RAPES IN INDIA a Man's Perspective

March 2004: A 59-year old Australian, Dawn Griggs was murdered and raped on her way to Mount Abu. 18th February 2008: An English teenager Scarlett Keeling, was raped in India which dew flak among international community 1st December 2009: A Russian national working in India claimed that she was raped by a Goan politician after having dinner with him that evening. 16th December 2012: The gang rape of a 23-year old student on a moving public bus, sparked large protests across the capital Delhi. She was penetrated with an iron rod leading to her death 13 days after the incident. December 2012: Within the 24-hour period after the after the horrific Delhi gang rape incident, at least two girls under the age of 18 were gang raped and one of them was murdered. March 2013: A Swiss couple cycling from Orchha to Agra, were physically assailed by locals, the man was overpowered and tied up while the 39-year old woman was gang-raped in front of her husband. The list is endless and further description of the crimes may put anyone to shame. The spate of incidences of rapes in India had forced me to think as to what is wrong with the current situation in our society and what could be done to make our family, workplaces society and country a better and dignified place for women. Like a man a woman is just a woman I remember a Sanskrit Shlok learned in seventh grade which goes by: यत्र नार्यस्तु पूज्यन्ते रमन्ते तत्र देवताः । यत्रैतास्तु न पूज्यन्ते सर्वास्तत्राफलाः क्रियाः ॥ It means that the society that provides respect and dignity to women flourishes with nobility and prosperity. And a society that does not put women on such a high pedestal has to face miseries and failures regardless of how so much noble deeds they perform otherwise. I also clearly remember my childhood days when we were told by the elders to touch the feet of a girl if we had mistakenly touched her. Women in Indian society have a great significance with connotations like ‘Ghar Ki Lakshmi’ and ‘Kanya Maata’. This was quite evident in the introductory line (Shlok) of this article as well. That according to me is where part of the problem lies. Since we see them as goddesses, we expect them to dress, address and behave in a certain manner and when they don’t fit in the ‘societal criterion’ of goddesses, we label them as sexual objects. We must appreciate that like men, women can just be women, they don’t have to be necessarily tagged as either a goddesses to be worshipped or an object seen as just ‘sexual beings’. Rape is not just a sexual attack. One might be considered foolish to ask a rudimentary question like what exactly a rape is. To be very true, this question has haunted me since the days when a daily soap named Shanti with Mandira Bedi as its protagonist was aired on the only available and accessible national television channel. I always wondered as to what was this gruesome atrocity which was forced on Shanti’s mother. Of course, I know a lot more today but I still fail to accept that rape is only a physical assault motivated by sexual desires. Rape depicts the outburst of desperation and frustration of the perpetrator and a mark of his desire to show his physical strength and dominance over women According to me it’s a mark of infringement of the utmost level of a woman’s privacy and has a lot to do with a ridiculous concept of sanctity of women’s virginity. We still live in a society where it is thought that the essence of a women’s life is lost if she has been subject to a rape. That is a reason of a rape in most of the cases where the accused has tried to do an irrevocable damage to women for revenge. Until and unless, we as a society fail to understand and see that this irrevocable damage is done not to the victim but to the perpetrator of the crime, the situation is not going to improve. Acknowledgment of sex a natural desire It is a well known fact that the more we try to conceal a concept from some; more is the curiosity and the desire of that person to explore that concept. In our society, sex is a taboo for discussion and we fail to understand the fact that it’s a natural desire and there is nothing wrong to have this desire. There is a mention of prostitution as one of the oldest trades, in almost every historical biblical which makes it pretty evident that there is nothing new about this sexual desire. Let me categorically state that I am in no way proposing legal prostitution as a measure to curb incidences of rape. This measure might have been appropriate in some of the places where sex workers are not looked down at and instead given the requisite dignity and respect. Yes! Such places exist in this world and one such example is Amsterdam. We as a society have to travel a long distance, mature and evolve a lot to reach that stage. In current situation, prostitution in India in itself is a cancer leading to chronic problems like human trafficking and slavery. In the current state of affairs, sex education with focus on sensitivity towards women is the need of the hour. Stringent laws The insensitiveness of the police machinery, judiciary has a lot to do with the incidences of rape. Many a times the victim chooses not to even report the crime to avoid the embarrassment at the hand of authorities. The legal process is lengthy and based on archaic and outdated laws which doesn’t not hold true in today’s context. The length of the legal process makes it difficult for the victim to move over traumatic incident. In the recent incident of Delhi gang rape case, one of the accused, the most brutal in the assault has been penalized with only 3 years of imprisonment by juvenile justice board on the pretext of his age proven by his school records. The speediness and severity of the punishment based of the gravity of the crimes committed would set a right precedent and might act as a deterrent for these incidences. Viney Rao

Maggi and Haldirams Fiasco- breach of trust and a hurt nation

If there is one debacle that almost every Indian has been talking about since the last few weeks, it is the Maggi fiasco. Most of us (especially our taste buds) were and are still extremely hurt with the recent spate of developments. The brand has been an indispensable part of kitchens across the country. So much so that the very name itself, Maggi, transports us back to nostalgia and the memories come wafting in. For years, Maggi had been a savior for bachelors living away from family, who came home to their rented accommodation and being so exhausted from work turned to the quick fix of Maggi for dinner. Their kitchen cabinets would be amply stocked with Maggi varieties since it had become their staple meal, one that was easy to prepare and filled a famished stomach. Moms who had kids’ who refused to eat home cooked healthy meals and threw tantrums at the sight of this food were tempted with a bowl of Maggi if they finished the nutritious food given to them. Late night studying in hostels which gave rise to hunger pangs were conveniently satiated with these noodles. The brand was so popular that in high altitude places, restaurants served it as part of their menu and tourists enjoyed eating it while watching the scenic view around. It was with this confidence that the brands marketing team initiated a campaign ‘me and meri Maggi’ inviting stories from consumers of unique experiences with the brand. The advertisements on TV showed Amitabh Bachchan and Madhuri Dixit advocating the brand. From being a casual evening snack to a favourite regular requirement in Indian households, the brand had successfully become an indispensable part of life. Then suddenly what went wrong? How did a product revered and loved by one and all for more than 30 years suddenly test positive with monosodium glutamate (MSG) and lead? How was it banned by governments across the country? These questions are what turned the tables around for Maggi. The downhill story started almost more than a year back in a small laboratory in a sleepy town of Gorakhpur in Uttar Pradesh. Here the samples collected from Barabanki as a part of a routine test were positive and the presence of MSG was detected. MSG is an additive which is used to enhance the flavour in foods and it is not considered as life threatening. The problem would have settled with a monetary fine. Instead Nestle India decided to appeal following which the samples of Maggi were sent to the Central food laboratory in Kolkata. The situation turned grave as the samples were found to be positive with eight times the permissible limits of lead. After this, the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) asked the states’ FDA (Food safety and drug association) to test Maggi samples. As individuals, we always knew that Maggi was never the healthiest food but we never thought that consuming it could be that detrimental to our health. The launches of whole wheat flour and oats variants of Maggi were being plugged as being a healthier version of the maida original noodles. Our faith and trust in the brand let us believe that it was true. After all it was good old faithful Maggi that we were talking about. Not even a month after the brand was banned across different states in India, many samples of Haldiram snacks were tested positive with pesticides in the United States by USFDA. The action also created buzz on Twitter with jokes taking punches at the brand and the situation. Two of these tweets were: “US FDA finds Haldiram’s food products unfit for consumption. Maggi ban is avenged. India should now send packets full of Guthka from Kanpur.” “First they came for Maggi. I didn’t do anything. Next they came for Haldirams. Still I didn’t do anything. What next? Chaat!” Though unlike Maggi, Haldirams didn’t carry the same strong level of association with its consumers and won’t leave a large set of people with limited food choices but still it is a signal towards a stricter regime around the world by the food safety agencies against food marketing organizations. This rightly needs to be adhered to because as common people we rely on these agencies to ensure that what we eat is safe for consumption specially when it is brands that are the hot favourite of young kids. Youth are the future of the country and unknowingly consuming brands that damage them will affect the progress and growth of the nation as a whole. The road ahead for both these brands is not easy. Apart from facing huge financial losses due to product recalls, they will incur huge losses due to the diminishing (rather negative) brand image and trust often percolating to other product categories under the same umbrella brand. Now the bigger question that Indians are asking themselves is whether they would be able to see over beloved brands anytime soon on shelves. Whether these brands would be able to regain our trust? For me it would not happen anytime soon, but yes if the organizations come up with better and healthier versions of their products and adhere to the safety norms stringently, I might consider giving them another chance. In the battle between convenience and health, quite a few times convenience tends to win. A lot of Indians would love to see a healthier Maggi even if it takes ten, fifteen or for that matter twenty minutes to cook and its entire ingredients and their quantity listed on the packet. Don’t cheat the consumers and betray their trust by marketing gimmicks is the message that has been put out, loud and clear. Viney Rao

Bhansaligate: My perspective

"Art is a reflection of society" goes a popular saying and rightly so. If we think about movies which were made in eighties or early nineties, almost every second movie villain was a "gold smuggler" which was quite relevant in that high import duty driven pre liberalization era. More often than not we as a society fail to see and understand the vice versa impact of the saying. Our society is largely driven by the predominant prevailing art so much so that the much ridiculed "north Indian misogynist mindset" has some bit of its origins from Bollywood drama wherein the "protagonist Hero" tries to stalk his love interest despite her resistance and finally at the end of a song which has quite a lot of teasing in it, the lady develops a never ending love for our hero. That is exactly the reason why our filmmakers should exercise caution while making films as they are going to have a great impact and influence on society. I got to know about the Bhansaligate incident on social media from couple of celebratory status messages from my facebook friends. That's the power of social media, we often get highly opinionated information without even understanding the actual incidents. To be very true, even my first reaction to the incident was celebratory in nature as any other normal person in Rajasthan, I have grown up hearing stories of exemplary courage and valor of Rajput kings wherein some of them refused to accept the sub-ordinanation of mughal emperors against their self respect and in the process ended up living a life of struggle giving up the luxuries which were on platter for them. The queens or the women of that era were never left behind in their courage by going to the extent to immolating themselves rather than going into the hands of mughal emperors. Another queen, Hadi Rani gave her head to her newly wed king husband since he asked for a momento and was reluctant to go to the war due to his love for the queen just to ensure that her husband's entire focus is at the battlefield. Now these are not mere stories of fiction, in fact if you happen to visit places like Udaipur, Chittorgarh or Kumbhalgarh, there is substantial amount of evidence triangulating the facts and stories mentioned above. So if any filmmaker is choosing to direct a film on these sensitive "subjects", they should exercise great restraint and caution as they are not mere subjects of fiction but draw a great amount of sentiments and emotions of the masses. Having said that, though my initial response to the incident was celebratory after giving it a due thought, came a realization that this incident should have been better avoided. This doesn't mean the Bhansali didn't need to be taught a lesson, he indeed had to, if the alleged love scene is there in the film but this definitely was not the best way to handle the situation. This way we have only ended up giving undue sympathy, propaganda and promotion to the upcoming film which in any case is not going to help us anyway. Also, vandalism and taking law into our hands is only going to deteriorate the prevailing lawlessness in our country. There is a very thin dividing line between activism and anarchy. We have seen lot of activist groups losing their cause and becoming a nightmare for our lawmakers and we don't want to add on that list. What I suggest and would have appreciated could have been litigation in Rajasthan High Court and a Police complaint. First of all, this would have ensured that script of the movie is shared with the necessary stakeholders, cleared the rumors on the alleged lover scene and avoided any action based on "rumors". If there was any distorting of history in the script, we would have surely got some respite from the court. Also advocacy and generating opinion in print, visual and social media would have surely helped the and attracted a lot of people towards the cause. Viney Rao