Desicritics Author: Siddhartha Shome

P. Sainath and Farmers' Suicides in India

Siddhartha Shome — Sat, 22 Nov 2008 01:09:05 EST

P. Sainath is one of India's most exalted journalists today. Last year he was awarded a Ramon Magsaysay Award for "his passionate commitment as a journalist to restore the rural poor to India's consciousness, moving the nation to action".

I read Sainath's writing occasionally, and last week attended a talk by him at the University of California at Berkeley. Here are some of my thoughts on Sainath and farmers' suicides in India - an issue with which Sainath in intimately connected.

Why Sainath is Important

Today's English educated urban upper middle class India remains almost totally ignorant of rural India. An English language journalist seriously interested in rural India is the rarest of rare creatures. It is therefore remarkable that Sainath has decided to devote his career to reporting about rural India. What is even more remarkable is that Sainath, with his passion and eloquence has been able to successfully carve out a space for himself in the India's English language media.

For this reason alone, Sainath deserves much acclaim.

Farmers' Suicides: Why Sainath's Analysis is Deeply Flawed

Sainath is a remarkable journalist. However, he does not limit himself to reporting. Though he does not claim any expertise as a researcher or an economist, he offers a very stark analysis of the problems of rural India. While I am in agreement with some parts of his analysis (the existence of an agrarian crisis, the negative impact of industrialized countries' farm subsidies, etc.), I feel that much of Sainath's analysis is, sadly, deeply flawed.

Sainath's Analysis

The issue most closely associated with Sainath is farmers' suicides. According to him, the story goes like this:
1. In recent years there has been a huge surge in farmers' suicides in rural India.
2. Farmers' suicides are driven by indebtedness.
3. Rising agricultural input costs are responsible for much of the debt.
4. Corporations, freer markets, and globalization are responsible for the rise in input costs, and hence are the root cause of farmers' suicides.

Thanks largely to Sainath, the issue of farmers' suicides in India has become something of a cause celebre in the global anti-globalization movement today.

The Reality of Farmers' Suicides in India

Sainath's uses data from India's National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) to support his narrative. According to the NCRB data, the total number of suicides in India has risen from 95,829 in 1997 to 118,112 in 2006. This works out to an annual growth rate of 2.4%. India's population, meanwhile, has grown at 1.93% annually (between 1991 and 2001).

Above: Total suicides and farmers' suicides in India (reference)

Above: Farmers' suicides as a percentage of total suicides (reference)

It is evident from the data that over the last 10 years, the number of suicides in India has grown only slightly, especially when adjusted for a growing population. Even farmers' suicides as a percentage of total suicides in India has been fairly constant at around 15%.

Clearly, it is a false notion that farmers' suicide rates in India have shot up dramatically in the last few years.

Farmers' Suicides in Yavatmal District in Maharashtra

While the notion of a huge surge in farmers' suicides in India is largely false, maybe there are pockets where farmers' suicides represent a serious problem.

Let us take a closer look at Yavatmal District in the Vidarbha region of Maharashtra, considered by Sainath as the epicenter of the farmers' suicide crisis. An investigation into farmers' suicides in Yavatmal District was carried out by Meeta and Ravilochan in conjunction with the Yashwantrao Chavan Academy of Development Administration (YASHADA). The findings were published in 2006 in a book called Farmers Suicide: Facts and Possible Policy Interventions. The following are some of the points from this book.

Yavatmal District has the highest suicide rate in Maharashtra.

For the years studied, the total number of suicides in Yavatmal District was 640, 819, 832, 787 and 786, in 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, and 2004, respectively. In each of these years, suicides of farmers and agricultural workers represented 23, 24, 23, 22, and 30 percent, respectively, of all suicides.

The researchers conducted case studies for individual farmers' suicides in Yavatmal District. A total of 148 case studies are presented in the book. To give a flavor of these case studies, two are very briefly described below.

Case 46. A 45 year old farmer who committed suicide by consuming poison in 2004. He had 3 acres of land. There was a crop loan of Rs. 3954 taken in 2001 from the Primary Agricultural Credit Society, which remained unpaid. In 2003-04 he spent Rs. 10,000 in treating his wife who was a psychiatric patient at a private clinic.
Case 120. A 50 year old farmer who committed suicide by consuming poison in 2004. He had 19 acres of land. There was an outstanding loan of Rs. 33,000 with the Bank of Maharashtra, and another outstanding loan of Rs. 8,000 from the Primary Agricultural Credit Society. In 2004 he spent Rs. 60,000 on the marriage of his second daughter. He used to drink alcohol and also gamble. He was having an affair with his bhabhi (sister-in-law). His affair had been discovered shortly before his suicide.

According to the authors of this study,

We found that while indebtedness was rampant, there was little clarity: was it disabling, to what extent, and who was responsible. On one side, indebtedness as high as 75% has been reported since the early 20th century but it was not considered disabling. On the other side, in the early 21st century, only 14% of the victims had indebtedness that resulted in alienation of land and/or animals. Moreover, we discovered that a loan from a rapacious relative rather than a bank or moneylender was often the cause of economic distress of the victim.

What comes out clearly from this study of farmer suicides is that each suicide is a unique and complex phenomenon - the reasons and motivations are varied and multifaceted. To find a single cause, one can certainly try to look for common threads running through the suicides, but one must keep in mind that this is bound to be a substantial oversimplification of a highly complex and multidimensional phenomenon.

Implausible and Plausible Causes of Farmers' Suicides

Sainath attributes farmers' suicides to rising indebtedness. How plausible is his reasoning?

It is true that most farmers who have committed suicides have outstanding loans against them. But can that be isolated as the single most important cause for suicide? The fact is that most farmers who do not commit suicide also have outstanding loans against them. To me, things like poor farm productivity, medical problems, social pressure to spend lavishly on a daughter's wedding, etc., seem to be at least as important as debt - if not more so - in driving people to suicide.

Sainath's further attribution of blame to economic liberalization, globalization, "the neoliberal agenda", etc., are even more implausible. As can be seen clearly from the NCRB data, the crisis of farmers' suicides is not a nationwide phenomenon, but is visible only in certain pockets. Surely it make sense to look for local factors, not just national or global factors. Nation-wide issues like growing cash crops (instead of food crops) are equally applicable to farmers in, say, Gujarat. So how come there are so few suicides among cotton farmers in Gujarat?

A much more plausible cause for cotton farmers' distress in Maharashtra is provided by Sharad Joshi, leader of the Shetkari Sanghatana, an important farmers' organization in Maharashtra. According to Joshi, the primary villain is the Maharashtra State Cotton Monopoly Procurement Scheme - a mechanism that makes the state government the sole buyer of cotton in Maharashtra, and despite promises, usually pays farmers less than prevailing market prices. Cotton farmers in Gujarat, who, by contrast, enjoy access to markets, a state government that invests in infrastructure, and access to new technologies, are witnessing unprecedented prosperity.

Suicides as a Development Indicator

Every suicide is an incredibly sad event. However, a basic question that must be asked is: how valid is suicide rate as an indicator of human development?

Above: Comparison of suicide rates

According to Jean Dreze and Amartya Sen, both eminent developmental economists,

The relevance of the suicide rate as a basic development indicator is far from clear. Indeed, many countries with high suicide rates (e.g., the Scandinavian countries) are doing extremely well in terms of overall social opportunities, and it would be quite odd to take their high suicide rates as a severe indictment of their development record. Suicide rates do correlate with specific social problems such as high rates of unemployment or divorce ... and it is quite possible that problems of this kind contribute to the high rate of suicide in Kerala. But these problems, such as they are, do not detract from Kerala's achievements in other, more fundamental fields such as health and education, just as - say - Finland's high suicide rate does not detract from its success in guaranteeing extensive social opportunities to its citizens.

Farmers' Suicide Crisis in Perspective

Sainath depicts farmers' suicides as one of the worst humanitarian crises facing India. So here are some statistics to keep things in proper perspective.

1. In 2006, 17,060 farmers committed suicide in India.

2. Every year in India some 400,000 to 500,000 children under the age of five die from diarrhea. Diarrhea and other waterborne infectious diseases can be easily prevented simply by improving the infrastructure for drinking water and sanitation.

3. In India some 35,000 people die every year from rabies, i.e., every year twice as many Indians die from rabies alone as from farmers' suicides. Rabies can be very easily prevented, simply by removing stray dogs from public areas.

4. Some 4,000 people die every year in accidents in the Mumbai Suburban Railway system alone (Mumbai city's mass transit system). This is just one example of the enormous numbers of accidents and fatalities that plague India's transportation system - a result of woefully inadequate infrastructure a virtual absence of even basic safety features.

Such statistics (and there are many more) point to the need for more, not less, economic growth and development in India.

India's Agrarian Crisis

While I disagree with Sainath on many things, I do agree with him that India is facing an agrarian crisis.

One need not look for clues to India's agrarian crisis in suicide statistics - there are many other more obvious pointers, such as anemic growth in agricultural output. The figure below of yield-per-hectare of foodgrains in India illustrates this problem.

Above: Foodgrains yield in India (reference)

This figure points to the issue that is at the heart of India's agrarian crisis: after a period of rapid growth during the Green Revolution, agricultural productivity in India has tapered off. As a result, farm incomes are under pressure. This is in sharp contrast to the industrial and service sectors of the economy, which are currently booming.

Economic Liberalization and Agriculture

In India the government started a process of economic liberalization in 1991, which aimed to move India away from a Soviet-style statist economic model to a much more free market oriented economic model. Anti-globalizers like Sainath blame economic liberalization for the agrarian crisis in India. I disagree completely. I think it is exactly the opposite - that it is not economic liberalization but rather the lack of it in the agricultural sector that is to blame. If increased economic freedom has made Indian industry boom, why should Indian agriculture be denied the same opportunity?

Below are two examples of how economic liberalization can help Indian farmers.

Consider farmland. Farming in India is not a particularly lucrative profession. It is thus no surprise that, according to a major survey, as many as 40% of Indian farmers would like to give up farming if they had a choice. I think it is important to give these farmers the liberty to monetize the most important asset that they possess - their land - and use the capital to embark on alternative ventures if they so desire. Unfortunately, India's stringent and stifling land regulations do not allow this to happen. According to Barun Mitra,

Indian industry can raise capital from the global market on the basis of a prospectus, which promises performance in the future. But Indian farmers can't raise adequate capital on the basis of the land asset which they already possess.... It is critical that the value of the land of farmers, often their only asset, is maximized, and it is made simple to capitalize. The problem facing the poor is not their poverty, but inability to capitalize their assets... Restrictions such as zoning, land ceiling and land use laws, along with unclear titles and poor land records, grossly undervalue land prices. ... The result is a greatly distorted land market. At one end, there are landowners, millions of small and marginal farmers, who can't even know the market value of their land. At the other end, there are the land mafia and speculators.

Consider farm technology. Like any other sector, to increase productivity, agriculture too needs new and innovative technologies. The good news is that recent advances in fields like biotechnology, genetic engineering, etc., offer immense promise. The bad news is that, partly in response to demands from anti-globalization groups, strict restrictions and prohibitions have been imposed on these new technologies.

Gail Omvedt, an American-born Indian scholar who married into a farming family in India has this to say,

Behind the appeal of the campaign is a distorted image of farmers ... which depicts them romantically but demeaningly as backward, tradition-loving, innocent and helpless creatures carrying on with their occupation for love of the land and the soil, and as practitioners of a "way of life" rather than a toilsome income-earning occupation. These imagined farmers have to be protected from market forces and the attacks of multinationals, from the seductions of commercialization and the enslavement of technologies...

Farmers may love the land they work on ... But they are people who are trying to scratch out a living, who want a better life for their children and for whom farming is a source of income and not a very good income. They are familiar with hybrid seeds ... They buy them, try them out, and refuse to use them if they do not perform... Farmers are economic actors and capable of making choices.

The way to overcome widespread poverty is to increase opportunities for people to fully utilize their own talents and abilities. I believe that if given the opportunity, most human beings will be able to overcome poverty through their own enterprise and hard work. For this, economic liberalization and better market access are vitally necessary.

This is not to suggest that the market is the solution to all problems. Markets need to be well regulated, with regulations designed to increase choice rather than stifle initiative. And because not everybody will have the ability and the luck to succeed in a dynamic market environment, especially during periods of downturn and crisis, social safety nets must accompany free markets.

Story Versus Analysis

Even though I disagree with much of Sainath's analysis, I can see where he is coming from. He is a journalist - a very good journalist - who is on the lookout for a story that a section of his audience can connect with. His urban English newspaper reading audience, immersed in a post-industrial economy, probably has very little serious knowledge or interest in obscure issues like Maharashtra's cotton procurement system, or in mundane problems like stray dogs and rabies. It is only the anti-globalization ideological angle of Sainath's story - whether real or imagined - that makes it interesting to some of his readers.

Reasoned analysis is sacrificed to produce a story that a particular section of the metropolitan audience will find engaging. Good reporting is lost in the blind rhetoric of anti-globalization.

A Weekend With Madhu Kishwar

Siddhartha Shome — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 00:18:28 EDT

Madhu Kishwar, founder of Manushi, an eminent Indian social activist, and a truly extraordinary person was in the San Francisco Bay Area a few days ago. I had the opportunity to attend a talk that she gave at Stanford, and also have more informal discussions with her over a lunch and a dinner. It was a wonderful experience.

I have long been an admirer of Ms. Kishwar’s work and I’ve been reading her essays for many years. Now that I have met her in person, I can say that she is also a very warm and friendly human being.

I first came to know of Ms. Kishwar when, some ten years or so ago, I read some of her writing on Indian women’s issues. I found her observations deeply insightful, nuanced and profound. As far as I am concerned, Ms. Kishwar’s series of essays (here’s one) on dowry and related issues is some of the best writing I have ever come across on Indian women’s issues. Here is a quote from her.

It has become politically fashionable to attribute all forms of violence and discrimination against women, including female infanticide and female foeticide to the economic burden of dowry that a daughter is said to represent.

Dowry requirements are used as another excuse for considering daughters a burden. The anti-dowry movement, by limiting itself to the constant repetition of ‘dowry abolition’ as a panacea for women’s empowerment and as the primary strategy for ending their oppression, has only helped give further legitimacy to the conventional belief that daughters are an economic liability.

We need to combat the culture of disinheritance if we wish to effectively combat the growing hold of dowry culture.

Though, in my opinion, some of Ms. Kishwar’s best work has been on women’s issues, she has also worked on and written about a myriad other social issues - on communal violence, Kashmir, governance, globalization, farm policy, stifling laws and regulations, and so on. On most of these issues I have found her views to be sensible, and in many cases, very close to my own point of view (rather, I found that my own views were close to hers).

I fondly recall an incident from a couple of years ago. I had written an article severely critical of the Narmada Bachao Andolan (the NBA, the movement opposed to building a dam across the Narmada River). My article was drawing quite a lot of flak from various NBA supporters. As luck would have it, just around that time, Ms. Kishwar came out with her own article criticizing the NBA, which largely validated my own stance.

This is not to say that I agree with Ms. Kishwar on everything. Ms. Kishwar is an unabashed admirer of Mahatma Gandhi. I don’t quite agree with her on this. I greatly admire Gandhi’s non-violence, his humanity, his leadership of the Indian independence movement, and the dignity and self-respect he engendered among so many Indians. However, I have serious reservations about Gandhi’s rejection of modernity and his denunciation of the scientific-technological world-view (for my views on Gandhi, see this).

Ms. Kishwar also appears to hold the view that pre-modern pre-British India was a land of milk-and-honey, a land of all-round prosperity and contentment, conceptually very similar to Gandhi’s views expressed in Hind Swaraj. I disagree. I see the pre-modern pre-British India as a civilization in precipitous decline, one that had lost its vitality and capacity for internal renewal. I agree with author V.S. Naipaul, who says, “the Indian system [in 1857] ... has come to the end of its possibilities, ... that the India that will come into being at the end of the period of British rule will be better educated, more creative and full of possibility than the India of a century before”.

On the whole, it appears that while I have some disagreements with Ms. Kishwar on how we interpret the past, I agree with her on almost everything she has to say about the present.

In recent years Ms. Kishwar has been working with people who make a living in the informal sector in Delhi, people such as cycle-rickshaw pullers, hawkers, vendors, etc. The talk she gave in Stanford was on this topic.

Consider the case of cycle-rickshaws in Delhi. The law holds that no person shall be allowed to ply a cyle-rickshaw unless he himself is the licensed owner of the rickshaw, and also stipulates that no person shall be granted more than one such license. However, most rickshaw-pullers in Delhi are newly arrived migrants from villages, who have neither the money, nor the desire to buy a rickshaw outright. Most rickshaw owners are themselves enterprising ex-rickshaw-pullers who, through dint of hard work over the years, have come to own a fleet of rickshaws. As a result, almost all the rickshaws on Delhi’s streets are “illegal”. So rickshaw pullers and owners, who are after all providing a legitimate service for which there is a legitimate demand, are forced to pay all kinds of bribes to various officials, just in order to carry on with their livelihoods.

Ms. Kishwar asks a question: suppose similarly restrictive laws were applicable to say cars or aircraft? Suppose, the law stipulated that a person can drive a car or pilot an aircraft only if he owns the vehicle, would it make sense? Why should cycle-rickshaws be treated so differently? We all applaud the business success of, say, Jet Airways when they grow their fleet and expand their network. A migrant from a village who comes pennyless to Delhi, becomes a rickshaw puller, and then grows his business to a fleet of rickshaws, is no less entrepreneurial than the executives at Jet Airways. But far from receiving accolades for building a successful business and creating job opportunities, this entrepreneur is hounded by the police and city administrators and is forced to shoulder the huge cost of arbitrary bribes.

Similarly irrational and restrictive laws apply to most other businesses in the informal economy. In recent years, Ms. Kishwar and Manushi have been involved in pilot project in a hawker market in Delhi (read Ms. Kishwar’s article about it here). This project aims to demonstrate what can be achieved by legalizing the status of street vendors.

On one hand this effort has been has been an enormous success. The hawkers have been very cooperative and, together with Manushi, they have indeed converted the area into a clean, attractive, and well-functioning marketplace. On the other hand, this very success has caused problems. Legalization has meant that corrupt officials and the local mafia have not been able to extort money; and the transformation of a slum-like area to a well-developed market has meant that market value of each stall has gone up tremendously, making the stalls targets of the mafia. The hawkers and Manushi activists have been subjected to continuous harassment and threats of violence. Eventually, after a series of life-threatening attacks on Manushi activists and Ms. Kishwar herself, she is now forced to live with round-the-clock police security.

Ms Kishwar’s work with rickshaw-pullers, hawkers, etc., is driven by the foundational belief that poverty is an unnatural condition for human beings, and given half a chance, the poor will be able to overcome poverty themselves through their own enterprise and hard work. In other words, Ms. Kishwar believes that the key to fighting poverty lies in unleashing the talents and energies of the poor that have been kept suppressed by a web of stifling laws and regulations.

It was rather inspiring to hear Ms. Kishwar declare that there is an entrepreneur in every human being - all that is needed is a chance to succeed. Asked what she thoughts would happen to hawkers and street vendors in India if multinationals like Wal-Mart enter the scene, Ms. Kishwar replied that she was not worried. She is of the opinion that as long as there is a level playing field (i.e., if hawkers/vendors don’t have pay a huge overhead in the form of bribes, etc.) they will be able to compete effectively with Wal-Mart, or will at least find niches where they will be able to thrive.

Ms. Kishwar is a strong proponent of economic liberalization for the poor. She points out that liberalization of the Indian economy has given a massive boost to the corporate sector and many Indian companies have now become globally competitive. She points out, however, that liberalization has never reached the poor. In the informal sector, which employs the vast majority of the Indian population, the License Raj still rules, accompanied by rampant corruption. This stifles initiative and enterprise, and perpetuates poverty.

One particularly fascinating aspect that I have noticed in Ms. Kishwar’s positions on various issues is her propensity to take a nuanced and independent stand, taking practical matters into account, rather than a stark black-or-white stand. This is a quality that is unfortunately uncommon in today’s world.

Consider, for example, the issue of multinationals coming to India. There is a strong pro-multinational business lobby that says that multinationals are the best thing that ever happened. At the other extreme there are strongly anti-multinational groups, such as the World Social Forum, who say that multinationals and corporates are the source of all the world’s evil. Ms. Kishwar takes the nuanced view that multinationals are not the solution to all our problems, nor the source of all evil; but economic liberalization, which allows multinationals to operate, is good for all, and should be extended to the poor.

So independent is Ms. Kishwar in her thinking that she states that she refuses to subscribe to any ‘isms’; so much so that she is well known for her essay “why I do not call myself a feminist”. Unfortunately, in today’s world of 20-second TV soundbites, thoughtful and nuanced voices such as Ms. Kishwar’s tend to be crowded out by extreme black-or-white views on most issues.

An Appeal

After being in publication for many years, and after having carved out a special niche for itself, Manushi has now ceased publication because of lack of funds. Plans are afoot to restart publication of Manushi. I, as well as some others, who met Ms. Kishwar during her stay in the U.S. have offered to help out. If you can help Manushi - either financially or otherwise - please do so.

Environmentalism, Global Warming, & The Tata Nano

Siddhartha Shome — Sun, 20 Jan 2008 07:26:49 EST

A few days ago, we were witness to a a spectacular event - the unveiling by Tata Motors of the world’s cheapest car ever, the Nano, which has a base price of just Rs. one lakh (Rs.100,000 or US$2,500). When, amidst unprecedented hype and anticipation, the “people’s car” was unveiled, it exceeded all expectations. What we saw was the cutest little car ever, with room for four adults, and with adequate power for Indian city roads.

What the Nano Means for India

The Indian middle class has already fallen in love with the Nano. Some two hundred thousand people thronged the Auto Expo in New Delhi to get their first glimpse of the car (link). And no wonder! According to the rating agency CRISIL, “the new price point translates into a 65% increase in the number of Indian families that can afford a car” (link).

Millions of Indians look to the Nano to fulfil their dreams of car ownership, and most importantly, to provide safe transportation. In Delhi alone about 1,800 people die on on the roads each year - about one-third of them on two-wheelers, while only 5% die in cars (link). In Mumbai more than 3,000 die every year in the city’s dangerously overcrowded commuter rail system alone (link). While unveiling the Nano, the chairman of Tata Motors, Ratan Tata, explained the motivation for developing this car, “I observed families riding on two-wheelers – the father driving the scooter, his young kid standing in front of him, his wife seated behind him holding a little baby. It led me to wonder whether one could conceive of a safe, affordable, all-weather form of transport for such a family.”

The World Takes Note

One of the most remarkable aspects of the Tata Nano has been the very high level of prominence it has received in the world media. This is possibly the first time ever that an Indian product developed by an Indian company has been seen as a worldwide leader in innovation and technology. (see for examples, the New York Times, Businessweek, the Economist, ABC News).

Typical was an article entitled “Can Detroit be Relevant?” in the New York Times, which said,

This week, Rick Wagoner, chief executive of General Motors, was at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas talking about driverless cars and the Cadillac Provoq, a concept vehicle powered by a fuel cell. But bigger news came half a world away, at the New Delhi Auto Expo in India. Tata Motors was unveiling the Nano. Nicknamed the People’s Car, the Nano is a small $2,500 car that is expected to revolutionize the auto industry, in India, at least (link).

An Article in a British newspaper actually speculated on the possibility of the Tata Nano ushering in world peace,

Perhaps the idea of the car industry succeeding in bringing peace and prosperity to parts of the developing world where countless governments and other institutions have failed is just too fanciful, but if it ever happens, just remember that it all started with the little Indian (link).

The Detractors

While the Tata Nano has already become India’s pride and joy, and is seen as a world leader in technology and innovation, it does have its share of detractors.

Land Acquisition for the Manufacturing Plant

When Tata Motors was looking for a site to locate a new manufacturing plant for its small car, the state government of West Bengal government successfully persuaded Tata to choose Singur, near Kolkata, as their site. In order to make space for the plant, the West Bengal government had to acquire land from farmers in Singur - a small part of it forcibly. This land acquisition has now snowballed into a major controversy.

While I realize that the West Bengal government could perhaps have done a better job in dealing with the land acquisition at the local level, I fully support their basic idea of turning Singur into an industrial area. It is clear that compared to agriculture, the auto industry in Singur will generate a much higher volume of economic activity, and will also create many more man-days of gainful employment - employment that is likely to be much better in terms of pay, benefits, etc. I do believe that generous compensation should be provided to those who have lost their land, and help and training should be provided as well, to enable them to adjust to their new lives and take advantage of the new economic opportunities that open up.

The Tata Nano and Oil Prices

Some commentators have criticized the Tata Nano on the grounds that widespread car ownership in India will push up the worldwide price of oil (link). This is really an absurd argument. After all, don’t people in India have the right to buy petroleum products (or in economic terms, “create demand” for oil), just as people in the United States or Europe do? It is like criticizing ordinary middle-class families for buying homes and driving up land prices, thereby making it more difficult for the rich to buy their mansions.

It is true that demand for oil has been rising because of economic growth in China, India, etc. However, it is important to note that this is not the only factor driving up the price of oil. The increase in the price of oil has been disproportionately larger than the growth in demand. Today, the price of oil is far far higher than the economic cost of its extraction. The main reason for this is the monopolization of the crude oil market by a cartel of sellers – the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC). It is well known that when monopolies exist, markets cease to function effectively. That is why most countries have anti-monopoly laws. Unfortunately, no such laws exist for sovereign states. As a consequence, OPEC has been able to indulge in the worst kind of price gouging. In order to counter OPEC’s monopoly, I feel that oil importing countries should organize themselves into a buyers’ cartel. The combined buying power of an anti-OPEC buyers’ cartel should be used to bargain effectively with OPEC and drive down the price of oil, much like what Wal-Mart does with its suppliers.

Opposition by Environmentalists

Some environmentalists have severely criticized the Tata Nano, for its perceived negative impact on the environment. One of the most prominent of these is Sunita Narain of the Center for Science and Environment (CSE), who has called for the Tata Nano to be “taxed like crazy”. Another prominent environmentalist, Dr. Rajendra Pachauri, who chairs the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (which won the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize, along with Al Gore) remarked that he is “having nightmares” about the Tata Nano.

I think these environmentalists have got it completely wrong.

The Tata Nano and Mass Transit

Some have put forward the argument that instead of small cars, Indians should concentrate on mass transit. I agree that India should indeed invest heavily in mass transit. However, I do not think that this calls for severe curbs (“tax it like crazy”) on the auto industry. This is not a zero-sum game. This is not an “either-or” situation.

Among Indian cities, Delhi has a much more extensive mass transit system than, say, Kolkata. But Delhi also has a higher rate of car ownership than Kolkata. In reality, car ownership is much more closely tied to peoples’ incomes than to the presence or absence of mass transit.

A few months ago I was in France on vacation. I was most impressed with the excellent public transport system there. However, in spite of an impressive mass transit system, car ownership in France is high - almost 500 cars for every 1000 people (India has 7 cars for every 1000 people) (link, link). Car ownership in France is high, not because the mass transit system there is bad, but simply because peoples’ incomes are high.

Had widespread car ownership spelt doom for public transportation (i.e., buses), the introduction of the Tata Nano would surely have been bad news for Indian bus manufacturers. But guess who is India’s largest bus and truck manufacturer? Tata Motors itself! It does not appear that Tata Motors is the slightest bit concerned that sales of the Nano will cannibalize its bus sales, even though Tata’s profit margin on buses is probably larger than it’s going to be on the Nano. Clearly this is not a zero-sum game. The automobile industry in India is not fundamentally opposed to the idea of mass transit. On the contrary, a healthy and growing economy, of which the auto industry forms an important component, is necessary to pay for large mass transit projects.

The Tata Nano and Global Warming

Some environmentalists have denounced the Tata Nano on the grounds that widespread car ownership in India will worsen global warming. While I do recognize the necessity of dealing with global warming, I feel that the environmentalists’ whole approach to dealing with this issue is fundamentally flawed.

Many environmentalists take the view that human civilization and development have been unmitigated disasters for the planet. In this view, human activities such as economic development, industrialization, consumerism, car-ownership, etc., have been guilty of destroying the environment and causing global warming. Supposedly the only way out is to curb these human activities and abandon our vain attempts to achieve progress and “growth”. In this view, an ideal society is one that is based on limited ambition, limited needs and subsistence production.

Based on the core idea that human activities are inherently bad for the planet, the solutions that environmentalists propose generally involve imposition of limits, quotas, punitive taxes, restrictions, etc., with the aim of curbing human activities and human initiative.

The Problem With the Limits and Quotas Approach

Limits and quotas can certainly lead to some modest incremental reductions in energy consumption. However, to address major environmental problems such as global warming, it is necessary to achieve not just modest reductions, but fundamental paradigm-changing shifts in energy usage. In other words, key breakthroughs in energy technology are needed. It is extremely unlikely that such key breakthroughs can ever be achieved through the limits-and-quotas approach. Consider the following.

None of the key breakthroughs in computer technology can be attributed to the effect of quotas or limits. As authors Ted Nordhaus and Michael Shellenberger point out, it is highly unlikely that simply introducing restrictive quotas for typewriters would have instigated critical breakthroughs in computer technology. Rather, public investment in science and technology research played a huge role in ushering in the computer age – by nurturing once fledgling technologies such as the silicon chip, the internet, etc.

One of the greatest achievements of the twentieth century was the Green Revolution, a paradigm-changing transformation of agriculture in countries like India. It dramatically increased food production, thereby avoiding the Malthusian catastrophe of a global “gigantic inevitable famine” caused by population growth outstripping food supply. During the Green Revolution new high yielding varieties (HYV) of seeds were developed, and technologies and infrastructure such as pesticides, fertilizers, and irrigation systems were made available to farmers. Just like the Computer Revolution, it was not primarily the introduction of quotas and limits (say food quotas), but rather, large public investments and human ingenuity that made the Green Revolution possible.

What many environmentalists do not seem to understand is that fundamental environmental problems like global warming cannot be solved simply by imposing limits and restrictions. If problems like global warming are ever to be solved, they will be solved by human ingenuity, by technological innovation, by further human progress. The idea that the environment can be saved by severely curbing human ingenuity and human initiative is, I believe, fundamentally flawed.

At its core, the world-view held by many environmentalists is deeply conservative. They wish to conserve - to preserve - the world as it was before large scale human intervention in nature. Human society too, they argue, should revert back to the way it was before modern development and industrialization. People are urged to preserve traditional hereditary occupations and traditional means of organizing society. In their view, farmers (and farmers’ children too) should forever remain farmers and never seek better paying industrial jobs. Moreover, farmers are urged to shun modern technologies such as genetically modified seeds, irrigation canals, chemical fertilizers, mechanization, etc., in favor of traditional technologies and subsistence agriculture. In this view, the millions of poor in India should always maintain their traditional way of life, and should always be satisfied with whatever standard of living is achievable through their traditional occupations and traditional technologies. They should never even aspire to possess consumer goods like cell phones, cars, etc. As writer and activist Arundhati Roy puts it, “the idea of turning one billion people into consumers is terrifying... are you going to starve to death dreaming of a mobile phone or are you going to have control of the resources that are available to you and have been for generations....?” (link)

I completely reject this conservative environmentalist world-view. My world-view is a progressive one. I believe that while we should seek to mitigate the negative side-effects of development such as environmental over-exploitation and global warming, the emphasis must be on moving forward, on further human progress. Human civilization and development have been wonderful. People today live longer, fuller, lives, with more prosperity, freedom, opportunity, and choice, than ever before. How can this be a bad thing? The world needs more progress and development, not less.

How to Solve Global Warming

The way I see it, the solution to global warming lies not in restricting, but rather, in encouraging human ingenuity and human initiative to develop new innovative clean energy technologies. For example, Tata Motors, the maker of the Tata Nano, is also investing in clean energy technologies such as cars running on compressed air (link) and cars powered by hydrogen fuel cells (link). Unfortunately, while environmentalists are very vocal in criticizing of the Nano, they fall completely silent when it comes to praising Tata Motors for its clean energy efforts.

While it is important that private companies invest in clean energy technologies, these may not be enough. In order to solve the problem of global warming, it is necessary to develop fundamental paradigm-changing new energy technologies. It is not enough to just depend on free market mechanisms and private companies for this. While free markets and private enterprises work well to incrementally refine technology, giving birth to revolutionary new technologies may not be possible without large public investments. In my view, any program to deal with global warming must have, as its central component, large-scale public investment for research into new innovative clean energy technologies.

At its core, our approach to dealing with global warming must articulate a positive vision that people can embrace, not just a nightmare that people need to be scared of. As authors Ted Nordhaus and Michael Shellenberger point out, the great American Civil Rights leader, Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., is remembered not for his “I have a Nightmare” speech, but for his “I have a Dream” speech.

Imagine if, instead of criticizing the Tata Nano as a “nightmare”, Dr. Pachauri, the eminent environmentalist, had said something like this: “I have a dream that one day every Indian family will be able to afford a car that runs on clean energy. This can never happen by making cars prohibitively expensive through high taxes, but this dream can become a reality if technological innovations make clean energy affordable to all. I call upon the United Nations to fund a massive international effort to develop new affordable clean energy technologies”.

Now, that would have been a vision I’d have loved to embrace. Dreams, Dr. Pachauri, are more powerful than nightmares!

References

Some of the ideas on environmentalism expressed here have been inspired by reading the book “Breakthrough” by Ted Nordhaus and Michael Shellenberger, and attending their talk at Berkeley, California. For more about the book, click here. A recording of the talk is available here.

New Social Movements, Post-modernism, Gandhism and Ambedkarism - Part II

Siddhartha Shome — Sat, 15 Sep 2007 00:12:53 EDT

Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar

Bhimrao Ramji ‘Babasaheb’Ambedkar was one of the greatest leaders that India has ever produced. Ambedkar and his ideas provide inspiration, dignity, and a practical way forward for millions of the most oppressed people in India.

Ambedkar was born in 1891 in an untouchable Mahar family in the Army cantonment of Mhow. British Rule had given his family the chance to break out of their traditional caste occupation. His father served in the Indian Army. Coming from an Army background, young Bhim got a rare opportunity to acquire a modern education. He was one of the first untouchables to go through college. Then, he earned a scholarship for higher studies in the United States. He eventually earned Doctorate degrees from Columbia University in the U.S. and from the London Schools of Economics in England, and was admitted to the London Bar as a barrister.

Ambedkar spent three years (1913 – 1916) at Columbia University in New York City – three years that played a crucial role in his intellectual development. He later recounted that it was at Columbia that he experienced social equality for the first time in his life, and that “the best friends I have had in my life were some of my classmates at Columbia and my great professors, John Dewey, James Shotwell, Edwin Seligman, and James Harvey Robinson” (link). Especially influential was John Dewey, of whom Ambedkar reportedly remarked, “I owe my whole intellectual life to Prof. John Dewey” (link). Dewey’s ideas were very much in the Enlightenment tradition. Ambedkar, like Dewey, held that reason and scientific temper had the potential – for all people everywhere – to challenge unexamined tradition and prejudices by cultivating a collective, democratic “will to inquire, to examine, to discriminate, to draw conclusions only on the basis of evidence after taking pains to gather all available evidence” [Nanda].

In Dr. Ambedkar’s view, an Enlightenment world view, emphasizing reason and a scientific-technological outlook was fundamentally emancipatory in nature, since it provided a means to challenge oppressive traditions and religious dogma. This was diametrically opposed to Gandhi’s Hind Samaj world view. A comparison below of how the two understood the meaning of ‘civilization’ highlights the stark contrast between them.

[Gandhi in Hind Swaraj] Civilization is that mode of conduct which points out to man the path of duty. Performance of duty and observance of morality are convertible terms. To observe morality is to attain mastery over our mind and our passions. So doing, we know ourselves. The Gujarati equivalent for civilization means “good conduct”. If this definition be correct, then India … has nothing to learn from anybody else… We notice that the mind is a restless bird; the more it gets the more it wants, and still remains unsatisfied. The more we indulge our passions the more unbridled they become. Our ancestors therefore set a limit to our indulgences. They saw that happiness was largely a mental condition. A man is not necessarily happy because he is rich or unhappy because he is poor. .... Millions will always remain poor. Observing all this, our ancestors dissuaded us from luxuries and pleasures. We have managed with the same kind of plough as existed thousands of years ago. We have retained the same kind of cottages that we had in former times and our indigenous education remains the same as before. We have had no system of life-corroding competition. Each followed his own occupation or trade and charged a regulation wage. (link)

[Ambedkar] In Gandhism, the common man has no hope. It treats man as an animal and no more. It is true that man shares the constitution and functions of animals, nutritive, reproductive, etc. But these are not distinctively human functions. The distinctively human function is reason, the purpose of which is to enable man to observe, meditate, cogitate, study and discover the beauties of the Universe and enrich his life. … The conclusion that follows is that … the ultimate goal of man’s existence is not reached unless and until he has fully cultivated his mind. … How then can a life of culture be made possible? It is not possible unless there is sufficient leisure. ... The problem of all problems which human society has to face is how to provide leisure to every individual. … Leisure means the lessening of the toil and effort necessary for satisfying the physical wants of life. … Leisure is quite impossible unless some means are found whereby the toil required for producing goods necessary to satisfy human needs is lessened. What can lessen such toil? Only when machines take the place of man. ... Machinery and modern civilization are thus indispensable for emancipating man from leading the life of a brute, and for providing him with leisure and making a life of culture possible. … A democratic society must assure a life of leisure and culture to each one of its citizens. … The slogan of a democratic society must be machinery, and more machinery, civilization and more civilization. Under Gandhism the common man must keep on toiling ceaselessly for a pittance and remain a brute. In short, Gandhism with its call of back to nature, means back to nakedness, back to squalor, back to poverty and back to ignorance for the vast mass of the people. (link)

While Gandhi did fight against untouchability, he defended the varnashrama dharma (the system of four varnas or castes), insisting that untouchability was only an unfortunate corruption of an otherwise sound system (towards the end of his life, Gandhi did make a few statements against the caste system itself). Gandhi’s approach towards untouchables was patronizing. As V.S. Naipaul put it, they were “Harijans, children of God, people for whom good things might be done, objects of sentiment and a passing piety”. Ambedkar, on the other hand, called for outright annihilation of the entire caste system, and called upon Dalits to stand up for their rights as human beings. Ambedkar also rejected the Gandhian vision of an idyllic Ram Rajya made up of peaceful and contended village communities. He declared, “The love of the intellectual Indians for the village community is of course infinite if not pathetic. ... What is the village but a sink of localism, a den of ignorance, narrow mindedness, and communalism?” [Jaffrelot]

In 1936, Ambedkar had declared, “Unfortunately for me I was born a Hindu untouchable. It was beyond my power to prevent that, but I declare that it is within my power to refuse to live under ignoble and humiliating conditions. I solemnly assure you that I will not die a Hindu” [Jaffrelot]. In 1956, he led a mass conversion of Dalits into Buddhism. Ambedkar, however, did not just ask Dalits to convert to one of the existing schools of Buddhism (Mahayana, Hinayana, etc.), rather he launched a new school of Buddhism, which some have labeled ‘Navayana’ – literally the ‘new vehicle’. Ambedkar set forth his Navayana Buddhism in the book The Buddha and His Dhamma (link), in which he laid great stress on encouraging a rational scientific-technological world view, as these following quotes demonstrate.

Belief in the supernatural is not Dhamma. [The Buddha’s] first object was to lead man to the path of rationalism. … Buddhism is nothing if not rationalism. That is why worship of the supernatural is not Dhamma. [The Buddha and His Dhamma, Book 3 Part 4]

Belief in Ishwara (God) is not essentially part of Dhamma. [Book 3 Part 4]

Belief in the infallibility of books of is not Dhamma. [Book 3 Part 4]

Dhamma to be Saddhamma must promote equality between man and man. [Book 3 Part 5]

Now what is Dhamma? and why is Dhamma necessary? According to the Buddha, Dhamma consists of Prajna and Karuna. What is Prajna? And why Prajna? Prajna is understanding. The Buddha made Prajna one of the two corner-stones of His Dhamma because he did not wish to leave any room for superstition. What is Karuna? And why Karuna? Karuna is love. Because without it, Society can neither live nor grow; that is why the Buddha made it the second corner-stone of His Dhamma. [Book 4 Part 1]

If there is anything which could be said with confidence it is: He was nothing if not rational, if not logical. Anything therefore which is rational and logical, other things being equal, may be taken to be the word of the Buddha. [Book 4 Part 2]

It is important to note that Dr. Ambedkar did not disdain all tradition. Rather, he chose to selectively promote those traditions that provide support for rationalism and scientific temper. He said, “my social philosophy may be said to be enshrined in three words: liberty, equality and fraternity. Let no one however say that I have borrowed my philosophy from the French Revolution. I have not. My philosophy has its roots in religion and not in political science. I have derived them from the teachings of my master, the Buddha.” The day before his conversion, Ambedkar underlined his connection to Indian tradition, “Buddhism is part and parcel of Bharatiya culture. I have taken care that my conversion will not harm the tradition of the culture and history of this land.” [Jaffrelot]

Some More Observations on the New Social Movements

Today, Dalits display a great deal of enthusiasm for Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar and his ideas. Ambedkar statues and portraits – usually depicting him in a Western suit and tie – are proudly displayed wherever Dalits live. Following in Ambedkar’s footsteps, Dalits generally do not seem to share the postmodernists’ aversion towards modernity and the West. Consider, for example, the Dalit Goddess called ‘English’, inpired by the Statue of Liberty, unveiled recently by Ambedkarite Dalit columnist Chandrabhan Prasad (see a portrait of Goddess English here and Prasad’s interview here). Considering this, it seems to me that civil society groups, NGOs, etc., who claim to be championing the cause of the downtrodden, should at least take a serious look at Ambedkar’s ideas emphasizing rationality and modernity, rather than blindly follow Gandhian traditionalism and postmodernism.

Another very serious problem with the postmodernist ideology is that it provides ideological support not only to the new social movements but also to the corrosive and intolerant extremist Hindutva and pseudo-Swadeshi movements. As Meera Nanda has shown, the extreme Hindutva ideology (equating astrology with science, for instance) is a close ideological cousin of postmodernism and Gandhian traditionalism. (link)

Having said all this, I do have some points of agreement with the new social movements.

One concern raised by the new social movements that I agree with is the need to protect the environment. However I do not agree with them that the solution lies in abandoning the entire concept of development, and moving towards a Gandhian-inspired traditional society with limited needs and subsistence production, populated by contented and unambitious people. My concept of development is completely different. To me, the fundamental idea of development means unlocking human potential. This process of unlocking human potential does involve some use of natural resources, but over-exploitation of natural recourses is neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition for development. It should be possible, through human ingenuity and technological advancement, to have development without over-exploitation of natural resources.

Another concern raised by the new social movements is the very high degree of inequality in Indian society. I do agree with them that this is a very serious problem for India. However, I do not agree that the solution lies in being anti-modern, anti-industrialization, anti-economic-growth, anti-Westernization, etc. If there there’s anything worse than the inequality that exists in the modern industrialized part of India, it is the inequality that exists in traditional feudal India. For instance, it is estimated that there are more than 10 million bonded labourers (slaves) in India today (link). In other words, at least one out of every 100 Indians is a slave. However, one finds that slavery, perhaps the worst imaginable form of inequality, is most rampant in India in those occupations and communities that are almost totally untouched by modernity or industrialization or Westernization. True, India’s fast growing information technology sector benefits only a small section of the highly educated, upper-caste, upper-class population of India. Clearly, economic growth must be made much more inclusive. One thing that I think should be done is to introduce some sort of meaningful affirmative action program (maybe reservations, maybe some alternative) in the private corporate sector – the most dynamic part of the Indian economy. I also feel it is important is to encourage the manufacturing sector, which has the potential to provide decent-paying jobs to large numbers of less highly educated people. For this, the government must invest in physical infrastructure – power plants, roads, ports, etc. Every effort must also be made to increase agricultural productivity through technology such as genetically modified seeds, etc. For the long term, the government must invest heavily in universal quality primary education and in basic health care.

Book References

Jaffrelot, Christophe 2005. Dr. Ambedkar and Untouchability. Columbia University Press, New York.

Nanda, Meera 2003. Prophets Facing Backward. Rutgers University Press, New Jersey.

New Social Movements, Post-modernism, Gandhism and Ambedkarism - Part I

Siddhartha Shome — Fri, 14 Sep 2007 03:16:55 EDT

In recent years in India, there has arisen a phenomenon described variously as the “new social movements”, “anti-globalization movement” or (self described as) “people’s movements”. There are many groups in this category, many of them raucous, with disagreements among themselves. However, they do have a substantial shared ideology. The following are some shared characteristics.

They claim to represent the “people” – the downtrodden Indian masses, without, however, subjecting this claim to the test of democratic elections.
They are against globalization, which, it is claimed, is bad for the “people”, though apparently not for the anti-globalizers themselves, who nurture elaborate multinational networks of activists and supporters.
They claim to be fighting for oppressed groups such as Dalits and Adivasis. However, the movement does not actually include any Dalits or Adivasis among its leaders or ideologues.
They oppose the state as well as large corporations and large funding agencies such as the World Bank. They also oppose large-scale projects. These are seen as fundamentally exploitative of the “people”.
They claim to be fighting for the protection of the environment, which, in their view means minimizing any kind of substantial new technological intervention in nature. Thus, they denounce nuclear power plants even though these produce far less greenhouse gases than thermal power plants. Similarly, they denounce genetically modified crops even though these have the potential to reduce the need for irrigation and the need for chemical pesticides.
They criticize the mainstream industrialized, corporate West, though many of the movements’ leaders themselves maintain strong ties with the West.
They reject Enlightenment ideas of the universalism of science and reason as Western hegemonic impositions. Rather, they claim to be in favor of diverse local or indigenous traditional knowledge and belief systems and ways of organizing society.
They reject universal indices of measuring development and progress such as GDP, life expectancy, child mortality, literacy rate, etc. Rather, they argue in favor of subjective and local yardsticks, such as “happiness”, “preserving of the link between people and the earth/river/forest/God”, “preserving the wholeness of the community”, etc.

Ideological Basis of the New Social Movements

Sometime in the 18th century, the Age of Enlightenment ushered in new ways of thinking in Europe and America. Enlightenment thinkers such as John Locke, Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Paine and Voltaire sought to discard irrationality, superstition, and inherited dogmas with reason, science and rationality, and believed that systematic thinking should be applied to all spheres of human activity. Since then, many important intellectuals – Karl Marx for instance – have accepted the basic values of the Enlightenment. These values represent “modernity” and form the basis of the rationalist scientific-technological outlook and the each-citizen-is-equal principles that lie at the foundation of the Western democracies. Enlightenment ideas entered the Indian consciousness around the latter half of the 19th century. The Constitution of India, adopted in 1950, lies very much in the Enlightenment tradition.

In the last few decades, a new movement known as post-modernism has become fashionable in intellectual circles, which denounces Enlightenment’s claim to universality. Post-modernists – like Ashis Nandy, one of its leading ideologues – hold that acceptance of Enlightenment ideas by Indians and other non-Westerners represents a “colonization of the mind”. They reject the idea that the spread of rationality and scientific temper are emancipatory, and instead argue for the preservation of “local knowledge systems” embedded in “traditional cosmologies”, religions, and traditional practices of agriculture, medicine, etc.

As far as India is concerned, these post-modern ideas are not new – they were espoused a century ago by Mahatma Gandhi. Gandhi, the father of the nation, can be viewed from many different angles – there is Gandhi the nationalist; there is Gandhi the politician; there is Gandhi the prophet of non-violence; and then, there is the Gandhi of Hind Swaraj, the repudiator of modernity and Enlightenment values. It is this last anti-modern Gandhi that post-modernists embrace.

Gandhi’s rejection of modernity and Enlightenment values comes out most forcefully in Hind Swaraj, a short book he wrote in 1909. In his essay Postmodern Gandhi, Lloyd Rudolph characterizes Hind Swaraj as the “opening salvo of the postmodern era”. Here are a few quotes from Hind Swaraj that demonstrate Gandhi’s complete antipathy towards a modern rationalistic scientific-technological world view.

[on Western civilization] Let us first consider what state of things is described by the word “civilization”. ... Formerly, in Europe, people ploughed their lands mainly by manual labor. Now, one man can plough a vast tract by means of steam engines and can thus amass great wealth. This is called a sign of civilization. Formerly, only a few men wrote valuable books. Now, anybody writes and prints anything he likes and poisons people’s minds. ... This civilization takes note neither of morality nor of religion. ... This civilization is irreligion, and it has taken such a hold on the people in Europe who are in it appear to be half mad. ... Women, who should be the queens of households, wander in the streets or they slave away in factories. ... This civilization is such that one has only to be patient and it will be self-destroyed. According to the teaching of Mahommed this would be considered a Satanic Civilization. Hinduism calls it the Black Age.

[on the railways] The railways, too, have spread the bubonic plague. ... They are the carriers of plague germs. Formerly we had natural segregation. ... Railways accentuate the evil nature of man. Bad men fulfill their evil designs with greater rapidity. The holy places of India have become unholy. Formerly, people went to these places with very great difficulty. Generally, therefore, only the real devotees visited such places. Nowadays rogues visit them in order to practice their roguery.

[on doctors] Doctors have almost unhinged us. Sometimes I think that quacks are better than highly qualified doctors…. The business of a doctor is to … rid the body of diseases that may afflict it. How do these diseases arise? Surely by our negligence or indulgence. I overeat, I have indigestion. I go to a doctor, he gives me medicine, I am cured. I overeat again, I take his pills again. Had I not taken the pills in the first instance, I would have suffered the punishments deserved by me and I would not have overeaten again. The doctor intervened and helped me to indulge myself. My body thereby certainly felt more at ease; but my mind became weakened. A continuance of a course of medicine must, therefore, result in loss of control over the mind. ... and the result is that we have become deprived of self-control.

[on education] If we consider our civilization to be the highest, I have regretfully to say that much of the effort [for compulsory education] ... is of no use. …. To teach boys reading, writing and arithmetic is called primary education. A peasant earns his bread honestly. He has ordinary knowledge of the world. He knows fairly well how he should behave towards his parents, his wife, his children and his fellow villagers. He understands and observes the rules of morality. But he cannot write his own name. What do you propose to do by giving him knowledge of letters? Will you add an inch to his happiness? Do you wish to make him discontented with his cottage or his lot?

As Lloyd Rudolph have shown in Postmodern Gandhi, Gandhi’s Hind Swaraj world view was never widely accepted either by Congress or by the Constituent Assembly of India. In 1945 Nehru wrote to Gandhi, “it is many years since I read Hind Swaraj ... but even when I read it twenty years ago it seemed to me completely unreal”. He further reminded Gandhi, “... the Congress has never considered that picture (portrayed in Hind Swaraj) much less adopted it”. In those days it was the nationalist, non-violent, humanist Gandhi who was admired and respected by Nehru and others – not the Gandhi of Hind Swaraj. However, things have changed in recent decades. According to Rudolph, “Gandhi’s image and reputation in India began to recuperate in the 1980s when a postmodern Gandhi began to take shape. Books by Ashis Nandy and other postmodernist scholars contributed to the turn-around. The critical and box office success of Richard Attenborough’s 1983 film Gandhi ... fed back to India. .... A newly-remembered Gandhi began to inspire and legitimize a burgeoning civil society of social and political movements and not-for-profit, non-governmental and voluntary organizations”.

According to postmodernist guru, Ashis Nandy, the Gandhi of Hind Swaraj had “decolonized his mind”, had freed himself from the “intimate enemy”, and spoke from “outside the imperium”. Here is a quote from Nandy approvingly describing the connection between the Gandhi of Hind Swaraj and the new social movements:

The third Gandhi is the Gandhi of the ragamuffins, eccentrics and the unpredictable. This Gandhi is more hostile to Coca-Cola than to Scotch whisky and considers the local versions of Coca-Cola more dangerous than imported ones. This is because his objection to highly mechanized fast foods is structural and, therefore, he considers it more dangerous if, on nationalist grounds, long-lasting, deep-rooted Indian structures are created to produce superfluous items of mass consumption within the Indian economy. ... This Gandhi – vintage Hind Swaraj – is also bit of a nag and a spoil-sport. He loves to be a maverick and an oddity in our public life. ... It is this Gandhi who has guided the notorious agitation of Medha Patkar against the Narmada dam, Claude Alvares against Operation Flood, and Vandana Shiva against the Green Revolution. ... this Gandhi and his young friends are a real nuisance to the Indian State. … They are a menace to the common sense that passes as sanity but can be actually called …the psychopathology of everyday public life. (link)

Gail Omvedt, one of the most astute participants in this debate, has this to say:

The great values of the Enlightenment and the French revolution are today under attack … not only in India from advocates of pseudo-swadeshi who would see them as merely “Western” but also world-wide, from postmodernists and eco-romanticists who think “progress” is impossible and from Leftists who have taken “liberalism” and “liberty” as bad words. … Eco-romanticism, taking its justification from Mahatma Gandhi, tends to see history as heading into a downspin. … [They argue] that the French Revolution is finished; its ideals cannot be extended to Dalits, women or other sections of the marginalized in the world, and we must turn away from this vain effort to achieve “growth” to acceptance of a society based on limited needs, subsistence production, and stasis. (link)

An Alternative World View

Other social movements that have come up in India claiming to represent the downtrodden have a very different ideology.

Mahatma Jyotirao Phule, who belonged to the low Mali caste, was the leader of the anti-Brahmin movement in Maharashtra from around the 1840s to 1880s. Phule was greatly influenced by the works of Thomas Paine – one of stalwarts of the Enlightenment. Phule was so taken in by the Enlightenment philosophy of the American Founding Fathers, and with the American slavery abolition movement, that he dedicated one of his books to “the good people of the United States” (link). Today, Mahatma Phule is revered figure in low caste movements all over India.

E.V. Ramaswamy Naicker, reverently called Periyar, was the founder and leader of the anti-Brahmin movement in Tamil Nadu from the 1920s to the 1960s. His movement was known as the Self Respect Movement and he founded the social organization Dravidar Kazhagam. He fought against upper caste domination. Periyar’s ideology was quite the opposite of Hind Swaraj. Periyar was a rationalist and an atheist, and he ridiculed Hindu rituals and superstitions. In contrast to Gandhi’s conspicuous vegetarianism, Periyar made it a point to eat large quantities of meat, including beef. Today, Periyar’s ideas still form an important part of Tamil social consciousness, and offshoots of his Dravidar Kazhagam dominate the political scene in the state.

To be continued in Part II. In Part II we will look at Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar's world view.

1857: First War of Indian Independence? - Part III

Siddhartha Shome — Sat, 9 Jun 2007 00:44:21 EDT

In this part we will reflect on the nature of the revolt of 1857-58 and its significance.

First War of Indian Independence?

Can this uprising really be called the ‘First War of Indian Independence’? Were the rebels really fighting for national independence? Was it really a “shining example of our national unity” as Prime Minister Manmohan Singh recently described it?

As Dalrymple has shown in his book, the rebel soldiers saw this as a war of religion. Muslim soldiers saw the war as a jihad. High caste Hindu soldiers were primarily motivated by a desire prevent any violation of their ritualistic caste purity. Consider the event that triggered the war: reports of cartridges greased with cow and pig fat. Now, touchability/untouchability of beef lies at the core of upper caste Hindu concepts of ritual purity/impurity. Interestingly, and contrary to popular belief, large sections of Hindus – the lowest castes (the Dalits of today), who comprise some one-fifth of all Hindus – have never had any qualms about touching or eating beef or pork (link, link, link). This revolt was certainly a war about religion. But it was about a narrowly defined idea of religion as a set of rituals and taboos wrapped up in notions of caste purity and pollution, rather than any broad inclusive vision. Very different indeed from the progressive and inclusive religiosity of Gandhi or Vivekananda.

We have also seen that for most of the war, the Rani of Jhansi was quite willing to ally with the British to take on the neighboring states of Orchha and Datia. Though the Rani of Jhansi was indeed a heroic warrior, the spirit of national unity simply did not exist for her or for any of the other feudal rulers. The rebels certainly did not present a “shining example of our national unity”. If anything, Indian unity was better represented by the ‘British’ forces, which were made up largely of Indians, including Sikhs, Gurkhas, Muslims from the North West Frontier, low-caste soldiers of the Bombay and Madras armies, and contingents from various princely states.

Most of the leaders of the Indian independence movement and social reform movements in the post-1857 period did not take inspiration from the revolt, nor did they say much about it. However, what little they had to say is revealing.

In 1903, in Indian Opinion, Mahatma Gandhi opines:

The year 1857 was a year of great anxiety. … An appeal was made to the worst superstitions of the people of India, religion was greatly brought into play, and all that could possibly be done by the evil-minded was done to unsettle people’s minds, and to make them hostile to British rule. It was at that time of stress and trouble that great mass of the Indian people remained absolutely firm and unshaken in their loyalty [to the British] (link).

Later, however, Gandhi may have taken a somewhat different view of the revolt. In 1925 he says:

You do not know of our condition at the time of the 1857 revolt. The persecution of the people at that time has no parallel. You cannot imagine how happy the country was before the days of the modern innovations – the railways, post and telegraph, etc. (link).

Jawaharlal Nehru in Glimpses of World History writes:

The revolt developed into a war of independence … but it was independence of the old feudal type, with an autocratic emperor at the head. There was no freedom for the common people in it. … It was fighting for a lost cause, the feudal order … The revolt of 1857-58 was the last flicker of feudal India.

And in Discovery of India, he says:

Essentially it was a feudal outburst, headed by feudal chiefs and their followers... There was hardly any national and unifying sentiment among the leaders.

Maulana Abul Kalam Azad in his foreword to the book 1857, says:

As I read about the events of 1857, I am forced to the sad conclusion that Indian national character had sunk very low. The leaders of the revolt could never agree. They were mutually jealous and continually intrigued against one another. ... [Bahadur Shah Zafar] was not fit to serve even as a symbol.

Mahatma Jyotirao Phule, the great social reformer in Maharashtra, who had started schools for low caste girls in the 1840s, took an active interest in the events of 1857. In his book Slavery he writes:

It was through Providential dispensation that the revolt engineered by Bhat Nana [Saheb] was put down by the brave English rulers. Otherwise the so-called emancipated Brahmins who perform religious rites ... would surely have sentenced many Mahars for wearing the dhoti tucked away on one side, or for (the offence of) having uttered Sanskrit verses during religious discourses, to transportation for life.

Dalits in general take a dim view of the revolt of 1857. Among the loyal soldiers of the Bombay Army around the time of the revolt was one Maloji Sakpal, an untouchable Mahar by caste. The army had instituted a policy of compulsory education for Indian soldiers of all castes as well as their children, both male and female. As a result, Maloji’s son Ramji received a formal education. Ramji also joined the army, and he and his wife – she too from a military family and therefore educated – emphasized education for their own children. One of these children, Bhim, better known today as Dr. Babaseheb Ambedkar, would go on to become one of the greatest thinkers and leaders of modern India. Naturally, Dr. Ambedkar did not think very highly of the revolt, and was actually quite proud of the Dalits’ role in suppressing it. Here is a quote from him:

The mutiny of 1857 was an attempt … to drive out the English and reconquer India. …the mutiny was headed by the Bengal Army. The Bombay Army and the Madras Army remained loyal and it was with their help that the Mutiny was suppressed. What was the composition of the Bombay Army and the Madras Army? They were mostly drawn from the untouchables, the Mahars in Bombay and the Pariahs in Madras. It is therefore true to say that the untouchables not only helped the British to conquer India they helped them to retain India (link).

The only nationalist leader of note who viewed the revolt as a heroic struggle was Vinayak Damodar Savarkar. He was the first one to describe the revolt as “the first war of Indian independence”, which was also the title of a book that he published. Savarkar seems to have taken a romanticized view of the revolt, one not entirely based on facts. Even then, he still struggled with one blatant and undeniable fact – that the rebel soldiers everywhere had proclaimed the restoration of the old and autocratic Mughal Rule, they had not even claimed to establish a new progressive government. Savarkar was never able to entirely square the circle, as this quote from his book demonstrates:

However this establishment of the power of this old representative of the Mughals, was not for bringing back the old Mughal dynasty or the old barbaric tradition…It would have been suicidal to do so…because that would have meant that the blood shed by Hindu martyrs, fighters for their religion, for their independence ... had been in vain.

My own view is that the revolt of 1857 fell well short of a war of national independence. I agree with Jawaharlal Nehru’s characterization that it was the “last flicker of feudal India”. However, it is also true that the revolt was more than just a series of local mutinies and uprisings. Some form of rudimentary nationalism did exist among the rebel soldiers, which gave them some sort of unity of purpose, and which drove them to proclaim the restoration of the Mughal Empire (rather than, say, establish new kingdoms in Meerut, Mathura, etc.).

Various other reasons have also been given by various groups regarding why the revolt should not be viewed as a glorious war of national independence. For a Dalit view, see this. Here is a Sikh view, and here is Hindu Nationalist perspective.

End of Feudal India and the Birth of a New India

Rather than the ‘First War of Indian Independence’, what we should really celebrate in 2007 is the 150th anniversary of end of feudal India. And this is something that is indeed worth celebrating, because the end of feudal India also marks the birth of a new and much more vibrant India.

The very same year as the revolt – 1857 – the great universities of Calcutta, Bombay and Madras were founded. These were representative of the new learning and the new ways of thinking that would sweep India over the next few decades. The very first batch of students to graduate from Calcutta University included Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay, whose song Vande Mataram would inspire nationalism in millions of Indians. Among the first few graduates of Bombay University was Bal Gangadhar Tilak, the great nationalist thinker and leader. Eventually, it would be people like these, educated and inculcated with modern ideas, rather than the feudal chiefs and princes, who would go on to shape a new India.

As author V.S. Naipaul puts it in India: A Million Mutinies Now, there was a recognition that the feudal system was a “system ... that has come to the end of its possibilities, ... that the India that will come into being at the end of the period of British rule will be better educated, more creative and full of possibility than the India of a century before; that it will have a larger idea of human association, and that out of this larger idea, and out of the encompassing humiliation of British rule, there will come to India the ideas of country and pride and historical self analysis, things that seem impossibly remote [in 1857].”

Concluded

References

Unless otherwise mentioned, almost everything here (all three parts) comes from the following:

Majumdar, R.C. 1963. The Sepoy Mutiny and the Revolt of 1857. Firma K.L. Mukhopadhyay, Calcutta.

Dalrymple, William. 2006. The Last Mughal The Fall of a Dynasty, Delhi, 1857. Penguin Viking, New Delhi.

Roy, Tapti. 2006. Raj of the Rani. Penguin Books, New Delhi.Lakshmibai, Rani of Jhansi (web-site) This excellent web-site has a wealth of information on the Rani of Jhansi.

1857: First War of Indian Independence? - Part II

Siddhartha Shome — Fri, 8 Jun 2007 00:15:58 EDT

Continued from Part I.

In this part we will take a look at events in Jhansi leading up to and during the revolt. The events in Jhansi are not very widely known. So I give a slightly more detailed description of these events, based primarily on Tapti Roy’s delightful new book, Raj of the Rani.

Jhansi was a principality in Bundelkhand (in present day U.P. and M.P.) where the Marathi Brahmin Newalkar family ruled, initially as governors of the Peshwas, and then under British protection. The Newalkars were devoted to the British, as the quote below exemplifies.

In 1832, William Bentnick, the Governor General of India ... visited Jhansi. Amidst all the glitter [the Jhansi ruler] Ramchandra Rao was awarded the title of Maharajadhiraj and described as a ‘devoted servant of the glorious King of England’ ... Ramchandra, overwhelmed by this honor, begged to be allowed to adopt the Union Jack as the flag of Jhansi. The request was granted and the flag hoisted over ... Jhansi fort.

In 1842, the ruler of Jhansi, Gangadhar Rao, got married to Manikarnika, affectionately known as Manu. Henceforth Manu would be known to the world as Rani Lakshmibai of Jhansi. In 1853, just a day before Gangadhar Rao’s death, the childless couple adopted a boy as their son and heir to the throne. However, the British authorities refused to recognize him as the legitimate heir, and, under a policy known as the Doctrine of Lapse, decided to annex Jhansi. The Rani spent the next four years trying to reverse that decision through a series of petitions and appeals to the British authorities. She impressed (link) many Britishers with the force of her personality, as well as her beauty and grace. Her exertions were to no avail, however. The British Governor General remained unmoved. According to Roy, Rani Lakshmibai’s actions in these years demonstrate her “faith and trust in British justice&rdquo

The storm broke over Jhansi on 5th June 1857, when soldiers in the British cantonment rose in rebellion. A massacre of the British followed. The Rani herself seems to have been caught completely by surprise. Roy, in her book, shows that Rani Lakshmibai had nothing to do with either the revolt of the soldiers or the massacre of the British, nor was she consulted prior to the uprising. In fact, in those chaotic days, the Rani herself seems to have been in some considerable danger from the rebel soldiers. Having ousted the British, they demanded money from the Rani in return for installing her on the throne of Jhansi, and threatened to install a rival claimant, Sadashiv Rao, instead. It is likely that they threatened her with more dire consequences as well. After extorting a satisfactorily large sum from the Rani, the soldiers handed Jhansi over to her and left for Delhi. Rani Lakshmibai was now ruler of Jhansi.

In a letter to a British official written on 12th June 1857 Rani Lakshmibai gave her own version of the events.

…the [soldiers] thro’ their faithlessness, cruelty and violence, killed all the European civil and military officers, the clerks and all their families and the Ranee not being able to assist them for want of guns, and soldiers as she had only 100 or 50 people engaged in guarding her house she could render them no aid, which she very much regrets. That they the mutineers afterwards behaved with much violence against herself and servants, and extorted a great deal of money from her. ... if she, at all hesitated to comply with their requests, they would blow up her palace with guns. Taking into consideration her position she was obliged to consent to all the requests made and put up with a great deal of annoyance, and had to pay large sums in property, as well as in cash to save her life and honor (link).

Ruling Jhansi was no cakewalk for the Rani. A rival claimant to the throne, Sadashiv Rao, captured a fort and proclaimed himself ruler of Jhansi. Then, on 10th August 1857, the Rani of Orchha (a neighboring state) sent her army into Jhansi to reclaim land her predecessors had lost to the Newalkars. Not to be left out, another neighboring state, Datia, invaded Jhansi as well. Rani Lakshmibai had to take frantic measures to prevent a complete collapse. It is a testament to her extraordinary ability and leadership qualities that not only was she able to quell Sadashiv Rao’s rebellion and repel the invading armies of Orchha and Datia, but she also managed to restore some semblance of order and normality to Jhansi. What is rather astonishing (in light of popular belief today) is that during this period (June to December 1857), a critical phase in the ‘First War of Indian Independence’, Rani Lakshmibai viewed the British not as her enemy but as her ally. Rather, she viewed Orchha and Datia as her enemies. Here is a quote from a letter she wrote to a British official on 1st January 1858.

To narrate all the strange and unexpected occurrences that took place during your absence from India is a painful task. I cannot describe the troubles and hardships I have suffered during this period. Your return to India has given me new life. ... At the time when the British forces mutinied at this place, and when the chiefs of Dutya and Oorchha commenced their career of coercion and rapine, I lost no time in writing to the British officers ... I tried my best by selling my property, taking money on interest--collected a party of men and took steps to protect the city. … The enemy ... did much mischief. … I wrote [to the British] … for reinforcements ... Under these circumstances I can never expect to get rid of these enemies and to clear myself of the heavy debts without the assistance of the British Government. ...I beg you will give me your support in the best way you can, and thus save myself and the people who are reduced to the last extremity and are not able to cope with the enemy (link).

British officials stationed near Jhansi also viewed Rani Lakshmibai as their ally. A British proclamation was issued declaring that “the Ranee will rule in the name of the British Government” and called on “all great and small, to obey the Ranee, and to pay the government revenue to her”. However, in Kolkata, high ranking British officials were bent upon indiscriminate reprisals. Without bothering about evidence, and discounting reports from their own officials in the area, they decided that Rani Lakshmibai must pay for the massacre of the British in Jhansi. The die was cast. Rani Lakshmibai’s fate was sealed. A Bombay Army force commanded by Major General Hugh Rose was sent to Jhansi. British actions (and inaction) had, by around January/February 1858, created serious doubts in the Rani’s mind about their intentions.

However she still harbored hopes of reconciliation. A report reached the British, which said, “it is given out that should this vakeel [the Rani’s representative] be treated kindly the Ranee will in no way oppose the British force. She will pay obedience to our government and return all the districts now in her possession. While on the contrary should the British officers show displeasure she will fight to the last”. By end-February 1858, Rani Lakshmibai had come to the realization that she had no choice but to “fight to the last” against the British.

It is only at this late stage, with the rebel forces already defeated in Delhi, Kanpur and Lucknow, and the most critical phase of the revolt already over, that she declares herself against the British and the Rani of Jhansi of popular legend emerges: the heroic warrior queen fighting the British with audacity and courage. On 21st March 1858, Hugh Rose’s forces besieged Jhansi. By 5th April they had taken the fort by assault. The battle was fierce, and Rani Lakshmibai led from the front – she was always in the midst of the fighting, inspiring and encouraging her troops. As Jhansi fell, the Rani affected a daring escape. Later, she, along with rebel leaders Rao Saheb and Tantia Tope carried out a bold attack on British ally Jayajirao Scindia, and captured Gwalior. In British eyes, the seizure of Gwalior “created a sensation throughout India only equaled by that which was caused by the first mutinies”. Hugh Rose marched on Gwalior. And there, fighting the British, Rani Lakshmibai died a true warrior’s death on 17th June 1858, and passed into legend.

Continued: In Part III we will reflect on the nature of the revolt and its significance.

1857: First War of Indian Independence? - Part I

Siddhartha Shome — Thu, 7 Jun 2007 00:13:11 EDT

In recent weeks India has been witness to quite a hoopla surrounding celebrations of the 150th anniversary of the ‘First War of Indian Independence’ of 1857. At a celebration in Delhi the Prime Minister Manmohan Singh claimed “there is no doubt that 1857 was a shining example of our national unity”.

I do not quite share these sentiments. In fact, my reading of history leads to very ambiguous sentiments regarding the very same events.

This is the first of a three-part series. In the first part I give a background and look at events in Delhi, the strategic center of the revolt. In the second part I look at events in Jhansi, another important center of the revolt. In the third and final part I reflect on the nature of the revolt and its significance.

The Background
By 1857 the British East India Company had established its Raj (rule) across India. Lately, they had also started tinkering with religious and social issues. They introduced a radical critique of certain customs and practices that were deeply entrenched in India and had religious and social sanction. Sati was banned, and widow remarriage was made legal. Many Indians resented this and saw it as a threat to their religion. In 1857 such resentment was rife among soldiers in the Bengal Army, most of whom were upper caste Hindus or Muslims. Greviences existed as well over pay, over changes in the feudal landholding pattern in Awadh (central portion of Today's Uttar Pradesh) where most of the soldiers came from. In the restive days of summer 1857 there were also rumors that the British were mixing dust ground from bones of cows with flour for the soldiers use, in order to make them lose caste.

So when there was talk that new rifles issued to them had cartridges lubricated with fat from cows and pigs, the soldiers’ resentment boiled over (beef being taboo for high caste Hindus and pork being taboo for Muslims). In cantonments across North India, Bengal Army soldiers rose up against the British, as did some princes. For a few months British rule ceased to exist across large swathes of North India. The British eventually defeated the rebels, and followed it up with brutal reprisals.

The Nature of the Revolt
To understand the nature of the revolt let us take a closer look at events at two locations, Delhi and Jhansi.

Delhi:
The events in Delhi during the revolt have been masterfully narrated by William Dalrymple in his book The Last Mughal. The broad outlines are well known, so I give here only a very brief description. In the years prior to 1857, while the Mughals still retained a powerful hold on the imagination of the people of North India, the British were the real power behind the throne. The Mughal emperor, Bahadur Shah Zafar, had very little interest or influence on the matters of state and spent most of his time on artistic pursuits.

The revolt started in Meerut on May 10th 1857 when soldiers of the Bengal Army, incensed by reports of cartridges greased with the fat of cows and pigs, rose against the British. They then took control of Delhi, where they proclaimed the restoration of Mughal Rule, and compelled a reluctant 81 year old Bahadur Shah Zafar to declare his support for the rebellion. After regrouping, British forces attacked rebel-controlled Delhi in early June and entrenched themselves on a ridge near the city's Kashmiri Gate, just outside the city; but mindful of their small numbers, made no attempts to assault the city or even to blockade it. By September, sufficient reinforcements had arrived for the British to go on the offensive. By this time, the ‘British’ forces outside Delhi comprised mostly Indian troops - about 80%. The assault on the city was carried out and after a few days of fierce fighting, Delhi fell to the British on September 21st 1857.

It is clear from Dalrymple’s book that as far as the Indian participants were concerned, the uprising was overwhelmingly seen as a war of religion. British men and women who had converted to Islam – apparently there were quite a few in Delhi – were not hurt; but Indians who had converted to Christianity were cut down by the soldiers. Urdu sources refer to the British “not as angrez (the English) or as goras (whites) or even firangis, but instead almost always as kafirs (infidels) and nasrani (Christians)”. The proportion of jihadi fighters was significant and eventually grew to almost half the total force defending the city.

Dalrymple also informs us that while many ordinary residents of Delhi initially welcomed the soldiers, people soon “tired of hosting a large and undisciplined army of boorish and violent peasants. ... Delhi sources describe them as ‘Tilangas’ or ‘Purbias’ - effectively outsiders”. The ordinary people of Delhi in their petitions to the Mughal court “did not describe the event there as Ghadr (mutiny) and still less Jang-e-Azadi (war of freedom) so much as fasad (riots) and danga (disturbance)”.

Continued: In Part II we will take a closer look at events in Jhansi.