“From appreciation to a demand – The move from Streedhan to Dahej”

Introduction:
Colonialism is such a phenomena that it often ends in the misuse of certain symbols. One example of this statement would be the use of dowry before, during and after the period of British colonialisation in India. The culture of dowry giving is spreading even to communities, which had no such tradition a generation or two ago. This despite the fact that in the last two decades the anti dowry laws have been made very stringent and draconian. Many interpret the failure of these laws to lessen dowry giving as a sign of their poor implementation. However, these laws have so many inherent flaws that their honest implementation is well nigh impossible. In fact, these laws have created more problems than they have solved. You cannot combat a 'crime' which is as ill defined as the anti dowry laws of India.
This essay aims to examine using dowry as a symbol, the way that the British colonial rulers in India changed the way that certain traditional Indian symbols were seen and used. Also this essay hopes to examine how the current post-colonial mindset has again given these symbols a new face; thus causing these symbols to evolve and re-evolve, creating a very ‘gendered’ history. This can be examined in the sense of the “white man” attempting to protect the “brown woman”, thus causing the “brown man” to grow more fixated with the symbols that the British were fighting against and emphasizing their importance even more.
As per the Dowry Prohibition Act (originally passed in 1961 and amended twice in the 1980s), dowry is defined as 'any property or valuable security given or agreed to be given either directly or indirectly by one party to a marriage to the other party to the marriage or by the parents of either party to a marriage or by any other person, to either party to the marriage or to any other person at or before [or any other time after the marriage] in connection with the marriage of the said parties' .
Madhu Kishwar commented most aptly that “It has become politically fashionable to attribute all forms of violence and discrimination against women, including female infanticide and female foeticide to the economic burden of dowry that a daughter is said to represent. ” Through such comments, we can see how many undesirable faces of history have become attributed to women. Instead, an examination of colonial policies that were implemented by the British in India would be able to provide a more comprehensive reason for the dowry system and its exorbitant growth.


Colonial rule and Dowry:
Dowry requirements are merely another excuse for considering daughters a burden. The anti-dowry movement, by constantly citing of 'dowry abolition' as the most effective method to attain women's empowerment and as the primary strategy for ending their oppression, has only helped give further legitimacy to the conventional belief that daughters are an economic liability.
There is little mention of exorbitant dowries causing the ruin of families in the literature of pre-British India. Ruin due to exorbitant dowry payments became a major theme in nineteenth century literature because this period witnessed an unprecedented erosion of women's economic importance and inheritance rights due to the manner in which the colonial rulers carried out land settlement operations in India. In conformity with Victorian norms that were the norm in England, land entitlements were given to the male heads of the family, bypassing Indian customary laws that allowed various categories of entitlements to women; including the concept of Stridhana, where the bride takes land and money with her, in her name, to her marital family. This “bride wealth” is then inherited in a matrilineal line. This concentrated property in the hands of men in an unprecedented way and paved the way for the eventual complete disinheritance of women. In addition, the enormous land revenue demands imposed by the British drained large amounts of the economic surplus from the rural economy. It made the peasants extremely cash poor. The destruction of traditional crafts pushed large sections of impoverished artisan groups to fall back on their small landholdings and the consequent increasing pressure on land made land ownership bestow special power and status; which naturally men exploited from each other whenever possible, especially through marital alliances.
To again quote Madhu Kishwar, “Thus, our modem inheritance laws have increasingly moved in favour of men and against the interests of women. All those communities that practiced matrilineal inheritance, such as the Nairs in Kerala, have also been forced through legislation to move towards patrilineal inheritance. Systems that provided reasonable or adequate protection of women's economic rights have been steamrollered out of existence. ”

How dowry engendered colonial society:
The colonial concern about rising dowry payments, infanticide linked to Hindu concerns about not being able to pay dowry, and the attempt to control marriage expenses to diminish the impoverishment attributed to dowry were all attempts that cast "Hindu culture" as the problem and justify colonial paternalist domination.
Even female infanticide can be linked back to colonial policies instead of being seen as a high-caste Hindu problem. The growing preference for sons had a far greater correlation with colonial land and revenue policies and suppression of modern industry than with any cultural male-preference. A very strong correlation can be seen with the colonial construction of males as property owners and the creation of lucrative wage jobs in the military. The simple fact the colonial rule completely sidelined Hindu women from the workforce served to reduce their importance and thus increased the perception that females were a burden. The colonial situation and even the present scenario in India bear little resemblance to pre-colonial traditions where men often worked alongside women in fields. So dowry by the 1850's went from being a way of showing the appreciation a family had for their daughter to becoming a demand. As the colonial economy was commoditized, women were as well, through the dowry demand. Systems of reciprocity, the fact that villages would come together to give a woman gifts, gave way to contractual systems leading to chronic indebtedness; and thus women were left without legal entitlements.
In opposition to the reigning mindset of the time that the private sphere was a realm of freedom and traditional practices, the British administration in India saw the private sphere in the colony instead as a space of "barbarism" that required change and ‘civilizing’. This produced the structure of the "scandal" as the mode through which the private sphere was made available to public scrutiny. Through law, patriarchy was imposed upon the private sphere. So criminalizing cultural or traditional practices was the way the colonial state was able to get out of its own proclaimed stance of non-interference.
The banning of dowry, child-marriages and sati however, served to do little else than intensify these practices as they came to be seen as ‘rebellion’ against the colonial powers. Dowry gradually became more and more exorbitant and in a vicious cycle, the more the grew, the more the colonial rulers and missionaries tried to stamp it out, serving only to again intensify it. In this war of culture and civilizations, women were increasingly disenfranchised and discriminated against; becoming mere chattels.
Dowry became such an issue at the time that even non-Hindus, for whom dowry was not part of tradition, came to take it as part of their belief system. It can be explained in terms of "hypergamy" where families seek to marry daughters to families of higher status and to the "sanskritisation" of India where communities try to improve their caste status by adopting dowry practices. The latter is clearly apparent in the adoption of the dowry system by Indian Christians and Muslims. For the Muslims, the concept of dowry was nonexistent, the groom instead paying the bride’s family a “bride price”. The adoption of a “Hindu” dowry culture has helped the other religious groups stand on a common ground with the Hindus and perhaps try to create a common “Indian” culture. The British also often favoured the Hindus in India, perhaps contributing to the ‘sanskritisation’ of India.

Conclusion:
Putting landed property exclusively in male hands, and holding the latter responsible for the payment of revenue had the effect of making the Indian male the dominant legal subject. The British further made the peasants pay revenue twice a year on a fixed date. Inability to pay would result in the land being auctioned off by the government. As a result, peasant were forced, during a bad year, to use their land as collateral to borrow from the moneylender, in order to pay taxes. The British resolve to rationalize and modernize the revenue was particularly hard on women. From being co-partners in pre-colonial landholding arrangement, they found themselves denied all access to economic resources, turning them into dependents. In the event they faced marital problems, they were left with no legal entitlements whatsoever.
The contemporary phenomenon of Indian dowry can be explained not in terms of scriptural and cultural concepts but more as a modern institution of showing off wealth connected to the colonial monetization of the economy and then again to postcolonial globalization. That the extreme devaluation of women reflected in contemporary practices such as dowry, female infanticide and female feticide may be traced back in India to colonial policies. This disenfranchisement makes women even more dependent on marriage as a route to economic security, and makes it likely that women will tolerate abuse within marriage. In fact in the current situation, as Madhu Kishwar studied, it may be that women themselves concur with dowry for their own marriages because they know they will receive little else from their parents .
Traditional forms of social life were changed due to modern conceptions of agency, consent, and individuality. Dowry, which was once a practice that enabled women, has now been transformed into one that oppresses them.

Bibliography:
Basu, Srimati. She Comes to Take Her Rights: Indian Women, Property and Propriety, 2001
http://www.boloji.com/wfs/wfs159.htm (Accessed on 24th March, 2006)

Caleekal, Anuppa. Dowry Death: Its gruesome reality and future interface in a digital cultural revolution. 1997
http://www.digitalism.org/ (Accessed on 24th March, 2006)

Kishwar, Madhu. Off the Beaten Track: Rethinking Gender Justice for Indian Women, New Delhi, Oxford University Press, 1999.

Kishwar, Madhu Purnima. Destined to fail in Manushi, Issue 148
(published July 2005 in India Together)



Oldenburg, Veena Talwar. Interview in Times of India, Mumbai as appeared on 31/1/03.
http://www.esamskriti.com/html/new_essay_page.asp?cat_name=why&cid=1030&sid=168 (Accessed 26th March, 2006)

Oldenburg, Veena Talwar. Dowry Murder: The Imperial Origins of a Cultural Crime; Oxford University Press, 2003

THE DOWRY PROHIBITION ACT, 1961, (No. 28 of 1961)
http://socialwelfare.delhigovt.nic.in/dowryact.htm (Accessed on 28th March, 2006)

The Impact of the Mass Media on Indian Culture and forms of Communication

Introduction:

The impact of mass media in India is very significant and this is clearly apparent through the rising number of advertisers who are capitalizing on these media channels to spread their messages. Rural or urban, regardless of caste and religious boundaries, Indians are glued to television and radio serials. The question this essay aims to examine is the intangible cost involved in this burgeoning mass media culture.
“Films are seen once or twice while ad films are seen over and over. Yet the advertising for many of these iconic brands doesn't seem to drive social change in behaviour and values as strongly as some of the heroes and heroines do through their portrayals in films and serials. ”
It is the people and their characters that the masses of India seem to identify with. With regards to their dressing and personifications of themselves, mass media has affected the lives of people in many ways. As village politician Chandraprakash Dwivedi said “Now village girls want to dress like Rani Mukherjee in Bunty aur Babli -- this within four weeks of the release of the film. ” Men want a hairstyle like “Radhe Bhayya ” in hit movie Tere Naam. Bindis, blouses, and bangles define the concept of beauty for girls in small towns - influenced by the looks of the saas-bahus in the umpteen TV serials beaming into their drawing rooms on various satellite channels.
In Kirk Johnson’s study of a small town two hours away from Mumbai city where television had just reached, he noted how television upset existing social structures and created new ones. This essay aims to answer the question it has put forth above through the examination of the differences in social structures in India from the past to the present; as well as the differences in forms of communication and entertainment.

Folk Music, television and cinema will be examined under the category of communication and entertainment. Communication in India often took on a musical tone, especially in the communication of religious works or literature. Poetry and religious texts were often sung. The advent of television however has made this rather obsolete. Similarly, village theatre and dance (nautanki) has been replaced by cinema and television serials.

Social structures in India have also changed with respect to the caste system as Johnson’s work shall demonstrate. Owning forms of media and communication (televisions) has becomes more a more important symbol of class than caste. Similarly; village story-telling and word-of-mouth has lost its following and has thus changed the social structure of things as well.




“Traditional forms of communication and entertainment”

The culture of India is one of the oldest cultures in the world and yet it is so diverse as to be impossible to pin down and define. The South, North, and Northeast have their own distinct cultures and almost every state has carved out its own cultural niche. In spite of the diversity, it's bound by a common thread as one civilization perhaps because of its shared history of colonialisation and the following struggle for independence from the British.
Culture and its preservation matters a great deal to Indians, at least in rhectoric. The Government of India has even formulated a “Cultural Policy” which lays out three major objectives as preserving the cultural heritage of India, inculcating Indian art consciousness amongst Indians and promoting high standards in creative and performing arts. Unfortunately, it seems the advent of mass media has made the cultural policy redundant as performing arts seem to have virtually disappeared for the masses of India.
In the past, Indian drama and theatre were a significant part of “Indian culture” and some of the oldest plays in the world originated from India. The tradition of folk theatre was also alive in nearly all the linguistic regions of the country. In addition, there is a rich tradition of puppet theatre in rural India. There were many theatre groups that used to travel from village to village putting up small skits and these served as entertainment and also as a means of communications between different villages as information travelled through word of mouth. These nautanki goups have since been replaced by Bollywood cinema and the tv-serial market.

Similarly, the earliest Indian literary traditions were first orally spread and only later transcribed. Most of these spring from Hindu tradition and are represented by sacred works like the Vedas, the epics of the Mahabharata and Ramayana. These works were narrated with an accompanying discourse by learned speakers or visiting sanskrit scholars and Brahmins.

Finally, the music of India includes multiple varieties of folk, pop and classical music. India's classical music tradition, including Carnatic and Hindustani music, has a history spanning millennia and, developed over several eras, remains fundamental to the lives of Indians today as sources of religious inspiration, cultural expression and pure entertainment. India is made up of several dozen ethnic groups, speaking their own languages and dialects, as a result, folk music plays an essential role in uniting people of the same dialect group who may be far apart geographically. An example is the folk music of Bihar and Uttar Pradesh, Bhojpuri music. It serves as a means of communication as the lyrics of the songs often cover recent cultural changes and events; as well as religious content. Bhojpuri music is spread through visiting singers as well as everyday singing by laypeople. The songs are not static and their lyrics are often played around and substituted by the singers. This allows for communication between gepgraphically disparate groups. Later in this essay, the loss of such a means of communication will be examined with regard to the invention of casette tapes and television.

Changes in forms of Media and Communiation:
Music, drama and literature have all changed with time and are now digitally enahnced are available to a wider base of people. The television and print revolutions have granted access to these forms of media to the masses across india. Villages often have their own newspapers and access to television is readily available to the majority. Bollywood cinema is not restricted to the urban community and is in fact highly popular with the rural masses.
The ease of making casette tapes and now compact discs has allowed for a very widespread distribution of music; negating the need for traditional folk singers and concerts. Bhojpuri folk music is an example of a dying genre of music that is now regaining some following due to overseas diaspora groups desperate to maintain their links to their dialect. As Ajeet Praimsingh, leader of the bhojpuri singing group D’Bhuyaa Saaj said, “we don’t speak Bhojpuri any more, so all that we sing is by the ear. But we love this form of music and we perform quite often”.
In Cassette Culture, Peter Manuel tells how a new mass medium, the portable cassette player, caused a major upheaval in popular culture in the world's second-largest country. The advent of cassette technology in the 1980s transformed India's popular music industry from the virtual monopoly of a single multinational LP manufacturer to a free-for-all among hundreds of local cassette producers. The result was a revolution in the quantity, quality, and variety of Indian popular music and its patterns of dissemination and consumption. Manuel shows that the cassette revolution, however, has brought new contradictions and problems to Indian culture. While inexpensive cassettes revitalized local subcultures and community values throughout the subcontinent, they were also a vehicle for regional and political factionalism, new forms of commercial vulgarity, and, disturbingly, the most provocative sorts of hate-mongering and religious chauvinism.

Television has had a more or less similar impact due to its widespread reach. It is nearly impossible to establish the precise number of people with access to a television set in “the poor world ”, as James Murdoch, chief executive of STAR TV Group told a cable conference in India; due to the fact that individual cable subscribers sometimes pass on the service illegally to an entire neighborhood. “Moreover, in parts of the developing world, large numbers of people often crowd into one house or cafe to watch television, a factor that is hard to quantify ”.
In the case of India, media empires have had to adjust their strategies to suit the Indian context. STAR TV realized that its mainly American oriented programming was only reaching a tiny, although wealthy, urban audience. It therefore started adding Hindi subtitles to Hollywood films broadcast on its 24-hour channel and dubbing popular U.S. soaps into Hindi. In October 1996, STAR Plus began telecasting programs in English and Hindi. In 1999, it claimed 19 million viewers in India.
Another example of this cultural hybridity is Zee TV, India’s first private Hindi-language satellite channel. Zee was launched in October 1992 and depended initially on recycled programming. It then broke television taboos by broadcasting programs about sex, relationships, and horoscopes. The channel thrives on a mixture of Hindi film, serials, musical countdowns, and quiz contests. Zee’s innovative programming includes news in “Hinglish.” Despite the influence of the English language in India, the biggest media growth is in regional languages. Even U.S. series like “Friends” (known as “Hello Friends” in India) have been hybridized, although the latter has not been as successful as expected—the lifestyle of the Hyderabadi versions of the New Yorker originals did not settle in the Indian imagination.
Such television shows are the prime example of how American culture has become more popular in India than Indian culture. Even Indian soap operas, set in traditional households often portray traditionally dressed women who behave and dress in a completely Western manner out of the house. Television serials, both Indian and western oriented ones have deemphasized traditional dress. As a Bengali fieldworker commented, in the cities it is difficult to tell men and women apart by their dress. Movies and television have created a new fashion that is being emulated all over the country, rural and urban.


Changes in Social Structure:

The people of India belong to thousands of castes and caste like groups--hierarchically ordered, named groups into which members are born. Caste members are expected to marry within the group and follow caste rules pertaining to diet, avoidance of ritual pollution, and many other aspects of life.

With the advent of mass media and channels of communication and information, the Brahmins who have traditionally been at the top of the caste system have been replaced by those with colour television sets in their homes reports Kirk Johnson in his study. The next level seems now to be those with access to colour TV, followed by black and white TV owners and then those with access to black and white TVs.

Caste lines have been blurred in the quest to gain access to information; which in itself is not a bad thing. Television watching, especially in the rural areas has become a communal event and it is not uncommon for TV owners to position their television sets such that they are facing the open door; allowing members of other caste groups to sit outside the home and enjoy the shows . Similarly, in villages where there is one common, government-provided television set, members of the village gather around to watch communally. This is especially the case for religious programs as well as those related to agriculture.

However, such interaction means that traditional social structures have been destroyed and more people are flocking to the cities that they see on television in the hopes of achieving the material goods that are telecast. This has resulted indirectly in an increasing number of unemployed in the cities as well as a growing number of slums, as these internal migrants are often lowly skilled and unable to find suitable jobs in the city.

Other than changing the social structure and norm, the media revolution has also contributed to the disintegration of so-called 'Indian norms'. Movies such as "Monsoon Wedding" are an ideal demonstration of the culture shock faced by many young Indians today. There is a chasm between traditional values of chastity and dressing conservatively and the TV values of stylish and often skimpy dressing and more liberal values, including dating before marriage and other 'western norms'.

Although information and communication links that television, cinema, radio and newspapers have brought about are immense; it is undeniable that they have had a very strong and not altogether beneficial impact upon the masses who watch them. Culture and social structures have suffered, as have traditional art forms and methods of communication.


Conclusion:

Other than dress; many other aspects of culture have been sacrificed in favour of western influences. Folk music and travelling singers have given way to cassettes and compact discs; nautanki shows have dissolved under the pressure and competition brought forth by television and cinema. The traditions of story telling has also taken a back seat due to casette playbacks of discourses and the ease with which printed material is cheaply available.

Just as traditions have gone ‘out of fashion’, it seems that many beliefs have done so as well. Television has reached a stage where even religious discourse is broadcast, negating the need for temple visits and religious-social gatherings. Infrastructure and the mass media influenences that it has brought with it have created a culture where person to person interaction has nearly stopped. Information is relayed to us through media channels, radio, television, books and newspapers.
It seems almost as if we have entered an era of ‘cognitive imperialism ’ where as Carolyn Martin famously commented, “Western civilization was the center of the stage play for which the rest of the world was an awestruck audience ." The interaction between the media and the people it impacts is ever changing and evolving; the Indian-themed but Hollywood made movie, “Monsoon Wedding,” demonstrates how globalization and the media reveal striking features in cultural contexts. Societies like India’s are being affected by globalization and the western influences that are a large part of it, but their interest also plays an active role in fostering it.

Bibliography:

Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), “Monsoon Wedding” Demonstrates Cultural Impact of Globalization on Many Levels, 27/02/2003.
http://www.globalization101.org/index.php?file=news1&id=44
(Accessed on 25th march 2006)

Chatterji, Shoma. Information as Empowerment in India Together, 24th March, 2006.
http://www.indiatogether.org/2006/mar/med-navodayam.htm
(Accessed on 25th march 2006)

Culture of India. Culture of India, Mumbai, 2004.
http://www.cultureofindia.net/
(Accessed on 20th march 2006)

Iyer, Venkatesh R. Culture Cops in India Together, July 2004
http://indiatogether.org/2004/jul/med-copmedia.htm
(Accessed on 24/3/06)

Hartmann, Paul. The mass media and village life : an Indian study. New Delhi ; Newbury Park : Sage Publications, 1989.


Johnson, Kirk. Television and social change in rural India. Thousand Oaks, California: Sage Publications, 2000.

Lahiri, Nisha Chutney makes the music, in The Telegraph (Calcutta, India) 25/2/05
http://www.telegraphindia.com/1050225/asp/calcutta/story_4419987.asp (Accessed on 24/3/06)

Lal, Vinay, Associate Professor of History, UCLA. Culture, December 12, 2002.
http://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/southasia/Culture/culture.html
(Accessed on 20th march 2006)

Manuel, Peter Lamarche. Cassette culture: popular music and technology in north India.
Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993.

Marvin, Carolyn. When Old Technologies Were New: Thinking About Electric Communication in the Late Nineteenth Century, 1988.

Neuman, Daniel M. The Life of Music in North India : The Organization of an Artistic Tradition. University Of Chicago Press; 1990.

Richards, Michael and French, David. From Global Development to Global Culture in Contemporary television: eastern perspectives. New Delhi; Thousand Oaks : Sage Publications, 1996

Rao, Bhaskara N. Media needs a new outlook and approach. 7th October, 2005
http://www.tribuneindia.com/2005/20050710/edit.htm
(Accessed on 24/3/06)

Sabnavis, Madhukar, Can ads impact popular culture, July 1, 2005 on Rediff.com
http://in.rediff.com/money/2005/jul/01guest2.htm
(Accessed 23rd March)

Thomas, Bella. What the World's Poor Watch on TV. From the March 2003 issue of World Press Review (VOL. 50, No. 3) http://www.worldpress.org/Europe/947.cfm#down (Accessed on 20th march 2006)

together... but with breathing space...

This is just what i dream of...
~~~~

Let there be spaces in your togetherness
And let the winds of heaven dance between you.

Love one another,
but make not a bond of love:
Let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls.

And stand together,
but yet not too near together:

For the pillars of the temple stand apart,
And the oak tree and the cypress grow not in each other's shade.

-Kahlil Gibran

KA HO!?

Culture is a shared entity as acknowledged by Conrad Phillip Kottak . Folk songs and folk traditions often make up a significant aspect of such ‘culture’ as shared by people both in and out of a nation. With reference to India and the Indian Diaspora, folk songs have played a huge role in uniting masses and providing disparate groups with a shared ‘culture’.

The Bhojpuri folksongs shared by the people of North India, mainly Bihar and Uttar Pradesh is one such example. It is a genre that has transcended the usual gender and caste boundaries to become a shared love of the people. Bhojpuri, a dialect of Hindi is spoken, with slight variations, over large parts of Northern India. Folk music plays a very important role in Northern India where it features in every ceremony from weddings to funerals, with different songs for each part of the ceremony, welcoming the groom, the arrival of the bride, the wedding itself and the bride’s bittersweet farewell, etc. There are also songs for each of the different seasons and times of harvest. Indian folk music is very diverse, reflecting the variety of cultures in the subcontinent. To take merely the political unit of Bihar state as an example, it encompasses the culturally distinct entities of the Bhojpuri dialect region, the Mithila dialect region as well as 29 tribal groups. Music styles are also differentiated by jati (caste), sex and context. Furthermore folkdance and drama must be considered in conjunction with vocal and instrumental music. Folksong, with or without instrumental support, and instrumental music are often partners of folkdance. Folk theatre (like ancient classical theatre) and most Indian films feature a tripartite integration of song, dance and drama, showing the everlasting influence of folk music even in today’s modernized movie songs. Themes have remained unchanged, focusing on weddings, farewells and the ever popular “male-female one-up man-ship”.

Folk music in India has even played the role of mediator among religions, which few other art forms or even people have been able to do. While the kirtan theoretically bypasses caste and class divisions, it and the bhajan, another type of devotional song, are clearly Hindu; their Muslim counterpart is qawwali. Other cultural groups such as the Bauls of Bengal disregard the boundaries of any religious system and their songs reflect this. Village songs have revealed a disregard for religious separatism. In a woman's song from Bhojpuri (Uttar Pradesh) Allah, the Muslim God is appealed to in a song for the Hindu smallpox goddess, Sitala. It has been noted that this song refers indirectly to the story of the marriage of Sitala with Allah which was apparently widespread before independence and partition movements developed, as was the participation of Hindu and Muslim communities in each other's religious festivals.

Long before Partition however, it was another act of the colonial rulers that created a wide Indian Diaspora and along with that, expanded the use f Bhojpuri and popularized its music. The continuous migration of landless labourers from Bihar and Eastern U P during the British raj to far-off places in the Mediterranean and the Pacific left a trail of pathos and sentimentalism for the mother country which resulted in the creation of new customs and an immensely rich literature that continues to be a living tradition in these areas, according to a study; however it also resulted in what some esteemed professors call the ‘fossilization of culture’. This is a phenomenon whereby immigrants leave the mother country with their cultures and traditions, and continue to preserve them long after the mother country has moved forward. An excellent example would be the main case study for this essay, the preservation of Bhojpuri music among the Indian Diaspora.
The folk songs, that depict the pathos of families whose loved ones had left them and never returned, as also the agonies of destitute peoples struggling for survival in an alien land, are being systematically compiled and documented jointly by a social science institute here and two other institutions, one of The Netherlands and Surinam, both countries home to a sizeable and now financially well-off Bhojpuri community.
"The Bidesia project which derives its name from the songs composed by legendary Bhojpuri poet Bhikari Thakur, tends to study the social and cultural changes that were caused by the migration from the Bhojpuri belt ," says Dr Badri Narain Tiwari of Gobind Ballabh Pant Social Science Institute (GBPSSI). The project is being undertaken by GBPSSI in collaboration with Royal Tropical Institue, Amsterdam and IMWO, a social science institute affiliated to the University of Surinam. Describing the psyche of the woman prototype, who is usually the protagonist of Bidesia songs, Tiwari quotes from a Bhojpuri verse "my husband went in search of gold, my hair turned silver. Neither gold was found, nor my husband returned. He settled down in an alien land." "These lines poignantly describe the pain experienced by the migrants' families . The ones who left the country could later establish no contact with their kin back home, who spent virtually their entire lives waiting and hoping," Tiwari says .
The migrants, who are left in a distant land with their hopes for a better future shattered, strive in a myriad ways to keep memories of homeland alive, which provides them with the resilience to endure the daily grind. The trauma of the migrants can be seen in the Bhojpuri songs sung in foreign countries in which an older generation recalls how it had come to distant lands with the hopes of a good life. Now their descendants, often a product of one settled migrant ‘importing’ a spouse from the motherland and settling up a family in the new country. These lines of first-generation citizens are often a mix of traditions of the motherland and the nation in which they were born. Folk songs and such fusion music is a very strong tool of maintaining their indigenous culture. In Singapore this is clearly visible in the large number of youth members in the newly established Bhojpuri society, to which the author belongs.
It is this ‘youth wing’ which often is the most involved in the society’s activities, going so far as to re-establish festivals which Singapore has not seen in a long time on such a scale, eg. Holi (Phaguwa), the festival of colours, often celebrated as the North Indian New Year. One very important factor that repeatedly came up in meetings was the relevance of music in making these third and fourth generation Singaporeans realize their Bhojpuri roots and the magic of their own dialect. The Singaporean Bhojpuri Society often invites Bhojpuri poets and musicians from different countries as well as from the mother land, to perform at major festivals and have even tried to popularize the use of Bhojpuri in temple activities.
Commercial interests have joined the fray and are making the search for culture even more interesting by creating funky remixes of traditional Bhojpuri folksongs and thus creating a wider appeal. HMV is targeting mainly the Indian migrant population with its Bhojpuri remixes. HMV says it was inspired to tap the market after the runaway remix-hit, Kaanta Laga . The hit song from HMV is already doing the rounds of satellite channels and has set sales soaring . HMV even admitted its target audience was mostly the huge migrant population . HMV’s competition with old war horse T-series has provided the migrants with a larger range of Bhojpuri music as HMV’s remixes are radically different from T-Series’ use of well-established singers like Radhey Sham Rasia, Guddu Rangeela and Manoj Tiwari who render folk songs and bhajans in the traditionally manner.

As such, it is apparent how essential folk music and the festivals described in them are important to Diasporic groups who have little scope of returning ‘home’ due to financial interests. The quest for culture in an increasingly Westernised world is making these migrants turn back towards a search for their differentiating factor so as to avoid becoming just another face in the crowd. As most Diasporic groups share a common history of having left the motherland due to financial reasons, they have developed a shared cultural inheritance although these groups may never have met and are separated through large geographical boundaries. The advent of communication technology has allowed numerous Diasporic Bhojpuri groups to spring up on the Internet and the success of Bhojpuri is making other Indian dialects equally popular, including Awadhi and Maithili. A result of Acculturalation as well as a simple need to preserve their own cultures, cultural features in these traditional folk songs have changed but their motive has not, they still serve to unite Indians world wide in a shared dialect and also interest the youth in their heritage.

I'll be on this list soon!

A complete listing of AP's Pulitzer Prize Winners

The Associated Press has won 48 Pulitzer Prizes, more than any other news organization in categories for which it can compete. The AP has won 19 Pulitzer Prizes for writing and 29 Pulitzer Prizes for pictures.

The Pulitzer Prizes, American journalism's most prestigious honor, were established by Joseph Pulitzer and are presented annually for outstanding achievement.
Here is a list of The Associated Press winners:

2005 -Bilal Hussein, Karim Kadim, BrennanLinsley, Jim MacMillan, Samir Mizban, Khalid Mohammed, John B. Moore , Muhammad Muheisen, Anja Niedringhaus, Murad Sezer and Mohammed Uraibi for breaking news photography for a stunning series of pictures of bloody yearlong combat inside Iraqi cities.

2001 -Alan Diaz for his photo of a federal agent in riot gear during a pre-dawn raid in Miami, confronting a man holding Elian Gonzalez in a closet.

2000 -Sang-Hun Choe, Charles J. Hanley, Martha Mendoza and Randy Herschaft for Investigative Reporting, for "The Bridge at No Gun Ri," a package of stories reporting the mass killings of South Korean civilians by American troops at the start of the Korean War..

1999 -J. Scott Applewhite, Roberto Borea, Khue Bui, Robert F. Bukaty, Ruth Fremson, Greg Gibson, Ron Heflin, Charles Krupa, Wilfredo Lee, Dan Loh, Joe Marquette, Pablo Martinez Monsivais, Doug Mills, Stephan Savoia and Susan Walsh, Feature Photography, for a series of pictures of the events surrounding President Clinton's impeachment.

1999 -Sayyid Azim, Jean-Marc Bouju, Dave Caulkin, Brennan Linsley, John McConnico and Khalil Senosi, Spot News Photography, for a series of pictures after the U.S. Embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania.

1997 -Alexander Zemlianichenko, for his photo of Russian President Boris Yeltsin dancing at a rock concert in Rostov before elections.

1996 -Charles Porter IV, for his photo of a fireman cradling an infant victim of the Oklahoma City bombing.

1995 -Mark Fritz, for reports on the ethnic violence in Rwanda.

1995 -Jackie Arzt, Javier Bauluz, Jean-Marc Bouju, Karsten Thielker for photos of the ethnic violence in Rwanda.

1993 -J. Scott Applewhite, Richard Drew, Greg Gibson, David Longstreath, Doug Mills, Marcia Nighswander, Amy Sancetta, Stephan Savoia, Reed Saxon and Lynne Sladky for a series of pictures from the 1992 U.S. presidential campaign.

1992 -Olga Shalygin, Liu Heung Shing, Czarek Sokolowski, Boris Yurchenko and Alexander Zemlianichenko, for a series of pictures on the attempted coup in the Soviet Union and the collapse of the Communist regime.

1991 -Greg Marinovich, for a series of pictures showing the brutal killing of a man believed to be a Zulu Inkatha supporter in South Africa.

1983 -Bill Foley, for a series of pictures of victims and survivors of the massacre of Palestinians in a refugee camp in Beirut.

1982 -Saul Pett, for a series of stories on the bureaucracy of the federal government.

1982 -Ron Edmonds, for a series of pictures showing the attempted assassination of President Reagan.

1978 -J. Ross Baughman, for a series of pictures showing white Rhodesian soldiers beating and torturing black nationalist guerrillas.

1977 -Neal Ulevich, for a series of pictures showing bloody fighting between police and left-wing students in Bangkok, Thailand.

1977 -Walter R. Mears, for reports on the 1976 presidential campaign and election.

1974 -Anthony K. Roberts, for his picture sequence made during an alleged kidnapping attempt in Hollywood.

1974 -Slava (Sal) Veder, for a picture of a U.S. Air Force officer being greeted by his family after being held a prisoner of war in Vietnam.

1973 -Huynh Cong (Nick) Ut, for a picture of a Vietnamese girl fleeing in terror after a napalm attack.

1972 -Horst Faas and Michel Laurent, for a series of pictures of tortures and executions in Bangladesh.

1970 -Steve Starr, for a picture of armed black students emerging after their 36-hour occupation of a Cornell University building.

1969 -Edward (Eddie) Adams, for a picture of Vietnamese Brig. Gen. Nguyen Ngoc Loan executing a Viet Cong prisoner on a Saigon street.

1967 -Jack Thornell, for a picture of James Meredith falling after being hit by a shotgun blast near Hernando, Miss.

1966 -Peter Arnett, for war reports from Vietnam.

1965 -Horst Faas, for photos from Vietnam.

1964 -Malcolm Browne, for war reports from Vietnam, including the overthrow of the Diem regime.

1962 -Paul Vathis, for a picture of President Kennedy and former President Eisenhower walking at Camp David following an unsuccessful 1961 Cuban invasion.

1961 -Lynn Heinzerling, for reports on the early stages of the Congo crisis and analysis of other African events.

1958 -Relman Morin, for reports on school desegregation rioting at Little Rock.

1954 -Mrs. Walter M. Schau, for a photo of a thrilling rescue in Redding, Calif.

1953 -Don Whitehead, for a story on President-elect Eisenhower's secret trips to Korea.

1952 -John Hightower, for reporting of international affairs.

1951 -Max Desfor, for a picture of Korean War refugees in flight over ruins of a Taedong River bridge.

1951 -Relman Morin and Don Whitehead, for war reports from Korea.

1947 -Arnold Hardy, for his photo of a girl leaping to death in a hotel fire.

1947 -Eddy Gilmore, for news reports from Russia, especially an interview with Joseph Stalin.

1945 -Hal Boyle, for columns and stories from the North African and European war theaters.

1945 -Joe Rosenthal, for a picture of Marines raising the U.S. flag on Iwo Jima.

1944 -Daniel DeLuce, for a series of stories from Yugoslavia disclosing the strength of the Tito movement.

1944 -Frank Filan, for a picture of a blasted Japanese pillbox on Tarawa.

1943 -Frank Noel, for a picture of a survivor of a torpedo attack begging for water in a lifeboat.

1942 -Laurence E. Allen, for war reporting, especially stories on the bombing of the British aircraft carrier Illustrious.

1939 -Louis P. Lochner, for news reports from Nazi Germany.

1937 -Howard W. Blakeslee, for reporting on the Harvard Tercentenary celebration.

1933 -Francis A. Jamieson, for a news beat on finding the body of the kidnapped Lindbergh baby.

1922 -Kirke L. Simpson, for a series of stories on the burial of the Unknown Soldier at Arlington National Cemetery.

phir, ek baar

Kahan gaye wo din
Kahan chor ke gaye aap?

Bina khabar bina pyaar,
Bina aap, mai to ho gayi beinsaan.

Kabhi to do mere dil ko chain,
Kabhi to nibha do, wo purane wade.

Sirf do pal ki muskurahat,
Sirf do pal chaihiye mujhe.

Keh do ek baar to,
Keh do mujhe tumse hua hai pyar.

Bana lo mujhko apni,
Bana lo hume apni dil ki rani.

Yeh sirf do pal ki baat hai,
yeh hain aapke do pal,
yeh banenge meri zindigi

To my pati - for always

Every time you smile,
I want it to be for me.
Every joy you feel,
I want it to be due to me.

Every tear that falls,
I want it to be
An outpouring of happiness –
Due to me.

Every song you sing,
Dedicate it to me.
Every word you write,
Let it be my name.

Every thought you have,
let it be the very essence of me.
Breathe each breath,
Just for me.

Eat every grain,
With my laughter in your mind.
Live your life,
With my love around you.

Am I asking for too much?
I am your wife, in every sense.
You are simply,
My life.

to my future daughter - one day

Insulated you in my womb,
preotected you.

Your tug at my breast,
nutrified you.

Picked you up when you fell,
soothed you.

Cradled you when you sobbed,
comforted you.

Then, you grew up.

When you cried,
you pushed me aside.

When you fell,
you were to proud for my soothing.

You were, too grown up for my touch.

I played your game, though
it broke my heart.

A decked up bride tonight,
you look so beautiful.

Things are full circle,
now i'm sobbing in your arms.

You grew up, my baby,
but i never let you grow away.

Dreams

Seldom did I dare,
Allow myself to dream

Since you walked in
To my life
I can’t help but dream

Red lehengas and flowers
Shehnaai playing and
Hidden shoes

I dream dreams
Of an everlasting love
Holding hands at 72

Children and grandchildren
A house and garden
A dog, cat and you

Always you
My friend, lover, confidante
My husband

I see my dreams
Reflected in your eyes
That’s when I know

They’re no longer dreams
They’re our future.

am i!?

I think,
I’m falling in love.

Aisa lagta hai,
Jaise sadiyon baad,
Ek koi apna sa mil gaya.

Uske baton me,
Apne vichaar sulajhte hai.

I never before knew,
The meaning of a soul mate,
The meaning of love.

For the Bandit Queen

The Bandit Queen, Phoolan Devi,
is riding again tonight
In her khaki and denims, and bright red bandana,
she's spoiling once more for a fight
Her gang are all Mullahs and low-castes,
poor peasants in need of a meal
You high-caste Thakurs better lock up your doors,
or Didi's bullets will make you squeal

Come hither and listen while I retell a story,
the legend of the Bandit Queen
A reincarnation of the Goddess Shakti,
a beauty in every Hindu man's dreams
Her youth was a torment of rapings and beatings,
but her spirit rose up to rebel
Struck out at those men who'd suppress and deny her,
though underneath just an innocent girl

Born in a hamlet by the Yamuna River,
in a region called Uttar Pradesh
Her family were Mullahs, a lowly fisherman's caste,
so she'd always be poor and repressed
When barely eleven she was sold into marriage,
the price just a bike and a cow
Three-fold her age, he was brutal and he beat her,
but she never succumbed to his power

She finally broke free and trod a hard road,
through the mountains to be with her kin
But her family felt shame, couldn't welcome her back,
seemed that being at home was a sin
On the fringe of society, outcast and lonely,
drawn into a lawless furl
Looting and thieving, just barely surviving,
what a life for an innocent girl?

Abducted and taken with her lover Vikram,
by some Thakurs who stole in by night
They beat her and raped her, murdered her lover,
high-caste thugs think such things are their right
Violated, distraught, yet came through it stronger,
as ring-leader soon she was crowned
In the Cambal Ravines, the beautiful bandit,
was sung, notorious and renowned


One Saint Valentine's day, her gang hit Behmai,
planned as nought but a routine raid
But seeing there those who had beaten and raped her,
her revenge echoed way past Bombay
Twenty two high-castes were taken that evening,
dragged from their homes through the grime
Their pleads were not harkened, their screams went unanswered,
they all paid with their lives for that crime

What an outrage that raised, a huge posse assembled,
like Uttar Pradesh had never seen
Didi knew the terrain like the back of her hand,
so they never caught up with the queen
She grew weary of running, each day testing her cunning,
broke cover and brokered a deal
After years on the run, 'neath a poster of Gandhi,
she surrendered, but never did kneel

Banged-up in a black hole, for a decade or more,
never once charged with a crime
A sad destiny for a victim of high-caste,
to rot there and serve out her time
When at last they released her, boasted her infamy,
campaigned for the rights of the poor
With the votes of the Mullahs, the beautiful bandit,
set out to strike the heart of their core

Her message was simple, it struck many a-chord,
revealing the source of their pain
"Why is it my destiny to always be poor?
They're no different, the same blood in their veins
So lend your support, help me complete this triumph,
over gender, caste and poverty"
Once the ballots were counted, aghast stood the Thakurs,
as Didi was elected MP

Over five very long years, such a thorn in their side,
as she faced down their system of class
But you could tell by her anger, impatience and passion,
one day she'd catch up with her past
The Thakurs still held sweet revenge in their hearts,
for the dead men lost down that ravine
An ambush one morning, a bullet clean through her head,
put an end to the brave Bandit Queen

Phoolan Devi was a portrait of courage,
who denied and refuted her fate
Rose high, high above those beaters and rapers,
was the focus and curse of their hate
To her critics a murderer, a notorious bandit
and a puppet of corrupt demigods
To her followers a hero, an innocent, a legend,
who overcame such incredible odds

On the day she was mourned, all were out on the streets,
to grieve or just bid her adieu
Her low-caste supporters were all pushed aside,
by the New Delhi Star's TV crew
A strike was proclaimed for that saddest of days,
so many could witness that scene
The passing of a legend, the new Goddess Shakti,
the beautiful and bold Bandit Queen

Phoolan Devi, the beautiful bandit,
is riding in Cambal tonight
In her khaki and denims, and bright red bandana,
she's spoiling again for a fight
Her gang are all low-castes and peasants,
but still ruling the hills and ravines
Flying so high, you can hear them all singing,
The Ballad of the Bandit Queen

imagine

imagine falling into friendship
becoming best friends!
kindred spirits!

Then realising there's more.
There's love, and
its reciprocated.

Then imagine,
he's engaged!
And its unbreakable!

What would you do?

Imagine, you get pregnant.
He makes u
murder it!

Imagine, the joy shattering,
imagine the heart breaking,
for ever.

Imagine he wont leave her
but u cant leave him..
Imagine.

Imagine he goes on holiday
and comes back with her
just imagine!

Imagine he tells
all your friends, before
you have an inkling.

Imagine you can feel
the blood draining
out of your body.

Imagine he calls
you his wife but
goes home to her.

Imagine!!!
Can you imagine?
What my life is like?

The Great Indian Rape-Trick

Arundhati Roy on Shekhar Kapur's Bandit Queen


At the premiere screening of Bandit Queen in Delhi, Shekhar Kapur introduced the film with these words: "I had a choice between Truth and Aesthetics. I chose Truth, because Truth is Pure."

To insist that the film tells the Truth is of the utmost commercial (and critical) importance to him. Again and again, we are assured, in interviews, in reviews, and eventually in writing on the screen before the film begins. "This is a True Story."


If it weren't the "Truth", what would redeem it from being just a classy version of your run-of-the-mill Rape n' Retribution theme that our film industry churns out every now and then? What would save it from the familiar accusation that it doesn't show India in a Proper Light? Exactly Nothing.
It's the "Truth" that saves it. Every time. It dives about like Superman with a swiss knife - and snatches the film straight from the jaws of unsavoury ignominy. It has bought headlines. Blunted argument. Drowned criticism.


If you say you found the film distasteful, you're told - Well that's what truth is - distasteful. Manipulative? That's Life - manipulative.
Go on. Now you try.
Try...Exploitative. Or.. Gross. Try Gross.


It's a little like having a dialogue with the backs of trucks.
God is Love.
Life is Hard.
Truth is Pure.
Sound Horn.

Whether or not it is the Truth is no longer relevant. The point is that it will, ( if it hasn't already) - become the Truth.


Phoolan Devi the woman has ceased to be important. (Yes of course she exists. She has eyes, ears, limbs hair etc. Even an address now) But she is suffering from a case of Legenditis. She's only a version of herself. There are other versions of her that are jostling for attention. Particularly Shekhar Kapur's "Truthful" one, which we are currently being bludgeoned into believing.


"... it has the kind of story, which, if it were a piece of fiction, would be difficult to credit. In fact, it is the true story of Phoolan Devi, the Indian child bride..."
Derek Malcolm writes in The Guardian.
But is it? The True Story? How does one decide? Who decides?


Shekhar Kapur says that the film is based on Mala Sen's book - India's Bandit Queen: The True Story of Phoolan Devi. The book reconstructs the story, using interviews, newspaper reports, meetings with Phoolan Devi and extracts from Phoolan's written account, smuggled out of prison by her visitors, a few pages at a time.

Sometimes various versions of the same event - versions that totally conflict with each other i.e: Phoolan's version, a journalist's version, or an eye- witnesses version - are all presented to the reader in the book. What emerges is a complex, intelligent and human book. Full of ambiguity, full of concern, full curiosity about who this woman called Phoolan Devi really is.


Shekhar Kapur wasn't curious.

He has openly admitted that he didn`t feel that he needed to meet Phoolan. His producer Bobby Bedi supports this decision "Shekhar would have met her if he had felt a need to do so." (Sunday Observer August 20th [1994]).

It didn't matter to Shekhar Kapur who Phoolan Devi really was. What kind of person she was. She was a woman, wasn't she? She was raped wasn't she? So what did that make her? A Raped Woman! You've seen one, you've seen 'em all.
He was in business.
What the hell would he need to meet her for?


Did he not stop to think that there must have been something very special about her? That if this was the normal career graph if a low-caste village woman that was raped, our landscapes would be teeming with female gangsters?


If there is another biographer any where in the world who has not done a living subject the courtesy of meeting her even once - will you please stand up and say your name? And having done that, will you (and your work) kindly take a running jump?


What does Shekhar Kapur mean when he says the film is based on Mala Sen's book? How has he decided which version of which event is "True" ? On what basis has he made these choices?
There's a sort of loutish arrogance at work here. A dunce's courage. Unafraid of what it doesn't know.
What he has done is to rampage through the book picking up what suits him, ignoring and even altering what doesn't.


I am not suggesting that a film should include every fact that's in the book.
I am suggesting that if you take a long hard look at the choices he has made - at his inclusions, his omissions and his blatant alterations, a truly dreadful pattern emerges.
Phoolan Devi (in the film version), has been kept on a tight leash. Each time she strays towards the shadowy marshlands that lie between Victimhood and Brutishness, she has been reined in. Brought to heel.
It is of consummate importance to the Emotional Graph of the film, that you never, ever, stop pitying her. That she never threatens the Power Balance.
I would have thought that this was anathema to the whole point of the Phoolan Devi story. That it went way beyond the You-Rape-Me: I'll-Kill- You equation. That the whole point of it was that she got a little out of control. That the Brutalized became the Brute.
The film wants no part of this. Because of what it would do to the Emotional Graph. To understand this, you must try and put Rape into its correct perspective. The Rape of a nice Woman (saucy, headstrong, foul-mouthed perhaps, but basicaly moral, sexually moral) - is one thing. The rape of a nasty/perceived-to-be-immoral womall, is quite another. It wouldn't be quite so bad. You wouldn't feel quite so sorry. Perhaps you wouldn't feel sorry at all.

Any policeman will tell you that.
Whenever the police are accused of custodial rape, they immediately set to work. Not to prove that she wasn't raped. But to prove that she wasn't nice. To prove that she was a loose woman A prostitute. A divorcee. Or an Elopee - ie: She asked for it.
Same difference.


Bandit Queen -the film, does not make a case against Rape. It makes its case against the Rape of nice (read moral), women. (Never mind the rest of us that aren't "nice") .


[??The film is consistently??] it's on the lookout, like a worried hen - saving Phoolan Devi from herself. Meanwhile we, the audience, are herded along, like so much trusting cattle. We cannot argue, (because Truth is Pure. And you can't mess With that).


Every time the Director has been faced with something that could disrupt the simple, pre- fabricated calculations uf his cloying morality play, it has been tampered with and forced to fit.
I'm not accusing him of having planned this.
I believe that it comes from a vision that has been distorted by his own middle-class outrage, which he has then turned on his audience like a fire-fighter's hose.


According to Shekhar Kapur's film, every landmark - every decison, every turning-point in Phoolan Devi's life, starting with how she became a dacoit in the first place, has to do with having been raped, or avenging rape.
He has just blundered through her life like a Rape-diviner
You cannot but sense his horrified fascination at the havoc that a wee willie can wreak. It's a sort of reversed male self absorption.
Rape is the main dish. Caste is the sauce that it swims in.


The film opens with a pre-credit sequence of Phoolan Devi the child being married off to an older man who takes her away to his village where he rapes her, and she eventually runs away. We see her next as a young girl being sexually abused bv Thakur louts in her village . When she protests, she is publicly humiliated, externed from the village, and when she returns to the village, ends up in prison. Here too she is raped and beaten, and eventually released on bail. Soon after her release, she is carried away bv dacoits. She has in effect become a criminal who has jumped bail. And so has little choice but to embark on a life in the ravines.
He has the caste-business and the rape-business neatly intertwined to kick-start that "swift, dense, dramatic narrative" (Sunil Sethi, Pioneer August 14th [1994])

Mala's book tells a different story.
Phoolan Devi stages her first protest against injustice at the age of ten. Before she is married off. In fact it's the reason that she's married off so early. To keep her out of trouble.
She didn't need to be raped to protest. Some of us don't.
She had heard from her mother, the story of how her father's brusher Biharilal and his son Maiyadeen falsified the land records and drove her father and musher out of the family house, forcing them to live in a little hut on the outskirts of the village.
The angry little girl accompanied by a frightened older sister marches into her uncle's hora field where the two of them hang around with a combative air, munching hora nuts and plucking flowers (combatively). Their cousin Maiyadeen, a young man in his twenties, orders the children off his premises. Phoolan refuses to move. Instead this remarkable child taunts him, and questions his claim to the land. She was special.
She is beaten unconscious with a brick.


Phoolan Devi's first war, like almost every dacoit's first war, was fought for territory. It was the classic beginning of the journey into dacoitdom.
But does it have rape in it?
Nope.
Caste-violence?
Nope.
So is it worth including in the film?
Nope.

According to the book, her second protest too, has to do with territory. And it is this (not the sexual harassment bv the village louts, though that happens too), that lands Phoolan Devi in jail and enters her name in the police records.
Maiyadeen, the book says, was enraged because the property dispute (thanks to Phoolan's pleas to the village panchayat) had been re-opened and transferred to the Allahabad High Court.
As revenge he destroys Devideen's (Phoolan's father) crop, and is in the process of hacking down their Neem tree when Phoolan intervenes and throws a stone at him. She is attacked, trussed up, and handed to the police.
Soon after she's released on bail, she is kidnapped by dacoits. This too, according to Phoolan's version ( upto, this point, there is no other version), is engineered by Maiyadeen as a ruse to get her out of his hair.
Maiyadeen does not figure in the film.


Already some pretty big decisions have been made. What stays, what goes. What is high-lighted, what isn't.
Life is Rape. The rest is jus' details.


We then see Phoolan in the ravines, being repeatedly raped by Babu Singh Gujar, the Thakur leader of the gang she has been kidnapped by. Vikram Mallah, the second-in-command is disgusted by his behaviour and puts a bullet through him. According to the book the killing happens as a drunken Babu Gujar is threatening to assault Phoolan. In the film he's actually at it, lying on top of her, his naked bottoms jerking. As he breathes his last, Phoolan blinks the blood out of her eyes and looks long into the eyes of her redeemer. Just so that we get the point.

After this we are treated to a sequence of After-rape-romance. The touching bits about the first stirrings of sexual desire in a much-raped woman. The way it works in the film is If-you- touch-me-I'll-slap-you-but-I-really-do-want-to-touch-you.
It's choreographed like a dusty dance in which they rub against each other, but whenever he touches her she swats his hand away, but nevertheless quivers with desire. It is such a crude, obvious, doltish depiction of conflict in a woman who is attracted to a man, but associates sex with humiliation. It's not in the book, so I'm not sure whose version Shekhar has used. From the looks of it, probably Donald Duck's.

Vikram Mallah and Phoolan Devi become lovers. While the book and the film agree that he was her one true love, the book does not suggest that he was her only lover.


The film does. She has to be portrayed as a One Man Woman. Otherwise who's going to pity her? So it's virtue or bust. One lover (a distant cousin) is eliminated completely. The other (Man Singh), is portrayed as what used to be known in college as a Rakhi-brother.


From all accounts, Vikram Mallah seems to have been the midwife of Phoolan's birth into dacoitdom.
He supervises her first act of retribution against her husband Puttilal.
The film shows him bound and gagged, being beaten by Phoolan Devi with the butt of her gun, whimpering and crying with remembered rage.


At having been raped. In the Retribution bits, she is allowed a little latitude. Otherwise, (as we shall see) none at all.


But there's a sly omission here. According to the book, according to Phoolan Devi herself, there were two victims that day. Not one.
The second one was a woman. Vidya, Puttilal's second wife.
The film hasn't told us about a second experience Phoolan has with Puttilal. The time that Maiyadeen forced her to return to Puttilal. Phoolan arrived at her husband's house to find that he had taken a second wife. Vidya harassed and humiliated Phoolan and eventually forced Puttilal to send her away.
Her humiliation at Vidya's hands is more recent in Phoolan's memory.
Phoolan, in her written version says she wanted to kill them both and leave a note saying that this will be the fate of any man who takes two wives. Later she changed her mind and decided to leave them alive to tell the tale. She beat them both. And broke Puttilal's hands and legs.


But what nice woman would do that?
Beat up another woman?
How would you feel sorry for someone like that?


So, in the film, Vidya is dumped.

Phoolan's affair with Vikram Mallah ends tragically when he is shot.
She is captured bv his Thakur killers, gagged, bound, and transported to Behmai. The stage is set for what has come to be referred to as the "centerpiece" of the film. The gang-rape.
It is the scene by which the film is judged.
Not surprisingly, Phoolan herself is reticent about what happened. All she says is un logo ne mejhse bahut mazaak ki.
She mentions being beaten, humliliated and paraded from village to village. She mentions another woman dacoit Kusuma -- who disliked her, and taunted and abused her. (Of course there's no sign of her in the film. It would only serve to confuse the Woman-as-victim moral arithmetic.)

Since Phoolan isn't forthcoming, it is the vivid (vicarious) account in Esquire by an American, journalist, Jon Bradshaw that has been enlisted to structure this scene.

"... Phoolan screamed, striking out at him, but he was too strong. Holding her down, the stranger raped her. They came in one by one after that. Tall, silent Thakur men -- and raped her until Phoolan lost consciousness. For the next three weeks Phoolan was raped several times a night, and she submitted silently turning her face to the wall... she lost all sense of time... a loud voice summoned her outside. Sri Ram ordered Phoolan to fetch water from the well. When she refused, he ripped off her clothes and kicked her savagely...at last she limped to the well while her tormentors laughed and spat at her. The naked girl was dragged back to the hut and raped again."
Whatever Shekhar Kapur's other failings are, never let it be said that he wasn't a trier. He did his bit too. He (Pioneer Aug 14th, India Today August 21st [1994])locked himself up in a room - the door opening and closing as one man after another strode in - imagining himself being sodomized!!! After this feat of inter-sexual empathy, he arrives at some radical, definitive conclusions. " There is no pain in a gang-rape, no physical pain after a while," he assures us "It is about something as dirty as the abject humiliation of a human being and the complete domination of its soul."
Thanks baby. I would never have guessed.
It's hard to match the self-righteousness of a film-maker with a cause. Harder when the film- maker is a man and the cause is rape.
And when it's the gang-rape of a low-caste woman by high-caste men .. don't even try it. Go with the feeling.

We see a lot of Phoolan's face, in tight close-up, contorted into a grimace of fear and pain as she is raped and mauled and buggered. The overwhelming consensus in the press has been that the rape was brilliantly staged and chilling.


That it wasn't exploitative.
Now what does that mean? Should we be grateful to Shekhar Kapur for not showing us the condition of her breasts and genitals? Or theirs? That he leaves so much to our imagination?
That he gave us a tasteful rape?
But I thought the whole point of this wonderful film was its no-holds-barred brutality? So why stop now? Why the sudden coyness?
I'll tell you why. Because it's all about regulating the Rape-meter. Adjusting it enough to make us a little preen-at-the-gills. Skip dinner perhaps . But not miss work.
It's us, We-the-Audience, stuck in our voyeuristic middle-class lives who really make the decisions about how much or how little rape/violence we can take/will applaud, and therefore, are given.
It isn't about the story. (There are ways and ways of telling a story) It isn't about the Truth. (There are ways around that too. Right?) It isn't about what Really Happened. It's none of that high falutin' stuff.
It's good old Us. We make the decisions about how much we would like to see. And when the mixture's right, it thrills us,. And we purr with approbation.


It's a class thing. If the controls are turned up too high, the hordes will get excited and arrive. To watch the centrepiece. They might even whistle. They won't bother to cloak their eagerness in concern like we do.
This way, it's fine, It's just Us and our Imagination.
But hey, I have news for you - the hordes have heard and are on their way. They'll even pay to watch. It'll make money, the centrepiece. It's hot stuff


How does one grade film-rapes on a scale from Exploitative to Non-exploitative?
Does it depend on how much skin we see? Or is it a more complex formula that juggles exposed skin, genitalia, and bare breasts?
Exploitative I'd say, is when the whole point of the exercise is to stand on high moral ground, and inform us, (as if we didn't know), that rape is about abject humiliation.
And, as in the case of this film, when it exploits exploitation. Phoolan has said (Pioneer, August 15 [1994]) that she thinks they're no better shall the men who raped her. This producer/director duo.

And they've done it without dirtying their hands. What was that again? The complete domination of the soul? I guess you don't need hands to hold souls down.

After the centrepiece, the film rushes through to its conclusion.
Phoolan manages to escape from her captors and arrives at a cousin's house, where she recuperates and then eventually teams up with Man Singh who later becomes her lover, (though of course the film won't admit it).
On one foray into a village with her new gang, (one of the only times we see her indulging in some non-rape-related banditry), we see her wandering through a village in a daze, with flaring nostrils, while the men loot and plunder. She isn't even scared when the police arrive. Before she leaves she smashes a glass case, picks out a pair of silver anklets and gives it to a little girl.
Sweet.


When Phoolan and her gang, arrive in Behmai for the denouement, everybody flees indoors except for a baby that is for some reason, left by the well, The gang fans out and gathers the Thakurs who have been marked for death. Suddenly the colour seeps out of the film and everything becomes bleached and dream sequency. It all turns very conceptual. No brutal close-ups. No bestiality.
A girl's gotta do what a girl's gotta do.
The twenty-two men are shot The baby wallows around in rivers of blood. Then colour leaches back into the film.

And with that, according to the film, she's more or less through with her business. The film certainly, is more or less through with her. Because there's no more rape. No more retribution.


According to the book, it is really only after the Behmai massacre that Phoolan Devi grows to fit her legend. There's a price on her head, people are baying for her blood, the gang splinters. Many of them are shot by the police. Ministers and Chief-ministers are in a flap. The police are in a panic . Dacoits are being shot down in fake encounters and their bodies are publicly displayed like game. Phoolan is hunted like an animal. But ironically, it is now, for the first time that she is in control of her life. She becomes a leader of men. Man Singh becomes her lover, but on her terms. She makes decisions. She confounds the police. She evades every trap they set for her./ She plays daring little games with them. She undermines the credibility of the entire UP police force. And all this time, the police don't even know what she really looks like.
Even when the famous Malkhan Singh surrenders, Phoolan doesn't.

This goes on for two whole years. When she finally does decide to surrender, it is after several meetings with a persuasive policeman called Rajendra Chaturvedi, the SP of Bhind, with whom she negotiates the terms of her surrender to the government of Madhya Pradesh.

Is the film interested in any of this?
Go on. Take a wild guess.


In the film, we see her and Man Singh on the run, tired, starved and out of bullets. Man Singh seems concerned, practical and stoical.
Phoolan is crying and asking for her mother!!!

The next thing we know is that we're at surrender. As she gives up her gun, she looks at Man Singh and he gives her an approving nod.
Good Girl! Clever girl!
God Clever Girl


Phoolan Devi spent three-and-a-half years in the ravines. She was wanted on 48 counts of major crime, 22 murder, the rest kidnaps-for-ransom and looting.
Even simple mathematics tells me that we've been told just half the story.
But the cool word for Half-truth is Greater-truth.
Other signs of circular logic are beginning to surface.
Such as: Life is Art

Art is not Real

How about changing the title of the film to: Phoolan Devi's Rape and Abject Humiliation: The True half-Truth?
How about sending it off to an underwater film festival with only one entry?

What responsibility does a biographer have to his subject? Particularly to a living subject?
None at all?
Does it not matter what she thinks or how this is going to affect her life?

Is he not even bound to shovv her the work before it is released for public consumption?


If the issues involved are culpable criminal offenses such as Murder and Rape - if some of them are still pending in a court of law -- legally, is he allowed to present conjecture, reasonable assumption and hearsay as the unalloyed "Truth?"


Shekhar Kapur has made an appeal to the Censor Board to allow the film through without a single cut. He has said that the Film, as a work of Art, is a whole, if it were censored it wouldn't be the same film.
What about the Life that he has fashioned his Art from?
He has a completelv different set of rules for that.


It's been several months since the film premiered at Cannes. Several weeks since the showings in Bombay and Delhi. Thousands of people have seen the film. It's being invited to festivals all over the world.
Phoolan Devi hasn't seen the film. She wasn't invited.
I met her yesterday. In the morning papers Bobby Bedi had dismissed Phoolan's statements to the press -- " Let Phoolan sit with me and point out inaccuracies in the film, I will counter her accusations effectively, " (Sunday Observer, August 21st [1994]). What is he going to do? Explain to her how it really happened?
But it's deeper than that. His story to the press is one thing. To Phoolan it's quite another. In front of me she rang him up and asked him when she could see the film. He would not give her a definite date.
What's going on?

Private screenings have been organised for powerful people. But not for her.
They hadn't bargained for this. She was supposed to be safely in jail. She wasn't supposed to matter. She isn't supposed to have an opinion.
"Right now", the Sunday Observer says, "Bobby Bedi is more concerned about the Indian Censor Board than a grumbling Phoolan Devi."

Legally, as things stand, in UP the charges against her haven't been dropped. (Mulayam Singh has tried, but an appeal against this is pending in the High Court).
There are several versions of what happened at Behmai. Phoolan denies that she was there. More importantly, two of the men who were shot at but didn't die say she wasn't there. Other eye- witnesses say she was. Nothing has been proved. Everything is conjecture.


By not showing her the film, but keeping her quiet until it's too late to protest (until it has been passed by the Censors and the show hits the road), what are they doing to Phoolan? By appearing to remain silent, is she concurring with the film version of the massacre at Behmai? Which states, unequivocally, that Phoolan was there. Will it appear as though she is admitting evidence against herself? Does she know that whether or not the film tells the Truth it is only a matter of time before it becomes the Truth. And that public sympathy for being shown as a rape-victim doesn't get you off the hook for murder?
Are they helping her to put her head in a noose?

On the one hand the concerned cowboys Messrs Bedi & Kapur are so eager to share with us the abject humiliation and the domination of Phoolan Devi's "soul", and o n the other they seem to be so totally uninterested in her.
In what she thinks of the film, or what their film will do to her life and future.

What is she to them? A concept? Or just a cunt?

One last terrifying thing. While she was still in jail, Phoolan was rushed to hospital bleeding heavily because of an ovarian cyst. Her womb was removed. When Mala Sen asked why this had been necessary, the prison doctor laughed and said " We don't want her breeding any more Phoolan Devi's."
The State removed a woman's uterus! Without asking her .Without her knowing.
It just reached into her and plucked out a part of her!
It decided to control who was allowed to breed and who wasn't.
Was this even mentioned in the film?
No. Not even in the rolling titles at the end
When it comes to getting bums on seats, hysterectomy just doesn't measure up to rape.

August 22nd, '94

The day they killed Phoolan Devi: 25 July 2001

By Dalem, niort@quaismodo.co.uk [By permission from the author]
["I wrote this. I don't know what you think .... It's written from the heart. 26 July 2001"]


In the afternoon of a sunny summer day -
because cruelty always comes in an unexpected manner, disguised in an illusory shape -
that afternoon i received an email just like any other email.
Its words were black and bloody.
Black like the horrible fate that pounces over us
when we least expect it.
Bloody like the body of a woman who lied dead on the ground
after the bullets of hate had killed her,
only one of too many women
silenced for their acts and words,
for their life of struggle and revolt.

"Phoolan Devi has been shot dead this afternoon", i read.
I choked on the tears before the horrible phrase.
It was not possible -
yet it was there in front of my eyes -
just some hours ago, that brave and strong woman,
who faced the most atrocious horrors and fears,
who fought bravely defying the oppressive caste system and the
cruelty towards women in India,
who for years had ruled the bandit gangs and imposed justice
across no matter what land she came across,
who protected the voiceless,
who fought for the rights of the low-caste, the exploited workers, the women,
had died.

They had gotten her, at last.
Even after having her beaten, raped, abused, insulted, humilated,
mistreated beyond belief and locked in jail,
she came alive and stronger than before,
and entered the Indian Parliament to defend
the rights of those which before had no rights at all.
She proved that by all means she was strong and brave,
that she was in fact
the incarnation of Goddess Durga as she claimed.
The Goddess of Flowers, as her name meant.

She had recently travelled to New York
to have a treatment for a tumour -
ironically, her life ended a different way.
Had she died of old or diseased,
she had been a landmark no less,
yet in some time she would be forgotten.
Ironically, her murder
immortalizes her into a heroine, a fighter, a justicer.
Her name will always be heard and pronounced
with a shiver of fear
or with a smile of gratitude.

Yet her killers have no faces -
where she fought in the bandit gangs,
defied local caste authorities
or surrendered herself,
she always showed her face,
proud of herself,
never having to hide behind a mask.
The masked assassins who took her life are
as pathetic as their masks - coward, weak men
who have to hide behind masks to desecrate the life of a Goddess.

From a small child of Uttar Pradesh,
who defied her own relatives because of land matters,
to a child bride sold for a cow and a bycicle,
who at the age of 12 abandoned her husband,
walking home across a land of hundreds of kilometers
after being repeatedly beaten and raped by the husband -
thus refusing to live the normal life of a wife in India,
that is - to living with her family as a repudiated wife,
to being charged with fraudulent accusations
and paying the price of one month in jail,
where each day was a sucession
of savage beatings and rapes -
the norm for imprisoned women in India.

In 1979 Phoolan was sold to a gang of bandits
who gave her no better treatment
until the day the gang leader was killed
by fellow bandit Vikram Mallah,
who admired Phoolan for her courage.
Vikram became the gang leader and
took Phoolan as his protégé and common-law wife.
He compared her to Goddess Durga,
respected her and helped her to recover her honour.
Along with Vikram she became leader of the gang,
hiding in the Chambal ravines
while not robbing villages
and at roadblocks, not without giving away part of the pillaged goods
to the lower-caste and thanking their Goddess Durga.

In 1980 Vikram Mallah was murdered by higher-caste gang rivals.
These same rivals kidnapped Phoolan and
took her to the village of Behmai,
keeping her locked in a hut for twenty-three days
where each day dozens of higher-caste inhabitants of the village
would come to beat her and rape her, one by one.
At the end of the twenty-third day she was taken from the hut, disfigured by despair,
paraded naked in front of the same men
who had abused her, and publically insulted and humiliated.
Later she was rescued by fellow bandit Man Singh
with whom she formed a new gang.

On Valentine's day, 1981, she returned to the village of Behmai
to reveal herself as Durga and claim justice.
In the same place where she was paraded naked and humiliated,
she gathered all the higher-caste men in Behmai -
the same who had repeatedly beaten and raped her
for twenty-three consecutive days -
and ordered her fellow gangsters to open fire on them,
not without beating some of the men first.
The Goddess of Flowers was revenged.

In 1983 she surrendered along with Man Singh and her gang
in a public ceremony in which she deposed her guns -
her farewell to arms.
She survived 11 years in jail.
After being released, in 1996,
was elected to Parliament in Uttar Pradesh.

Until today, she was continuing her strife
for justice on politics - but bullets spoke louder.

My heart freezes when i think that
this morning she was still alive -
this same morning she was breathing,
alive and well -
that a few hours ago her blood ran happy in her veins,
her heart beated like mine does,
that a few hours ago she was still alive,
under the same sun i was.
I freeze if I think that
they killed one of my heroines -
a person i longed to have the honour of meeting one day -
i will never talk to her,
i will never hear her voice,
i will never be able to hug that woman
whose history has helped me and
guided me through some of the most horrible moments of my life.
The masked assassins took her away from me
and from all the voiceless, lower-caste people
she was defending,
selfish me,
those miserable people who needed her priceless political help.

I can't help crying while i write this.
It is too unfair.
Who will continue her struggle?
How many of these women could do what she did?
How many women in the future
will not be silent about the injustices and be brave enough
to handle the guns and
do justice by their bare hands?
Who will be Phoolan's sucessors?
Maybe the day of tomorrow knows another woman,
maybe more than one,
who for a change
decides to raise her voice and make herself heard,
even if it is through suffering and tragic justice.

Phoolan Devi has been a hero for all of us women,
and for all the socially exploited,
those who never had a voice.
Those whose work is hard and unpaid and never done,
whose rights do not exist,
whose life is lived in complete misery and is expendable,
who are exploited like cattle by rich,
high-caste masters, must be grateful to her,
because she helped them in their long struggle
for basic social rights in her political carreer.
Those women who have been mistreated,
abused, raped, beaten,
must honour her,
because she survived the unimaginable horror
with a super-human courage -
i speak as an abuse and rape survivor myself
and she is a role-model to any of us,
for her courage to stand up,
claim her life and make justice.

The world has lost a heroine,
one of the bravest and strongest women of this century.
Yet, like those who are immolated in the fire of their beliefs,
silenced for their truth being too loud
- like Joan of Arc, Giordano Bruno, Savonarola -
she will be remembered,
the fire and rage of her strife for justice alive and burning,
in our memory of her
and into the future generations.

HAIL THE BANDIT QUEEN!
HAIL THE GODDESS OF FLOWERS!
HAIL PHOOLAN DEVI!

Pvra Dalem

HDB's success over SIT

The PAP government faced a serious housing shortage when it assumed office in June 1959 because of the failure of the Singapore Improvement Trust (SIT) to solve the housing problem. The Housing and Development Board (HDB) was established by the PAP government in February 1960 to tackle the housing shortage. Explain why the HDB has succeeded in providing public housing for 84% of the population today when its predecessor, the SIT, had failed to do so. What have you learnt about public administration in Singapore from the HDB’s experience in public housing?


Introduction:

This essay will be organised in two parts; the first being a study of the HDB and their activities, which will then be compared to those of the SIT. The second part will focus on public administration in Singapore and its requirements, with relation to the HDB’s ‘experience’ in providing large-scale public housing.

Public administration in Singapore consists of three main components; the Singapore Civil Service, Statutory Boards and Government-Linked Companies. It must be noted here that the latter two organisations are not part of the structure of the Singapore Civil Service. Statutory boards are task specific and are set up under the supervision of a department of the civil service to tackle certain problems. Statutory boards were set up to complement the Civil Service and provide efficient service while sidestepping the constraints faced by the civil service, yet maintaining accountability.

In this essay, we will be examining one of Singapore most successful statutory boards, the Housing and Development board (HDB), which operates under the offices of the Ministry of National Development. We will also be comparing the HDB to its predecessor, the Singapore Improvement Trust (SIT), a statutory board set up during the period of British colonial rule in Singapore.


The SIT:
The Singapore Improvement Trust (SIT) was set up in 1927 by the British colonial government in an attempt to arrest the growing congestion in many parts of Singapore. The main problem areas were in the city centre and Chinatown, spreading rapidly to the East Coast and thus clogging up Geylang road that linked the city to the East Coast. The main aims of the SIT were to reduce congestion, improve and upgrade the existing infrastructure of the country, and especially to widen roads - which were originally built for human and animal traffic, to allow motorcars to pass through .

In 1932 the SIT was given permission to build houses for squatters and other people with no proper housing. The SIT was handed this task as it was seen to have experience in this area due to the fact that it had been previously building houses. The main difficulties faced by the SIT were in relation to a lack of resources to build the houses as well as a lack of legislation that allowed them to carry out these plans, other factors like demographic and political changes also gave the HDB the opportunities it needed to succeed in the face of general disbelief in Singapore’s future. The SIT had been set up as a town planning authority ‘to provide for the improvement of the town and island of Singapore’ ; and was not granted the legal powers of a public housing authority although it was expected to fulfil the role. It was originally meant to provide housing only for those dislocated from their current homes due to SIT improvement schemes. However, due to the growing need for houses, between 1932 and 1941, the SIT was forced to start building some tenement-style housing for those who could not afford private housing; first in Lorong Limau and then Tiong Bahru.

To first cover internal factors leading to the failure of the SIT; the organisation was doing far more than it was meant to do and had to do so without adequate resources. Providing public housing was a top concern for the citizens but not for the colonial government who were more concerned with trade matters. In fact, the main aim for which the SIT was set up – to widen roads, proves how little the colonial government concerned itself with grassroots’ matters, widening roads and improving infrastructure would serve to improve communication links and quicken trade and ultimately improve their profits.

This thirst for profits extended to the structure of the SIT and other government bodies as well. The senior officials would collude with the junior officials (who were often local and fluent in the indigenous tongues) to accept bribes from local contractors and award contracts on that basis. Corruption within the SIT was rife; and this combined with the other internal factors mentioned above made the SIT the resounding failure that it turned out to be. The SIT was staffed by largely expatriates who were often not professionals in the field of public administration, housing or architecture; being employed solely due to their willingness to work in ‘the colonies’. Most of these officers had not been in Singapore for long and were thus unaware of the local situations and unable to adapt; thus being of little use to the needs of the grassroots.

Government expenditure on the SIT was minimal as it was a small concern for the colonial government. The economy of Singapore also contributed to the lacks faced by the SIT; Singapore’s economy was based on entrepôt trade and had significant shortages in terms of skilled labour and capital. As such, with no materials to build, and no one to do the building, the SIT faced major problems getting started on their projects.

External factors also added to their failure, these included the Singaporean demographics, population and politics during that time period. These external factors were beyond the control of the SIT, however, they were badly managed by the SIT, and we will see later, exploited by the HDB for its own success.

Singapore is a very small city-state and this allows for greater governmental control over the administration, and also few communication problems, thus allowing rapid government responsiveness. However, all of these three advantages of Singapore were not utilised by the SIT who were disorganised and rampant with corruption. The climate of Singapore and its natural immunity to natural disasters allows for the building of high-rise flats, but this factor was also ignored by the SIT who built flats up to only four or five stories high. However, the colonial government was not sincere in providing public housing in Singapore and thus cared naught for the structure of the SIT; the costs of building high-rise buildings were also high and thus not a feasible project for the SIT.

In addition to the list of problems faced by the SIT, the rapidly growing population also served to completely unbalance the SIT who seemed to be sinking rapidly. The many squatter settlements that had sprung up all over the island also posed a problem to the SIT as they refused to be evicted and re-housed. The lack of legislative powers to evict them rendered the SIT ineffective. Internally, the SIT already faced problems, these were further aggravated by the external problems they faced; in fact, the SIT was thrown off by the sheer magnitude of the job that had been thrust upon them.


The HDB:

The HDB was far better equipped than the SIT in that the new government had a significant vested interest in ensuring the success of the HDB and its plans. It was set up to avoid the mistakes made by the SIT and was to be awarded “considerably more funds, more legal powers and, above all more drive than its predecessor” . In 32.5 years, the SIT built only 23,264 units; in the 20 years immediately after its creation, the HDB built 372,000 units.

The SIT succeeded where the SIT failed for a number of reasons, these can again be categorised as internal and external reasons, but one common thread running through them was the determination of the new installed PAP party to live up to its election promise of providing adequate public housing for the citizens of Singapore. The PAP put its full political weight behind the HDB knowing that public housing was a volatile issue close to the hearts (and votes) of the people. It implemented a variety of laws that gave the HDB very significant legal leeway. The Land Acquisition Act of 1966 eradicated one of the major problems faced by the SIT. The HDB could now take over any plot of land for “for any residential, commercial or industrial purposes” .

The government’s policy of family planning which was implemented by the Singapore Family Planning and Population Board also helped boost the HDB’s amazing success rates by decreasing somewhat the annual rates of population growth and thus alleviating the HDB’s workload.

However, other than the legal rights given to the HDB by the PAP, internal factors also helped the HDB to succeed and raise it to the world-class level it stands at today.
Most importantly, the HDB was set up as the de-jure public housing authority in Singapore, unlike the SIT which had become the de-facto housing authority. The reason behind the creation of the HDB was the creation of ‘low-cost public housing for Singaporeans’ . The external factors did not change much during the handover of the public housing mandate from the SIT to the HDB. In terms of internal factors, the HDB used a great deal of innovation in setting about achieving the aims it had set for itself.

The HDB exploited Singapore’s natural advantages to a significant extent. It set about building high-rise flats, realising that the Singaporean topography favoured such forms of housing. Economically the HDB benefited from Singapore changing from an almost purely entrepôt economy to an entrepôt and manufacturing based economy. This allowed the government to allocate more funds to the HDB, nearly four times the amount spent by the SIT in 12 years was allocated to the HDB for a 15 month period. A most significant reason for the success of the HDB can thus be said to be the provision of adequate funding. This is however not to say that the HDB spent its budget liberally, in its first five year building program, the HDB exceeded its building aims by 3,399 units but spent SGD 2 million less than it had budgeted. This can go to show the commitment of the HDB to serving Singapore well.

The HDB also was pretty self-serving in itself. It’s building efforts contributed very largely to the building boom in the late 1960s and created between 15 to 20 thousand jobs from the 1960s to early 1970s. The provision of adequate funding meant that the HDB did not have to face the problems of the SIT with relation to a lack of capital and building and construction capacity. However, the HDB faced problems in that there was a shortage of skilled labour, building materials, and the increasing inflation meant that costs of building were increasing. The ingenuity with which the HDB overcame these problems proves that the HDB was going to be a huge success and it was. It employed foreign architects and also set up a training scheme in tandem with the Government Ministry it came under to train more qualified architects. Other than this scheme, there were also programs set up to train primary school leavers in the mechanics of the construction industry. Finally, the HDB made attempts to mechanize many of the processes required in building to overcome the shortage of labour and speed up construction. It also began to operate its own granite quarries, piling plants and brick manufacturing factory. These new initiatives ensured that the costs of building were significantly reduced and also somewhat less vulnerable to inflation and other external economic factors. Lastly, the HDB also maintained reserves of some essential building materials to overcome any possible shortages in the future.

Thus, it is apparent that the government loans that were open and offered to the HDB as well as its own initiatives were significant contributing factors to its success.

The changing population of Singapore was also a contributing factor to the success of the HDB. Not only was the population growing at an amazing rate, the sex ratio was also more balanced, this factor and the increase in proportion of Chinese and Malays, together show that Singapore was changing from a city-state where the majority of the population were transient workers to one where the population was settling down. It is precisely due to the ‘settling down’ of the population that the HDB managed to find people willing to first rent, and then buy the units they were building. These people were making an investment in the nation they were beginning to see as home. This is a major point in terms of Singapore’s nation building and how they HDB can serve to unite the majority of the nation. In 1960 a mere 23% lived in public housing, in just ten years it rose to 50% and today, the number stands around 84%. These 84% of people can be said to share common experiences and living standards, thus creating a standard in an otherwise heterogeneous nation.

In terms of the internal factors of the HDB which led to its success, the organisation of the SIT and HDB were significantly different. The HDB carried out recruitment with the aid of the Public Service Commission which fills the offices of the Singapore Civil Service. The system of recruitment is based purely on merit and it is clear from the study done by Jon Quah that the officers of the HDB were not just better trained than those of the SIT, they were far more familiar with the local context and its needs. The morale of the officers in the HDB was also significantly higher than that of the SIT officers, as demonstrated by the reduction in complaints registered against HDB officials , and the reduction in terms of corrupt behaviour among them . Lastly, the internal structure of the HDB was dynamic as opposed to the paternalistic structure of the SIT. This obviously acted as a motivation to its relatively young officials who felt happier working in such a dynamic environment.


Lessons learnt from the HDB on Public Administration in Singapore:

The HDB’s experience has made significant contributions to the study as well as the active practice of public administration in Singapore. Most significantly, I would say that the HDB has set a benchmark not only for statutory boards to follow, but also for all other government bodies.

It has demonstrated in action, the importance of statutory boards, especially in the Singaporean context. In a one-party dominant state, which is immensely multi-racial, it is easy to blame nepotism and other biases for all problems. However, the meritocracy practiced by the HDB in the recruitment of members and in the completely impartial allocation of flats, makes it apparent that the corrupt practices often used by the SIT officials is a thing of the past. The SIT experience has set out the fatal mistakes for any board in Singapore, the mistakes to avoid. The HDB did so successfully. It also demonstrated that the splitting up of work between one or more statutory boards is much more efficient than loading one board with numerous different duties. The SIT had too many things on its plate, this and the lacks in terms of funding and support it suffered from ended up in its dissolution. The HDB concentrated on public housing and in fact some of its duties (urban renewal) were passed on to the Urban Redevelopment Authority in 1974 to allow the HDB greater work specialisation. Even when the HDB was given an extra goal in 1966, that of land reclamation, the coffers of the HDB were increased, as were its other resources. In fact, the success of the HDB has justified statutory boards in themselves. Many sceptics have commented that statutory boards are just an extension of the Civil Service, however the resounding success of the HDB has not just silenced them but stood as a world example in sharing the work of nation building and not loading it all on the Civil Service.

The essentiality of government support in terms of funding, legislation and sheer moral support is also an important lesson learnt from the HDB experience. The SIT failed as drastically as it did largely due to the lack of political support it had from the British government. It is clear from the HDB experience that only when the government and the important government bodies share the same priorities that these aims will be actualised. It is for the benefit of the government to support these bodies as the realisation of campaign and election promises serves the best interests of the party in that it not only legitimises them as a party but also as a ruling government. It was essential for the PAP to maintain their election promise of 1959 and they pushed for adequate public housing, which then became a never-ending process of improvement. This is the main reason for the success of the HDB and Singapore’s public administration, they are never satisfied, and there is always a new level to reach. This is one of the reasons for the PAP government being in power for most of Singapore’s lifespan, post colonial-government.

Other than these factors, the removal of corruption from government systems not just increases the legitimacy of the government but also allows policies to be carried out efficiently and improves rapidly the state of the nation.


Conclusion:
As Such, we can see that the HDB succeeded where the SIT failed for a number of reasons, both internal and external. Strong governmental support is essential for any statutory board and plays the most significant role in the success or failure of the organisation. The internal factors such as recruitment processes and morale also boost the success rate of the organisation.

Singapore has learnt a number of lessons with regards to Public Administration from the HDB experience; these include the importance of government support, the need to cut graft and have impartial systems and the need to only load upon government bodies as much work as they can handle given their resources. If all these lessons are implemented, Singaporean organisations will surpass any expectations and legitimise their setting-up in the first place.


Bibliography:
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Housing and Development Board. First decade in public housing, 1960-69.
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Practice of people's participation : seven Asian experiences in housing the poor.
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Quah, Jon S.T. “Statutory Boards.” In Quah, Chan and Seah (eds.), Government and Politics in Singapore, Chapter 6

Quah, Jon S.T. “Public Housing.” In Quah, Chan and Seah (eds.), Government and Politics in Singapore, Chapter 10

Quah, Jon S. T. (Jon Siew Tien), Singapore's experience in public housing: some lessons for other new states. Singapore : Dept. of Political Science, University of Singapore, 1975

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Urban Planning in Singapore from Wikipedia, the free encyclopaedia. Updated on 6th August, 2005. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urban_planning_in_Singapore (accessed on 31/8/05)