Lord Ram’s Story: Many Tellings

By Ram Puniyani

04 November, 2011
Countercurrents.org

Recently Delhi University Academic Council (Oct 2011) decided to drop the scholarly essay “Three Hundred Ramayanas” of A.K.Ramanujan, on different telling of Ram’s story from the syllabus of ‘Culture in India’ for BA Honors students. Of the four experts on the committee, one of them, whose opinion was finally accepted, said that undergraduate students will not be able to tolerate the portrayal of divine characters in the different versions given in the essay. In response to the ban while Akhil Bhartiya Vidyarthi Parishad, which is an affiliate of RSS, and company celebrated, the staff and many students protested against this ban. Just to recall earlier in 2008 ABVP activists had protested against the introduction of this essay, and indulged in vandalism on the issue.

This essay by the much acclaimed scholar, A.K.Ramanujan is part of his "The Collected Essays of A.K.Ramanujan (Oxford 1999). Earlier in the aftermath of Babri demolition, a Sahmat exhibition on different versions of Ramayana was attacked by RSS combine's goons in Pune in 1993. This was done on the pretext that one of the panels based on Jataka (Buddhist version) showed Ram and Sita as brother and sister, and it is an insult to their faith. Ramanujan's essay talks of different versions and presents five of them as an example.

It is known that there are hundreds of versions of Ramayana, Buddhist, Jain, Valmiki etc. Paula Richman in her book Many Ramayana's (Oxford) describes several of these. And again there are different interpretations of the prevalent Valmiki Ramayana, many of which are not to the liking of those who are indulging in politics in the name of their faith. Surprisingly all this intolerance is shown by those who assert that Hinduism is tolerant and other religions are intolerant.

It is a fascinating exercise to go through various tellings and interpretations of Ramayana. Even the other renderings acceptable to this intolerant but currently dominant political force are not uniform. Valmiki, Tulsidas and later the one adopted by Ramanand Sagar for his serial Ramayana have their own subtle nuances, which are very different from each other.

Ramayana has been rendered in many languages of Asia in particular. Ramanujan points out that the tellings of Ram story has been part of Balinese, Bengali, Kashmiri, Thai, Sinhala, Santhali Tamil, Tibetan and Pali amongst others. There are innumerable versions in Western languages also. The narrative in these is not matching. Those opposing this essay take Valmiki as the standard and others as diversions which are not acceptable to them for political reasons. The version of Ramayana, the communalists want to impose has the caste and gender equations of pre-modern times so it is hung up upon only that version as the only one acceptable to it.

Interestingly one can see the correlation between the class-caste aspirations of the narration-interpretation. In Buddhist Dasharath Jataka, Sita is projected both as sister and wife of Ram. As per this version Dashrath is King not of Ayodhya but of Varanasi. The marriage of sister and brother is part of the tradition of glorious Kshtriya clans who wanted to maintain their caste and clan purity. This Jataka tale shows Ram to be the follower of Buddha. Similarly Jain versions of Ramayana project Ram as the propagator of Jain values, especially as a follower of non-violence. What do both Buddhist and Jain versions have in common is that in these Ravan is not shown as a villain but a great spiritual soul dedicated to quest of knowledge, endowed with majestic commands over passions, a sage and a responsible ruler. Popular and prevalent "Women's Ramayana Songs" of Telugu Brahmin Women, put together by Rangnayakamma, keep the women's concern as the central theme. These songs present Sita as finally victorious over Ram and in these, Surpanakha succeeds in taking revenge over Ram.

In Thai Ramkirti, or Ramkin (Ram's story), there is a twist in the tale and Shurpanakh's daughter decides to take revenge attributing her mother’s mutilation primarily because of Sita. More interestingly here the focus is on Hanuman, who in this telling is neither devout nor celibate but quite a ladies’ man, looking into the bedrooms of Lanka. In Valmiki, Kampan and Tamil tellings Hanuman regards seeing another man’s sleeping wife as a sin, but not in this Thai version. Incidentally he is a very popular Thai hero even today. Also like Jain Ramayana this Thai telling focuses on genealogy and adventures of Ravana and not of Ram.

In recent times Jotiba Phule who stood more with the interests of Dalits and women, was amongst the first to interpret this mythological tale from the perspective of those subjugated by caste-varna-gender hierarchy. Phule points out that upper castes were descendents of conquering Indo-Europeans who overturned the original egalitarian society and forbade the conquered from studying texts. His mythology is woven around King Bali, who could invoke the image of peasant community. Needless to say his murder by Lord Ram from behind is condemned and is seen as an act of subjugation of lower castes by the upper castes. And Ram is seen as an avatar of Vishnu out to conquer the land from the Rakshasas (those protecting their crops) for establishing the hegemony of upper caste values of caste and gender hierarchy.

Dr. Ambedkar and Periyar's commentaries are more an alternative reading of the Valmiki's text rather than a separate version. There is a good deal of overlap in the interpretation of both. Dr. Ambedkar focuses his attention on the issues pertaining to Ram's killing of Shambuk for violating the prevalent norm where a low caste has no right to do penance, tapasya. Like Phule he also castigates Lord Ram for murdering the popular folk king Bali. He questions Ram's act of taking Sita's agnipariksha, trial by fire, and his patriarchal attitude towards her. After defeating Ravan he tells Sita that he had done all this battle not to get her released for her own sake but to restore his honor, and his banishing her in response to the rumors about her chastity when she was pregnant comes for severest criticism from Ambedkar.

Periyar is basically taking the same line but in his interpretation the North Indian upper caste onslaught-South Indian resistance becomes the central theme. Periyar the initiator of ‘Self Respect Movement’ was the pioneer of caste and gender equality in Tamilnadu. In one of the movements, which is very less known, on the lines of Dr. Ambedkar burning Manusmriti, he planned to burn the photo of Ram, as for him Ram symbolized the imposition of upper caste norms in South India. This was a part of his campaign against caste Hinduism. Periyar also upheld Tamil identity. According to him the Ramayana story was a thinly disguised historical account of how caste ridden, Sanskritic, Upper caste North Indians led by Ram subjugated South Indians. He identifies Ravan as the monarch of ancient Dravidians, who abducted Sita, primarily to take revenge against the mutilation and insult of his sister Surpanakha. In his interpretation Ravana is practitioner of Bhakti, and is a virtuous man.

It seems the dropping of the essay from syllabus is under indirect political pressure of communal forces. RSS and affiliates who have reaped rich benefit from the campaign around Lord Ram are also giving the political message of caste and gender hierarchy, through the version upheld by them, the one of Valmiki and presented in current times by Ramanand Sagar’s tele serial Ramayana. And the politics claiming to be tolerant is intolerant about scholarly renderings of ‘Many Rams: Many Ramayanas’ prevalent World over!

Eurocrats are terrified of democracy

By Daniel Hannan

8:15PM GMT 01 Nov 2011

706 Comments

Shall I tell you the truly terrifying thing about the EU? It’s not the absence of democracy in Brussels, or the ease with which Eurocrats swat aside referendum results. It’s the way in which the internal democracy of the member states is subverted in order to sustain the requirements of membership.

George Papandreou, the luckless Greek leader, is the latest politician to find himself being chewed up because he stands in the way of the Brussels machine. On Monday afternoon, Papandreou announced a referendum on whether to accept the EU’s bail-out terms. He had evidently had enough of the antics of the opposition party, New Democracy, which kept insisting that Greece remain in the euro, while opposing all the austerity measures necessary to that end – an outrageous stance given that New Democracy ran up the deficit in the first place. Papandreou hoped to force his opponents off the fence: in favour of the spending cuts or against euro membership. Perhaps he also hoped to put pressure on the EU to offer more generous terms.

I wish I could convey the sheer horror that his proposal provoked in Brussels. The first rule of the Eurocracy is “no referendums”. Brussels functionaries believe that their work is too important to be subject to the prejudices of hoi polloi (for once, the Greek phrase seems apposite). Referendums are always seen as irresponsible; but, at a time when the euro is teetering on the brink, Papandreou’s proposal was seen as an act of ingratitude bordering on treason.

Across the palaces and chanceries of the continent, Euro-elites closed ranks. Nicolas Sarkozy’s spokesman described Papandreou’s announcement as “irrational and dangerous”, Angela Merkel’s called it “irritating”, Silvio Berlusconi’s “negative”. Such phrases, in the mouths of government officials, suggest purple, choking rage.

The Athens establishment lined up with them. Antonis Samaras, the leader of New Democracy, vowed – with splendid disregard for his party’s name – to prevent a referendum “at all costs”. Constantine Michalos, the president of the Athens Chamber of Commerce, called the proposal “an act of political blackmail”. All these insults were provoked by the suggestion that people be allowed to determine their future through the ballot box.

Euro-enthusiasts in Brussels and in Athens are ready to bring down an elected government rather than allow a referendum. Yet the funny thing is that Papandreou is a Euro-enthusiast. He fervently wants to remain in the euro, and had been planning to campaign for a Yes vote. His sin, in the eyes of Brussels, was not to hold the wrong opinions, but to be too keen on democracy. Leninists had a term for people who, while they might be committed Bolsheviks, none the less behaved in a way which endangered the movement. They were called “objectively counter-revolutionary”. Poor Papandreou finds himself in this category.

Nor is he the first. When it became clear that Ireland was to have a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty, Bertie Ahern was required to fall on his sword lest the corruption allegations seeping about him tainted the Europhile cause. He was replaced by Brian Cowen, the former Europe minister, who went on to lose the referendum anyway. Cowen then refused to accept the verdict, siding openly with Brussels against his own countrymen. Result? Fianna Fáil, the party which had won the most votes at every election since 1932, was extirpated.

Borrowing a phrase from C S Lewis, I think of this phenomenon as the EU’s “hideous strength”. Brussels has a bizarre power to make politicians break their words, split their parties and betray their voters so as to keep the project going. Again and again, it makes good men do bad things.

Think of the way all three British party leaders whipped their MPs against an EU referendum proposal last week – despite the fact that two thirds of the country wanted such a vote, and despite the fact that all three parties were promising referendums on Europe in the last Parliament. Think of the way Margaret Thatcher was ousted, by a combination of Tory Europhiles and Continental leaders, when she made clear her opposition to Jacques Delors’s plans for Euro-federalism.

One of Papandreou’s supporters, a socialist MEP called Anni Podimata, argued that a referendum would bring catharsis. It’s a good metaphor. Catharsis is the purification and emotional renewal that comes at the end of a Greek tragedy. Greece has been through the hubris – the boom years, when the markets pretended that Greek and German debt were interchangeable – and is now suffering the nemesis, but the catharsis has been artificially stayed. Greece won’t begin to grow again until it leaves the euro, writes off its debts and prices itself into the markets.

Eurocrats are prepared to pay any price rather than admit that the single currency was a mistake – or, more precisely, to expect their peoples to pay, since EU officials are exempt from national taxation. The peripheral countries are to suffer poverty, unemployment and emigration, the core countries perpetual tax rises, so that supporters of the euro can save face.

It’s chilling to write these words, but EU leaders are evidently prepared to vitiate Greek democracy and wreck the Greek economy rather than allow the euro to break apart. Yet even if they succeed in Greece, they may find that their efforts are for nothing. Italian bond spreads yesterday were back at the level that usually triggers bail-outs. We are about to see quite how far the Brussels apparat will go in defence of its privileges.
 
Daniel Hannan is a Conservative MEP for South East England

This is no return to ancient Greek democracy

Matthew Norman

Wednesday, 02 November 2011

There may be nothing new under the sun, but according to the ancient Greeks it is quite the celestial Johnny-come-lately. Long before the sun, long even before the Titans rose and fell, and Zeus slew his father Cronos to seize control of Olympus, there was only Chaos. The mother of all things is back in charge as the muthah of all financial crises moves closer – thanks to the modern Greeks – to sucking us all into the Abyss (Chaos's firstborn, as you cosmology fans well know). Perhaps by now a semblance of order has re-asserted itself over the mayhem prevailing at the time of writing, with markets in freefall and confusion reigning over Greece's forthcoming referendum on the euro bailout. If so, it won't last long.

The date of that vote is as unclear as any intricate political calculations behind Prime Minister George Papandreou's decision to call it, or even whether he informed the Franco-German neo-axis powers before announcing it. Nor is it obvious what the precise implications for Europe might be, other than perfectly hideous.

Chaotic hardly seems an adequate adjective. The Greeks have unleashed pandemonium, and if there is any hope remaining in Pandora's box this time around, you'd want the Hubble Telescope to locate it. In the frantic quest for an upside, all I can dredge up is gratitude that I took the mediocre redbrick degree in Classics, hence all the tiresome and pretentious allusions, rather than in economics. Now that would have been a waste of time. No professional economist has much clue what's going on, beyond a basic appreciation that we are, as Richard Littlejohn will surely put it, going to Hellas in a handcart.

What is abundantly clear is that all the comparisons between this grumbling nightmare and the approach to war in 1939 were less fanciful than one would have liked, though in the globalised age everything moves faster. There was almost a calendar year between Neville Chamberlain declaring peace for our time and war with Germany. From the moment Angela Merkel and Nicolas Sarkozy waved their Greek bailout paper in Brussels and Mr Papandreou's startling announcement were barely five days.

Why he did so is the source of contention, but we can probably rule out any driving passion to invoke the memory of fifth century BC Athens. Some muscular Eurosceptics will posit that, in offering the plebiscite denied us, Mr Papandreou honours his nation's status as the birthplace of democracy. But politicians tend not to think in such grandiose terms when trying to navigate a course between a rock and hard place. Or, to continue this whirlwind odyssey through half-remembered lectures, between Scylla and Charybdis. The waters may be uncharted, but the menaces to Greece are in plain sight. On one side stand the unforgiving rocks of unending austerity within the eurozone, struggling to tame sovereign debt which remains crippling despite that offer of a 50 per cent haircut. Already suffering horribly and riven by civil unrest, the Greeks do not much fancy a future of penury under German dominion, as the explosion there of Nazi-themed cartoons and graffiti confirms.

On the other side lies the dreaded whirlpool of "disorderly default"... leaving the euro in disgrace, and attempting to return to growth via a devalued drachma, with no protection from the world's second reserve currency. Which is the quicker route to perdition is anyone's guess, but from this remove it looks a bit like offering a terminal patient the choice between a revolver and the hemlock.

Mr Papandreou, who seems neither a madman nor a nihilist, will not have taken this apparently deranged last throw of the dice without feeling irresistible pressure. Apart from a livid electorate, he is assailed by an opposition so irresponsible in promising cure without pain that it makes Ed Balls look like Stafford Cripps the day his hairshirt returned from Sketchley's with a wire-wool lining. In delegating the decision, he presumably believes this is the only possible way to compel the opposition to face reality and to scare the electorate into accepting that the alternative is worse than the bailout. It is, to put it gently, a monstrous gamble.

It is also playing with fire on behalf of the rest of us, within and outside the eurozone. If Greece goes, as begins to look inevitable, the fall of Italy becomes more imminent... and as with their respective empires long ago, the latter is rather more threatening to the rest of Europe than the former. Perhaps when your liver is being daily devoured by vultures, you can be forgiven for losing sight of any obligation to the world beyond your shores.

It hardly behoves a country that slags the euro off from the sidelines at every turn – to borrow from Mr Sarkozy's trenchant rebuke to David Cameron – to lecture others on the altruistic need to remain in it. But there is a strong sense that, just as with the supremacy of chaos, the Greeks have been here before. Disguised as a white bull, Zeus kidnapped Europa and ravished her. With this referendum, Greece seeks to take Europe hostage and is screwing her in Olympian fashion once again.

Could your star sign affect what you earn? Yes, says IFS

Could your star sign or the month of your birth affect how likely you are to hold down a job and what you will earn?
Yes, according to new research by no less an authority than the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS), whose research was funded by the Nuffield Foundation.

But the explanation has less to do with astrology than how old you were relative to classmates at school. Previous research published by the IFS indicated that children born at the start of the academic year tend to achieve better exam results, on average, than children born at the end of the academic year.

In England, this means that children born in the autumn tend to outperform those born in the summer. New research published today by the IFS, and funded by the Nuffield Foundation, shows that your date of birth also matters after schooldays. Compared to children born in September, those born in August are 20pc more likely to study for vocational qualifications – if they attend tertiary education at all – and 20pc less likely to attend a Russell Group or top notch university.

Claire Crawford, a director of the IFS and one of the authors of the report, said: “Studying for academic qualifications, attending a Russell Group university, and believing that you have control over your own life are all associated with a greater chance of being in work and having higher wages later in life.
This suggests that August-born children may end up doing worse than September-born children throughout their working lives, simply because of the month in which they were born.”

That’s good news for children born recently – who will have the star signs Scorpio, Libra and Virgo – but less encouraging for those born in the summer – with the star signs Leo, Cancer and Gemini. Are the latter really more likely to end up as Neets; Not in Employment, Education or Training?

For my part, I have always thought astrology is nonsense. But, as a former girlfriend pointed out: “You’re a typical  Virgoan, so you would say that, wouldn’t you?”

Be strong, be different

Pritish Nandy
30 October 2011, 02:59 PM IST

 

I like Dhoni. He is a no nonsense guy and, like Kapil Dev and Saurav Ganguly before him, a fine leader of men. He is as dignified in defeat as in victory. He was unfazed when England ignominiously crushed us recently, and the Indian team (fresh from winning the World Cup) became the butt of all jokes. He came back and led India to a spectacular 5-0 win in the one-day series against the same England, just to prove cricket isn’t only about winning. It’s a game where defeat teaches you your best lessons so that you can go back and beat the hell out of your tormenters.

But what I like most about Dhoni are two other things. One: He speaks little and always to the point. His game talks for him. His decisions, inexplicable and flawed at times, are never defended, rarely argued over. He simply sets things right the next time. More important, he never plays to the gallery and has no desire to be anointed God, neither by his fans nor fawning sponsors. He remains that ticket checker in Kharagpur station who got lucky and made good. And that precisely is his charm. Neither fame nor money has been able to spoil him. In fact, if you watch his ads, you will figure how ill at ease he is before the camera. He’s a man best left alone. To play the game he’s best at.

Dhoni sums it all up in his new ad when he says, “Zindagi mein kuch karna hai to large chhodo, kuch alag karo yaar.” Great lines those, in response to a campaign by a rival brand which exhorted us to Make it Large. Yes, you are right. It’s the same campaign that drew a spoof from UB showing a fake Harbhajan getting whacked by his father for making ball bearings the size of gym balls at his father’s factory and asking if he had made it large. Another spoof has just appeared featuring a fake Saif as the Chhote Nawab who despite all the pomp and regalia never quite makes it large, as the real nawab.

Dhoni’s right. Any idiot can make it large. All you need is pots of money. The more money you have, the more you can go for scale. The less you need to depend on thinking new, thinking smart. Clever guys, on the other hand, put their indelible stamp on history and show us that innovation is at the heart of all success, not size. Henry Ford could have easily built the world’s biggest bicycle plant. Instead, he launched the car. Steve Jobs spent the best years of his life, not in making Apple the biggest in computers, but in enlarging the domain space and bringing out with the world’s smartest music, phone and communication devices. That’s the constant challenge before clever men and women. To think smart. Not big.

But big is what seduces us. It starts, as usual, with the stupidest claim of all. Every schoolboy boasts to others in the locker room: Mine is bigger than yours. Even though every scholar of sex, from Vatsyayan to Havelock Ellis has repeatedly reiterated that size has nothing to do with being a great lover. In fact, big is a joke among the smarter sex. It is never as important as it is made out to be. It is those who can’t afford the best who go for size. The only real yardstick is excellence, how good you are in what you do. And the less you talk about it, the more likely are others to acknowledge it.

Picasso was not a great painter because he painted large canvases. Chaplin wasn’t great because he made big films. Mozart was not a great musician because he composed large symphonies. Tagore was not a great poet because he wrote epics. You can't compare the achievements of Boeing and Airbus with the ingenuity of the Wright brothers. Or the achievements of Nokia and Blackberry with the genius of Guglielmo Marconi. All real achievers think new. Not big. That’s why Dhoni’s advice, even though it’s in an ad where one brand is spoofing the other, finds so much resonance. “Zindagi mein kuch karna hai to large chhodo, kuch alag karo yaar.”  

That’s why Dhoni is so special.

NGOs, Kiran Bedi, The Media: Who’s The ‘Farest Of Them All?

By Farzana Versey

27 October, 2011
Countercurrents.org

Kiran Bedi is indeed wrong, but when media persons sit to judge her it is a bit of a laugh. Clearly, they do not look in the mirror.

Instead of seeing this as an opportunity to question all sorts of voluntary agencies and their modus operandi, we have a situation where a person is pinned down for wrongdoing without a backward glance at how the whole NGO business works, often with the media’s involvement.

Kiran Bedi has been fudging her bills, where she charged inflated amounts from her hosts. The main source was airline tickets. She would travel by economy class, that too at a discount because of her gallantry award, and charge business class fares. We now have these sanctimonious NGOs tell us that they took it at “face value”. Most NGOs send the tickets themselves. So, why did they let her use her travel agent? And what sort of auditing departments do they run? The reason for keeping quiet is not that they were afraid of Ms. Bedi’s wrath – they obviously did not mind shelling out Business Class fares – but because their finances will lead to many question marks.

This is my point. The media and certain activists have taken a convenient yo-yo stand on the Jan Lokpal Bill campaign. They propped him up and were completely besotted by Team Anna. After they were done with the photo-ops of the caps and the fasting and dancing, they realised that there were chinks in the armour. No one was interested in the deeper questions – it came down to superficial put-downs.

Let us get this fudging business clear. Kiran Bedi has admitted to it and says she will return the excess money that she wanted to use for her own NGO. Where do the NGOs get this kind of money that they can afford to invite people from different cities for seminars? I have often posed this query when we rubbish other institutions. Do you know that most of the activists themselves travel Business Class, stay at fancy hotels, and order the best food – for what? To gupshup about the state of the nation, the homeless, female foeticide, dowry, terrorism, communalism?

Check out the number of people who have left their high-paying corporate and bureaucratic jobs to “serve the nation” or “become useful members of society” or, “fight communalism”. They could do all of these by continuing to work. The reason is that activism has become a paying proposition. Have you seen the huge ads put up in newspapers inviting you to attend some conclave or the other? Is it affordable or even appropriate to shell out this kind of money on overheads? Besides government grants, there is a good deal of foreign sponsorship and donations from industrial houses. While the international ‘intervention’ often comes with some amount of side-effects (pushing of substandard products and services clubbed with the do-good, feel-good stuff), some of the Indian business black money that is not stashed away in banks abroad is routed to charitable organisation, with income tax exemption.

Why does the media not raise a voice about this? Has the media ever questioned journalists who attend these same seminars? Oh yes, the same journalists who give inflated bills to their accounts departments for their travels and hotel stays and “related expenses”. Journalists who sit at the desk and make phone calls but charge taxi fare for the quotes. Journalists who try to get tickets and freebies because they think they are in a position to ‘arrange something’. Journalists who do not have to spend a paisa at restaurants and spas because they just might mention it, in passing, in their next column. Journalists who give us scoops that are fed to them by interested parties or who conduct sting operations that are again paid for by interested parties.

Of course, it is not only the media at fault, but also those who host such talks. Corporate India’s ladies who lunch get a big high when they invite a person who can indeed talk and add to their resume. They flash such people as trophies to display their own worth as ‘aware citizens’. That some media people are doing their evening show with this group should be an eye-opener rather than a can-opener.

If, as some commentators wish to know, why people from public office enter the fray late in the day to become part of NGOs, then one might wish to ask them why they have timed their queries now and not for all these years. Do they ponder about it when they go on government-sponsored junkets?

The problem is that this whole Anna Hazare campaign has been a sham, and revealed more shams both on the inside as well as on the outside. It showed us how the ruling party and the opposition got to pay politics; the arrests also reveal a lot about those who got away without a scratch to their reputations. It is rather disingenuous of Digvijay Singh to say that if Kiran Bedi can offer to return the money, then every bribery case can be closed by saying the bribe-taker will return the money, including, A. Raja.

This is some gumption. A minister in the government of India is caught in a scam of frightening proportions and another government person uses this as an analogy. He is also quite gung-ho about such a thing happening at the highest level. The 2G Spectrum scam is not just about bribes, but also about how the nation was taken for a ride with the government, big industrialists and lobbies involved. It is about how the government functions and not merely who took how much. This case has come under scrutiny; many others do not.

If political agencies get a chance, they try to co-opt the activist groups. Most are willing to go along because it is the easy option. In some cases where they need the government to act, it does become a crucial mutual involvement. Therefore, if a political party invites activists, and they fudge figures about travel expenses, then what will the political parties do? Why not question the complete lack of balance by media groups? One can understand individual commentators taking a particular position, but why do they blatantly follow the newspaper/TV channel line? Where is their independence? Those who talk about objectivity should really look in their own backyards. There is favouritism everywhere and the media indulges in it as much as politicians, and the ‘activist’ role of the media should also come under scrutiny.

Tavleen Singh, Indian Express columnist, while raising some important points, makes a rather shocking comment: “My own observation is that many NGOs working in India appear to be funded by organisations bent on ensuring that India never becomes a developed country… In order for India to become a halfway developed country, we need new roads, airports, ports, modern railways and masses more electricity. In addition, according to experts, we need 500 more cities by 2050. The odd thing is that the NGOs who oppose steel plants, nuclear power stations, dams and aluminum refineries in India never object to the same things in China.”

Is this the definition of development, and the only model? As I have already said, many NGOs do have an agenda, but not only if they are funded by organisations that do not wish to see a developed India. By this logic, Gujarat should have no NGOs. And why must Indian NGOs object to what happens in China? Has the Indian government opposed the self-immolation of Tibetan monks and nuns in support of the Dalai Lama’s return? Has the BJP done so? Has the media done so?

Forget the NGOs for a while. Think about how these plants were to come up, who was to be uprooted and how it would affect the environment. If this development is only for those setting up factories and making India technologically advanced, then why are we still the hub of western-powered outsourcing? Are the NGOs involved here?

Why absolve the fat cats of business only to hit out at the NGOs unless they are specifically playing dirty? How many media people have taken free jet rides, attended fancy wedding functions abroad and written glowing accounts of them? Will they be sanctified as the facilitators of development? Or do they need to get closer to the seats of such power or perhaps such development? These are trick or treat queries. Ask them we must, for there is much beyond Kiran Bedi, whose banshee persona was in fact given a boost by the media when they needed her sound bytes. They were birds of a feather, until she was grounded.

The still-feathered ones have taken wing and are giving us a bird’s eye-view.

Farzana Versey is a Mumbai-based writer.

Consumption is the real problem, not population growth.

Beyond the headlines from the UN population report lies a clear message: consumption is still a far bigger threat to the planet

By George Monbiot

A worker repairs a grain lifter on a soy bean mountain in Salto, Argentina. Photograph: Diego Giudice/AP

 

It must rank among the most remarkable events in recent human history. In just 60 years, the global average number of children each woman bears has fallen from 6 to 2.5. This is an astonishing triumph for women's empowerment, and whatever your position on population growth, it is something we should celebrate.
But this decline in fertility, according to the United Natinos report published on Wednesday, is not the end of the story. It has also raised its estimate of global population growth. Rather than peaking at about 9 billion in the middle of this century, the UN says that human numbers will reach some 10 billion by 2100, and continue growing beyond that point.

That's the middle scenario. The highest of its range of estimates is an astonishing 15.8 billion by 2100. If this were correct, population would be a much greater problem – for both the environment and human development – than we had assumed. It would oblige me to change my views on yet another subject. But fortunately for my peace of mind, and, rather more importantly, for the prospects of everyone on earth, it is almost certainly baloney.

Writing in the journal Nature in May, Fred Pearce pointed out that the UN's revision arose not from any scientific research or analysis, but from what appeared to be an arbitrary decision to change one of the inputs it fed into its model. Its previous analysis was based on the assumption that the average number of children per woman would fall to 1.85 worldwide by 2100. But this year it changed the assumption to 2.1. This happens to be the population replacement rate: the point at which reproduction contributes to neither a fall nor a rise in the number of people.

The UN failed to explain this changed assumption, which appears to fly in the face of current trends, or to show why fertility decline should suddenly stop when it hit replacement level, rather than continuing beyond that point, as has happened to date in all such populations. I expected yesterday's report to contain the explanation, but I was wrong: it appears to have plucked its fertility figure out of the air.

Even so, even if we're to assume that the old figures are more realistic than the new ones, there's a problem. As the new report points out, "the escape from poverty and hunger is made more difficult by rapid population growth". It also adds to the pressure on the biosphere. But how big a problem is it?

If you believe the rich, elderly white men who dominate the population debate, it is the biggest one of all. In 2009 for example, a group of US billionaires met to decide which threat to the planet most urgently required their attention. Who'd have guessed? These men, who probably each consume as many of the world's resources in half an hour as the average African consumes in a lifetime, decided that it was population.
Population is the issue you blame if you can't admit to your own impacts: it's not us consuming, it's those brown people reproducing. It seems to be a reliable rule of environmental politics that the richer you are, the more likely you are to place population growth close to the top of the list of crimes against the planet.
The new report, inflated though its figures seem to be, will gravely disappoint the population obsessives. It cites Paul Murtaugh of Oregon State University, whose research shows that:

"An extra child born today in the United States, would, down the generations, produce an eventual carbon footprint seven times that of an extra child in China, 55 times that of an Indian child or 86 times that of a Nigerian child."

And it draws on a paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, which makes the first comprehensive assessment of how changes in population affect carbon dioxide emissions. It concludes:

"Slowing population growth could provide 16-19% of the emissions reductions suggested to be necessary by 2050 to avoid dangerous climate change."

In other words, it can make a contribution. But the other 81-84% will have to come from reducing consumption and changing technologies. The UN report concludes that "even if zero population growth were achieved, that would barely touch the climate problem".

This should not prevent us from strongly supporting the policies which will cause population to peak sooner rather than later. Sex education, the report shows, is crucial, as is access to contraception and the recognition of women's rights and improvement in their social status. All these have been important factors in the demographic transition the world has seen so far. We should also press for a better distribution of wealth: escaping from grinding poverty is another of the factors which have allowed women to have fewer children. The highly unequal system sustained by the rich white men who fulminate about population is one of the major reasons for population growth.

All this puts conservatives in a difficult position. They want to blame the poor for the environmental crisis by attributing it to population growth. Yet some of them oppose all the measures – better and earlier sex education, universal access to contraception (for teenagers among others), stronger rights for women, the redistribution of wealth – that are likely to reduce it.

And beyond these interventions, what do they intend to do about population growth? As the UN report points out:

"Considerable population growth continues today because of the high numbers of births in the 1950s and 1960s, which have resulted in larger base populations with millions of young people reaching their reproductive years over succeeding generations."

In other words, it's a hangover from an earlier period. It has been compounded by another astonishing transformation: since the 1950s, global life expectancy has risen from 48 to 68.

What this means is that even if all the measures I've mentioned here – education, contraception, rights, redistribution – were widely deployed today, there will still be a population bulge, as a result of the momentum generated 60 years ago. So what do they propose? Compulsory sterilisation? Mass killing? If not, they had better explain their programme.

Yes, population growth contributes to environmental problems. No, it is not the decisive factor. Even the availability of grain is affected more by rising livestock numbers and the use of biofuels – driven, again by consumption – than by human population growth.

Of course we should demand that governments help women regain control over their bodies. But beyond that there's little that can be done. We must instead decide how best to accommodate human numbers which will, at least for the next four decades, continue to rise.

www.monbiot.com