car reflect back at you from the white rolling wall threatening to devour you. Even fog lights are of no help.

You have to be extremely careful while driving. The fog not only makes it difficult to see the road but it totally disorientates you.

The police issues regular advisories asking drivers to switch on the hazard lights while driving in foggy conditions and to follow the vehicle immediately ahead. The problem is that it could well become a case of the blind following the blind.

People commute amidst the fog on a chilly morning in the northern Indian city of Chandigarh December 29, 2008.
Source: REUTERS photo

There are innumerable stories of drivers taking the wrong turn and ending up at some unintended place.

Some people, wisely, park the car on the road side and sleep in the car till the fog clears up, rather than take the risk of driving in such difficult conditions.

Invariably, after every foggy night and morning, newspapers are full of pictures of some major accident or another.

One New Year morning some years ago, when the fog was really bad, more than a dozen vehicles were involved in a multiple collision on a bridge in eastern Delhi.

And this is what the fog did to travellers today: airport and railway officials said several international and domestic flights were delayed for hours and two domestic flights cancelled. Several trains were running hours behind schedule.

But let all this not frighten you if you are intending to travel to India. Because winter is the best time to visit the country.

But just be prepared. Your flight may be delayed, or cancelled or you may be taken to a different destination where the plane can land.

After all, what is travel without some unplanned adventure!

In a flap over chickens

2008-12-19T05:04:00Z

P. Jayaram says its bad news for chicken lovers as bird flu hits Indian states.

In New Delhi

WINTER is here and, once again, so is the dreaded bird flu in some Indian states.

The news will be disappointing for those looking forward to tucking into scrumptious tandoori chicken or butter chicken while lazing under the winter sun on holidays at some local park with friends and families.

Chicken, particularly butter chicken, called ‘murgh makhani’ locally, is said to be the most favourite chicken dish in Delhi and the northern Punjab region.

Walk into any restaurant in Delhi and you have a choice of wide range of chicken preparations, from Biryani Badshahi to Mughlai chicken pulao, Murg Noorijehani or Murg Kababs Mughlai and kormas. Murg is the Hindi term for chicken.

Most of these preparations are a legacy of the Mughals, who invaded India in the 16th century. They brought exotic spices, dried fruit and nuts and new special cooking methods.

But butter chicken is very much indigenous. According to a popular story, unlike the Mughlai dishes, butter chicken had its origin relatively recently, in the 1950s.

It is said cooks at a restaurant in Old Delhi, well-known for its tandoori chickens used to recycle the leftover chicken juices in the marinade trays by adding butter and tomato. This sauce was then tossed around with the chicken pieces being cooked on the tandoor, a cylindrical clay oven used in cooking and baking. The leftover dish was a hit in northern India and is now popular across the world.

Chicken and egg consumption in India has been growing, seen as an indication of rising incomes and a rapidly expanding middle class.

According to official figures, the production of eggs and broilers has been rising at a rate of 8 to 10 per cent per annum.

That puts India as the world's fifth largest egg producer and the eighteenth largest producer of broilers.

With demand growing and production keeping pace, chicken is affordable even for the poor. In the national capital, for instance, a kilo of chicken costs about Rs. 90 (less than S$3).

At the moment, the bird flu is confined to two or three states in the east and northeast. That means the Delhiwallahs, as the people of the national capital are called, will have their choice chicken dishes for Christmas and New Year eve festivities.

If the health experts and poultry farmers are worried, there are some chicken lovers, who see in the epidemic a feast in the making.

When the disease occurred in the past two years, chicken prices had crashed as chicken dishes went out of dining tables in homes and hotels.

Dubbing the scare as a 'hoax', the poultry farmers’ associations across the country had organised 'chicken parties', where the public could go and eat all the chicken they could, for free.

No prize for guessing how was the turn out. There was virtually a stampede at those parties as finger-licking chicken-lovers moved from table to table and gorged themselves on different dishes.

Congress charges ahead

2008-12-09T11:23:00Z

P. Jayaram gives his take on the India state elections.

In New Delhi

THE just concluded elections to five Indian state assemblies have left political pundits, analysts and the media red-faced.

They were all unanimous before the elections that there was no way the ruling Congress party would win them, particularly in the backdrop of high inflation, looming economic problems and charges that the government is “soft on terrorism.” In fact, two states – Delhi and Rajasthan – went to the polls immediately after a group of armed terrorists launched a devastating attack on Mumbai, the country’s financial capital.

That attack left over 170 people, including foreigners, dead, over 300 injured and the nation traumatised.

The large turnout of voters in politically conscious national capital and Rajasthan was cited as evidence of their keenness to express though the ballot their unhappiness over the government’s handling of the menace of terrorism, particularly the Mumbai attack.

In the event, the Congress had the last laugh, although, senior party leaders admitted in private that even they were pleasantly surprised by the results.

The party won three of the five states that went to the polls and thus managed to reverse a string of defeats it had suffered since 2005.

While the Congress retained the prestigious Delhi for the third consecutive term and returned to power in Rajasthan and northeastern border state of Mizoram, the main opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) had to be content with retaining the sprawling Madhya Pradesh and the Maoist-infested Chattisgarh states.

So, where does it all leave Indian politics as the country heads of parliamentary or national elections in the first half of 2009.

The media, which had almost unanimously written off the Congress, conceded that the party had done creditably well, given the background in which the elections were held.

“Congress Wins Semis 3-2,” said the main headline in The Times of India. “Congress sounds war cry, Wins 3 to BJP’s 2 in semi-finals,” read the banner in Hindustan Times.

Both parties have reasons for cheer as well as introspection ahead of the upcoming parliamentary elections, which the Election Commission has said would be held in April-May.

For the Congress, the fact that it has retained Delhi for the third consecutive term under the charismatic Shiela Dikshit while wresting Rajasthan and Mizoram from the opposition is a matter to rejoice.

At the same time, the party’s inability to vote out the BJP government in Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh, largely attributed to in-fighting in the local party units, should be a matter of concern.

Party leaders acknowledge that they would have to put their own house in order before they could hope to return to power at the centre.

For the BJP, on the other hand, the failure to capture Delhi and the loss of power in Rajasthan is a manifestation of the deep faultlines among the leadership that has spread to the rank and files.

Among the most creditable victories is that of Delhi’s Shiela Dikshit, who became only the third Congress chief minister in the country’s history to win a third consecutive term.

“Winning Delhi is like winning India,” Congress general secretary M. Veerappa Moily exulted.

Such talk immediately triggered speculation whether Mrs. Dikshit is prime ministerial material or whether the impressive victory would become her petard and confine her for ever to state politics.

Like Mrs. Dikshit, Madhya Pradesh’s Shivraj Singh Chouhan and Chhattisgarh’s Raman Singh, who delivered their states to the BJP, made an important point, that incumbency need not be seen as a burden.

While the Congress and the BJP will sit and analyse their respective performances, there is one point on which they agree: People vote for those who deliver on their promises of development.

All three victorious chief ministers are seen as those who had delivered on this front.

And if that conclusion is drawn by all political parties, Indian politics would take a giant leap, from dividing the people on the basis of caste, religion and region to uniting them on a nation-building agenda.

The aftermath of India's 9/11.

2008-11-30T15:13:00Z

Jayaram Perumpilavil provides an inside view on what's happening in Mumbai.

In Mumbai

THE Indian Airlines flight to Mumbai was nearly empty and Mumbai’s Santa Cruz domestic airport wore a deserted look as I landed on Thursday afternoon, nearly 18 hours after a group of armed terrorists had attacked nearly a dozen locations in the city and took several hostages in two hotels and a Jewish residential complex.

I had to check into a hotel first, dump my stroller and head for the scene of action, all in a 5 square km area in South Mumbai. The airport is at the northern end of the teeming city. Time was of essence, considering that Singapore is two and a half hours ahead of India.

The few taxis at the airport refused to take me to south Mumbai because there is a curfew there. I check into a hotel a few kilometres from the airport and ask for a hotel cab to take me to Taj Mahal hotel, one of the hotels under terror siege.

"There’s trouble there, sir. It is dangerous. There is still firing going on. We would advice you to remain in the hotel," the receptionist said.

I have to be there, I insist and tell him about my profession – where no sane person wants to go, journalists do.

"It will take one and a half to two hours to cross the city," a local journalist colleague observes when I tell him where my hotel is located. Mumbai is not my town, but in this profession you learn to find your bearings quickly and overcome logistical problems.

I venture out of the hotel and manage to get a cab to take me to the "closest point" to Malabar Hotel. The roads are deserted and the 1990 model Premier Padmini Fiat flies like a Formula One car, creating as much, if not more, noise.

"What do these fellows get by killing so many innocent people?" says the driver, Abdul Majeed, a Muslim, after he learned the purpose of my visit to the curfew-bound area. "These are misguided young men. The government should talk to them and find out what they want."

He drops me near a police barricade. I have to trek nearly two kilometres to reach the Taj and flash my press card half a dozen times before the policemen posted at various points lets me through.

The Taj, a sprawling, opulent hotel with its distinctive onion domes and pointed archways, was built in 1903 by Indian businessman Jamsetji Tata in an act of defiance after he was turned away by some fashionable Mumbai hotels of that time because they admitted only the colonial British.

The hotel overlooks the Arabian Sea and is close to the Gate of India, built to commemorate the visit to India of King George and Queen Mary in 1928. Ironically, the terrorists, who were holding hostages at the Taj and other places had also arrived by sea and landed somewhere near, according to police.

"From maharajas and princes to various kings, presidents, CEOs and entertainers, the Taj has played the perfect host," says the Taj website.

By the time, I reach the spot, the conflagration that had engulfed a part of the hotel had been put out by the fire brigade after battling the flames for several hours. There are scores of journalists of all nationalities who had converged on the spot to cover the hostage drama. Dozens of TV cameras were trained on the hotel to cover every second of the unfolding drama. They have been staking out there since the previous night and many looked tired.

Suddenly, there is a burst of gunfire heard from the hotel and I hope that the spot where we were is beyond the firing range of weapons the terrorists were armed with.

I decide to head towards Oberoi, the second hotel where the terrorists had taken hostages. If Taj Mahal exudes the old world charm, Oberoi-Trident Tower is a fixture of the arriviste, modern, hep, the last word in luxury.

There again, a large number of journalists were staking out, recording every movement, the sounds of automatic gunfire, explosions. I join them.

The police had barricaded all approaches to the hotel and have to wield their long sticks to chase away curious onlookers, including men, women and children, who had come in droves as if it was a picnic spot.

Among the unspecified number of guests taken hostages in Oberoi is Singaporean lawyer Lo Hwei Yen, who, it was announced the next day, was among some 30 innocent victims of terrorist violence.

Even as I stand there, a call comes from a colleague out at the Taj. A terrorist lobbed a grenade from a second-floor window at the journalists and four scribes sustained shrapnel injuries.

At both places, senior army or police officials come out occasionally and brief the news hungry media about the progress of the mopping up operations by the National Security Guard commandos, which only increases the media’s appetite for more information.

There is a commotion every time a group of guests are rescued by the National Security Commandos and whisked away in waiting vehicles. Every relative of the hostages waiting outside anxiously is interviewed.

"I think you people are going overboard. How can you subject husbands and wives, sons and daughters about what they felt about the loss of their dear ones," says a man on discovering that I’m a scribe.

"The 24-hour TV news channels are the worst," he said.

"Stop viewing them then," I say to him as I go looking for a taxi that would take me back to the hotel, planning the strategy for next day’s coverage.