Author Archives: Subhendu Bikash Tahal

It was a hot summer afternoon and a strange silence was witnessed to be prevailed over a small village, 60 kilometers from Aurangabad in the Marathwada region. But in this scorching heat where even the sight of a bird was rare,a hopeless grim face was visible sitting on the middle of an infertile field with both hands on his head. He was indeed a farmer ,namely TUKARAM ,may be on the verge of his breaking point because of successive crop failures and prolonged drought conditions in the Marathwada region.

India is a monsoon dependent country whose 60% of gross cropped area is rainfed which accounts for 45% of Agricultural output(national commission on farmers). Thus the importance of monsoonal rainfall is quite Apparent from the perspective of an agrarian economy like India whrere more than 60% of population is dependent on agriculture accounting for 17% of GDP. In order to know the gravity of the problem which we are facing we need to to understand the causes of rain failure ,drought and the consequent water crisis.

Causes of drought and water crisis

The unpredictability of monsoon is the result of its dependence on various factors such as El Nino , Pacific decadal oscillation, Indian ocean dipole, the movement of various jet streams such as subtropical westerly and tropical easterly jet stream. The reason for its unequal distribution is due to the varied topography and orientation of Indian peninsula. These are natural factors and are beyond human control. But the problem starts when we neglect and undermine the factors which are under our control. The various such problems are lack of Crop diversification & faulty agricultural practices, deforestation which causes the failure in discharge of groundwater, over exploitation of groundwater due to free electricity to farmers and digging of numerous borewells, lack of any concrete water conservation policy as well as implementation of policies such as
rainwater harvesting (In Tamil Nadu irony is it was the 1st state to make RWH mandatory in 2003 and today most of its govt buildings lack functional RWH system),mismanagement of dams ,pollution and siltation of water bodies and most importantly considering water as a free resource leading to its exploitation.

Consequences of water crisis

In a country like India where 70 percentage of rainfall is just concentrated in 4 months, lack of proper water conservation and harvesting system accompanied with over exploitation leads to serious depletion of water resource. Addition to this there are various socioeconomic ramifications too, for example failed monsoon leads to crop failure which results in in increase in inflation of Agricultural produce as a result interest rate increases and ultimately effects the overall investment rate in the country. Also the farm loan waiver provided by the government has serious repercussions on fiscal health of the nation. According to National crime record bureau data 3 lakh farmers have committed suicide in the last two decades due to to crop failure and consequent trap of indebtness.
Also crop failure leads to abandonment of agricultural land and increased rural to Urban migration(mostly males) which leads to mushrooming of urban ghettos and its related social problems such as unhygienic conditions, social exploitation and conflicts, casualization of labour,etc. On the other side feminization of agriculture is witnessed in the rural areas.
Also women need to to scale long distances in hot summers for water collection which has adverse effect on their health. It also affects the urban Industries dependent on waterand also IT sector for example due to water
crisis in Chennai most of the IT firms had directed its employees to work from home due to shortage of even drinking water.

Solutions to this problem

We need to be institutionally organised in order to tackle this problem of water crisis. Knee jerk reactions and fire fighting strategies will not be able to address the problems and systematic solution is the need of the
hour.Creation of jal shakti ministry is a welcome step in this regard. Various solutions to this are promoting crop diversification
through new MSP incentives, centre-state agreement on groundwater uses through aquifer mapping( as according to Niti Aayog by 2020 ,21 cities in the country will run out of groundwater), promoting desalination plants
in the coastal areas(desalinated water is less expensive than water tankers), periodical deepening of silted lakes, decentralised water conservation by taking villages as unit(PM’s letter to all sarpanchs of the country regarding water conservation is a welcome step),
promoting sprinkler, drip and micro irrigation techniques and most importantly spreading awareness.

Way forward

Time has come when we need to think about
pricing of water given the amount of carelessness shown in its use. It is already prevalent in Marathwada region through water ATMs but by private companies.Thus Creation of proper infrastructure and the respective policies built on consensus of all stakeholders is needed. Interlinking of rivers though seems impractical can be given a second thought and techniques like cloud seeding can be used as a last resort. The main focus should be on spreading awareness, cooperation between individuals, NGOs, civil society, government and local community
level leadership such as hiware Bazar in Ahmednagar district of maharashtra(bottom up approach). Rainfall is not just a
geographical phenomenon but an emotion as livelihood of crores of people is dependent on water,most importantly our existence depends on water. Thus Only consistent implementation of all these measures can
lessen the plight of farmers like TUKARAM in particular and common citizens in general.

About the author- The author of this article, Sairaj Mishra, is a student of Geography, pursuing B.A at BJB Autonomous college.

We are in a society which is in a state of continues and constant flux. Hundred and a half  years have  passed by, but  there,  still remains a little or zero sense of what really it is, Can we still hope for the improvement , hasn’t enough have been done by us? Can it now be said that we are equally participating or this is just a mere propaganda  to make this half of Human-being feel equal? It’s really appalling and oxymoronic  that the value of women is deteriorating day by day, even when the literacy rate has risen up from sixteen to seventy four percent.

A famous sloka from Manusmruthi says “Yatra naryastu pujyante ramante tatra Devata, yatraitaastu na pujyante sarvaastatrafalaah kriyaah” which means where Women are honored, divinity blossoms there, and where women are dishonored, all action no matter how noble remain unfruitful. “There is no chance for the welfare of the world unless the condition of woman is improved. It is not possible for a bird to fly on only one wing” says Swami Vivekananda. So feminism came as a movement and an ideology to unleash the shackles of years of subjugation and subordination, to tear the man-made manacle into pieces.  It is a political doctrine which stands on  two foundational beliefs that women are disadvantaged because of their sex and this disadvantage can be and should be overthrown . The Feminists have underscored the supremacy of men and the subjugation of women in all most all societies.

The concept of public men and private women is deeply entrenched in every society, the public sphere i.e. forms of politics, art, and literature, has been a monopoly of men, while women have been confined to an essentially private existence, to the repetitive task of domestic chores and family responsibilities.  And the irony is that even when they spend hour after hour doing the monotonous and heavy domestic chores  without any complain as a mother, as a sister, in-laws, etc, we forgot to attach monetary value to it, we have forgotten to measure it in terms of the so-called measuring unit i.e. GDP or GNP. The first and the second wave of feminism brought with it the long desired sexual equality in political arena and strived to end discrimination, respectively. But did that end discrimination?

The inequality that exist  between male and female is a by-product and direct result of existing Patriarchy, is a  consequence of our notion that women are born not made. Patriarchy is all pervading, it spreads to each and every sphere starting from public to the so-called private. Millet went to the extent of describing  the patriarchal government as an institution whereby that half of populace which is female is controlled by that half which is male. The most common argument that gender division in society are natural: women and men are merely fulfilling the social roles for which they were naturally designed, forgetting the fact, that difference exist between gender and sex. The real problem lies here, these anti feminists don’t know or rather pretend to be not knowing the difference between Sex and Gender in which the former is natural but the latter is Socially consecrated, politically conspired .

  Being considered as the embodiment of weaker sex, women were considered timid or lesser intelligent than men, needing special protection,  hence under the cloak of sexual protection, a division was created,  denying women equal rights as man and it was warranted  by the argument  of existing  natural inequality, which doesn’t exist at all. Not getting rights, resources and opportunities women are still forced to remain underprivileged, uneducated & even undernourished at times.  Women are conditioned in a particular way  to a passive sexual role, which has repressed their intrinsic personality.   

The pioneers in the Indian history, reformers such as Ram Mohan Roy, Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar & Jyoti Rao phule fought for the betterment of women in India. Peary Charan Sarkar Found the first free School for girls in India. Engels suggested that the position of women in society had changed fundamentally with the development of capitalism and the institution of private property.

   Although the objective of feminism is to overthrow patriarchy and end the oppression on the basis of sex, feminists have sometime seen in a state of eternal conflict over the methodologies to achieve it. This makes the word feminism a bit confusing. However, the issue of equality is always key to the feminist thought. Meanwhile, the issue of equality have also exposed major faultiness within feminism: feminists have embraced contrasting notions of equality and some have entirely rejected equality in favour of the idea of difference.  

   Although there is a constant  fear that feminism  with its high tide will wash away the skyscrapers of man-domination and men will eventually lose out –of power, influence, impact authority, control, economic opportunities,  and religious beliefs, and established gender roles will loose their sanctity, which makes the man feel scary. But we never know what could she bring to the society with her that hands which is today running the home swiftly, May be something we are desiring in future or may be we never have dreamt of.

About the author-  Sankar Das is a chemistry graduate from Berhampur Universty.

Franklin D. Roosevelt, the former US president, had once rightly said, “Democracycannot succeed unless those who express their choice are prepared to choose wisely. The real safeguard of democracy, therefore, is education”. Education becomes even more important for healthy functioning of a giant democracy like India where more than 65% of the population is below the age of 35 and more than 25% of the population is illiterate. While the former figure leaves us with an optimistic image of a young, vibrant and ambitious India, the latter opens our eyes wide enough to make us aware of the thorny path that lies ahead. While an illiterate and ignorant mind is like the raw clay which can be moulded intoany shape, a young brain too is like a hot iron plate which can be turned into a shield to protect as well as a sword to kill. Interestingly, the Indian democracy has abundance of both the raw clay and the hot iron plates.

Here the solution comes in the forms of information, education and institutions. While Indian Universities suffer from a wide range of problems starting from shortage of faculties to age-old syllabus and lack of infrastructure, often they face allegations of promoting certain ideologies and leaving no space behind for the young generation to think and use their rationale.For instance, the JNU is often called as ‘the factory of the left’ while a few are unpopular as ‘ambassadors of the right’.

        However, another university continues to maintain the first rank when it comes to manipulation of the young intellectual capital. It is, unlike the traditional Universities, ever expanding. It is omnipresent and enrolls millions of students across the land with just one touch. It becomes even more powerful as there is no eligibility criteria to get into this university. Anybody from any age group, from any socio-economic background and even without a minimum qualification can enroll himself/herself. This university, again, does not suffer from shortage of faculty members as anyone with an android smartphone can become a professor. The University I’m talking about is the University of the social media giants-Facebook and WhatsApp.

But in the age of information and technology, where about 300 millionusers are using smartphone in India, how does the social media pose a threat when it is supposed to strengthen the polity by bringing people together? Well, the answer is simple. When an Indian youth opens his social media application, be it WhatsApp, Instagram or Facebook, he encounters a number of manufactured propaganda and ultimately starts believing them to be the ultimate truths. Most of them are either pro-establishment or anti-establishment, pro-government or anti-government, hyper-nationalist or anti-national, hyper-secular or communal, radically feminist or misogynist; but one thing is for sure – they all are biased and none of them will tell you the full truth.

For instance, a week back, a post was widely shared and made viral where an IPS officer, Ajay Pal Sharma, was claimed to have proudly killed the rape accused of a 6 year old. At first it gave me a shock as how an IPS could act so casually and took the law into his hand. But after checking the facts it became quite clear that the entire news was fake. But how many of them who shared that post had checked the authenticity of the story? Did they even bother to think if it was right to kill a person only based on mere allegation and suspicion? Does anybody care to take the responsibility of making people aware of the fact that around 54% of the rape cases filed were fake in the so called rape capital-Delhi alone and hence with such a situation, capital punishment is not a viable option?

Moreover, every time you open Facebookor WhatsApp you will find posts abusing Gandhi, Nehru, Savarkar, Ambedkar and so on depending on who has created those posts and who has shared them. But the irony is most of them areeither factually incorrect or fundamentally corrupt, snatching away the right to knowledge from the Indian minds.

In the past few years, we have seen many incidents of mob lynching where whatsapp messages and Facebook posts had played a negative role. Every now and then posts, inciting violence and hatred, are getting shared by people without having a second thought. But if we peep into the matter, we can find clear political gains for some political groups at the cost of misleading our youth. While the television and the print media were vehemently criticized for their biased role and were alleged of being sold out during the 2019 General Elections, much less attention was paid to the negative role of social media.

Yes, nobody can underestimate the benefit of social media in making information cheaper and accessible. In fact, we must admire the fact that, because of this social media, today we aren’t mere consumers of information but also the participants and contributors. But at the same time we need to keep  an eye on the negative side as well. Now let’s get back to the beginning of this article. “The real safeguard of democracy is education”(F. D. Roosevelt). But that education must be enlightening, inspirational and based on truth. A misleading education and information are even worse than ignorance.

About the author- The author of this article, Shailesh kumar, is a student of political science, pursuing B.A at BJB Autonomous college.

I’m Subhendu, i don’t think there is much to write about me here. A strong desire to explore alternatives, a strong commitment to criticize guide my journey, a journey that has already begun, a journey that will continue. A desire to discuss, a mindset to explore through debate and deliberations what stimulated me to connect you through a blog. This blog will present you with the posts pertaining to issues which concern you and me, the issues which affect everyone.

Be yourself; Everyone else is already taken.

— Oscar Wilde.

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