"The greatest event of our age..."

I wanted to blog this quotation a while ago, but am just getting around to it. I found it on the cover of the folder I was given at the Indian Institute of Advanced Study in September.

"The greatest event of our age is the meeting of cultures, meeting of civilizations, meeting of different points of view, making us understand that we should not adhere to any one kind of single faith, but respect diversity of belief... Our attempt should always be to cooperate, to bring together people, to establish friendship and have some kind of a right world in which we can live together in happiness, harmony and friendship. Let us therefore realize that this increasing maturity should express itself in this capacity understand what others points of view are." (Dr. Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan)

Talking toilets

I was at an IFMR seminar this morning, a presentation on public toilets in Chennai by the Transparent Chennai project team.

I learned many things, and I want to share my notes here in the interest of public debate on the issue.
Please note I am just typing the notes I jotted down, without checking or polishing them. At some point all this information should be available on their website, if it isn't already.

• We don't really know how many toilets there are in Chennai. An IFMR team member quoted the 2001 census as showing 600,000 toilets for 800,000 houses. 
• The question is how to reach the 'open defecation-free' goal: septic tanks? sewage connections? 
• The public toilets that there are are used in a variety of ways, from their intended use, to bathing, to washing. 
• Transparency Chennai visited zonal offices to ascertain how many public toilets in each zone. They came up with a count of 572. They filed an RTI to get an official number, and the response was 715. 
• In North Chennai, they found 49 public toilets for over 400,000 people. 
• The norm is supposed to be 60 users per toilet seat, but of course, there are far more users than that in many places.
• And many toilets don't get used, especially by women and children. The researchers heard many explanations for that: blocked latrines; blocked sewers; varying (random?) user charges; poor maintenance; cracked ceiling; no door; no lights; leaky taps; no water.
• Mothers found the open ground more sanitary for their children's use. 
• Safe disposal of waste was also a problem. 
• Here, I want to mention the Menstrual Hygiene Management Consortium, a Trichy NGO represented at the discussion. All of us forget that the disposal of sanitary waste is also an important consideration in creating sanitation systems. 
• The EXNORA team member at the table made the point that sanitation and public conveniences are ultimately the responsibility of local government and the most useful thing civil society can do is to facilitate their learning and planning, rather than take over their work. 
• The question of accountability came up again and again. When the state contracts out toilet construction to companies, which contract out maintenance to others, who contract caretakers... who is accountable for the state of a toilet.
• The distinction made in the discussion between community toilets (in slums, for instance, for the use of residents); public toilets (in stations, markets, etc) and mandatory toilet facilities in workplaces (like the crowded congested stores in T.Nagar) was useful here in delineating responsibility. There was discussion about regulation, coordination, etc. 

Interesting session, which I hope will open a good conversation on this issue, and some action.

Bearing Witness: A new report on women in conflict zones

The Centre for North East Studies & Policy Research, based in New Delhi and Guwahati, and the Heinrich Boll Foundation, have just released a report on the impact of conflict on women in Nagaland and Assam, two states on India’s northeastern frontier. The study is based on intensive field work and documentation in these areas. http://www.c-nes.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/The-final-report-of-HBF.pdf

The researchers set out to speak primarily to victims of trauma and PTSD. But in Nagaland, they identified seven kinds of trauma, and found it hard to restrict their conversations to respondents that primarily fit their research design. Their listing of seven kinds of trauma brought home just how profound the impact of conflict can be and how long this impact can last (pages 10-11). Apart from the trauma experienced by individual women when they themselves were assaulted, they also experienced the trauma that others in their family, clan or village suffered or that they witnessed. Moreover, hearing of assault and traumatic experiences, either across generations through family stories or as researchers, also had an impact. Those interviewed experienced the hopelessness of their cause, however righteous, as trauma. Displacement, the loss of place and history, was another source of trauma. Being forced to interact with and adapt to the ways of others—even the ‘other’—contributed to traumatisation.

In Nagaland, the research team found that given the nature of Naga society, trauma was experienced by the village collectively, and people were hesitant to identify themselves individually, as if to suggest their own experience was somehow worse. Naga women drew sustenance from the support system provided by their traditional structures and institutions like the church. Whether or not women knew about the different laws that governed their region, they spoke to the brutality of the Indian security forces.

“All women respondents had stated that conflicts had affected all aspects of daily normal life whether they were socio-economic, health, education, etc. People cutting across class, clans, villages, gender, age, etc., had suffered tremendously over the years due to different conflicts… There were also many discords and tensions in society. There were divorces and broken homes. Conflicts had generated an atmosphere of mistrust and suspicion as well as fear.” (page 27)

What the researchers stress is the need for counseling and legal services and for education about the same, so people could seek help. This is borne out by what they learnt in Assam too, except that the research team adds the need to generate and make available livelihood and educational opportunities, the absence of which was identified here as leading to trauma. Timely relief and rehabilitation was also stressed. Where Naga society already has such platforms, it is recommended in Assam that, “Women committees must be formed in conflict affected villages which check any sort of physical or structural violence against women and human trafficking issues.” (page 44)  

The importance of this study is two-fold. First, it is based on really sound field research—thoughtful conversations sensitively reported. The report is full of stories that the research team heard and they are the heart of this report, bringing to life the experience of multiple generations living with a conflict that is sometimes with the state and sometimes (or at once) internecine. The research team has used photographs, film and research notes to capture and communicate the experience of women in Nagaland and Assam. This is an unusually comprehensive effort. Second, Nagaland and Assam are important Indian states, but even so, underreported and understudied in the Indian context. A project that begins to look at the marginalized in a marginalized region thus acquires tremendous importance for researchers and policy-makers, but also for other citizens of the same state. And so does the multimedia documentation and communication effort. The research team explicitly points to the limited scope of this project and states that more studies of this sort are needed; they are absolutely right. In the meanwhile, it is important to make this study widely known. Again, it may be accessed at the C-NES website: http://www.c-nes.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/The-final-report-of-HBF.pdf

Also posted at: http://asiasecurity.macfound.org/blog/entry/111bearing_witness/ and http://keepingcount.wordpress.com/2011/10/06/bearing-witness/

The trouble with writing

... is not with writing.

It is with reading. It is with thinking. It is with the habit of conversation. It is with practice in discussion.

Sometimes I think that the trouble I have with writing comes from the fact that I have nothing to say. But somehow, even I can't believe that.

I think the problem is that my writing sounds like me. Or like a textbook. It doesn't ever sound like people I read, people who get quoted, people who get RT'd. It just sounds like me.

And I am not sure that's good enough.

So I twist my writing self into knots and contort my writing to look like something I don't quite get. And then I hurt--from the effort and from the idea that somehow just sounding like me is not good enough.

The trouble with writing then becomes the trouble with my whole life. Try fixing that!