The Food Security Bill

I was present at a discussion of this bill this week. I cannot find a copy online so it is difficult to illustrate.

The draft legislation is path-breaking in many ways but sadly, it does very little to resolve one of the most pressing issues relating to food security. Women.

Women is this country would probably form the largest group of people who starve. Although the legislation makes women the heads of households for the purposes of distribution of food, this is still nowhere near sufficient. We live in a country where even rich and middle-class housewives have been taught to feel guilty every time they eat anything nice without attempting to shove it down their offspring/spouse's throat.

In families with a limited amount of food, women routinely starve. If such a practice is embedded in our culture, handing food to the women of the family might ensure that it gets to their (male) children. Much more needs to be done to ensure that the food reaches women.

Although I am thrilled to see that the women's reservation bill is making its way though parliament, food is far far more crucial. How will the women of our country ever hold up their half of the sky, if most of them live their years undergoing the most abject and horrifying starvation?

If we don't say it, it won't happen

Indians have this odd tendency to treat sex like the word 'Voldemort' is treated in the world of Harry Potter - it is imagined that all sorts of horrors shall be visited on those who speak the word freely. This is particularly so with respect to children.

More than half the children in India are sexually abused, and 70% of this abuse went unreported [more on the statistic here]. Those who imagine that abuse is confined to a particular stratum of society would be well advised to consider the fact that children are powerless people, regardless of their family's social status.

Child abusers emotionally abuse and entrap children in a private fear-filled world by highlighting their powerlessness and demonstrating to them that they have no place to run to. Taboos and notions of shame are likely to excarbate a situation where the child feels unable to tell anyone about sustained abuse. Being silenced everytime he/ she attempts to bring up anything related to sex can hardly be constructive in such a situation.

Despite the appalling statistics and the undeniable violence and damage caused to children who cannot understand or speak of their experience, sex education is seen as undesirable by many. States in India are actually going to the extent of banning sex education.

The price of a hymen (or lack thereof)

The Mukhya Mantri Kanyadan Yojana is a scheme by which the Madhya Pradesh Government helps girls from poor families get married. Those of you who are familiar with why girls from poor families in India need help with getting married may skip on to the next paragraph. For those of you who find this bewildering - daughters are often considered a bit of a disaster in low income families, since the gender bias in the informal labour sector means that they will never be able to earn much, and the lack of personal security in low income dwelling means that they will eventually have to be married to man who can protect them. Parents may be expected to pay dowries to the groom's families to achieve these marriages, and are almost certain to be expected to pay for the wedding and the 'setting up' of the new couples' household.

Under the state scheme "Marriages are solemnised free of cost under and as all necessary arrangements are made by the district administration. Every couple is provided assistance to the tune of Rs six thousand. Out of this amount, Rs five thousand is spent on provision of household items and Rs one thousand on the arrangements...apart from assistance from the state government, voluntary organisations and distinguished citizens are also providing articles to the newly married couples." The state government concerned is of course rather pleased about the whole affair and happy to swagger about, boasting about it.

But recently, very recently, a huge problem was apparently discovered with this exercise. Apparently there is one little step that these young women have to go through before the state is willing to 'give them away' - they have to go through a medical examination. The state claims that this is about testing for pregnancy, but others say that the tests were to check the 'virginity' of the brides. So no hymen could mean no wedding, no gifts, no money and presumably (since the whole village'd have seen the girl being turned away at the mass wedding) public branding as an 'immoral' women.

Additional reading for the curious:

- The ultra violet post

- The Huffington Post

- The Indian Express

- BBC

Deterring harassment complaints

As if it was not difficult enough already, the army seems to have decided to make it even more daunting for a woman in the army to report harassment. In addition to the wild counter-allegations permitted, if she should be unable to prove her case, she will lose her job.

A General Court Martial (GCM) of the Army has sacked Captain Poonam Kaur of the Army Service Corps (ASC) for levelling false allegations of sexual harassment against her seniors.

Captain Kaur had complained that her Commanding Officer Colonel R K Sharma and Lt Col Ajay Chawla, and Major Suraj Bhan had physically and mentally harassed her after she turned down their physical advances, and that they had kept her in illegal confinement in her quarters at the Kalka military station. She had said that she had been facing contiinuing harassment since she was posted in Kalka, and that all her efforts to resolve the matter with the intervention of Army authorities had failed.

The Court of Inquiry appointed to investigate her allegations held that there was no basis for these charges and later recommended a court martial against her for "false charges." Her counsel says that:

"Her charges of sexual harassment against Col R K Sharma, Lt Col Chawla and Major Suraj Bhan were never investigated by the COI and the Army authorities never looked into them. Her allegations against these officers have been put under the carpet"

The army has not had the best track record with respect to these issues. In 2007, there were only 945 women out of a total of 35,377 officers in the Army. No female officer had lodged a harassment complaint against a superior officer till 1999 - and the pioneer, Major Dr. Hemalata Kakkar, although she succeeded in her complaint, was unaccountably punished for it by never being permitted to complete her medical training with the army. In January this year, the army was 'slammed' by the Supreme Court of India for refusing to constitute a complaints committee to examiine a sexual harassment complaint made by a principal of an Army School against a colonel.

So it makes me wonder what actually happened, and how much of this takes place everyday and is never reported by women for fear of punishment.

Big Bully Uncle Bharat

It is very easy to whine all the time about how 'white' people are racist, and treat Indians badly, but not as easy to extend the same courtesy we expect from Australians to the those that are of darker hues than our own.*

It is also very easy to whine all the time about how the United States walks all over us, but not as easy to acknowledge that we also have a habit of walking all over other countries.

An excerpt from an excellent post by Anurag Acharya (at Kafila) about Indo-Nepal relations:

"Actually, Nepalis don’t hate Indians. In fact, we love Indian food, we enjoy Indian movies and music and we support Indian cricket team with as much passion because we feel a sense of nearness that the shared culture and kinship across the border has brought. What we do hate is the fact that Indian State has never treated Nepal with the respect and dignity that a sovereign nation is entitled to. From Nehru to Manmohan Singh, India has always used diplomatic coercion to meddle into Nepal’s internal matters citing its security interests." [Read the entire post here]

PS- Yes, I am aware that this post is currently up on my blogroll feed, but it isn't going to stay there forever.

* Rhetorical device but if you are interested in Indian racism, outlook has an interesting article on it (password required)

News-reports on the Naz Foundation judgment

Some interesting excerpts I found. Click on the source for the full article.

The Hindu:

Anjali Gopalan of the Naz Foundation said when they started the movement against Section 377 eight years ago, they did not receive much support, but people joined hands in course of time. “We now feel there is a change happening which also reflects in the attitude of the people. This judgment is the first major step towards equality but we have many more battles ahead,” she said.

Anand Grover of Voices Against 377 – a coalition of groups and individuals working on a wide range of issues, including same sex desiring and transgender people – said the judgment was a crucial step in the struggle towards affirming the rights of all citizens and hoped that it would be aptly executed with the support of the government, police departments and other courts.

New York Times:

Still, the decision was condemned from many corners in India. “This is wrong,” said Maulana Abdul Khaliq Madrasi, a vice chancellor of Dar ul-Uloom, the main university for Islamic education in India. The decision to bring Western culture to India, he said, will “corrupt Indian boys and girls.”

“The real problem is still the stigma attached,” especially outside big cities, said Ritu Dalmia, one of India’s best-known chefs, who lives with her girlfriend in New Delhi. Change particularly needs to happen in rural India, she said in an e-mail message Thursday afternoon. “I have met women who were forced to sleep with men so that they could be ‘cured’ of homosexuality,” she said.

CNN-IBN:

A high-level meeting of the Home Minister, Health Minister and the Law Minister at the North Bloc failed to reach a consensus on the future course of action

There is no consensus among the ministers and if the debate reaches Parliament, the UPA Government will be at the receiving end from the BJP as well as parties like the RJD and theSamajwadi Party, which are also taken bitterly opposed to gay rights.

The Inaugural Post: Consensual gay intercourse is finally decriminalised

Having received from my grandmother ideas about 'auspicious' and 'inauspicious', and having mutated them from their sun-and-moon-in-the-right-place form to a let-us-begin-with-a-note-of-hope form, it delights me to begin this blog with a post on, and about, a big day for civil liberties in India. Homosexuality is no longer illegal in India, and the judiciary has finally recognised the rights of homosexuals to consensual intercourse.

To the human rights lawyer, this judgment is poetry - many of us cried as we read it. We have spent our years at law school upset with a legal system that stands on such a beautifully crafted base of rights but persistently holds on to its archaic ugly, incongruent laws such as section of the Indian Penal Code which punished consensual sex between gay men. This judgment is going to one of the classics that law students study as a turning point in the law, that historians write about as a turning point for the country.

Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code:

Unnatural offences.--Whoever voluntarily has carnal intercourse against the order of nature with any man, woman or animal, shall be punished with imprisonment for life, or with imprisonment of either description for a term which may extend to ten years, and shall also be liable to fine.

Explanation.-Penetration is sufficient to constitute the carnal intercourse necessary to the offence described in this section.

Issues

This section has basically been interpreted such that intercourse between two consenting homosexuals was considered 'against the order' of nature. Gay men have been harassed for the longest time with threats of prosecution under this section.

The trouble with getting rid of it has been that it is the legal provision under which child sexual abusers targeting little boys are prosecuted, and if it were removed, the absence of another appropriate provision would create a significant amount of trouble.

The Judgment

The Delhi High Court found its way around the issues by reading the provision such that it applies to cases of child abuse but not to cases of consensual sex.

"We declare that Section 377 IPC, insofar it criminalises consensual sexual acts of adults in private, is violative of Articles 21, 14 and 15 of the Constitution. The provisions of Section 377 IPC will continue to govern non-consensual penile non-vaginal sex and penile non-vaginal sex involving minors."

More excerpts from the judgment (full text here*):

"Section 377 IPC has the effect of viewing all gay men as criminals. When everything associated with homosexuality is treated as bent, queer, repugnant, the whole gay and lesbian community is marked with deviance and perversity. They are subject to extensive prejudice because what they are or what they are perceived to be, not because of what they do. The result is that a significant group of the population is, because of its sexual nonconformity, persecuted, marginalised and turned in on itself."

"The inevitable conclusion is that the discrimination caused to MSM and gay community is unfair and unreasonable and, therefore, in breach of Article 14 of the Constitution of India."

"The impugned provision in Section 377 IPC criminalises the acts of sexual minorities particularly men who have sex with men and gay men. It disproportionately impacts them solely on the basis of their sexual orientation. The provision runs counter to the constitutional values and the notion of human dignity which is considered to be the cornerstone of our Constitution. "

"A provision of law branding one section of people as criminal based wholly on the State’s moral disapproval of that class goes counter to the equality guaranteed under Articles 14 and 15 under any standard of review."

UPDATE:

The Alternative Law Forum has published a primer on the Naz Foundation judgment. It can be downloaded here.

*Credit to http://lawandotherthings.blogspot.com/ for promptly posting the link to the judgment.