Rock the Vote, by Hamsa Subramaniam

One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics

is that you end up being governed by your inferiors.  -- Plato

It was almost unbearable for me to be away from Washington, DC during the elections this year. I remember when I was in third grade, Ms. Bukaty told us that voting was a privilege and since then I have always taken an extra effort to participate in my political process. I remember being 18 years old and campaigning for Howard Dean in the dead of winter during the Iowa caucuses, and again for Barack Obama during the Virginia and Maryland primaries. I have canvassed, phone-banked and stuffed envelopes. I have participated in voter registration drives and will never back out of a political conversation.

Now that the Indian elections are fast approaching, I am saddened to find apathy, defeat and disinterest. Living in India as a Service Corps Fellow for eight months, I have been privy to numerous discussions about how the BJP discriminates against non-Hindus and how Congress caters to Muslims and other minorities unfairly.  I’ve heard grumbling about how sleazy politicians give the uneducated poor a bottle of liquor and a free meal to buy campaign peons and ultimately votes.  Lunchtime conversation at SAATHII reveals that many people feel disenfranchised because they are unable to vote for someone they believe in, someone who will keep promises, someone who will actually serve the public instead of filling their own coffers.

My 16 year-old cousin said that she and her friends think that Indian politics won’t change until young, energetic politicians with new ideas and a fresh perspective oust the dynastic politics that has gripped many regions in India.  “We need someone who will realize that [young people] have voices too. We need someone who will sacrifice for the Indian people as opposed to caring just for their own religion and caste.”

I see on a regular basis political parties in Tamil Nadu choosing a candidate to stand for election based on the caste most represented in his constituency to gain votes. In one election, the chosen candidate then quoted the famous Tamil poet Barathiyar, professing on the dais, “Caste does not exist in Tamil Nadu, my children.”  Is this a display of calculated hypocrisy, or merely symptomatic of an India that is still far from gaining a sense of national unity and citizenship?  Those I have spoken with in India feel that caste should be maintained as an important cultural marker and an enforcer of shared values and customs, while not reverting back to the rigid caste hierarchy of the past and its accompanying system of overt discrimination. From my observations however, this has resulted into what has become either cultural discouragement of lawful actions (such as inter-caste marriage), or laws that administer to castes inequitably (e.g., reverse affirmative action often precluding Brahmins acceptance to college). 

This is just one example. These are the kinds of incongruities which cause frustration among those who are aware of what is at stake.

At the end of the day, while India has on average, a higher voter-turnout than the United States (60.7% versus 48.3% according to the Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance), those Indians whose votes cannot be bought – those who are educated – end up not voting. However, this group of people also tend to be the ones who have ideas, who have a vision, who know what a government should be like. No matter how naïve, “western” or futile it may seem, voting is both a right and a privilege that so many in the world lack.  As Plato points out, the direction of Indian politics has so far been dictated by the poor who cannot help but look to politicians for a free meal and cash, as opposed to social change. And many politicians give their public what they want to get votes. Free televisions. Free booze. Free meals. 

The educated must hold government responsible for their actions, even if it means choosing the lesser of two evils for now. Politicians should be at the mercy of those who elect them. The onus for social change is on people like us who can afford to think about the future, instead of putting food on the table tonight. I have started this conversation many times with my co-workers and I encourage the other AIF fellows to do the same – talk to your Indian co-workers, families and friends about voting, lest the future of Indian politics continues to rest solely on Plato’s inferior.

Rock the Indian vote.

- Hamsa Subramaniam

Where are the Women? Finding Leadership, by Clara Presler

It is from the rickshaw that I do much of my observing of Delhi. The long stretches of kilometers that run through back alleys and over six-lane flyovers are not always conducive to foot travel. But a rickshaw grants you much of the same physical sensation as walking and the rides are never dull: I overhear snippets of conversations between drivers pausing at streetlights, catch a whiff of the chai sipped by groggy taxi drivers or a glimpse of families preparing for the day.  I see a city constantly at work: the same kids clamor at my side each day selling magazines, the dhobis teeter on their bicycles amidst traffic with oversized loads, the government Ambassador cars and the blue-plated SUVs of the United Nations whiz by authoritatively.

 

But these daily rickshaw rides offer more than sensory exposure and a series of near-accidents. They provide constant fodder for my work at Center for Social Research, the NGO with which I have been working since January.  The relevancy of Delhi’s street life to my project stems from the under-representation of one group: the women.

 

At the Center for Social Research, a 25-year-old women’s rights organization, I have been asked to author a leadership training manual for women aspiring to enter politics. Currently there is a pending bill that would establish a 33 percent reservation for women in state legislatures and Parliament. The course I am writing aims to mobilize women around political issues and empower them to see themselves as leaders. Our long-term goal—beyond providing women with information and training they may lack—is to pressure the government to pass the reservation bill through the voices of new women leaders.

 

When this project was first proposed to me, I hesitated. On the one hand, it had all the right elements: it was timely and stimulating, and would likely put me in contact with a wide cross section of society. On the other hand, I thought of the divisiveness of similar debates in the US and my role as a foreigner. I asked myself, “in my short time in Delhi, do I really want to enter into a debate as fierce and complex as something resembling affirmative action and quotas?”

   

Then I thought about my rickshaw rides through the streets and the teeming crowds: if there are so few women in daily public spaces, what would move them decide to run for political office, perhaps the ultimate of public positions? My curiosity peaking, I suspected the debate might be very different in India. 

 

I decided to turn outward. I contacted academics and NGOs, attended public debates, and spoke, through a translator, to local leaders. Through a series of interviews, I learned that the question of reservations in India, while just as lively and fierce as in the US, has a different starting point. Few dispute the disadvantage that certain social groups face in Indian society, particularly the lower castes and women. Reservations for lower castes are deeply entrenched in public sector institutions.  The debate around reservations for women concerns what we would think are the finer details but here, in such a populous and layered society, are the crux: numbers and percentages, and whether to address caste issues within or apart from reservations for women.

 

But it was not always this way. During the writing of the Indian Constitution, many leaders from disadvantaged groups felt that reservations were a way of ‘institutionalizing inequality’ and vehemently opposed them. The hope of unity and equality was too great. Sarojini Naidu, one of the most famous women leaders of India wrote: “To seek any form of preferential treatment would be to violate the integrity of the universal demand of Indian women for absolute equality of political status. We are confident that no untoward difficulties will intervene in the way of women.”

 

That was 1950. In 1993, India’s Constitution was amended to establish a one-third reservation for women at local (panchayat) level government; as I mentioned, there is a pending bill to do the same for state and Parliamentary legislatures. Some women question whether these bills will bring about the radical shift in gender roles we hope for. Generally, though, the women’s movement is supportive. So what changed?

 

Towards Equality, a report published in 1974 by the Commission on the Status of Women in India, suggested that independence had not created the opportunities for women that the writers of the Constitution had hoped. The Committee claimed that its field studies showed that the status of women had actually deteriorated in the preceding decades and called for stronger legislature and grassroots mobilization. Towards Equality galvanized the women’s movement; the report is considered to be one of its founding texts.

 

Addressing the breakdown between ideals and reality for women in Indian society in a way that is accurate yet empowering has been my primary focus in preparing this course. Ideals—progressive legislation, success stories—will play a crucial role in drawing women into the public sphere in greater numbers. We rely on the ideals to chip away at the harsh realities:

 

Men, Money, Muscle-power: the typical phrase used to describe Indian politics. Violence: against candidates and their families, against young women in pubs, against women at home. The exorbitant price of party tickets and the shady deals required to pay for them. The proxy debate, suggesting that reservations for women simply encourage men to put their wives forward to represent their interests.

 

The list of factors that could repel women from the public sphere and political leadership goes on and on.

 

The next set of questions I seek to address in this course concern the definition and cultivation of leadership: once a woman has decided to hold on to ideals and work to effect change in her surroundings, what does she need? What information and skills will encourage women and prepare them for leadership?

 

Parts of this answer are universal; many others are locally-specific. I have learned that the only way I can write an effective and relevant course to Indian women is to listen. Each individual I have spoken to has added to the definition and message of the course. Listening has deepened my ideas about politics, leadership, and women’s empowerment, sometimes casting them in a new light. Interviews with certain individuals, men and women, have been particularly instructive:

 

Sumitra, a woman who has contested two local village elections entered politics through her work in domestic violence. A survivor of violence herself, she became a local councilor and entered politics in order to be more effective in her work preventing violence. She has proven to me that the personal is political.

 

Atul, a PhD student at Nehru University, contested elections in his home district in northwest Bihar. He went door-to-door, introduced himself to his constituents, and listened to them in their homes. He lost, but received many more votes than expected. As a result, the opposition murdered his brother. Yet Atul plans to run again, showing that scare tactics are not universally effective.

 

Rheka counsels women experiencing domestic violence. She is fierce in her defense of her clients’ rights and radiates as she works. But she does not advocate total independence; instead reconciliation. She has shown me the ways in which a woman finds power is often relative to her surroundings.

 

Pallavi leads the student government at Nehru University. She was never interested in politics before she moved to Delhi from Bihar. At JNU she looked to her seniors for guidance, informed herself of the issues, and chose a party. She has shown me that, with strong mentors, an interest in politics can be cultivated, and that a community in which to learn is vital.

 

My friends from the States who have led wilderness trips spoke to me at length about activities and consciousness-raising exercises that encourage new leaders. They have convinced me that leaders are not necessarily natural-born; instead, most traits can be turned into a leadership skill. Knowing and listening to your own strengths is the first step towards leadership.  

I have started to see women leaders all around me. A woman I met last week at a domestic violence counseling center is filing a case against her husband while going to college and raising her child. My flatmate, a head editor at a magazine, turns on a dime from relaxing at home to making quick decisions on her phone. I am part of a vibrant running group organized by one community-minded woman who didn’t feel safe running alone. I think back to the self-help groups I visited while at my previous placement in Tamil Nadu, and the crucial role the women held in managing their families’ 

finances.

 

It is clear that my rickshaw rides and newspapers only tell part of the story. Women are scarce on the streets of Delhi; they comprise only 8 percent of the Lok Sabha. Off the streets women are organizing, taking charge of their lives, and reaching out to others. The goal of the one-third reservation bill is to bring this grassroots action to the public. To represent and facilitate women-focused leadership in politics.  To change the way political leadership looks.

 

I like to think that Sarojini Naidu would be appeased to consider that perhaps reservations are not a negative reflection of women’s capabilities. Reservations instead recognize the barriers between the public and the private spheres and the social structures that reinforce them.  Instead of ‘institutionalizing inequality’, reservations could actually recognize leadership potential and carve out doorways through the barriers. The doors will still be hard to open and women will need a good reason to push.  But as more women step through and leave the doors open behind them, the reasons will become more numerous and barriers increasingly porous.  

- Clara Presler

Portraits of Bangalore, by Meera Sinha

For my AIF Fellowship, I’ve been placed with Adobe Youth Voices (AYV) in Bangalore. AYV is a global initiative aimed to empower underserved youth using digital tools such as video, digital art, and photography. The Bangalore AYV program is running in 10 government-run high schools and 5 slum-focused NGOs. At each site, my coworkers and I run hands-on video production classes. The documentaries are entirely student-produced, meaning the youth develop the story, shoot the footage, and edit the final videos themselves. Each class of 30 students will have produced one documentary film and one photo essay by the end of April. Amongst others, this year’s project topics include slum life, electricity wastage, and elders’ childhood memories.

My fellowship has been incredibly rewarding because of the people that have shaped it. For this blog post, I’ll highlight a few of these characters.

Chandan

Chandan and me

Each AIF Service Corps Fellow is paired with a mentor, a work colleague meant to guide and support throughout the 10-month fellowship. My mentor, Chandan, has become my India flagship: my day-to-day work companion, my window into local Bangalore life, my close friend.

The day begins, and I’m riding on the back of Chandan’s motorbike, past tea stalls, malls, offices, slums, gardens, garbage, mansions, street vendors; alongside rickshaws, buses, cows, cars, bikes; on roads that are dirt, paved, rocky, full of potholes; beside office-goers, beggars, school children, construction workers, shoppers, dog-walkers, wanderers. The wind is on our faces.

I find myself in an old Bangalore neighborhood, at the end of a quiet street: Chandan’s home. I slip off my sandals and enter the casual, comfortable space. To my right, the Kannada news blares on the TV. To my left, Chandan’s brother, seated in front of an altar, prays. Chandan and I sit on the floor in his office and work. Between work, we talk about everything under the sun: family, graduate school, life in the US, Gandhi, the future, our students. Something small tips us off, and we start laughing hysterically: our sides ache, we can’t breathe, it is the kind of laughter that is raw and rich, that doesn’t really ever cease.

Chandan’s mother calls us for lunch. She cooks the best South Indian food I’ve tasted, and I tell her so. We smile, we talk, she tells me to eat more. In his booming voice, Chandan’s father asks when we’re going to get dosas again, when we’ll make our way to our favorite hole-in-the-wall joint, where neither the décor nor the perfect, secret recipe has changed for 70 years.

In the evening, Chandan, his cousins, and I go to a concert. We sit in a small hall as the sounds of the tabla, sitar, and flute surround us. I marvel at the technicality of the Indian classical music. Chandan and his cousins sing along, sigh in unison, tap their fingers to the intricate beat.

Chandan has made me comfortable with a family-centric, local side of Bangalore that I would not otherwise easily know as a foreigner. Much more than a work mentor, Chandan is a friend who has connected me to this chaotic, intriguing city.

Mubeen

Mubeen in her neighborhood

I’ve had the pleasure of learning from and growing close to my students. Take, for example, Mubeen, a fiery, 17-year-old Muslim girl. She led her class in making a documentary about the differences between the ways female and male children are treated in her community. Her academic determination stems largely from her single mother’s support.

Recently, Mubeen invited me to her home. Her five-person family lives in a house with a modest living room, one tiny bedroom, and a small corner kitchen. There is no proper plumbing, and there is one light in the living room.

When I arrived, Mubeen’s mother seated me on the couch, pinched me on the cheeks, and served me fruit custard, mutton biryani, tea, and biscuits. The two of them showed me family photos. They asked me questions I’ve come to find normal here in India: What are your education qualifications? Are you married? (My response followed by a look of shock, and then: Why not? But how old are you?!) What is your father’s name? What religion are you? Are you really Indian? You look too American!

These questions, I gather, place me in the tricky Indian social web, the framework that defines – to be blunt – who falls “above” whom.

In a small way, my time at Mubeen’s home tears away at that web. She and I are pulling at a strand and throwing it away. We’re messing up the system.

As we sat drinking tea, Mubeen put it this way: “Meera Madam, I feel so happy that you came to my house. You see, in India, I am very low, very poor, a Muslim. People know me this way. People like you don’t come to see people like me. They don't come into the homes of poors.” She continued, gesturing. “You see, you are water, and I am color. Colored powder. Usually the water wants to stay clean, clear. But you know that if you add me, the water becomes something else, something nice, with color. Like green water, or black water.”

Karthik

Students shooting their film

My students have featured all kinds of people in their films: slum-dwellers, parents, shopkeepers, peers, teachers, activists, etc. These characters’ stories are glimpses into this city and into my students’ minds.

An example: at Christel House India, a privately funded school for slum children, the youth based their film’s main character on one of themselves, a boy named Karthik. Because their film dealt with a sensitive topic – Karthik’s poor relationship with his parents – they decided to scrap the documentary medium and create a fictional account. Out of this vision came a fictionalized version of Karthik, a teenage slum-dweller whose parents neglect and beat him. Instead of being consumed by his family problems, Karthik delves into his studies, leaning on his peers, his teachers, and his education to support him.

Initially, I struggled with Karthik. I didn’t understand why the students wanted to turn his story into fiction. Wouldn’t a documentary be more powerful and direct? One of the Christel House teachers explained that the topic was touchier than I grasped. In reality, Karthik’s father is an alcoholic and can’t hold a job to support his family. His mother has therefore turned to prostitution, which has created marital tension in their home. In the midst of it all, they are neglecting and abusing their son. The teacher told me to think about Karthik’s position: his parents might see the film and get angry about their portrayal, his peers might look down on him for his family problems, and he himself might find the issues too difficult to talk about on camera. I realized that fiction is a solid, healthy way for the students to express and deal with such situations.

My struggle continued, though, during film production. There were too many aspects of the film I didn’t understand: Is Karthik dreaming or is this real? Is the film becoming melodramatic? Shouldn’t Karthik’s actions have defined motivations behind them? Why isn’t this clear?

Again, my students’ perspectives slowly sunk in. What was spilling out on camera, in all of its murkiness and abstraction, was their perspective. And that’s what my work in India is all about: allowing youth who may not always have a voice – or whose voice may be suppressed because people like me don’t understand it or give it a chance – to express, to have some freedom, to feel proud of their voices. (Later, one of the students told me that his friend started crying when he saw the film, confirmation that the story touches these kids’ lives.)

Like the youth, I am proud of the final Christel House video. I hope that the students learned half as much from me as I learned from them during the filmmaking process. The video:

Balram & Barack

One of the video topics proposed by

students during a brainstorming session

Living in Bangalore has inspired me to read about India in hopes of understanding what makes her tick. Simultaneously, given the US’s fresh administration change this past November, I’ve avidly been reading more about my own country. The intersection of this reading brings me to my final two characters: Balram and Barack.

I’m currently in the middle of The White Tiger, Aravind Adigas’s biting novel about the relationship between an Indian chauffeur, Balram, and his “master,” Ashok. During his journey from his village to Delhi, Balram explores India’s quiet acceptance of a social structure that allows for blatant (and at times horrifying) social inequalities to exist.

I’m also in the midst of Barack Obama’s second novel, The Audacity of Hope. What a contrast to be reading the two in parallel.

Speaking to the idea of common American values, Obama writes, “… The essential idea behind the Declaration – that we are born into this world free, all of us; that each of us arrives with a bundle of rights that can’t be taken away by any person or any state without just cause; that through our own agency we can, and must, make our lives what we will – is one that every American understands. It orients us, sets our course, each and every day. Indeed, the value of individual freedom is so deeply ingrained in us that we tend to take it for granted.” (p. 53)

Could such a blanket statement be written about India? I would answer no. India has taken the “essential idea” that frames my world and shaken it up, pushed it this way and that, turned it on its head. Each time I think the idea has settled into a version applicable to India, it once again gets rustled up – flipped over so that it’s not what I thought it was. It is at once stimulating and frustrating to live in a country where my perspective is constantly challenged.

In The White Tiger, Balram often points out the strange contradictions that define his relationship with his master. At one moment, Ashok is calling Balram a “good, family man,” patting him on the back, giving him a little extra cash. The next moment, he’s cursing him for the stupidity that characterizes his “people.” On one hand, Ashok treats Balram “well” by paying him 3,000 rupees a month (US $60). On the other hand, he finds it normal that Balram is living below his fancy apartment in a tiny room infested with cockroaches. And the reverse as well: Balram scorns Ashok for seeking out a prostitute after his divorce, but yearns to sleep with one himself. He admires Ashok’s thoughtfulness, his composure, yet he steals money from him.

Some explain India’s contradictory character by way of the caste system, others by way of the Western influence that is quickly pervading, others by way of the clash between urban development and a population that lives and works largely in rural settings, and others by way of religion.

Too often, though, these reasons are followed by, “But that’s just the way it is in India,” as if the reasons are the end of a tunnel, shut behind a locked door, etched into cement. Too often I hear people say “Oh, but if you talk to people in the slums, you’ll find that they’re actually happy!” (Right, tell that to the slum-dweller my students interviewed whose child is dying of a sickness she doesn’t recognize, the same one who said, “Just show me a way to a better lifestyle, and I’ll take it!”)

Misuse of government funds could explain India’s staggering contradictions (one of the most obvious being that while India’s economic growth rate is 6-8%, 43% of children under age 5 are still malnourished). But what drives the mentality – the lack of values, in my mind – that allows this extent of government corruption to exist? Where is India’s sense of social responsibility? The idea of social responsibility may be a concept “Western” in nature, but that doesn’t mean it shouldn’t apply to India.

I’m not yet at a point in my work, in my studies, or in my historical understanding of India to comment on why India is such a confusing, conflicting country. What I can reflect on are moments. Walking to work and seeing a child splashing, playing in what is literally a sewage drain. Watching a woman, half my size and shoeless, lifting bricks to build a shopping mall she won’t be allowed to enter. Seeing a hunched-over vegetable vendor getting barked at (it’s a matter of tone) to gather the “right” tomatoes and place them one by one in his client’s shiny car.

An instant answer, I know, is unfathomable. What I hope for, though, is a change in mentality, some sort of awakening in the minds of everyday people, so that we stop looking around and saying “But that’s just the way it is in India” and start asking why, start feeling a bit unsettled, start seeing things through Balram’s eyes, start searching for a belief in values, the way Obama so relentlessly does.

-Meera Sinha
www.meerasinha.wordpress.com