SAT - APRIL - MAY 2020

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southSouth asia times 1 Asia Times

CELEBRATiNG 17TH YEAR OF PUBLICATION

APRIL - MAY 2020

South Asia Times

Vol.17 I No. 9-10 I apr-may 2020 I FREE

READ INSIDE COMMUNITY

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TIGERS & BEYOND

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FILM FESTIVAL

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opinion

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SOUTH ASIA

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HINDI PUSHP

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s o u t hasiatim es.com .au Editor: Neeraj Nanda

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Physical distancing is here for a while – over 100 experts call for more safe walking and cycling space

By Ben Beck, Billie Giles-Corti& Rebecca lvers*

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he coronavirus pandemic has dramatically shifted our lives and the ways we move about our cities. Despite tight restrictions on nonessential work and outings, and on social gatherings in every state and territory, governments have listed exercise as one of four essential activities. As a result, we have seen increases in the number of people walking and cycling, including children.

Physical activities such as walking and cycling are perfectly compatible with physical distancing – but only with the right infrastructure. More than 100 Australian health and transport experts have signed an open letter calling on governments to enact urgent measures to support safe walking and cycling and social distancing during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Increased numbers lead to crowding If you have walked or ridden around your neighbourhood, you have probably noticed more people on footpaths and shared walking and cycling paths. This increase in numbers is exposing much of our walking and cycling infrastructure as inadequate. It simply doesn’t provide enough space to follow physical distancing rules, leading to reports of overcrowding on

these paths.

The pandemic has highlighted the volume of street space given to motor vehicles, at the cost of space for people to walk and cycle.

Given the far lower traffic volumes on roads, cities across the globe have been reallocating road space to enable people to walk and cycle safely while adhering to physical distancing.

Australian cities appear to have lagged behind.

The pandemic has highlighted the importance of our local neighbourhoods and the need to provide safe space locally for walking and riding, particularly for our children. As many Australians are staying home, most of our physical activity occurs on the streets and paths around our homes.

Therefore, we must focus our efforts on our neighbourhoods, local streets and shopping centres, where residents need safe and easy opportunities to be active.

This includes providing safe routes to children’s schools, activity centres and other hubs.

Experts call for action The call by more than 100 health and transport experts for infrastructure to enable safer walking and cycling has been supported by key organisations including the Heart Foundation, Public Health Association of Australia, the Australasian College for Emergency Medicine, the Australasian CONTD. ON PG 6

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EDITORIAL page

APRIL - MAY 2020

Epidemics Change the Course of Political History Viruses may help or harm despots

By Amlan Home Chowdhury

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t’s too early to say what the shape of the planetary social-political order will be after the avenging angel COVID19 bids goodbye to humanity, but epidemic outbreaks have always changed the course of history at various junctures.

Over the centuries, whenever epidemics descended as a curse the human world was never the same again be it in China, India or the European subcontinent.

What arrests our attention is the fact that the scenes of panic they offered differ little from the present attack.

Take Nei Ching, the world’s oldest known book on clinical matters relating to viruses. The book documents happenings in China when malaria hit in 2700 BCE, discussing malaria-like symptoms and treatment of these fevers.

Surprising though it may seem, in rural India and many other parts of the world ordinary people still use lime as a rudimentary disinfectant to cleanse the place where the dead are cremated. Many crematoriums in India are cleansed using lime even today.

When the ‘Plague of Cyprian’ hit Egypt and the Roman Empire in the third century CE the people also used lime as a disinfectant.

Archaeological excavations in Egypt show that a thick cover of lime was used around the burial sites of casualties of the plague.

This plague changed the course history in Africa, Asia and Europe, with the Romans dying not at the hands of human beings opposing them but of the plague, bundled up within the core of the Roman empire, marking its end.

On comparing the scenario that existed just four months ago with that today, you find that with a

single stroke, almost all antigovernment demonstrations, political rivalries, economic rivalries and diplomatic exchanges of heat have come to a grinding halt.

The reason? An invisible virus that has cast a visible change on our worldview, that too very suddenly.

This is a reiteration of the inexorable tides of history. It is happening and will happen again.

But such happenings come at a price, often

terrible. Epidemic outbreaks can end old orders but also bring in new political waves altogether, forever changing human communities.

Take the Peloponnesian War in Greece in 30 BC. It resulted in the victory of Sparta over Athens. The culprit was typhoid.

In the case of the Black Death, as the bubonic plague epidemic in Europe around 1350 is known, we find a weakening of the feudal system in England. The

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epidemic also saw a truce between perennially warring England and France.

In the past, epidemics also deterred expansionist societies-polities from expanding. Take the Vikings as an example. The Black Death resulted in the deaths of nearly half of all Europeans, and the mighty Vikings found it utterly impossible to move to North America. They halted their expansion programme.

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CONTD. FROM PG 2 Had the plague not broken, the Vikings may have colonised North America defeating the Amerindian societies. American history would have been completely different from what it is today had the Vikings set foot there.

Similarly, the most devastating effect of smallpox was the collapse of the great Aztec Empire in 1520, which let the invading Spanish army take total control of almost the whole of what we call South America today.

Just imagine, smallpox some 500 years ago changed the language, religion, culture and the very course of political history of the Incas and Mayans in Latin America.

It also resulted in the plunder of gold from Latin America to Spain, which later prompted British Privateers like Walter Raleigh to attack the Spanish galleons and loot the cargo of yellow metal.

And Elizabeth I blessed those pirates. Why not? Did not they bring gold?

In the Britain of 444 AD, the Cyprian Plague had made the nation so helpless that it paved the way for the arrival of Saxons who subsequently

EDITORIAL page took control of the country.

It so happened that when the Cyprian Plague hit Britain, it was fighting against the Picts and the Scots.

Utterly helpless, Britain sought military help from the Saxons, who did help it crush the Picts and Scots, but never left!

In many cases viruses helped the despots, and in other cases, harmed them.

They helped the people in the case of the Haitian Revolution.

In December 1801, Napoleon Bonaparte of France sent his troops to crush a revolution of slaves in particular and the other “black” people of Haiti. But the despotic mission failed as the French soldiers, some hundreds of them, died of Yellow Fever.

The Haitians weren’t much affected by the virus as they had grown immune to it over the centuries. Here, a virus helped them. The Haitians gained independence. The Flavivirus which causes yellow fever shattered the dream of Bonaparte!

On looking at scenes of how the hapless migrants from eastern India are returning home from Delhi, Gujarat, Maharashtra and

other states, we find the same happened in 1918 in almost the whole of the Bengal province. People left their homes to flee elsewhere and leave the epidemic behind.

In the absence of any means of transportation, those migrants are trekking on railway tracks and roads to reach their homes mainly in Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan and Bihar. Practically nothing has changed over the past 100 years!

When the plague hit again in Surat in 1994, we found thousands including the migrants from eastern India fleeing the Diamond City for safety.

Epidemics like the plague

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influence the people to revolt against the rulers, as became evident in India during the bubonic plague outbreak that especially hit Pune and Mumbai in 1896.

The situation in Pune became so bad that an Indian Civil Service officer named W.C.Rand formed a Special Plague Committee with himself as its chairman.

Rand ordered people to be taken to hospitals or quarantine centres using physical force, including the women who mostly were pardanasheen or ‘veiled’.

For orthodox Hindus and Muslims, it was an outrage.

The result too was an outrage—the murder of Rand!

Two brothers, Balkrishna

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and VasudeoChapekar, killed Rand in 1897. This gave birth to yet another armed rebellion against the British in India. It marked a new trend in Indian politics against the British: armed resistance.

Really, not much seems to have changed so far as epidemics and law and government are concerned.

Just see, even the orders invoked to contain COVID19 derive from the 1897 Epidemic Diseases Act. A hundred and twentythree years and much water has flown through the nation’s streams, but the law governing epidemics has not changed!

Source- The Citizen, 1 April 2020.

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COMMUNITY

APRIL - MAY 2020

Australian Museum turns ‘Inside Out’ to share virtual content

Content Curated for the Curious includes education, citizen science, virtual tours and exhibitions

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ydney, 15 April, 2020: Through the new portal ‘Australian Museum Inside Out’, the nation’s firstmuseum, the Australian Museum (AM) has opened its ‘virtual doors’ to ensure science and cultureremain accessible by curating virtual tours, online exhibitions, school resources, podcasts from scientistsand other experts and even more for curious visitors: australianmuseum.net.au/ insideout Through a broad spectrum of content, the AM’s new awardwinning website offers an extraordinaryworld of virtual tours, online exhibitions, citizen science initiatives like FrogID, and educational activitiesto engage and inspire people of all ages.

“We’re thrilled to be able to share our content,

developed against a backdrop of 193 years of collecting,in a new virtual way through ‘Australian Museum Inside Out’, hosted on our popular website,” KimMcKay, director & CEO of the AM said.

“While people are learning from home or working remotely, ‘Australian Museum Inside Out’ provides afree window into the behind-the-scenes experiences that only the AM can offer,” she said.

Curated to stimulate curiosity in all visitors, the AM’s new portal, is supported with detailed informationand fact sheets to complement teachers and parents wanting to utilise more resources, becoming a one-stop-website for learning requirements.

Teachers, and homeschooling and supervising parents, will be able to engage with a variety of

3D-images of priceless collections; witness birdseye footage of daring expeditions; experience the verylatest in scientific research and view online

exhibitions, events and podcasts.

“Our digital team has turned the AM website and archives literally ‘Inside Out’ over the past couple

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ofweeks ensuring access to content is easy and that each click allows you to go deeper into ourresources,” McKay said. “And, it will be updated and added to on a regular basis,” she said.

While the Australian Museum closed its doors in August last year for the $57.5m Project Discoverrenovation, it’s 250+ staff only moved to remote working from home three weeks ago when the impactsof COVID-19 hit Australia.

The AM plans to reopen to the public in Spring this year once the public areable to once again visit the State’s cultural institutions and construction is completed.

The AM’s newly launched website recently won the Museums Australasia Multimedia Publication DesignAward, (MAPDA) for Best Website.

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APRIL - MAY 2020

Simple steps to help stop the spread.

Cough or sneeze into your arm

Bin the tissue

Use a tissue

Wash your hands

Together we can help stop the spread and stay healthy.

For more information about Coronavirus (COVID-19) visit health.gov.au Authorised by the Australian Government, Canberra

www.southasiatimes.com.au - 0421 677 082

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community

APRIL - MAY 2020

Deakin University announces up to $25 million in hardship support for international students facing COVID-19 crisis hardship

By SAT News Desk

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ELBOURNE, 9 April 2020: The Deakin University announced up to $25 million in additional targeted support for international students experiencing hardship as a result of COVID-19.

Vice-Chancellor Professor Iain Martin said the support for impacted international students was available for the next six months and in addition to the financial assistance for domestic students.

"Many international students, through no fault of their own, are struggling with the costs of living and studying, yet are not eligible for the same Government COVID-19 assistance available to our domestic students," Professor Martin said.

"Some of those students face a very desperate situation where their parttime and casual work is gone or drying up, and they can't return home yet can't

Many international students, through no fault of their own, are struggling with the costs of living and studying, yet are not eligible for the same Government COVID-19 assistance available to our domestic students," Professor Martin said.

"Some of those students face a very desperate situation where their part-time and casual work is gone or drying up, and they can't return home yet can't afford to stay. This is an untenable position. afford to stay. This is an untenable position.

"With very limited access to Government assistance, our additional hardship support will prevent students from falling through the cracks during the difficult months ahead. We stand shoulderto-shoulder with our

international students."

Professor Martin said the hardship support for international students was available through Deakin's existing support services and that the University would continue to take a case-managed, individual approach to assist.

"When students connect

to our support services, we are talking one-on-one to identify how we can best help that student continue their studies at Deakin," he said.

"That direct conversation is the best way to determine specific and unexpected personal circumstances and tailor our support as

necessary. So far, we have approved more than 1200 requests for immediate financial and hardship support, with hundreds more applications currently being assessed.

"My message to every Deakin student is that if COVID-19 has made it hard for you to continue your studies, then please step forward and let us know.

"We want our international students to continue at Deakin, and as of this week, more than 95 per cent remain enrolled.

I hope this additional support will keep it that way. Of course, should an international student decide they simply cannot continue, we will support that decision and help with either a transition to online study or by holding their place for the future."

For more information about Deakin's student supports, visit: https:// www.deakin.edu.au/ students/enrolment-feesand-money/financialassistance/covid-19financial-assistance.

Physical distancing is here for a while – over 100 experts...

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College of Road Safety, the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons Trauma Committee, Kidsafe, the Australasian Injury Prevention Network, Doctors for the Environment Australia, The Committee for Sydney and The Committee for Adelaide.

Across the world we see many examples of the rapid roll-out of social distancing infrastructure to support cycling and walking during the COVID-19 pandemic: Paris is rolling out 650km of emergency bicycle lanes Milan has announced 35km of streets will be transformed for walking and cycling Oakland is allocating 10% of the city’s streets for walking and cycling New Zealand has announced significant funding to help councils create more people-

friendly spaces in towns and cities.

These are just a few examples. We must also consider lowering the default urban speed limit to 30km/h and reducing traffic on residential streets and around local business areas.

Australia lagging behind Despite the urgent need for connected networks of walking and cycling infrastructure in Australia, we have not seen a similar response from federal, state and territory governments.

At the moment, local councils often don’t have the authority to make changes locally or take road space without the approval of the state or territory government. We need these governments to recognise the need for rapid action and provide temporary delegation powers to local councils to enable quick infrastructure

changes to support safe walking and cycling. This has happened in New Zealand and the UK. The roll-out of this infrastructure will also be critical in reactivating the economy when physicaldistancing measures are relaxed.

Financial and planning experts have recommended against investing in major road projects. Instead, they recommend smallerscale projects that focus on sustainable modes of transport. Such projects will enable people to travel to work and school using transport modes that are both safe and healthy.

A turning point for our cities Public transport typically moves up to half of all people travelling to work in some city centres. However, physical distancing is often a challenge on public transport. As restrictions

are eased, shifting even a proportion of these passengers to walking or cycling trips will have infection-control advantages that limit transmission.

If there is not a significant shift to cycling or walking, private car use is likely to increase. The results will be increased congestion and pollution and reduced community amenity.

Never before have we seen such a shift to active modes as our population has sought to stay healthy and active during the COVID-19 pandemic. Our immediate priority must be to tackle the inadequacies of current walking and cycling infrastructure to enable physical distancing.

Beyond this, we must look to the future. To promote active transport, we need more space that encourages these modes.

We need space for health.

This is one moment in time to undo the wrongs

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of past transport policies that promoted the use of private cars and harmed population health and the environment. We must use this opportunity to futureproof our cities, invest in active modes of transport and ensure we provide safe and equitable mobility solutions for people today and for generations to come. * Ben Beck, Senior Research Fellow, School of Public Health and Preventive Medicine, Monash University --- Billie Giles-Corti, Distinguished Professor and Director, Urban Futures Enabling Capability Platform, and Director, Healthy Liveable Cities Group, RMIT University --Rebecca Ivers, Professor of Public Health; Head of School, Public Health and Community Medicine, UNSW. Source: The Conversation, April 29, 2020 (Under Creative Commons Licence)

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APRIL - MAY 2020

ECCV urges the Australian Government to support temporary migrants during the COVID-19 crisis

By SAT News Desk

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ELBOURNE,13 April 2020: The Ethnic Communities’ Council of Victoria (ECCV) urges the Commonwealth Government toreconsider its coronavirus response for temporary migrants to avoid a humanitarian and economicdisaster in Australia.

The $320b COVID-19 stimulus package fails to provide a safety net to approximately 1.1 million peoplein Australia who are on temporary work or study visas.

This exclusion puts a significant percentage ofour population at risk of destitution, while also

risking major Australian industries in the future suchas education, agriculture and hospitality.

ECCV Chairperson, Eddie Micallef, believes the humanitarian and economic costs associated withexcluding people

on temporary visas in Australia can no longer be ignored.

“The threat to people who are now out of work and can no longer support themselves without anysafety net is immediate.

ECCV has received reports

that migrant communities on temporary visas arein crisis, with the sad recent case of one international student taking their own life as a result of theircircumstances,” said Mr Micallef.

Australia’s reputation as a preferred destination for people from around the world for work and studyis being jeopardised, with the long-term cost to the $37b international education industry directly atrisk, including the 250,000 Australians currently employed by this sector.

“Australia has done well to position itself as a world class destination for international students overthe last two decades.

This reputation can be

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undone very quickly if our political leaders promote anisolationist view that if temporary visa holders cannot support themselves during a crisis like this theyshould just go home,” Mr Micallef said.

“This position is not good enough, when the borders of so many countries are currently closed, evento their own citizens.”

“The Australian Government urgently needs to step up and include temporary visa holders in theinterim JobKeeper scheme and establish a dedicated hardship fund for international students to avoidcreating a local underclass with no access to income or welfare.”

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APRIL - MAY 2020

All Photos: Ajay Suri

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`Zaalim’ (the heartless) he certainly was not

aalim’ (the heartless) he certainly was not, but the name got stuck with him till his last breath. It was probably his penchant for loud roars and habit of rushing towards the tourists’ vehicles in his younger days which got him that name. But an extended act of kindness towards two orphaned cubs, something never witnessed before in the recorded history of tigers, made him one of the most revered and celebrated big cats of India.

In 2011, I first heard the unconfirmed stories of a male tiger taking care of two very small cubs in the Kachida area of Ranthambore. It was impossible, I told myself.

In the world of tigers, it is always the female which rear the cubs and teach them the ways of the jungle.

The father has absolutely no role or place in the family.

But when the then Field Director of Ranthambore, Y K Sahu, showed me the CCTV footage ofZaalim with two cubs, all doubts were laid to rest. The story that emerged- which we later made into a film, with

authentic location shots, for the National Geographic Channel (NGC)- was equally fascinating.

In February 2011, the cubs’ mother T-5had died

after a brief illness. A search for the cubs yielded no result. The forest department then set up a few trap cameras in the dead tiger’s territory. Co-

predators like leopards and jackals in the tiger reserve posed immediate threat to the cubs, and therefore they had to be secured soon. A few days later, the officials

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got their first break. One of the cameras picked up the cubs. But even as the officials were deliberating on how to catch the little CONTD. ON PG 9

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APRIL - MAY 2020

`Zaalim’ (the heartless) he certainly was not

CONTD. FROM PG 8

ones, another grab by CCTV sprung a big surprise at them. It showed the cubs ambling alongside a tiger, and that too a big male!

Checking the tiger’s stripes (a surefire way of identifying the individual) showed it was Zaalim. The officials concluded he was the cubs’ biological father, for any other male tiger would have immediately killed the young ones not sired by him, a phenomenon observed among tigers, lions and other big cats.

The cubs were safe with Zaalim, but for how long?

There was no evidence of a male tiger ever having reared a cub. To leave the cubs at the mercy of Zaalim would have been dangerous, but considering the unusual situation and the way things were unfolding, the forest department decided to step aside and see what happened next.

Zaalim, aka T-25 and Dollar Male (for the dollar

sign on his right flank), turned out to be a stubborn tiger and a doting father.

For the next many months, the trio presented a most unusual sight to the visitors and photographers: a male tiger strolling in the grasslands with two cubs!

This was also the time when Zaalim’s popularity soared to the level of Machli, the legendary Ranthamboretigress and the only tiger for whom a postal stamp was issued.

As we started documenting the evolving

story with our video cameras, we found the cubs’ upbringing was not always smooth. In one scary but memorable moment, one of the cubs nearly gets killed when the tigress Sundari lunges at it. But in the nick of time Zaalim appears out of nowhere, puts his nose on Sundari and tells her something in a tiger’s language. After that Sundari never approached the cubs!

In the early mornings and late afternoon, the cubsboth females- could be

seen playing with Zaalim.

The film, `A Tiger’s Heart’ which we made on Zaalim and the two cubs later got me the presetigious Ramnath Goenka Award for Environment Reporting (Broadcast).

Zaalim died yesterday, but his story has not ended. It’s alive and kicking 165 kilometres away, in the Sariska Tiger Reserve, where two tigresses named ST9 and ST10 (brought from Ranthambore) have turned out be huge draw for the visitors. Between them,

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the two have given birth to seven cubs, thereby protecting the fragile tiger population of Sariska. At one time as motherless cubs, both ST9 and ST10 were at a kissing distance from certain death- until Zaalim decided to come to their rescue. *Ajay Suri is an award winning wildlife filmmaker and a seasoned journalist based in New Delhi, India. His blog/website is tigersandbeyond.com.

He can be contacted at suriajay@gmail.com )

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SOCIETY

APRIL - MAY 2020

COVID-19: Genetics overtaken

by Social Darwinism

By Anuradha Chenoy

M

any leaders and politicians have declared that the COVID-19 (coronavirus) does not distinguish between religions, classes or identities. But this is at best a partial claim.

While the virus may not be discriminatory, the political and social societies are.

Data from official releases from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show that the minorities and people of low socioeconomic status like the Latinos and African Americans have a much higher death rate than white Americans.

In Chicago for example, 60% of the dead were African American. (Hamblin, The Atlantic, April 21, 2020) Similarly, the mayor of London, Sadiq Khan writes that in the UK the black, Asian, and minority communitiesBAME- are disproportionately affected and though they make up only 14% of the population, they account for one third of the critically ill of coronavirus patients.

Forty percent of doctors, 20% nurses and 67% of the social care force in the UK are from the BAME community and more at risk. Again the reason for disproportionate deaths here is primarily on account of socioeconomic disparities. (The Guardian, 19 April, 2020). Other side

factors are also at play, however I argue that genetics is minor compared to social Darwinism.

Again, data from Italy showed that 43% of people who were tested positive with the virus had no symptoms, while others had very severe symptoms and still others had organ failure. The difference was immunity – linked to vulnerability of immune systems that depended primarily on socioeconomic deprivations, old age and other vulnerabilities.

Such data on the correlation of illness to socioeconomic deprivations and minority marginalisation, with a gender dimension would probably be much higher in India and the Third World (if and when the data is made available- which most the Global South is known to fudge).

The point is clear: the virus like other diseases spreads in line with the constructed social and political systems based on deep social cleavages. The outcomes and impact therefore are largely discriminatory. This is not to say that the 40% of the upper strata remain immune to contracting such diseases from the ‘others’ who form the arch of essential services that society rests on.

It needs to be emphasised that this co-relation between communicable diseases and vulnerable population is not new. Public health specialists

Data from official releases from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show that the minorities and people of low socioeconomic status like the Latinos and African Americans have a much higher death rate than white Americans. have argued this for ages but have been ignored and the university departments dealing with such analysis shut in the wave of neo liberal policies. For example, Dr Vittorio Agnoletto MD, Professor of Medicine at the University of Milan, Italy, made a compelling argument on public health recalling

the ‘Glasgow Effect’ where research shows that two areas within Glasgow (UK) called Lenzie and Calton are 10 mile apart.

However, the life expectancy between these two areas differs by 30 years. Those living in a poor neighbourhood are prone to die 30 years earlier than those living in a gated residential colony. I am sure you could find such matching correlative figures between let’s say Okhla and Friends Colony in Delhi.

A related major issue is the control of drugs by big pharmaceutical multinationals. Many essential drugs are commercialised and far too expensive. This trend is likely to increase since the World Trade Organization aims to extend patents rights for companies to twenty years under TRIPSTrade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights.

Clearly if there is no paradigm shift from such thinking to alternate ways the world will see many more such catastrophes.

Public health specialists from Dr.Agnoletto in Milan, Dr.Srinath Reddy, Dr. Mohan Rao in India and others strongly critiqued the privatization of health showing evidence from Europe to Asia that health system with long public institutional basis were devastated since the 1980s restructuring. And

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this process continues till the day before Covid-19 started taking lives and locked down the world.

The answer that public health specialists along with civil society organizations propose is the universalization of health care. They have shown that the World Bank proposed basic insurance schemes that many governments are adopting primarily transfers money to private medical care but does little for the vulnerable. The response of many governments during Covid 19, perforce has been to expand health care for all. This emergency measure should be put into place permanently.

Further the patents on life serving drugs should be removed. Pharmaceuticals need to share this knowledge as social commons. The pharma profits may take longer to set in, but will not decrease.

In the Covid crises we see the consequences of the appropriation of the human body for private profit.

This is a virus of nature, of bodies of society, of state structures and power. It has to dealt with holistically and with international public conversation. Keeping it within silos, will be repeating the tragedy as a farce.

First published on April 24, 2020 in The Citizen, April 28, 2020.

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APRIL - MAY 2020

Simple steps to help stop the spread.

Cough or sneeze into your arm

Bin the tissue

Use a tissue

Wash your hands

Together we can help stop the spread and stay healthy.

For more information about Coronavirus (COVID-19) visit health.gov.au Authorised by the Australian Government, Canberra

www.southasiatimes.com.au - 0421 677 082

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film festival

APRIL - MAY 2020

Major film festivals & You Tube join hands for a Global Film Festival starting 29 May

The 10-day digital festival, produced and organized by Tribeca Enterprises, will feature programming from 20 festivals including Berlin International Film Festival, Cannes Film Festival, Venice Film Festival and many more, enabling audiences to experience films from around the world. The Festival to benefit World Health Organization Covid-19 Solidarity Response Fund.

By SAT News Desk

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EW YORK/ MELBOURNE, April 27, 2020: Tribeca Enterprises and the YouTube have jointly announced the We Are One: A Global Film Festival, an unprecedented 10day digital film festival exclusively on YouTube, bringing together an international community of storytellers to present festival programming for free to audiences around the world.

Set to begin on May 29 on YouTube.com/ WeAreOne, the festival will feature programming curated by the Annecy International Animation CONTD. ON PG 13

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tribute

APRIL - MAY 2020

Rishi Kapoor 1952-2020 Goodbye Bobby!

By Soma A. Chatterji

I

t is not easy for any celebrity whose face is known across the country and beyond to wear a happy face when the person knows that he is suffering from a deadly illness that could be terminal. So, he has to put up a cheerful face in the public domain when he Rishi Kapoor adds to the list of others like Irrfan Khan who passed away a day before he did.

One of the biggest challenges for a famous film star as an actor is his/ her ability to bring across the greatest acting in his/ her life. Rishi Kapoor is one of them. He was hyperactive on the social media till recently taking on the trolls he got for his brazen views and opinions on some things he did not agree to.

After he returned from the US, he decided to go on with his passion and his genes – films.

The Kapoor family needs no introduction for the Pan-South Asian audience.

Even a feature film was made called Kapoor and Sons which had nothing to do with the original Kapoors but was certainly

an attempt to capitalise on its celebrity status. But one met a different Rishi Kapoor from the one we saw in Mera Naam Joker, his first feature film as a child actor.

Rishi Kapoor spent eleven months and eleven days on a hospital bed in the US where he went to be treated for bone marrow cancer.

He returned in September 2019, presumably having recovered completely. But he had not recovered as evinced from his having fallen very sick in February this year in Delhi where he went to attend an important family occasion.

But he developed breathing problems in April this week and passed away this morning. His wife, ex-actress Nitu Kapoor, was beside him right till the last minute.

His son Ranbir Kapoor, is a famous actor while their daughter, Riddhima, is married and settled in Delhi.

He is one actor I never could nail down for a one-toone interview because I had heard that all the Kapoors were quite inaccessible. I did not even try and find out whether they were really inaccessible so the interview never happened. I remember having seen him at a street side shoot near

Metro Cinema in Bombay (then) one afternoon.

What struck me about all the Kapoors was their

incredibly fair complexion and flawless skins that would embarrass any model of any fairness cream or skin bloomer.

In his first film Mera Naam Joker (1970), his debut film, Rishi Kapoor portrayed the boyhood version of the hero played by his father Raj Kapoor. He was a sweet, cherubic, baby-faced little boy who developed a massive crush on his beautiful teacher portrayed

by Simi. It was perhaps the first mainstream Hindi film to explore the subject of the sexual awakening of a boy slowly growing into adolescence.

I think it is the first part of the four-part-long Mera Naam Joker is the best part, enriched by the wonderful performance of the small Rishi Kapoor.

His performance fetched him the National Award for Best Child Actor the following year. But before Mera Naam Joker, he was in a beautifully choreographed scene as a small boy in a song sequence along with his older brother and sister in Sri 420 (1955). The song was pyar hua ikraar hua hai in a rain sequence.

CONTD. ON PG 31

Major film festivals & You...

CONTD. FROM PG 12

Film Festival, Berlin International Film Festival, BFI London Film Festival, Cannes Film Festival, Guadalajara International Film Festival, International Film Festival & Awards Macao (IFFAM), Jerusalem Film Festival, Mumbai Film Festival (MAMI), Karlovy Vary International Film Festival, Locarno Film Festival, Marrakech International Film Festival, New York Film Festival, San Sebastian International Film Festival, Sarajevo Film Festival, Sundance Film Festival, Sydney Film Festival, Tokyo International Film Festival, Toronto International Film Festival, Tribeca Film Festival, Venice Film Festival, and more, immersing audiences in stories from around the world and providing a voice for filmmakers on a global stage.

Core to the DNA of film festivals is the belief that artists and creators have the power to bring people

together and create meaningful connections during a time when the world needs it most.

Through We Are One: A Global Film Festival, audiences will not only get a peek into different cultures through a new lens, they’ll be able to support local communities by directly donating to organizations helping the relief efforts for those affected by COVID-19. The festival will benefit the World Health Organization (WHO), as well as local relief partners in each region.

"We often talk about film's uniquely powerful role in inspiring and uniting people across borders and differences to help heal the world.

All of the world needs healing right now,” said Tribeca Enterprises and Tribeca Film Festival CoFounder and CEO Jane Rosenthal. “We Are One: A Global Film Festival unites curators, artists and storytellers to entertain

and provide relief to audiences worldwide.

Inworking with our extraordinary festival partners and YouTube we hope that everyone gets a taste of what makes each festival so unique and appreciates the art and power of film."

"One of the most unique and inspiring aspects of the world staying home is our ability to come together and experience an event as one, and We Are One: A Global Film Festival is just that," said Robert Kyncl, Chief Business Officer, YouTube. "Along with Tribeca Enterprises and our incredible partners, we are bringing fans the opportunity to experience the curated programming each of these festivals provides as part of our ten-day long event. It's an event that's never been done before and we're proud to be the home for this fantastic content that is free to fans around the world."

“We are proud to join with our partner festivals to spotlight truly extraordinary films and talent, allowing audiences to experience both the nuances of storytelling from around the world and the artistic personalities of each festival,” said Pierre Lescure, President of the Cannes Film Festival, and Thierry Frémaux, Cannes Film Festival General Delegate.

We Are One: A Global Film Festival will run from May 29 - June 7 on YouTube.com/ WeAreOne. Programming will be available for free, and will include films, shorts, documentaries, music, comedy, and conversations. A full schedule will be available closer to the festival start date.

About Tribeca Enterprises Tribeca Enterprises is a multi-platform storytelling company, established

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in 2003 by Robert De Niro and Jane Rosenthal.

Tribeca provides artists with unique platforms to expand the audience for their work and broadens consumer access to experience storytelling, independent film, and media. The company operates a network of entertainment businesses including the Tribeca Film Festival; the Tribeca TV Festival; and its branded entertainment production arm, Tribeca Studios.

About YouTube Launched in May 2005, YouTube allows billions of people to discover, watch, and share originallycreated videos. YouTube provides a forum for people to connect, inform, and inspire others across the globe and acts as a distribution platform for original content creators and advertisers large and small. YouTube is a Google company.

—Supplied.

south asia 14 South Asia Timestimes

Focus

APRIL - MAY 2020

Record 50.8 million people displaced inside own countries by conflict, violence & disasters

By Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre 28 April 2020

“IDPs are often highly vulnerable people living in crowded camps, emergency shelters and informal settlements with little or no access to healthcare,” said IDMC’s director, Alexandra Bilak. “The global coronavirus pandemic will make them more vulnerable still. It will compromise their already precarious living conditions, by further limiting their access to essential services and humanitarian aid.”

g

eneva – The number of internally displaced people (IDPs) around the world has reached an all-time high, according to a new report from the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC), part of the Norwegian Refugee Council.

The Global Report on Internal Displacement (GRID) estimates that 45.7 million people are living in internal displacement as a result of conflict and violence in 61 countries, the majority in Syria, Colombia, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Yemen and Afghanistan. Another 5.1 million in 95 countries are displaced because of disasters. This includes 1.2 million people displaced by years of drought and floods in Afghanistan, more than 500,000 by monsoon rains in India and 33,000 whose lives are still uprooted a decade after the devastating 2010 earthquake in Haiti.

“IDPs are often highly vulnerable people living in crowded camps, emergency shelters and informal settlements with little or no access to healthcare,” said IDMC’s director, Alexandra Bilak.

“The global coronavirus pandemic will make them more vulnerable still. It will compromise their already precarious living conditions, by further limiting their access to essential services and humanitarian aid.”

Contributing to these record figures, 33.4 million new displacements were recorded in 2019, the highest annual figure since 2012. Some 8.5 million took place in the context of conflict and violence in countries like Syria, DRC, Ethiopia, South Sudan and Burkina Faso. Around 24.9 million new displacements were triggered by disasters, including 4.5 million by cyclone Fani in India and Bangladesh, cyclones

Idai and Kenneth in Mozambique and hurricane Dorian in the Bahamas. Heavy and prolonged rains resulted in widespread flooding in Africa, resulting in two million new displacements.

“Year after year, conflict and violence uproot millions of people from their homes.

Collectively, we are failing by epic proportions to protect the world’s most vulnerable.

Politicians, generals and diplomats must rise above stalemates and seek ceasefires and peace talks, not guns and

grenades. In this age of coronavirus, continued political violence is utterly senseless,” said Jan Egeland, Secretary General of the Norwegian Refugee Council.

The findings of this year’s GRID do, however, also hold some promise. Efforts to prevent and respond to internal displacement were visible in many countries in 2019.

Several in Asia showed that displacement in the form of pre-emptive evacuations saves lives, and that effective early warning systems and other measures to

reduce disaster risk avert the worst impacts of disasters.

National systems to collect and analyse displacement data were put in place in Indonesia, Mali and Sri Lanka, and development approaches to resolving the issue were launched in Ethiopia and Somalia.

The UN secretary general established the High-Level Panel on Internal Displacement, an expression of global political commitment, and three more African countries ratified the Kampala Convention, the continent’s unique and

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legally binding framework on the phenomenon.

“The GRID shows that measuring and understanding a problem is the cornerstone of efforts to resolve it, but resources and political commitment are also needed if IDPs are to make tangible progress in re-establishing their lives,” said Bilak.

“As the coronavirus pandemic casts an unforgiving light on the urgency of our task, we hope the lessons documented in this report will prove useful in our collective efforts to end internal displacement.”

Source: internaldisplacement.org

southSouth asia times 15 Asia Times

OPINION

APRIL - MAY 2020

The Theology of Pandemics

By Sam Ben-Meir*

n

EW YORK, Apr 21 2020 (IPS) - Ingmar Bergman’s 1957 film The Seventh Seal is set in medieval Sweden, as the bubonic plague ravages the countryside. In one famous scene, a procession of zombie-like flagellants enters a village and interrupts a comic stageshow.

The townspeople are present to hear the procession’s leader, a bombastic preacher who proclaims that death is coming for them all: they are full of sin – lustful and gluttonous – and the plague is God’s punishment for their wicked ways.

That scene is not without historical merit: the flagellants were indeed a very real phenomenon, and with the plague, the movement grew and spread throughout Europe.

For most of us, public selfmutilation and penance is a particularly extreme and repulsive form of religious fanaticism. But in the West, we still have ways of lashing ourselves, and each

UN Secretary-General AntónioGuterres appeals for a global ceasefire in a virtual press conference broadcast on UN Web TV last month.

Credit: UN News/Daniel Dickinson other, in the face of plague, pestilence and the terror they sow; and pandemics still invariably prompt a religious explanation.

During the AIDS epidemic, we were told that God was

punishing homosexuals and illicit drug users. In 1992, 36 percent of Americans admitted that AIDS might be God’s punishment for sexual immorality.

The interesting question

is: What is the temptation to view a catastrophe like the plague as divine punishment as opposed to a brute fact of nature?

Surely at least one reason we are tempted to

do so is because, if it is heavenly retribution, then the hardship still has some meaning; we still live in a world with an underlying moral structure.

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What COVIDSafe is for?

By SAT News Desk

be uploaded to a highly secure information storage system.

State and territory health officials will then: use the contacts captured by the app to support their usual contact tracing call people to let them or their parent/guardian know they may have been exposed offer advice on next steps, including: what to look out for when, how and where to get tested what to do to protect friends and family from exposure Health officials will not name the person who was infected.

T

he COVIDSafe app helps find close contacts of COVID-19 cases. The app helps state and territory health officials to quickly contact people who may have been exposed to COVID-19.

The COVIDSafe app speeds up the current manual process of finding people who have been in close contact with someone with COVID-19. This means you’ll be contacted more quickly if you are at risk.

This reduces the chances of you passing on the virus to your family, friends and other people in the community.

State and territory health officials can only access app information if someone tests positive and agrees to the information in their phone being uploaded. The health officials can only use the app information to help alert those who may need to quarantine or get tested.

The COVIDSafe app is the only contact trace app approved by the Australian Government.

How COVIDSafe works?

When you download the app you provide your name, mobile number, and postcode and select your age range (see Privacy). You will receive a confirmation SMS text message

to complete installation. The system then creates a unique encrypted reference code just for you.

COVIDSafe recognises other devices with the COVIDSafe app installed and Bluetooth enabled. When the app recognises another user, it notes the date, time, distance and duration of the contact and the other user’s reference code. The COVIDSafe app does not collect your location.

To be effective, you should have the COVIDSafe app running as you go about your daily business and come into contact with people. Users will receive daily notifications to ensure the COVIDSafe app is running.

The information is encrypt-

ed and that encrypted identifier is stored securely on your phone. Not even you can access it. The contact information stored in people’s mobiles is deleted on a 21-day rolling cycle. This period takes into account the COVID-19 incubation period and the time it takes to get tested. For more, see Privacy.

When an app user tests positive for COVID-19 When someone is diagnosed with COVID-19, state and territory health officials will ask them or their parent/guardian who they have been in contact with. If they have the COVIDSafeapp and provide their permission, the encrypted contact information from the app will

After the pandemic At the end of the Australian COVID-19 pandemic, users will be prompted to delete the COVIDSafe app from their phone.

This will delete all app information on a person’s phone. The information contained in the information storage system will also be destroyed at the end of the pandemic.

Deleting the COVIDSafe app You can delete the COVIDSafe app from your phone at any time. This will delete all COVIDSafe app information from your phone. The information in the secure information storage system will not be deleted immediately. It will be destroyed

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at the end of the pandemic. If you would like your information deleted from the storage system sooner, you can complete our request data deletion form.

Privacy Your information and privacy is strictly protected.

Read the COVIDSafe Privacy Policy for details on how personal information collected in the app is handled.

A Privacy Impact Assessment was commissioned to ensure that privacy risks have been addressed. See the Privacy Impact Assessment Report and our Agency Response.

The Health Minister has issued a Determination under the Biosecurity Act to protect people’s privacy and restrict access to information from the app. State and territory health authorities can access the information for contact tracing only. The only other access will be by the COVIDSafe Administrator to ensure the proper functioning, integrity and security of COVIDSafe, including to delete your registration information at your request.

It will be a criminal offence to use any app data in any other way. The COVIDSafe app cannot be used to enforce quarantine or isolation restrictions, or any other laws.

Source- health.gov.au

south asia 16 South Asia Timestimes

OPINION

APRIL - MAY 2020

The Theology of Pandemics CONTD. FROM PG 15

Indeed, to many, the idea that such a great calamity is nothing more than a brute act of nature is far more painful to contemplate than an account by which God cares enough about us to punish us.

In case you think the coronavirus is any different, it is not. On March 8, 2020, the Times of Israel reported that Rabbi Meir Mazuz “claimed the spread of the deadly coronavirus in Israel and around the world is divine retribution for gay pride parades.”

By some ironic twist, the rabbi is basically in agreement with Rick Wiles, a Florida pastor who said the spread of coronavirus in synagogues is a punishment of the Jewish people.

The Jerusalem Post quotes Wiles as saying, “It’s spreading in Israel through the synagogues. God is spreading it in your synagogues! You are under judgment because you oppose his son, Jesus Christ. That is why you have a plague in your synagogues. Repent and believe on the name of Jesus Christ, and the plague will stop.”

The temptation to view catastrophes as divine punishment is nothing to scoff or smirk at: it is entirely legitimate to want to construct a narrative out of what has occurred – to find a pattern, to derive some meaning that redeems the suffering, hardship and death.

What is unfortunate is the tendency to point to some perceived wickedness of which others are

purportedly guilty as the justification for God’s wrath.

Both the rabbi and the pastor are the same: both talk like Job’s notorious companions, those socalled friends of the unfortunate and innocent Job, who insist that he must be guilty, that he must have sinned for God to assail him with such fury.

Of course, at the end of the poem, God tells the companions that they were wrong: Job was right – his suffering was not punishment for any sin he had committed. Indeed, the Bible teaches that God often sees fit to test precisely those that are good and righteous. Sadly, the pastor and rabbi entirely disregard that biblical lesson.

If a pandemic is divine punishment, then in a sense we can be at peace – inasmuch as we have provided the scourge with a theodicy, that is, a justification of God’s ways to man.

Whenever we are faced with human tragedy, we cannot but question how an omnibenevolent and omnipotent deity would permit so much suffering to occur. A plague sharpens the concerns that lie at the heart of the theological problem of evil – the problem of reconciling a loving God with the reality and ubiquity of human and animal suffering.

Thankfully, most religious leaders are unwilling to cast the burden of guilt on any particular group of which they may disapprove.

Instead, they take a page from Job

The Jerusalem Post quotes Wiles as saying, “It’s spreading in Israel through the synagogues.

God is spreading it in your synagogues! You are under judgment because you oppose his son, Jesus Christ.

That is why you have a plague in your synagogues. Repent and believe on the name of Jesus Christ, and the plague will stop.” and underscore the impenetrable mystery of suffering – taking their inspiration perhaps from God’s speech to Job from out of the whirlwind, where He begins with one of the famous queries of the Bible: “Where were you when I laid the earth’s foundations?”

And He continues with withering sarcasm, “Who marked off its dimensions? Surely you know!”

In short, do not attempt to sound the depths of God’s inscrutable purpose.

For every pandemic there is a theology; by their nature, they call forth notions of guilt, sin and responsibility. It is almost as if we cannot but view them through theological categories.

Each pandemic begins with a kind of “fall,” or original sin, which we attempt to retrace with our search for “patient zero,” the individual representing the source of the calamity, the one who kicked us out of paradise as it were.

The writers of the 2011 film “Contagion” clearly had as much in mind when they decided that their story’s patient zero (played by Gwyneth Paltrow) should also be an adulteress.

A pandemic also highlights an inescapable function of all significant human action – namely, that our actions always outrun our intentions. Everything we do has consequences that we never anticipated, wanted or even imagined.

We like to think that we are not responsible for everything our actions may cause – but the reality is that we cannot dodge or entirely relinquish our responsibility even for those things we never intended.

Perhaps like nothing else, a pandemic reveals the burden of human action, our infinite liability; indeed, our indeclinable responsibility.

There is a theology accompanying

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every plague because there is a very human need to make sense of such colossal suffering. That theology may take the form of a conspiracy theory, but it is a theology all the same.

One example is the persistent speculation that the coronavirus originated in some kind of bioweapons laboratory in Wuhan, China. This explanation, regardless of its lack of evidentiary merit, is a temptation because it offers us a story, which is but a secularized version of the fall.

The essential features are there: to say that human beings deliberately created the virus is to say that this pandemic is the result of human transgression; that human hubris introduced this uncontrollable element that upset the order of things.

The current pandemic has left fear and death, loneliness and stagnation in its wake. We must start asking ourselves what it has all been for.

Eventually, this great tide of suffering will ebb, life will resume, the economy will reopen and pick up steam, and the coronavirus will slowly fade from our immediate view – at that point, when we think of all those many tens, perhaps hundreds, of thousands who died, alone, what will we be able to point to as their legacy? What did they die for?

What is unfortunate is the tendency to point to some perceived wickedness of which others are purportedly guilty as the justification for God’s wrath.

Undoubtedly many will say only that their deaths were unfortunate – all we can do to honor their sacrifice is return to life as it was, prosper and grow the economy at two percent annually. If we allow that to happen, then we will have failed, completely and utterly.

If we do not seize this crisis as a moment for transformation, then we will have lost the war. If doing so requires reviving notions of collective guilt and responsibility – including the admittedly uncomfortable view that every one of us is infinitely responsible, then so be it; as long we do not morally cop out by blaming some group as the true bearers of sin, guilt, and God’s heavy judgment.

A pandemic clarifies the nature of action: that with our every act we answer to each other. In that light, we have a duty to seize this public crisis as an opportunity to reframe our mutual responsibility to one another and the world. * Sam Ben-Meir is a professor of philosophy and world religions at Mercy College in New York City.

southSouth asia times 17 Asia Times

south asia South Asia Times

SOUTH ASIA

APRIL - MAY 2020

Why India's poor didn't stay back in cities, were better off on road, marching in hot sun

By Anand K Sahay*

N

EW DELHI: The Covid-19 pandemic has exposed the uncertainties of major world economies, but in India it has laid bare our pretensions. The reality is sinking in slowly as hundreds of thousands of Indians have been forced, in the absence of governmental support, to make do with short-term charity from private individuals and voluntary agencies to stave off hunger in the past fortyodd days, the duration of the lockdown so far.

The Union government has proved itself unwilling (and is quite possibly also incapable) to extend them succor even in an hour such as this. On the ground -- in the districts and in the villages -- it is state governments that must deal with the unprecedented situation. And they are

struggling.

The state of their finances is far from satisfactory. It’s been made worse by the Centre’s unexplained delay in paying the Rs, 32,000 crore owed them as GST backlog, and that’s just one of the issues on the table.

If things turn out poorly, it is the states that will be made the fall guy, politically speaking, while the good and the great at the Centre will probably busy themselves with theatrics.

Such is the state of affairs in the world’s ninth largest economy in nominal GDP terms, and the fifth largest in terms of purchasing power parity, a notional landmark reached last year when India pushed ahead of Britain and France.

In recent years, official propaganda has sought to play up these facts to give ordinary Indians a sense of achievement, and to buoy them with the false feeling

that while they may be a developing country they have also arrived and may now be counted alongside those in the big league whose wealth we had so far envied from afar.

The contrived gratification took a beating when thousands upon thousands of the poorest Indians and their families fled India’s big cities on foot for destinations hundreds of kilometers away. They aimed to head back to their villages (in Rajasthan, UP, Bihar, Chhatisgarh, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh) from Delhi, Mumbai, Surat, Ahmedabad, and places in even faraway Kerala and Karnataka.

These were daily income earners. When the lockdown came, they knew they didn’t stand a chance in the big city (to which they had fled from their impoverished village homes to eke out a living). Dick Whittington was

not wanted in London any more.

For our poorest citizens, life is lived at the most basic level. If they don’t have earnings at the end of the day, they are invited to starve. And when the exodus began, it was clear to them that they didn’t have money for rent either.

They were better off on the road, marching in the hot sun, than in staying back in the city. Not since the Partition of India had such images of mass migration been seen. At least then, there may have been hope in some bosoms; now there was only trepidation.

No tabulation is yet available of how many ran away from cities and headed home on hearing Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s flash announcement of a national lockdown. But it is reasonable to assume that they were from the vast pool variously referred

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to (with small definitional differences) as informal sector workers, migrant labourers, or casual (nonagriculture sector) workers.

According to an ILO estimate of 2011-12, of the total labour force in India of 495 million, the overwhelming bulk (90.7 per cent) is from this category.

Ten years on, as a rule of thumb, it seems plausible that around 500 million Indians live day-to-day, which means they pretty much go hungry on days they cannot earn.

If this means that close to half the population (taken to be around 1.2 billion) is on the brink of any-time starvation, then it is an indictment. It is also an index of serious structural infirmity of India’s economy, no matter how much we have begun to praise its presumed strengths.

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south asia 18 South Asia Timestimes

south asia

APRIL - MAY 2020

Why India's poor didn't stay back in cities, were better off on road, marching in hot sun CONTD. FROM PG 17 Whatever our finance ministers since Manmohan Singh may have said to shore up morale, and to assure foreign investors that budget deficits will be tightly managed so that the country remains of investment grade, “the fundamentals” of our economy cannot be considered “sound” if there are serious structural limitations.

India’s GDP per capita (the share of the GDP notionally available to each individual) gives the game away. It mocks the self-adulation summoned by citing total GDP figures or pointing to the economy in terms of purchasing power parity.

World Bank data for 2018 suggests that India ranks a lowly 139th in the world in terms of GDP per capita, which stood at a measly US dollars 2,010. In contrast, China was around USD 9000, Indonesia USD 3,900 (to say nothing of the major

Centre transferred Rs 500 in every Jan Dhan account when the storm broke. How does this look for the world’s fifth largest economy? western economies, many of which rank behind India in PPP or total GDP terms).

For perspective, the India-China gap (one is to 4.5 approximately) is similar to the IndiaAfghanistan gap since the latter’s GDP per capita stood at a meager USD 500 in 2018.

While many of India’s poorest left for their village home on hearing the PM’s instruction for

an immediate lockdown, a very large number (again, no data exists) stayed behind because the government, having now turned wise, blocked them from leaving.

In very large measure, these poorer than poor people have been sustained for the past month or so mostly through personal donations from thousands of good samaritans and the heroic voluntary

efforts of many.

Having been associated with this effort in a trifling way for a time, this writer can attest from personal experience that a week’s pack of the most basic foodstuffs for a week for a family of six or seven persons can cost anywhere between Rs750 to around Rs 940. (And we speak of zero cash transfers).

That’s the scale of the most basic effort

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the Centre ought to have made. What it did, instead, was to transfer a total of Rs 500 in every Jan Dhan account when the storm broke. How does this look for the world’s fifth largest economy in PPP terms? *Senior journalist based in Delhi. A version of this article was first published in “The Asian Age” Source- Counterview

southSouth asia times 19 Asia Times

SOUTH ASIA

APRIL - MAY 2020

Learning from disasters: Nepal copes with coronavirus pandemic 5 years after earthquake

By Sara Shneiderman, Jeevan Baniya & Phillippe Le Billon

finish domestic projects.

With no opportunities for wage labour, some families are using the time at home to add finishing touches to their new residences. But for those who have not been able to complete construction, the lockdown may seem like a cruel joke. How can you stay at home when you do not have one?

d

oes one kind of disaster prepare us for another?

Five years after devastating earthquakes struck, Nepali citizens and their government are pondering this question while under lockdown due to the coronavirus pandemic.

After the earthquakes in 2015, nearly 9,000 people died, while more than 800,000 lost their homes and 2.8 million were displaced. In many rural areas, the earthquakes compounded the effects of a decade-long civil war that ended in 2006 but left the country in a period of protracted political instability.

Now, Nepal’s nearly 30 million citizens have been mandated to stay at home since March 24, and the tourism trade and other international supply chains upon which the country depends are severely curtailed. Despite relatively few confirmed cases earlier, the virus is now spreading through many of the country’s districts.

Nepal’s experience with these cascading upheavals can help us understand how multiple vulnerabilities may not only challenge communities, but also help them generate complex approaches to anticipating and mitigating systemic disruptions. These are skills needed to tackle the pandemic everywhere.

Labour shortages and reconstruction finance Each disaster is different, but they can reveal systemic patterns in their aftermaths.

In Nepal, the civil conflict, the earthquake and now the pandemic have all occurred during rapid economic and social transformation, including Nepal’s shift from an agrarian to a cash economy, and the expansion of labour migration.

When disaster hits, those who are already most precariously positioned within these large-scale processes of transformation may suffer most. In each of Nepal’s three crises, top-down response mechanisms have fallen

short in engaging its most vulnerable citizens.

Sustainable peace remains far from reality. This is partly because some of the most affected populations were not substantively included in the peace process after the civil war. (Nepal’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission has never completed its task).

Similarly, earthquakeaffected people were not fully included in planning reconstruction policies, such as the choice of materials and housing designs. Many are dissatisfied with the reconstruction approach and the houses they had to build.

Civil war and political instability pushed more people into migration, leading to remittances now making up 30 per cent of the country’s GDP. This migration likely reduced the earthquake death toll, and foreign remittances helped fund reconstruction.

Now, remittances are in jeopardy as the COVID-19 crisis slows economies and international labour flows are halted.

Lessons from Nepal’s reconstruction program Our research shows that private housing reconstruction grants and loans were key to the rebuilding process.

As governments around the world are now offering unprecedented subsidy programs to large portions

of their populations, the experience of Nepal’s National Reconstruction Authority (NRA) in disbursing private housing reconstruction grants could provide some useful lessons.

First, rapidly setting up disbursement authorities and channels are key. But vested political interests can overshadow the immediate needs of disaster response. It took about six months for the NRA to be officially mandated and operational. The delay was due to conflicts among the political parties.

Second, payments must be significant and easy to receive. Payments that are too low simply go into daily survival expenses. While welcome, they did not enable homeowners to complete reconstruction. Most families had to supplement with remittances or other income.

Five years after the disaster, the formal reconstruction completion rate hovers at about 65 per cent. Many remain unable to complete reconstruction or continue to live in vulnerable structures.

Stringent building codes enforced by engineers — in a place where most homeowners had previously built their own residence without needing a building permit — drastically slowed down the disbursement process, as many people could not meet the design requirements due to lack of capital, materials or skilled

labour. Regulations were eventually relaxed to enable people to complete their houses and receive the full amount of the grant.

Women and members of historically marginalized groups faced disproportionate challenges in accessing such resources to build their homes. Although gender equality and social inclusion provisions were emphasized in reconstruction policy documents, implementation has been lacking on the ground. The NRA lacks any visible evidence of women in leadership roles.

Third, the informal financial sector was key for accessing loans; although the NRA portrays disbursement through banks as having enhanced transparency and enabling a large section of the rural population to access financial institutions, there were significant limitations in this process.

Banks imposed such taxing conditions on borrowers that few accessed official government subsidized loans. Instead, many turned to informal borrowing from relatives, local private lenders and cooperatives. While flexible and mostly guided through community-based social norms, some of these loans had abusive interest rates.

For those who have nearly completed rebuilding, the present lockdown may present an opportunity to

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Vulnerability and solidarity The informal economic sector has been devastated with the COVID-19 lockdown, increasing risks to those already most in need.

Working class people in marginal economic situations and migrants who are not protected by social security have been further marginalized by all three crisis situations.

The country is now experiencing caravans of internal migrants returning to their villages after losing jobs in Kathmandu and other cities.

Likewise, the international migrants who contribute 30 per cent to the country’s GDP are in precarious situations in destination countries jobless and unable to feed themselves, but also unable to return home.

Yet the closing of borders and drastic reductions in the flow of people does not mean an end to solidarity.

On the contrary the Nepali diaspora can and does help, notably through financial contributions, as they did in the wake of the earthquakes.

In the pandemic context as well, they have been a lifeline for many.

Five years on, Nepal’s earthquake-affected communities have not returned to their pre-disaster state. Rather, they have fashioned new lives through a combination of creativity, perseverance, careful use of available resources and hard-earned income, with some state and international intervention. Now, the lessons they have learned may have new meaning.

Deepak Thapa contributed to this piece. He is Director of Social Science Baha in Kathmandu, Nepal.

Source: The Conversation, April 24 2020 (Under Creative Commons Licence)

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SOUTH ASIA

APRIL - MAY 2020

India & the global ‘war on cash’

By Colin Todhunter*

b

ack in November 2016, the Indian government decided to remove all 500- and 1000-rupee notes from circulation overnight without prior notice. This effectively removed 86% of cash in a country that was almost 90% cash reliant.

The notes became worthless and people were asked to hand them in to banks. They would only receive what they had deposited in dribs and drabs over time in the form of new notes. The official reason for this was that the action would curtail the shadow economy and reduce the use of illicit and counterfeit cash to fund illegal activity and terrorism.

Some who questioned the official narrative regarded this ‘demonetisation’ policy as a ploy to take money from the public and use it to inject much needed liquidity into the banking system that had been bled dry by the outflow of cheap money (and loan waivers) to large corporations which had been milking the well dry.

The purpose of this article is not to explore the merits or otherwise of this claim or the official government narrative. The point here is to highlight how the policy (also) formed part of an ongoing global ‘war on cash’. In the discussion that follows, it will be shown that Bill Gates is a major player in trying to get the world to go digital and ditch cash, especially relevant given his role in the COVID-19 issue.

When we look beyond the mainstream narrative to gain an understanding of the current crisis, it doesn’t take long before the name of Bill Gates and his foundation appears.

And this is no coincidence seeing that he has placed himself firmly in the limelight on prime time TV shows offering his opinion on COVID-19 and what he thinks should be done. He has mentioned the need for maintaining some form of lockdown until a vaccine is discovered.

Much has been written on the Gates Foundation’s close associations with the big vaccine manufacturers and its questionable practices and record in rolling out vaccines in places like Africa

and India. US attorney Robert F Kennedy Jr says that top Trump advisor Stephen Fauci has made the reckless choice to fast track vaccines, partially funded by Gates, without critical animal studies.

Gates is so worried about the danger of adverse events that he says vaccines shouldn’t be distributed until governments agree to indemnity against lawsuits.

But this should come as little surprise. The Gates Foundation and its global vaccine agenda already has much to answer for.

Instead of prioritising projects that are proven to curb infectious diseases and improve health – clean water, hygiene, nutrition and economic development – Kennedy notes that the Gates Foundation spends only about $650 million of its $5 billion budget on these areas.

It is fair to say that the Gates Foundation has an agenda: it believes that many of its aims can be

delivered via the barrel of a syringe. It has been well documented in recent weeks about how the Gates Foundation has spread its tentacles into every facet of global health policy.

For instance, it is a major funder of the World Health Organization and donates to other pivotal players in the COVID-19 saga, not least Imperial College London whose Neil Ferguson produced hugely flawed data upon which the UK government implemented a lockdown, which entailed sanctioning draconian state powers and stripping of people’s basic rights via the Coronavirus Emergency Act. Although often alluded to, Gates’s push for cashless societies is given less attention in the current climate but is just as important. It is not only the major pharmaceutical corporations which the Gates Foundation is firmly in bed with (along with the big agri-food players), it is also embedded with Wall

Street financial interests.

The global shift from cash towards digital transactions is being spearheaded by Bill Gates and US financial corporations who will profit from digital payments.

At the same time, by controlling digital payments (and removing cash), you can control and monitor everything a country and its citizens do and pay for.

War on cash in India In India, the informal workforce has been measured at around 85%.

By 2014, fewer than 35% of Indians above the age of 15 had used a bank account and under 10% had ever used any kind of non-cash payment instrument.

Although some voices welcomed the 2016 demonetisation policy, as they believed it would push many Indians off cash and towards ‘financial inclusion’, it was, according to economist Norbert Haring, concocted in Washington, not for the benefit of Indians but in the interests

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of Western financial institutions who are pushing for a cashless world. For a lower income country such as India, which runs on cash, the outcomes were catastrophic for hundreds of millions of people, especially those who did not have a bank account (almost half the population) or did not have easy access to a bank.

According to Haring, the global ‘war on cash’ has the backing of some heavy hitters: the major US banks and likes of PayPal, Visa and the Gates Foundation.

Writing in 2017, he argued that the cooperation of the Gates Foundation and the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has been a very tight one.

For example, NachiketMor, a banker, is director of the Gates Foundation India. He is also a board member of the RBI with responsibility for financial supervision.

Haring indicates that the demonetization policy was carried out on behalf of USAID, MasterCard, Visa and the people behind eBay and Citi, among others, with support from the Gates Foundation and the Ford Foundation.

He adds that the start of direct cooperation of the Gates Foundation with the RBI on digital payments coincided with the work of the foundation in the President’s Global Development Council, which was to promote cooperation with foreign governments and the private sector with a view to securing US defence and commercial interests.

Bill Gates, Haring notes, gave an example of the link between worldwide digitalisation of payments (via the large US payment companies) and US security interests in a speech in 2015.

Gates said: “If financial flows go into a digital system that the US is not connected to, it becomes much harder to find those transactions that you want to be aware of or you want to block.”

Demonetisation used the Indian population as a collective guinea pig to see how far the geostrategic interests of the US and those of Wall Street could be secured in a country of 1.3 billion people. The effects of people’s lives did not matter as long as the policy was pushed forward.

CONTD. ON PG 21

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SOUTH ASIA

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India & the global ‘war on cash’

CONTD. FROM PG 20 And this was carried out with reference to the usual corporate jargon of ‘financial inclusion’. Cash already provides financial inclusion.

What does not lead to financial inclusion or any time of inclusion is a neoliberal system that imposes gross inequalities, austerity, joblessness, neocolonialism and the destruction of indigenous practices and cultures under the guise of ‘development’, the deliberate impoverishment of farmers in India, the twisting and writing of national and international laws, the destruction of rural communities or an unjust global food regime.

It is clear that ‘financial inclusion’ really means eliminating the main competitor of digital payments and finance sector profits – cash. In capitalism, every aspect of human life is to be commodified in the quest for fresh markets and profit – in this case, securing payments from payments.

Norbert Haring quotes Dan Schulmann, CEO of PayPal, who has stated: “The major competitor we have is cash. Right now, 85 percent of the world’s transactions are done in cash.

That is really what we are trying to attack right now.”

He also quotes Strive Masiyiwa, chairman and founder of Econet, a large African mobile phone company with a payment platform: “Our major competitor is cash. Cash is what we seek to eliminate.”

It seems ‘financial

The major competitor we have is cash. Right now, 85 percent of the world’s transactions are done in cash.

That is really what we are trying to attack right now.”

inclusion’ really means denying sections of society their preferred method of payment – cash – to benefit the bottom line of these corporations.

Did Gates and his associates succeed in pushing Indians off cash? By April 2018, the volume of digital payments had doubled. At the same time, however, at the end of May 2019, currency notes in circulation had increased by more than 22% over the pre-demonetisation level. The use of cash was expected to reach $2.45 trillion by 2021, up from $1.5 trillion in 2016, although demonetisation helped digital payments advance by three to

four years.

The 2016 policy adopted a callous and ill-thought-out blanket approach. And it was not as though Indians were clamouring for digital – it was imposed on them.

Under cover of COVID-19 lockdowns, can we expect to see cash being pushed right to the margins when countries emerge from the current crisis (for instance, in an ongoing pandemic culture of fear and paranoia, it would be easy to convince people that notes and coins are potential transmitters of disease, or with mass unemployment we may have universal basic income schemes linked to digital

payment systems)? It can already be seen with large stores asking customers to pay by card whenever possible.

Many commentators have discussed how the current crisis has been used to remove basic rights and how vaccines and surveillance will be intensified. What could follow may also see our purchases and behaviour being monitored even further via digital payments.

For instance, Haring notes that in Kenya Gates saw little wrong in compelling mobile phone providers to give the authorities the opportunity to monitor

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all phone calls and mobile payments by telling phone companies to let contracted (private) companies hook up to all routers. The plan was to monitor transactions and use the data to target people with advertising to make even more transactions, thereby driving consumption.

It doesn’t take a great leap of faith to appreciate how in a fully digital system, ‘financial flows’ could be blocked, as Gates implied back in 2015.

This already happens in the dollar-centred monetary system. But when there is no cash to fall back on and every single transaction in a society is computerised and can be monitored by the state and private corporations, will the term ‘financial inclusion’ then sound so benign? *Colin Todhunter is an independent writer Source- countercurrens. org, April 26 2020 (Heading changed)

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tribute

APRIL - MAY 2020

Irfan Khan (1967-2020)

“I Define Acting As Not To Act At All”

By Soma A. Chatterji

I

first met Irrfan Khan at the Cairo International Film Festival around 2010, if my memory serves me right. I tried to make an appointment for a one-on-one but it was difficult with the crowds surrounding him all the time. Finally, he agreed to sit down at the restaurant of the hotel we were residing in and let his guard down. To tell you the truth, Irrfan preferred his silence and his space. But this time, unable to refuse an elderly Indian journalist, he let himself go.

This tall, dark and not-sohandsome young man with his large, brooding eyes, his long silences, broke every rule in the Bollywood book that crafted its hero either as a romantic hero, or a six-ab youngster oozing machismo, or, the handsome prince who arrived to rescue his damsel in distress. But he was made for different roles in films made across the map – India, Bangladesh, the US, the UK and everywhere that charted out a career flooded with a range of characters that set the trend for out-of-thebox heroes like Nizamuddin Sheikh among others.

I have not seen all his films but my introduction to this great star was with the International film The Warrior (2001) directed by Asif Kapadia. I loved the film for its entire landscape and the story in which Irrfan portrayed the title role just when he was about to give up his career as an actor.

A much younger Irrfan Khan portrayed Lafcadia, a warrior in feudal Rajasthan who wants to give up the sword. I then saw Maqbool and could not decide whose acting I would vouch for. I did not like his performance much in Mahesh Bhatt’s Rog which thankfully, turned a turnip at the box office.

I did not get the chance to watch all his films because they had rather irregular releases and some of them were pulled out of the theatres soon after their release. But which actor can really take pride in delivering a magnificent performance in every film?

At the Cairo interview, he said, “I define acting as ‘not to act at all.’ An actor must be mentally, intellectually

and emotionally connected to a given situation or story.

He has then to relive that situation and story through his body and mind. Acting means doing, to actually enact something without any pretensions. For example, if a particular shot needs me to lift a cup, I will lift the cup the way the character and the situation demands, not any which way. Things are effective when they are actually done and not pretended. The line between pretending and doing is quite thin. To blur that line, an actor must practice working around himself.”

Irrfan Khan bagged the National Award for Best Actor for his performance in Paan Singh Tomar.

About one of very offbeat roles, Irrfan said, ““I heard about Tomar and his extraordinary achievements first from Tigmangshu Dhulia. Two months before the shoot, I took physical training from a Delhibased national-level coach on Steeplechase. It was difficult but enjoyable. I also undertook lessons on voice modulation and pronunciation as I had to speak in local dialect. It was a different experience because you need to be

convincing in all aspects to resemble the person that you are essaying. The character required me to be physically fit. Hence after the shoot, I would exercise. Chambal is a beautiful place, so I would go for jogs in the evenings.”

He went on to add that the film has changed his way of looking at life, discipline and commitment.

He stepped into production but perhaps it was not the right step for him to take. The example is the Bangladesh-India co-produced Bengali film called Doob (No Bed of Roses) which Irrfan, who portrayed a famous filmmaker Javed Hassan who leaves his wife and daughter for his daughter’s young friend, turned out to be a very badly made film. What films has he made? No answer. What is he working on after the film he was making with Nitu was shelved? No detailing.

Where are the hangerson such as his assistant, his permanent crew discussing some script with him? Silence. There was absolutely no ambience of Javed being a part of the Bangladeshi film industry and also a prominent figure with a long track record in

films. But the film bagged the Kommersant Jury Prize at the Moscow International Film Festival in 2017. After a point of time, Irrfan appeared quite confused about his own role in the film.

As an about-to-retire accountant in The Lunch Box, Irrfan Khan’s role is a brilliant example of an ageing, introvert widower who falls in love with a woman he has never seen through an accidental switch of the lunch box.

The film was screened the International Critics Week at the 2013 Cannes Film Festival and later won the Critics Week Viewers Choice Award also known as Grand Rail d'Or. The Lunch Box was Irrfan Khan's highest-grossing film till Hindi Medium broke the record. The Lunchbox was nominated for the Best Film in the English Language category of the British Academy Film Awards 2015. The universal drawing capacity of Irrfan Khan, the actor, is another reason why it was a festival hit and an Indian hit. The film was screened at the International Critics’ Week at Cannes and later ended up making more than Rs.20 crore in India. It

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also won the Critics Week Viewers Choice Award, and was screened at the 2013 Toronto Film Festival.

I will never be able to ask him ever now whether he still longs to fly kites like he used to, when he grew up in Rajasthan in a middle-class family. I will never know whether he could continue with his passion for reading anything he could lay his hands on. I will never know why he kept his family life so very private that few know he was married to SutapaSikder, a Bengali lady who he met during his National School of Drama days and was content within the privacy he opted for despite the stardom that surrounded him.

Sutapa became a script writer and the actor leaves behind two son, Babil and Ayan. He would laughingly admit that he could not speak Bengali though his wife is one. He had got a scholarship to study at the National School of Drama, Delhi, in 1984. He laughingly admitted that he cannot speak Bengali though his wife is one. Will he learn to speak Bengali wherever he is now?

Source: The Citizen, 29 APRIL, 2020

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essay

APRIL - MAY 2020

Pandemic and Poetry: How Writers in Pakistan react to COVID-19 T

By Dr Aftab Husain*

here is a proverb in Persian and Urdu that could be roughly translated thus — ‘A collective death has an air of festivity’. The great Urdu poet, Ghalib, however, would have not subscribed to this notion as was made evident from an episode in his personal life. Once afflicted by his financial and existential miseries, he had foretold his own death the following year. There broke out in the given year an epidemic that claimed many lives in the city, but luckily our poet survived. When asked later about his prognostication, Ghalib replied with a tinge of humour that his forecast had been accurate, but it would have degraded him to die a common death, therefore, he held himself back.

This could be seen as a hyper-individualistic thought process of a genius poet which was ultimately reflected in his poetry. But common human beings think differently.

The line of wisdom that the proverb at the starting of this essay conveys does not in any way celebrate death, but our collective, gregarious nature.

It is a strange fact of human existence that a catastrophe unites people more than a festivity.

World literature, as many of us know, is replete with the examples of writing inspired by or dealing with different catastrophes; draught, floods, different types of epidemic: plague, cholera, influenza etc. The Plague by Albert Camus (French), Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel GarcíaMárquez (Spanish) and Blindness by José Saramago (Portuguese) – incidentally all three written by Nobel laureates – immediately come to mind.

Rabindranath Tagore’s long, descriptive poem: ‘PuratanBhritya’ (Old servant) – ‘Keshta, old manservant of mine’, stemmed from smallpox. In a few short stories by Premchand, the founding father of Urdu and Hindi fiction there appears pestilence – albeit as subtext.

In ‘Idgah’ (mosque), the child protagonist lost his father to cholera. Similarly, in ‘DoodhKaDaam’ (price of milk), one character dies of plague. Famous Urdu and English fiction writer Ahmad Ali who is known to the Urdu world as one of the

contributors to Angaaree (The Burning Coals) an anthology of mainly short stories that had stirred the somewhat stagnant waters of the then Urdu literature, ventured into this area with his maiden novel in English. Ahmad Ali’s novel, Twilight in Delhi, offers a bleak and pathetic picture of the city in the wake of an epidemic.

‘How deadly this fever is.

Everyone is dying of it. The hospitals are gay and bright.

But sorry is men’s plight’.

‘Rebati’, a well-known short story by Fakir Mohan Senapati, one of the pioneers of modern Odia literature depicts a village hit by a cholera epidemic. The list is endless, but so far Urdu literature is concerned, ‘Quarantine’, a poignant short story by Rajinder Singh Bedi presents a detailed and exclusive description of the life affected by plague and also of quarantine as the title of the story also indicates.

Human beings in the long span of their history have been going through many different epidemics, but the present one is unique in that it has not only affected different strata of society, it has also had a global outreach. With bated breath, we watch the movement of this pandemic that has paralysed social life. Nevertheless, healthcare workers, scientists, politicians, policy makers, psychiatrists, media persons and many other groups are actively working to finding a solution to the problem or at least curb its growth.

People from art and literature too are responding to the disease in different ways. Pakistani writers, especially poets, have profusely responded to the situation.

One interesting fact that one notices is in the word ‘corona’, that is, we know, a noun but when spelt out in Urdu-Hindi it makes a fullfledged meaningful phrase: ‘Don’t do.’ Resultantly, one observes a lot of versifications exploiting this pun – albeit major and established poets have shunned this facile jugglery.

Barring this word play, poets who have chosen to write in a lighter vein seemingly have set their comic spirit to work as a defence mechanism to make the grave situation a little less intimidating. For example, a poem entitled as ‘Thanks’ by a senior poet Tahir Sherazi argues that this compulsory restriction that confines us to our home places might provide us an opportunity to repair our broken relationships with our family members. The poems ends on a jubilant note on acquiring the newly-gained leisure in this way: ‘My wife will make a cup of tea for me and I will write poems on roses, lamps, on the earth and the heaven’. Well, the male poet is scheming of enjoying this free time at his will while his spouse will be doomed to carry on with her routine domestic chores.

This aspect does make this otherwise light poem somewhat pathetic.

Poets with a religious sensibility see this development as sort divine wrath and put forward their sentiments either in direct prayers or by employing religious terminology. ‘A Dialogue with God in the Days of Epidemic’ by Najma Mansoor, and ‘In the Days of Epidemic’ by Safia Hayat, are both of this vein. But, in major and significant poets you find no direct recourse to divine powers or holy personages, but only a thin, veiled religious consciousness.

‘God Smiles in Their Eyes’, a poem by Ali Muhammad Farshi, a senior poet, pays tribute to the life-saving endeavours of a nurse who had wrenched back a bride from the clutches of death.

Quite pertinently, the poet invokes figures of Mary and Christ, the messiah, and despite having no apparent reference to corona the poem provides a penetrating presentation of the present state of affairs. ‘God, Epidemic and Human Beings’ by Jameelur Rahman is also a poem sprinkled with religious diction, but its overall philosophical tone saves the poem from becoming merelamentation of a pious soul caught in an unbearable suffering.

However, MaqsoodWafa altogether rejects the role of religion in such a dreadful disease as he puts it in the closing lines of his poem, ‘The Captive Days’: “I will listen to the Prime Minister’s speech/And I won’t be able to make the people of this holy land understand/that when a virus attacks a human being/ It doesn’t ask the name of his god”. Almost similar is the tone in Saqib Nadeem’s poem: “We Don’t Accept (The Poem of A Petty Sentimentality)” where the poet lashes at the shallow and hypocritical religious community. “After every prayer we embrace and congratulate each other on being alive and we trade in kisses, (but) we don’t hear screams of virus in our kisses”.

Then, there is a group that believes that one can with the power of love conquer this monster. ‘An Innocent Poem’ by Parveen Tahir speaks about the wishes of its female protagonist – a lover – who kisses her lover and dines with him in the naive expectation that the disease will at least spare those who are in love. Seemab Zafar’s

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‘One Erects Love with the Bricks of Affliction’ does not offer such optimism but presents a desolate scenario – within and without. ‘On Death Bed’ by Fatima Mehru juxtaposes among the triad of love, disease and death. It is soulful poem that vacillates between life affirming spirit of love and that of despair.

Some poems in this category remind you Márquez’s Love in the Times of Cholera – at least title of the novel which is quite a popular book.

KhumarMeerzada’s two short and impressive poems ‘Love in the Days of Epidemic’ and ‘Love and Epidemic’ show how love act in front of such a fatal malady. Iftekhar Bukhari’s ‘We Descends from One Father’ does not lose touch to the ground reality, yet it rises up to the lofty human bonds.

“We will not shake hands/ This is time that we united our heart…. Without urgent needs we will not leave our house/ In order that roads, fields and gardens are again full of life…. /If needed, we will go and die in a silent corner/So that the earth might echo with songs, even after our departure.” A powerful poem, indeed!

Arshad Latif took a different, cynical and somewhat callous stance towards the given grave situation. “We couldn’t control our inhuman impulses/And our negative thoughts took us far away from the life itself…

We, you and some others proved a total failure…./ Embrace death willingly so that souls of us, yours and some others could bequeath peace”. (‘The World Wants A Cure’).

Whereas SalmatSarwat’s ‘Quarantine No 1’ portrays the ennui spawned by an ever-spreading leisure and the resultant disinclination to write further, GulnazKausar’s ‘Precaution’ is composed in the poet’s typically soft and feminine style. Her diction and her treatment leave, despite the morbid subject of the poem, a soothing effect on the reader.

At least two other poems: ‘Quarantine’ by Irfan Sadiq and ‘Seventh Day in the Quarantine’ by Omer Aziz, take not only the term of quarantine in their titles, but they revolve around this trope.

Aziz, a doctor by profession, has quite effectively captured the physical affliction and mental agony of a patient put in quarantine.

CONTD. ON PG 24

south asia 24 South Asia Timestimes CONTD. FROM PG 23 Alongside such poems, there is a wide circulation of individual ghazal couplets: the two liners that quite succinctly sum up the general mood about the epidemic. Most of these small pieces, for their overflowing sentimentality or sheer propaganda do not have much appeal. Yet, a few of them not only hit the bull’s eye, but they do not veer away from the aesthetic requirement of a piece of literature.

Afsaos, Ye WabaaKe Dino Ki Mohabbate IkDoosre Se HaathMilaane Se Bhi Gaye (Sajjad Baloch) Alas, these love affairs in the days of epidemic!

Even shaking hands with each other is rendered hard * HarTarafAisiiKhamoshii Hay Ki SarGhoomta Hay Log PahreMeNHaiNAurGalioN Men Dar Ghoomta Hay (Seemab Zafar) A terrible hush rules all over and makes you feel giddy Human being caught in the custody While a certain fearfulness prowls in the streets * Ajeeb Dard Hay JisKiiDawaa Hay Tanhaaii Baqaa e Shahr Hay Ab ShahrKeUjadneMeN (Mahmood Shaam) What a weird malady is it whose cure lies in solitude!

Now the survival of the city is in its depopulation.

ESSAY

Thus, we see that an overwhelming response to the pandemic came from our poets. As for prose, though in general there are a plethora of pieces written on the subject, that is, journalistic writing, but quite rarely one comes across relevant fiction, fictional narrative or imaginative prose.

Justifying this comparative absence fiction writer M Hameed Shahid says: “Poetry might be composed in reaction to a happening, for fiction that is not enough. Fiction needs something more to build up its aesthetics,” he adds.

Well, our writers writing on the communal riots in the wake of the Partition of India in 1947 did produce literature in reaction to these events, though such literature was, to be sure, not created while the riots were still taking place. M. Hameed Shahid is therefore in favour of waiting and seeing and letting his experience take a mature form, so he stayed away from offering something half-backed in fiction.

Nevertheless, he has come forward with a non-fictional narrative: ‘Epidemic Days, Closed Door & Deserted Street’ – a sort of chroniclenarrative and despite its excessive self‐referentiality, the write up is interesting in the sense that it, at least, introduces us to the disquiet and anxieties of a writer finding himself in the midst of a prisonlike claustrophobic confinement.

Meanwhile, another fiction writer who has given a clarion call to his colleagues and urged them use their pens in dispelling the gloomy atmosphere created by the disease is AmjadTuhfail. He was, however, snubbed by a senior short story writer declaring that any such move was to yield nothing but slogan-mongering that jump on the bandwagon could bring out only ‘faction’ and in no way any genuine fiction. A Lahore based short story writer, Tufail, did not take this warning seriously and immediately posted a threepage short story in a socialmedia outlet. Jabir Ali Syed had once called Shamsur Rahman Faruqi known as the “the impetuous critic”.

The gentleman story writer might be no match for Faruqi, but he shares, at least, this quality with his senior contemporary.

As a saving grace to this discouraging deficiency in prose, comes an English write-up, “Something’s not right with the world”, from Farah Zia. The small item that the writer prefers to call “a mood piece” appears like a free stroke by some accomplished painter: laconic, telling and powerful. “It is like waking up every day into a dream: in a place where life imitates fiction” thus begins the write up. Written with profound concern, yet at the same time, with a cold objectivity, it makes a serene and soulful reading. No wonder, the

APRIL - MAY 2020

Arshad Latif took a different, cynical and somewhat callous stance towards the given grave situation. “We couldn’t control our inhuman impulses/ And our negative thoughts took us far away from the life itself…We, you and some others proved a total failure…./ Embrace death willingly so that souls of us, yours and some others could bequeath peace”. (‘The World Wants A Cure’). piece was quickly rendered into Urdu and published, but one wonders if such a deeply-felt prose could be translated without losing much of its essential charm and pathos.

Closing the deliberations one can say that each piece that is being written in the name of literature cannot be, quite naturally, up to the literary mark – let

alone to be remembered by posterity. Most of these writings fall into the category of pièce d’occasion. But such pieces, occasioned by certain events sometimes transcend the given situation and live on, beyond the time of their creation. Some of the given stuff has remarkable literary value and therefore it might survive longer; the other ones might not be fortune enough, but the fact remains that they too bear a witness to a momentous phenomenon in human history and have transcribed these times on the climate of our minds. *Aftab Husain (Pakistan/ Austria) is an eminent name in modern Ghazal poetry from South Asia. In addition to Urdu, he writes in English both poems and literary essays and translates from German to Urdu and vice versa. He earned his doctorate in comparative literature from Vienna University where he teaches South Asian Literature and Culture. He has four collections of poetry and three of books of translations – from German into Urdu – to his credit.

He was a fellow of HeinrichBöll-Haus, Germany as well as the ‘Writer of Exile’ of Vienna City. His poems have been translated into many languages. He is a member of the Austrian PEN and coedits a bilingual magazine – Words & Worlds – for migrant literature.

Source: Borderless, 3 April, 2020.

ICC bans bookie Deepak Agarwal for two years The International Cricket Council (ICC) has banned Deepak Agarwal, a blacklisted bookie from India from all cricket for two years, with a half year of that suspended after he acknowledged one charge of breaking the ICC Anti-Corruption Code.

By SAT Sports Desk/ICC Media Zone

A

garwal was charged as a member under the Code because of the reality he was one of the team owners of the Sindhi’s franchise in the 2018 T10 Cricket League.

The charge is as per the following: 1. Article 2.4.7 – obstructing or delaying an investigation, including concealing, tampering with or destroying any documentation or other information that may be relevant to that investigation and / or that may be evidence of or may lead to the discovery of evidence of corrupt conduct under the ICC Anti-Corruption Code.

Under the arrangements of the Code, Mr Agarwal decided to concede the charges and concurred the assent with the ICC in lieu of

an Anti-Corruption Tribunal hearing. Subject to him fulfilling conditions in regard of the suspended part of the assent, he will be allowed to continue his inclusion in the game on 27 October 2021.

Alex Marshall, ICC General Manager – Integrity stated: “There were various

instances of Mr Agarwal deterring and deferring our investigations and it was not only an erratic event. In any case, he made a brief confirmation of his break of the ICC AntiCorruption Code and keeps on giving generous help to the ACU according to a few investigations including different members. This

collaboration is reflected in his sanction.”

It should be noted that Deepak is known in the spot-fixing circle and the ICC Anti-Corruption Unit had kept the bookie under their constant surveillance for a long time. International Cricket Council (ICC) had blacklisted Deepak Agarwal for his infamous spot-

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fixing attempts in franchise cricket leagues including the international matches.

And Deepak Agarwal was the man who approached Bangladesh star Shakib Al Hasan for inside information. The International Cricket Council (ICC) banned Bangladesh star Shakib Al Hasan from all cricket for two years, with one year of that suspended, after he accepted three charges of breaching the ICC Anti-Corruption Code last year.

Deepak’s threat led to the death of a 29-year-old Indian cricketer in 2011. Indian police detained him back in April 2017 in the Indian city of Raigarh along with two of his supporters. Deepak was put behind the bars and he didn’t learn a lesson for his wrongdoing. After getting out of jail, Agarwal got back in full swing in his usual business of spot-fixing.

southSouth asia times 25 Asia Times

BOOKS

APRIL - MAY 2020

Secrets and scandals: where Malcolm Turnbull’s memoir fits in the rich history of prime ministerial books

By Joshua Black*

l

anding in the middle of the coronavirus pandemic, it may seem strange former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull’s memoir has generated so much political controversy.

Turnbull has been accused of hypocrisy and championing socialism, and has been threatened with expulsion from the Liberal Party.

In A Bigger Picture, Turnbull deals candidly with his antagonists inside the Coalition, who fought him bitterly on the samesex marriage reform and climate policy. Similarly, he names and shames those he blames for the leadership insurgency of August 2018.

All of this was expected, but none of it must please the current government.

But is the book any more inflammatory than previous prime ministerial memoirs?

Political controversy is a trademark of political memoir publishing in Australia. A Bigger Picture is just another page in that story.

Until the 1960s, prime ministerial memoirs were the exception, not the rule.

Between 1945 and 1990, just three former prime ministers chose to publish books about their political lives. Two of them – Billy Hughes and Robert Menzies – produced two books each, and both political veterans sought to avoid “telling tales out of school”. Both seemed more interested in foreign affairs, particularly our imperial relationship to the UK in the case of Menzies.

The dismissal of the Whitlam government provoked both Sir John Kerr and Gough Whitlam to publish their memoirs. After reading extracts of Kerr’s Matters for Judgement, Whitlam decided to “set the record straight immediately” by writing The Truth of the Matter. His second book, The Whitlam Government, was also designed to make a political splash. Promising to explain the “development and implementation” of his policy program, the book was timed for release on the tenth anniversary of the dismissal itself, ensuring

maximum publicity.

Since then, political controversy has accompanied prime ministerial memoirs, in part because incumbent political parties and leaders have had a vested interest in how these books might affect their popularity.

In his 1994 political memoir, Bob Hawke accused his rival and successor, Paul Keating, of calling Australia “the arse-end of the world” during an argument about the Laborleadership.

Further, Hawke accused Keating of failing to support Australia’s involvement in the Gulf War against Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait in 1990.

Keating, who was attacked in parliament in October 1994 over the claims, called both allegations “lies”.

Hawke offered to take a liedetector test to prove his sincerity. Senior ALP figures recorded their outrage at Hawke’s memoir. But Hawke hit back, describing them as “precious self-appointed

guardians of proper behaviour”.

Hawke’s predecessor also damaged his relationship with his own party in the process of publishing his memoirs. Malcolm Fraser’s Political Memoirs, written with journalist Margaret Simons, was recognised as one of Australia’s top ten books of 2010. His outspokenness – in the book and in his postprime-ministerial life more generally – earned him many attacks from Coalition MPs. John Howard handled the politics of his memoirs better than most politicians.

Though the book was antagonistic toward his former treasurer, Peter Costello, Howard promised to “deal objectively” with events and relationships in Lazarus Rising. Ever the party stalwart, Howard and his publishers re-issued the book after the 2013 election with a new chapter that touted Tony Abbott’s “high intelligence, discipline […] good people skills”.

Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard both publicly took aim at one another in their memoirs, which made for plenty of media fodder. In My Story, Gillard described Rudd’s leadership as a descent into “paralysis and misery”. Rudd returned fire, calling her book her “latest contribution to Australian fiction”. However, he was unable to dent the book’s commercial success.

Four years later, Rudd in The PM Years accused Gillard of plotting “with the faceless men” to become prime minister. In a bid to patch over the historic rifts, he subsequently promised the Labor Party’s 2018 National Conference that the “time for healing” had come.

Critics of Turnbull’s book – such as Sky News’ Andrew Bolt and 2GB’s Ben Fordham – have argued that he and his publishers, Hardie Grant, were wrong to “betray confidences” and divulge “private conversations”.

In reality, political memoirs have always pushed against conventions of political secrecy. In the 1970s, British cabinet minister Richard Crossman published his Diaries, which included detailed descriptions of how cabinet functioned. The British establishment subsequently conducted the Radcliffe review into political memoirs and diaries. It found such material should be kept secret for 15 years, but that civil servants could do little to stop their political masters from publishing.

In 1999, Australia’s Neal Blewett was warned that publishing his A Cabinet Diary, recorded seven years earlier, could lead to prosecution under the Crimes Act because it revealed confidential cabinet discussions.

Calling the public service’s bluff, Blewett published anyway. He explained in the book that “a few egos will be bruised, but cabinet ministers are a robust lot”.

His diary shed significant light on the trials and tribulations of a ministerial life.

Since then, countless MPs and ministers have published books that claim to accurately represent

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personal conversations, some based on private notes (as Costello claimed in his memoirs), others on diary entries (as is the case in Turnbull’s book). In recent years, politicians have reproduced text messages and email exchanges in their books, as Bob Carr did in his 2014 book, Diary of a Foreign Minister. In each version of history, the author is the essential policymaker.

In his book, Turnbull reveals private conversations and WhatsApp exchanges with colleagues, world leaders, public servants and more. His accounts of cabinet discussions are hardly ground-breaking: cabinet debates about the economy and national security under the Abbott government, for instance, were thoroughly detailed in Niki Savva’s The Road to Ruin, while the acrimonious debates about energy policy, same-sex marriage and home affairs inside the Turnbull government were laid bare in David Crowe’s Venom. Similarly, Turnbull’s criticisms of News Corporation’s biased reporting have been aired elsewhere, and stop short of Rudd’s argument in The PM Years that Rupert Murdoch should be the subject of a royal commission.

Turnbull’s book is another addition to the history of incendiary political memoir publishing in Australia.

Political parties and their media associates have confirmed once again that a successful parliamentary memoir requires deft political management.

Ultimately, A Bigger Picture is not the compendium of revelations that some may perceive.

Instead, it is another picture of politics in which “character” and “leadership” reign supreme at the expense of all other political forces. * PhD Candidate, School of History, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University.

Source: The Conversation, 22 April 2020 (Under Creative Commons Licence) Photo credit- Wes Mountain/The Conversation.

south asia 26 South Asia Timestimes

BOOKS

APRIL - MAY 2020

Afghanistan: A country that refuses to be tamed

RETURN OF A KING – AN INDIAN ARMY IN AFGHANISTAN; William Dalrymple; Bloomsbury 2014; 567 pp, Rupees 499.

By Neeraj Nanda

M

ELBOURNE, 7 April 2020: I bought this book from Mumbai’s Crossword Bookstore in 2015 and started reading it quite late and, slowly, but finally, finished it last year. Meanwhile, numerous reviews of this incredible piece of history (in William Dalrymple’s history writing style) have already appeared and the book is relevant and a best- seller to this day. Its well-researched page by page facts backed by potent sources (Bibliography pages 537 to 551) is a fine point which one cannot but commend.

Since the publication of this book in 2014, the geopolitics of Afghanistan continues to be in a flux culminating with the current talks between the Trump administration and the Taliban which could lead to the withdrawal of US forces from the country. And, possibly the return to power of the Taliban in Kabul, who are already in control of much of the country.

Anthony Loyd quotes a Taliban operative (he calls him ‘Pashtun fighter) in New Statesman (Letter from Afghanistan: “We have just defeated a superpower”, 1 April 2020) as saying, “It is 40 years we have been fighting now to establish an Islamic emirate, either as the Taliban or as the Mujahedin,” Khalid Agha told me as a slow breeze danced dust around the desert plains beneath us.

“It is true we are sick of killing and dying. Who wouldn’t be? But if it takes another 40 years of fighting and killing to achieve what we fight for, then so be it.”

This very spirit is reflected in the array of events that Dalrymple charts in this book. The 1839 restoration of Shah Shuja (1786-1842) to the throne in Kabul by a massive British invading army comprising of 14,000 East India Company sepoys plus 38,000 others are fiercely fought out

by Afghans as a jihad.

After two years they are expelled slapping the biggest ever humiliation to the British.

By the end of February 1842, the British quit the place in retreat and Shah Shuja could not manipulate himself to remain on the throne and on 5 April 1842 was mowed down by his own godson. The massive details and storytelling are exceptionally brilliant.

From chapter one (No Easy Place to Rule) to nine (The Death of a King) is a historical thriller with clockwork precision. Shah Shuja was on the throne but the actual rule was that of the British occupation army. The Afghans never accepted this and Shah Shuja remained a hated figure till his end. The Union Jack was lowered at BalaHissar, Kabul, on 12 October 1842 ending the British occupation.

The East India Company left Afghanistan after losing around 40,000

men, 50,000 camels with a demoralized army, ripe for a revolt, retreated, leaving the country in tribal chaos. In 1844, Dost Mohammed took over Afghanistan. It was the Anglo-Russian rivalry that led to this violent and needless episode in Afghan history.

But, events unfolding much later, saw the Russians (Soviet Union) in the 1980s withdrawing; in 2001 the US and Britain being pushed out by Afghan resistance; and inbetween the Taliban rule and then 9/11 happened and the rest is history.

The book reveals the Afghan people though united by one faith are actually badly fractured.

So was their resistance to foreign occupiers.

Afghanistan is a graveyard of empires, no doubt, is validated by the recent events unfolding with US troops poised to withdraw from the country and two leaders already battling for power

after an election and most of the country occupied by the Taliban.

Most of the sources of the book are from the British Library, Oriental and India Office Collections, National Archives of India, Public Records Office, National Army Museum, London, Punjab Archives, Lahore and private collections.

The hundreds of historical sources are all detailed (chapter wise) and make one wonder the amount of hard work the author did research the book.

All major figures/ personalities mentioned in the book have their details in the Dramatis Personae giving one a historical context while reading the gripping book.

I repeat the quote of Mirza ‘Ata (1842) with which the author ends this book: “It is certainly no easy thing to invade or govern the Kingdom of Khurasan”.

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By the end of February 1842, the British quit the place in retreat and Shah Shuja could not manipulate himself to remain on the throne and on 5 April 1842 was mowed down by his own godson. The massive details and storytelling are exceptionally brilliant.

southSouth asia times 27 Asia Times

cinema

APRIL - MAY 2020

Shira Haas’s ‘Unorthodox’ & ‘Queen’ Kangana Ranaut’s flight to freedom

By Neeraj Nanda

M

ELBOURNE, 4 April 2020: In 2014 when ‘Queen’ was released and today (2020) have about six years in between but ‘Queen’ on the big screen and ‘Unorthodox ‘on Netflix, with its four episodes, crisscross paths where patriarchy remains a driving force and the protagonists choose the path of freedom.

During the IFFM media conference in Melbourne, I told Kangana about ‘Queen’ being her best movie. A Punjabi woman charts her honeymoon alone one day before marriage and beats the ‘sati-savatri’ image. Israeli actress Esty (Shira Haas), escapes a one-year-old arranged marriage with Yanky (Amit Ragav) from her Satmar Jewish community in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, New York to Berlin, where her estranged mum lives.

The hubby with a cousin goes searching for her to Berlin.

In Berlin, Esty struggles and tries to peruse her passion for music and singing, which was frowned by her tight-knit orthodox

community. Her liberating zeal takes many a form and like Kangna in ‘Queen’, she has a freedom-loving friends group.

Esty’s step by step cultural shift from a suppressed creature to integration in Berlin’s freedom ethos is the

highlight of the series. Her first time on the beach, eating a ham sandwich, parties, wearing a Jean and singing in public speak for themselves. It’s the steady demise of orthodoxy with life freeing itself from regressive personal regulations.

This beautifully crafted series directed by Maria Schrader with powerful performances made good and satisfying watching during my self-decided Carona self-isolation.

Based on ‘Unorthodox: The Scandalous Rejection of My Hasidic Roots’ by Deborah

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Feldman, ‘Unorthodox’ is endlessly touching, realistic and gives one hope in a rather complex world.

Written by Anna Winger, Alexa Karolinski, Daniel Hendler, Eli Rosen and Deoborah Feldman, ‘Unorthodox’ is streaming on NETFLIX.

South Asia Times south asia community 30 South Asia Timestimes

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SUNDAY Language Programs Hindi..................................9 am to 10 am – 93.1 FM BANGLA Urdu................................10 am to 11 am – 93.1 FM Sydney 97.7 FM & SBS Radio 2 Tamil...............................11 am to 12 pm – 93.1 FM Melbourne 93.1 FM & SBS Radio 2 Hindi.................................8 pm to 10 pm – 88.3 FM Monday & Saturday Singhalese.......................8 pm to 11 pm –97.7 FM 6-7 PM GUJARATI MONDA Y Sydney 97.7 FM & SBS Radio 2 Hindi....................................3 to 4 pm – 93.1 FM Melbourne 93.1 FM & SBSPm Radio Bengali...............................4 pm to 5 pm – 93.1 FM Wednesday & Friday 4-5 PM Hindi...................................6 pm to 8 pm – 88.3 FM Indian (Fiji)..................................6 pm to 8 pm 88.3 HINDI Punjabi........................1 1 am to 12 Sydney 97.7 FM & SBS Radio 2 noon 92.3 FM Melbourne 93.1 FM & SBS Radio 2

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11 pm to 1 am urdu Sydney 97.7 FM & SBS Radio24/7 2 Radio stations Melbourne FM & SBS Radio (Subscription) 2 Indian Link93.1 Radio Wednesday & Sunday 18000 15 8 47 6-7 PM Radio Santa Banta (Internet) Santabanta.com.au WORLD NEWS AUSTRALIA RADIO SydneyJhankar 1107AM88.6 & SBSFM; Radio 1 Thursday; 8 to Radio Every Melbourne 1224AM & SBS Radio 1 10 pm; Contact: 94668900 or 0411247320 or Monday & Friday 9404 2111 6-7 am & 6-7 PM

South Asian websiteS India TEHELKA – www.tehelka.com OUTLOOK – www.outlookindia.com FRONTLINE- www.flonnet.com THE HINDU: www.hinduonnet.com TIMES OF INDIA: www.timesofindia.indiatimes.com HINDUSTAN TIMES: www.hindustantimes.com Pakistan DAWN: www.dawn.com THE FRIDAY TIMES: www.thefridaytimes.com THE NEWS INTERENATIONAL: www.thenews.com.pk Sri Lanka DAILY MIRROR: www.dailymirror.lk DAILY NEWS: www.dailynews.lk THE ISLAND: www.island.lk Nepal THE HIMALAYAN TIMES: www.thehimalayantimes.com KANTIPUR NATIONAL DAILY:

PLACES OF WORSHIP HINDU Shri Shiva Vishnu Temple 57 Boundary Rd, Carrum Downs, Melbourne, Vic 3201, Ph: 03 9782 0878; Fax: 03 9782 0001 Website: www.hsvshivavishnu.org.au Sri Vakratunda Vinayaka Temple 1292 - 1294, The Mountain Highway, The Basin, Vic 3154, Ph: 03 9792 1835 Melbourne Murugan Temple 17-19 Knight Ave., Sunshine VIC 3020 Ph: 03 9310 9026 Durga Temple (Durga Bhajan Mandali) Neales Road, Rockbank, Vic 3335 Ph: 03 9747 1628 or Mobile: 0401 333 738 Hare Krishna (ISKCON) Temple 197 Danks Street, Middle Park Vic 3206 Ph: (03) 9699 5122 Email: 100237.354@compuserve.com Hare Krishna New Nandagram Rural Community Oak Hill, Dean’s Marsh Rd., Bambra VIC 3241, Ph: (052) 887383 Fax: (052) 887309 Kundrathu Kumaran Temple 139 Gray Court, ROCKBANK Victoria 3335 Ph: 03-9747 1135 or M: 0450 979 023 http://www.kumarantemple.org.au/ Sankat Mochan Temple 1289 A North Road. Huntingdale Morning: 10.30 am – 12.30 pm daily Evening: 4:30 pm – 8.00 pm daily Site: http: www.sankatmochan.org.au Contact: 0427 274 462 Shirdi Sai Sansthan 32 Hailey Avenue, Camberwell Vic 3124;Ph: (03) 9889 2974; Site: shirdisai.net.au Sai Baba Temple, 50 Camberwell Road Aum Sai Sansthan Temple 76 Albert Street (Enter From : Bear Street) MORDIALLOC VIC - 3195 Website : www.aumsai.org.au Contact : 0468 362 644

SIKH BLACKBURN Sri Guru Nanak Satsang Sabha 127 Whitehorse Road, Blackburn VICTORIA 3130, Ph: (03) 9894 1800 CRAIGIEBURN Sri Guru Singh Sabha 344 Hume Highway, Craigieburn VICTORIA 3164 (see map), Ph: (03) 9305 6511 KEYSBOROUGH Gurdwara Sri Guru Granth Sahib 198 -206 Perry Road, Keysborough VICTORIA 3073 (see map) LYNBROOK Nanaksar Taath, 430 Evans Road,

Lynbrook VICTORIA 3975, (03) 9799 1081 HOPPERS CROSSING Sri Guru Nanak Satsang Sabha 417 Sayers Road, Hoppers Crossing VICTORIA 3029, Ph: (03) 9749 2639 WERRIBEE Gurdwara Sahib Werribee 560 Davis Road, Tarneit VICTORIA 3029 PH: (03) 8015 4707 SHEPPARTON Gurdwara Sahib Shepparton 240 Doyles Road, Shepparton VICTORIA 3603 PH: (03) 5821 9309

JAIN Melbourne Shwetambar Jain Sangh Inc 3 Rice Street, Moorabbin, Vic - 3189, Australia. Phone: +61 3 9555 2439 info@melbournejainsangh.org http://www.melbournejainsangh.org

MUSLIM Melbourne West Mosque 66-68 Jeffcott Street, Melbourne Ph: 03 9328 2067 Broadmeadows Mosque 45-55 King Street, Broadmeadows Ph 03 9359 0054 Islamic Call Society 19 Michael Street, Brunswick Ph: 03 9387 7100 Islamic Centre of Australia 660 Sydney Road, Brunswick Ph 03 9385 8423 Australian Islamic Cultural Centre 46-48 Mason Street, Campbellfield Ph: 03 9309 7605 Coburg ISNA Mosque 995 Sydney Road, Coburg North Coburg Mosque (Fatih Mosque) 31 Nicholson Street, Coburg Ph 03 9386 5324 Deer Park Mosque 283 Station Road, Deer Park Ph 03 9310 8811 United Migrant Muslim Assn.

72 George Road, Doncaster Ph 03 9842 6491, Footscray West Mosque 294 Essex Street, Footscray Glenroy Musala 1st Floor, 92 Wheatsheaf Road, Glenroy Heidelberg Mosque Corner Lloyd & Elloits Streets, West Heidelberg Islamic College of Victoria (Mosque) 201 Sayers Road, Hoppers Crossing Ph 03 9369 6010 Huntingdale Mosque 320-324 Huntingdale Road, Huntingdale Ph 03 9543 8037 Al Nur Mosque 34-36 Studley Street, Maidstone Meadow Heights Mosque Hudson Circuit, Meadow Heights Springvale Mosque 68 Garnworthy Street, Springvale

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Address: Part 4 Suite, Level 12, 55 Swanston Street, Melbourne VIC 3000 Site : www.vfsglobal.com/india/australia/ Services handled by Indian Consulate Melbourne itself: OCI Misc. services, Registration of Birth, Birth Certificate, Renunciation of Indian Citizenship, Surrender of Indian Passport, New Passport Details on PIO, Transfer of Valid Visas, Marriage Certificate, Affidavit for Applying Child’s Passport in India, Documents Attestation.)

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quick community guide VIEW POINT

South Asia Times

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contd from previous page Suite 536, No 1 Queens Road,

Sri Lanka Consulate Melbourne VIC 3004 Telephone: +61 3 9290 4200 Fax: +61 3 9867 4873 Email:mail@slcgmel.org Web: http://www.slcgmel.org

Bangladesh High Commission, Canberra 43, Culgoa Circuit, O’Malley, ACT-2606 Canberra, Australia, Ph: (61-2) 6290-0511, (61-2) 6290-0522, (61-2)6290-0533 (Auto hunting).

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Consulate of Nepal, Melbourne Email: cyonzon@nepalconsulate.net.au Level 7, 28-32 Elizabeth Street, Melbourne VIC 3000, Ph: (03) 9650 8338 Email: info@nepalconsulate.net.au

TV GUIDE SBS1 – Daily NDTV News - 11:05 am - Monday to Saturday. (From New Delhi, India).

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Raj Rani Creations 83-A Foster Street, Dandenong, Vic 3175 Ph: (03) 9794 9398

Rishi Kapoor 1952-2020 Goodbye Bobby!

CONTD. FROM PG 13 He made his debut as full-fledged hero in Bobby (1973) produced by his father as a try-out film that might rescue him from the massive burden of debt Raj Kapoor had incurred for the miserable commercial failure of Mera Naam Joker. Bobby was a story of teenage love between the only son of a very rich businessman very proud of his power and his affluence and a beautiful young girl (Dimple Kapadia), the daughter of a leading fisherman.

demanded every kind of emotion there is in human life specially for a young boy who rebels against his arrogant parents to elope with the girl he has fallen in love with.

In terms of its aesthetics and its quality, Bobby was directed rather heavy-handedly, ran into footage much more than was called for and was both formulaic and melodramatic. But it offered the freshness and charm of youth and turned out to be one of the biggest hits in Hindi cinema. The songs will remain archived in the annals of Indian film music.

Bobby ranks second in the list of the biggest Hindi hits between 1970 and 1979 till this day as it was one of the biggest box office hits and the only film that holds first rank is Sholay (1975). He got the Best Actor Award from Filmfare for his performance in the film that

For the first thirty years of his fifty-year-long career, Rishi Kapoor basked in the direct glory of his romantic screen image as hero. Of these, some were multi-starrers while the others had him in the single male lead. During these years, most of his single-hero films

flopped but nevertheless, there are some very good films among them not talked or written about much.

During this phase, a few films that flopped at the box office but carried a subtle strain of romance treated differently are – Doosra Aadmi (1977), directed by Ramesh Talwar, Khel Khel Mein (1975) directed by Ravi Tandon and Hum Kisise Kum Nahin (1977) directed

by Nasir Hussain. Each of these films belonged to different genres but the common bond they shared was romance spelt out differently in each film.

In Doosra Aadmi, he plays the role of a young man with who, an older woman (Rakhee) falls in love with because he reminds her of her dead lover. He does not understand what is going on till he finds himself falling in love with her though he does have a girlfriend. It is not surprising that this story much ahead of its time, did not go down well with the audience. Khel Khel Mein begins like a light-hearted, young romance which turns into a murder mystery and then takes a different twist altogether. The film will remain memorable for its beautiful songdance numbers. Rishi named his autobiography after a hit song in the film Khel Khel Mein.

It is a pity that except the last one, a romantic musical melodrama, were turnips at the box office. He was an excellent dancer at a time when no handsome hero was technically trained in dancing and did not have too many action scenes which actually gave him an edge over actors who were mainly doing

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action films including the great and invincible Amitabh Bachchan.

He changed the direction of his career as an actor when he put on a lot of weight like all male Kapoors and looked more aged than he really was. He took up character roles and his versatility became extremely challenging and a wonder to watch as he changed colours from Agneepath to Kapoor and Sons to 102 Not Out to Mulk. Playing a girl trafficking mafia lord in Agneepath with his soormastained eyes, Rishi Kapoor gave such a scintillating performance that the audience hated him.

In Mulk, Rishi Kapoor plays a sensitive Muslim family head who decided to stay back in India when the country was partitioned off into two nations. The sweet and syrupy ‘romance’ between Maulana (Kapoor) and his wife the older Tabassum (Neena Gupta) reminds one of B.R. Chopra’s famous Waqt song while the Maulana being a culinary expert in Moghlai cuisine adds that bit of non-patriarchal mileage to the film as does the daughter-in-law Aarti being a practising but progressive Hindu.

Rishi Kapoor’s sudden passing away may be tragic and painful.

But the huge treasure of films he has left behind, with beautiful love stories and scintillating music, will keep us charmed forever and will also function as a frame of reference for actors, filmmakers and film scholars. Bye bye Rishi Kapoor, may your soul rest in peace.

south asia 32 South Asia Timestimes

APRIL - MAY 2020

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