OPEN Magazine 23 December 2013

Why the political pundits got ARVIND KEJRIWAL wrong

RS 35 23 December 2013

INSIDE When family members rape

l i f e

a n d

t i m e s .

e v e r y

w e e k

REINVENTION

RAHUL GANDHI VERSUS THE OLD GUARD

His battle to change the ways of the grand old party SAME OLD STORY 11 Members of Parliament, cutting across party lines, have been caught on camera accepting bribes to lobby with the petroleum ministry for a fictitious company.

A Cobrapost report

Open Mail | editor@openmedianetwork.in Editor Manu Joseph managing Editor Rajesh Jha Deputy Editor Aresh Shirali Features and Sports Editor Akshay

Sawai

Senior Editors Kishore Seram,

Haima Deshpande (Mumbai) Mumbai bureau chief Madhavankutty Pillai associate editors Dhirendra Kumar Jha, Rahul Pandita assistant editors

Anil Budur Lulla (Bangalore), Shahina KK, Aastha Atray Banan, Mihir Srivastava, Chinki Sinha, Sohini Chattopadhyay Special Correspondents Aanchal Bansal, Lhendup Gyatso Bhutia (Mumbai), Gunjeet Sra Assistant Art Directors Tarun Sehgal, Anirban Ghosh SENIOR DESIGNER Anup Banerjee photo editor Ruhani Kaur assistant Photo editor Ritesh Uttamchandani (Mumbai) Staff Photographers Ashish Sharma, Raul Irani Editorial Researcher Shailendra Tyagi asst Editor (web) Arindam Mukherjee staff writer Devika Bakshi Associate publisher Deepa Gopinath Associate general managers (advertisement) Rajeev Marwaha (North

and East), Karl Mistry (West), Krishnanand Nair (South)

Manager—Marketing Raghav

Chandrasekhar

National Head—Distribution and Sales

Ajay Gupta regional heads—circulation D Charles

(South), Melvin George (West), Basab Ghosh (East) Head—production Maneesh Tyagi pre-press manager Sharad Tailang cfo Anil Bisht hEAD—it Hamendra Singh

Vivekananda Nemana

This refers to the article ‘Women Don’t Bleed Blue’ (2 December 2013). I grew up in the US, where by the time one turns 11 one is taught all about periods and other ‘boy-girl’ things. I was always puzzled by why the ‘forbidden period’ was such a big deal at home.

When my cousins and sisters began menstruating, the women of the house informed each other in hushed whispers that the girl in question had “become a big person”. The event was wrapped under so many layers of euphemism that to Wrapped under layers my 13-year-old menof euphemism, the struation-aware self, it event seemed a far more seemed a far more sinister and exciting sinister and exciting conspiracy than a conspiracy than a mundane ‘period’. As for mundane ‘period’ the ‘maturity ceremony’ mentioned in the article, for years I thought it was like a thread ceremony for girls, one that you just hold whenever convenient. And I couldn’t understand why my aunts erupted in scandalised giggles when I asked when they were going to make my cousin a ‘big person’. When I have kids, ‘menstruation’ will be an encouraged word.  letter of the week

publisher

R Rajmohan

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Volume 5 Issue 50 For the week 17—23 Dec 2013 Total No. of pages 64 + Covers cover illustration

2 open

Anirban Ghosh

Seer Acquittal

much as the brutal murder of the temple official Sankar Raman of the Sri Varadaraja Perumal temple in Kancheepuram in September 2004 was disturbing, the subsequent arrest of Kanchi Seer Jayendra Saraswathi on mere suspicion sent shockwaves across the country (‘The Shankaracharya’s Acquittal’, 16 December 2013). While many believed it as an act of vendetta

by Jayalalithaa to settle scores with the seer, Dravidian parties welcomed the arrest. In this context, one must appreciate the Shankaracharya for taking everything in his stride by cooperating with the investigation agency and police throughout the trial. After the lengthy trial, it is heartening to note that Kanchi’s Seer has been acquitted along with 21 others accused after no incriminating

evidence was found against them. However, it is unfortunate that the real killers of the temple manager are still at large.  KR Srinivasan

the mystery over the charges levelled against the Kanchi Seer by Sankar Raman is yet to be unravelled. The grapevine has it that the daylight murder was meant to silence his allegations. It was a rare turn of event that scores of witnesses turned hostile to get a reprieve for the accused. The prosecution may be inclined to file an appeal as the defence sneaked through a few chinks.  Chandrasekaran

Good Journalism

this refers to ‘The Perfect Mystery’ (9 December 2013).

Mihir Srivastava’s articles have brought out the truth of

the Aarushi case. He has called a spade a spade. It is an example that journalists should follow. Everything he has written on this twin-murder case has been reconfirmed by the special court judgment.

I am sure the Supreme Court will also concur.  Manoj Pra jwal

Banish the Stigma

ramya, this is a splendid article (‘Women Don’t Bleed Blue’, 2 December 2013). I have not read something more candid and direct and I applaud the level of consciousness you have reached to be able to do so. I’ll be honest: while reading the article, there were a few moments like when you described the ‘white gelatinous mucus’ or the ‘expressionist streaks in your panty’ that made even me, a well educated grown up woman, shift a little in my seat. But then I realised that it is that very discomfort you are trying to rescue from a socially constructed stigma on such a natural thing.  Pallavi Prasad

Forget or Forgive

it seems Raghavendra Bhimsen Joshi has been truly committed to his family (‘A Belated Acknowledgement’, 2 December 2013). Good that he became gutsy enough to question his father [Bhimsen Joshi] on why he abandoned them. People make mistakes, but they do realise them at some point of their lives.

Forgive if you cannot forget. At least then you can live on or die peacefully.  Suman Verma

23 december 2013

A Prisoner’s Guide to Living in Luxury misdirection

Since his arrest last year, Shiv Sena MLA Suresh Jain has spent most of his time in hospitals

If you were a little upset about Sanjay Dutt repeatedly being allowed to go home despite being a prisoner, then consider the case of Suresh Jain, former Maharashtra minister for Housing and Shiv Sena MLA. Convicted of a multi-crore housing scam, Jain is the undoubted master of the art of staying out of jail.

It was in March 2012 that he was arrested in Jalgaon, his home constituency. A week after his arrest, he complained of chest pain and was admitted to the tony Breach Candy

MUMBAI

23 december 2013

Hospital in South Mumbai.

Later, he was shifted to Jaslok Hospital. He was there until November when he was transferred to the Arthur Road prison. Within 10 minutes of being shifted there, he complained of chest pain. That led to his stay at the state-run Sir J J Group of Hospitals and later St George Hospital. His VIP room at these hospitals usually had a separate bathroom, and was fitted with an LCD television and a music system.

Unlike other prisoners, Jain was also allowed as many visitors as he liked.

The reason he enjoys such five-star treatment is that he is an extremely powerful and smart politician, adept at switching parties. He has been with the Congress, NCP and Shiv Sena. Even now, despite being a prisoner, his clout in Jalgaon remains intact.

Jain’s luck ran out after a sting operation by a private TV channel showed him to be quite well in hospital and he was transferred back to prison.

Immediately, however, another ‘ailment’ took Jain back to another private hospital.

But by then, Maharashtra’s

Additional Director General of Police (Jails) Meeran Borwankar had started objecting to Jain’s extended stay at various hospitals. Stating that Jain was using poor health as an excuse to stay out of prison, she ordered him back behind bars. “The prison has good doctors who take care of its inmates,” said Borwankar.

Maharashtra Home Minister RR Patil says he will “have to inquire” into the issue. At Jalgaon prison, Jain is still said to be rather cosy, and happily meeting a steady stream of visitors . n

open www.openthemagazine.com 3

photo imaging anup banerjee

small world

contents 8

20

30

cover story

34

Rahul versus the old guard

taking names

kejri’s delhi

Trademark debate

A photo essay

angle

The cat-kicker and the mob

14

news reel

AAP’s tough test in Mumbai

24 dirty 11

A sting operation finds 11 MPs accepting cash to lobby for a fake oil firm

The Gold Thief’s Banana Diet The police are keeping alive the notorious Bengali interest in scatology. According to a recent report in The Times of India, the city police arrested Raju Thakur for snatching a gold necklace on the complaint of one Ishani Chatterjee. Thakur, the police say, agreed rather happily to a body search when the police tracked him down. They found nothing on his person but the complainant insisted that Thakur was the guy who had attacked her near the Calcutta Swimming Club. The police then made him undergo an ultrasonography and the gold necklace was found in his lower abdomen. The search successful, two men have now been assigned the duty of feeding Thakur guavas and bananas so he ‘ejects’ the necklace. And if this fails, then Thakur will be hospitalised. The Kolkata cops had successfully recovered snatched goods through a similar modus operandi operations in another case five months ago. Quite some internal probe team, this. n

on able Pers Unreasotnhe Week of uly ■

T h e K o l kata

■

the BJP and AAP falling short of claiming a majority in the Delhi Assembly polls, Rambir Shokeen, Delhi’s lone Independent candidate elected this time, has his hopes pinned on the position of Deputy Chief Minister. Elected from Mundka, which has traditionally always favoured the BJP in the past few elections, he is ready to offer his support to the BJP which is short of a simple majority in the House by only five seats. His only condition is that the BJP’s prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi should personally call him 4 open

r Kuma

Gang

F o r m e r Supreme Court judge Ashok Kumar Ganguly for not resigning as chairman of the West Bengal Human Rights Commission

The Ambitious Independent W ith b o th

Ashok

and offer him the position of Deputy Chief Minister. An avowed Modi fan, Shokeen told a television channel that he will not press to be made Deputy CM if Modi wishes so.

“If Modi asks me to support the BJP, I will do so without the post because I am a Modi fan,” he says.

Incidentally, Shokeen, who describes himself as an ‘Indian social worker’ on his website was initially denied a ticket by the BJP. This resulted in his contesting the Mundka seatas an independent. n

Tehelka’s editor-in-chief Tarun Tejpal ‘recused’ himself for six months after facing sexual assault charges, but former Supreme Court judge Ashok Kumar Ganguly only took leave for two days.

Currently chairman of the West Bengal Human Rights Commission and facing similar allegations by a law intern in his office, Ganguly went on his leave citing ‘personal reasons’. This came barely two days after he denied the charges and said he was still ‘undecided’ on his next step— on being asked to step down from the commission. On Tuesday, he said he would “do whatever I have to”. The intern, who completed her law degree this year, levelled charges against him in a blog entry written on 6 November.

She claimed that he had harassed her in a hotel room around the time of the December 16 gangrape protests in Delhi. n 23 December 2013

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38

a arts

50

prabhudheva

Dancer, actor, director

Atul Dodiya: mash-up artist

p p

photo essay

true life

56

Rape: Not just a behen-beti issue

NOT PEOPLE LIKE US

Snoops on the train

63

What a waste, Sonakshi

A Bid for the North Pole looking at claiming the North Pole. The Guardian reports that the Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird has asked scientists to work on a submission to the United Nations stating that the outer limits of the country’s continental shelf includes the Pole, which has so far not been claimed by anyone. The US and Russia are meanwhile looking at the Arctic for its natural resources and won’t take too kindly to Canada’s claim. According to the US Geological Survey, the region has 30 per cent of the world’s undiscovered natural gas and 15 per cent of oil. n

C anada is

Actual Results Versus Exit Polls Times Now C-voter

ORGIndia Today

Today’s Chanakya

ABP NewsNielsen

Actual Results Seats Won

BJP

31

41

29

37

31

Cong

24

20

10

16

AAP

11

6

31

Others

4

3

0

Delhi

ORGIndia Today

CNN-IBNCSDS

BJP

128

138

136-146

161

138

165

8

Cong

92

80

67-77

62

80

58

15

28

BSP

6

2

3

Others

4

12

13-21

7

6

70

Total

Total Times Now C-voter

ORGIndia Today

CNNIBNCSDS

Today’s Chanakya

Actual Results Seats Won

BJP

44

53

45-55

51

49

Cong

41

33

32-40

39

39

BSP

2

Others

3

chhattisgarh

Total

4

1-7

ABP Actual Today’s NewsResults Chanakya Nielsen Seats Won

Times Now C-voter

Madhya pradesh

0

3 230

Times Now C-voter

ORGIndia Today

CNNIBNCSDS

Today’s Chanakya

Actual Results Seats Won

BJP

130

110

126-136

147

162

Cong

48

62

49-57

39

21

1

Others

21

28

12-20

14

16

90

Total

1

rajasthan

200# #- polling for one constituency was adjourned

23 December 2013

4

Source: Election Commission

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angle

On the Contrary

Who Exactly Is Cruel Here?

The obtuseness of the mob that hounded a boy who kicked a cat M a d h ava n ku t t y P i l l a i

little housing society in Mumbai. One day, you come home early from work and see two teenagers playing around with a cat. One of them ruffles its mane tenderly, then lifts it a little and kicks it to send it flying away. What would you do?

You could shout at the kid. You might slap him a little if you were that sort of person. You could explain to him nicely about being kind to all beings and that what he did was an act of wanton cruelty.

You could go to his home and tell his parents what he did. You could scream at them, or, if you are an enlightened person and they are not, explain the need of kindness towards all beings and that what their son did was an act of wanton cruelty.

You could even advise them on how to discuss this with the boy.

What you would probably not do is go to the police. What you would not do is lead a dharna against the boy the next day, collecting all the members of your housing society. You would not do that because a) it is a young boy doing this, b) it is the first time you saw the boy doing this, and c) for every act, there has to be a proportional response—just as you don’t give a Padma Shri to a kid who feeds a stray dog, it is bizarre to file a police case against one who kicks cat.

But it did happen. There was a boy who kicked a cat, and some animal rights activists and a self-righteous mob on Twitter and Facebook decided, based on a 19-second video, that he deserved public shaming, an FIR and an agitation that earned the headline: ‘Hundreds protest at cruel youth’s home in Mumbai’.

The teenager was stupid enough to upload the video on Facebook, but he did that because he is a boy. If adults use that video to identify him and, instead of having a quiet word with his parents, bay for a police case, make his mobile number and address public, lay siege to his home and force him to abscond like a rapist or murderer, then the sickness is not in the kid.

The disease that afflicts these adults is the myopic self-righteousness of the social networking world, giving them the power of outrage without responsibility.

8 open

curi hyvrard/corbis

I

magine you are a resident of a nice

cruelty Those outraged by the incident of cat-kicking that went viral ought to examine their dinner

Take the tens of thousands who were angry at the boy. Surely many of them were non-vegetarians. You wouldn’t have to travel too far from where this cat was kicked to find a poultry shop selling fresh chicken. There, from morning to night, you would see customers placing orders and a man slitting the throats of chickens and putting them in a drum to flail and bleed to death. There are hundreds of thousands of such shops all over India.

Any of those murdered chickens would, given a choice, happily switch places with the cat. It is a no-brainer, what’s crueller.

But this daily chicken ‘genocide’ does

Just as you don’t give a Padma Shri to every kid who feeds a stray dog, you don’t file a police case against one who kicks a cat. If a kid posts a video of kicking a cat and adults use it to force him to abscond like a rapist or murderer, the sickness is not in the kid

not merit anger, a police case or a dharna because chicken (cooked well) is tasty, and, when it comes to dinner, no one minds an animal’s throat being slit. The boy kicked an animal once. Any non-vegetarian who forwarded that video was not only party to something crueller, but also a hypocrite.

Youth Organisation in Defence of Animals, the NGO that lodged the FIR against the boy, has made public its complaint letter. It begins thus: ‘It has come to our notice that—residing in—has been conducting acts that go against Section 11 [of the] The Prevention of Cruelty Act published in 1960. The Act clearly states that if any person ‘beats, kicks, over-rides, over-drives, over-loads, tortures or otherwise treats any animal so as to subject it to unnecessary pain or suffering or causes…’ IS SUBJECT TO PUNISHMENT.’ (All caps theirs) But there is something the NGO didn’t mention—the punishment under that Act for first time offenders. Guess what it is? A minimum fine of Rs 10 and a maximum of Rs 50. Take that Rs 10 from the boy and leave him alone. Next time, pick on someone your own size and age. n 23 december 2013

real

india

A Hurried Man’s Guide

to France Criminalising Clients of Prostitutes A new law in France, a country that is okay with nudity on daytime TV and not with hijabs, will soon make paying for sex a crime.

The Socialist Party’s women’s minister Najat Vallaud-Belkacem, who has led the motion in the French lower house, said she did not want to live in a society where women had a price.

It Happens

The Prison Social Network Undertrials of an infamous political murder case in Kerala are found active on Facebook in jail S h a h i n a K K

The law follows in the footsteps of Sweden, Finland and Norway which also criminalise prostitutes’ clients but protect prostitutes.

The new law will decriminalise soliciting clients and help those who want a way out. The ban on pimping and brothels will stand.

France, its reputation for sexual tolerance notwithstanding, has had as much of a confused history of regulation and suppression as any other country in the world. For instance, in the early 19th In India, century, Napoleon regprostitutes may ulated brothels: wompractise their en were registered as sex trade privately workers and had to subbut cannot solicit mit twice weekly medical clients in public examinations.

joel saget/afp

In India, anti-trafficking laws are designed to combat slavery and trafficking. Prostitutes may practise their trade privately but cannot solicit clients in public. Sex workers are not protected under normal labour laws, but possess

the right to voluntary rehabilitation, as also all other rights as Indian citizens.

The nature of prostitution has changed in France, as have the workers’ racial profiles. In 2003, The New York Times reported that 5,619 charges of passive solicitation were made in France, 90 per cent of which were against women, most from poor countries such as Bulgaria and Albania (40 per cent), Nigeria, Sierra Leone and Cameroon (35 per cent). Only 15 per cent were French nationals. This has led to the issue of sexual slavery being conflated with trafficking, which may have pushed the French National Assembly to action. n

che fans Three of the four accused have Che Guevara as their profile picture

F

or prisoners in Kerala,

especially those with the backing of a powerful political party, being in jail can still mean a happy social-networking life.

Undertrials in a political murder case that shocked the state last year have allegedly been making regular updates on Facebook and uploading their latest photos from inside Kozhikode jail.

The accused— MC Anoop, Manoj Kirmani, Kodi Suni alias V K Sunil Kumar, Mohammed Shafi, Annan Sijith, Shinoj Kohinoor and Rajith Compara—are associated with the Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPM) and facing trial for the murder of TP Chandrashekharan, leader of the Revolutionary Marxist Party, who broke away from the party. In jail, they were active on Facebook through smart phones. The profile pictures of all except one is the same—an image of Che Guevara.

Their Timelines are flooded with messages of ‘red salute’ from ‘comrades’.

All of them except Mohammed Shafi has the same cover photo—the flag of the CPM’s youth wing Democratic Youth Federation of India.

Annan Sijith has shared CPM Politburo member Kodiyeri Balakrishnan’s status on the recently conducted party plenum at Palakkadu, which ended up with a call for a ‘better disciplined

personal life’ for comrades. The images uploaded include the accused wearing Bermudas, T-Shirts and goggles.

CPM leaders are unwilling to comment on the ostentatious commitment of the accused to the party. The CPM has never acknowledged their ‘connection’ with the party and has publicly denounced Kodi Suni alias Sunil Kumar as a hired goonda.

Alexander Jacob, ADGP of Jail Administration, refuses to comment on the matter. He only hints that a conspiracy cannot be ruled The CPM out, suggesting has never that it could acknowledged have been done by somebody these men’s outside jail to connection put the with the party government in trouble. Kerala Home Minister Thiruvanchoor Radhakrishan told the media he would look into the matter.

After the Facebook updates stirred a controversy, the police conducted a raid but did not find mobile phones or laptops. There have been no fresh updates but CPM supporters continue to post ‘Congratulations’ on their pages. Meanwhile, the Kozhikode jail superintendent has been suspend. n 23 december 2013

business

S E N SE X There is a word that Indian stockmarkets appear to be in the grip of: ‘decisive’. It describes a form of political leadership that many market analysts hope—and increasingly expect—will lead India out of its economic slump. It also explains the BSE Sensex’s gains on 5 December after exit polls for four state elections pointed to a strong showing by the opposition BJP, and then again on 9 December, the first day of trading after the actual results confirmed the Congress’ rout. It was a sign of “angst against bad economic governance” says Phani Sekhar, a fund manager with Angel Broking.

The results have largely been read as a shift in voter preference for ‘decisive’ leadership, which is what some vocal FIIs are betting on as a way to revive the reforms they are keen on. Observers expect the market mood to stay buoyant.

As an Angel Broking reports puts it: ‘The expectations of a stronger reform-led mandate are likely to gain even more traction.’ Deepak Kapoor, financial consultant with ADC Legal Services Pvt Ltd, says that the recent gains in stock value will not be given up, even if market indices dip on periodic rounds of profitbooking. “But,” cautions Sekhar, “extrapolating this verdict to a saffron victory in the General Election next year might actually be a misreading [of poll results] and might well disappoint the bourses.”

While Narendra Modi of the BJP is seen as the frontrunner in the race for prime ministership, the Lok Sabha polls of 2014

ashish sharma

Narendra Modi and the Stockmarket

triumph of the will? not yet The BJP’s Narendra Modi is favoured by FIIs but that itself does not spell victory

would have a novel contender in the Aam Aadmi Party, which, after its stellar show in Delhi, could yet upset the saffron party’s expectations of a The Sensex’s mandate in its favour. celebratory air Plus, indices could after the recent decline on weak assembly poll corporate results and results may be worsening macroecopremature nomic conditions if the Congress abandons fiscal responsibility in a fit of populism.

Now that a loose fiscal policy of earlier years has already resulted in inflation, the party may be tempted to spend even more

in desperation. If an incoming government signals fiscal restraint, says Sekhar, then the economy’s prospects would brighten and “the market may well propel itself to a trajectory which might go beyond [current] expectations”.

But then, candidate Modi’s fiscal proposals remain unknown, even if his position on other issues is seen as ‘decisive’ by his supporters. Also, not everyone is convinced that addressing what ails India’s economy is a simple matter of a single leader’s will. Yet, if money can be made on political speculation, punters will try to make it. n shailendra tyagi

infographic by tarun sehgal

The Political Profit Season Impact of Poll results Impact of exit polls 20,898 02 Dec-13

20,854 03 Dec-13

20,708 04 Dec-13

20,957 05 Dec-13

20,996 06 Dec-13

21,326 09 Dec-13

21,255 10 Dec-13

The BSE Sensex has seen much exuberance lately.

How much of it is rational, however, is unclear Source: BSE compiled by Shailendra Tyagi

12 open

“In our petition, we have submitted that [Coal India Ltd’s] abuse of its dominant position takes place when coal companies become reckless and consistently supply inferior-quality coal to the detriment of purchasers” Subrat Ratho, Managing Director, Mahagenco , explaining his grievance against Coal India that the Competition Commission of India recently upheld while slapping a penalty of about Rs 1,800 crore on the State-run coal monopoly

news

reel

maharashtra

Why AAP Will Find the Going Tough in Mumbai Unlike Delhi, Maharashtra has several strong regional parties that command huge support. And Kejriwal’s old friend Anna Hazare is not a big fan of the AAP either haima deshpande

s i n c e t h e A a m A d m i Pa r t y

stunned the nation with its election results in Delhi, Anjali Damania, the AAP convener in Maharashtra, has been a busy woman. Her telephone has not stopped ringing. However, Damania, who is an RTI activist, has no time to return the calls or connect with the aam admi. Appearances on television channels, phone-in TV interviews and reporter interactions with well-known Marathi newspapers and round after round of meetings are taking up all her time. An English-speaking posh coterie—clad in silks, malamal, organdis and expensive cottons—that is helping her “take the AAP agenda” to common folk responds only to well-known names.

Damania hasn’t always been this busy.

Her tryst with fame started when her plot at Karjat (near Lonavala) was acquired by the state’s Irrigation Department for building a dam. Incensed, Damania filed an RTI application to find out details of the said project. The state’s reply was an eye-opener. Project costs had been inflated for the dam that was long overdue. Armed with the RTI reply, she took on one of the state’s most powerful politicians—Ajit Pawar, the nephew of NCP chief Sharad Pawar, and also Deputy Chief Minister of the state.

Ajit Pawar’s spin doctors swung into action. Pawar resigned “until the inquiry was on”. But he was soon back in office, exonerated of all charges of corruption by the Irrigation Department that he happens to head. Not one to take criticism or allegations in his stride, Ajit Pawar set about righting “Damania’s wrong”.

But the AAP’s spectacular show in Delhi may well turn out to be a no-show in Maharashtra, a state that has strong regional parties. The stage is set for a 14 open

strong regional alternatives.

The Congress, NCP, Shiv Sena and the BJP have entered into strategic electoral alliances with regional parties at the gram panchayat, zilla parishad, municipal council and the municipal corporations levels, leaving little room for a new entrant. In Maharashtra, the mood tilts in favour of either national parties or regional parties. Where the Congress-NCP combine is not acceptable, there a strong alternative available in the form of the Shiv Sena-BJP coalition.

In the past, ex-bureaucrats like Arun Bhatia and Avinash Dharmadhikari and a bunch of other government servants have tried to enter politics with a penchant for cleaning up politics. When Bhatia and Maharashtra has significant Dharmadhikari had quit government service (at separate times), they, too, regional parties such as Raj generated considerable buzz but this did Thackeray’s Maharashtra not translate into the required mass base Navnirman Sena, various or vote share. Mumbai’s much-loved factions of the Republican Party ‘demolition man’ GR Khairnar, who took up the problem of illegal construction by of India and the Peasants and the underworld, including the properties Workers Party of Dawood Ibrahim, could not secure public support when he contested elections. All the clean men combined have been unable to notch up 1,000 votes All these parties have strong leaders who have cultivated their constituencies, collectively against their names whenever and command huge support. Moreover, in they have contested elections.

The AAP office has been inundated with the six months before the 2014 polls, these calls from NGOs, social activists and parties will no doubt reorient their institutions keen to join the effort. Many agendas to cater more obviously to the aam admi. Damani and her AAP team face of them want tickets to contest elections. the tough challenge of carving out a space Identifying winnable candidates will not be an easy task for the new party. Right for themselves in a crowded electoral after the Delhi victory of AAP, Damania arena. This is very different from the had told reporters that the poll results scenario in Delhi where voters had no regional party alternatives. Every region of would encourage fence-sitters to step into the state—the western, central, Vidharba, politics. The party is keen on expanding its base in Maharashtra, but progress on the Marathwada or the coastal belt—has pitched battle between the Congress-NCP coalition and the Shiv Sena-BJP-RPI (Ramdas Athavale faction) alliance in the 2014 Lok Sabha polls. Besides these, Maharashtra also has significant regional parties such as Raj Thackeray’s Maharashtra Navnirman Sena, Bharip Bahujan Party, Republican Party of India (with Prakash Ambedkar and Khobrgade factions), Peasants and Workers Party and the Swabhiman Shetkari Sanghatana.

Mulayam Singh’s Samajwadi Party and Mayawati’s Bahujan Samaj Party are also players to contend with in the state’s political arena.

23 december 2013

pradip das/express archive

her big moment Maharashtra AAP convener and RTI activist Anjali Damania: in the spotlight all of a sudden

ground has been slow.

The AAP may be in a resurgent mood at the moment, but its candidates may lack winnability, say senior politicians.

Damania’s growing inaccessibility to the common man in this nascent stage of the party’s formation and the growing group of ‘idealists’ crowding the party are unlikely to help matters in this regard.

The party’s ideology might resonate with the candlelight marchers of South Mumbai, sneers a senior BJP leader.

“If Kumar Vishwas can win a seat by reciting poetry, so can I,” says AAP ticket aspirant ‘Kavi’ Ritesh Jha. He is keen on contesting against Ajit Pawar from the Baramati constituency in Pune district. “I have tried Damania madam several times, but she has not taken my calls. I will go and meet her and tell her that I want to take on Ajit Pawar,” says the poet.

Interestingly, anti-corruption crusader Anna Hazare is from Ralegan Siddhi in Maharashtra’s Ahmednagar district, yet he has been unable to develop a support base in the area. In fact, when Hazare fasted at the Ramlila Grounds in Delhi, there was little support for him in Maharashtra. Though it generated mammoth support in Delhi, people from 23 december 2013

Hazare’s village had to be coerced to visit him in Delhi during the fast.

After the resounding success of the fast at the Ramlila Grounds in Delhi, the Hazare-Kejriwal rally at the BKC Ground in Mumbai attracted 2,000 people at best.

“People in Maharashtra are used to Hazare’s flip-flops with politicians. They know that he fasts only to inconvenience certain politicians, and works to secure gains for others,” said a senior Congress leader who has been the target of Hazare’s anti-corruption stir.

The AAP is unlikely to get the support of Anna Hazare and his Bhrastachar Virodhi Samiti; Hazare has not seemed very comfortable with Kejriwal since the Ramlila fast. He has, in fact, issued periodic warnings against Kejriwal and the AAP for using his name or image to lure voters. There seems little likelihood of a change of heart on Hazare’s part.

Hazare has now begun yet another round of indefinite fasting from 10 December at Ralegan Siddhi for the Jan Lokpal Bill, warning the Congress of grave consequences in the 2014 elections if it fails to pass the Bill. So far, Hazare has found no support from the AAP for his latest fast.

Clearly, the political scene in

Maharashtra is quite different from that in Delhi. Regional issues such as procurement prices for cotton, sugarcane, irrigation issues, electricity supply to farmers, etcetera, are of considerable importance. The state has a strong cooperative base across sectors such as banking, agriculture and dairy farming, and the state’s leaders have sizeable holdings which help them connect with their vote banks. The majority of leaders in Maharashtra (except the Shiv Sena) own sugar mills. These farmers are usually aligned with leaders who own these mills.

Unlike the AAP, these regional parties are flush with funds; big corporates have been ‘donating’ generously to their coffers. In the tight nexus between career politicians and these generous companies, the AAP will find it difficult to get donors in the state since few are willing to support candidates with uncertain chances of winning.

Though Damania’s caller-tune belts out: “Aam aadmi ke saath, aam aadmi ke baat, aam aadmi ke haq mein hain, her team needs to be more in tune with the aam aadmi’s needs. Otherwise, it might turn out that South Bombay’s candlelight marchers take over this party. n open www.openthemagazine.com 15

ashish sharma

broom vroom

The Victor They Missed Why the pundits got Kejriwal wrong MIHIR SRIVASTAVA

T

he Aam Aadmi Party’s unprece-

dented debut in electoral politics— winning 28 of Delhi’s 70 Assembly seats—has surprised many. The party’s triumph is a first in many ways. Not only has it dislodged a 15-year-old state government and its Chief Minister, it has done so without ushering the usual opposition into power by default. It has defied the unwritten rules of how elections are fought and won in India. And it could mark the start of an alternative polity.

Before the election, AAP leader Arvind Kejriwal was seen by political pundits as an ambitious man who had gained popularity by exposing the rotten underbelly of India’s political establishment and by fighting for an anti-corruption law under the leadership of Anna Hazare, as someone who was trying to encash this popularity for political power.

Moreover, his popularity was seen as media hype. His yen for drama, for dhar16 open

nas, the burning of electricity bills, his power pole theatrics, were all seen as petty attention seeking devices.

Sheila Dikshit called him an iconoclast. Others called him an anarchist. His views on swaraj were dismissed as naïve idealism, his intolerance of corruption as rabble-rousing, and his pledge to practice clean politics as populist rhetoric. The best way to deal with him, some pundits thought, was to ignore him.

Kejriwal espouses participative democracy. He insists that the aam aadmi decide what is best for him, instead of some politician or babu in some sarkari office. This is not simply his party’s ideology, he has said, but a political project.

However trite it may seem, the AAP, to Kejriwal, is not just a political outfit but a movement of the people, by the people and for the people—against corruption and for participatory governance.

As the leader has made clear, it was the

Anna Movement’s failure to persuade the Government to pass its proposed anti-corruption legislation—the Jan Lokpal bill—that motivated him to join politics.

All along, he has minced no words in calling politics as usual a sham, a conspiracy, a game of dalals (wheeler-dealers) who work for vested interests in a corrupt system—and not for people at large.

The AAP was conceived of as an alternative to that kind of politics, and the Delhi Assembly election was seen as its pilot project. Political pundits saw little merit in it.

A paradigm shift in politics?

‘Ha!’ they thought.

The pundits have been proven wrong.

T

he problem, political pundits rea-

soned, was that AAP had no money. It was inconceivable for a party to contest an election without funds pouring in 23 December 2013

surprise, surprise It would seem a party can be led to success by a man who means what he says

from corporate entities via either formal or informal channels (often as a quid pro quo for favours of ‘governance’). Reports estimate that the ruling Congress party spent Rs 380 crore on the Delhi election, and the BJP, Rs 450 crore. The AAP’s poll expenditure budget was just Rs 20 crore.

Party expenditure for the 2014 General Election is expected to be staggering. It is well known that the Congress, BJP and most other parties rely on dhanda money for their expenses. This results in a nexus between business and politics, as the Radia Tapes so dramatically showed.

The AAP’s independence of such funding has been evident to observers, and that nexus has been a focal point of Kejriwal’s attacks on ‘the system’. Earlier this year, he alleged that Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance Industries had used its influence to strike a favourable deal for itself in the Krishna-Godavari (KG) basin off the Andhra coast. Kejriwal suggested that S Jaipal Reddy had been moved out of the Union Petroleum Ministry at Reliance’s behest for asking too many inconvenient questions about its control of KG Basin gas. The AAP leader also drummed up noise over Congress President Sonia Gandhi’s son-in-law Robert Vadra’s dubious land dealings in Haryana, and against the BJP’s then President Nitin Gadkari, who was accused of a scam involving his businesses in Maharashtra. All of this made Kejriwal stand out as an earnest protestor against corruption who did not worry who was at the receiving end.

It was in keeping with a need to stay above the dirty fray that AAP asked the electorate to fund its election effort. As candidates, the party picked people from varied walks of life who wanted to make a difference and did not have the means to fight an election. The party relied solely on donations made by supporters, and actually stopped taking money after hitting its target of Rs 20 crore.

It worked. Most impressively so in Kejriwal’s New Delhi constituency, where he was elected to replace threeterm Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit by a margin of 25,000 votes. It stunned political pundits who thought he had no chance of pulling off this upset.

That Kejriwal had popular support should have been clear from the donations he was gathering. His constituency 23 December 2013

manager Gopal’s list of donors included 12,000 families—half the total number in the New Delhi consituency, as Open reported. The pundits ignored what this meant. Preferring to discuss politics in the closed confines of news studios, guided by old parameters of politics as usually practised, they failed to see what was happening right under their noses in the country’s capital.

A

AP had some 7,500 volunteers.

Unlike BJP and Congress workers, who are either well off or are paid Rs 5,000 a week, AAP volunteers were actually working pro bono. They were there for the party’s cause. Many were qualified professionals who’d left lucrative jobs or taken extended leave without pay to be part of a new phenomenon.

While the BJP and Congress were busy bussing in thousands to fill vacant seats at their rallies, the AAP was working to

Pundits declared Kejriwal’s fast a failure as it didn’t lead to governmental action.

But while he fasted, the AAP reached 4 million voters and won wide support coordinate a crowd of real enthusiasts, many of whom were happy to camp in hardship—sleeping on mats in cramped party offices—for their ideals. They would canvass door-to-door on foot, wearing the party’s iconic ‘Main aam aadmi hoon’ cap. And they did not merely ask for votes, they asked people to outline their problems of daily life. They tabulated the responses; corruption, price rise, water and power, security, street lights and roads were some of the issues that bothered Delhi’s aam aadmi. In a new push for direct democracy, they promised to address exactly these issues.

Also in contrast with its rivals, the AAP studiously avoided raking up issues of religion, caste and creed in its campaign.

Om Prakash Chauhan, a 60-year-old who is blind and has been a hawker in Connaught Place for 30 years, supports AAP for one reason: “They asked me about my problem and sought my advice

on how to solve it.” He was at the AAP headquarters on Hanuman road when the results were declared, celebrating with rickshaw pullers, students, housewives, government servants, even businessmen. Brooms were hurled in the air.

Though they knew the party would not necessarily get to run Delhi’s government, they were jubilant they had made their point loud and clear.

Politics would not be the same again.

Kejriwal has said many times that his aspiration is not to hold office. He reasons that the aam aadmi is not bothered with who becomes Delhi’s CM; what he worries about is the cost of electricity, state of primary health infrastructure, of schools, and availability of water.

K

ejriwal admits he is ambitious. But

his ambition is to change the way politics is practised in this country. He says he is not open to backdoor negotiations and will make no private deals. If a corporate house wishes to make AAP an offer of support, it must do it openly and its financial contribution would be listed on AAP’s website.

Transparency has been the party’s hallmark—and so with candidate selection as well. Anyone could apply or have his/ her name nominated by others. A screening committee shortlisted names for each constituency and put them on the party website for feedback from people at large. If there were an objection to someone (backed by proof), the person’s candidacy was struck off. Guided by such feedback, a final list was prepared by the party’s Political Affairs Committee, which includes Yogendra Yadav and Prashant Bhushan, among others, apart from Kejriwal himself.

When party member Prashant Bhushan was accused of taking a favour from UP’s Mayawati government in2011 after his family was allotted two 10,000 m2 farmland plots in Noida, this reporter asked the renowned lawyer for a detailed account of his personal wealth, assets and back accounts. He readily supplied these details despite the fact that he was not required to (as he didn’t hold any public office).

The internet was also used openly to guide candidates, with information on manifesto issues uploaded in real time. open www.openthemagazine.com 17

The party’s own surveys pointed to an AAP sweep, of which it even ran FM radio ad spots, but the pundits saw this as premature self congratulation.

The party’s response to allegations was interesting too. In a farcical episode a couple of weeks before polling, Anna Hazare wrote Kejriwal a letter accusing him of using his name to garner votes.

Anna also sought a clarification on the use of India Against Corruption (IAC) funds. Political pundits called it a ‘letter bomb’, but Kejriwal made the letter public along with his reply, and offered to withdraw his candidacy if any wrongdoing were proven. “If nothing is found, we would like Anna to come to Delhi and campaign for us,” he had said. Anna, taken aback, told the media that his letter had been ‘personal’.

The party was also a target of sting operations trying to expose its own ‘corruption’, but none of these was convincing.

Former BJP President Nitin Gadkari accused IAC of using ‘dubious’ foreign funds, alleging that Team Kejriwal was part of a foreign conspiracy to cast India’s democracy in suspicion. A month before the polls, Union Home Minister Sushil Kumar Shinde ordered a probe of the party’s alleged foreign funding. This, after Shinde himself had given AAP a clean chit on this count eight months earlier.

Kejriwal welcomed the probe and requested that it be done in 48 hours. He also demanded a probe of how the Congress has mustered funds of some Rs 2,000 crore and how the BJP had so much money. That didn’t happen.

The news of Shinde’s probe, ironically, actually served the party well. Over the next five days, it collected an extra Rs 90 lakh in sympathy donations. It was enough to meet the Rs 20 crore target.

I

t was on 7 April this year that Kejriwal

ended his 15-day fast and announced that AAP would contest all 70 seats in Delhi, where he had been protesting against ‘inflated’ electricity and water bills. Pundits said his fast had been a failure because his satyagraha, unlike Anna’s earlier, didn’t lead to any action by the Delhi government. Kejriwal’s fast was summarily ignored by most of the media. CM Sheila Dikshit, under no media pressure to act, didn’t even cor-

18 open

respond with Kejriwal on this issue.

But while he fasted, AAP workers went door-to-door across the city, visiting various unauthorised resettlement colonies, collecting signatures for a campaign to have Dikshit reduce water and power tariffs. The AAP reached more than 4 million voters in this period and won widespread support. This was a big success that pundits failed to recognise.

I met Kejriwal soon after the fast and found him upbeat. He called it a ‘spiritual experience’. This was around the time AAP activists, representing 272 municipal wards of Delhi and travelling in 272 autorickshaws, had caused a traffic jam in their mission to deliver bundles of 800,000 letters to Dikshit. “What’s the problem in receiving letters from the aggrieved? She could have just sent a clerk to receive [them],” said Kejriwal, sitting on his bed eating daal chaawal.

It was in this phase that the AAP consolidated itself as a political entity. Party members and volunteers were moved by Kejriwal’s fast to put in their best. There was a surge in membership. The movement had momentum. “The party has 5,000 active workers who are at least 100 times more committed than [those] of other parties,” Kejriwal had said then. An additional 50,000 members joined the party after that.

While pundits in India were oblivious of his expanding influence, in April Kejriwal was the only Indian to feature in Time magazine as one of the 100 most influential people in the world.

K

ejriwal quit his job as a revenue

officer in 2000 to join an NGO called Parivartan, which focuses on assisting citizens in navigating income tax, electricity and food ration nightmares in Delhi through the Right to Information Act. Change, he has always held, begins with small things. Parivartan’s first office in Sunder Nagari, a resettlement colony in East Delhi, was a big empty room with a table and computer donated by another NGO. He was always particular about proper documentation, believing that such transparency was the best shield against a hostile government.

In 2006, Kejriwal won the Ramon Magsaysay Award for Emergent Leadership. He used an RTI application to expose scams in the Public

Distribution System. He forced the Diskhit government to withdraw a World Bank-backed proposal to privatise Delhi’s water supply.

Back home, his parents, wife Sunita Kejriwal—a senior income tax officer who has been on leave from her job since November 2011—and two children have reconciled themselves to the fact that Kejriwal has devoted his life to his cause.

The leader once told me that he cannot do much to change this, asserting that his family is his biggest support.

There was a time, during the battle for the Jan Lokpal bill for example, that pundits would dub him ‘Anna’s sidekick’ despite the fact that he was the brains behind the movement. On another occasion, after Anna happened to praise Narendra Modi, IAC leaders were scoffed at as the BJP’s B team.

Kejriwal has since made it clear that his party is not wedded to any ideology.

The popularity of the Anna Movement forced the Government to constitute a ten-member committee of ministers and regular citizens to prepare a draft of a new anti-corruption bill, but they failed to arrive at a mutually acceptable draft. At the time, social activist Aruna Roy called Kejriwal’s version of the Jan Lokpal bill a Frankenstein’s monster that “would devour all of us”. Kejriwal put out documents to show that Roy was part of the consultation process that resulted in that draft of the proposed bill.

Eventually, Anna Hazare’s fast whipped up such a storm that the UPA Government was forced to pass a resolution in Parliament conceding to three of his demands: a citizen’s charter, the inclusion of the lower bureaucracy in the ambit of the Lokpal bill, and the creation of Lokayuktas in all states. The resolution was passed unanimously by all parties.

Yet, a year later, nothing had happened.

That was Kejriwal’s cue, as he has said, to take upon himself the onus to clean up Indian politics. Anna, however, was not convinced that joining politics was the way out. They parted ways on the issue, but Kejriwal went on to create history.

The pundits are now hailing him as a giant killer. Anna has said that he could be CM one day. Perhaps we all need to come to grips with a new wonder: that a party can be led to success by a man who means what he says. n 23 December 2013

vignettes

Kejriwal’s Delhi Snapshots from some of the winning constituencies of the Aam Aadmi Party Photographs by ashish sharma and raul irani

the AAP people (clockwise from far left) Graffiti in the New Delhi constituency where Arvind Kejriwal defeated Sheila Dikshit; an AAP supporter in Jharera village in Delhi Cantt; residents of Mangolpuri slum in west Delhi

23 December 2013

open www.openthemagazine.com 21

AAP’s base (clockwise from left) Devli village in Ambedkarnagar in south Delhi that hosted rallies by Rahul Gandhi and Narendra Modi but voted AAP; Mashi Charan, 80, and his wife Shantidevi (in the middle), who have always voted for the Congress because they felt there was no meaningful alternative, but voted for the AAP this time; residents of Mayapuri Rewari huddle together along a train track on a chilly evening; a view of the Dhobi Ghat slum in Delhi Cantt

23 December 2013

open www.openthemagazine.com 23

st i n g

The Dirty Eleven

rogues gallery (Top row) Hari Manjhi of the BJP, K Sugumar of the AIADMK, Khiladi Lal Bairwa of the Congress, Vikrambhai Arjanbhai Madam of the Congress (Middle row) Vishwa Mohan Kumar of the JD-U; Ravindra Kumar Pandey of the BJP; C Rajendran of the AIADMK, Bhudeo Chaudhary of the JD-U (Bottom row) Kaiser Jahan of the BSP, Maheshwar Hazari (right) of the JD-U, Lalubhai Patel of the BJP

An undercover investigation by Cobrapost that employed clandestine cameras shows 11 MPs cutting across party lines, including of the Congress and BJP, offering to write letters of recommendation for a fictional foreign oil firm. Some helpfully offer the support of other MPs as well, and a lawmaker’s husband promises to approach Sonia Gandhi. The prices for these services range from Rs 50,000 to Rs 50 lakh K Ashish

F

or several weeks, I posed as a

representative of an oil firm that does not exist—Mediterranean Oil Inc, apparently based in Queensland, Australia, with interests in oil, diamonds, metals and mineral exploration. The Cobrapost investigation team created a website and produced brochures, and I tapped a few middlemen to approach the staff of Members of Parliament from the BJP, Congress, JD-U, AIADMK and BSP. Introducing myself as a consultant with Mediterranean Oil Inc, I requested the MPs to write letters of recommendation to India’s Petroleum Ministry for my company, saying it was planning to bid for oil exploration rights in the Northeast. The proposed project was pegged at Rs 1,000 crore.

Eleven MPs agreed to write the letters for a fee. Of these, six promptly issued recommendation letters. For proffering these letters, they settled on prices between Rs 50,000 and several lakh; Khiladi Lal Bairwa of the Congress put his price at Rs 50 lakh.

Apart from Lal Bairwa, the MPs are Vikrambhai Arjanbhai, also of the Congress; Lalu Bhai Patel, Ravindra Kumar Pandey and Hari Manjhi of the BJP; K Sugumar and C Rajendran of the AIADMK; Vishwa Mohan Kumar, Maheshwar Hazari and Bhudeo Chaudhary of the JD-U, and Kaiser Jahan of the BSP. None of the parliamentarians bothered to check the antecedents of Mediterranean Oil Inc. The JD-U’s MP from Samastipur, Bihar, Maheshwar Hazari helpfully offered to bring along a bunch of five MPs to lobby effectively with the Ministry. The price: Rs 5 lakh for each MP.

23 December 2013

MPs like to keep deals as discreet as they can. They tend not to get into direct negotiations or talk money. A network of touts, personal staff, and occasionally relatives, works alongside these MPs; they control access to lawmakers, organise meetings, talk money and iron out the terms of negotiation. However, Vikrambhai Arjanbhai of the Congress asked me to forward the money through an angadia (a hawala channel). I came across plenty of such touts on South Avenue, North Avenue and Baba Kharak Singh Marg in Lutyen’s Delhi, where parliamentarians are housed. One tout, Avnish Singh, negotiated deals with two MPs but got suspicious when my recording instrument started beeping intermittently as the battery ran low.

“Kuchh gadbad toh nahin hai na bhai sahib… yeh aajkal ka samay theek nahin hai na (Hope there is no problem… these are bad times).” Thereafter, we couldn’t get in touch with him.

“After all, we have to fight elections that are so expensive”

Maheshwar Hazari, the MP who offered to gather other MPs for the task of lobbying, is a prominent JD-U leader. Hazari is a lawmaker from Samastipur, Bihar.

It does not take much to inspire him

“Shell out at least Rs 5 lakh for each letter. We will sit there to see the work is done… all five will go there personally” M a h e s h wa r H a z a r i ,

JD-U MP from Samastipur, Bihar

to write a recommendation for the fictional oil company. “Suno na, aapko kahin jaane ki zaroorat nahin padegi (Listen, you don’t have to go anywhere else),” assures Hazari.“Chitthi ki copy de dijiyega… sansad aur sabse hum chitthi likhwa denge (Give me the copy of the letter… I will get more parliamentarians to write letters for you).” In fact, Hazari is confident that he can see the deal through; “Aur abhi itna hi nahin, chitthiyan hi nahin denge ladkar kar kara denge poora (It is not only that we will issue you the letters but would also fight it out to see your job done).”

He leaves the price to us. “You tell me something… after all, we have to fight elections that are so expensive.” This is the argument I hear from almost every MP: elections are expensive. One of the touts says: “Our leaders would not have become corrupt if the elections had not become so expensive nowadays.”

I offer Hazari Rs 1 lakh for every letter of recommendation. “What use is Rs 1 lakh?” Hazari snaps. “Shell out at least Rs 5 lakh for each letter. We will sit there to see the work is done… all five will go there personally.”

Remember the din the JD-U created in the Lok Sabha over FDI in retail? The party’s own MPs, however, do not hesitate before writing a letter of recommendation for an Australian company. Or offering to lobby for it.

JD-U MP Vishwa Mohan Kumar, who represents Bihar’s Supaul in the Lok Sabha, also agrees readily to endorse Mediterranean Oil Inc. In our meeting with Kumar at his North Avenue residence, he negotiates terms. Reacting to a low fishing offer, “Give at least 50,000, open www.openthemagazine.com 25

sir,” says Kumar. “All people come and pay 50–50… nothing can be done in less than this.”

I tell him that there are MPs who have written us recommendation letters without taking a penny. Kumar says he could oblige us similarly, but he has a rally to organise: “I also write for free… but there is a burden of this rally on [the 15th] on my head.”

Eventually I pay Kumar Rs 50,000 for the recommendation.

The tout, Dharmendra, leads me to more MPs of more parties than I had bargained for. I am at the door of another JD-U MP, Bhudeo Choudhary, from Jamui, Bihar. Dharmendra has briefed the Lok Sabha MP about me; once I am ushered into the meeting, Choudhary suggests with gestures that he can provide the letter. I agree to a price of Rs 50,000, but am able to procure the recommendation after paying his staff only half the sum, promising to cough up the rest soon.

“I have a very good rapport with Veerappa Moily”

I meet Lalu Bhai Patel, the BJP MP from Daman and Diu, at his residence in South Avenue with the help of a revolver-brandishing tout, Jaiswal, who says he can take me straight to Union Petroleum Minister Veerappa Moily for my work. “I will also come along… wherever you want we will follow it up… all officials in the Petroleum Ministry are my friends... I have a very good rapport with Veerappa Moily.”

Patel sits through our meeting silently, occasionally uttering ‘haan’ or making gestures. Jaiswal does all the talking, and makes various assurances on Patel’s behalf. I strike a deal for Rs 50,000 for a recommendation letter. Jaiswal says such letters are no big deal; “Ask for some big favour, then the MPs will work … what will they do sitting idle?” At this point, Patel says, “Haan (yes).”

Jaiswal boasts of Patel’s influence in the Government, irrespective of which party is in power: “If we wish we can ask any ministry to come here… the Government is ours… but MP sahib has good relations with the Government… his work will be done on priority.”

I have been advised against talking money with Patel by his PA and Jaiswal; 26 open

I try nevertheless. The BJP MP, however, feigns ignorance when I tell him that I will pay his PA Rs 50,000: “What for?”

After I collect the recommendation letter from Patel, I sneak a chance to speak to him, saying that I have left my phone behind. Jaiswal waits outside. I repeat to Patel that I have paid him Rs 50,000 for the letter. “Not me… don’t tell me this thing,” retorts Lalu Bhai.

Jaiswal speaks of a previous Cobrapost expose: “There was this scandal… there was this scandal… four MPs were suspended for [accepting a bribe of] Rs 25,000–50,000.” This was Operation Duryodhan, an undercover investigation

by Cobrapost in 2005 that caught MPs from both Houses accepting money to ask questions. It led to the dismissal from Parliament of all the MPs who were caught in the investigation.

“Aap wahan baat kar lo paisa kaise ayega… sahib ne bola paisa baad mein doosre kisi aur ka naam mein … theek hai (You tell them how the money has to be paid … sahib says money has to be sent in someone else’s name, okay)?

R a j e s h M a r u , secretary to

Vikrambhai Arjanbhai Madaam, Congress MP from Jamnagar, Gujarat

Patel seems to be rather close to the tout Jaiswal, who claims he is a liquor don from Chhattisgarh with “20 arms licences”.

Jaiswal does not part with the recommendation letter until I pay him his cut—Rs 25,000. Jaiswal claims that he is close to Chhattisgarh CM Raman Singh, and has political aspirations himself. He claimed to have secured the support of a builders’ lobby in his area to fund his campaign for the coming Lok Sabha polls.

Like the JD-U, the BJP had opposed the Congress policy on FDI in retail. Indeed, these protests were underway at the time of this undercover investigation. Yet, BJP lawmakers don’t mind writing recommendations for foreign oil firms seeking licences to operate in India.

I am introduced to Ravindra Kumar Pandey, the BJP MP from Giridih in Jharkhand, by the tout Dharmendra.

Pandey is rather obliging when I request a letter, implying he could secure more such letters to endorse the firm which might secure the company the licences it needs. “It would serve your purpose if some others also write letters [for you]?” he asks.

It would certainly serve our purpose if we got more letters, I say. The asking price is Rs 2 lakh. We haggle, but Dharmendra is unyielding: “This is the fifth term of our MP… he enjoys such a stature that no matter where he stands from, the party rallies behind him.” I manage to speak to Pandey again: “Sir, Rs 2 lakh is a bit high.

We can pay Rs 1 lakh upfront for the letter.” Pandey says, “No.” Dharmendra introduces me to BJP MP Hari Manjhi from Gaya, Bihar, at his North Avenue residence. Here, I also meet Manjhi’s cousin Kamlesh. I have been told in advance that I will have to shell out Rs 1.5 lakh for a recommendation letter. I ask Manhji to help my company lobby with the Ministry as well.

The MP is reassuring: “Will go… will come along. Lineup karna padega (It will have to be lined up).” He adds, “Will have to meet the minister—meaning, I will have to speak to him.”

When I ask to speak with Manjhi ‘separately’ to discuss money, he directs me to his henchmen instead: “Yes, you can talk to them.” He reassures me: “There is nothing to worry… you can talk with him… you can talk anything with him.”

The price fixed with Manjhi’s men for the letter and lobbying job is Rs 1.5 lakh.

I try to negotiate, and secure my recommendation letter for Rs 35,000, promising to pay the rest when my company releases funds.

“Okay, you can talk”

Several MPs are not comfortable discussing money directly. Take the MP from South Chennai, C Rajendran of the AIADMK, an influential politician who is believed to enjoy Chief Minister Jayalalitha’s confidence. When I mention money, he leaves the room displeased. Middleman Nair reprimands me: “He’s angry… You can hand [it] over [to us]. He never interferes in this.”

My request for a letter of recommenda23 December 2013

tion, however, is met with an “Okay.” I say, “This guy told me that… on behalf of [sic] recommendation letter you need some money, sir.” Rajendran says, “You give him,” referring to his personal secretary, Martin.

Martin is paid the money at Rajendran’s office-cum-residence on North Avenue. The cost of the letter of recommendation: Rs 50,000.

Rajendran’s party colleague K Sugumar has no qualms talking about money. I meet the MP from Pollachi, Tamil Nadu, at his North Avenue residence after briefing a middleman on my purpose. Sugumar asks a few questions about the company and is satisfied with my answers. Asked if he would write a “recommendation letter”, Sugumar nods, “Okay.” Although the price has already been settled with the middleman, I broach the issue of money. “Okay, you can talk,” says Sugumar. We settle on Rs 50,000 for a recommendation written on his “letterhead.”

“Rs 20 lakh is too little”

I meet Khiladi Lal Bairwa, the Congress MP from Karauli-Dholpur, Rajasthan, at his South Avenue residence. He flatly refuses to play ball: “Hum kaise chitthi likh denge, bhai (Why should I write the letter)?”

So far, none of the MPs I met have refused. I persist, asking if he could suggest some other way of doing this. “Kitne ka consulting hua hai (How big is this consulting gig)?” Bairwa asks. I say the project is placed at Rs 1,000 crore, and I have a budget of Rs 1 crore to obtain five recommendation letters for the company.

“Then, how much is a letter worth?”

Bairwa asks. I raise the stakes, “Rs 20 lakh”. He scrutinises every document I show him, and after asking several questions, says: “Gadbad mamla… yeh coal jaisa mamla hai... (There is something fishy… this is like the Coal[gate] affair).”

The MP invites me to his home in Jaipur: “Day after tomorrow, around 10– 11.” I ask Bairwa if this is for another meeting, but he says he wants me to deliver the ‘material’ home: “Nahin … toh le ayein ye material (No… bring this material).” By material, Bairwa means money.

But he says that my offer price, Rs 20 lakh, is too little. “You are paying less… it won’t be possible to do it,” Bairwa says. His 28 open

price? “Pachaas (50 lakh).” Too high, I say.

“Because this job involves risk,” he says, “I write a letter… then someone else writes, there are many things.”

Bairwa’s party colleague Vikrambhai Arjanbhai says that he will not accept cash, and that I have to route the money through hawala channels. Arjanbhai’s personal secretary Ramsi Maru assures me that the letter of recommendation “will be done”.

Maru is powerful in Arjanbhai’s scheme of things. I ask him to offer his terms, including his commission for the deal. Maru promises that he will arrange it at a price lower than what the MP demands: “If he says, ‘Give me Rs 15 lakh’, I will tell him ‘Okay, leave it, do it for Rs 10 lakh’… so you benefit,” says the politician’s personal secretary.

At the meeting with Arjanbhai in the

price of Rs 6 lakh excluding his cut. They ask that the money be sent via an angadia [hawala channel]. Maru says his sahib, Arjanbhai, has instructed him how the money is to be paid: “Aap wahan baat kar lo paisa kaise ayega… sahib ne bola paisa baad mein doosre kisi aur ka naam mein … theek hai (You tell them how the money has to be paid… sahib says money has to be sent in someone else’s name, okay)?”

When I bring up money with Arjanbhai, he is told to speak with Maru.

I finally pay Maru Rs 75,000 without securing the letter from Arjanbhai. I felt compelled to pay up, despite not getting the letter, because I felt I was at risk.

I am, nevertheless, confident that the Congress MP would have issued the letter if I had paid Rs 6 lakh via hawala.

“I never do this kind of job… I am talking to you for the first time in my life and I am talking to you only because elections are due… I have to see all that”

I meet Kaiser Jahan, the BSP lawmaker from Sitapur, Uttar Pradesh, at her South Avenue residence in Delhi. It is her husband, Jasmir Ansari, an MLA from Lahurpur, who does much of the talking. “How can it be done without our knowing you,” Ansari says. Kaiser advises us to speak to her personal secretary Ainul Hatim.

When Hatim learns the project is pegged at Rs 1,000 crore, he wastes no time: “He [Ansari] has asked to enquire who it is, what it is,” he says. “If they want us to write a letter only… or want to get the job done… if the job has to be done then how big is the project… what will be our share?”

Ansari is ready to go to Sonia Gandhi to see the project through. But he must meet my bosses, he says. “We will see your project through… by talking to Sonia or somebody else… Then whom should we talk to [in your company]?” He promises three letters in place of the one I’d asked for. I offer Rs 5 lakh. He agrees, but says, “I never do this kind of job… I am talking to you for the first time in my life and I am talking to you only because elections are due… I have to see all that.”

Later, Ansari says, “We don’t do any work for such a petty amount… give us some big job… will do that.” n

Ja s m i r A n s a r i , BSP MLA from Lahurpur, UP, and husband of Kaiser Jahan, BSP MP from Sitapur, UP

MP’s Jamnagar residence, Maru does most of the talking with the Congress MP. I am told to discuss money matters only with Maru. “Gujarat ka kisi ka letter hai aapke paas (Have you secured a letter from any Gujarat MP)?” Arjanbhai asks.

No, I tell him, but I will get a letter from an Orissa MP. I tell Arjanbhai that since he is on a committee of the Petroleum Ministry, a recommendation letter from him will help considerably.

I also offer to help Arjanbhai with funds for the forthcoming polls. Maru seizes this moment to say that the price we’d fixed was before there was any talk of helping with election funds: “Woh toh election se pehle jo boli thi aapne (That thing you had told me before the thing about polls).” I say it was about paying Rs 5 lakh for the election fund. But Maru corrects me: “Abhi ki baat hai (This is about the present deal).”

After much discussion, Maru sets a

“We will see your project through—by talking to Sonia or somebody else”

K Ashish is associate editor with Cobrapost 23 December 2013

g u e st co lu m n

Right to Sexuality Why the Supreme Court verdict upholding Section 377 is a loss for everyone AKSHAY KHANNA

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ednesday’s Supreme Court verdict setting

aside the path-breaking Delhi High Court judgment of 2009, which declared consensual sex between adults outside the purview of Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code, is an obvious affront to the rights of LGBTIQ (Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender Intersex and Queer) citizens of India. But there is something about this dark day that must be mourned by everyone.

First, the Delhi High Court judgment recognised not just the rights of LGBT citizens, but, for the first time, the Right to Sexuality of all Indian citizens. It had fallen to the Queer body to demonstrate the absurdity of denying something so basic to what it means to be human. But the judgment was a moment when the fundamental rights of all citizens to sexuality, to dignity, to a right against violence and discrimination, found expression. Today’s loss is not simply a loss for all LGBTIQ communities across the country; it is a loss for every citizen.

Second, this is a major setback in the development of a radical jurisprudence, of a relationship between law and justice. The Delhi High Court judgment is one of the richest pieces of jurisprudence we have seen in several decades. The very notion of a ‘constitutional morality’ identifying the essence of the Indian nation-state on principles of dignity and equality for all, for instance, had been a much needed innovation in legal thinking. Another key aspect of the 2009 judgment had been its development of an understanding of horizontal discrimination; that is, looking beyond discrimination in acts of the State and bringing into the realm of Constitutional concern the matter of societal discrimination. These principles are crucial to developing an understanding of the role of law in protecting the rights of minorities in the face of majoritarian aggression. The Delhi High Court judgment generated the conditions for developing a far more nuanced and radical legal landscape for the rights of all minority communities, whether based on religion, ethnicity, caste, or gender and sexuality. It is ironic, then, that the patriarchal articulations of some of these minority communities opposed the judgment. This ought to be a day of mourning for them as well.

We are seeing, in several parts of the world, a cynical appropriation of the discourse of sexual rights and sexuality by right-wing and reactionary agendas. In Western Europe, North America and Israel, we see the phenomenon of ‘homonationalism’, where LGBT discourse is being used in deeply racist—usually Islamophobic—

23 december 2013

groups. In East Africa, the question of sexuality has come to be the central question in discourse about the nation— where notions of ‘Africanness’ have come to be tied to a position on homosexuality. This centering of the question of sexuality is always a way of diverting attention from political and economic questions on the control of natural resources or instances of corruption.

In this context, the Delhi High Court judgment and the progressive actions of the state in the years since–such as the provision of three options of gender in formal documents of citizenship—have been a beacon of light representing the possibility of a truly progressive politics in a time of cynicism. The fact that ‘it could happen in India’ has been a source of inspiration for Queer groups the world over, especially in former British colonies.

Expressions of shock, disappointment, mourning and solidarity flow in from all these parts of the world today.

Finally—and this is the crucial question for the future of Indian politics—the Supreme Court verdict sets the stage for a phase of fascism looming large over our political landscape. In the figure of Narendra Modi, we see the demand for a certain kind of love of the dictator, an erotic love. Women must love him, and men, be like him. There is something crucially gendered and sexualised about the kind of politics that centres around the charisma of a central figure. Along with this comes a very strict notion of the normative citizen, with very firm demands for particular types of masculinity and certain types of femininity.

In such a politics, the different aspects of our existence and identity—religion, gender, sexuality, caste, etcetera– are placed in a hierarchy of privilege and denial. There is an exclusion of all those who fall outside the space claimed as ‘the State’, and we are faced with the possibility of violence against those who do not fit our strict notions of citizenship.

There was perhaps never a time when the Supreme Court had such a pressing duty to stand up and firmly declare the centrality of dignity and diversity in our Constitutional make up. In its verdict of 11 December 2013, the Supreme Court has failed that duty—quite as dramatically as it did 37 years ago, when it might have averted the Emergency. n Akshay Khanna is an anthropologist at Institute of Development Studies, UK, and has been part of the Queer movement in India for 15 years open www.openthemagazine.com 29

reinvention

Rahul Gandhi versus the Old Guard

vipin kumar/ht/getty images

Why his battle is not yet lost Dhirendra K Jha

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his would be a problem at the best of times; and

these are not the best of times for the Congress. The party’s rout in the recent assembly elections has worsened the stand-off between Vice-president Rahul Gandhi and the party’s old guard. And his declaration that he is on a mission to overhaul the party comes just as its latest poll hammering lengthens a shadow on his leadership qualities. With hardly five months to go before the next General Election, Rahul Gandhi has a lot to prove in a short span of time.

“I think we need to start thinking about politics of empowerment,” Rahul said on 8 December once the extent of the party’s electoral defeat was revealed. “I have been saying this inside the party. I am now going to do it very aggressively in the Congress party.”

These words have been taken by many as a pointed reminder that he, rather than Congress President Sonia Gandhi, now has the final say in party matters. Not everyone within the party is pleased with this. “It’s high time Sonia Gandhi leads the party from the front,” says a senior party leader who does not wish to be named. “Ever since [Rahul] was made the party’s vice-president in January, he has put his stamp on the party with his leadership style and election management. These assembly elections were the first test of that and he has failed the test.”

In particular, the old guard fears that Rahul Gandhi’s organisational experiments of internal democracy will dissolve an inner party structure based on loyalty—from top to bottom and from one wing to another—at a time when the party’s focus ought to be on gearing up for the 2014 polls.

Those supporting the 43-year-old vice-president’s project are no less vocal. In fact, unlike his detractors, they have even started voicing their views openly. Congress leader Mani Shankar Aiyar, in an article published in The Indian Express on 10 December, went to the extent of welcoming the poll reverses, arguing that this would give Rahul Gandhi an opportunity to reshape the Congress.

‘The reason for this paradox is that for at least the last quarter of a century, my party has been in desperate need of a root and branch restructuring,’ wrote Aiyar, ‘Rahul Gandhi has promised a transformation of both the organisation and leadership of the party.’

Indeed, in the states that went to the polls recently, it was Rahul Gandhi and his team of young leaders who had a major say in everything from the selection of candidates to the management of campaigns. Following the party’s debacle in Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Delhi (and loss in Chhattisgarh), with a win in Mizoram its only consolation, dissent has begun to surface within the party in the form of hints that Sonia Gandhi must take the reins

23 december 2013

of control back and return the Congress to winning form.

“The party is still in the hands of Sonia Gandhi,” said party leader Tariq Anwar on the morning of 8 December as vote counting began to show a gloomy outcome for the Congress. “Rahul is still second in command.”

Technically, Anwar was correct, but in a party like the Congress, the mere emphasis on an obvious fact of this nature is considered a sign of resentment against the established order. Anwar’s words were soon followed— though in private conversations—by several other Congress leaders who blamed Rahul Gandhi’s style of functioning for the defeat and underlined a need for Sonia Gandhi’s own leadership.

These murmurs did not stop even after the mother and son showed up together at the party headquarters moments after the final results. In that brief encounter with the press, Sonia Gandhi acknowledged that the drubbing was a shock and identified inflation as a major reason, while Rahul Gandhi vowed to “give serious space to the common man in our processes, in our systems and in our structures” and to take “all necessary action” to overhaul the party and its way of functioning.

R

ahul Gandhi’s experiments with internal democracy and his bid to restore the Congress’ pro-poor image were not an outcome of the party’s drubbing. In his own way, he has been emphatic about the need for these changes ever since he joined his mother in electoral politics back in 2004. All these years, he has insisted on a transformation through a process of political inclusion and by levelling the party’s playing fields. All along, it was clear that the project he had set for himself was one for the long haul, with the democratisation of the party’s youth wings—the All India Youth Congress (AIYF) and National Students Union of India (NSUI)—only the first of more significant campaigns to come.

All considered, Rahul Gandhi has shown greater enthusiasm for flattening the party’s top-down style of centralised command than either Sonia or Rajiv Gandhi, or any of their predecessors. In his time, Rajiv Gandhi had denounced “brokers of power” who “dispense patronage” and had turned “a mass movement into a feudal oligarchy”. He made this statement almost a year after assuming charge as India’s Prime Minister. But he could hardly take any concrete steps against the ills he had spoken of.

Sonia Gandhi, on her part, set up a series of committees to review the party’s organisational structure and suggest corrective measures. All of them held up a lack of internal democracy as the party’s most serious problem, yet the fear of upsetting the status quo was so high that she open www.openthemagazine.com 31

could act on none of these well-meaning reports.

Rahul Gandhi began with small but concrete steps. The Congress, like other parties, is a tightly controlled body that has traditionally thrived on loyalty. Of course, the party has a constitution, but it exists more on paper than in reality. Many Congress leaders would boast that even if the principle of election is not followed strictly for the assignment of roles, the party still functions in a democratic manner, that its leaders take decisions only after listening to the opinions of other members. In one crucial sense, this is true. In many cases of selection, a two-way process has indeed taken place or at least it looks as if it has. But that is still selection, not election. A leader knows he can survive only if he has support from the top. Rahul Gandhi’s call for a transformation would turn this state of affairs upside down: with support from below no less significant as that from above.

“Rahul thinks that this may be set right,” says a senior party leader, “He is not ready to give it up simply because some party leaders do not want it. He is determined.”

If the organisational part of his reform agenda has unsettled some party members, his attempts to woo the poor and underprivileged—the social groups the party has always banked upon in moments of deep crisis—have impressed even some of his detractors. Many senior leaders

The illusionist’s art, as politics in India has been, is no longer working the way it used to. The grand old party’s problem is how to sell an illusion now that voters have seen it for what it is of the party, even though irked by his often brash attitude to issues, agree that he has been consistent in his effort to engage the country’s poor and deprived. They also admit that this is the best way for the party to approach the General Election due next May, especially as a point of contrast with the BJP’s prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi, who is emerging in popular perception as the favourite of big business.

Undeniably, Rahul Gandhi has been relentless in his endeavour to strike an emotional chord with the poor. At an election rally at Chittorgarh in Rajasthan last month, for instance, he had this to say: “On one side is the Congress and the other is the Opposition (read BJP). But there is a big difference in their thinking. We say this country is for everyone—the rich, the poor, businessmen, Dalits. And they say the focus should be on [a] select few. They say if the government has to run, it will run for industrialists.

If you listen to their speeches, you will hear about roads, airports and infrastructure. But you won’t hear about human beings, about poor people.”

Even though this plank has yielded no gains in the as32 open

sembly elections, with the party all but wiped out in Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Delhi, Congress insiders feel that it does hold out hope for next year’s Lok Sabha polls. According to these insiders, it is because of this ray of hope that pressure is being mounted on the Manmohan Singh Government to align its policy framework with the party’s electoral needs.

It is unclear how close an alignment can be made in the last five months of the Union Government’s term, but what is certain is that both young leaders and the party’s old guard agree that this is the only way to ensure the viability of a credible secular alternative that could contain a BJP resurgence.

I

t has been proven time and again that no secular front

is possible without an explicit pro-poor agenda. The urgency of it is also borne out by the fact that only a shift in the Government’s policy direction can grant Rahul the credibility needed to make the most of his plank.

In the current circumstances, promises alone—however noble they may sound—are unlikely to fetch results as they did in the past: whether it was the 1970s, when Indira Gandhi’s ‘Garibi Hatao’ worked wonders for her, or in 2004, when the party’s ‘Aam Aadmi’ slogan played a critical role in dislodging the NDA from power.

Such a policy shift would also come in handy if Rahul Gandhi wants to open a window of negotiation with the Left, which many Congress leaders believe is vital for the formation of a credible secular front. “Their words do not match their deeds,” says veteran Communist leader AB Bardhan, referring to the Congress. “This [coming together of the two] is not possible with the kind of policies they are pursuing.”

There are many ifs and buts, and Rahul Gandhi would have to think in broad terms if he wants to reform the grand old party and retain its influence over the country’s direction. His frequent meetings with CPM Politburo member Sitaram Yechury—mostly in the latter’s Parliament Annexe office—are being watched silently by curious observers. Yechury will have to play a crucial role if at all the Congress and Left join forces again.

The Congress is at a crucial juncture. Its image is in ruins, its government is unpopular and its leaders are symbols of corruption and arrogance. “It’s true a number of trivial people have been attracted to the party and we have committed mistakes too,” says a senior Congress leader, speaking privately after the results, “but not all of us are scoundrels. Many of us do have noble ideals and genuinely want to make the world a better place.”

The illusionist’s art, as politics in India has been, is no longer working the way it used to. The grand old party’s problem is how to sell an illusion now that voters have seen it for what it is. And in this reawakening of the electorate lies Rahul Gandhi’s real challenge.

After all, politics matters. n 23 december 2013

fstop/Corbis

infringement

Whose Word Is It Anyway?

ISKCON versus ISCON, Tata Sons versus Oktatabyebye, Gap versus Green The Gap‌ as trademarks are shielded by the law with ever more zeal, are you and I left with no right to use these words and symbols?

Lhendup G Bhutia

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bout five years ago, when a Delhi-based NGO involved in environmental and social issues decided to start a brand that would retail kitschy apparel and accessories that had been upcycled (created from trash), it had a simple question to address: what to call it?

All of its products, from tea coasters and iPad covers to T-shirts, were to be made from ‘waste’ and created by inhouse tailors and craftsmen. But as, Vimlendu Jha, executive director of the NGO Swechha puts it, no one came up with a good enough name to encapsulate the idea of the project. That’s when it occurred to Jha: ‘How about Green the Gap?’ A few years earlier, Swechha had developed a school-level educational programme called Bridge the Gap. Aimed at getting students to love their environment, it was a success, says Jha. And thus the derivative. “Green the Gap was perfect. It was everything we wanted of a name,” he says. “We were not just teaching, as we did through Bridge the Gap, we were converting waste into valuable commodities, we were providing employment, we were greening the gap.”

Since then, Green the Gap has earned a reputation for itself as a green do-gooder brand. It runs a workshop in Delhi, a couple of stores (in Mumbai and Delhi), and also retails its products at other outlets it has tied up with, apart from selling its wares online.

On 1 March this year, Jha reached the Delhi store to find a letter awaiting him.

On first impression, it seemed like an official missive of sorts. As he went through it, he wondered if it was a prank. Only on his second reading did he realise what it was: a threat of legal action. The US retail giant Gap Inc was accusing Swechha of trademark infringement for its use of ‘Gap’.

“I was—how do I put it?—shocked out of my wits.”

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rademark laws in India are governed by The Trade Marks Act, 1999, along with The Trade Marks Rules of 2002. Regarded by many intellectual property lawyers as one of the best trademark laws in the world, these seek to shield marks—or symbols, designs, words or expressions—that identify the

23 December 2013

products or services of a particular source from mala fide use. The idea is to stamp out fakes that mislead customers into buying what they think is the real thing.

But while firms are entitled to keep others from using their property, there is also another upshot: people lose access to the use of common words, phrases and symbols that are appropriated by businesses. So in a trademarked world, to what extent does an individual have the right to use one of these?

Says Vikrant Rana, managing director of SS Rana & Co, an intellectual property law firm in Delhi, “Like all trademark laws all over the world, complications often arise in India, especially when companies go overboard to protect their trademarks.”

According to IP lawyers, many companies fear that letting others use even a variant of their trademark, however ten-

The ISKCON temple in Ahmedabad has filed a lawsuit against JP Infrastructure Pvt Ltd for naming several of its buildings ISCON uous the link or unrelated their interests, could lead to the dilution of its consumer appeal. This is why they guard their brands with such zeal.

Can common phrases be trademarked?

In 2009, the online travel firm Makemytrip, was asked to relinquish the domain name of a travel recommendations website it had created because it ran into trademark trouble. Makemytrip had started a website called Oktatabyebye. com, which let holidayers share their travel experiences and post reviews of hotels. However, Tata Sons complained that the term ‘tata’ in its domain name was suggestive of its brand and was thus an unfair attempt to leverage its trademark. Says Kamal K Avutapalli, associate director of Makemytrip’s legal department, “We told [Tata Sons] that the term ‘tata’ in our domain name referred to ‘tata’ the informal farewell greeting, and had nothing to do with their trademark.

But to them, it was nothing short of trademark infringement.”

Tata Sons took the matter to the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) Arbitration and Mediation Centre, a United Nations agency that deliberates on domain disputes, among other things. The agency ruled in favour of Tata Sons and Makemytrip was asked to hand over its ownership of the domain name. The travel company then challenged its decision at the Delhi High Court, which has issued a stay order on the verdict. The case is still underway.

According to Avutapalli, the court’s final decision will set a precedent. “What our case does is also pose a bigger question. Can people and businesses use common and generic words? Or can companies—in this case owning a trademark over a similar name but in a different context—assert their rights over other people’s?”

Makemytrip has also put out an appeal online to garner public support for its stance. Swechha’s Jha has done something similar. Pitching it as a Davidversus-Goliath story, an apparel giant bullying a tiny brand promoting sustainable living, Jha started gathering favourable opinions on the internet. “They chose to mess with the wrong guy,” he says. His online petition said that he would not take this lying down and his story hit the media both here and overseas. “I had to let people know and get them on my side.

The more pressure [Gap Inc] put, the more I would let people know. I would make it a big PR disaster for them.”

A

n interesting trademark case that is currently underway in a civil court in Ahmedabad involves the International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON). Its temple in the city has filed a lawsuit claiming that its name is being misused by JP Infrastructure Pvt Ltd, a realtor that has put up several structures—including a mall—under the name ISCON. According to Yashomati Nandan, president of ISKCON Ahmedabad, the mall is what drew the Society’s ire when it was coming up near the temple in the early 2000s. “We approached them many times over the years, and they said they will look into it,” Nandan says, “But they never did. In fact, they started expanding.

More and more projects with the name open www.openthemagazine.com 35

brand war The US retail giant Gap Inc (far right) is accusing Swechha of trademark infringement for its use of ‘Gap’ in its ‘Green the Gap’ brand

ISCON started coming up.”

ISCON is now a well-known real estate brand in Gujarat, with numerous commercial, retail and residential projects built in that name. Nandan argues that the realtor had first used the name for its ISCON Mega Mall to draw benefits from its proximity to the temple. He claims that the company has an unfair advantage in the resemblance of the name with that of the Krishna Consciousness group.

“People get mistaken,” he says. “Many have started believing that the mall is somehow connected to the temple and the ISKCON movement.”

Ignored by the company, the temple approached the court in 2011. In its defence, the real-estate firm argues that there is no question of misuse since the two parties’ interests do not overlap; also, that the name it uses is ‘JP ISCON’ and not simply ‘ISCON’. According to the temple, however, the term ‘JP’ in ‘JP ISCON’ is presented in such tiny type that most people don’t even notice it.

Venkat Ganesan, president of JP ISCON, denies that the term ISCON was drawn from the name of the famous temple. Says he over email: ‘We have coined and adopted our extremely famous house mark ISCON by adopting the first letter ‘I’ from the name Induben, a sister of the present director of the company, second letter ‘S’ from the name Saraswatiben, the mother of the present director of the company, and the last three letters ‘CON’ from the word ‘construction’ as we are engaged in [this] business… Also, even the characters ‘J’ and ‘P’ of the corporate name JP Iscon Ltd, formerly JP Infrastructure Pvt Ltd, are derived from the first letters of the directors’ names—Mr Jayesh Kotak and Mr Pravin Kotak… it is our general practice to adopt the first letters of family names or the business category while coining or adopting a trademark / trade name.’

Also, to settle the matter amicably, contends Ganesan, the firm added the letters ‘JP’ to ‘ISCON’ and changed its name from JP Infrastructure Ltd to JP Iscon Ltd. ‘Our group has completed more than 20 projects in last 13 years with more than 2.5 million square feet of residential, commercial, and retail space in Gujarat… we are very much attached to our brand ISCON, which we have built over the years with a lot of hard work and passion.

36 open

manan srivastava/afp

We would not like to part with it.’

If one goes by a ruling of the Intellectual Property Appellate Board (IPAB) a few years ago, and if the row comes down to the name itself, the temple may stand a fair chance of securing a favourable verdict. Back then, a trademark row had erupted over similar names with different spellings between two dairy cooperatives. In 2001, Ichhamati Co-Operative Milk Producers’ Union Ltd, a dairy cooperative in West Bengal, started selling dairy products in the state under the label Imul, an abbreviation of its name. Three years later, the cooperative put in an application to register the trademark Imul. Guess who objected? The famous Kaira District CoOperative Milk Producers’ Union Ltd of Anand, Gujarat, which has been selling dairy products under Amul since 1955.

According to the latter, a buyer could confuse Imul with Amul.

The Registrar of Trademarks in Kolkata, however, rejected the objection and approved the trademark in 2006 on the grounds that Imul was honest and not deceptively similar; and since it had been selling since 2001 with increasing sales, a termination of the application would be unfair. The Gujarat cooperative appealed against the decision at the IPAB in Kolkata, which ruled in its favour. The phonetic similarity, it judged, was enough to mislead customers. ‘An unwary purchaser with average intelligence and imperfect recollection’, held the Board, would be confused between the two. Sales figures, it added, were no reason to approve of Imul as an independent trademark.

Although Ichhamati Co-Operative 23 December 2013

pat wellenbach/ap

Milk Producers’ Union Ltd is still colloquially referred to as ‘Imul’ in the West Bengal locality, it has been ordered against using the brandname.

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he trademark law is clear that you cannot use one owned by another company or individual. If you do, you run afoul of it and may be punished accordingly. But does it not also restrict your right to free expression? Can someone, for example, use a brand for the purpose of, say, satire?

Such questions arise from a current case at the Delhi High Court. After the Tata Group and Larsen & Toubro were awarded the Dhamra Port Project in Odisha to develop, Greenpeace began a campaign against the project in 2010.

Environmentalists have long opposed the port’s construction as it lies close to an eco-sensitive area that includes one of the Indian Ocean’s largest nesting grounds of the endangered Olive Ridley turtle. To warn people of the harm it foresaw, Greenpeace put up a game on its website, a variant of PacMan. Titled Turtle vs Tata, gamers had to save a turtle from tiny demons. Not only does the game use the name Tata, its demons bear the group’s insignia: a stylised ‘T’ within a circle.

According to Tata Sons, this amounts to infringement of its trademark and def-

23 December 2013

amation of the business group. Tata approached the High Court for an interim injunction and sought around Rs 10 crore in damages from Greenpeace. “We argued that what we were doing was not trademark infringement, but an attempt to create public awareness through a game. This is accorded to us [by] freedom of speech,” says Divya Ranganathan, a senior campaigner with Greenpeace, which has also claimed that this depic-

The use of a brand for parody could prove tricky.

If it reminds one of the original without adequate distinction, you risk legal trouble tion was a form of parody. Section 29(4) of the Trade Marks Act, 1999, argues Greenpeace, allows the use of a trademark for criticism, fair comment and parody if it is done with due cause.

However, for all those who have the urge, it is advisable to bear in mind that the use of a brand for purposes of parody could prove tricky. It must not be an exact reproduction of the original trademark, and, to establish the legitimacy of your intent, its use should conjure an original

work of some sort. If the parody reminds one of the original without adequate distinction, you risk legal trouble.

Greenpeace’s depiction of Tata as demons in its game has specifically been challenged by the business house. “To defend ourselves [on] this issue,” Ranganathan says, “we turned to the concept of hyperbole. We argued in court that portraying Tata as demons was done in an exaggerated and overtly emphatic manner simply to create a strong impression and was not meant in a defamatory manner.” The court found merit in Greenpeace’s arguments and ruled out an injunction against the game in 2011. The broad case of trademark infringement and defamation, however, is still to be settled.

Not everyone has the resources that an organisation like Greenpeace does. Jha, for instance, despite having got Gap Inc to back off by canvassing internet support, lives in fear of a lawsuit around the corner. “Apart from sending me two legal notices, nothing more has come of it. I suppose they don’t want to risk my creating more noise,” he says, “But I keep hearing about their plans [to enter the Indian market]. And if that happens, and they decide to go to court against us, I don’t know if I will be able to take them on.” n Tata Sons and Gap Inc did not respond to Open’s questions for this article open www.openthemagazine.com 37

m u lt i ta s k i n g

Happy Feet and Many Hats Prabhudheva’s journey from southern dance sensation to hit actor to one of Bollywood’s most wanted directors Shaikh Ayaz

“I

n Hyderabad, they take me as a choreographer. Everybody, including fans, call me Master.

In Chennai, I am known as an actor and in Bollywood, as a director,” announces Prabhudheva, offering us a brief geographic tour of his two-decade-long career. There isn’t the faintest whiff of arrogance in the pronouncement. His sentences often begin and end with ‘No’— “No sir, how can I talk like that, no?” Add to that his habit of calling everybody ‘sir’ and you get a man more respectful than you might think.

He complains of homesickness, of wanting to go back to Chennai. When he went home for Diwali, his mother gave him a traditional oil bath. “She does all the household work herself. Sweeping, cooking, doing dishes. We have seen her like this for many years now,” says the director, the ‘we’ being his two brothers, both of whom also work in the movies.

Prabhudheva, 40, probably won’t admit it, but he looks ill at ease in Bollywood. We meet a couple of weeks before his new release, the Shahid Kapoor starrer R... Rajkumar. Despite scoring big as a director with the superhits Wanted and Rowdy Rathore, and the unexpected, if moderate success of a film he starred in, ABCD: Any Body Can Dance, Prabhudheva 38 open

remains “unassuming” and “absolutely devoted to his work”, according to producer Boney Kapoor.

When a Hindi film director smells success, he buys a sea-facing 4BHK and a fancy car to affirm his status. For accommodation, Prabhudheva has rented Boney Kapoor’s vacant flat, and for transport, he relies on a car rental company that sends him an “Innova, different, different colour every day” as he puts it. (In Chennai, he drives a Chevrolet Captiva).

He refrains from commenting on his peers. You expect him at the very least to take on critics who were harsh on Wanted and Rowdy Rathore, starring Salman Khan and Akshay Kumar, but he won’t.

“Critics are learned people. How can I say anything against them?” he says. One critic, he recounts, gave Rowdy Rathore one star. “When we met, I reminded him, ‘Sir, with all due respect to your review, the film ran.’ He replied, ‘People love your films. Don’t worry about reviews.’ A little later, I said, ‘Sir, my next film is releasing soon. Be ready with your one star.’ We had a good laugh.”

Uncomfortable with interviews, partly because he is not a glib talker, more than twice in our 45-minute conversation does he suppress a full-blown yawn, stare at the ceiling and check his phone

impatiently. And yet, somehow he grins and bears it. No gripes, no scoffs.

W

hat is Prabhudheva made of?

“Dosa,” he says, in jest.

Make that rubber. Rubber Man. That’s what he is called, a reference to his supple dance moves. Viewers’ earliest memory of him is his grooving to Urvashi Urvashi from 1994’s Kadhalan with a pair of vermillion socks popping out. But what stayed in young minds were his ‘bum-scratching’ moves. This, he says, was inspired by all the “Michael Jackson stuff” he was getting exposed to. And 23 December 2013

devendra parab

the man who dreams dance Prabhudheva strikes a pose at his apartment in Lokhandwala, Mumbai

surely, he has been in the memory of Tamil viewers a little longer than that of Hindi film-goers.

Trained in Bharatanatyam, under the watchful care of two gurus who had contrasting temperaments–one “angry like hell” and the other “very soft”–Prabhudheva as a little boy was a terrible student but a terrific dancer. By 15, he was demonstrating unusual precocity. His father Mugur Sundar, a well-known Tamil chorographer, took him on as an understudy. So a young Prabhudheva started accompanying his father to the sets, helping with his work. On one such occasion, in 1986, he found himself on the sets of Mouna 23 December 2013

Ragam with director Mani Ratnam and cameraman PC Sreeram. When a dancer dropped out last minute, Master Sundar called on his young son to show them a few moves. Both surprised and impressed by his talent, Mani Ratnam gave him Rs 500 as a reward. “I was scared. It was a lot of money. So I gave it to Father.”

But the first flush of talent was felt in 1987 when his father sent him as his stand-in to a Kamal Haasan film set as he had commitments elsewhere. The film was Vetri Vizha. Prabhudheva vividly recalls director Prathap K Pothan’s promise, “If your choreography is good, we will give you credit. If it’s bad, we will put

your dad’s’ name.” He never saw that film to check if he got a credit mention, but that’s probably because he hasn’t had time to look back since.

In the early years, Kamal Haasan was particularly encouraging: “He used to tell Father, ‘Send this boy to London. He will do well as a dancer’.” Rajinikanth took a shine to him too. In 1989, a 16-year-old Prabhudheva wore baggy pants that hadn’t yet caught Madras street fashion to the sets of the superstar’s Mappillai.

“Rajini sir wanted to know where I got the pants from. ‘Get one for me, please,’ he said. Nervously, I replied: ‘Sir, from a local store called Rex, sir. Fifty rupees open www.openthemagazine.com 39

only.’ But he was just fooling around.”

Prabhudheva wore similar pants in 1993’s Gentleman, making them a popculture trend among Tamil youth.

Prabhudheva views himself as a better dancer than director. When he is down with fever, all he has to do is shake a leg: “A little sweating and I feel better.”

His films contain at least one song specially mounted to showcase the skills he is best known for. He enjoys putting in an appearance. And when he does, others run for cover. In a Wanted number, Govinda and Salman Khan couldn’t match steps with him. Still, he counts Govinda among his favourite dancers.

“He does it from his heart, from his core.

Even from a kilometre, you can tell it is Govinda dancing,” he says. And while Shahid Kapoor is “super-superb”, Hrithik Roshan is the “best in India”.

Listening to Prabhudheva speak about dance reminds one of Vincent van Gogh’s famous quip, “I dream my painting and I paint my dream.” Prabhudheva’s approach is unconsciously similar. “I have a sleepless night if I am choreographing a song the next day. I dream something.

And then I wake up in the middle of the night and start dancing. Next morning, I repeat the same moves on the sets.” No planning, practice or research is involved. He says: “Whatever comes to my mind, I do.” The Lakshya number Main Aisa Kyun Hoon was choreographed in exactly 15 minutes. But then, it had Hrithik Roshan. It won Prabhudheva his second National award for best choreography.

It’s strange that for a man whose work involves songs, Prabhudheva neither listens to music nor has a CD/DVD collection. “I don’t have a stereo system in my house,” he says. In an age of iPods, this is a telling absence.

T

he ‘I Dream My Dance’ philosophy, however, doesn’t—and cannot—extend to filmmaking where nothing can be left to creative whims. Prabhudheva can barely speak Hindi but on a film set, he is in command. He claims to catch a “wrong expression from a mile”. He knows which line works or how to get rid of extraneous words. “If a line reads, ‘Achcha main kal ghar aata hoon’ (Okay, I’ll come home tomorrow)’, I confront the writer: ‘Why achcha? Take it out.

40 open

Why main (me)? Take it out. The final line would read something like: ‘Kal ghar aata hoon.’”

As with dance, in filmmaking, too, Prabhudheva constantly makes spur-ofthe-moment inventions. He talks of a scene from his 2007 Tamil hit Pokkiri, remade as Wanted in 2009, where a cop is attempting to trick the film’s star Vijay but instead, finds himself outwitted. This scene wasn’t in the script, which was derived from a Telugu blockbuster.

Prabhudheva made the sensible suggestion of including the scene. “Audience loved it,” he says, adding that the scene was retained in Wanted and that “people clapped and whistled” as loudly for Salman Khan as they did for Vijay.

Prabhudheva arrived in Mumbai armed with a ready reckoner of Tamil tropes. His cinema is a blend of Rajinisms and 1970s Bollywood formulae. Stylised

“I have a sleepless night if I am choreographing a song the next day. I dream something. And then I wake up in the middle of the night and start dancing.

Next morning, I repeat the same moves on the sets” action, slick editing, snazzy camerawork and memorable wisecracks are the staples of his masala fare. Unlike Abhinav Kashyap or Farah Khan, his films are neither pastiche-laden tributes nor satirical.

He denies this, but Salman Khan’s repackaging as Bollywood’s Rajinikanth began with Wanted, a year before Dabangg actually established the Rajini turn in Bollywood.

Boney Kapoor, producer of Wanted, says, “Action-oriented films from south India have their own flavour. Prabhu, having worked there, knows a lot about audience taste. On the technical front, he is aware of editing, which helps make his films snappy.”

Prabhudheva calls it a brand of filmmaking that highlights the “distinctive style” of the hero. Like Farah Khan and Rohit Shetty, he dutifully follows the maxim of entertainment being “king”. Outlining that vision, he says,

“Except five cities, all of India is a village.

My target audience is that man in a small town or village who works very hard for his money and if he spends a part of that money on buying my film’s ticket, the least we can do is assure him a good time.”

We turn to influences and he reveals an admiration of K Balachander, the Tamil legend whose cinema thrums with unconventional themes. Earlier, he found Balachander’s films hard to watch. “I didn’t understand that kind of cinema,” he admits. “But in the last seven-eight years, I have started liking him a lot. He was ahead of his time.” But for all his affinity with Balachander, their work has little in common.

Prabhudheva is no auteur and his films have no personal vision whatsoever. But then, he has no pretensions to being a cinema geek. By his logic, a real movie experience is tantamount to being on a holiday—away from work and the world.

Me: “Do you make films for money or passion?”

Him: “Both are correct.”

Me: “Is a movie’s main purpose entertainment?”

Him: “When a child goes to school, he studies. Correct? How can you expect him to study when he is on holiday?

Films are like holidays, no? You want to have fun. (Pauses) Sometimes, a child studies on holiday. Sometimes, a child doesn’t even study in school. That also is fine. I am not very educated but I can say that if you want... [to be intellectually challenged], you can read a book or go to a university for higher studies. Why are you looking for intelligence in films?”

He relishes the ‘holiday’ analogy. As a child, Prabhudheva longed for vacations and eventually dropped out. He says, “All through school, my report card used to read: quarterly—fail; mid-term—fail; annual—pass (barely). In the eleventh grade, I failed entirely. Nobody fails in eleventh but I was so bad I failed that too.”

Kapoor says that Prabhudheva makes up with lived experience what he lost out in the classroom. “You don’t learn dance or filmmaking in a school. These things you don’t learn from books. You learn it on a film set,” he says.

Viewers vouch for that. n 23 December 2013

true life

mindspace

photo essay Bombay’s over-the-shoulder readers 56

The Sound of Success

63

O p e n s pa c e

Kajol Sonakshi Sinha

62

n p lu

R... Rajkumar The Hunger Games: Catching Fire

61 Cinema reviews

Breguet Classique Toubillon Extra-Thin Automatic 5377 BlackBerry 7290 Sony MDR-10RNC

60

Tech & style

Why Men are from Mars and Women from Venus How Mosquitoes Detect Skin Brain Too Produces Oestrogen

56

Science

Snoops on the Train

54

p h o t o e s s ay

NH7: Too Little, Too Late

50

Music

Atul Dodiya: The Mash-up Artist

46

a rt

The Cult of Donna Tartt

books

Rape: Not Just a Behen-Beti Issue

42 64

ritesh uttamchandani

true life

Fathers, Brothers and Other Demons Priya was raped by her father and brother for nine years—and her mother knew all along—till she saw on television the protests against the 16 December gang-rape Neha Dixit

I

t was the first day of 2013. Priya’s

family waited for the popular Aaj Tak crime show Vardaat to begin.

Shams Tahir Khan, the presenter of the show for the last ten years, is something of a sensation in the North Indian heartland. He has been credited with causing train delays in non-descript towns in Uttar Pradesh when news spread that he was on a particular train and fans gathered at the railway station to see him, take autographs and pictures. “I feel so confident when he presents crime stories. I [have] never missed an episode,” says Priya.

That day after dinner, Priya and her two brothers waited patiently for a repeat telecast of the show. There were still twenty minutes to go. In the meantime, they watched the news bulletin, which included reports on the aftermath of the death of the young woman gang-raped in Delhi on 16 December 2012.

“There were two reports. First, that Nirbhaya’s father had immersed her ashes in the Ganga, and second, that there had been a fresh round of protest by young girls my age at India Gate 42 open

in Delhi. As I watched, my mother scolded me for not listening to my father, who was calling me to his room.

I didn’t want to miss the show,” she says. That night, she was raped by her father, as she had routinely been over the previous nine years.

P

riya is 25 years old and a graduate in Humanities from a college in Lucknow. Her father, Ramesh Singh, 50, is an employee of the Indian Railways. Ramesh moved to Lucknow from Dumraon, one of India’s oldest municipalities in the Buxar district of Bihar, when he got a job as a fitter in a railway workshop in Lucknow.

That was 20 years ago. Ramesh is of the Kshatriya caste and his monthly income is Rs 16,000. Priya studied till Class 10 at her maternal grandparents’ home in Bihar’s Mughal Sarai district; her naani paid the fees. She moved to her parents’ place in Lucknow in 2005 for further studies. She was then 16.

“The first time it happened, my mother was in the kitchen. My father had just come back from work. I had

gone to his room to give him tea when he shut the door and pulled down my salwar. I screamed when he started doing things to me but he told me to shut up and said the jinh would get annoyed,” she says, staring blankly at her feet. Later, her father explained that it was not him who raped her; it was the jinh that had possessed Priya that would sometimes take him over and rape her.

When Priya complained to her mother Sheela, who is illiterate and hardly ever stepped out of the house, she was asked to keep quiet. And when she told her brother Amit, a year younger than her, he raped her that very night. “He blatantly told me that he was doing it for his satisfaction,” she says.

Stories of jinhs and bad spirits were not new to Priya’s family. “My grandfather’s younger brother’s wife died long back. Since then, she has been troubling many members of the family. Each time somebody falls ill, it is attributed to her spirit,” Priya tells me in a matter-of-fact tone. Her father also told her that their ‘guruji’ Ramesh 23 December 2013

Thornton Dial/corbis

ashish sharma

mirror Watching coverage of anti-rape protests in Delhi, Priya realised she was one of the cases being talked about

Tiwari, a tantrik from the small town Sitapur near Lucknow who had helped them solve a property dispute through his ‘powers’, had suggested that he rape her. In 2009, catching the guru in isolation during a visit to her family, she confronted him over making this suggestion. He denied it, and never came back again.

“While he was raping me on 1 January, while my entire family, my mother and two younger brothers, sat outside and watched Vardaat, the words of a boy from the India Gate report rang in my ears: ‘We want the rapists of Nirbhaya to be hanged. We have maa, behen, beti (mother, sister, daughter) too.’ It disgusted me,” she says, her facial muscles clenched in anger. “Was I not a behen or a beti? Do those who have behen and beti not rape? Am I the only one?”

In 2012, according to India’s National Crime Records Bureau, 1,963 cases of rape were reported in Uttar Pradesh, of which only 12 were cases of incestuous rape.

Over the years, Priya often saw her mother being thrashed by her father.

“He did not like visitors in the house.

He even distanced his own relatives in the last few years by misbehaving with them each time they came to visit us. In 2008, he even threw out my 44 open

naani, in whose house I grew up,” says Priya. Within a year, Priya’s grandparents passed away.

With no moral support, she started to imagine there could be solace in marriage. All girls her age known to her, her friends from college and cousins, were married. But that door was also shut. “I was desperately hoping to get married to escape this hell hole, but on three occasions my father and brother misbehaved with people who brought marriage proposals for me,” she says. “One day, I asked my brother why he didn’t get married if he wanted to satisfy himself. He said he could not get married before me. I replied, in utter frustration, why didn’t he marry me? He said he could not and walked away. The next afternoon, he was at my doorstep again, to hit me, to sodomise me.”

Priya was growing restless. Repeated abortions, assisted by her mother, were taking a toll on her. “I could not go to college, I had to cook, and my father and brother kept raping me, even two days after an abortion. My mother behaved as if nothing happened,” she says.

W

atching coverage of the ongoing protests in Delhi over the 16

December gang-rape, Priya connected the dots. “There were all these cases in the papers, and I was one of them, like a mirror,” she says, confusion in her voice. With the marriage window being repeatedly slammed shut, the only other way out was economic independence, a job. “My father had refused to give me money to file an application for a post-graduate programme. So I asked him to let me work at a call centre,” she says with conviction.

She worked as a call centre executive for an astrology company for three months on a monthly salary of Rs 4,000 and saved enough money to buy a cellphone. “I knew that was the first thing I’d need if I wanted to seek help.”

Her father began objecting to her night shifts—or her non-availability at night for his sexual gratification— and she had to quit her job. “I was constantly thinking on my feet—how to avoid his presence at home, how to work, how to go outside to find a solution for this,” she says, thrusting her fist through the air to punctuate her point. She then joined a beauty parlour training course. After the first two months of training, she started getting a small stipend and meeting a lot of customers. It was a customer who told her about Akhilesh Yadav’s jan durbar.

Last year in April, UP Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav opened up his official residence to ‘let the public walk in with their problems’ twice a week.

This became popular—especially since his predecessor Mayawati did not hold any public hearings during her five-year tenure.

“I thought about it for almost a month, read about it in the newspaper.

Finally, I wrote an application sitting in the beauty parlour. I had never spoken to anyone about it. Who would believe me if I talked about my father and brother raping me? I was scared, but I had some money and a cellphone and took the plunge.”

On 4 September, she left her house early in the morning on the pretext of submitting her ‘berozgaari bhatta’ form, to register for the Rs 1,000 per month unemployment allowance announced by CM Yadav. She took a 23 December 2013

‘Vikram’—a triangular diesel tempo that is a popular mode of local transport in Lucknow—straight to the official residence of Akhilesh Yadav in the centre of the city.

“There was a huge queue, and a number of people sitting in a big hall. The CM was sitting right in front of me. I waited my turn for an hour. As soon as he read my application, he handed it over to the District Magistrate standing next to him. He told me that I was brave and asked me not to cry.”

Within an hour, Shiva Shukla, the incharge of the mahila thana (all-women police station), was called and an FIR was registered. “That very day,” says Shukla, “we arrested the brother, who works at an Adidas store in the newly opened Phoenix mall, from his workplace, and later, her father from the railway workshop. Surprisingly, both of them confessed without resistance.”

Priya was sent to a shelter home run by an NGO. She received phone calls of support and solidarity from her neighbours and maternal uncles.

When questioned, her mother Sheela denied any knowledge of the abuse.

Priya’s brother told the police that he did it for ‘satisfaction’, and her father claimed that his ‘mind had been temporarily corrupted’, not mentioning the jinh excuse he had given Priya.

Both are now in jail and a chargesheet has been filed against them.

W

hile Priya was fortunate to receive immediate legal relief after she took the brave step of approaching the Chief Minister directly—and on a public platform no less—not many women find similar support. In March this year, Union Law Minister Ashwani Kumar informed the Rajya Sabha that of the 24,000 rape cases pending in the country, 8,215 are in the Allahabad High Court. The lower courts in Lucknow are no better, with 605 pending rape cases, of which 54 gang-rape cases and 373 rape cases are in trial stage, whereas 34 gang-rape cases and 144 rape matters are awaiting committal from magistrate courts to sessions courts.

23 December 2013

India does not have a particular law that deals with incestuous abuse.

Culprits are charged either with sexual abuse and rape, or, in case the victim is a minor, for custodial offences.

‘Family values’ stand in the way of any debate around the issue. When asked about cases of incestuous abuse, Shiva Shukla, though sensitive about wom-

“While my father was raping me, my mother and brothers watched TV. The words of a boy from the India Gate report rang in my ears:

‘We want the rapists hanged.

We have maa, behen, beti too.’ It disgusted me. Was I not a behen or a beti?

Do those who have behen and beti not rape?” en’s cases in general, answers, with a tinge of hesitation, that “ninety per cent of cases are false. Recently, a girl who was an MBBS student wanted to marry a Muslim boy. She charged her father with [rape]. Parents today are still not so broadminded as to let their daughters choose their life partners.

The girls then completely disregard

the money their parents have invested in their education and instead immorally accuse them of something as disgusting as this.” Shiva’s comments are worrying. Had the same logic been applied to Priya’s case and her desperation to get married, she might also have been falsely accused of being immoral and lying.

A report titled Voices from the Silent Zone by Delhi-based NGO RAHI (Recovering and Healing from Incest), which works with victims of child sexual abuse, suggests that nearly threequarters of upper and middle class Indian girls are abused by a family member, often an uncle, a cousin or an elder brother. Anuja Gupta, founder and executive director of RAHI, says, “Not legislating a strict punishment amounts to the law reiterating that it is not a serious issue. If stringent punishment were made legal, then it [would have] to be accepted that [incestuous abuse] exists. But we don’t even want to admit that. This is true across the world and it is a terrible truth to own up to.”

This reluctance to admit its occurrence is a major reason for the under reporting of cases of incestuous abuse.

Bhuvan Ribhu, a lawyer and activist with child rights NGO Bachpan Bachao Andolan says, “A system should be institutionalised in schools [whereby] children are taught that it is okay to report cases of abuse within the family. But this is not encouraged because of our hypocritical moral values. We only receive two to three [reports] of [incestuous abuse] a year.”

Priya is now the kitchen in-charge of her shelter home and very popular among other inhabitants. She is attending C++ computer language classes, has applied for an MA from an open university, and made Rs 2,000 this karwa chauth as a henna artist at a nearby beauty parlour.

Her story is a stinging lesson to all those who invoke their mothers, sisters and daughters—instead of all women—in their call for justice. n All names in this story have been changed to protect the identity of the victim open www.openthemagazine.com 45

Grant Delin/Corbis

Books

‘A Jolt at the End of the Wire’ In her new novel The Goldfinch, Donna Tartt offers us the meaning of life.

There’s no way of knowing what makes her sublime, but perhaps it doesn’t matter Sheba Thayil

D

onna Tartt is really code, as in ‘Dear Lord, Bless my family and thank you for the bounty set before us, Donna Tartt’. It is a punctuation that gives thanks for those who have made sense out of chaos and brought light where there was once darkness.

Is it any wonder then that her latest novel, The Goldfinch, gives you, quite literally, the answer to the meaning of life? Or that the journey to the last five pages where it is offered to you gratis is so poetic, it physically hurts somewhere in the region of your heart?

Books sometimes come your way when you need them most. The Brothers Karamazov when you are struggling with the concept of God, or Catch-22 when you’re ambivalent about the virtues of war. Or, if you have come to the crossroads we all must come to and wondered why you bothered, The Goldfinch.

ow does one judge Tartt’s worth?

Does her gender lift her writing above the ordinary? Does it matter how long she laboured over this book in particular? Is there a single overriding force that makes an author something Else?

William Blake was certainly ‘Other’, touched by the divine, happily embracing visions, plucking words from the sky and padding up his verses. But as Ed Friedlander wrote when discussing Blake’s Tyger, ‘just because something is diagnosable, it isn’t necessarily a disease.’

An argument could be made that the greater the ‘derangement of all the senses’, the greater the writer, as both Arthur Rimbaud and Franz Kafka

H

23 december 2013

could attest. Rimbaud called it something to endure if you had the fortune of being ‘a born poet’. ‘It’s really not my fault,’ he said.

Maybe it’s not madness but subliminal longing that makes a writer special.

In her first novel The Secret History (1992), Tartt tapped into a desire within us all to stay young—for a time when the future is still out there, there is hope, dreams have yet to reduce to sawdust. She pulled us into a clique as cool as its members were siren-like,

Tartt’s readers call her everything from ‘mesmerising’ to ‘the literary equivalent to novocaine’. She shares her power with you each time you dip into The Goldfinch sweeping through university corridors—and what’s a murder or two between friends?

There is nothing more magical than being in a ‘gang’ during your student years, or owning a best friend who has the right to bully you and adore you in equal measure—and Tartt took this in the least expected direction, but with such sleight of hand in terms of language, atmosphere and ballast that she, too, was instantly recognisable as ‘Other’.

You can tap into the yearning more directly, of course, like Sarah Collins Honenberger did with Catcher, Caught, taking the baton from JD Salinger, the master himself. Honenberger

caught not just the tragic, transitory history of all our lives but told her story through the voice of a 15-yearold, authentically.

Holden Caulfield continues to live in the popular imagination every time we stay true. That’s what being young is, whether you’re 15 or 50. Tartt, in that sense, is perennially around 21, perfectly poised, her fascination with Youth—and Death—unending.

This fascination culminates in The Goldfinch, which, 20 years in the making, with its unforgettable family dynamics and spotlight on our collective heart of darkness, has to be Tartt’s definitive work.

3-year-old Theo Decker loses his mother in a bomb attack and must navigate what is pretty much a parallel universe. He moves from stability and unconditional love to a desert where he has to find some solace in a fate unasked for. His first stop is with childhood buddy Andy and his equally dysfunctional but richer family.

Andy’s mother, Mrs Barbour, with a voice ‘hollow and infinitely far away’—almost like Sandra Bullock in The Blind Side—is, for my money, ready for the big screen herself. We are always wondering which way she’ll flip.

Just as you’re getting ready to dismiss her Park Avenue posh, she will steel magnolia all encroachers into submission, and she has an italicised way of decimating the competition that is rather endearing. Because of it, she makes sure a child has time to grieve.

How Tartt expresses that grief, like a tsunami leaving behind ‘a brackish wreck’ where Theo can hardly remember ‘the world had ever been anything

1

open www.openthemagazine.com 47

but dead’, it stays with you.

Despite what Tartt’s readers call her—hilariously, everything from ‘mesmerising’ to ‘the literary equivalent to novocaine’—she shares a little of her power with you each time you dip into The Goldfinch.

It’s spot-on, the way she captures the snide remarks of teen boys against their fathers, when Andy says learning to read nautical flags is only crucial if one ‘needs to hail a passing tugboat’— Andy is difficult to reach, anyway, ‘a planet without an atmosphere’. Or the way she describes Theo’s father as someone who ‘had that crazed and slightly heroic look of schoolboy insolence, all the more stirring since it was drifting towards autumn, half-ruined and careless of itself’. Or the way Theo sees Hobie, whom he meets because of the bombing, as ‘an elegant but mistreated polar bear’.

The painting of a goldfinch gives Theo a mooring. It is reassuring ‘just as it was reassuring to know that far away, whales swam untroubled in Baltic waters and monks in arcane time zones chanted ceaselessly for the salvation of the world’.

But we see how the blast sets out ripples of unease in Theo when he suffers from tinnitus, or in the way he jumps if someone puts a hand on his shoulder, or how he sees his mother in Mrs Barbour (cleverly underscored by the fact that both talk about Rembrandt the same way), or how he and his great love and fellow blast victim suffer the aftershocks in a dozen daily tortures.

Our first glimpse of the meaning-oflife motif is during adult Theo’s drug withdrawal, when he sees the world as ‘soft fruit about to spoil’, and in his fiancé Kitsy’s reaction to being caught with another man, for which pragmatic is too warm a word. Further along, there is another glimpse when not-allbad boy Boris tells Theo nothing needs to be pounced on and judged immediately, that ‘fate is cruel but maybe not random’.

The Tartt perspective is unnerving.

She’s the kind of thinker who could write about a clear blue sky and make it a portent of the apocalypse. Only Theo could arrive in Amsterdam 48 open

Tartt’s endless fascination with Youth and Death culminates in The Goldfinch.

20 years in the making, with its unforgettable family dynamics and spotlight on our collective heart of darkness, it has to be her definitive work and visualise it as ‘a place where you might come to let the water close over your head’.

Like us, Tartt is preoccupied with death and worry, and opens up several paths to dealing with it. You could get stoned and feel ‘magnificent detachment’, or figure out that worry is nothing but a colossal waste of time.

Or you could feel, like Theo does when he gets ready for the water to close over his head, like ‘the dentist had leaned in under the lamps and said almost done’. You could also find ‘a jolt at the end of the wire’, in something you discover when throwing yourself ‘head first and laughing into the holy rage calling your name’.

S Naipaul famously said that he could start reading something and know immediately whether it was by a man or a woman, and in any case it didn’t matter a damn because they

V

were “unequal to me”. The Guardian, meanwhile, came up with a simple quiz to see whether all those not equal to Naipaul could tell an author’s sex.

Take the test, you’ll fail.

It’s impossible to decide whether a work has merit based on the sexual organs possessed by its author, let alone how long it took to write.

How long should it take to get out that beast wriggling in your chest anyway? Jack Kerouac apparently took seven years to make notes, but only three weeks to write On The Road, no doubt screaming ‘Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes!’ all the way. Charles Dickens wrote in stops and starts because he had to make a living in the serial publication style popular in 19th Century England. That style also allowed him to rewrite, tone down, add elements and delete, which is what many authors mean when they say it took them 12 years to do such-and-such.

Journalist Patrick Ness once wrote, ‘It’s a truism that a debut album is often so good because the artist has taken an entire life to write it.’ The key word is ‘often’. With some, it’s the works that come later. Like Glenn Duncan’s The Last Werewolf or John Kennedy Toole’s Confederacy of Dunces (although, to be fair, Toole wrote The Neon Bible when he was 16).

Our scrambling in the hearth for characteristics of the ‘Other’ may be unnecessary, however. There’s a good reason why Georgette Heyer never granted interviews and why Salinger said “I write just for myself and my own pleasure”. Why examine the feasts we were promised and are sometimes given?

In the end it’s this simple: it could be the story, it could be how well you weave it; it could be Pride & Prejudice, it could be The Happy Prince. But if it changes a reader’s life, it’s pure gravy.

We may be ‘tethered to fly on the shortest of chains’ yet still refuse ‘to pull back from the world’. In the end, that is all there is. Trust Donna Tartt to teach you. n The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt is now available in Paperback from Hachette India, 784 pages, Rs 799 23 december 2013

arts

ritesh uttamchandani

The Mash-up Artist Atul Dodiya’s work is replete with influences and references. But it also raises critical questions about how we see art Shaikh Ayaz

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tul Dodiya’s factory-sized studio in Ghatkopar, a fast developing eastern suburb in Mumbai, is as elegant and meticulously organised as his paintings. Its sheer spaciousness, splendid furnishings and the presence of studio assistants and helpers suggests the new affluence that typifies contemporary Indian art.

Perched on a large bookshelf are framed images of Dodiya’s heroes— Marcel Duchamp, Picasso and Satyajit Ray—to both inspire and remind him of his artistic ancestors.

A Dodiya painting is an invitation to a game of ‘spot the references’. The art world’s answer to Quentin Tarantino, he digs into the history of paintings,

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cinema and commercial culture to create his own version of hybrid art. His other abiding influence is Mahatma Gandhi.

Dodiya’s new show, curated by Ranjit Hoskote and open at Delhi’s National Gallery of Modern Art (NGMA) till the end of December, is called Experiments with Truth. Gandhi serves as Dodiya’s spiritual guide and dominant motif.

Dodiya paints him often—with both reverence and irreverence. But while his works give us a world where humour travels without ticket, the artist himself is surprisingly serious and reserved. Edited excerpts:

What’s a good day of work like?

I am quite disciplined. I work from 10.30 am till about 7.30-8 pm. Since I work on two-three projects simultaneously, I get to switch between mediums. Suppose the oil paint is drying, then during that period I may attempt drawing, watercolour or washes.

Do you sketch before proceeding to oil?

No, I don’t have that method. I used to sketch earlier and still do, but because I have such diverse imagery—references from pop culture, sometimes photographs, advertising or an existing artwork by someone else—there is no need to sketch. A photograph is enough. I may at times pin a colour Xerox or reproduction on my canvas to 23 december 2013

I think so. Your surroundings influence you in a way you don’t even realise.

For some painters, the location may not matter. MF Husain painted everywhere and he painted very well. He was painting Indian themes even abroad. In my case, I was born and brought up in Ghatkopar and have lived here all my life—except when I have been abroad on residency programmes. Every morning when I leave home—a 15 minute drive from here—I pass through Pant Nagar and Nityanand Nagar, areas I am acquainted with. Pant Nagar has a line of small middle-class colonies. On the other hand, Nityanand Nagar is where you see old shops and people hanging around the streets. You see metal shutters of shops being shut and opened. I have incorporated these shutters into my work.

We used to stay in a chawl at Cama Lane near Ghatkopar station; some 15 families, about eight Gujarati and seven Maharashtrian, living together in a tenement setting. These neighbours were like our relatives. The Gujaratis

“Duchamp, a French artist who lived continents away, bothers me in Ghatkopar everyday. What to do? So I incorporate him in my work and life. Then, Tyeb Mehta bothers me. What to do?” icon “Duchamp was witty, but raised important questions about how we see art. That’s what I’m doing”

see how it looks. Sometimes, I project the image I intend to paint [via] a projector to get an idea. I know a lot of artists who carry sketchbooks while travelling and do sketching in public. I don’t do that. Instead, I take photographs.

Abroad, I prefer doing small works on paper, with just a few tubes of watercolour and brushes. If it’s a big painting or installation, I prefer working here in my studio. It’s more comfortable.

Does a painting have any relationship with where it is painted?

23 december 2013

were from Kathiawar in Saurashtra.

We spoke Kathiawari Gujarati the way someone from Rajkot or Porbandar would speak. Because of us, the Marathi families picked up our language, and because of them, we started speaking fluent Marathi. I speak the kind of Marathi a Brahmin from Pune speaks. We used to go to classical music programmes by Kumar Gandharva, Bhimsen Joshi, Kishori Amonkar and Prabha Atre. Our discussions were incomplete without [mentions of] Marathi poets and writers like Vinda Karandikar and Arati Prabhu. Much later, I came across the writings of Arun Kolatkar, Dilip Chitre and Raghu Dandvate. So when you go to your stu-

dio and shut yourself up, all these influences rush back.

Then the other thing is a sense of comfort that I have here—to know that you belong here. Things are settled.

But at the same time, despite all these familiar faces and places and all these people you meet on the street, there is another world which is only mine.

It’s an unknown world where I explore and find things. When I face my canvas, this entire world shuts out [everything else]. Nobody is allowed into this private world.

You once painted Aamir Khan watching a cricket match behind a wall, which any cricket fan would recognise as a reference to Rahul Dravid. Do you think people respond differently if it’s Aamir Khan on the canvas?

Definitely. If you have Aamir Khan, Hrithik Roshan or Sridevi on your canvas, you know that people will recognise them and there will be a different kind of response. Popular cinema can provide playfulness, humour and colour. It’s fun to dabble with wellknown personalities. But it’s not restricted to films alone.

Many things influence me. My knowledge and love of art history is also a part of me. So it enters my work.

I cannot stop it. In fact, I allow it to happen. Duchamp, a French artist who lived continents away, bothers me here in Ghatkopar every day. What to do?

So [I] incorporate him in [my] work and life. Then, Tyeb Mehta bothers me. What to do? So when I am painting an image of Goddess Kali with just her legs showing and the corpse of Lord Shiva underneath, I am suddenly reminded of Tyeb Mehta’s Kali. So I include that. That’s how I develop my concepts.

There is much humour and satire in your work...

Well, things in life, the pain attached to life, life in general can be so depressing.

How do you survive? You have comfort, luxury, you have everything but how can life progress? In times like these, you are saved by humour. Anybody with a sense of humour will manage. If I am able to see life in a funny manner open www.openthemagazine.com 51

culture collage Dodiya incorporates all sorts of influences into his work. Such as metal shutters of shops in Nityanand Nagar, which he passes on his way to work

then I would think I have lived to some extent. But to translate that humour on canvas is often not that easy. I once wrote an SMS joke on my canvas. You laugh when you read an SMS joke and the very next moment you forget it. A painting shouldn’t be like that. A painting can be funny but it can’t be a silly joke in itself. You can include a joke, but it should also be serious.

The titles of your paintings are often ironical. How do you decide on a title?

Being a figurative painter and having recognisable iconography in my work, a title is a must. In my career, probably only one or two works are untitled. Otherwise, all works are titled.

The title sometimes emerges half way through, sometimes in the end. If it’s my father sitting on a sofa, it’s called Father. I did a self-portrait which was 52 open

called Bombay Buccaneer. The self-portrait was inspired by the Hindi film Baazigar but the title was taken from one of Satyajit Ray’s Feluda stories set in Kemps Corner in Mumbai. In Baroda, I was struck by a garage called Die Hard Auto Batteries. I wondered how it would look if I use it as a title for a painting with a portrait of [the late artist] Bhupen Khakhar. And it came out well. I like doing this, playing with the viewer and the work of art.

You know Bose Krishnamachari?

He sent me a catalogue where he had painted portraits of artists as homage. It had Husain, Tyeb Mehta, Akbar Padamsee, me, my wife [Anju Dodiya, also an artist]—every important artist. With a marker, I painted Hitlercut moustaches on somebody and dark glasses and bindis on somebody else. (Laughs) Even Husain, Tyeb and

all were not spared. The idea was to do [what] kids do in school: put a moustache on somebody’s photo to make fun of them. Now, I had gone to China with a gallerist who was wearing an Anarkali dress. There, she posed with a camel. This gallerist one day invited me to show these moustache paintings at an exhibition in Delhi. The theme was wit and humour in Indian art. I thought it would be great if I can play on this. So I titled the work Anarkali and the 72 Idiots.

We know you admire David Hockney and Bhupen Khakhar for their whimsical wit.

Which are the other artists who had a sense of humour?

Picasso. He turned beautiful women into ugly animals. He painted their hands like paws, their faces like a bull.

Duchamp is another artist who’s wit-

23 december 2013

ty. He put a bicycle wheel on a stool and called it a work of art and installed urinals in a museum as sculpture. He drew a moustache on a Mona Lisa reproduction. At the same time, he was raising a lot of important questions about formal beauty, about the history of art and how we see art. That’s what I am also doing, I think.

Coming from a Gujarati medium school, did you at any point feel self-conscious among the snobbish art crowd of which you are now a part? I ask this because you couldn’t speak English when you started out. MF Husain, if I am not wrong, said somewhere that he learnt English to ‘fit in’.

and context. Hence, it requires a certain kind of writing. When Gulzar writes for Bollywood, he makes it simple but when he writes for himself, as a poet, it must be pure poetry.

He knows Bollywood is for mass consumption. Art writing cannot be like that. It’s very different. It’s an expert’s opinion. That’s why art critics are important. They interpret art. As I said, it’s not easy. If you have to describe a [Mark] Rothko painting, what will you write? Imagine a painting with just the colour red on it. When you see it, you have a certain experience. How do you translate that experience into a language? Academicians have a different approach. I may not always be interested in what they are saying. If you are going to go into semiotics, the signs of

Actually, I wasn’t surrounded by English speakers at all while growing up. When I went to art school I realised all the books in the library were in English. I was only able to read the titles and [look at the] pictures. Not knowing English, something was definitely lacking. At the same time I noticed that when one went to exhibitions or galleries people generally spoke English. Then again you feel conscious, a little shy, even inferior. In fact, I was quite knowledgeable about many things, but because of not knowing English, I appeared deprived. So I started talking in English with my friends to improve my speech.

“I know some rich people who acquire paintings and yet are apologetic about not understanding art. But when I show my paintings to people who work in my studio, they give me wonderful reactions”

I am reminded of this particular work of yours, done in the 1980s, in which two very learned gentlemen—are they art critics?— are discussing a sculpture on display while the sculpture itself is thoroughly amused to be the subject of their conversation. What is going on, you think?

I think the general public is scared to approach art. People see a museum as something sacred, something that is not for them. It reminds them of a church or library—basically, a place of no fun.

Whatever they are discussing, I allow [it]. You can read anything into the painting, see anything you like. It’s your problem—or your joy (smiles). If I happen to be at the gallery and somebody asks about the concept or theme, I usually explain.

Would you agree that most people find art writing both incomprehensible and intimidating?

That purely depends on who is writing, who the reader is and what kind of art it is. My art is not that simple.

It needs explaining in a certain way 23 december 2013

language and all that, then even I don’t have the comprehension ability for that. So I ignore it.

Well, that’s your opinion.

Actually, that’s John Berger’s opinion, not mine. Anyway, how can art get off its high horse? Should more exhibitions be held in studios, like Anish Kapoor’s 2010 show at Mumbai’s Mehboob studio? Is a change in scene the answer? Can public art be used to engage more people?

I don’t agree with that. I feel art appreciation should start from school.

Contemporary art should be included in the school syllabus. School children should be taken to galleries on trips. Everybody doesn’t necessarily have to become a painter or a col-

lector, but looking at visuals gives us joy and knowledge. When I go to museums abroad I notice that kids enjoy that experience the most, with the help of a guide who explains complex paintings, whether it’s Mona Lisa, Picasso or [Jackson] Pollock. There, education is such that it becomes a part of their life to go to museums. Here, we don’t have many museums. So there is no museum culture.

As far as understanding art is concerned, when I show my paintings to people who work in my studio or [my] neighbours, they give me wonderful reactions. Some of them are not even educated but they are not afraid to approach art. When my mother sees a painting, she may not know who Duchamp is or the other Western art references, but she understands the Indian mythology and appreciates it in her own way. I know some very rich people who are educated, who know about Picasso and who acquire paintings and yet, are apologetic about not understanding art.

Could you talk a little about your paintings on Gandhi?

When India was celebrating its 50th Independence [day] in 1997, that was the first time I attempted a series of paintings on Gandhi. I had painted him earlier but I just felt: these are the times when we most need him to guide us. His philosophy of non-violence and love for humanity is exactly what we need today. It is strange that Gandhi is everywhere, on the currency, on stamps, in government offices, every second street is MG Road, and yet, he is not there, in some sense. He has become just a picture hanging [in] government offices. Nobody is following his ideology. That’s why I paint him.

As a liberal Gujarati and Gandhian, does the rise of Narendra Modi disturb you?

I am not happy about right-wing politics in this country. What happened in Gujarat in 2002 was definitely politically motivated and shameful. That hurts a lot. The fact that so many people were killed hurts a lot. You can never pit development of infrastructure against humanity and human life. n

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music

Too Little, Too Late The NH7 music festival arrived in concert-starved Delhi just last year, but it already feels stale, feeding the city’s appetite for appearances more than its love of music GUNJEET SRA

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n 2011, when news broke that a Metallica performance was to kick off the first ever Indian Grand Prix in Noida, it seemed almost too good to be true. Until then, Delhi had often been denied opportunities to see international artists perform live, as bands frequently skipped the National Capital Region (NCR) altogether, choosing instead to perform in Mumbai and Bangalore, citing bigger fan bases, better venues and a more enthusiastic underground music culture. With Metallica, Delhi hoped for change. But 23 december 2013

raised enough bands and artistes of its own to boast a healthy underground rock, alternative and EDM scene. By 2011, several standalone music festivals like Holi Cow, South Asian Bands Festival and Dog Day Afternoon had sprung up, and things had begun moving at a slow yet steady pace.

Last year, the NH7 Weekender music festival, which originated in Pune in 2010 and has since spread to four cities, made its debut in the capital.

Immediately after its first edition in Pune, NH7 had been labelled the best music festival in India. Its USP was always its round-up of indie musicians with strong niche followings. It was the place to go and see a band before it made it big. Its eclectic line-up of local and international music acts attracted music pilgrims from other cities too. It became a conference of cool.

Dev Ambardekar

Delhi has enough venues and gigs throughout the year to accommodate almost all the local acts on the NH7 roster, so even some of the solid indie acts were nothing new

in the end, the concert didn’t happen.

Organisers had misjudged musical preferences and failed to anticipate the huge crowds the band would draw. It was more than a letdown; it was an embarrassment. Especially since Metallica flew to Bangalore the next day and gave a stellar performance to an equally enthusiastic crowd. Metallica fans in Delhi felt cheated, again losing hope of ever seeing a big international act play live in the capital.

The cancellation seemed especially unfair because Delhi has in recent years 23 december 2013

Naturally, when the festival came to Delhi, everybody wanted in. The first year was overwhelmingly applauded by the capital’s music enthusiasts, who had all but given up on big shows after the Metallica debacle. But it was the second year that really stole the show, delivering three of the biggest international acts on the festival’s roster: Meshuggah, Mutemath and Killparis.

The three acts corresponded perfectly with three types of music enthusiasts in the city: metal heads, alternative rockers and EDM kids—they may not be mutually exclusive, but these are the broad categories that Delhi’s music fans may be sliced and slotted into.

There are also, of course, the Bollywood types and wannabe hangers-on who can be seen at every music festival and who ring the death knell for any kind of musical discovery. So it was no surprise that the so-called national indie acts performing at the

festival were the usual suspects: The Skavengers, Nischay Parekh, Rajasthan Roots, Kailasa, Noori , Lucky Ali— who, by the way, can’t perform live to save his life—and a very drunk Monica Dogra failing miserably at belting a song without autotune support.

There were solid indie artists like Nucleya, Scribe and Shiva Soundsystem, but they were nothing you hadn’t heard before, as Delhi has enough venues and gigs throughout the year to accommodate almost all local acts on the list. It was a bittersweet experience to attend the second NH7 Weekender in Delhi and find that the festival was no longer about musical discoveries, but about going to see a familiar artiste of your preference; that it had become a commercial, watered-down version of its original self, something of a sell-out.

If there was one thing that was evident at the festival, it was the foreignness of the whole thing. For the majority of attendees, it was all about an idea—a chance to live out your very own Americanised fantasy of what a music festival is. From the red plastic frat-party cups for drinks, the beer bongs and buckets, to the crazy hair and accents, it was clear that Delhi was trying awfully hard to make NH7 its very own Coachella, which was both a little ridiculous and a bit desperate.

The city’s phony cultural identity was never more starkly visible.

But all this paled in comparison with the joy of seeing a favourite band perform live. Mutemath is the first band that I have ever had the opportunity to see live while actually still into its music. Most of the international acts that perform in the capital do so long after they’ve lost their relevance, almost as an afterthought, a quick pit stop before retirement. Case in point: Backstreet Boys, Bryan Adams and even Snoop Dogg. Usually, one attends these shows purely out of nostalgia. Not so with me and Mutemath.

To be part of something that doesn’t involve foraging through one’s memory to come up with a connection is indescribable. For that reason and that reason alone, I will credit NH7 for giving me one of my most memorable moments of 2013. n open www.openthemagazine.com 55

photo essay Snoops on a Train The Mumbai local’s law of sharing photographs and text by ritesh uttamchandani

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ombay’s lifeline, as lovers of the crumbling city call it, is a melting pot of people and cultures. On the city’s local trains, humans of all sizes, shapes, colours and creeds melt into a single solid mass till arrival at their destination unglues them. Inmates enter willingly and submit helplessly to the exchange of hair oil, sweat, body odour, garlic breath and other unmentionable fumes. Inside this 12-rake sardine can, everyone must obey the unwritten law of sharing. I take the train too, either to work or to wander or both. It’s one of the few places left in this city where you can catch up on your reading—or thinking—before the swaying motion lulls you to sleep. The typical male commuter reads all sorts of books and newspapers—or wrappers of bhel consumed moments before—and plays games or watches movies on his iPad, and sometimes, in a grip of hunger, even watches pornographic clips on his phone. The law of sharing applies to this solitary act too. Observe any reader closely, and you will notice that someone is peering into his business. The snooper’s interest depends on the nature of the content held between the host’s loosely closed fists. Some are satisfied with just a glance. Some read or watch along with the host, at his pace, till one or the other wraps up and gets off. Some frown at first, then steal a glance, then frown and glance, and so on. Some bob their heads along with the ups and downs of a game being played, while others just stare longingly at images on someone else’s screen till the slow onslaught of sleep weakens their necks.

The photographs that follow offer a peek into the quieter aspects of the relationship between Bombay’s local trains and the city’s commuters

23 December 2013

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23 December 2013

ethyl pyruvate This fruity-scented compound—a flavour agent in food—inhibits a mosquito’s CO2 receptor neuron and substantially reduces its attraction towards human skin

Why Men Are from Mars and Women from Venus Male and female brains are hardwired differently

How Mosquitoes Detect Our Skin

Bill Sykes/getty images

science

I

s there any truth to the com-

monly-held view that men are better at things like parking or navigating a car, or women at remembering events like birthdays and anniversaries?

According to a new study, there is a scientific basis to it. Men and women’s brains are configured differently.

Males are better at coordinating actions with their senses and females have better memories, and are better at gauging social situations. They also find multi-tasking easier.

The study, which was recently published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, examined brain scans of 949 people aged between eight and 22. Of the 949, 428 were men. The researchers used a form of brain scan known as ‘diffusion tensor imaging’ to study the structural connections within brains.

They found that men tended to have stronger front-to-back circuits and links between perception and action, while women had stronger left-toright links between reasoning and intuition. The researchers claim there are few differences between the male and female brain in children younger than 13. However, these

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differences become pronounced between the ages 14 to 17 and in older young adults.

According to the researchers, various psychological tests in the past have often indicated a significant difference between the sexes in the ability to perform various mental tasks.

They claim that physical differences between the two sexes in the way the brain is hardwired could play an important role in making men better at spatial tasks involving muscle control, while women are better at verbal tasks involving memory and intuition.

Writing that male brains are optimised for intra-hemispheric and female brains for inter-hemispheric communication, the researchers write in the journal: ‘The developmental trajectories of males and females separate at a young age, demonstrating wide differences during adolescence and adulthood. The observations suggest that male brains are structured to facilitate connectivity between perception and coordinated action, whereas female brains are designed to facilitate communication between analytical and intuitive processing modes.’ n

According to a study published in Cell, the very receptors in the mosquito’s maxillary palp that detect carbon dioxide we exhale are ones that detect skin odours as well, thus explaining why mosquitoes are attracted to skin odour—smelly socks, worn clothes, bedding— even in the absence of CO2. The new finding that the CO2-sensitive olfactory neuron is also a sensitive detector of human skin is critical not only for understanding the basis of the mosquito’s host attraction and preference, but also because it identifies this dual receptor of CO2 and skin-odorants as a key target that could be useful to disrupt host-seeking behaviour and thus aid in the control of disease transmission. n

Brain Too Produces Oestrogen

A new study in Journal of Neuroscience shows that the brain can produce and release oestrogen. It shows that the hypothalamus can directly control reproductive function in rhesus monkeys and very likely performs the same action in women. Most oestrogens, such as estradiol, a primary hormone that controls the menstrual cycle, are produced in the ovaries. Estradiol circulates throughout the body, including the brain and pituitary gland, and influences reproduction, weight and memory.

Many normal functions are compromised when ovaries are removed or lose their function after menopause. The finding has implications for understanding and treating a number of diseases and disorders. n 23 december 2013

noise reduction Noise-cancelling headphones use Active noise control‑—a method for reducing unwanted sound by the addition of another sound specifically designed to cancel the first—to eliminate lower-frequency noise

tech&style

BlackBerry 7290 w

Rs 15,990

Breguet Classique Tourbillon ExtraThin Automatic 5377 A thinner model of the 5377 Classique Tourbillon Price on request

This one is for the budget consumer. It runs the previous release of BlackBerry OS 7, but has been updated for touch. It features a 2.8-inch touch screen, FM radio, a dedicated BBM key and a very neatly laid out comfortable keyboard. Other features include a 5 megapixel rear camera, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi and GPS. It weighs about 126 gm and its battery offers 7 hours of talk time and 18 days of standby time. n

Sony MDR-10RNC

T

his 42mm watch has all the identifying attributes of a Breguet product, including its engine-turned dial and open-tipped Breguet hands, welded lugs, fine fluting on the caseband, unique number and secret signature. This complicated watch is distinguished by its off-centre tourbillon, which is protected by several patents. The tourbillon carriage and balance are in titanium, the balance-spring is made of silicon and the escapement is in silicon and anti-magnetic steel.

The new calibre 581DR fitted into this timepiece beats at 4Hz—a high frequency for a tourbillon—without sacrificing power reserve. The patented ‘high-energy’ barrel provides 90 hours of running time. To keep the height of the movement down to 3mm in a 7mm thick case, Breguet’s watchmakers have placed the bi-di23 december 2013

rectional platinum winding rotor on the edge of the movement. This new movement, protected by two patents, has been made into a work of art; the fine engraving and superb workmanship can be admired through the sapphire-crystal caseback.

So far as its looks are concerned, the dial juxtaposes its symmetry of lines with its non-symmetrical features. Four engine-turned patterns demonstrate fine workmanship with a hobnail pattern for the hours and minutes chapter, a barleycorn surround, a straight chevron pattern for the power-reserve indicator at 8 o’clock and cross-hatching to outline each feature. A blue sapphire crowns the centre of the tourbillon bridge to draw the eye down from the hands.

The case, in 18-carat rose gold with a finely fluted caseband, is water resistant to 30 metres. n

Rs 14,990

Sony’s digital noise cancelling set of headphones comes with a 3.5 mm cable and an additional cable that has an inline remote and microphone for use with your phone if you want. There is also a travel adapter to use these headphones on a plane.

The headphones use one AAA battery that lasts roughly 20 hours.

These over-the-ear headphones weigh about 205 gm including the battery.

The noise cancellation function is pretty effective and the headphones’ 40 mm drivers deliver some powerful sound.

The earpads feel comfortable and the set uses optimal settings to cancel out noise, whether from the street or an aeroplane engine. The cords are designed to be tangle free. n Gagandeep Singh Sapra is The Big Geek at System3. He can be reached at gadgets@openmedianetwork.in

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CINEMA

cuaron among the contender s After Gary Ross, director of the first instalment of The Hunger Games, turned down the offer to direct the sequel, one of those in contention for the job was Gravity director Alfonso Cuaron. The job ultimately went to Francis Lawrence

R...Rajkumar The cool tapori act works for Salman but Shahid doesn’t have the panache to pull it off ajit duara

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The Hunger Games: Catching Fire Director Francis Lawrence cast Jennifer Lawrence, Josh

Hutcherson, Liam Hemsworth Score ★★★★★

r, Sonakshi Cast Shahid Kapu od So nu So , ha Sin deva Director Prabhu

W

hen you see a ‘mindless’ film

like R...Rajkumar, you have to come around to the idea that the essential principle of popular culture is to thumb your nose at traditional values without really upsetting the status quo.

Though the pop cinema of Mumbai and south India may appear different to each other in approach, a film like this doesn’t really upset the apple cart because it is placed outside a specific socio-political context. It may offend your sense of aesthetics, but little else.

It is enough to know, for instance, that R...Rajkumar takes place somewhere on the Indian mainland and that people here talk in Hindi. Interestingly, the only geographically specific scene in the movie is in Hong Kong, where the don who controls drug supplies to India, Ajit Taaka (Srihari), lives in a penthouse, surrounded by Caucasian women in bikinis. He snorts cocaine and sends his stuff to two rival dealers in India called Shivraj (Sonu Sood) and Parmar (Ashish Vidyarthi).

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Rajkumar (Shahid Kapoor) works for Shivraj and is in love with Parmar’s niece. He is a goon on hire, and struts around with the über cool attitude that director Prabhu Deva gave Salman Khan in Wanted. That worked, this doesn’t. No matter how much he has developed his pectorals, knocking out two dozen goons in five minutes by flying around in the air and kicking his legs needs to be made plausible by Shahid’s persona and star image, neither of which fits the bill.

As a lover boy, he doesn’t fare much better and badgers Chanda (Sonakshi Sinha) into acknowledging his existence. She views him as a pest and it is only when her drug dealer uncle makes peace with his rival by arranging her marriage with him that Chanda panics. Rajkumar, then, seems the more attractive option.

All this takes place in a complete vacuum and you will safely delete it from your mind as soon as you leave the theatre. n

This second installment of a dystopian universe set in the fascist Republic of ‘Panem’ is less action-packed, but more interesting than the first. The survivors of the 74th ‘Hunger Games’, Katniss (Jennifer Lawrence) and Peeta (Josh Hutcherson) are to marry. We know from the previous film that their falling in love was an invention in order to survive the gladiatorial blood sport. Now, they have to sustain the illusion, and this is not easy.

In ‘The Capitol’, a city modelled on ancient Rome, President Coriolanus Snow (Donald Sutherland) decides that for the next games the contenders will all be from the winners of previous editions of ‘Hunger Games’. Which means that all but one of the victors will be killed. This time round, however, the ‘gladiators’ reject their death sentence and unite to foment a revolt.

This film examines empathy as a survival tactic. The competitors negotiate with each other and deal with an unjust system with tactics that are akin to ‘civil disobedience’. First, they study the technology that enslaves them and try to find a flaw in it. Then they look for allies among the people who impose the dictatorship.

In truth, it is ambience that makes this film watchable—the creation of a dark and foreboding world without an exit. n ad 23 december 2013

Not People Like Us

R aj e e v M asa n d

Cranky No More?

Given that she has long had a reputation for losing her cool at public events, even snapping at fans when the attention gets too much, it was particularly refreshing to see Kajol in a surprisingly good mood on an early morning flight to the capital last week, where she was committed to participate in a panel with her husband.

While Ajay Devgn flew in directly from London, his missus—dressed in jeans and a black top, her hair bunched and a pair of shades perched on her nose—travelled with her hairdresser and make-up woman, who were seated in the row behind her in business class, and whom she repeatedly turned to chat with during the flight.

Moments after the flight touched down, the actress made a call to her mother-in-law, urging her to make sure her son Yug got some sleep right after coming home from school, or he’d be cranky all day. Kajol didn’t seem to mind that fellow passengers were eavesdropping on her conversation, which wasn’t exactly difficult, considering she was speaking loudly into a hands-free while waiting to alight.

What’s more, there were no angry outbursts or impatient sighing when everyone from star-struck airhostesses to fellow passengers requested autographs or cheerfully started conversations with her.

A new calmer, warmer Kajol, perhaps? We like.

Wasted Potential

She’s gone from being one of the most promising young actresses in the business to one who appears to be drawn to mostly insignificant parts in big movies. It’s such a shame, the undoing of Sonakshi Sinha.

In Lootera, earlier this year, it became clear that given the right parts, she could deliver the goods. Effortlessly using her eyes to convey hidden reserves of pain and resentment, she gave one of the best performances by a female actor in 2013. But this is also the year she showed up in films like Once Upon a Time in Mumbaai, Dobaara, Bullett Raja, and, most recently, R… Rajkumar, none of which required her to so much as flex her acting chops.

In R…Rajkumar, a regressive Telugu-style actioner, Sonakshi had the unenviable job 23 december 2013

of mouthing crude lines that sound right out of a bad 1980s potboiler. In one scene, standing with her sari pallu off, she snarls at the film’s villain (Sonu Sood), promising to strip down for him if he can first vanquish her lover. In another scene, she taunts him by describing how her boyfriend will make love to her on their honeymoon.

Though Sonakshi has repeatedly insisted that her actorturned-politico dad Shatrughan Sinha is dead against her wearing revealing clothes on screen or embarrassing him in any way, it appears the family is quite liberal about the kind of parts she picks. The coming year doesn’t promise a change of range either, given that Sonakshi’s next two releases will be Ghajini director AR Murugadoss’ remake of his own South hit Thupakki opposite Akshay Kumar, and Prabhudheva’s next, titled Action Jackson, with Ajay Devgn.

Aah! What a squandering of the potential we saw in Lootera.

The Impunctual Pacifier

He’s always been the most charming star, a marked characteristic that has often got him out of sticky situations. In one such instance recently, the A-lister showed up roughly four hours late to shoot for a campaign with as many as seven heavily pregnant women who’d been cooling their heels waiting for the megastar to turn up.

He had reportedly informed the unit that he was running two hours late, and instructed his team that the ladies be well attended to. Naturally tempers began to rise and hormones were all over the place while the wait for the actor got longer.

But when he strode into the room—much later than he’d promised—he apparently won over the women instantly with his inherent likeability. Laying the charm on thick, he had them eating out of his palm in a matter of minutes.

In less than half an hour after he arrived, the campaign was shot and completed, the women adequately wooed, and the superstar on his way to the airport to board an international flight. n Rajeev Masand is entertainment editor and film critic at CNN-IBN open www.openthemagazine.com 63

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The Sound of Success

by r i t e s h u t ta m c h a n da n i

Forty-year-old Dhananjay Kaviskar makes his way through shoppers at a store in Colaba. Born with weak vision, Dhananjay lost his eyesight completely at the age of six, and his father soon after. He helped his mother make ends meet by taking up odd jobs as a phone booth attendant or a store assistant, till one day, with some help from a blind school in Worli, he was given his own public phone booth to run near his home in Santacruz. A few years later, he got married and is now father to a son. Six months ago, however, he took up a job with a computer hardware firm in Byculla as a delivery man. With mobile companies reducing rates and offering competitive packages, his phone booth earnings had taken a beating. His current salary, Rs 6,000, isn’t great either, but Dhananjay is happy to have a job that guarantees a stable income. His boss is kind, assigning him mostly deliveries of invoices or tiny pieces of hardware and compensating him for travel expenses. As for the phone booth, it is still there, manned by his mother, or sometimes his wife

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23 december 2013