On Topic: student politics, workers’ protests, cyberspace misogyny, Ambedkar’s legacy

And we’re back!

Here’s what we have been reading:

We must begin with what has been termed the ‘Indian spring’—the student protests that began with slapping sedition charges on a few students from the Jawaharlal Nehru University. This has been seen as an attack on the autonomy of the university, indicative of a general sense of intolerance toward dissent and a spirit of enquiry that is the foundation of all education institutions. Not only have the students of JNU viewed as freeloaders being educated at the expense of the taxpayer, but also they have been publicly delegitimized as ‘immoral’. Amidst the cacophony, Janaki Nair, in this essay offers a rational and lucid analysis of the role of the public university in the current time:

“The perceived illegitimacy of “politics on the campus” is aimed not against the various shades of the Left, which, till recently, stood dangerously isolated and endangered in the surge towards the dominance of market forces, but against at least two strands of politics which have, at least in a university like JNU, been uniquely and visibly allied. These are the Ambedkarite forces and the feminists. Not only has the public university, for the first time in post-Independence history, enabled the participation of the widest range of its citizens in higher education, it has given them the resources to think their social worlds anew, in an institutional space that permits and encourages new structures and relationships”

…the university is being pushed away from being a full-blooded and lively institution, which encourages critical thinking, if necessary, of the state, and dreaming of new worlds, to being a mechanism for training people to fit the world they know and receive.”

Here is a brilliant discussion among Saikat Majumdar, Arunava Sinha, Gita Hariharan and Anjum Hasan on the recent attacks on writers, and the general milieu of intolerance festering in the public sphere.

Towards the end of April Bangalore witnessed unprecedented protests by garment factory workers against changes to EPF norms. T.M Veeraraghav spotlights the disparities that undergird a city like Bangalore in his piece for The Hindu:

“These factories exist in clusters and hence workers in garment manufacturing units could mobilise themselves instantly. There are an estimated 5,00,000 people working in garment factories in the city. Predominantly women (estimated to be around 85 per cent) and for them, usually with salaries of around Rs. 6,500 a month, the few hundred rupees they save as PF is the only social security.”

…. “It is important to address the difference in the way PF is looked at by those surging with a booming corporate economy and workers, like those in garment factories — PF is not the only saving mechanism for the young manager or techie, for many it’s just a mandatory contribution that one has to make.”

Chandan Gowda, in his response, reads the protests as a challenge to the idea Bangalore being the ‘Silicon Valley of India’, and in a sense, argues that this is a means for garment workers to make their claims to the city visible:

“But these workers, and those involved in manual or non-glamorous work, are invisible in the dominant imaginations of Bangalore. If the pleasures of anonymity in urban areas are celebrated, the pain of invisibility there is less talked about.”

“The garment factory workers’ protest was a confident and dignified announcement of their presence in Bangalore: they are a sizable workforce; their work matters to the city’s economy; they could not be taken for granted; they need to be respected.”

Delta Meghwal a 17-year-old artist pursuing a degree in teaching was raped and consequently murdered by her physical training teacher. This report looks at attempts to pass of her rape as consensual sex. Sharanya Manivannan, in her article, questions the mainstream media’s silence about Delta’s death.

We found an older post from last year, and we think it must be read. Zenisha Gonsalves’ account of the treatment meted out to women by Indian female gynaecologists is perhaps the first step towards sensitizing medical students, and practicing doctors about the ethical codes they must practice with every patient. Conservatism, morality lessons and outright shaming of women goes against this code of civil, responsible behaviour. The best part is that the piece ends with a crowd-sourced list of progressive gynecologists across Indian cities. A much needed database indeed!

This longish essay in The Guardian looks at the rise of the doctor-writer, and how such autobiographical medical narratives are therapeutic to doctor and patient alike.

Monobina Gupta writes on the inherent sexism that undergirds news reporting in India. Kate Middleton’s so called ‘Marilyn moment’ made it to the front page of one of India’s well-known newspapers, and here is Gupta’s critique of such invasive reportage.

What happens when the pillars of access and anonymity that buttress cyberspace are used to perpetuate and air highly misogynist opinions? Stephen Marche offers a nuanced commentary on The Red Pill, an online community hosted by Reddit, which acts as a virtual space where ‘men can be men’:

“In the hours upon hours I spent wandering this online neighbourhood, I saw mostly feral boys wandering the digital ruins of exploded masculinity, howling their misery, concocting vast nonsense about women, and craving the tiniest crumb of self-confidence and fellow-feeling. The discussion threads are a mixed bag of rage and curiosity: screeds against feminists, advice on how to masturbate less, theories on why women fantasize about rape, descriptions of arguments with girlfriends, guides to going up to strangers on the street, and, most of all, workout schedules and diet regimes.”

Finally, R.K. Pachari has been fired from TERI, as reported here.

Mohammed Junaid writes on Rollie Mukherjee’s images of Kashmir.

On the occasion of Ambedkar’s 125th birth anniversary, Ananya Vajpeyi looks at the attempts to appropriate his ideas both by the Hindu wing and the left. She looks at the afterlife of Ambedkar in our time and his increased visibility in the public sphere. In her analysis she poses crucial questions about the possibility of an alternative political philosophy:

“The novelty and the idealism of these mass (student) protests were clear for all to see; but as a participant in many of these events in Delhi, I can testify that they were also marked by uncertainty and a lack of direction: Who is leading this inchoate Indian Spring? Does it have a clear agenda? Will it develop into a real political alternative in the future? Can a student-led movement, which is by definition transient (like students who enter and pass through the university), acquire a staying power of its own, or will it be subsumed under the banners of existing political parties and held hostage to their failures and limitations?”

Tired of all male panels? The Ladies Finger spots a recent one for you. But here is an alternative.

How image driven is the publishing industry? To what extent does an author’s size determine whether she will be published? This article looks at the unacknowledged nexus between physical appearance and the chances of being published.

Meanwhile, solidarity pours in for the continuing the hunger strike by students of Jawaharlal Nehru University . Here is a report on professors showing solidarity by undertaking a one day fast.

The gruesome rape and murder of a young Dalit law student Jisha, has been ignored by the mainstream press. The Ladies Finger offers a roundup of the case.