SACW | 26 Jan. 2006 Bangladesh: Gags and Moral Codes; Pakistan: Science vs Superstition; India: sex ratio, health, tribals fleeing from fascist threat

[Harsh Kapoor]

South Asia Citizens Wire  | 26 January, 2006 | Dispatch No. 2210

[1] Bangladesh: Love in the time of cell phones (Naeem Mohaiemen)
[2] Pakistan: Can we say no to Uncle Sam? (M B Naqvi)
[3] Pakistan: Taking science to the people to fight superstition
[4] India:
     - Sting surgery on Dr Sex Test (G.S. Mudur)
     - Laws Fail to Remedy Skewed Sex Ratio (Sandhya Srinivasan)
[5] India is seriously sick (Pamela Philipose)
[6] India: Tribal Christians Consider Mass Exodus Plan Before Fascist Fair

____________________________________


[1]

The Daily Star
January 26, 2006 	

BANGLADESH: LOVE IN THE TIME OF CELL PHONES
Naeem Mohaiemen

Last week, the government launched another mini-salvo in their war
against free speech. The new year already brought an amendment to the
Telecommunications Act which gives intelligence agencies power to
monitor, and stop, phone calls and e-mails in Bangladesh1. But these are
only steps to police the political sphere. For the enactment of a total
surveillance nation, the private sphere and especially the area of
"loose morals" has to be brought under state control.

After all, we do trust our government to legislate morality.

Don't we?

In this spirit, a letter was sent this week to all five of Bangladesh's
cellular phone companies from the Telecommunications Regulatory
Commission, demanding that "free calls after midnight" offers be
immediately shut off. According to press reports2, this is to "protect
the morals" of young people who were using the service to "form romantic
attachments," "losing sleep," and indulging in "vulgar talk." I put
quotes around almost every phrase in the preceding sentence because the
source for all this data are "scores of complaints from parents" (sure).
The BBC's Ronald Buerk helpfully adds his own
generalization-simplification, "Many people are conservative in Bangladesh."

All this teacup storming reminded me of our own times as "young people."
We were also trying to form "romantic attachments," but more ineptly
than today, and with fewer tools at hand. St Joseph, like all missionary
schools, was single-sex, but our afternoons were brightened by the
arrival of the Siddiqui's girls. Siddiqui's was an English Medium
school, preparing students to take the A Levels and go abroad. In those
days (early 1980s), Dhaka teens were divided into BMT (Bangla Medium
Type = St Joseph, Shaheen School, Government Lab, etc) and EMT (English
Medium Type = Scholastica, Green Herald, Maple Leaf, etc)3. Siddiqui's
was the rare EMT school without its own building, so they had to come to
our school to use lab facilities. This meant we could get fleeting
glimpses of girls, rare visions in our schoolyard.

In our pathetic, callow youth, we would wait around for hours after
class ended in the hopes of that brief glance. But in all my time at St.
Joseph, I don't recall a single person actually getting up the nerve to
talk to one of the girls. All this unrequited swooning played havoc with
our idea of relationships. Things got so bad that I was over the moon
when an anonymous girl started calling my house. "Ami apnake kothai jani
dekhechi" (I have seen you somewhere) was her coy flirtation and that
was as hot and heavy as it got. But where had she seen me? WVA Meena
Bazar? Newmarket? Elephant Road? The places to meet girls were very
limited, so it could only be one of three places (this was before Aarong
café added a fourth). But after a year of talking on the phone, I gave
up because I realized that I had yet to meet her, and perhaps never would.

All this intense gender-segregation meant that when we finally got to
co-ed Dhaka University, we had no idea what to do with ourselves. If you
fell for someone, there was an elaborate ritual. You would let a male
friend of yours know. He would then tell his friend who would tell the
girl in question. Eventually through a daisy chain of whispered
confidences you would figure out if all this was mutual. It was a slow,
byzantine process.

All this sounds sweet -- innocent, bygone times, etc, but at the same
time tremendously frustrating. There were few chances to meet and
interact with women in a normalized setting. The first girl you fell
for, you basically would have to marry, because there would be no second
chances and no normal interaction outside marriage. You didn't date, you
got married.

Through the decades, there were numerous interventions to ensure this
suffocating condition continued. Recently I came across a photo from
1973 of my cousin in a band with local legend Bogey bhai (later founder
of Renaissance). She was the tambourine girl and such innocent
expressions of fun-loving high-jinks (think Josie & The Pussycats) were
verboten. Similarly, Waves was a 70s rock band that faced morals tests.
The sight of girls dancing on stage during the band's first and only
appearance on television sent the guardians into a frenzy, with cries of
"oposhongskrithi" banishing them from screens. It's especially worth
remembering examples from the 1970s because, contrary to stereotype,
virtue policing did not originate with the mullahs. In those days, it
was the secularists that were up in arms, since their key plank was
uber-Bangla nationalism. "Westernization" was the all-encompassing
enemy, mullah politics still a twinkle in Jamaat's eye. From Abba to
Boney M, everything disco was eventually hounded off the screens. One
flash of Donna Summers' legs, and Solid Gold was also cancelled. For the
rest of our school days, the only sanctioned music program was James
Last Orchestra (German friends are baffled to hear this today!). Later
of course, political Islam came to be seen as a bigger threat, and some
secularists embraced the same opo culture as a weapon to goad the maulvis.

The 1980s brought a fresh military dictatorship and a new legal
enforcement against "free mixing of the sexes." Tinted glasses on cars
were banned to prevent "opokormo." Special police squads roved the area
around Parliament, hoping to catch young couples. The few friends who
actually had girlfriends (there were not many!) developed the technique
of driving to Airport Road while holding hands. As with any dynamic
where law enforcement meets morality (look at the Iranian and Saudi
virtue police), the clashes were ugly. Stories of young couples being
brutally harassed by police officers were frequent. Unlike other
situations, it was not in the hopes of a bribe -- the public humiliation
was what the police relished.

Today there is a tendency in the West to fetishize arranged marriages.
This is pushed along by a segment of the Asian diaspora that wants to
promote things from "the old country" as inherently better than "modern
life." Articles like "Looking for Love on Craigslist" (soon to be a
book!) argue that since modern romance is so random, we may as well
retreat and allow parents to arrange marriages again. Exhibit A may be a
"successful" corporate lawyer, but at the end of the day he wants to
come home to mummy, have her cook khichuri and find a girl just like her
(and of course, she will be the same religion). Divorce rates are high
today goes the argument, bring back the good old days. No one mentions
that divorce rates are also a function of situations where single or
divorced women can live productive, stigma-free lives on their own.
Anyway, some of us have no interest in going back to the "old ways" of
arranged marriages. Better to make our own mistakes and learn from them.

Thinking back to those suffocating school years, it makes me happy to
see today's young Dhaka lovers. For the most part I only see people
holding hands near Dhanmondi lake, more pda (public display of
affection) is not here yet. Of course, all this enrages the vice squad.
This Christmas, three police officers (one on motorcycle, two with bulky
wirelesses) surrounded a young couple on a rickshaw and held them for
interrogation outside our Dhanmondi gate. A crowd gathered, everyone was
there to see the tamasha. When I came to protest, I was harshly told to
mind my own business. "Era kharap lok, apni nak golaben na" (these are
bad people, don't stick your nose in). There was almost a Roman
spectacle to the episode. As if the young couple would now be fed to the
lions.

Rokkhok jokhon bhokkok.
All this may seem trivial compared to "bigger," "life and death" issues
we face, but culture wars are core struggles and often Trojan horses for
larger battles. This is why the recent attempt to ban phone calls after
midnight to stop teenage lovers bothers me so much. This is a nasty move
that tries to stigmatize normal behaviour and dictate an antique moral
code. Relationship dynamics are slowly shifting in our urban centers.
But there are people and forces (sometimes religious forces, but equally
a city elite that is socially right-wing in spite of its pretences) that
would like to turn the clock back. The problem they face is a genie out
of the box, and they are now trying desperately to fold, tuck, nip,
crinkle, and crush the new freedoms.

In earlier essays, I argued that people needed to urgently make the
connection between the loss of civil liberties in one sphere (phone
tapping) and the loss of liberty everywhere.

It's already starting.

Naeem Mohaiemen is a filmmaker and media activist.

Notes:
1 See my past articles "Your Last Phone Call" (12/12/05), "Big Brother
is Taping You" (12/22/05) and "Dittrich Boulevard & Stasi Consciousness"
(8/1/06)
2 BBC, 1/15/06
3 I am indebted to Dr. Amala Reddy for the terms BMT and EMT.

_____


[2]


The news International
January 25, 2006

PAKISTAN: CAN WE SAY NO TO UNCLE SAM? (M B NAQVI)

by M B Naqvi

The writer is a veteran journalist and freelance columnist.

Pakistan's Prime Minister is in Washington and is meeting with the
American President. What exactly will transpire in the meeting we may
never know. But the fact is that both sides are in the process of
reviewing and enlarging their mutual relations against the backdrop of
news items purporting to show Pakistan being assigned greater
responsibilities in Afghanistan from April onwards.

This would be a repeat of the 1970s when the American CIA and Pakistani
officials colluded for action in Afghanistan that finally resulted in
the Russian invasion of that country in December 1979, after which
Pakistan played a supposedly heroic role in defeating the Soviets. All
Pakistanis know what the outcome of that war was. True, there are many
generals in Pakistan who take pride in having done what they did in the
1980s, despite the fallout of the Afghan events on Pakistani society,
politics and economy.

We are again in the same alley, talking things over with Uncle Sam that,
apart from policing Afghanistan and safeguarding the interests of
America and its friends. This may include Pakistan doing this or that
vis-à-vis any possible American or Israeli action against Iran. The
Iranian stances are likely to come up in more than one context, not
excluding the question of the gas pipeline from that country to India
via Pakistan and Iran's alleged nuclear transgressions being referred to
the UN Security Council.

Insofar as the Pakistani administration is concerned, what it is
interested in is market access in America, to start with. Pakistan wants
more opportunities for trading with the US on an equal, if not
preferential, footing. It certainly wants more FDIs and other
investments from American corporations and Pakistani expatriates. Then,
Mr Shaukat Aziz would also discuss the recent Damadola incident in which
at least 13 Pakistani men, women and children were killed. Some
remonstrations by him would be in order: that by doing such things the
US gravely embarrasses General Musharraf's administration. And such
actions ultimately promote terrorism and not eliminate it.

Probably he must also have repeated the demand of Pakistan being treated
on an equal footing with India in the matter of civilian nuclear
reactors; Pakistan surely wants to import some nuclear reactors too, as
its recently announced ambitious programme requires. Actually, Islamabad
dislikes being excluded from the kind of nuclear cooperation that the US
envisages with India under last July's Indo-American agreement, but
knows that here the US cannot possibly oblige. It may also have made the
age-old demand for more military equipment, including the F16s. However,
the political content of the bilateral talks, whether or not that find
mention in the joint statement, is centred on political matters like
American plans for India, Iran and of course, Afghanistan.

What has not been announced by either Washington or Islamabad is the
precise subjects of discussion in Washington by the PM, or, for that
matter, what Nicholas Burns will negotiate in Islamabad. One has already
mentioned the subject of the growth of cooperation over Afghanistan. The
American behaviour in the Damadola bombing should also be mentioned. But
the indications are that the Americans must have repeated what they have
been saying in public: "Pakistan has to realise that America is at war
and that its generals and policymakers cannot be dissuaded from
continuing the hot pursuit of their enemy. If that happens to be in
Pakistan territory, it can't be helped."

Doubtless, Pakistanis would anyhow like to explore the limits, if any,
of the Indo-American cooperation, especially in the field of atomic
reactors and other related matters. One cannot ignore the permanent
Pakistani wish that was sure to have found expression regarding ever
more economic and military aid and some forcing of India to negotiate
over Kashmir.

The basic fact must be remembered: the Americans are not the most
popular foreigners in Pakistan. There has been a grudging acceptance in
Pakistan that, after 9/11, a U turn in Pakistan's policies vis-à-vis
Afghanistan was unavoidable. But that has created much bitterness and a
sort of impotent rage against Uncle Sam. However, it finds no clear
expression in Pakistani state actions. Nobody has demanded a review of
Pakistan's American policy. But, also, only a few are prepared to
concede that the original policy of colluding with the Americans over
Afghanistan or promoting the Taliban was wrong. Some do argue that if it
was not wrong in the 1970s and 1980s, how can be it wrong today? And yet
there are far too many inconsistent anti-Americans here, led by
yesteryear's collaborators, the Islamic (extremist) parties, though most
liberals also rail against American imperialism.

Let's keep in view what the US is asking now. One has already mentioned
the US desire to have its Afghan burdens lightened by Pakistani soldiers
on a perhaps longer-term basis so that the GIs now grounded in
Afghanistan can be freed for action elsewhere. One has also mentioned
the possibilities of American and Israeli military action against Iran.
It is impossible that Pakistan would not be asked to do this or that in
this context. The Americans will perhaps in time agree with Pakistan on
the question of civilian nuclear reactors; the US has too many
obsolescent reactors. It can do good business selling them to Pakistan
and obliging it. But what would Pakistan be asked to do as a political
quid pro quo for this generosity should also be examined.

Pakistan must also have asked for US help to not only continue the
Composite Dialogue with India but to make it more meaningful. That must
have been music to American ears. The point is there is little chance of
a deal with America on overall military cooperation; it goes against the
grain of the Indo-American honeymoon. The sane and longer-term interest
of Pakistan demands that it does not entangle itself in Afghanistan
further. Nor do anything to alienate Iran or the Shanghai Six. In short,
can Pakistanis say no to American wishes?

One recognises the difficulties involved; most Pakistani political
classes, including the generals and bureaucrats, cannot conceive of life
without American aid and some support. American aid and support includes
some handouts and aid from its friends as well as IFIs (international
financial institutions) like the World Bank, the IMF and their
subsidiaries. The government believes Pakistan cannot do without these
crutches.

But the case for saying no is unassailable if Pakistan wants to have a
respectable, indeed, independent, future. Despite the Iraq and
Afghanistan setbacks, the US remains on an imperial course that can only
benefit America, while forcing Pakistan to accept the role of a bag
carrier. Many so-called realists persuasively argue that the US is no
longer able to carry through the full programme that was involved in the
neocon ideas embodied in US official documents like the Annual Strategy
Papers or the Twenty-first Century Project. One argues that there is
bipartisan agreement over broad strategic objectives that the US would
follow. There are scarcely any coherent alternative strategic purposes
being articulated by George Bush's challengers. The next US president
will, willy nilly, remain committed to the same broad goals, only
slightly amended and, of course, much reworded. The US wants only to
benefit some more by preserving the unipolar world and all that this
involves.

What Pakistan gets by becoming an ally or, more accurately, remaining
America's satellite, is some crumbs from the American table. This gain
on the swings will scarcely compensate for the losses on the roundabouts
in Pakistani cities. That will be a horrible political cost. In the
ultimate analysis, that role will make more difficult for Pakistan to
become democratic, peaceful and united. It is important that we find
ways of saying no – as courteously and respectfully as anyone may like
-- but still a no.


_____


[3]  PAKISTAN: TAKING SCIENCE TO THE PEOPLE TO FIGHT SUPERSTITION

Dawn
January 26, 2006

Editorial

Promoting science

THE appeal to the media by physicist Dr Pervez Hoodbhoy to popularize
science is timely. Speaking at a conference in Islamabad, he pointed out
that the people in Pakistan were generally very superstitious because
they did not have a clear understanding of scientific phenomena. It may
be added here that a better knowledge and awareness of science also make
a person more rational, something we badly need in our society. Dr
Hoodbhoy is right when he says that the media has a role to play in
promoting scientific thinking. This holds especially true of the
electronic media, which has not always been serving the cause of
science. While newspapers, television and radio could explain various
events and happenings in a scientific manner, it is also important that
science per se is promoted at every level.

There are two strategies to be adopted to strengthen the foundations of
science in Pakistan. First, every primary school student should be given
a grounding in physics, chemistry and biology before he reaches the
secondary level. If taught in an interesting manner with reference to
commonly observed or experienced phenomena, science subjects can be
extremely interesting while arousing curiosity in the minds of young
learners. Moreover, the study of science teaches people to reason and
think logically — qualities we could benefit from. That is why every
student should be given a grounding in science in the early stages of
education, even if he does not go on to study the subject at the higher
level. The second strategy would be to make science popular for the
common man. This can be done by setting up science museums where
interesting and educative exhibits can be put up for public viewing.
Mercifully, some museums have been opened in Karachi — Mohatta Palace
Museum, the Maritime Museum and the Air Force Museum — and they are
known to attract big crowds, which testifies to the public interest in
such exhibitions. Regrettably, science has been underplayed in this
exercise. Not a single centre for science exhibits has been set up and
those that existed have been closed down — for instance, the
planetarium, aquarium and so on in Karachi. If attention is given to
this aspect of social and cultural life, much can be achieved.


_____


[4]

The Telegraph
January 25, 2006

STING SURGERY ON DR SEX TEST
- Anti-foeticide activists launch stealth operation on clinics
G.S. MUDUR

New Delhi, Jan. 24: With a concealed camera and a miniature microphone,
a pregnant woman captures the words and gestures of a doctor in a town
in western India as he reveals the sex of her foetus after a brief
ultrasound scan.

Within minutes, district officials knock on his doors and confront him
with the digital evidence and charge him with violating the decade-old
law that prohibits doctors in India from revealing the sex of foetuses
to parents.

It’s a typical culmination of a series of sting operations planned and
executed by health activists as well as government officials in recent
months in an attempt to trap doctors who breach the law.

“It’s time to make the law work,” said Varsha Deshpande, a health
activist with the Kranti Yuvak Dal in Maharashtra’s Satara district, who
has helped trap eight doctors in the state.

“We’re fighting organised crime and murder,” she said.

District collector Arvind Kumar in Hyderabad has also used decoys and
hidden audio-visual equipment to record eight doctors revealing foetal
gender — either through words or coded gestures. He has also prosecuted
18 ultrasound clinics in the city that had not maintained detailed
records of their patients as required under the law.

“We need to jolt them by putting some of them in jail,” Kumar said.

Health activists have used the steady decline in sex ratio to estimate
that hundreds of ultrasound clinics are engaged in sex determination.

The national sex ratio dropped from 945 in 1991 to 927 in 2001. Since
then, it has dropped to below 850 in several districts across the
country. In Delhi, it is now 812. Birth registration data suggest that
25,000 female foetuses were aborted in Delhi alone in 2004.

Health activist Sabu George estimates that several million female
foetuses have been aborted in India. “It’s genocide,” he said.

“The awareness campaigns are pointless. Female foeticide occurs among
the educated,” said Puneet Bedi, a consultant in foetal medicine in New
Delhi.

“Those engaged in female foeticide have Jai Mata Di stickers on their cars.”

The operations against sex determination have led to 357 cases against
ultrasound clinics, said Ratan Chand, the director of a body that
monitors the implementation of the prenatal sex determination law. But
action has been taken against only four doctors in Punjab.“The
mechanisms for action are in place. We just need committed individuals
who're willing to take up the challenge,” Chand said.

But government officials say that convicting doctors is proving to be an
uphill task. “There is tremendous pressure from the medical fraternity
not to touch them,” said Kumar who has got permission from the
government to appoint a special counsel for prosecution of the doctors.

“I need someone whom I can trust. If we’re not careful, they could use
influence to weaken our case,” he said.

Dr M. Geetha, the former district magistrate in Shivpuri, Madhya
Pradesh, said she had a hard time in investigating and closing down
three ultrasound clinics in her district that had breached provisions of
the law.

After simultaneous raids on the three ultrasound clinics in October
2005, a seven-member committee of doctors and experts met to vote on the
fate of the clinics. “Although the committee voted to close down the
clinics and charge the doctors with violating the law, even government
doctors on the committee voted against taking action,” Geetha said.

But Deshpande believes that a few convictions would be enough to send a
message among the medical community. “They’re basically timid. When
trapped, they begin squealing against their own colleagues who’re also
in this business,” she said.


o o o o

Inter Press Service
January 17, 2006

INDIA: LAWS FAIL TO REMEDY SKEWED SEX RATIO
Sandhya Srinivasan

MUMBAI, Jan 17 (IPS) - Damning evidence in the British medical journal
‘The Lancet', that illegal sex selective abortions in India were
responsible for 10 million ''missing'' girls over the last two decades,
has goaded health authorities and campaigners into renewed action.

On Jan 12, the Maharashtra state health department held a meeting to
discuss the fall-out of The Lancet study. Some suggestions: conduct
sting operations in clinics, ensure registration of all sonography
clinics and monitor their work; also, track second trimester abortions.

Prenatal sex detection was outlawed in India in 1994 but the practice
remains rampant. India's 2001 census findings confirmed a skewed sex
ratio of girls to boys, under the age of six, for the first time.

"After all the public awareness we generated, what does it take for the
mindset to change? On the other hand, if we hadn't campaigned for the
law, who knows how much worse the situation would be today,'' says
women's activist Chayanika, member of the Mumbai-based Forum Against
Oppression of Women, which was a member of the campaign against sex
selection which led to the outlawing of selective abortions.

The Lancet study, published Jan. 9, by two doctors--Prabhat Jha from the
University of Toronto, Canada, and Rajesh Kumar from the Post Graduate
Institute of Medical Education and Research, Chandigarh, India -- and
their colleagues, has firmly established the link between India's low
sex ratio and sex selective abortion.

They examined data from the Special Fertility and Mortality Survey
(SFMS), a nation-wide government survey of 1.1 million households,
conducted in 1998. The SFMS is part of the Sample Registration System,
an on-going and regularly monitored government data collection exercise.

"Ever-married" women were interviewed in detail for information
including the number of children they'd given birth to in the previous
year, their sex and their birth order.

Researchers found that the sex ratio of second- or third-born children
was affected by the sex of the previous child or children.

The sex ratio for first order births was found to be 871 girls for every
1,000 boys, compared to the expected sex ratio of 950-980: 1,000. If the
first child had been a girl, the sex ratio of second children was as low
as 759 girls for every 1,000 boys. This got further skewed to 719: 1,000
for the third child, if both first and second children had been girls.

This was only possible if, as the authors write, "households are
ensuring that at least one boy is born," through sex selective abortion.

Some other alarming findings:

- There were twice as many "missing girls" among the children of
educated women than in those of illiterate women;

- The sex ratio of second children when the first child was a girl was
as low as 614: 1,000 in Punjab, 527: 1,000 in urban Rajasthan and 572:
1,000 in urban Bihar.

- Though the sex ratio was closer to the normal in progressive states
such as southern Kerala and Tamil Nadu, even in those states were "clear
differences between the sex ratio after a previous female birth versus a
previous male birth," write the authors.

-Religion had no influence on this practice.

-Affluent and educated parents were more likely to resort to sex
selection than others.

The researchers concluded that 500,000 girls were "missing" in 1997.
They would have been born, but they were not, because of foetal sex
determination and sex selective abortion. The technology became
available in India in the early 1980s.

Women's and health groups under the banner of the Forum Against Sex
Pre-selection and Sex-selective Abortion, first got outlawed, sex
detection in the states of Goa and Maharashtra in 1989.

They pointed to the once widespread promotion of this practice by
doctors openly advertising with posters in suburban trains a "solution"
to parental burdens: "Pay Rs 500 now and avoid spending Rs five lakh
later!" --referring to the dowry for a girl's marriage.

The state laws were followed by national legislation in 1994, the
Prenatal Diagnostic Techniques (Regulation and Prevention of Misuse) Act
1994. But six years after the law was passed, the 2001 census found that
the child sex ratio had dropped from 962: 1,000 in 1981 to 945: 1,000 in
1991, to 927: 1,000 in 2001.

The sharpest declines were in Himachal Pradesh, Punjab, Haryana,
Gujarat, Uttaranchal, Maharashtra and Chandigarh, where sex selection
technology was widely available.

The 2001 census findings galvanised health activists to renewing their
campaign.

In 2002, a writ petition was filed by Dr Sabu George and two
organisations, Centre for Enquiry into Health and Allied Themes (CEHAT),
Mumbai and Mahila Sarvangeen Utkarsh Mandal (MASUM), Pune --seeking to
implement the existing law against prenatal sex selection, and amend the
law to include newer sex selection techniques such as pre-implantational
genetic diagnosis or "sex selection through in vitro fertilisation".

The result was the Preconception and Prenatal Diagnostic Techniques Act
(PNDT), 2003, which included pre-conceptual techniques and also called
for specific action by the government to implement the law, including
registering prenatal diagnostic machines and tracking their use.

But as of end 2005, only 300 cases had been registered under the PNDT
Act, about 250 of which were about paperwork, and only 24 about sex
selection. And not a single person had been successfully prosecuted
under the law.

''Sometimes we feel cynical," said Chayanika, who believes that it takes
much more than mere laws to change society's preference for male children.

"The campaign has created a lot of awareness and there is a consensus
that medical professionals are one of the key guilty parties in this
practice," says health activist Amar Jesani, also part of the campaign
since its inception. "Today, at least, even medical associations are
saying the practice is unethical. It is another thing that they have not
taken any action against their colleagues who are breaking the law."

The practice has only become more refined. Sonography is widely used,
and doctors give cues to indicate the sex of the foetus, with keywords
to indicate a girl or boy.

Also, activists are strongly opposed to attempts to shift the focus of
the campaign to abortion and away from sex determination. The
Maharashtra government's proposal, last week, to monitor second
trimester abortions have been opposed.

"In fact, in the early days (of the campaign), we consciously focused on
the diagnostic technology rather than the abortion law, to avoid any
restriction on abortion," said Chayanika.

There is also concern that efforts to control fertility like the
two-child policies being promoted by various state governments could
promote sex selection. Indeed, the population control programme in China
is believed to have led to exactly the same phenomenon now being seen in
India.

Demographers Udaya Mishra of the Centre for Development Studies and Mala
Ramanathan of the Achutha Menon Centre for Health Sciences Studies, both
in Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala, have warned that, like in China where
there is a son preference, efforts to control fertility will further
distort the sex ratio in India.

"It can be expected that pre-natal sex determination and sex selective
abortions will be more intense in restrictive fertility regimes
characterised by lower age at sterilisation, shorter birth intervals,
and lesser proportions of women progressing beyond second parity," said
a 2004 paper written for CEHAT.

"There is now more than anecdotal evidence that the two-child norm has
contributed to the skewing of the child sex ratio," notes Dr Mohan Rao
of the Centre for Social Medicine and Community Health, Jawaharlal Nehru
University in New Delhi.

"Two studies covering a total of six states have indicated that coercive
population policies are compelling women to go in for sex selective
abortions,'' Rao said. (END/2006)



____



[5]


Indian Express
January 24, 2006
  	
INDIA IS SERIOUSLY SICK
Will Budget 2006 apply a healing touch, Mr Chidambaram?
Pamela Philipose  	

Pamela Philipose Finance minister P. Chidambaram began his budgetary
peroration last year with a quote from the Tamil saint poet,
Tiruvalluvar: “Health, wealth, produce, the happiness that is the
result, and security. These five the learned say are the ornaments of a
polity.” So far so good. Unfortunately, in the course of the budget he
then presented, health as a concern got the standard treatment: it was
put on a drip. The net result was that the one initiative in that
document that held the shadow of a promise on this front — the National
Rural Health Mission — was hardly provided for.

Today, the consequences of successive finance ministers failing to spend
adequately on health have resulted in some disturbing trends. For one,
public health expenditure has steadily headed south. In 1990, it was 1.3
per cent of GDP, a decade later the figure stood at 0.9 per cent. The
huge gap created by the poor public provisioning of healthcare has been
filled by an often indifferent and rapacious private sector. In 2002,
for instance, the private sector accounted for 78.7 per cent of total
health expenditure, while public expenditure made up just 21.3 per cent.
To see this in perspective, consider this: it’s the other way around in
prosperous Britain! Worse, even the little public money made available
to healthcare has not reached the people who need it the most. Three
times the sum that goes to the poorest quintile of the population
(living below the poverty line), reaches the richest quintile, and an
estimated four-fifths of the money goes in paying salaries.

This lack of adequate and effective public provisioning has seen a
decline by 30 per cent in the proportion of patients seeking public
healthcare between 1986-96. Ultimately, those who can afford it the
least, end up spending the most on health — and it is one of the most
important factors for the sale of personal assets and rural
indebtedness. Also, while India has been able to bring down its
mortality level, its morbidity (ill health) levels have been
consistently rising. This means that less Indians die, but — equally —
less Indians live. That is to say, less Indians live fully enabled
lives, without having to cope with serious and periodic bouts of ill
health. This, obviously, is a huge drain on national resources.

Apart from endemic morbidity, India also has the largest number of
maternal deaths in the world — over 1,25,000 every year, with nearly one
in seven women developing life-threatening complications during
pregnancy. But one stark fact more than any other speaks of India’s
inadequate attention to health: the country’s decline in the Infant
Mortality Rate (IMR) is threatening to plateau. It had fallen by 27.27
per cent in the ’80s; by the ’90s, the decline was only 15 per cent. At
the present rate, India will fail to meet its national/international
commitments on infant mortality. As Dr Vinod Paul of the All India
Institute of Medical Sciences pointed out at a recent symposium on
children and the 11th Plan, the Millennium Development Goals commitment
requires us to achieve an IMR level of 27 by 2015, our Tenth Plan target
was to reach a target of less than 30 by 2010. But unless things change
drastically, India’s IMR will be around 45 by 2015.

Placing public health on the frontburner has never been more urgent. And
the finance minister, when he puts on the hat of the Congress activist
as he did at the AICC session in Hyderabad, even acknowledges this. The
question is whether Budget 2006-2007 will reflect that concern. Health
is a state subject. At present, states contribute 85 per cent and the
Centre 15 per cent of total expenditure. But the Centre has nevertheless
the important responsibility in giving a normative direction to the
revival of the health system. A significant instrument it has for this
purpose, as health experts like Ravi Duggal have pointed out, is the
budget document.

There can be no two ways about it. The decision to increase public
spending on health — the National Common Minimum Programme commits to
raising it from the present 0.9 per cent to 2-3 per cent of GDP — cannot
be postponed any longer. But this project requires more than an infusion
of capital. In fact, some initiatives that can immediately help do not
even require huge spending. Dr Abhay Bhang and his team has proved in
Gadchiroli, Maharashtra, that a low-technology intervention of providing
home-based healthcare delivered through trained female community health
workers could bring the IMR rate of 76 in 1993-95 to 30 in 2001-03.

So how can the country make up for lost time? The National Rural Health
Mission (NRHM) that the finance minister touched upon in his budget last
year could be the catalyst for such a revival and deserves careful
provisioning to achieve optimal efficiency. At the heart of NRHM is the
strategy to train at the household level some three lakh Accredited
Social Health Activists (or ASHAs); getting panchayati raj institutions
to assume ownership of the health delivery system; and strengthening the
existing triad of sub-centres, primary health centres, and community
health centres. Getting these mostly defunct health centres to function
would require not just the presence of suitably incentivised and trained
medical professionals, it demands close supervision by local
communities, an expansion of existing infrastructure, a system of
regulation and a credible health information system.

The first step then is to revive the basic health delivery system.
Everything else depends on this. Even the silver bullet solutions that
are sometimes offered — like the expansion of public-private
partnerships in health, and a public health insurance — will require the
secure foundation of a functioning system. China, incidentally,
dismantled its earlier system of free clinics and came up with an
insurance plan in which rural residents contribute a sum of a little
over a dollar to access health services. It has not worked precisely
because the earlier system of healthcare delivery was dismantled. Only
an estimated 21 per cent of China’s population is medically insured
today in a country that once had universal coverage, leaving large
numbers extremely vulnerable — as the SARS epidemic demonstrated.

India has stopped thinking about public health and has paid a very heavy
price for that. It now needs to seriously re-imagine strategies. The
health-wealth equation cannot just remain an idea in a Tiruvalluvar
verse, Mr Chidambaram. It demands not just linguistic but budgetary
translation.



____


[6] INDIA: TRIBAL CHRISTIANS CONSIDER MASS EXODUS PLAN BEFORE HINDUTVA FAIR

Dr John Dayal's response to report on mass exodus of Tribal Christians
from Dangs, Gujarat
(Tribal Christians Consider Mass Exodus Plan Before Hindu Fair )


"Dr John Dayal, member of the National integration Council of the
Indian government, has advised the Tribal Christians of the Dangs
district of Gujarat not to flee the region in the wake of the communal
threat from the Hindutva elements whose aggressive campaign for the so
called Sabhri Kumbh mass gathering next month has shattered the peace
of the region.

"This is a test as much for the state government which has been
assuring security to the community as for the central government which
is sworn to assure that Indian minorities are safe in their homeland,
says Dr Dayal, who is the national president of the Catholic union and
secretary general of the All India Christian Council.  For us
Chritians, it is also our faith which is being put to test. The threat
has united the community across the nation in prayer and support.

An exodus from the state and eviction of the people from their homes
does not offer either short term or a long term solution. We have
called upon the central government to post high ranking officers in the
region as we do not trust the word of the state government.We remember
this is the same state government whose political, police and official
machinery has been indicted in the calculated massacre of the Muslims
in 2002.

Senior Christian leaders will themselves be in the Dangs as observers
during the so called shabri maha kumbh which is being financially and
patronized by the state government and the ruling political party. we
did this during the Christmas seasons of 1999 and 2000 when similar
provocative gestures were made by the Hindutva group.

At various levels, major Christian groups have met the national
leadership and have brought the threat perception to their notice. we
expect positive steps for our security in the next few days, Dr. dayal
said.

Original News report:

Tribal Christians Consider Mass Exodus Plan Before Hindu Fair
AHMEDABAD, India (UCAN) -- Christians plan to temporarily leave their
homes in a tribal area in western India where right-wing Hindu groups
are preparing a religious gathering.

"It is a do-or-die situation (for Christians)," says lay leader Samson
Christian, who is leading the "mass exodus" plan. The Hindu groups
"will finish the Christians if we don't do that," he told UCA News.

The Hindu groups plan to hold their Feb. 11-13 religious fair in the
Dangs district of Gujarat state. A major attraction of the fair is a
program to convert tribal Christians to Hinduism. It is billed as a
religious gathering "towards awakening the Hindus in general and the
'vanavasi' (tribal) Hindus in the Dang region of Gujarat in
particular," according to the Hindu fair organizers' website at
(www.shabarikumbh.org).

Christians of at least 17 denominations, including Catholics, live in
Dangs district, forming about 15 percent of its 186,000 people.

Samson, executive member of the All India Christian Council, has
requested the federal Home Ministry's intervention to stop the Hindu
fair. Such a step, he says, could prevent a recurrence of sectarian
violence that occurred in 2002, when Hindu-Muslim riots killed more
than 1,000 people, mostly Muslims.

Before that, Dangs district made headlines in 1998 when some Hindu
groups beat tribal Christians, destroyed chapels and burned copies of
the Bible.

Hindu groups such as Hindu Jagran Manch (Hindu forum for awareness),
allegedly responsible for those attacks, are organizers and sponsors
for the coming gathering.

Christians allege that some of these groups have already placed
saffron-colored forked flags on non-Christian homes in the district to
mark them out.

Samson Christian said his group plans to shift the entire Christian
population to a transit camp outside the district for a week. They
would return after the Hindu gathering ended.

Nattubhai Chaudhary, a tribal leader, also favors the temporary
migration. The message has already been communicated to other tribal
chiefs, he told UCA News. "There should be none left here for them to
reconvert. So where will they bring the people from?" the
septuagenarian remarked. He lives in the district headquarters, Ahwa,
about 1,500 kilometers southwest of New Delhi.

Not all tribal people believe the situation would turn dangerous,
especially since Gujarat already has international notoriety for
sectarian violence.

Motilal Gaikwad says Christians should not migrate, lest they set a
trend of forming "refugee camps" every time a threat of sectarian
violence surfaces. "It is not viable. Many of us don't even have a
lock, and in any case where will our cattle go?" the former village
head asked.

Jesuit Father Xavier Manjooran, who coordinates some NGOs working to
counter the Hindu threat, agrees with Gaikwad. He recommends that the
best approach is not to treat the issue as a Christian problem. "This
is a problem of tribals and we have to fight in that manner," the
Jesuit priest, who also directs a free legal aid center in Gujarat's
tribal area, told UCA News.

Volunteers from an organization the priest manages now conduct programs
for village elders and other villagers to expose the vested interests
of some people with "nefarious designs" to grab tribal land. "They have
done it so many times at many places. We cannot counter this eye to
eye," Father Manjooran said.

The Hindu groups say they expect around 500,000 people to attend the
fair. According to their website, India has become a "special target of
the Christian Church worldwide," because "the Hindus represent the
greatest stumbling block in their grand design to establish Christ's
kingdom on earth."

It also says the poor illiterate tribal people have become "an obvious
target in this nefarious scheme" and that the Church has spread "its
tentacles in far-flung, tribal regions of our country" under "the garb
of social service."

Those organizing the Hindu fair denied they plan to attack Christians.
"Christians are our prime targets -- not to harm them physically but to
counter their way for luring the poor tribal into Christianity," said a
volunteer at the organizers' main office in Surat, some 140 kilometers
north of Ahwa.

"We plan to bring them back to our fold and for that we will spare no
stone unturned," said the man, who refused to reveal his name.

Father Manjooran spoke of a rumored plan to provoke two Catholic
schools in the area before the Hindu fair. "In that scenario, the blame
can easily be put on Christians," he explained. The priest's volunteers
have asked local Christian families to submit an application
individually to the district administration asking for protection. "Let
us see how they can cope with such a situation," the priest added.

Tribal people such as Ratilal Vasava from Vyara, on the district
boundary, say Dangs has witnessed an unprecedented number of people
arriving from outside. "We have lost our peace of mind," the
schoolteacher said, adding that Hindu groups think they have "a
mandate" to do anything they want "because numerically, economically
and politically they outnumber the tribals."

According to Vasava, the Hindu groups have been treating a few tribal
people with liquor and food to get their support for the fair. Other
tribal people, though in the majority, have no courage to oppose the
move, he told UCA News.


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Buzz on the perils of fundamentalist politics, on
matters of peace and democratisation in South
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