Revival of Realism in Indian Fiction in English

STARS: Int. Journal (Humanities and Social Sciences) 2010ISSN 0973-7812Vol.4, No.1&2, pp 1-14

Monetary Policy Beyond Inflation

Tojo Joseph

Joseph E Stieglitz is known for radical observations on contemporary macroeconomicmanagement and policies. His speech at the 15th CD Deshmuk Memorial Lecture at RBIis notable for the frank observations on financial regulation and monetary policy implemen-tation. The speech, titled “A Revolution of Monetary Policy: Lessons in the Wake of theGlobal Financial Crisis”, is concentrated on the current phase of financial regulation amongthe central banks.

But a remarkable part of the speech was on monetary policy which should not be leftunnoticed. It contains disapproval of the manner in which the central bank frames monetarypolicy in these different items. Here, Prof. Stieglitz has highlighted some weakness of con-temporary central banking practices in emerging market economies with regard to monetarypolicy implementation. Stieglitz’z speech highlights some wrong trends from which centralbanking should be freed.

Firstly, Prof. Stieglitz has attacked central banks for blindly focusing on inflation bydisregarding other priorities like growth and employment. He has pointed out that imple-mentation of monetary policy unresponsive to other objectives has produced welfare losses forthe people. His justification for getting away with the traditional format of too much focuson inflation fighting is that it has produced more costs. The costs of inflation fighting weresignificant and they are often left uncounted. Besides, the prevailing supply side instabilitiesmake monetary policy inefficient.

Stieglitz urges central banks to consider other important macroeconomic priorities likegrowth and employment than focusing on inflation only. The costs of inflation control inthe form demand compression and welfare losses are bigger in the context of the currentslowdown.

He maintains that inflation fighting is a coordinated effort of the government and thecentral bank. Stieglitz urges central banks to conduct monetary policy by addressing thechallenges brought on by recession. So, inflation should not be the stand-alone objective.

Secondly, he has cautioned central banks of the developing world to zealously imitatetheir developed country peers.

Thirdly, on the issue of the ongoing attempts made by central banks including RBIto attain independence, he reminds us that it is the Western central banks that enjoyed

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STARS: Int. Journal (Humanities and Social Sciences) 2010 Tojo Joseph

independence which have failed during the 2008 crisis. On the other hand, the central banksof the developing countries-China, India and Brazil, with less independence were able towithstand the crisis.

Success in financial regulation and failure in inflation fighting

Altogether, the observations made by Prof. Stieglitz on monetary policy implementation willbe formed a stunning attack on the monetary policy of the RBI if it is carefully analyzedwith reference to the manner in which it is implemented in India during the past few years.

Stieglitz has lauded the emerging market central banks for being successful in overcomingthe crisis of 2008. As per his judgment, the RBI has emerged as a model for financial regu-lation amidst ruins in the west. Its regulations are now tested by time. But a backgrounderof economic regulations in India reveals that strong regulations are inherited by institutionsin the country. Strong regulations are the main feature of the entire macroeconomic institu-tional mechanism in India. The industrial licensing policy, trade policy, public sector policyall are featured by strong regulations. The RBI has retained these traits in its financial reg-ulation over the last 50 years. Incidentally, the 2008 crisis rewarded the RBI and reveled toit the benefits of strong regulations.

Coming to the monetary policy front, the achievements of RBI in inflation control remainmeager. So far, it was able to cover up its failure in monetary policy by putting the blameon the ongoing global financial crisis on the one hand and by highlighting the inheritedregulatory strengths on the other. If the RBI is zealous in showcasing the achievement infinancial regulation, it should be equally courageous to admit its failure in monetary policyimplementation.

Central banks should broaden their objective beyond inflation

Undoubtedly, the major criticism as well as a suggestion made by Prof. Stieglitz is thatcentral banks should look beyond inflation. For him, the central banks also should focuson growth and employment. “In the aftermath of the crisis, it is evident that the single-minded focus of some central banks on inflation was misplaced”. He adds that single-mindedattention on inflation creates instability rather than stability. “By diverting attention fromwhat was really important, inflation targeting may accordingly not only have failed to enhancemacro-stability, it may actually have contributed to instability.”

Prof Stieglitz’s attack on the inflation focused monetary policy and its destabilizing effectsis more specific on India as he discredits such a policy in the case of supply shocks. Accordingto him “. . . developing countries exposed to supply shock which results in imported inflationincreased interest rates, slowing the economy down even more, and imposing even greatercosts on workers already suffering from high food and energy prices.” It is evident that the RBIhas followed high interest rate oriented inflation fighting policy during the last three yearsamidst the pressure from imported inflation and the existence of supply shocks. Stieglitzdescribes the situation as one of “the cure being worse than the disease.”

Stieglitz traces a leading post-crisis monetary policy trend among developing countrycentral banks. For him, these central banks are imitating the cult of inflation targetingembraced by their advanced country peers. Already, many academicians are worried that the

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STARS: Int. Journal (Humanities and Social Sciences) 2010 Monetary Policy Beyond Inflation

central banks of emerging world are adopting inflation targeting of different variants.

Inflation targeting monetary policy framework is followed by central banks in advancedcountries and a few emerging market central banks. Under it, the key instrument is theshort run interest rate (repo). The monetary transmission process starts with the centralbank raising policy rate (short term interest rate) to target inflation. Increase in short terminterest rate raises the prevailing market interest rate. In the next stage of the transmissionmechanism, increased market interest rate represented by lending rates, depresses consump-tion and investment and thus aggregates demand. The resultant decrease in income ensuresdecline in inflation.

The same philosophy of inflation fighting was stressed by Dr Subbarao in his speech atIIM Kozhikode last year when he advocated that sacrificing GDP in the short term is a smallprice necessary to rein in price rise. Over the last few years, the RBI is spiritedly focusing oninflation fighting disregarding the loss of growth and employment that they have producedin their fight against inflation.

Monetary policy implementation in India over the last three years thus reveals the singleminded focus made by RBI on fighting inflation. Clearly, the high interest rate policy adoptedby the RBI has so far depressed private expenditure-both investment and consumption. Thecurrent debate about the so called conflict between growth and stability is because of theRBI’s uncompromising stand on sacrificing growth to fight inflation. The RBI has stack onto the philosophy of reducing growth to stabilize the prices - - a practice commonly adoptedin inflation targeting countries. Unfortunately the short term interest rate using inflationfighting exercise by the BRI has not yielded any visible impact. Inflation continues to be athigh level. Remarkably, the period since 2010 March is the longer period in recent historywhere high inflation and declining growth rate coexisted with high interest rate.

There is nothing wrong in being accommodative of RBI’s management of the inflationscenario; we need not worry about losing a little bit of growth while ensuring medium termprice stability. But how long and deeper should the loss of GDP growth be in ensuring pricestability is a relevant question to evaluate the effectiveness of the present inflation fightingstrategy.

Mohanty (2012) himself has made a study about the effect of interest rate policy by theRBI on GDP growth and inflation. His analysis (mentioned in RBI Annual Report 2011-12)shows that a policy rate (repo) increase by the RBI had produced negative effect on outputgrowth with a lag of two quarters and a moderating effect on inflation with a lag of threequarters. Indeed, an examination of the policy rate’s effect on output and prices in Indiaduring the last two years on the basis of Mohanty’s predictions is enough to assess the workingof inflation targeting measures.

RBI launched the present hard interest rate phase in March 2010. Then it started thenow famous thirteen times upward revision of the policy rate which relieved was a little inApril 2011. The initial stages of the policy rate increase can be considered a restoration ofthe rate to normalcy or a part of the exit strategy from the accommodative monetary policystance during the financial crisis period. If the normal policy rate can be taken as 6% inthe Indian context, the repo rate increase to 6.25% on November 2, 2010 is the beginning

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STARS: Int. Journal (Humanities and Social Sciences) 2010 Tojo Joseph

of the high interest rate regime effectively. The rate increased to the peak 8.5% in October2011. Invisibly, the RBI’s monetary policy framework has remained a near inflation targetingvariety since 2010.

There is no doubt that GDP growth rate has responded well to the policy rate hike asquarterly growth rate has come down to 6%. But on the price front, as per the predictions ofMohanty, the time for interest rate increase to hit inflation (three quarters) has well passed,but the price level continues to reign at high levels. Even after eight quarters of launchingthe high interest rate oriented inflation fighting or almost four quarters after making interestrate signal at its peak, inflation has not been responded to monetary policy.

Thus, price level responses to monetary policy interventions in India show that inflation-interest rate relationship definitely is not in accordance with Dr. Mohanty’s predictions.Monetary policy interventions continue to be random experiments in the application side. Inessence, the high policy rate pursued by the RBI since the last two years has killed growthwithout killing inflation. The economy has entered a stagflation phase.

Prof. Mohanty need not be blamed for the failure of the VAR predictions to explain thenon-responsiveness of inflation to interest rate hike. Monetary policy models at best remainapproximations rather than accurate forecasters. The reason why inflation continues to beunabated despite strong use of interest rate medicines is simple. The RBI fights inflation ina developed country format, disregarding demand supply relationships in India’s emergingcountry setting. About the failure of such models as well as its disutility, Prof. Stieglitzobserves that the models on which the central banks rely haven’t given the prominence thatthey deserve For him, the belief of central banks that keeping inflation low was necessary andalmost sufficient for stable and strong growth has been shown to be wrong.

But the worst outcome of monetary policy implementation during the last three years isnot just the decline in growth causes by the RBI in its effort to contain inflation. Rather, itis the RBI’s inability to explain properly why inflation remains at high levels despite keepinginterest rate high for a long term to depress demand growth.

The policy prescription from Prof. Stieglitz is very clear in the Indian context. Given theinability of the RBI to contain inflation, it should not be allowed to curtail growth limitlesslyin the pretext of inflation fighting by continuing with the present high interest rate regime.His suggestion that central banks should broaden their objectives beyond inflation is veryimportant to associate the otherwise price stability addicted central banks with fiscal author-ities to revive the recession hit economies. Justifying the possibility of failure in inflationmanagement, Stieglitz reminds that monetary policy is not a ‘technocratic matter’. “Whilemonetary policy is an effective instrument in containing output, it may be far less effectivein stimulating the economy in deep downturn.”

Stieglitz’s speech provides a worthy message in framing macroeconomic policies to revivethe economy in the post crisis phase. The economy managers should not continue to wastetime and effort for a policy which is yet to prove its authenticity scientifically in its fightagainst inflation. As per Stieglitz’s warning, it appears that the costs of inflation controlis like clogs in the wheels of economic growth. Hence, it is time to prevent the RBI frombecoming an institution which blocks the economy travelling back to the growth track. For

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STARS: Int. Journal (Humanities and Social Sciences) 2010 Monetary Policy Beyond Inflation

the time being, rather than inflation, growth is the priority.

References

Stieglitz, Joseph E (2013): ‘A Revolution in Monetary Policy: Lessons in the Wake of theGlobal Financial Crisis’, CD Deshmukh Speech at RBI, Mumbai.

Mishkin, S Frederic (2000): ‘From Monetary Targeting to Inflation Targeting: Lessons Fromthe Industrialized Countries’. NBER.

Mohanty, Deepak A B Chakraborty AB, Das A and John Joice (2011), ‘Inflation Thresholdin India’s P S (DEPR) : 18/ 2011. RBI Working Paper Series.

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SUBJUGATING BODY: BODY POLITICS IN VASTUSASTRA WITH SPECIAL REFERENCE TO

MANUS. YALAYACANDRIKA

AJOMY MARIA JOSEPH

The emotional approach to the wounded female subjectivity as upheld by the feministsin the initial stages of the feminist movement underwent a radical change during the 1970swhen the notion of body entered the stage. Though the concept was dormant within thewomb erstwhile, it came out specifically, inspiring a wide range of interpretations in 1990when the body art movement gathered momentum. The term body politics was first usedin the 1970s, during the “Second Wave” of the feminist movement in the United States.As Jrank Encyclopaedia says, “the powers at play in body politics encompass institutionalpower expressed in government and laws, disciplinary power exacted in economic production,discretionary power exercised in consumption, and personal power negotiated in intimaterelations”. Body politics becomes practical when individuals or groups seek to alleviate theoppressive effects of such power on those bodies that are marked as inferior or who are deniedrights to control their own bodies. In a wider perspective it refers to the practices and policiesthrough which powers of society regulate the human body, as well as the struggle over thedegree of individual and social control of the body.

Limiting the definition of Body Politics, to feminism alone will be a theoretical error.It became popular with feminism, since the female body was the most subjugated of allbodies. But discussions on the spacing of body – regardless of gender – in a structure and itsconsequences emerged parallel to feminist approach to body, or perhaps gave more impetusfor their approach. It was Michel Foucault who opened up a discussion on the play of powerrelations in structures especially, building spaces. Foucault’s consciousness and subjectivityare inseparable from body. He injected a spatial turn for his study.

Consolidation of power over time to serve the interests of specific groups or classes affectsdifferent bodies differently. Foucault through his epoch making work Discipline and Punish(1975) introduced the notion that discipline produces “docile bodies.” Foucault opens hisexamination by giving attention to the “the way in which the body itself is infested bypower relations” (24). He declares “our society is not of spectacle, but of surveillance”(217). According to him everybody finds themselves placed in “a great enclosed, complexand hierarchical structure and subject to continuous regime of surveillance and manipulation”

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STARS: Int. Journal (Humanities and Social Sciences) 2010 SUBJUGATING BODY: BODY ...

(115). The subjugation of body in enclosed structures is explained by Foucault with referenceto the power mechanism working in the prison architecture developed by Jeremy Bentham,the Panopticon. It is a mechanism in which the individual prisoner is placed in a position ofpermanent ‘visibility’, to enforce self policing upon himself. Foucault maintains that:

The Panopticon must not be understood as a dream building: It is the diagram ofa mechanism of power reduced to its ideal form. . . . It is a type of location of bodiesin space of distribution of individuals in relation to one another, of hierarchicalorganization, of disposition of centres and channels of power, of definition of theinstruments and modes of intervention of power, which can be implemented inhospitals, which all resemble prison. (205)

In the Foucauldian sense, all “spaces of representations” – factories, schools, hospitals, housesetc – resemble prison.

Recent feminist theorists, like Elizabeth Grosz also raise questions concerning body pol-itics, with an emphasis on the surveillance of women in architectural constructs. Accordingto her, the under representation of women’s experience and opinions in “spaces of representa-tion” creates a setting for their subordination and exploitation. Architecture and design havebeen used as a means to exert control over class, race, gender and nation through diverseways: by the imposition of physical barriers, limiting access to the public, shared spaces andfacilities, restrictive and inappropriate models of housing. Restricting access to space hasbeen, as Dolores Hyden says, “one of the consistent ways to limit the economic and politicalrights of the group” (22), especially women.

By commingling the Foucauldian spacing of body in a structure and the approach of ahandful of feminist theorists of body an attempt to read the traditional architectural dis-course of India, Vastu Sastra is made in the light of the propositions made in the text,Manusyalayacandrika – the most popular one with regard to Vastu Sastra. Besides, thesubjugating nature of architectural body – the house – is also a major concern.

Vastu Sastra is an ancient doctrine of construction, formulated by the Sages of ancientIndia and consists of precepts born out of an investigation on how the laws of nature affecthuman dwellings. Vastu Sastra involves the alignment of the five elements of nature – earth,water, fire, air and space. It unifies science, art, astronomy and astrology. Our Sages and seershave known the secrets of aligning all the five elements of this universe for the advantage ofmankind in suitably planning and constructing buildings for dwelling, prayer, entertainment,education, working, production and other purposes. They evolved scientific methods andsystems and confined them over the years as Vastu Sastra.

The origin of Vastu Sastra took place over thousands of years ago. The learned men ofthose days may not have lived in houses themselves, but they most definitely dedicated theirlives to the development of the science “Vastu Sastra” or “Vastu ”, as it is popularly knowntoday. The art of Vastu originates in Stapatya Veda, a part of Atharva Veda. It used to bea purely technical subject and it was confined to architects (Stapatis) and handed over totheir heirs. Manusyalayacandrikais only one of the numerous texts explaining the principlesof Vastu Sastra. It is authored by Thirumangalathu Neelakandan Moosath, compiling slokasfrom different texts of Vastu Sastra existing prior to it.

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STARS: Int. Journal (Humanities and Social Sciences) 2010 AJOMY MARIA JOSEPH

Like any other architectural discourse, Vastu Sastra also produces a space where menoverpower women. Assigning the throne of a domestic queen, women are enclosed within thefour walls of the house. Gender relations are thus implicated in the conventional sense, whereit is sanctioned that man should dominate space and house is women’s assigned place (livedspace). But inside the house women are to be confined within the sequence of spaces at thefarthest distance from the public sphere.

In Vastu Sastra female body is disciplined through the strategic confinement of womenwithin a space authored by man, limiting their free movement. Women being the interiorsubjects who seldom get access to the exterior space, bodily suffer the aftermath of interi-orization. Thus seclusion within a place defined by the other gender – male – is a modeof politics over the female body. The architectural ‘body’ itself is subjugating and it pavesthe way for the overpowering of the dominant section over the other. Feminist architectsapproach the concept of place based on how a person experiences a sense of place throughtheir body.

For Elizabeth Grosz, “a practical and fleshy body” is also a sexed body, a body whosesexed difference is fundamental and material. In Vastu Sastra in order to adjust the energyflow, to facilitate the maximum flow of positive energy, the inauspicious portions of the landare made less spacious. In this venture, the female places become shrunk. As per VastuSastra the most auspicious position for kitchen is the South East corner, otherwise calledthe agnimula. Agni or the god of fire is the presiding deity of this portion. It is prescribedthat agnimula should be used only for those purposes that are associated with the usage offire. Constructions in this direction should not be spacious, since the extensive constructionin this section results in the mental unrest of the members of the family. Positioning ofprayer rooms, bedrooms or locker rooms is prohibited here. The belief is that placing theprayer room in South East corner would provoke the gods and finally culminates in theloss of peace at home. If this position is made spacious, it is believed that women becomethe property holders, which is unimaginable in the traditional Indian society. Vastu Sastra,through propagating the confinement of women through limiting the space of kitchen, affirmsthe superiority of man over woman and echoes their unwillingness to behold women as theproperty holders.

Childbirth, during the earlier times was not an outside affair, but a homely one. Thereforelying-in room was an inevitable part of traditional homes. This room falls in the North West(vayu kon) position. Vayu (Wind god) is the presiding god. Constructions in this portionmust be done carefully since it controls the reproductive functions in a woman such as theformation of foetus, its growth and delivery. Faulty constructions in this portion result inmultiple abortions. This portion is also denied the luxury of having extensive rooms for fearof the instability of the family members and the members going astray. Moreover spaciousconstructions in this area will grab the space of Isana (North East) which should be spacious,since it is the point of origin of the positive force of the land being used. Therefore the deliveryroom confines to a limited space.

The birthing room or lying-in room, as it was commonly called, accommodated themother, her attendant, and the baby, from the onset of labour, until one month after de-

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livery. This was the time believed to be necessary for the womb to return to its normal sizeand for the body of the newly delivered mother to be “purified” of the illness and dangersassociated with childbirth. The association of impurity with female bodily function is evi-denced through the distancing of lying-in room from the “pure” places of living, which infact is a mode of exerting power over the female body.

By stamping women as “pollutants” they are expected to secure the safety of other familymembers by “cleaning” their houses and isolating their bodies. The view of pregnancy as an“infective malady” (Adams 120) as Oakley has elaborated, restricted entry of other membersto the lying-in room. It was not because of the dangers posed to pregnant women – as iscommonly assumed – but because of the dangers women posed to the already vulnerablethrough illness. The less spacious nature of the delivery room upgrades the heat inside.Modern science has proved this as unfavourable for woman’s body. Moreover the increasedthermal condition slows down the process of labour which prolongs the pain and sufferingsthat the female body undergoes.

The temperature of a lying-in room should not be too high. Females frequentlysuffer from this circumstance; in some it induces a state of fever; in others adistressing and weakening degree of perspiration. The room, ought always to bemoderately cool. (Wakley 674)

Reading Vastu Sastra in the light of this exposes that, instead of facilitating uncomplicatedchild birth, the female body suffers due to the spatial restraints of the room. The soundsaccompanying childbirth also could be disturbing to the family members. The odour of theafter birth also was consistently described as unpleasant. Jane Ellen Panton calls the lying-inroom a “temporary prison.”

Expelling women out of the major spaces of home to a limited and comfortless spaceduring menstruation also bears testimony to the way in which women’s body is associatedwith impurity, which in turn becomes the reason for her suffering. Kate Millet says:

The feeling that woman’s sexual functions are impure is both worldwide and per-sistent. One sees evidence of it everywhere in literature, in myth, in primitive andcivilized life. . . . Contemporary slang denominates menstruation as “the curse.”(Millet 47)

All these are instances of subjugating the female body by the prescriptions given bya masculine discourse. The repulsion towards what Kristeva calls the “abject,” triggersmasculine hatred towards the female body. In other words her body itself becomes the“abject.”

At the level of the individual body, the abject is the material expelled from thebody by the body – mucus, bile, vomit, pus and excrement – while at the sametime being a part of it . . . what is abject is considered disgusting abominable,repellent, uncivilized. (Farrar 56)

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What is considered repulsive, which is associated with corporeality is often equated withfemininity. Elizabeth Grosz argues that women’s bodies have been constructed “not onlyas a lack or absence but with much more complexity, as a leaking, uncontrollable, seepingliquid; as formless flow, as viscosity, entrapping, secreting; . . . but a formlessness that engulfsall form; a disorder that threatens all order” (qtd. in Farrar 54). Vastu Sastra by separatingthe feminine places from the masculine spaces of purity and cleanliness affirms the femalebody as impure.

The architectural body itself is subjugating due to the exception of female body in theconstruction where the home is built in proportion to the male body. Diana Agrest’s “Ar-chitecture from Without: Body, Logic and Sex” (1989) embarks on the subjugation of thefemale body while choosing the measuring rods in relation to the male body. In Vastu Sastrathe fundamental ideas of the measures are derived from the body of the male head of thefamily or in his absence the eldest male member. It is to make the construction congenialto those living within it. Paradoxically men who live outside the home, through defining thehome in proportion to their body, where the female community lives their lives, deny the roleof women and their space. The construction itself becomes a symbol of male power. Themeasurements based on human organs are called angulamanas in Vastu. Angula is half themeasurement of the middle finger of the house owner.

Yajn akakartur.daks.akaramadhyamamadhyapar.vano

Dair.ghyam matr.angulam sres.tham nicam tadvyasasammitam

Itham matr.angulam dwedha yagadinam prasyate. (104)

(To determine the auspicious matrangula, the length from the middle joint of the middlefinger of right hand of the master is used and inauspicious one can be determined throughthe diameter of the same.)

Vastu also proposes rules for measuring each and every part of the building.

Taladyaih pratimadikam khalu yavair –

meyam ca bhus.adikam

ks.aumapravaran. amsukadi parime –

yam syadvitastya tadha

sastr. adyam tadanamikanguliyuge –

naivam ca tadvyasato

mus.tya yajn ikabhajanani yajama –

nasyanyadanghryadina. (107)

(Ornaments should be measured with yava (1 angula), attire with vitasti, weapons withtwo added to the diameter of the ring finger, plates for holy sacrifice (yaga) with the fist ofthe owner and the sacrificial hall (yagasala), dais etc. should be measured with the foot ofthe master.)

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Man is presented as having the attribute of perfect natural proportions. Hence, theanalogical relationship between architecture and human body appears to ensure that thenatural laws of beauty and nature are transferred into architecture. For Agrest “the bodyoperates as a semiotic ‘shifter’ that relocates the metaphor of the body from being a culturalconvention to a principle of natural order, transforming the body into a geometric set of‘abstract’ relationships that appear transcendent of both culture and physical form” (Hight38).

The building is constructed as a simile for the human figure. The architectural bodyborn out of Vastu principles is derived from man, not woman, that is, from his body. Fi-larete considers building as living man. Many architects believe that buildings also havegender. Some architectural critics say that the tall, forceful shape of a skyscraper expressesmasculinity. They state that “male” architecture is architecture that expresses heaviness,strength, or power. Some believe that “female” architecture is architecture that seems toexpress femininity. Curved shapes suggest the womb. There is something womanly aboutthe building’s shape, size, proportions, colour, or texture. A building that has both maleand female characteristics might be called androgynous. Vastu considers house to be aman. The usage vesmakhyapum (house as the man) in the 32ndsloka ofsixth chapter ofManus.yalayacandrikatestifies this. Vastu-based homes are masculine constructions, becauseof the phallic nature of their roofs which are angular and pointed.

“Wood panelling is conventionally used for sheathing recreational interiors which arecodified as ruggedly masculine. Masculine properties of being hard, cold and crystalline aresimilarly attributed to glass, steel and stone” (Lico 35). Wooden panels and stone works areinevitable in Vastu homes and traditional homes built according to Vastu Sastra employwood or stones for walls. Roofs are primarily made of wood and tiles. Extensive woodenadornments are the core of Vastu buildings. An instance of the importance given for woodand stone can be seen in the following sloka. Vinyasyet padapi t.ham sudr.dhatarasila –

Darusaraprakl.ptam. (193)

Oma (the lower portion of the pillar) should be built with stone or strong wood)

The Vastu-home thus constructed proves to be a sheer masculine body. Enclosing womenwithin these masculine constructs means confining women in men’s physical space thus prov-ing them to be subjugating bodies.

Another instance of manliness of Vastu based construction is visible in attributing father –son relationship between the dikgrihas and the kongrihas.

Sarvatrapi ca kon. agehaparin. a –

haptyai svodigyonire –

voktastatra vidigrhastu sakala

janya bhavantyeva hi

diksala janaka bhavanti ca. (151)

(In every quadrangular building dikgrihas are fathers and kongrihas are sons)

In the interiorization of women in a domestic space authored by men, they are alsosubjected to continuous surveillance and self policing as in a Panopticon. David Harvey says:

The domination of space reflects how individuals or powerful groups dominate the organiza-

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tion, and production of space through legal or extra-legal means so as to exercise a greaterdegree of control, either over the friction of distance, or over the manner in which space isappropriated by themselves or others. (222)Thus, the house becomes a battlefield of genders, where female body is conquered by themale body.

Vastu Sastra endows men with panoptic visual authority while subjugating disempoweredsubjects – women – as scopophilic objects. When the body enacts movement and displace-ment in space, space structures the bodily practice. Thus all actions performed in spacefunction as a structural exercise, which builds practical mastery of fundamental schemes.Thus Vastu Sastra, with its bounding surfaces, enclosures, walls and levels, manipulates allbodily experiences. The politics of body is evident in this regard. Women are denied controlover their own body. The rules and regulations of Vastu Sastra formulated by men in apatriarchal society control the “positioning” of female body within a masculine architecturalbody, marking them inferior.

Bibliography

Adams, Annmarie. Architecture in the Family Way: Doctors, Houses and Women, 1870 –1900. Canada: Mc Gill Queen’s University Press, 1996.

“Body Politics - Feminism and Racial.” Encyclopaedia Jrank Online. Jrank Encyclopaedia,2012. Web. 5 December 2012.

Farrar, Margaret E. Building the Body Politic: Power and Urban Space in Washington DC. Chicago: U of Illinois Press, 2008.

Foucault, Michel. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. Trans. Alan Sheridan.NY: Vintage, 1977.

Grosz, Elizabeth A, ed. Space Time and Perversion: Essays on the Politics of Bodies. NY:Routledge, 1995.

Harvey, David. The Condition of Postmodernity. Oxford: Basil Blackwell Ltd, 1989.

Hayden, Dolores. The Power of Place: Urban Landscapes as Public History. Massachusetts:MIT Press, 1997.

Hight, Christopher. Architectural Principles in the Age of Cybernetics. Abington: Rout-ledge, 2008.

Lefebvre, Henri. The Production of Space. Trans. Donald Nicholson Smith. Oxford:Blackwell, 1991.

Lico, GR. “Architecture and Sexuality: The Politics of Gendered Space.” Humanities Dil-man 2.1 (2001): 30 – 34. Web. 5 January 2012.

Millet, Kate. Sexual Politics. Chicago: U of Illinois Press, 2000.

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Moorthy, G. Ganapathy. Vstu stravum Grihanirmnakalyum[Vstu stra and The Art of HomeBuilding]. Trivandrum: Sunco Publications, 2010.

Moosath, Thirumangalathu Neelakandan. Manus?ylayacandrik. Kottayam: DC Books,2011.

Wakley, Thomas. The Lancet. London: Mills, Jowett and Mills, 1831.

Wegner, Philip. “Spatial Criticism: Critical Geography, Space, Place and Textuality.”Ed. Julian Wolfreys. Introducing Criticism at the 21stCentury. Edinburg: EdinburgUniversity Press, 2002.

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Caribbean Literature: Mimicry and Beyond

Saju Joseph

Introduction

The nomenclature ‘Caribbean’ or ‘The West Indian’ immediately reminds us of the cricket.The West Indies cricketers like Sir Vivian Richards, Brain Lara, Chris Gayle and so on arethe standard -bearers of the West Indian identity as is revealed to the modern world andespecially to the young generation. The West Indian cricket, like their very politico-culturalentity, is an offshoot of their colonial legacy. It was a game introduced in the CaribbeanIslands by the English colonialists who subjugated the Caribbeans for centuries. But in thelatter half of the 20th Century, the Caribbean Islands got independence one after anotherfrom the colonial rule of the British, French and the Spaniards as the case might be andthereafter they began to assert themselves and showcase their cultural archives to the worldoutside. Cricket is a dominant item which they inherited from their colonial masters buttheir recent achievements in that field reveal beyond doubt that they excelled their mastersin this respect.

If that is the Caribbean experiment with cricket, almost similar are their achievementsin the field of literature. Like cricket, literature is another cultural relic the West Indiansshowcase before the aesthetic world in the modern times. Here, too, like cricket, they outdotheir masters. The Caribbean literature upto the 1960’s was, by and large, a literature ofimitation. Writers likes James Anthony Froude and V.S. Naipaul rightly point it out andthey, in fact, lash out at the aesthetic uncreativity of the Caribbean Islands. Before delvingdeep into the history of Caribbean literature, one has to examine, at least in a cursory way,the socio-political history of the Caribbeans which has gone a great deal into the making oftheir literature.

Caribbean Literature: Origin and Development

As we know, Caribbean literature is comparatively new and its name originates from theCaribbean sea that surrounds a group of islands commonly known as the West Indies. Thename indicates a historical misconception of Columbus who, in his perilous voyage to find outa sea route to India, landed on these islands. He mistook these islands for India and hencethe name, West Indies. In the mistaken notion of Columbus, this was the much coveted India

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STARS: Int. Journal (Humanities and Social Sciences) 2010 Caribbean Literature: Mimicry ...

and later in order to distinguish it from the India of the East it was christened the WestIndies by the colonialists.

But unlike Indians, during the time of colonial aggression on the West Indies, the Caribbeanslost their language, religion and identity and they were forced to replace their prestine lan-guage and culture with those of their colonial aggressors. So the Caribbean Islands havea bitter story to tell, the story of persecution and oppression at the hands of the Colonialmasters and of the sad loss of their cultural identity. ‘The Caribs’, the aborigines in theCaribbean islands, had been exterminated by the colonial aggressors who contented amongthemselves for political dominance in the region. Hence the Caribs as a tribe had been almostwiped out, by the English, French and the Spaniards at different times of colonial invasion.The minority that survived withdrew themselves to the margins of social life just like theRed Indians in the American Continent.

Then what about the literature of the West Indies? The West Indian literature beforethe second half of the 20th century had been a literature of mimicry, an off shoot of the aes-thetics of the colonial masters. Comparatively insignificant, mainly in the form of landscapepoetry, it was a literature that closely followed the western literary canon and hence worthno serious critical concern. However, Caribbean literature received a fresh lease of life afterthe independence of the Caribbean Islands in the 1960’s.

The Anglophone Caribbean Islands like Jamaica, Barbados, Gayana and Trinidad becameindependent by the second half of the 20th Century and there started earnest attempts bythe Caribbean writers to assert their identity by liberating their literature from the influenceof the Western literary canon.

The Caribbean literature before the second decade of the 20th century consisted of someoral poetry and certain scattered early publications. The West Indian poetry in Englishhas its origin around 1920. That means that for centuries after colonization and indenturedlabour there remained a vacuum in Caribbean poetry. It was only in the 1920’s that thereemerged some voices worth considering in the arena of West Indian literature. Colonial wars,slavery, emancipation, and indenture became the themes of that emerging poetic endeavourand hence they were subjects for poetry only in retrospect. But poetry then on began to beobsessed with certain recurrent concerns such as the question of national identity and selfconsciousness; an exploration of multiple cultural traditions; the adaptations of the Englishlanguage by the deft fusion of local dialects and the exploration of the folklore and oraltradition as a resource for poetry. If the West Indian literature tended to be a mimicry ofthe Western literature even upto the first half of the 20th century, it began to assert itselfin the second half through its eminent writers – poets and novelists – both at home and indiaspora.

Frank Birbalsingh in his book Frontiers of Caribbean Literature in English identifies fourstages in the phased development of Caribbean literature. They are:

1. Colonial period (1496-1949)

2. The period of nationalism associated with the Federation of the West Indies (1950-65)

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STARS: Int. Journal (Humanities and Social Sciences) 2010 Saju Joseph

3. The Micro National period (1965-80) with its post independence visions and disap-pointments

4. The “trans-national” period (after 1980) with its post-colonial concerns very oftenexpressed by the writers of the new diaspora

According to Birbalsingh, the trans-national period is marked by an enormous expansion ofthe scope of the term “West Indian Literature’ (xi). He attaches great significance to thisperiod in which there has been a great spurt in the number of writers with their more distinctand diverse positions - both physical and ideological. Naturally, this post colonial scenariopropped up some characteristic issues quite different from those of the earlier decades.

Though there had been some earnest attempts at forging national sentiments through theworks of art of that period under the aegis of the newly formed Federation of the West Indiesduring the 50’s and the 60’s, those attempts did not succeed completely mainly due to thedisintegration of the Federation. The hope kindled by the growth of nationalism during thatperiod and the unhappy disintegration of the Federation and its resultant frustration amongthe literary circles are all discernible in the works of that period, especially in the poetry ofwriters like Derek Walcott and Edward Kamau Brathwaite. After the disintegration of theFederation each region has projected a different identity, and the populous communities havedemonstrated varying kinds of racial problems and social tensions. These issues of the timeexpressed themselves in the literature of that period. Since the socio -cultural and economicsituation in the Caribbean were not conducive to the growth of literature at home, most ofthe writers migrated under pressure either to London or to New York in search of betterliterary prospects and they began expressing their sentiments about their homelands fromthe diaspora. Of this diasporic literature, the most noteworthy during the second half of the20th century were the novels of expatriate writers like George Lamming, Roger Mais, EdwardMittelholzer, V.S. Reid, Samuel Selvon and V.S. Naipaul.

Their works, especially novels, reflected the changing Caribbean scenario after the colonialdisintegration. “They explored human conditions set against a world where the old orderwas changing, especially in politics and economics,” says Ajanta Dutt (Neruda, Walcott andAtwood XI).

Lamming’s novel In the Castle of My Skin (1953) was noticeable and it created an enor-mous impact on the literary circles both at home and in diaspora. Samuel Selvon, an ex-patriate in London, portrayed the socio. cultural and economic conditions of the IndianCommunity in Trinidad who were the descendants of the indentured labourers from Indiaafter the abolition of slavery. His novels like The Brighter Sun express the sentiments of theIndian community in the Caribbean diaspora.

The novelists of that period like Jean Rhys, Edgar Mittelholzer and V.S. Reid too dealtwith the West Indian Diaspora, of the blackman struggling in a society filled with white valuesand tradition. These novels dealt with themes like the onslaught of colonialism, alienationand the present condition of a multi- cultural community struggling hard to establish anindependent identity despite their apparent linguistic diversity and cultural plurality. Milt-telholzer’s novels depict the Caribbean identity crisis which Derek Walcott has defined as

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“divided to the vein” (CP18) or the contradiction of being white in mind and black in body.

His novel A Morning at the Office (1950) is a veritable expression of this Caribbeandilemma. V.S. Reid, the Jamaican novelist, has been rightly regarded as a writer of theJamaican heritage and is noted for his anti-colonial ideals. In his novel New Day (1949), onecan read the story of the Jamaicans resistance to colonial oppression. When he calls Englanda ‘mother bird’ it is an apt vindication of his problematic identity which is an obsessive themein the poetry of Derek Walcott. He too, like Walcott, draws inspiration from the Africanresistance to colonial aggression. The multi-cultural and the multi racial crises of his peopleare his recurrent concerns. The Rastafarian Movement in Jamaica and its repercussions toofind their expression in his works.

In the array of Caribbean novelists in diaspora V.S. Naipaul is a class of his own. Beingdomiciled in England at an early age, his stance towards his native Caribbean is quite differentfrom that of his contemporaries.

Though one can come across in his works so many references about the West Indies and‘the East Indies’, his ancestral lands, the general tempo of his writings is one of disenchant-ment and frustration. He is of the opinion that the Caribbean search for identity is a massivefailure.

When we think about the growth of the West Indian poetry in the latter half of the 20th

Century, an epoch making event that took place in 1971 in Jamaica could not be overlooked.That is the Conference of the Association for Commonwealth Literature and Language Studies(ACLALS) at the University of the West Indies (UWI) in Mona, Jamaica. The theme of theconference was “the function of the writer in Society” and the conference turned out to be aliteral “enactment of national identity in poetry, fiction and criticism” (JCL 6:2 (Dec., 1971),120-26). This conference, the first of its kind in the whole of the West Indies, was a concertedattempt by the Caribbean writers to mark clearly the contours of Caribbean literature forredefining the Caribbean aesthetics in the post-war, post Independence scenario. It was wellresponded to by novelists like V.S. Naipaul and poets like Edward Brathwaite and DerekWalcott. The Conference and the BBC’s radio broadcast on Caribbean literature called“Caribbean Voices” and the publication of literary journals such as Bim, The CaribbeanQuarterly, Kyk – Over-al, Savacou and so on from different parts of the West Indies, alladded a new vigour and vitality to Caribbean literature, especially poetry.

Two colossal figures in the Caribbean poetry of the post-colonial era are Brathwaiteand Walcott. Derek Walcott, the St. Lucian poet, was born in Castries, the capital of St.Lucia in 1930 son of Warwick Walcott and Alix Walcott. His grandmothers were black andgrandfathers white and hence by birth he was a ‘Mulatto’. His ‘Mulatto angst’ is discerniblethrough out his work, both poetry and drama. Being the Nobel Laureate of 1992 he has beenregarded as a representative voice in Caribbean Poetry which is an expression of the postcolonial predicament in the West Indies. In his book-length autobiographical poem AnotherLife he defines himself as “a prodigy of the wrong age and colour” (CP 145). His masterpiecepoem is Omeros which has been rightly acclaimed as a ‘Caribbean epic’. His entire poetic anddramatic output is wonderfully rich in metaphors, classical allusions and Caribbean folkloresand hence he has been classified as an elite poet by the critics. All through his works he has

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been engaged in the task of purifying the English tongue, his colonial legacy, by a deft fusionof the Western and the Creole elements in the language. His first collection of poetry In aGreen Night (1964) itself drew wide attention and it evoked the critical response from RobertGraves, an eminent poet, that “Derek Walcott handles English with a closer understandingof its inner magic than most (if not any) of his contemporaries” (qtd in Robert D. Hamner 1).His subsequent collections of poetry entitled ‘The Castaway and Other Poems (1965), TheGulf (1969), Another Life (1973) The Fortunate Traveller (1981), The Arkansas Testament(1987), Omeros (1990), The Odyssey (1993), The Bourty (1997), The White Egrets (2010) allreveal his earnest attempts at expressing the Caribbean sentiments of dispossession, diasporaand the cravings for a New World Adamic vision of being and becoming.

While awarding the Nobel Prize for literature in 1992 for his magnificent work Omeros,the Nobel Committee pointed out that his works are a brilliant artist’s response to the“complexity of his own situation” (qtd in Dutt 141). Through his works Walcott makes anearnest attempt at proving that the Naipaulian indictment that “nothing has been createdin the West Indies” (Middle Passage 27) is baseless. His literary works exemplify that hebeing a modern Crusoe, seizes upon the fragments at hand to demonstrate that “Somethingnew can arise like phoenix, out of imperial ashes” (Hamner 2). His poetry and drama arethe vindication of his aesthetic theory expressed in his innumerable essays and articles, mostnotably “What the Twilight Says: Essays,” “The Muse of History”, “The Caribbean: Cultureor Mimicry,” “Antilles: The Fragments of Epic memory”.

As Robert Hamner rightly points out, “In poetry as on stage, Derek Walcott rewrites tra-dition, expanding and renewing in the most profound sense of the word. Perhaps the crowningrecognition of this achievement is his Nobel prize for literature, awarded in December 1992”(Hamner 12).

Another noteworthy representative voice in the Caribbean poetry is that of Edward Brath-waite. This poet from Barbados is also a historian by profession. Though his poetry too isobsessed with the colonial question as in the case of Derek Walcott, his approach to theCaribbean search for identity is quite different from that of Walcott. His exploration of theCaribbean identity has been rooted in his African experience. He had spent years in Ghana,before returning to the West Indies. His poetry is concerned with the question of the Blackidentity and he traces this issue through its traditional overtone, emotions and other culturalmotifs. In his search for identity his reference point is Africa and its prestine culture andreligion. His magnum opus, the trilogy named The Arrivants (1973) is a work of epic mag-nitude. This groundbreaking work is a “poetic discussion of Caribbean writing as it evolves,surmounts its alienation from dominant literatures and finds fulfilment within itself (Duttxxvi). He has played a crucial role in making poetry a popular genre in the Caribbean andthis has carved him a nitche in Caribbean literature as a “Public poet” (qtd in Hamner 221).Through his valorization of the African traditions and its folk culture as the reference pointsfor the reawakening of the Caribbean literature, he belongs to a school of ‘negritude poets’in the Caribbean who also highlight the role of the Caribbean creoles in the expression of theCaribbean ethos rooted in the African cultural legacy.

Patricia Ismond’s article “Walcott Versus Brathwaite” is a scholarly exegesis of the literary

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contributions and the seemingly dialectical aesthetic stands expressed by these two authenticvoices of Caribbean literature.

Though there has been a tendency among the critics to brand Walcott a ‘private poet’ andBrathwaite ‘a public poet’ on the basis of the mode of expression of their aesthetic sensibilityand poetic mission, Ismond tries to prove that this type of categorization is baseless. Shequotes Gordon Rohlehr who holds this approach as false and misleading. Rohlehr states that“Each of these poets in his different way is at once ‘public’ and ‘private’ (LHYXI : 2 (July1970: 178). Ismond’s rejoinder in this context is worth noting. She states:

When one regards Brathwaite as a “Public poet”, it is not at all to underestimate hiscapacity for a deep personal involvement in the psychic and spiritual disturbances he presents.The point is that Brathwaite has undertaken to present certain aspects of the experience ofa group, suffers in his own person for them as a representative, and always in relation tohis vision of their collective destiny. The epic endeavour behind the trilogy demands theheightened awareness and sensitivity without which the poem could not begin to be written.There is not the sense of Brathwaite as an isolated figure – which is pervasive in Walcott’spoetry - for this very reason : that his is a representative posture (Hamner 221)

Conclusion

Whatever be the categorisation and the resultant controversies, one thing is quite clear thatboth these poets are expressing their attitude towards their native lands, their landscape andpeople, in their distinctly unique way. Their approaches, however diverse, enrich the WestIndian poetry. Both are engaged in the task of redefining the Caribbean sensibility in thepost colonial, post war socio-political and cultural scenario. The efforts initiated by thesegreat poets are taken up by a long line of young writers in the Caribbean. The fact thatthe Nobel Prize for literature in 1992 went to an otherwise insignificant Caribbean islandSt. Lucia through Derek Walcott is an ample vindication of the World’s recognition of theliterary efforts going on in the Caribbean.

Works Cited

Birbalsingh, Frank. Frontiers of Caribbean Literature in English. New York: St. Martin’sPress, 1996.

Breiner, Laurence A. An Introduction to West Indian Poetry. Cambridge: Cambridge UP,1998

Brown Stewart, ed. The Art of Derek Walcott. Dufour: Seren Books, 1991.

Dutt, Ajanta, ed. Neruda, Walcott and Atwood: Poets of the Amercas. Delhi: Worldview,2002.

Hamner, Robert D., ed. Critical Perspectives on Derek Walcott. Boulder: Lynne ReinnerPublishers, 1996.

Ismond, Patricia. ‘Walcott Versus Brathwaite”. Critical Perspectives on Derek Walcott.Ed. Robert D. Hamner. Boulder: Lynne Reinner Publishers, 1996.

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Narasumhaiah, C.D. Report on “A.C.L.A.L.S. Conference on Commonwealth Literature :Kingston, Jamaica, 3-9. January, 1971, “Journal of Commonwealth Literature 6:2 (Dec.1971).

Naipaul, V.S. The Middle Passage. London: Andre Deutsch, 1967.

Thieme John. Derek Walcott. Manchester: Manchester UP., 1999.

Walcott, Derek. Collected Poems 1948-1984. London: Faber and Faber, 1992.

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EFFECTIVENESS OF VALUE ANALYSIS MODEL INDEVELOPING VALUING COMPETENCIES

A.Manju and Dr. T.M. Mollykutty

INTRODUCTION

“Education according to the Indian traditions is not merely a means of earning a living; noris it only a nursery of thought or a school for citizenship. It is initiation into the life of spirit,training of human souls in the pursuit of truth, and the practice of virtue. It is a second birth,dvivitiyam Janma.”

University Education Commission (1948 – 1949)

Education has a very important role in human life. The process of acquiring educationcontinues throughout human life. The garden of life will be colourless and without fragrancein the absence of education. God created the human being strong, intelligent, right andbeautiful. The human life designed by God has three aspects – the biological, the spiritualand the social. The biological aspect of human life is maintained and transmitted by nutritionand reproduction, the spiritual aspect of human life is maintained by prayer and meditation,and the social aspect of human life is maintained and transmitted by education.

A good teacher is the light of the world. He can remove the darkness of ignorance fromthe minds of children and even from the face of the world. The Guru of the ancient Indiansystem was the candle of the society and of the disciples. The character and personality ofthe pupils cannot be developed if the teacher, who is the model to be followed, lacks characterand personality. “Example is better than percept” is an old saying and is absolutely true inthe teaching profession.

A teacher should be kept away from tension, anxiety, fear, pressure, strain and stressin day-to-day life to contribute effectively to the field of education. The end product ofeducation is based on four factors namely, the teacher, the taught, the curricula and thelearning environment. It is difficult to list these factors in any hierarchical order.

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VARIABLES

The following variables are used in the study:

VALUE ANALYSIS MODEL

Value Analysis Model was developed by Coombs and Frankael (1977). This model is basedon the theories of moral reasoning of Lawrence Kohlberg (1970). Social and moral dilemmascan be resolved through this model. The following are the important steps in value analysismodel:

� Presenting the dilemma

� Identification and clarification of value conflict

� Asking for conceivable alternatives

� Asking for possible consequence of each alternative

� Asking for evidences to support the likelihood of each consequence occurring

� Asking for evaluation of desirability of likely consequences

� Asking for judgements as to which alternatives seem best and why

Value analysis aims at solving Social, Moral and Personal problems surroundingsocial issues.

Valuing Competencies are the skills, which we use, in the valuing process. Valuing is thetendency of a person to show preference. Valuing is a process, which is gradual and steady’it is a process wherein an individual prices and esteems a principle dearly. The process ofvaluing is what we go through when we make a judgement about things, events and peoplethat we encounter in our day- to- day life. In valuing process, a principle is priced, held inrespect, deemed worthy, esteemed and proclaimed. Valuing competencies involve the skills

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STARS: Int. Journal (Humanities and Social Sciences) 2010 EFFECTIVENESS OF VALUE ...

which develop sensitivity and awareness of what is right and what is wrong and what isbeautiful, and the ability to choose the right values in accordance with one’s conception ofthe highest ideals of life and internalizing and realizing them in thought and action.

OBJECTIVES

1. To find out the valuing competencies of student teachers.

2. To study the significant difference, if any, between the valuing competencies of studentteachers of experimental group and control group based on gender before the instruc-tion.

3. To find out the effectiveness of value analysis model in developing valuing competenciesamong student teachers.

4. To study the significant difference if any between the valuing competencies of studentteachers of experimental group and control group based on gender after the instruction.

HYPOTHESES

1. There is no significant difference in the mean pre-test scores of valuing competenciesof student teachers of experimental group and control group based on gender.

2. There is no significant difference in the mean post-test scores of valuing competenciesof student teachers of experimental group and control group based on gender.

3. There is no significant difference in the mean post-test scores of valuing competenciesof student teachers of experimental group and experimental group based on teachingstrategies.

RESEARCH DESIGN

METHODOLOGYExperimental Research Method was adopted in the study.

SAMPLEThe sample is a small proportion of a population selected for the purpose of repre-

senting the population. The sample selected for the study consisted of hundred SecondaryLevel Teacher Trainees of Pathanamthitta District. The sample includes male and femalestudent teachers. Purposive sampling technique was used for selecting sample from the pop-ulation. The samples were drawn from University College of Teacher Education, Elanthoor,Pathanamthitta district.

TOOLS OF THE STUDY

1. Value Competency Scale (developed by the investigator)

2. Instructional material based on Value Analysis model (developed by the investigator)

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3. Worksheets on Value Analysis Model

PROCEDURE OF THE STUDYFor the present study, Non-equivalent Pre-test Post-test Control group design was em-

ployed. After the selection of sample, investigator was administered Value Competency Scaleas pre-test. Instructional material based on Value analysis model was implemented to the ex-periment group and control group was continued with existing method. After the completionof the instruction, Value Competency Scale was administered as post-test. Thus, obtainedscripts were scored and analysed using statistical treatments.

STATISTICAL ANALYSISThe following statistical techniques were employed for the analysis of data collection.

1. Mean

2. Standard deviation

3. ‘t’ – test

ANALYSIS AND INTERPRETATION

VALUING COMPETENCIES OF STUDENT TEACHERS BASED ON GEN-DER

(Before and after instruction)

Table 1The significant difference between mean pre-test scores of Valuing Competencies of

Student Teachers of experimental and control group based on GenderVariable Category Number Mean SD ‘t’ valueValuingCompeten-cies

Experimentalgroup

Male 32 255.69 23.39 0.732@

Female 18 250.17 26.76Controlgroup

Male 30 252.50 25.49 0.439@

Female 20 256.20 27.96

Table 2The significant difference between mean post-test scores of Valuing Competencies of

Student Teachers of experimental group and control group based on GenderVariable Category Number Mean SD ‘t’ valueValuingCompeten-cies

Experimentalgroup

Male 32 299.06 21.81 0.440@

Female 18 295.56 29.61Controlgroup

Male 30 268.57 22.18 0.206@

Female 20 270.10 27.96@ Not Significant

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STARS: Int. Journal (Humanities and Social Sciences) 2010 EFFECTIVENESS OF VALUE ...

Table 1 and 2 shows that all the calculated ‘t’ values 0.732, 0.439, 0.440, 0.206 are lessthan the table value 1.98 at 0.05 level of significance. This shows that there is no significantdifference between the mean pre-test and post-test scores of valuing competencies of studentteachers of experimental and control group based on gender. So, the Null Hypotheses “Thereis no significant difference between mean pre-test scores of valuing competencies of studentteachers of experimental group and control group based on gender” and “There is no signifi-cant difference between mean post-test scores of valuing competencies of student teachers ofexperimental group and control group based on gender” are accepted.

EFFECT OF INSTRUCTIONAL MATERIAL BASED ON VALUE ANALY-SIS MODEL IN DEVELOPING VALUING COMPETENCIES OF STUDENTTEACHERS

Table 3

The significant difference between mean post-test scores of ValuingCompetencies of Student Teachers based on Teaching Strategies

Variable Category Number Mean SD ‘t’ value

ValuingCompe-tencies

TeachingStrate-gies

Value Anal-ysis Model

50 297.80 24.66 5.84*

ExistingMethod

50 270.18 22.63

*Significant at 0.01 level

From the table 3, it is clear that the calculated ‘t’ value 5.84 is greater than the table value2.58 at 0.01 level of significance. This shows that there is a significant difference betweenthe mean post-test scores of valuing competencies of Student Teachers based on teachingstrategies. So, the Null Hypothesis “There is no significant difference between mean post-testscores of valuing competencies of student teachers based on teaching strategies” is rejected.

MAJOR FINDINGS

1. The valuing competencies of student teachers under experimental and control groupbased on gender before the instruction is not significant.

2. The valuing competencies of student teachers under experimental and control groupbased on gender after the instruction is not significant.

3. The valuing competencies of student teachers under experimental group are found tobe higher than the control group.

4. Value Analysis Model is more effective in developing valuing competencies of studentteachers than existing method.

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EDUCATIONAL IMPLICATIONS

The study revealed that the student teachers trained through the value analysis model ofteaching can transfer the valuing competencies to their students. The training on value anal-ysis model will solve the value conflict of all people including the teachers and students. Thestudy has implications for students, teachers, teacher educators, curriculum planner, admin-istrators and education policy makers in understanding the effectiveness of value analysismodel for developing valuing competencies. The studies have special reference to teacherswho are teaching value education.

Instructional material based on Value Analysis model for developing valuing competenciescan be used for further studies. The value competency scale can be used further to find outthe valuing competencies of students of different categories. The students can implementand practically use the valuing competencies in their daily life activities to solve various lifeconflicts.

CONCLUSION

The study persuasively and conclusively reveals that, the instructional material on valueanalysis model is effective in improving valuing competencies among student teachers. Thestudent teachers who are the future teachers can transfer the valuing competencies to theirstudents using value analysis model which help them to solve the value conflicts in their life.

REFERENCES:

S.R. Bhatt, Knowledge, Value and Education, Gain publishing House, New Delhi.

Dhand et. al.,Value Clarification Strategies, H. National Psychological Corporation, Agra.

Frankael. R, How to teach about Values, Englewood Cliffs NS: Prentice Hall

Passi. B.K and Singh, Value Education, National Psychological Corporation, Agra.

Effectiveness of Value Analysis Model in developing Value Clarifying Competencies of Stu-dent Teachers, Passi. B.K and Singh. P, Indore, DAVV.

Raths et.al., Values and Teaching (1966), Charles E. Merrill, Columbus, OH

www.dauniv.ac.in

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RURAL DEVELOPMENT IN THE PERSPECTIVE OFGANDHIAN IDEOLOGY

Dr. Rosamma Mathew

ABSTRACT

The world has gone far ahead in its material growth. Inventions have become popularized,communities have become stabilized and people have become sophisticated. We the citizensof the new millennium are destined to tune with the new wave of developments happeningin the entire world now. It is the apt time to analyze the significance of Indian rural set up,oriented by Gandhian ideology. In the Indian context rural community is a small group ofpeople mostly depending on agriculture and allied occupations. In this juncture one shouldbe aware about the entire situations and all the scenario of immense growth, developmentand problems. Today the ideal of human unity is making its way to the front of our con-sciousness. In the midst of diversified elements there are two schools of thought in front of us.One wants to divide the world into cities and the other into villages. The village civilizationand the city civilization are totally different in certain aspects. One set depends on industrialgoods and the other sets on handicrafts. In the Indian context we are giving preference tothe handicrafts. Hence all these parameters may lead to the integrated developments of theentire society. The extent to which a country has modernized or developed dictates its powerand importance on the international level. Here we can notice remarkable changes in theconcept of rural development oriented by Gandhian Philosophy.

INTRODUCTION

From the very beginning basically our country has been an agricultural one. It is a greatland of several villages and is rightly called the country of villages. More than seventy five %of the people of India live in villages. Mahatma Gandhi, the Father of our Nation is alwaysupheld the view that India is constituted of her villages i.e. India lives in the villages and ifvillages perish India will perish too.1A rural community is a cluster of people living withina narrow territorial radius who share a common way of life. It has a long history of its ownand has become almost natural with human life. Our country can never make progress unlessits rural areas and conditions of villagers are fully developed and changed. India’s prosperitydepends upon the agricultural produce of the rural areas. But our rural areas have beenneglected and they remain backwardness. Even after sixty five years of our Independence

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STARS: Int. Journal (Humanities and Social Sciences) 2010 Dr. Rosamma Mathew

not much improvement has been brought about in the conditions of Indians in all scenarios.In the educational field too we have to face several challenges. In this contest the vision ofMahatma Gandhi is vital and significant to tackle with our problems. He says villages are thetreasure houses of resources. It is viewed that villages are the centers and basic unit of social,economic and political developments of any kind.2. At the same time Gandhi opposed thechanges and developments which undermine the role and importance of villages. He wantedto remove the poverty of villages and make improvement in the miserable conditions of them.His lifelong efforts, insights and action programmes are the basis of the reconstructed ruraldevelopments. We can see that Gandhi laid much emphasis on the uplift of the rural peoplewho are the backbone of the Indian culture.

GANDHIAN APPROACH TO RURAL DEVELOPMENT

The views of Mahatma Gandhi on various aspects of rural development are known from hiswritings, speeches and correspondence with his co-workers and public. Its codification and di-mensions of developments and problems are described as Gandhian philosophy and ideology.Gandhian approach contains a solution to both immediate and ultimate problems. Gandhistated that man is the centre of all activities and his well being is the ultimate goal3. Thechange in man is basic to any change in social and economic transformation. His approachesto solve the problems of villagers were much related to other problems like social, cultural,political and the like. It means he adopted a holistic or comprehensive approach in relationwith rural systems. The Gandhian approach sowed the seeds of micro level planning basedon decentralized administration. It is very interesting to note that he identified the problemsof “tiny villages” and searched for the availability of resources to solve the problems at grassroot level and advocated bottom up approach. He had the vision that the village reconstruc-tion could not be on a temporary basis but on permanent basis. Gandhian philosophy offersa practical solution to the problems of Indian villages based on Sarvodaya and Antyodayaprinciples. It aims at bringing a social revolution in villages along with improving the qual-ity of life of the people. It was not restricted to Indians alone .His message was not for aparticular sector time but for the future of mankind. He profoundly advocated the need foran integrated rural development strategy.

AN IDEAL VILLAGE IN THE VISION OF MAHATMA GANDHI

Indian villages are the treasure houses of resources and the centers of the basic social, eco-nomic and political developments. The Gandhian vision of an ideal village is as a perfectstage of simple life backed by good sanitation, sufficient water facilities, light and ventila-tion. He says rural development means the indigenous and integral development of villages.Also he had the vision of the utilization of the available man power and the resources of thevillages for the productive purposes of the village itself. An ideal village in accordance withGandhi had many specialties. There will be a village common land for grassing cattle, aco-operative dairy, primary and secondary schools and Panchayat for settling disputes4. Allthese manifest the specialties of .rural life. It is a fact that the village communities shouldrevive in accordance with the need of the people. The resources of the villages should bemade productive and useful to the entire community. The village community produces its

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own grains and its own Khadi needed to its people and an ideal village will contain intelligenthuman beings. It is the centre of the reduction of poverty. After all there must be a cleanatmosphere and tranquility of life to one and all without any demarcations.

ECONOMIC LIFE ORIENTED BY RURAL TECHONOLOGY

Since economic production is the basic activity of the humans, the mode of production playsa determining role in shaping the social structure of any kind of society. It is more suitableto cope with the rural patterns in the overall life backed by agrarian set up. Rural society isbased predominantly on agriculture. Village agriculture is sharply distinguished from urbanindustry for many reasons. We can see that from the very beginning in the rural scenarioand in the process of development Gandhian ideals of economic and social changes made astrong platform to liberate the people from the monopoly of existing orders. On the otherhand the rural life in India depended on varied factors namely the agricultural population,level of agricultural labour, position of non-agricultural rural population, their living con-ditions and competition for survival.5 All these substances in a way laid the foundation forthe developmental platform in the village based on the needs and infrastructures providedby Gandhian ideals.

RURAL DEVELOPMENT A NEW SCENARIO OF DEVELOPMENT

As we all know development is a process which includes changes backed by certain ideals.Since we are the inheritors of a rural civilization, the geographical position, vastness of thepopulation and the climate of the country have designed its rural background .On the otherhand with the bulk of the population residing in rural areas we cannot go forward with anurban economy6. Our villages are still in the bullock cart age. They don’t have enough roadsand communication facilities. In such a situation our urban cities can do good things to upliftthe conditions of the rural population. It can be made possible only when the cities realizethe duty of making an adequate return to the villages for the strength and sustenance whichthey derive from them rather than exploiting them on account of the collection of raw mate-rials and the question of marketing. In my opinion it is better to have a healthy relationshipto be maintained between the rural community and the urban community in the scenario ofsocial relationship, community based developmental programmes and the like. This is in away a task in front of us to be achieved within a short span of time without spoiling any onesdemand and thirst.

RURAL DEVELOPMENT AND EDUCATIONAL CHANGES

Our higher education till now was urban oriented. The existing condition says that the fewvillage students who were able to climb up the ladder of higher education and who adoptedurban life became segregated from the rest of the community. In this juncture, we feel theneed for evolving a commendable system of education. There is special need of higher in-stitution of rural studies. Hence emphasis should be laid on agriculture, veterinary scienceand on all those subjects which are exclusively related to rural life7. Moreover, educationand rural development aims at the transformation of the individual in life. It includes theinculcation of values like self-respect, self-sufficiency and self-reliance. “By self—sufficiency

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Gandhi means that villages must be self—sufficient in regard to food ,cloth and other basicnecessities.”8 In other sense lack of education and scientific knowledge has kept poverty inthe country. But knowledge of modern methods of agriculture and living has to be impartedto the common man to increase the production and promote the healthy living. Provisionshould be made to extend desirable backing to the rural community in every department oflife.

URBANISM BACKED BY RURAL LIFE; AN ANALYSES

Urbanization is closely linked to modernization, industralization and sociological process ofrationalization. Its rate varies between regions. As more and more people leave villages andfarms to live in cities, many problems occurs. From the very beginning of civilized life manstarted a kind of migration or movement on many reasons namely food, shelter, job facilitiesand for socialization. Though the richness of the urban life has the backing of rural culture,the village communities cannot get due consideration in all matters. For example Indianvillages produced and supplied to the Indian towns and cities all their wants but they keepto open their markets for foreign goods .It led to the villages being drained of their wealth.On the other hand it is the duty of the cities to extend adequate return to the villages fortheir services and strength showed upon them rather than exploiting them. There must behealthy and cordial relationship maintained between the rural and urban population. Thevirtues of rural civilization have been the nutshell of the urban life. According to Gandhi,rural development means the indigenous and integral development of villages9. The availableresources of the villages should be made productive and use in the villages itself. At the sametime the urban life must collect the positive elements of the rural life and make use of it forthe integrated development of the community.

CONCLUSION

India lives in her villages. So where is the villages are developed to a level that influencesenough food, a clean environment, adequate health facilities and unhampered intellectualdevelopment we cannot expect India to be developed. Let us hope that through —- effort,planning and —– we will be able to achieve this dream, which was the great dream of theMahatma.

References

Bernstein, H. (1971). “Modernization theory and the sociological study of development”.Journal of Development Studies .p.238

Anjana Chaudhary, Rural Sociology, Dominant Publishers, New Delhi1995 p.123

Cary, S.India lives in Village, Sterline Publishers, and Bombay.2001p.257

Black, Cyril. The Dynamics of Modernization: A Study in Comparative History (1966) p.85

Blokland, Hans, and Nancy Smyth Van Weesep, eds. Modernization and Its Political Con-sequences: Weber, Mannheim, and Schumpeter (2006) p.76

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Ibid p.215

Parylal, The Last Phase of Gandhi. Navajeevan publishing House.Ahammadabad.P.215

Ramsy.E.India in the past, Viks Publishers.Gujrat 1998 p.64

Saran A. K., Sociology in India, New York, 1979 P.214

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LIFESTYLE DISEASES A THREAT TO KERALAECONOMY

Dr. Mary Senterla P.S.

Health is defined by the World Health Organization as ‘a state of complete physical,mental and social well-being and not merely absence of disease or infirmity’. The right to goodhealth is a fundamental right and all the nations around the world are giving predominantimportance to this goal. It is the duty of the state to provide the essentials to satisfy thebasic human needs and to improve the quality of life. The development of any nation dependson the health of its people. The National Council of Applied Economic Research (NCAER,1992) considers the health sector an important indicator of the level of economic development.Health has importance in three distinct ways:

1. Intrinsic importance

2. Instrumental importance at personal and social level

3. Empowerment importance (Mahadevia, 2000)

In essential sense health is important because it is a direct measure of human well-being. Itis fulfillment of life and a valuable achievement in itself. In the instrumental sense, betterhealth is important in many ways. It enables . . . . to reduce medical costs at the governmentand household level. Better health of the children leads to the decline in educational dropoutsand higher level of knowledge attainment. Better education and knowledge leads to betterpaid jobs and larger benefits to posterity.

Kerala’s achievements in health have been universally recognized and praised. In spite ofits economic backwardness, it has provoked many analysts to talk about the unique “KeralaModel Health” as worth emulating by other developed countries. The hallmark of Keralamodel, is low cost of health care and universal accessibility and availability even to thepoor sections of the society. It is a model of socio-economic development that envisagesa people-centred rather than growth centred approach to development. The basic messageof the model is very clear and profound: the objective of development should not merelybe economic growth but the expansion of people’s capabilities and freedom. The idea ofcapabilities and freedom is highly stressed by Amartya Sen. The end product of the modelis a conflation of two contradictory situations – low economic growth rate with high index

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of human development (Panikker 1999, Kutty et. al, 1993). The human development indexprepared by UNDP takes into account three critical variables, including, literacy rate, lifeexpectancy and per capita income adjusted for purchasing power parity.

Kerala presents a deplorable picture in comparison with other states in the country.As statistics shows, the dependency load for India was 63, but 42.34 in Kerala, the toiletcoverage was much wider in Kerala than that of India, and immunization percentage was 44in India and 74 in Kerala in recent past. It is gratifying to note that for serious diseases, theimmunization coverage has gone up to around 80 % in Kerala. The life span is much higherin Kerala compared to other Indian states and is well comparable to developed countries.

In Kerala, the birth and death rates have been low from the early years of the last century.It is mainly due to high literacy. Similarly expectation of life at birth has been consistentlyhigher in Kerala since 1960 and the latest figure put it at 72 for males and 75 for femalesas against 64 and 65 in India, respectively. In Kerala, the crude death rate for female is 2.3points lower than that for males. (www.idrc) The high female literacy of the state and thewidely accepted health indication viz., death rate, Infant Mortality Rate and expectation oflife at birth too are more advanced than in the rest of the states in India and are even com-parable with developed countries, such that in Kerala, the expectation of life has increased,IMR is very low and there is decline in death rate. Also the health awareness among thecitizens of the state maintains to be at a very high level.

Health Development Indicators- Kerala & India -2007

Health Indicators Kerala IndiaBirth rate (per’000 population) 15.00 23.80Death rate ( ,, ) 6.40 7.60Infant mortality rate ( ,, ) 14.00 58.00Maternal mortality ratio(per lakh/live births) 110 300Total Fertility rate (per woman) 1.70 2.90Couple Protection rate (%) 72.10 52

Life at Birth

Male 70.90 61.80Female (per’000 population) 76.00 63.50Total 73.45 62.70

Source : Directorate of Health Services

*Refers to the period 2001-03

Kerala’s achievement of TFR in spite of low per capita income disproves the theory thateconomic development is an essential prerequisite for reduction in fertility. High status ofwomen, female literacy, age of marriage and low infant mortality were thought to be thefactors behind the rapid fall in the fertility rate in Kerala.

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Kerala has shown best results with regard to most of the health hazards but the biggestparadox is that Kerala has been identified as the state with highest morbidity prevalence inIndia.(Sheriff 1995). It has been estimated that 181 out of every thousand people in Keralaare morbid due to any of the illness prevalence and urban Kerala records the highest malemorbidity prevalence rate of 185 per thousand population in India. Kerala has also beenidentified as a state with highest percentage of non-infectious illnesses reported both in ruraland urban in India. This hike in non-infectious or chronic illness in Kerala is in the agedpopulation of Kerala. When cardiovascular deaths contribute to nearly half the deaths ina population, the state of health of the people is far from satisfactory. The tale that thedead tells us is a picture of a highly morbid society, weighed down by heart disease, stroke,high blood pressure, cancer and diabetes. Collectively these diseases are called modernlifestyle diseases, denoting the negative side of westernization of our culture. Careless andunauthorized or sneaky use of certain highly dangerous chemicals causes damage to thehealth of a whole community as in the case of endosulfan in the Kasargode district. Manyhave succumbed to various ailments. Many are still dragging their miserable lives beingvictims to certain diseases quite unknown in medical history. It is mere cruelty on the partof the state of Kerala and nobody can be excused for this is indifference to human suffering.

Coming to lifestyle diseases that appear to increase in frequency as countries becomemore industrialized and people live longer. Lifestyle diseases are a result of an inappropriaterelationship of people with their environment. The onset of these lifestyle diseases is insidious,they take years to develop, and once encountered do not lend themselves easily to cure. Thesediseases are different from other disease because they are potentially preventable, and canbe lowered with changes in diet, lifestyle and environment. They can include Alzheimersdisease, atheroscherosis, asthma, cancer, chronic liver disease or cirrhosis, chronic obstructivepulmonary disease, Type 2diabetics, heart disease, metabolic syndrome, Crohn’s diseasenephritis or chronic renal failure, osteoporosis, acne, stroke, depression and obesity.

As the name suggests, lifestyle diseases are a result of the way we lead our lives. Theseare also named as diseases of longevity or diseases of civilization. Lifestyle diseases are theresult of an unhealthy-relationship of people with their environment and food especially fastfood prepared in unhealthy surroundings using poor or low quality substances.

These diseases are widespread, as countries become industrialized and people live longer.The way these begin, is dangerous. It takes years to develop and then become so much apart of our lives that it cannot be easily cured even with the most effective medicine our dietis changing day by day, from high nutritional food . Our hunt for junk food, has contributedto the era of lifestyle diseases. Reduction in physical activity and exercise has also added tothe scenario. Substance abuse, like tobacco smoking and alcohol drinking may also increasethe risk of certain diseases like cancer of the mouth and throat in the case of tobacco andliver and kidney problems using alcohol.

The emergence of the silent epidemic of lifestyle diseases poses disastrous consequencefor our state. The prevalence of diabetes mellitus and high blood pressure in Kerala is muchhigher than the reported estimates in the West. While about 8% of adults are diabetic inKerala, the proportion in Kerala ranges from six percent in rural areas to nearly 20% in the

34


cities. By a most conservative estimate there are about 1.5 million diabetic people in Kerala.It is interesting to note that both infectious diseases like dengue fever, diarrhea, lep-

tospirosis, etc. and the so called lifestyle diseases are both prevalent in Kerala. Moreover theincidence of many lifestyle diseases is more than the national average (Table 1 & 2)

Table OneIncidence of Life Style (Chronic) Diseases

(per lakh population)

Name of Disease India KeralaHypertension 589 1433Diabetes 221 980Heart Disease 385 914Mental Disease 132 283

Economic Review: 2004 State Planning Board, 2005

Table TwoAttack of Communicable Diseases

Diseases Attack Death

2002 2003 2002 2003Dengue Fever 263 3861 1 67Leptospirosis 2928 2162 199 98Diarrhoea 539863 506034 26 16

Economic Review 2004 State Planning Board, 2005

Ageing is an important stage in the demographic transition in the sense that people intheir old age succumb to many illnesses and most of them are chronic in nature which requirestreatment for long periods. The fast food habits of the people coupled with lack of exercisealso account for the hike in chronic illness in Kerala.

Recent surveys in different strata of society in Kerala reveal that one out of three adults inKerala is hypertensive. Hypertension, the insidious killer contributes to heart attacks, strokeand kidney failure in addition to eye complications. Hypertension too is a lifelong diseaseand needs careful sensible management throughout our life

Overweight and obesity are indications of an increasingly indolent society. Obesity is riskfactor for heart attack, hypertension, breast cancer, diabetes and joint problems. Most ofthe lifestyle diseases are woven into the fabric of overweight and obesity that exists in ourpopulation. The most tragic picture is the alarming rise in suicides in our state. Eight% ofdeaths is from suicides. The tragedy of Kerala is that the suicide rate of women in Keralawhich stands at 31 per 100,000 women is the highest reported anywhere in the world. Itpresents the gruesome picture of the mental health of our people which is alarming.

Medical expenditure has become a significant component of household monthly expen-diture. The increased morbidity prevalence rates and health care expenditure have deeper

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STARS: Int. Journal (Humanities and Social Sciences) 2010 Dr. Mary Senterla P.S.

societal implications. Increased medical expenditure has deteriorated the health status of therural poor and other vulnerable groups.

Health in Kerala, is passing through a crisis, which the state has never experienced sincethe formation of the state in 1956. The State is going through a radical transition in thesocio-economic and cultural scenario. The lifestyle of the Keralites is undergoing a drasticchange. The outcomes of the changes in lifestyle- diseases, communicative illness, epidemics,etc. affect the health sector of the state. These diseases are causing unimaginable threat tothe economy of the state. The dominant lifestyle diseases like diabetes, high blood pressure,mental illness, cardiac problems are very common in almost all households in Kerala.

Though Kerala succeeded to a great extent in reducing the vagaries of filariasis majorpublic health diseases like small pox, filarial and malaria, diseases like respiratory infections,acute diarrhea etc are on the increase. Among lifestyle diseases cardio vascular diseases,cancer, hypertension and diabetes, etc. are emerging as the severe health problems of thestate. Sedentary lifestyles, lack of physical activities and obesity, severe eye problems thatcome as a result of excessive exposure to TV and Computers increase the risk of chronicdiseases. Cancer in all forms, is causing about 12% of deaths throughout the world. In 2004the Regional Cancer Centre at Trivandrum alone treated 10,225 patients for different leadingsites of Cancer. (Government of Kerala 2005)

Kerala spends fairly a substantial amount on medical and public health, compared toother Indian states which is evident from per capita government health expenditure. InKerala it was Rs. 238/ in 2001-02 as against the all India average of Rs.191/ including theinvestments of local governments. Per capita expenditure on health increased to Rs. 267/ in2002-03 and to Rs.312/ in 2003-04. (B.N.Ghosh, Padmaja. D.Namboodiri, 2009)

Dependence on private health care is quite high even among the lower expenditures lassesand rural areas, especially for outpatient treatment due to lack of medicines and suppliesin govt. hospitals. What the people can save from a govt. hospital or health centre is theconsultation fee of Rs.20/ or Rs.25/ for which they have to waste on whole day due to rush inthe government hospitals. The available facilities in both private hospitals and govt. healthcentres are quite inadequate, and not up to the mark. The speciality centres are inaccessibleto the ordinary people and marginalized sections of the society due to financial strain andlack of sufficient knowledge in the field - medical field.

Though we have retained better health care indicators, massive effort is still needed toattain health for all. Since high morbidity prevalence is the basic issue of Kerala’s healthsector, greater attention is needed to reduce the negative influences of modern life style.Safe drinking water and sanitation are to be provided to the urban and rural areas. Keralahas to undertake a massive lifestyle education programme and it should be started from thegrassroots level- from the nursery class and even up to the graduate level, if possible. Tobe more effective, the mothers can be given special lessons on child rearing sufficiently earlyso that they can have healthy citizens fully conscious of their healthy role in the societyin advocating the ideals of good health and hygiene. The thrust has to be on physicalactivity, prudent eating and abstinence from tobacco and alcohol. Early detection throughscreening for diabetes, hypertension and overweight has to be integrated into the culture of

36


the Keralites. It is high time that we rose up to the occasion. The right step at the righttime can help to eradicate the threat to Keralites.

References

Dr. B. Ekbal, Kerala Calling, May 2006, p.37-39.

Dr. C.R. Soman, Kerala Calling, January 2004, p.26-28.

Economic Review 2004, State Planning Board, 2005.

Ghosh, B.N. & Padmaja D. Namboodiri, “The Economy of Kerala Yesterday, Today andTomorrow”, Serials Publications, New Delhi, 2009.

Govt. of Kerala (2005), Report on Survey of Aged in Kerala, Dept. of Economics andStatistics, Trivandrum.

K. Rajan, Kerala Economy Trends during the Post Reform Period, Serials Publications,New Delhi, 2009.

Kutty, V.R. et al. (1993), “How Socio-economic Status affects Birth Rates and Death Ratesin Rural Kerala, India: Results of a Health Study”, International Journal of HealthServices, Vol.23.

Mahadevi, Dharshini (2000), “Health for all in Gujarat, Is it achievable?”, Economic andPolitical Weekly, 25 (35/36).

National Council for Applied Economic Research, NCAER (1992), Household Survey ofMedical Care, New Delhi, NCAER.

Panikar, P.G.K. (1999), Health Transition in Kerala, KRPLLD Discussion Paper No.10,CDS, Trivandrum.

Sharief (1995), Health Transition in India: Differentials and Determinants of Morbidity inIndia by Disaggregated Analysis, Working Paper No.57, NCAER, New Delhi.

dinesh.sharma@mailtoday.inwww.diseasescausedbyfugi.comwww.lipkart.comwww.naturalhealthprespective.comwww.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/keralawww.wikipedia.org

37


Human Rights and Globalisation: Nexus and Reflections

Sijo K. Manuel

Abstract

Human Rights are considered the greatest idea of this century and a milestone in the develop-ment of the rights of man. Innumerable declarations, conventions, covenants and legislationshave been initiated and entered into at national and international levels for the protectionand promotion of human rights. In spite of all these efforts, human rights violations continueand grow. The forces of globalisation affect the protection and promotion of human rightsor lead to the exalation of human rights violations. While the proponents of globalisationassociate it with the protection and promotion of human rights, its opponents see has syn-onymous with human rights violation. There are varied barriers seen among the countriesfor the universal acceptance of human rights. So the central question is whether the forces ofglobalisation widen or reduce the barriers on the creation of universally accepted standardsof human rights.

Introduction

Human Rights are those rights, which are essential for human existence with dignity. Theserights would enable a man to live like a man. In other words, these rights would help aman meet his basic needs of life, enjoy fundamental rights and lead a life of dignity. Theserights are given to all individuals irrespective of their race, language, religion, sex, ethnicityand nationality. Human rights are the minimum rights for being a member of human family.Every individual, whether he lives in democracy or in a dictatorship, in a rich country orin a poor country,should have access to human rights. Human rights are, thus, universal inscope. No country has the right to close the doors to these rights. Human rights belongto individuals, not to countries. Human rights have universal application and therefore areequally valuable and relevant in all nations, in all societies, in all communities and in allcultures. Every individual is entitled to have these rights1. Human rights presuppose welfareand betterment in the quality of life of every member of the society. Human rights receivedthe recognition of the international community on 10, December 1948 through a resolution ofthe General Assembly of the UN, known as Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR).

Globalisation is the most controversial concept of the current times that has evoked aworld-wide debate over its theory as well as practice. Globalisation describes a process by

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STARS: Int. Journal (Humanities and Social Sciences) 2010 Human Rights and Globalisation: Nexus ...

which regional economies, societies and cultures have become integrated through a globalnetwork of communication, transportation and trade2. It is the flow of ideas, information,capital, commodities and people. This implies that the world is becoming highly intercon-nected through economic, social, political and cultural contacts. In other words, globalisationmeans ’integrating and connecting cultures and communities in new space-time combinations,and making the world in reality and in experience more interconnected3 . Globalisation aimsat converting the whole world into one global village in which all people are increasinglyinterconnected and all the fences or barriers are removed. Though globalisation may witnessthe enjoyment of world or global market and gigantic transnational corporations, it maythreaten the human rights of the people in the world particularly in the developing and un-derdeveloped nations.

Divergence in Universality of Human Rights

Human Rights are universal since it is given to all people of the world. There is no discrimi-nation on the ground of religion, caste, sex, creed, nationality, ethnicity, language, birth, etc.in the enjoyment of these rights. But third world countries do not recognise the concept of’universality’ of human rights. To them, universality of human rights is a Western imposition,on countries with different moral standards and social traditions. A majority of the thirdworld countries feel that Western countries use human rights as an instrument for protectingtheir political and ideological hegemony.

Developed countries of the West have attained progress in socio-economic and politicalsphere. These countries also have a sound economy, improved social life and matured politicalculture. So these countries have no problem in giving maximum freedom and rights to thepeople. But the situation is just the opposite in third world countries. Lack of democraticgovernments, instability of government, poverty, unemployment, riots, epidemics etc. arethe regular features of third world countries. So these countries give prime importance tosocio-economic progress. To achieve social progress and eliminate economic inequalities,the governments of these countries are being compelled to impose certain restrictions andlimitations upon individual freedoms and rights. So the third world countries may not beable to guarantee the same extent of individual freedom and rights as the West. Third worldcountries emphasize the interest of the community whereas the Western countries stress therights of individuals. There is wide divergence so far as the concepts of human rights areconcerned.

Globalisation cuts across national boundaries, it involves flows of goods, capital, people,information, ideas, images and risks across national borders, combined with the emergenceof social networks and political institutions. It results in the creation of a global village. Thecountries of the world are divided into different categories on the basis of their economies.The forces of globalisation reduce the divergence and protect or promote human rights orwiden the gap and increase human rights violations. There are supporting and opposingviews on this regard.

Economic Globalisation and Human Rights

Economic and social human rights are related to the guarantee of minimum necessities of the

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life to human beings. In the absence of these rights the existence of human beings is likely tobe endangered. Articles 22 to 27 of the UDHR deal with economic and social rights. Theyinclude the right to social security, right to work and free choice of employment, right to restand leisure, right to standard of living and adequate health etc4.

Both the proponents and opponents of economic globalisation have their own argumentson human rights. Globalisation develops an economy, that is, it increases its wealth. Wealth-ier societies are more likely to protect human rights than poor societies. Multi-NationalCompanies give employment opportunity to the people of developing and underdevelopednations. It reduces poverty and finally leads to better human rights. Globalisation opens upmarkets; markets are the basis of liberal economic order; liberal economic order is the basisof human rights5.

The opponents of globalisation say that human rights are increasingly violated by theforces of globalisation. International organisations like WTO, IMF are agencies to enforcea corporate agenda. Globalisation gives no attention to equitable distribution of wealth,sustainable development and non-exploitative social relationships. Profit is the motive underglobalisation. When everything is driven by profit, a class society emerges in which therich will always exploit the poor. And absolute rightlessness will be the end result6. In1999, the United Nations reported that the richest 20 % of the world controlled 80 % of theworld’s gross domestic product, while the poorest 20% controlled only one %7. Today worldeconomies are dominated by Multinational Corporations. It is difficult for a country to tell alarge multinational to treat their workers better when the company is richer than the country.Many developing countries now encounter a steady erosion of their sovereign competence andability to act as providers of public welfare, economic, social and cultural rights for their ownpeople8. One of the important arguments raised in favour of globalisation is that it createsjob opportunities. But in most of the cases the workers are paid so little and treated so badly.Not only that, globalisation has resulted in the intensification of ethnic and religious conflictand violence.

Political Globalisation and Human Rights

Political human rights are the foundation of a democratic polity. Only through the exerciseof these rights does the democracy actually come into existence. Democratic constitutiondefinitely provides political rights to the people. Right to nationality, right to asylum, rightto freedom of peaceful assembly and association, right to take part in Government, equalaccess to public service, right to equal suffrage, right to freedom of movement, right tofreedom of opinion and expression, right to vote, right to be elected, right to petition, rightto criticising the government, right to resist etc. are some of the political rights9.

Efforts have been on to bring the whole world under one Government for a long time.The League of Nations and the UN have been efforts in that direction. It is believed thatthe world under one Government will be safer and more free from conflicts. One of the mainaims of regional organisations like European Union, ASEAN, APEC, SAARC etc. is a freeworld without conflicts and ensuring fundamental rights and freedoms. But the contradictoryargument is that the creation of a world Government will affect the relationship among

40


Governments. Economically powerful nations dominate the weaker countries. It adverselyaffects fundamental human rights of weaker nations.

Globalisation results in an erosion of state capacity, that is, the ability of Governmentto do what they do. The State withdraws from many of its earlier welfare functions. In theplace of the welfare state, a market state will emerge. The entry and the increased role ofmultinational companies all over the world lead to a reduction in the capacity of Governmentsto take decisions on their own. The withdrawals of state from its welfare functions affect theprotection and maintenance of fundamental human rights of poor people.

Cultural Globalisation and Human Rights

Cultural rights imply that people of the world have the right to preserve and maintain theirculture and related things. Article 27 of the UDHR says that ‘everyone has the right freelyto participate in the cultural life of the community, to enjoy the arts and to share in scientificadvancement and its benefits’10.

Globalisation leads to the rise of a uniform culture. It is helpful for the implementation ofinternational human rights standards. Better protection and promotion of human rights andbasic freedoms is possible in cultural homogeneity. Cultural globalisation increases culturalinterconnectedness across the globe. Mass media, migration and tourism lead to similar lifepatterns in different parts of the globe11.

The rise of a uniform culture is not the emergence of a global culture. In the name ofglobal culture there is an imposition of Western culture on the rest of the world. The cultureof the politically and economically dominant societies influences less powerful societies. Thisis dangerous not only for the poor countries but for the whole of humanity. It leads to theshrinking of the rich cultural heritage of the entire globe. The flow of culture is mainlyfrom the North to the South. In the last few years the media owners of the West have showninterest in entering developing countries. The cultural globalisation has been facilitated by theinformation revolution, the spread of satellite communication, telecommunication networks,information technology the Internet etc. This global flow of ideas, knowledge and values islikely to reduce cultural differences between nations, regions and individuals. This tendencyadversely affects the indigenous cultures of the world and the right to protect cultural life.

North-South Divide and Human Rights

The widespread economic inequalities and big technological gap that exists between the richand the poor-the developed and the developing countries, have virtually divided the worldinto two parts The Rich or the North and the Poor or the South. The Rich countries aretechnologically developed and economically very well off. By virtue of this, they are in aposition to maintain and even strengthen their hold not only over international economicsystem but also over the economies and policies of the poor countries. The poor countrieswhich are industrially, technologically and economically underdeveloped, continue to liveunder the neo-colonial dependence upon the Rich. In the past, they were the victims ofimperialism and colonialism, and even after becoming sovereign independent states, theycontinue to suffer from poverty and underdevelopment and continue to face exploitation at thehands of the rich countries. The North, through several devices like foreign aid, multinational

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corporations, its controls international economic institutions and protectionist trade andeconomic policies, and forces the underdeveloped countries to live with their sufferings12.Globalisation is the new name for prevailing the North-South divide across the world.

Globalisation is seen as a conscious and active process of expanding business and tradeacross the borders of all the States. It stands for expanding cross-border facilities and eco-nomic linkages. This is to be done with a view to securing an integration of economic interestsand activities of the people living in all parts of the world. Thus a global village, of inter-related and interdependent, is created by the process of globalisation. The issue of humanrights is very vital in the social, economic, political and cultural transformation of the worldinto a global community. The North are developed countries which have attained progress insocial, economic and political realm. So these countries have no problem to give maximumindividual freedom and rights to the people. The North always stands for the betterment ofcivil and political rights. But the situation is not the same in the South. These countries faceproblems like instability of Government, poverty, human rights violations, unemployment,riots, epidemics etc. For better protection and promotion of individual human rights, theSouth should have a sound economic, social and political set up. So the South emphasiseseconomic, social and cultural human rights. If globalisation increases the gap between theNorth and the South, it also affects the rights and freedom of the people in the world.

Conclusion

So both the advocates and critics of globalisation agree on the fact that human rights are insome way or the other adversely affected by globalisation, particularly in the South. Whilethe advocates prescribe more absorption of peoples and countries in the global system, thecritics of globalisation prescribe opposition and resistance of the hegemony of the transna-tional corporations and the injustice inherent in the global process.

The underlying basic assumption of all UN Human Rights agreements was based onGovernments’ responsibility in the matter. But globalisation has advocated relief of the Gov-ernment from any responsibility as far as Human Rights are concerned. If Governments tryto abide by UN Human Rights agreements which they signed, they would be violating theglobalisation agreements. The crux of the argument is that globalisation helps the North forbetter protection and promotion of human rights. But globalisation negatively affects thehuman rights and leads to denial of basic freedoms and rights of people of the South.

Notes and References

1. J.K. Baral, S.C. Hazari, A.P. Padhy, Foundations of Politics and Government, Vidya-puri, Cuttack, 2001, p.318.

2. Jagdish Bhagawati, In Defence of Globalisation, New York, Oxford University Press,2004, p.24

3. Stuart Hall, Question of Cultural Identity in Modernity: An Introduction to ModernSocieties, Cambridge, Blackwell Publishers, 1996, p.619.

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4. Dr. H.O. Agarwal, Human Rights, Allahabad, Central Law Publications, 2008, pp.38-39.

5. Howard-Hassmann, Rhoda E., ’The Second great Transformation: Human Rights LeapFrogging in the Era of Globalisation’, Human Rights Quarterly, 2005, Vol.27, p.15.

6. Josekutty C.A., ’Conceptual Divergence in Human Rights: A Continuing Debate’, ISDAJournal, October-December 2006, Vol.16, No.4, pp.406-407.

7. United Nations Development Program, Human Development Report 1999, in Jeff Madrick,2001, ’The Charms of Property’, New York, Rev. Books, p.39.

8. M. Rafiqul Islam, ’The Realisation of Economic, Social and Cultural Rights and Eco-nomic Globalisation in the Third World’, Human Rights Focus, October 2004, Vol.1,No.1, p.718.

9. N. Jayapalan, Human Rights, New Delhi, Atlantic Publishers and Distributors, 2000,pp.13-17.

10. Article 27 of the UDHR

11. P.G. Jogdand and S.M. Michael (ed.), Globalisation and Social Movements, New Delhi,Rawat Publications, , 2006, p.3.

12. U.R. Ghai, International Politics: Theory and Practice, New Academic Publishing Co.,Jalandhar, 2009, p.307.

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The Politics of Representation: Reading DeshadanakkiliKarayarilla and Sancharam as Conventional Movies.

Bhagyalakshmi Mohan

Abstract

This paper is a reading of the Malayalam movies Sancharam (2004) and DeshadanakkiliKarayarilla (1986).The present paper argues that these two films at two historical contextsare trying to institutionalize Kerala public/private domain as the ideal realms of casteistpatriarchy. Thus the movies seem to apply the politics of conventional movies even whilelocating them as innovative movies.

While the representations of sexuality in literature, art, cinema, television and adver-tisements is one of the areas of public controversy in post-colonial India, the hegemony of aheterosexual society and the representations that are needed for the existence of a “morallyright” Hindutva nation are given prominence everywhere. Many Indian feminists argue thatsexualizing the female body is humiliating for a woman and demand for a greater censorship.Thus, India has Bills that stand against the “indecent” representation of women and thebelief that the real Indian respect for women is to treat them as asexual prevails everywhere.As Jasodhara Bagchi points out “Indian womanhood is transfixed on an essentialist notion of“purity” that was used in a particular historical juncture to define Indianness”. (As quotedby Brinda Bose, 2002:21)

Thus Deepa Mehta’s diasporic movie Fire (1996), the first lesbian movie in India, in whichthe Indian sisters-in-law Radha and Nita who are the “spiritual goddesses” of the Indian fam-ilies love each other, led to a great controversy in India. Fire seems to address the constructedhistory of heterosexuality, the family, and the asexual nature of Hindu women and thus ques-tions the construction of heterocentricity of Indian nation itself. For this conceptualizationof the movie, the story line in which the perspective of sexual pleasure as a part of life andin which women “come out” from the failure of the heterosexual relationships seems to beimportant. Moreover, the rebellion against Fire proved that the identity of a woman worksin the Indian society as a “culture-bearing one” rather than “a rights-bearing individual”.The mainstream film texts try to appeal to the sense of the Indian audience by attachingthemselves to the dominant Hindu ideology and view lesbianism as “unnatural”, and hencethe characters that show such traits are shown as excluded from the “natural” heterosexualrealm as in the Hindi movie Girlfriend.

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STARS: Int. Journal (Humanities and Social Sciences) 2010 The Politics of Representation: Reading ...

Hence for the cinema, which easily reaches all parts of the society, the ideology of thepatriarchal society seems to be important and the stereotypical roles of women are alwaysconstructed for the existence of patriarchal society. This can be seen in Malayalam moviesalso. The identity of the woman does not seem to be a part of the Malayalam movies whereasthe question of sexuality and the sexual orientation of women are not shown as included un-less they are for the sake of the male gaze. Moreover, the politics of caste seem to workmore in the movies. When V.T. Nandakumar’s novel Randu Penkuttikal that deals withlesbian love was filmed in 1978, the aspect of lesbianism was absent. In a recent inter-view, Mohan, the director of the movie, stated that he did not read the novel as it is nota “good” book to take home and he considered it as “vulgar” and “notorious” due to itslesbian content, and added that his movie talked only about the emotional bonding of twogirls. ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fp82-FjcMj4). These words of the film director,clearly apprehend the working of the dominant patriarchal ideology and the negative, cal-lous attitude of the Kerala society towards subjects like lesbianism. While dealing with theissue of lesbians, Kerala thus seems to be silent. However, the movies Sancharam and De-shadanakkili Karayarilla address the concept of lesbianism, but the modes of representing thelesbian identity as a part of Kerala identity seem to be an issue here. The main argument thatthe present paper tries to put forth is that these cultural texts are trying to institutionalizeKerala public/private domain as the ideal realms of casteist patriarchy.

In his article, Aravind Narrain suggests Sancharam as an important “cultural marker”.According to him it is a “critique of the institution of family and an incredible act of af-firmation of queer desire” (10 June, 2005). But while Sancharam , which is produced anddistributed in the West, focuses on the rural setting and addresses the foreign audience andprojects the ideals that hail Kerala as God’s own country and talks about lesbianism as aWestern concept, it may not appear reliable to the Kerala audience. In this movie, a seniorsecondary student, Kiran, who is portrayed as an intellectual and a member of high-classmodernity lives “in a land steeped in tradition”. She can understand her sexual orientationas “natural” and she prefers to live in Calcutta, as their life is not possible in Kerala. Herethe filmmaker might have chosen Calcutta, as it is “the centre of modernity” which offersfreedom to sexual minorities there.

The movie focuses on creating a matrilineal myth for the audience to construct the freedomof women. Thus, Kiran is from a traditional Nair tharavadu and her life itself is shown as apart of it. When the movie begins, the ancestral home that is inherited by Kiran’s mother isshown, where, a basil plant grows in the front yard and pictures of Kiran’s ancestors, swordsand big rooms that show the aristocracy of the home are seen. Her mother tells her thattheir heritage should continue through her. (PS, 2004)

Kiran’s life is shown as almost dominated by the tales told by her mother about her Nairheritage. Her identity is always a part of the ‘Nair identity’ and her unchangeable love toDelilah is constructed through this identity. Her mother is also shown as holding on to theNair identity. Kiran says to her mother that she is a Nair girl, descended of warriors. Shegives up home to find the space where she can be herself and it is due to the “powerfulmatriarch” who is her mother. To make her move “radical” the movie mainly focuses on

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the constructed myth of matrilineal Nair family and it seems that the movie idealises themainstream institutions when Kiran breaks this myth with her Nair identity, where heridentity as a doubly oppressed lesbian does not seem to be important here. Kiran’s father issilent when Kiran’s mother asks her to go and he says: “Is this what I raised my daughterfor?” Thus the matrilineal tradition of Kiran’s mother, that has inherited her ancestral homeand family estate, makes her powerful here and the “powerful” mother who is the head of themainstream institution family is the cause of Kiran’s sufferings. As Ratheesh Radhakrishnansays, the construction of an emancipated “femininity” that is produced by the discourse of“masculinity” can be seen here when it is different in the public/private domain.

The construction of this old matrilineal tradition seems to be important here in theportrayal of a Kerala that is foreign to Keralites. Pullappally seems to portray a completelymatriarchal tradition where women are very powerful, which can be new to Kerala culture. D.Renjini argues that the “matrilineal Nair women always suffered due to the rule of the colonialmatriarch Karanavan and the new Nair women enjoy freedom only with the help of theirfathers or husbands” (44).Thus it seems that Pullappally valourises Nair matrilineal traditionwhich is hailed for its laws of inheritance by the Western critics. Surely, the matrilinealtradition seems to have differentiated Nair women from Brahmin women and other women inKerala as Narikkattiri Devaki Antarjanam argues (2006) .But it does not seem to mean thatthey enjoyed a “great” status or freedom equal to the male members of the society. RatheeshRadhakrishnan suggests how “the language and imagery of Kerala society” is inflected bythe upper caste - Nair:

. . . Although recent historical works have maintained that matriliny has neverbeen exclusively a Nair system, I argue that popular historical memory still as-sociates the caste and the system and that the circulation of caste-inflected tech-nologies should be understood as working with these popular memories. (7).

Thus, it seems that the movie tries to attempt a translation of the Western Queer politicsby making a “new” Kerala society.

Kiran’s character seems to be attributed with the characteristics of the Hindutva hege-monic masculinity as parallel to other dominant film narratives that seem to be providedwith her as a part of her Nair identity. Kiran thus appears as the “new feudal lord” (asin the mainstream movies she seems to talk about the welfare of their dependants and stillenjoys her privileged position of caste and class as the generous lord ) who is generous to“other” classes of society even while talking about her Nair identity. She always corrects hermother, who considers the vendors and all as family tenants. But her fondness to her Nairidentity is given prominence everywhere. In Deshadanakkili Karayarilla also, it seems thatthe prominence is given to the Nair caste. The movie talks about the relationships betweenSally and Nimmy, Harishankar and Nimmy, and Devika and Harishankar, and the relation-ship between Harishankar and Devika seems to be shown as “ideal”. When Harishankargoes to see Devika, he is shown as sure about her caste as he used to get money orders inthe name of P. Parameshwaran Nair. When he enters her house in the evening, he sees thebasil plant in the front yard, the architecture that is common to a Nair tharavadu, Devika’s

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grandmother reciting Ramayana and Devika, who comes out in the traditional Kerala dress.Nair idealization is again stressed in the conversation between Devika and Harishankar, whenthey talk standing near the serpent shrine.

Nimmy’s identity, as a non-Nair seems to make her rejected by Harishankar, as Haris-hankar also appears as interested in her until he gets Devika’s photo. The movie seems toproject a caste politics against the class politics. Thus, Sally and Nimmy are portrayed as richgirls who are “arrogant” about their monetary power. This can be seen when Devika teacherspeaks about them as spoiling other children who come from the ordinary background. AndSally says that Devika teacher is a woman of jealousy and complex as she is from a poorfamily. The new rich class is shown as associated with drinks, odd behavior, malign natureetc whereas the old disintegrated Nair families are hailed as “cultured”. The movie seems totalk about this heterosexual relationship as parallel to the homosexual relationship and themovie seems to use stereotypical notions of attributing the “bad” qualities to Sally, as she isa Christian. The same thing can be seen in the movie Sancharam also.

In the movie Sancharam, Delilah is not shown as romanticizing her life like Kiran. Thiscan be seen in the conversation between Delilah and her grandmother .Delilah says: “In yourschool days you will have many friends. When school is over, they all leave and go theirown way. It does not really mean much in the end.”(PS, 2004). Delilah tells Kiran abouther idea of life at times. Delilah is portrayed as a traditional Christian whereas Kiran isportrayed as a secular Hindu, and the same thing happens in their life later, when Kiran callsDelilah with her. She does not go with her and says that they can continue their relationshipafter getting married and she is not ready to play with her life, as they have to live secretlywithout any money as a lesbian couple. Delilah is shown as ready to continue the affair aftertheir marriage whereas Kiran cannot think about it. Kiran plans to commit suicide. But shechooses life instead. Here Kiran is idealized as even dying for the sake of her love whereasDelilah gets the stereotypical representation associated with Christian woman i.e. morallyweak. Thus, Padmarajan and Pullappally seem to equate the “ideal” of Kerala woman tothat of Nair woman and deal with the representation of Christian woman as the “other”.

In Deshadanakkili Karayarilla, Padmarajan seems to define women in terms of the villageand city. According to Anithakumari, Padmarajan’s fondness for village life can be seen inhis works where he considers the village and village landscape as characters and he portraysthe village and the city as binaries to show the beautiful village life with its culture, heritageand orthodoxy (2007). Thus, Padmarajan seems to attribute innocence to his characters whoare villagers, whereas the characters that are associated with the city stand as symbols oflost innocence. Devika is portrayed as a villager whereas Sally and Nimmy “come out” tothe city and Devika signifies the presence of home and Sally and Nimmy signify the absenceof home. It works as a part of “inside/outside dichotomy”, it seems, and the home/inside isglorified as the space of the women. Thus as Partha Chatterjee says:

The world is the external, the domain of the material; the home represents ourinner spiritual self, our true identity. The world is a treacherous terrain of the pur-suit of material interests, where practical considerations reign supreme. It is alsotypically the domain of the male. The home in its essence must remain unaffected

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by the profane activities of the material-world and woman is its representation.(238-239).

The gender difference attributed to Devika can be seen in her occupation as the teacher:“Social reform in Kerala allowed for women to be teachers and nurses as these occupationswere thought of as needing ‘feminine’ qualities such as tolerance, patience, love, kindness etc.(Radhakrishnan, 14).”

Thus Devika is credited with many qualities that make her subservient to patriarchalideology. She possesses the home, family, innocence, culture, tradition etc whereas Sally andNimmy lack all those. Devika can be also considered as the “new woman” defined in termsof “new patriarchy”, “ . . . who was quite the reverse of the ‘common woman’ who was coarse,vulgar, loud, quarrelsome, devoid of superior moral sense, sexually promiscuous, subjected tobrutal physical oppression by males” (Chatterjee, 244) and Sally and Nimmy are thus shownas the “other” of Devika. The girls are shown as aware of the fate of women outside thecity and hence they choose the outside realm as the “other” of the “new woman” whereasDevika is afraid of the fate of the grown up girls in the outside realm. This is seen in theconversation between Sally and the Mother of the convent to get a room for the night. Theyare also aware of the concept of sexuality associated with women in the public space. This isevident when Sally and Nimmy converse on Sally’s visit to a folk artist named Nambeeshanand Sally chooses a job for Nimmy in an antique shop owned by a very old man, as onlyforeigners visit that shop and Keralites do not come there.

As a movie of 80s, when the discussions on sexuality and sexual orientation were not atall a part of Kerala discourse, Deshadanakkili Karayarilla seems to address the concept oflesbianism in the context of Radical Feminism. The critics like Anithakumari argue thatDeshadanakkili Karayarilla is not a lesbian movie. But, it seems that, by using certain codes,Padmarajan talks about the concept of lesbianism, which is thus against the concept of“masculinity”. Sally is thus the dominant figure in whom Nimmy finds safety. Moreover, inthe new city space Sally cuts her hair like that of boys and selects the dress code of boys andthus questions the notions of masculinity. Sally’s male bashing attitude can be seen whenthe magician asks her to drink a cup of milk. She says: “I won’t take anything from othermen.” She says to Nimmy “none of the guys can be trusted!”(PD, 1986).

But Sally does not leave Nimmy. Through Sally, who is shown as jealous towards herteacher and as the companion who takes Nimmy with her to save her from the heterosexualworld, Padmarajan seems to define the lesbian traits. In a scene, Nimmy is shown as lyingin Sally’s lap under a tree in their school and the same cinematic codes used for heterosexualaffair between Nimmy and Harishankar are used here. They talk about their future lifeand Sally consoles her that they will go to some safe places far away from there. Sally’scommitment to Nimmy and her identification with Nimmy’s sorrows are shown even as Sallyknows that they will not get such a safe place. When they come to the youth hostel inErnakulam, Nimmy asks her whether it is the safe place and Sally answers that it is theirsafe place until they are found out and assures her that they will go from there then.

Padmarajan constantly reminds us that the public space does not belong to women.When the movie starts Sally and Nimmy are shown as punished by the Head Mistress for

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going for a movie without the knowledge of teachers. The teachers come to know aboutthis only because they quarrel with the boys who disturb them and it becomes an issue inthe theatre. They are shown as speaking English and acting as tourists to save them in thepublic space. A police man also follows them and they say a lot of lies to save themselves.In the restaurant also, Harishankar comes to their life as an intruder. He does not come nearthem by thinking that it is a boy and girl. But when he understands that both are girls,he questions them by saying that he does not disturb them or complain about them to thepolice etc. Thus, the movie shows the “naturalized” association between men and power andit seems that public domain in Kerala is constructed and structured by various notions ofhegemonic masculinities and girls do not have a “safe place” as they have dreamt and theyneed to commit suicide for the survival of patriarchy. As Carrigan, et al suggest:

Hegemonic masculinity is far more complex than the accounts of essences . . . Itis rather a question of how particular groups of men inhabit positions of powerand wealth and how they legitimate and reproduce the social relationships thatgenerate their dominance. (Vijayan, 84)

The movie thus tries to institutionalize men’s dominance over women.While Sancharam tries to translate the desire in the realm of home and village and shows

that it is “natural”, where the women who show lesbian traits are “unnatural” for the family,Deshadanakkili Karayarilla widens the space and locates how it is considered as “unnatural”in the new city space occupied by the girls. Thus when Sancharam talks about inside, whichis considered as the “ideal” realm of femininity and locates lesbianism in the imaginarymatriarchal discourse, Deshadanakkili Karayarilla talks about how the outside city spaceexcludes women if they are not the “new women” defined in patriarchal terms.

As a mainstream moviemaker, Padmarajan seems to talk about family and society interms of women. Thus, the problem of Sally is shown as the lack of care from her motherwho is a nurse in Bhopal and a divorcee. Here the “new woman” who has the job andfinancial security is questioned when she defines her own life. Her identity as a Christiannurse is focused here against the “ideal” Nair woman who lives for the family. Nimmy’sproblems are shown as due to her “bad friendship” with Sally. Devika’s cousin VenukkuttanNair becomes a drunkard and he commits suicide as his wife Lathika Kumari is “immoral” asthe movie suggests. But he is also portrayed as an “ideal” man who loves her like anythingand his will suggests that all his wealth is for her who is responsible for the problems in thefamily.

Harishankar defines the “good” woman in this movie and tries to change Nimmy from a“bad girl” to a “good girl”. Devika is defined as the “good” woman by him whereas Sallyis the “bad girl” for him. Thus, the movie tries to define femininity in terms of masculinityand tries to idealise the institution of family. This can be seen from the characters of theMajor who becomes a drunkard after the loss of his family, of Lathika Kumari who makesthe problems in the family and society. Thus, Deshadanakkili Karayarilla tries to glorifyhome, marriage, family etc which are the institutions that hail the patriarchal ideology andthus the compulsory heterosexuality and explains authoritatively, the ethics for the womanas constructed by the patriarchy.

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Thus, Deshadanakkili Karayarilla and Sancharam seem to represent conventional politicseven while talking about innovative issues. When these movies are written in certain periods,the whole structure of the movies appears as following the conventional politics by followingthe dominant ideology by idealizing the politics of gender, caste, class and sexuality. Sothe dominant views are given focus in both the movies. According to Fareed Kazmi, aconventional cinema:

is one which restates in an intense form, values and attitudes already known,which stresses the repetition or performance of something already known ratherthan the creation of something new, which guarantees that what is experiencedin one film will not be very different from what has been experienced in mostothers. (Kazmi:56)

Thus, the conventional movies are portrayed for the sake of mainstream audience and boththe movies can be viewed as conventional movies in their ideology and they do not seemto focus on lesbian identity politics. According to M. Navaneetha, the mainstream movieDeshadanakkili Karayarilla talks more about the aspect of lesbianism as located in the con-temporary Kerala context and it “queers the social space” and constructs the narrative morefreely than Sancharam that “queers the characters” that deals with the traditional Nair fam-ily(45). But when Padmarajan describes the contemporary Kerala and the space of freewomen in the outside realm, he uses contrasting characters and contrasting scenes to locatethe dominant ideology as the “ideal”. Both the movies seem to follow the construction ofcaste politics in the Kerala realm. Thus as Dilip Menon states, caste works as a mode ofself fashioning in South India as Religion works in the case of North India(2007). Thus,the existence of a Nair hegemonic masculinity/femininity that stands parallel to Hindutvahegemonic masculinities in Hindi movies can be seen in both the movies.

However, Sancharam , which is celebrated as the first lesbian movie in Kerala and thefirst straight lesbian movie in India, does not seem to address India or the Indian lesbian.When the emergence of a political lesbian community is still at its infancy and the questionof a sexual identity in India itself is a question, Pullappally has almost placed modernityin a high-class old household that is traditional and defined the dominant lesbian by apply-ing “melodramatic politics”. Madhava Prasad in his article “Melodramatic Polities?” talksabout melodrama as the genre that deals with the “vision of India combining its gloriouspast” and states the definition of Rajadhyaksha: “More than a genre, it was a mode of cul-tural production/assimilation’ which has intervened quite fundamentally in the formation of. . . the imaginary institution of India” (462). Thus, it seems that Sancharam , which can beconsidered as “the melodrama of feudal nostalgia”, is a politically wrong text constructed forthe Western audience as it institutionalizes and defines only the dominant perspective whiledealing with cinematic ideology and sexual identity even when it terms itself as a “self artic-ulation”. The “self articulation” only asserts the view that Kiran does not commit suicideand when Kiran chooses another city space like Calcutta to find her realm, it seems thatPullappally also idealizes Kerala as God’s own country and heterosexual.

Thus it seems that Malayalam does not have movies that seriously deal with the aspectof lesbianism. It can be due to the constructed historical power of heterosexuality or the

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asexual nature ascribed to the women. Thus these films are entirely constructed with thedominant male perspective for the identification of the male audience. The woman’s role inthese movies is only to provide the male audience pleasure in both intellectual and emotionalterms. Even if women come to film making field, they are not seen as representing the “real”issues of women. Here, as Rajeshwari Sunder Rajan says:

If we acknowledge (a) that femaleness is constructed, (b) that the terms of such construc-tion are to be sought in the dominant modes of ideology (patriarchy, colonialism, capitalism),and (c) that therefore what is at stake is the investments of desire and the politics of controlthat representation both signifies and serves, then the task of the feminist critic becomeswhat Jacqueline Rose describes as the “critique of male discourse” born of “a radical distrustof representation which allies itself with a semiotic critique of sign.” What is required hereis an alertness to the political process by which such representation becomes naturalized andultimately coercive in structuring women’s self representation. (129)

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Uploaded by istreamkeralam on Feb 8, 2010 “Mohan: ‘Randu Penkuttikal’ dealt with lesbianrelation” <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fp82-FjcMj4>.

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Role of Spirituality in Crisis Management

Dr. Sr. Elsy P.A. and Teseena P. Emmatty

This paper is an attempt to highlight the role of spirituality in Crisis Management. Firstwe will speak about crisis management itself and then proceed to consider the role of spiri-tuality in crisis management.

I. Crisis Management

What is crisis management? The answer depends on what we mean by crisis itself. The wordcrisis is of Greek origin. In the Greek original it means to sift or separate. In fact it is verymuch a term of spiritual origin. Crisis in Greek means also the activity of God or the Messiahas the judge, especially on the last day. In the Bible, especially in the New Testament, thisword is used in connection with the final judgement of God (cf. 2 Thessalonians, chapter1, verse 5; John chapter 1, verse 30 and so on). In English it received the meaning of anunexpected situation which requires an immediate solution. In the field of management wecan think of different types of Crises. As is the nature of crisis so is the strategy to be usedto face it and solve it. Different scholars in the field of management speak about differentcategories of crises. According to Lerbinger, there are seven categories of crises.

1. Natural disaster

2. Technological Crises

3. Confrontation Crises

4. Malevolence Crises

5. Crises of skewed management values

6. Crises of deception

7. Crises of management misconduct

The seven categories give us a total picture of possible crises that we might be called uponface. For all these types of crises we need different strategies to face them. In this paper weare not dealing with any particular crisis as such or with a particular strategy required for

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these different types, but we deal with crises as such in its generality and spirituality as acommon requirement for adopting any of the strategies.

Crises Management Models

To diffuse a crisis a proper understanding of how to handle it is needed. Some managementscholars speak of a four-phase crisis management model. The phases are;

� Issues management

� Planning prevention

� The Crisis itself

� Post crisis phase

Issues management means a crisis has a history and that it has to be faced at the generationof the issue itself. That is to say the issue has to be tackled before it precipitates into a crisis.The second one is planning prevention, which means when somebody within an organisationor outside an organisation makes plans to destroy the organisation with a crisis, the solutionis to be seen in the process of planning itself or the plan itself has to be diffused. Then itwill not precipitate into a crisis. The third phase is the crisis itself. That means we actuallyface a crisis in its true form. Now it is not a question of prevention, but it is a question ofsolution. But how to solve it? That is the question which faces those responsible for themanagement of the organisation. The fourth phase is the post-crisis phase. Now the problemhas been solved or the crisis does not exist now. But that is not an indication that the peopleinvolved in the management of organisation can sit back without doing anything. There isalways the possibility that a solved crisis can reappear in a slightly different form. Thereforethere is need for caution even after having solved the crisis.

Spirituality has its role to play in all the four phases of managing a crisis.

An introductory notion of Spirituality:

Spirituality according to all the main traditions of the world is giving to God moreimportance than to oneself. In that sense it is an abandoning of the self into the hands of theSupreme Being. This abandoning is possible because of the depth of the faith one has in thatSupreme Being. In the Bible Jesus tells his followers not to be worried about the day-to-dayconcerns of life. In the Gospel of Matthew 6:25-32 Jesus gives a long list of beings that arefreely provided with the necessities of life. It is a beautiful sermon which begins with theinstruction, “Therefore I tell you do not worry about what you will eat or what you will drinkor about your body, what you will wear”. The central point in this instruction is given inverse 32where He says, “Indeed your heavenly father knows that you need all these things”1.Jesus is asking his followers to throw all their worries and difficulties on the shoulders of Godand to go about free and consoled.

1Thomas Perumalil, Holy Indifference - Part II, Indian Journal of Spirituality, June 1990, Vol.III, No.2, P. 137

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In the Christian tradition there is a famous branch of spirituality called the Salesianspirituality. Here the fundamental principle is called the principle of abandonment or holyindifference. This idea is a development from a Greek concept called apatheia.

Apatheia means “impassivity under pleasure or pain”. If a person attains holy indiffer-ence, that will lead him or her “to the taming of one’s passions and aims at bringing about thedispassionate response of the soul which would guarantee full freedom from created thingsin the vision of God”2. This attitude in spirituality is not something totally new in theChristian religion. It is a development from the Old Testament. This is evident in the call ofMoses. Moses was appointed by God to go to Egypt to liberate the Israelites who were slavesthere. But Moses was not ready to take up this mission for many reasons. He was young andpoor. He was not good at speaking. He himself says, “Who am I that I should to Pharaoh?”(Exod. 3:11). These words of Moses show that he was not courageous enough to take upthe mission. Then came thundering voice of God, “I will be with you” (Exod. 3:12). Thereaction of Moses was a surrender to the assuring words of God. Now going to Egypt anddoing the necessary things for the liberation of the people is no more a problem for Moses.This surrender is not a passive surrender. Rather, it is an active surrender. Moses is notremaining inactive, but he goes with a new power and courage which he gained through hissurrender to God. Commending on the reaction of Moses, famous Bible Scholar AnthonyR. Ceresko says, “Moses surrenders to God not in a passive, resigned sense,but in an activesense. . . ‘Surrender’ here involves something active, an engagement, a commitment to be andto act”3.

Almost the same idea we have in the Bhagwat Gita. In this well known spiritual poemwhich describes the conversation between Arjuna, the representative of a very human seekerafter spiritual wisdom and Krishna, the lord who is the goal of every spiritual aspirationunderstands spirituality as a total surrender of the self before the Supreme Being. In thisbook chapter 11 is very specially significant. It gives a vision of Krishna. Krishna appearsbefore as the almighty Lord. After the vision Arjuna is convinced that it is not he who doesthe actions or karma, but it is the Lord. He says,

You are the eternal reality, the ultimate cause of the world which every seekerafter truth has to realise. You are the final resort of the universe. You who haveno destruction at any time are the eternal saviour of righteousness (Dharma). Youare the person (Purusha) who are always wakeful and control nature (Prakrithi).These things have become evident to me today.

What Arjuna means is that it is not he or any human being that controls and perfects theworld and its rhythms, but it is the Lord.

The nature of the abandonment

When we speak of spirituality as self surrender to God and abandonment or holy indifferencewe have to understand it properly and avoid certain misconception.

2Ibid.3Anthony R. Ceresko, “Surrender to in the Old Testament: Some reflection on Moses and Job”

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1. It is not running away from the problemsA spiritual man who understands spirituality as self surrender to God does not do it as ameans of running away from the problems. He is not afraid of the problems. Rather he facesthe problems courageously.

2. It is working with the LordA spiritual man knows that there is a God who controls everything and that without thisultimate director of the universe nothing is possible. Therefore the spiritual man seeks thehelp of the Lord in solving whatever crisis he has to face.

3. It is empowermentA spiritual man knows that he is not alone in solving crisis but that the invisible Lord is withhim to do all the needful. Therefore he is empowered. He feels that the power of the Lord isadded with his human power.

4. It gives self confidenceA man who faces the crisis alone feels that he is helpless. The gravity of the crisis sometimesmakes him afraid. He feels that it is beyond his power to solve it. But when he has theconfidence that he is working with the Lord he receives a heightening of his own self imageso much so that he is able to face the crisis boldly.

Examples of successful crisis management

We have spoken about how spirituality can empower a person to face crisis in all its phases.But this paper will not be complete unless we give some examples of people who have managedto diffuse crises successfully. Tylenol is a capsule which was widely in use in Europe. Nowa terrorist (we do not know his name) added a small quantity of cyanide to this capsulewith the intention of killing thousands of people. The result was that the first seven peoplewho used this capsule were killed. Three of them were from the same family. Johnson andJohnson, the company which stored up the capsule knew about the cheating and to save thepeople the Manager of this organisation destroyed 31 million capsules. The total cost of themedicine was 100 million US dollars. The management of Johnson and Johnson appeared inthe television and explained the matter to the people. The result was people did not rejectthem. On the contrary people had more confidence in Johnson and Johnson. Now whatprompted them to do it? We can say with confidence that it is their spiritual convictionwhich gave them the strength to undertake such a big loss to save the life of people. Aperson who has no such conviction will only think of the loss of the money and never the lossof human life.

There is a case of Odwalla Foods. The crisis was in October, 1996. It was found out thatthe outbreak of a particular bacterium called E. Coli was due to the unpasteurized applejuice manufactured by Odwalla Inc. Many people were affected and a small child even died.It affected the company in a very negative way. But immediately the manager appeared intelevision and did everything possible to diffuse the crisis. As a result people offered theirconfidence in the company. We have many other instances of crisis in management. Mattelin 2007, and Pepsi in 1993 also took such prudent steps when they were faced such crisis.

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The role of spirituality in the above cited cases can be detailed as follows. In the phaseof the crises the management did not lose self confidence. They were not in a position of notknowing what to do. They were able to face the crises rather than run away from it. Becauseof their spiritual tradition, they were not afraid to face the people who were affected by thecrisis. As a result they were able to regain the faith and the confidence of the people.

Conclusion

The title of this article is the role of spirituality in crisis management. Some people may evenlaugh at the title. They may ask themselves: “What has this foolish spirituality to do withthe science of management”?. This question is the result of a long term misunderstandingabout spirituality that has managed to control the convictions of the people. There is needfor the removal of misunderstanding if at all we want to understand properly. Spirituality isnot a running away from the problems of the world. It is a new way of looking at a reality. Itis a new vision in which the selfishness of the self is constrained and suppressed and reliancein the Lord is established. Therefore spirituality is not a loss, but a gain. It is gaining thetrue value of the self and this true value makes it possible to face any crisis with confidenceand boldness.

Bibliography

1. John, Saee. Contemporary Corporate Strategy: Global Perspectives; New York:Taylor& Francis Routledge, London 2007.

2. Morley Michael. Global Industrial Relations; New York Taylor: & Francis Rout-ledge,London 2006.

3. Goel Aruna,Goel S.L.,Stress Management & Education ; New Delhi, Deep & DeepPublications (P)Ltd,;2005.

4. Beach Lee Roy , Human Element: Understanding & Managing Employee Behaviour;Armonk N.Y.: ME Sharpe ,Inc.,2007.

5. Ivanovic A., Collin P.H., Dictionary of Human Resources & Personnel Management ;London: A & C Black Publishers Ltd.;2006.

6. Armstrong Michael, Handbook of Human Resource Management Practice;London :Philadel-phia Kogan Page; 2006.

7. Perumalil Thomas: “Holy Indifference” - Part II, Indian Journal of Spirituality, June1990, Vol.III,

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Participative Management - The European Experience

Biju T. George∗, Deepu Jose Sebastian∗∗

Abstract

Participative Management, in spite of its controversy and conflicts, is being increasinglyadopted in different countries, both in capitalist and socialist blocks particularly in the Euro-pean countries, and in the Third World, as an ideal form of industrial democracy. A surveyon the cross-national experiences in participative management is attempted in this paper.

1. Introduction

The philosophy of employees’ participation in productivity management and decision-makingdiffer from country to country. The method of participative management varies from countryto country depending on the system of the economy, the style of management, the areas inwhich participation is sought and the pattern of labour-management relations. The widerange of meanings attached to the concept of participative management is the result of thevariety of forms in which the concept is put into actual practice in different parts of the world.

The concept of participative management has evolved out of the recognition of the factthat workers are also human beings, that they are not machines, that they have the capabilityto contribute to productivity, and that on their willing co-operation, satisfaction and moraledepends the productivity and smooth running of the enterprise. A cordial relationship be-tween the labour and the management is sine-quo-non for industrial peace and productivity.The great benefit of participation is that it restores to people at work their birth rights tobe contributing members of the groups in which they work.

2. Meaning of the Concept

The participative management has though gradually developed under the influence of social,political and economic changes and modern management philosophies; it is now an inherentand integral part of the modern industrial relations. Participative management is a historicalnecessity. It is plentifully supplied with ideas, institutions and opinion. In the modern

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times, this concept is known as ‘participative management’ because of the emergence of neweconomic order and new researches and developments in the field of human relations andhuman resources, involving basic changes in the very system of management and philosophy.

Participative management may be looked as an instrument for improving efficiency ofenterprises and establishing harmonious industrial relations; as device for developing socialeducation; for effective solidarity among the working community and for tapping latent hu-man resources; as a means for attaining industrial peace and harmony leading to higherproductivity and increased production; as a humanitarian act for giving the worker an ac-ceptable status within the working community and a sense of purpose in activity; and as anideological device to develop self management in industry.

Participative management prepares the ground for peaceful and co-operative relations bypromoting the common interest in industry. For management, it is a joint consultation fordecision-making; for workers, it is a co-determination and for government it is an associationof labour with management for acting as a responsive agency.

3. The Cross-National Experience

Most of the European countries have highly structured participative management process,and in many cases it is mandated by law (Beach, 1980). The structure, content and form ofparticipative management depend on the ideology and system adopted by a particular society(Monappa, 1987). A review of the existing theoritical structure of participative managementin selected European countries is made under.

3.1. Sweden

Sweden has achieved a lot in economic development and high standard of living. It is not aclassless society but one free from acute class antagonisms, a large measure of reduction ofinequalities, a widely shared culture, and an atmosphere of tolerance and freedom from notonly religious but social bigotry and performance in many fields- including technological andindustrial- whose quality equals and in some cases, excels that of many advanced countries.It is also a country where the socialist party has exercised a monopoly of power and yet it isa country of private enterprise in industry, in farming, and also mostly in trade; and the issueof public ownership of industry and land has been relegated to the position of a secondaryimportance.

This peculiar situation has had a bearing on labour-management relations and it is the‘Joint Enterprise Council’ functioning as the widely recognised participative managementbody in Sweden. The council came into existence in 1946 through a voluntary agreementamong three major stakeholders of business, namely, Employer’s Federation, Trade UnionFederation, and the Central Organisation of Salaried Employees. These councils are con-stituted of nominees of management and representatives of labour elected, as a rule, fromthe members of the trade unions. The employers, under the agreement, have assumed the

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obligation to supply the Council with continuous production surveys including reports ofchanges undertaken or planned; also regular information on business trends, the state ofmarket within the industry and the enterprise and general condition of production and sale.

However, it is a fact that the Council is advisory and has no authority or administrativefunctions; still it is felt that this kind of association of labour with management is sufficientand workers’ control over industrial management is neither necessary nor desirable.

The voluntary agreement between the employers on one side and the labour unions andemployees on the other is said to have a direct bearing on the industrial democracy in Swedenand due weight shall be given to the fact that industrial relations have improved owing tothese agreements. Joint Enterprise Councils, which have been developed in Sweden as theinstitutional devices for easing industrial tensions have also added to the industrial rest andpeace in the country.

3.2. Germany

Germany has, after a state of post-war prostration, again become a strong, prosperous andvigorous state and people and leaders of that country must take credit for having re-builttheir economy with outstanding success. The German economy is characterised by a systemof private enterprise and free market mechanism. The German trade unions are well organisedand have a long record of experience and work and they are known to have contributed theeconomic recovery of Germany.

Germany provided a unique experiment in workers’ participation in the form of co-determination. It has been considered as the system of industrial democracy which gaveemployees genuine decision-making power on a meaningful level (Jenkins, 1973).

This is the context in which the significance of the post-war schemes of association oflabour with management in Germany has to be assessed. There is a statutory provision for theappointment of the representatives of workers on Supervisory Board, Managing Board, andWorks Council of the economic undertakings including nationalised undertaking like Railway.These representatives are elected by the workers in consultation with the trade unions. In thehigher bodies of the mining and steel industries, the employers and the workers have equalnumber of seats, but in others, the proportion of workers’ representation is generally one-third.The Works Councils are composed only of workers. The main purpose of this arrangement iswhat is called co-determination and co-decision, and though in matters relating to personneland welfare services, the workers’ representatives do share responsibility for decisions, ineconomic matters relating to production, investment, marketing, and organisation they canonly make recommendations, and as a rule do not exercise any real authority.

The system of co-determination in Germany in its present form was established by theCo-determination Act of 1951 and Works Constitution Act of 1952. The system of co-determination has Works Council, Supervisory Board and Management Boards as its organs.

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The Works Council has been bestowed with co-determination rights, co-operation rightsand rights of information. It is neither a management body nor a joint body. It representsexclusively the workers of an enterprise. Every establishment employing five or more personshas to elect a Works Council by ballot. In firms with several establishments, a central workscouncil has also to be established. The size of the council varies from 1 to 35 dependingupon the employment strength of an enterprise. The tenure of the council is for three years.The council elects the chairman and his deputy from its own members. The co-determinationrights of the council pertain to matters relating to wages, work-schedules, discipline, adminis-trative and welfare services while co-operation rights are related to issues like group transfers,unlawful behaviour on the part of an employee etc., and the right to information with regardto economic matters.

3.3. Russia

The case of Russia among the centrally planned economy is interesting as regards participativemanagement. Participation in management is carried out through the trade unions and themain responsibility of the trade unions is to initiate a competitive attitude to work and toapply methods aimed at full participation by the workers in achieving the targets assignedto the industrial undertaking by the Five-Year Plans.

Russia has now occupied the position of biggest industrial power. The socialist revolutionhas been a revolution uplifting the position of the worker and nationalisation of industry,land, trade, and finance are meant primarily to be the instruments of placing the workersin the centre of the economy and making them its masters. Great expansion of production,marvelous advance in technique, science, education, health, social security, and social mobilityhave occurred because, according to the Russian view, the worker is working in and for aneconomy which belongs to him and is being operated by him and is for his well-being. Thisview has helped in developing a sense of belonging among the workers in Russia and hasraised not only the level of their performance but also given a meaning to their work anddevelopment of their personality.

The following principles facilitating participative management have been included in the‘labour programme’ of the Russian Government:

1. The extensive participation of the workers’ collectives in the management of enterprise;

2. Expansion of the role and responsibility of local bodies in management; and

3. The direct and most active participation of trade unions in elaborating and realisingeconomic plans.

Trade unions are identified as the agencies through which the workers are assumed toparticipate in planning and management. They, besides negotiating collective agreements, areconsulted in fixing norms by the Director and they are expected to safe guard the interest ofthe workers in the implementation of labour laws and regulation and administer all beneficial,

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cultural and social welfare activities. Each enterprise holds conferences for production andplanning at which the Director is to take the workers into confidence, explain problems andplans, invite discussions and suggestions and give due weight to the views of the workers andincorporate them in the plans and reports which he forwards to the higher authorities. Thetrade union organs at the industry, area, and republic levels are expected to be consultedin regard to fixation of wages, formulation of plans and policies, decisions on problems oflabour, production in particular fields and the working of the economy as a whole.

3.4. United Kingdom

It is interesting to mention that, both in the U.S.A. and United Kingdom (U.K.) the initiativefor employee ownership schemes has come not from the employees, not so much even fromthe employers but, firmly due to the efforts of national governments.

The U.K. is one of the pioneer countries in setting up the consultative committees aimedat harmonising industrial relations. Apart from consultative committees, the trade unionsare represented in the Board of Directors. But, both the parties involved in joint consultationhave shown disinterest in such committees because, managerial matters and the deliberationscentered around welfare issues (Virmani, 1978). The British Trade Union Congress stronglyadvocates adoption of a worker participation system similar to the co-determination modelin Germany which has been strongly opposed by the employers. The Lord Bullock report,however, recommended parity representation of employees on Board of Directors along withshareholders’ representatives. Many of the recommendations of the Bullock Report were alsoopposed by the employers and consequently, the Government rejected some of the controver-sial elements of the report and perhaps, encouraged voluntary participation agreement (Jain,1980).

In the U.K., the employee stock holding scheme was approved under the Finance Act of1978. All full time employees of the company with five or more years’ service are eligible toparticipate. The company makes annual allocation out of its profits to the trustees of thescheme to secure shares on behalf of the participants.

However, there are doubts about the success of the British system of participative man-agement. “The British system of workers’ participation in management, has achieved limitedsuccess due to the management view of the system as unwarranted encroachment on theirprerogatives and the workers’ inclination to use it as a tool for gaining more benefits forthemselves and for exerting their power.” (Agarwal, 1977).

It may be noted that Nationalisation Acts in the U.K. made it obligatory on the partof the nationalised industry or service to accord recognition to a representative union anddevelop joint consultative machinery for consultation. The Bullock Committee of 1975 inU.K. recommended representation of workers’ even at the Board level of enterprises and thiswas to be implemented even by the nationalised industries and services.

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3.5. France

‘Works Council’ has been the major participatory organ in France. Participation was madecompulsory during the Second World War, but it could neither build co-operation nor trustbetween the two sides, namely, managers and workers. So in France, participative manage-ment has achieved only a limited success as it has been initiated due to compulsion of lawand circumstances rather that voluntary agreement (Agrawal, 1977).

In France, in the final days of the Second World War, workers had set up ‘ManagementCommittees’ to run enterprises whose owners had fled. This spontaneous movement waslegitimised by the legislation of 1945 and 1946 which extended the obligation to set-up workscouncils to all the firms having more than 50 employees. The council comprised electedrepresentatives from each category of employees, with the chief executive as the Chairman.The works councils has the right to information, which was extended to mean the right tobe consulted on economic and financial problems. With respect to the welfare activities, theworks councils had a free rein and this was the area where the councils have been effective.Otherwise, on the whole, the councils have had little impact on the economic aspects of therunning of the enterprise (jain, 1980).

The rigid and autocratic behaviour of the management has been one of the reasons forthe failure of the system (Jenkins, 1973). The general alienation among workers that resultedin the paralysis of all the activities in France still pervades, as the system of works councilsheavily relies upon the goodwill of management. Therefore the results of the works councilsexperiment in France are disappointing (Jain, 1980).

4. Conclusion

The question of giving workers a sense of belonging, an increased share in the affairs of theindustry, has been a hot issue all over the world. Emergence of a specific form of participativemanagement as well as the extent of its realisation depends on the social environment, thelevel of economic development, the political system prevalent in the country and, above all,the values held by management and workers. Today, it is a fact beyond exageration thatparticipative management constitutes a large social movement across the globe.

Bibliography

Agarwal, R.D. (1977). Dynamics of Personnel Management in India, Tata McGraw Hill Publishing Company,New Delhi.

Armstrong, M. (1986). A Handbook of Management Techniques, Kogan Page Limited, London.

Banks, J.A. (1963). Industrial Participation- Theory and Practice: A Case Study, Liverpool University Press,Liverpool.

Beach, D.S. (1980). Personnel, Macmillan Publishing Company Inc., New York.

Calhoon, R. (1964). Managing Personnel, Harper & Row, New York.

Cole, G.D.H. (1957). The Case for Industrial Partnership, MacMillan and Company Limited, London.

Jain, H.C. (1980). Worker Participation: Success and Problems, Praegar, New York.

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Jenkins, D. (1973). Job Power: Blue and White Collar Democracy, Heinemann, London.

Mathis, R.L., Jackson, J.H. (2000). Human Resource Management, South-Western College Publishing,Cincinnatti.

Monappa, A. (1987). Industrial Relations, Tata McGraw-Hill Publishing Company, New Delhi.

Virmani, V.R. (1978). Workers Participation in Management, Some Experiences and Lessons, Macmillan,New Delhi.

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Revivification of realism in Indian Fiction in English. A studyof Difficult Daughters and The White Tiger.

P.P.Sajeev

Abstract

Indian fiction in English witnessed a spurt in realist novels in the 80s and 90s. Realism cameto an end in European fiction at the close of the 19th century, but in the Indian scenario, wewitnessed its rebirth in the fictions of Mulk Raj Anand, R.K.Narayan, Raja Rao and manyother stalwarts. The nascent Indian society has been suffering from many social injustices andthe creative mind of the writers reacted sympathetically to the woes of the downtrodden andthe marginalized. In the fictions of Vikram Seth, Manju Kapur, Aravind Adiga, ArundhatiRoy and in many of our new generation writers, realism has made a comeback with anadded vigour and vitality. Manju Kapur and Aravind Adiga handle realism with its classicalcharacteristics and their fictions are like a mirror held against the uncomfortable realities ofIndian society. Manju Kapur’s Difficult Daughters explores the Indian society with all itswoes and imperfections and reminds us that patriarchal hegemony is the root cause of itsfair sex’s unending subjugation. Aravind Adiga fictionalizes the injustices meted out to itsmarginalized and explicitly narrates us the tentacles of exploitation that encapsulates Indiansociety in his The White Tiger. This paper tries to analyze features of realism in the abovenovels with special emphasis to the social realities reflected in them.

Realism as a literary movement is supposed to come to an end by the end of nineteenthcentury in Europe. But the recent critical explorations have caused a turnaround in theconcepts about realism and its relevance in fiction.

Indian literary scene is always a fertile ground for realist writings. Indian fiction inEnglish also shares this cultural and critical milieu. Starting from the 30s to the presentday, realism remains to be the most sought after literary mode for effective representation ofthe complexity and vitality of Indian life. Dennis Walder in his edited work on realism hasstressed the inevitability of realism as a critical approach in fiction.

Realism is a word that anyone studying novels cannot avoid using, or at least trying tocome to terms with it. There seems to me to be at least three reasons for this.

1. The history of the genre is intimately bound up with the concept of realism.

2. The novel’s major development in nineteenth century is impossible to follow withouttaking into account the family of features or conventions that the word realism allows

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us to isolate and distinguish from the conventions employed in other kinds of literature(and art).

3. Despite recent attempts to displace or undermine the idea of realism as outdated orinfected by humanist ideology, its use persists. Most of the fiction we read (and indeed,watch, in the form of television drama) is realist in orientation. (Walder 17)

The new genre i.e. the novel flourished in the last quarter of nineteenth century in India.Along with the birth of this genre, Indian urban scene has been undergoing tremendouschange. This rapid changes in the urban life foregrounded new tensions and paradoxes, hith-erto unknown to the Indian people. As noted by Meenakshi Mukherji, ‘individualization’started in the Indian societal scene with the advent of English education and the consequentintroduction of new values and standards (Mukherji, Realism 68). The new individualizedurban elite started challenging their age old cultural obstinacies and they argued for prag-matism and flexibility. The hierarchical social structure came under attack, and the novelistswho attempted to present this complex period in fiction were themselves products of thistension.

Meenakshi Mukherji brilliantly analyses this particular juncture of Indian creative historyjudiciously and with perfect acumen. She writes,

Creating real people in a recognizable historical setting- people who are not merearchetypes or representatives of a cast or a class or a social role (priest, land lord,mother-in-law etc)-necessitate an acceptance of subjective individualism and aspecific awareness of history. (it) had never been a component of traditionalnarratives in Indiachanges in the writer’s own value systems were perceptible butthese had not made any dent on the larger social structure, and to this extentthe major Indian novels of the nineteenth century reflect a central dilemma of theperiod. (Mukherji, Realism 69)

Aravind Adiga and Manju Kapur are the two new generation writers who adhere to the modeof realism in an honest and consistent way. Both the writers share the angst and concernof the changing Indian society. Realism is a faithful representation of everyday life. Thecharacters and plot are commonplace and the story narrated is plausible. The narrationis linear with an omniscient third person narrator. Realist writers always keep a healthyand viable connection with the past; from which they assimilate the necessary energy forfictionalization of their present context. They impinge imagination to the visible effects ofreality, thereby creating a reality effect to the events and movements of the everyday life.

This paper tries to analyze Manju Kapur’s Difficult Daughters and Aravind Adiga’s TheWhite Tiger in the light of the above theoretical approach to realism.

Manju Kapur has entered in the literary arena with her first novel Difficult Daughterswhich was published in 1998 by Penguin Books India Ltd. This is followed by A MarriedWoman (2002), Home (2006), The Immigrant (2009) and Custody (2011).

Manju Kapur’s novels are largely realistic with social consciousness in them. In termsof narration, development of plot, characterization, and subject matter, her fictional world

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fits suitably to the cannons of realism. Her first novel Difficult Daughters (1998) won theCommonwealth prize in the ‘best first published book’ category for the Eurasia region.

Realism when associated with social concerns demands a certain level of commitmentfrom the part of the writer and it is this commitment that makes Kapur a notable andsuccessful writer. Her attempt in Difficult Daughters to recreate the Punjab of yesteryearsis commendable. Difficult Daughters handles the saga of four generations of Punjabi society.Her major concern is women and their social status. As Swati Srivastava and Fatima Rizvihave opined in their paper in IUP;

The women in the novels of Manju Kapur seem to be the personification of newwomen who have been carrying the burden of inhibition since ages and want to befree now. The writer clearly shows the dilemma of women who carry the burdenof being female as well as the added responsibility of being mothers to membersof their own sex. In the traditional social milieu of the novel where mothers anddaughters exist, marriage is regarded as the ultimate goal and destiny from whichthese women cannot escape. Manju Kapur succeeds in presenting the real pictureof women in a male dominated society. (Srivastava & Rizvi, IUP,V I,2 44)

Kapur’s protagonists are always educated young women who are striving to free themselvesfrom the shackles of conservatism and tradition. In Difficult Daughters the locale shiftsfrom Amritsar to Lahore, both cosmopolitan and progressing Indian cities even in the pre-independent period. The society was undergoing fast change and the national movement wasat its peak. All these compelling situations are introducing new values and outlook into thesociety and it is reflected mainly in the matters of female education. All the national leadersare clamouring for emancipation of women through education and purification of societythrough discarding social taboos and superstitions.

It is in this milieu, Kapur constructed her story of Difficult Daughters, which is partlyautobiographic. The name of Kapur’s mother and that of Ida of the novel is Virmati, whotrespasses forbidden boundaries of the society in her youth and asserted herself in mattersof love, marriage and sex. The style of narration first turns out to be retrospective, whenIda discloses her intension to visit Lahore after the funeral of her mother Virmati. It waswhere her mother studied in two terms, one before her marriage with Professor Harish andthereafter. She visits her ancestral home in Amritsar for the purpose.

Ida unfolds the story of her mother Virmati. Kapur constructs Punjab of the thirties,and with a linear narration, completes the saga of Virmati. Virmati’s mother Kasturi hadeleven children and she being the eldest, has more responsibilities. Her mother is devoid ofany filial affections. A woman always under the stress of pregnancy hasn’t enough time tobe compassionate and sentimental. See how Kapur describes Kasturi’s condition.

Kasturi could not remember a time when she was not tired, when her feet andlegs did not ache. Her back curved in towards the base of her spine, and carryingher children was a strain, even when they were very young. Her stomach was softand spongy, her breasts long and unattractive. Her hair barely snaked down tomid-back, its length and thickness gone with her babies. Her teeth bled, when

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she chewed her morning neem twigs, and she could feel some of them shaking.(Kapur 7)

Disintergration of joint families took place in Punjab in the late thirties. Suraj Prakash,Kasturi’s brother-in-law, who has only two children, claims for a separate house. He isexasperated by the fast breeding of Kasturi and the ruin of family income on her pregnancies.Prakash and his wife Lajwanti started living separately and it is in this house Professor Harishand his family arrived as tenants.

A good neighbourly relationship grew between the two families. Virmati became infat-uated with the professor and their relationship grew transcending all the barriers of con-ventional society. The professor wants to escape the boredom of life with his illiterate wifeGanga and want to satiate his intellectual hunger. He found both in Virmati. To Virmatithe professor was modernity and opportunity blended in one. Virmati’s temperament waslargely influenced by her cousin Sakuntala, who got educated at Lahore and was continuouslydenying her Shadi. She was her role model. Virmati’s dream was to go to Lahore and therelationship with the professor augmented it.

Virmati’s pregnancy and her efforts to get it aborted, the attempt to end her life byplunging in the canal at Tarsikka and her insistence with the professor to marry her all showthe concreteness of her character. She shows a balanced and patient temperament when livesalong with Ganga, the professor’s first wife. The professor at the same time is meek andinconsistent in his affairs with Virmati. Her attempt to be employed by shouldering teachingassignments at various schools shows the emerging notion of independence among Indianwomen. It is the secret of Virmati’s life that Ida wants to explore and expose before hercommunity. But she maintains aloofness with her mother’s affairs. She makes it clear whenshe says, “The only thing I had wanted was not to be like my mother”(Kapur 1). In anothersense she has a different notion of independence when compared to her otherwise rebelliousmother.

Lahore witnesses pre-partition tensions. Virmati’s father is killed in one such commotion,when the British police emptied their guns against a banned procession. One day Guddiya,the Professor’s sister was chased by a Muslim youth and this urged them to leave Lahore toAmritsar. Virmati and Harish are left behind. For the first time in her conjugal life with theProfessor, Virmati tasted the marital bliss of living with one’s partner alone and with fullstatus. Virmati conceives Ida at this time.

Independence and the birth of two nations demanded more effort and responsibility fromcitizens like Virmati and Harish. They are engaged in rehabilitation activities and are busywith wound healing among the two warring communities. Even when she was distributingclothes to the hapless victims of the riots, a wild sense of retaliation engulfed her. She emptiedthe shelf that belonged to Ganga with frenzy.

She stretched out her hand to pluck the first sari from the pile, a red thing. Gangaliked wearing red. It was hard for her to touch it; it was like touching Ganga’sskin. Finally she swept everything out of the cupboard, without going through theindividual items, and tied them into large bundles with old bed sheets. The huge

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piles of clothes she made over to Kailashnath to donate to the camps. (Kapur276)

This is largely symbolic. It is Virmati’s desperate attempt to ward off a hateful relationship.Time has grown certain coldness in relation with the Professor. After independence, whenHarish was offered the post of principal in one of the new colleges in Delhi, they all moved toDelhi and settled there. Virmati’s stepchildren went in different directions in their life, onebecame a businessman and other joined I.A.S. Ida was intellectually shallow. But she alwayscarried with her, the sense of independence as an inheritance from her mother. Like Kasturi,who made difficulties in the way of Virmati, Ida was also met with similar difficulties inducedby Virmati. “My mother tightened her reins on me as I grew older, she said it was for my owngood. As a result, I am constantly looking for escape roots”(Kapur 279). Difficult Daughterreminds us Simon Beauvoir’s assertion that “one is not born as women; one becomes one”.

Aravind Adiga’s Booker Prize winning The White Tiger (2008) portrays the marginalizedsections of post globalised India. Drivers, rickshaw pullers, farmers, and menial labourers,who are the real sufferers in a society of mad competition gets pushed hard to the more andmore darker side of the Indian society and Adiga’s fictional adventure is a reminder of thisbitter reality.

The novel gives the detailed accounts of both the rural and urban Indian society with itsvarious economic and cultural facets. Laxamangarh, Gaya, Dhanbad, Delhi and Bangaloreare types as wells as symbols of India. Poverty, literacy, unemployment, caste and culturalconflict, superstition, dowry practice, economic disparity, Zamindari system and exploita-tion of marginal farmers and landless labourers, rise of Naxalism, corrupt education system,poor health services, tax evading racket, embittered master-servant relationship, prostitution,weakening family structure, entrepreneurial success and its fallout, etc, constitute some ofthe themes Adiga has incorporated in his novel.

The structure of The White Tiger is in the form of a letter written by the protagonist,Balram Halwai, to the visiting Chinese Premier, Wen Jiabao. The writer brings out sharpcontrast between the world’s greatest democracy and the greatest autocracy. Both the nationsare marching forward in their entrepreneurial adventures and according to Adiga, India islagging behind because of its ‘glorious parliamentary democracy’ and that is the greatesttragedy of this country.(Adiga, 10).

Balram Halwai is the epitome of entrepreneurial success in the changed India. Mr. AshokSharma, once a driver of Mr. Ashok, a Delhi business man, is the proud owner of a fleet oftourist taxi cars. In his earlier avatar, he was a school dropout, but has remnants of ‘halfbacked’ knowledge in his brain that he has studied in the school. He was born to wretchedparents; his father is a rickshaw puller and his mother is suffering from consumption. Amidstabject poverty, his parents forget to give him a proper name and casually call him Munna.It is the school master who named him Balram. To the poor, death is more soothing thanlife, and when his mother dies, she was cremated to the banks of the Ganges, the holy riverin India, which is destined to receive all the filth on its banks. The spiritual significance ofthe Ganga is contrasted to its present condition. “And then I understood, this was the realgod of Banaras-this black mud of the Ganga into which everything died, and decomposed,

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and was reborn from, and died into again, the same would happen to me when I died andthey brought me here. Nothing would get liberated here”(Adiga, 18)

Like Mistry, Adiga is also drawing pictures of metropolitan India in a neo-realist way. Themisery of rickshaw-pullers is expressed in vivid and compassionate words, with a suppressingdisappointment to see the perpetuation of such an inhuman system only in this part of theworld. He writes, “Now, since I doubt that you have rickshaw pullers in China- or in anyother civilized nation on earth-you will have to see one for yourself”( Adiga,27). RahikaChopra writes,

The White Tiger is a tale of this underdog and its life-begging for food, sleep-ing under concrete flyovers, defecation on the roadside, shivering in the coldand struggling in the 21st century for its freedom. V.S. Naipaul has also high-lighted the Darkness of India in his Area of Darkness (1964);“rigid caste distinc-tion”(p.53),“English mimicry”(p.55),“Indian lavatory and kitchens-the visitors’nightmare”(p.58), “clubs of Bombay and Delhipoverty”(pp.62-66),“misfortune ofrefugee family”(p.68), underdog denied opportunities; lack of hygiene and senseof sanitation;“Indians defecate everywhere”(p.70),“labor is a degradation”(p.73),businessman:“all his duty is, by whatever means, to make money”(p.77);“symbolicactions”(p.80); irrational “reservation policy[which] places responsibility in thehands of the unqualified”(p.82). (The IUP V 3. 33).

After his father’s death, Balram comes under the guardianship of his uncle Kishan. Balram’scousin Reena’s lavish marriage and dowry compels them to borrow a big amount of moneyfrom Stork who for repayment demands all members of the family to work for him and Balramis pulled out of school and made to work at a tea shop where he gets ‘better education’ of lifeand its grim realities ‘than at any school’ (Adiga 38). But his rebellious spirit is evident whenhe say; ‘I was destined not to stay a slave’ (Adiga 41). Born in to the caste of Halwai- Makersof sweetmeat and tea, he finds it very difficult to get a trainer to learn driving. Getting a jobwas another Herculean task. But he is lucky to get Mr.Ashok, an entrepreneur, as his boss.He has to suffer castist discriminations from his masters and Adiga makes an appropriateobservation regarding castism in India, ”these days, there are just two castes; Men with bigbellies, and men with small bellies.

And two destinies: eat or get eaten up.”(Adiga,64)

Adiga’s choice of the Chinese Premier as Balram’s epistolary target is indeed a symbolicone. India’s democratic credentials, despite of all its shortcomings cannot be compared withChina in any way. But Adiga has another point in his mind. Indian democracy is, in essence,autocracy of various types- that of the family, clan, caste, and money power etc- disguisedin its peripheral form as parliamentary democracy. Adiga expresses it in a rather sarcasticmanner, “These are the three main disease of this country, Sir; typhoid, Cholera and electionfever. This last one is the worst; it makes people talk and talk about things that they haveno say in”.(Adiga 98).

Adiga’s protagonist makes use of the first opportunity itself to rise in life. His masterAshok and Pinky decide to go to Delhi and will take either of the two drivers with them and

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Ram Parsad being the senior one stood all chance to be the selected one. Balram thwartsthis and tilts the favour to his side by exposing the imposter Ram parsad’s original religion.He, being a Muslim, fasts during Ramadan and visits mosques in a secret way. When thissecret was exposed, Ashok’s father threw him out and Balram became the servant No.1 inthe family. On their journey to Delhi, at one point, Ashok and Balram change their position,Ashok driving and Balram enjoying the status of the passenger, which ironically indicate thefuture change of fortune awaits in the life of Balram.

Balram’s transplantation to Delhi opens to the writer another chance to expose the starkreality in the Indian cities- the exploitation and sufferings of the underprivileged. Withthe labourers working in the industrial set-up, taxi and auto drivers, servants, prostitutes,beggars, poor people shivering under flyovers, slum dwellers, corrupt police and unfriendlymaster-servant relationship-life in big cities are unimaginable. Metros like Delhi and Ban-galore witness both kinds of India. Balram’s journey from Laxamngarh to Dhanbad, thenDelhi and finally to Bangalore endorses the stark reality that the socio-psychological con-dition of the underclass remains unchanged. Whether it is a landlord or politician, policeofficial, bureaucrat, upper caste people, rich man, industrialist or entrepreneur social be-havior and psyche of the upper class is identical everywhere. They continue to belittle andill-treat them. To the upper class, democracy is a hurdle in their pursuit of wealth and cor-porate power. They prefer a totalitarian regime. Ashok says to Pinky,“we have this fuckedup system called parliamentary democracy. Otherwise we’d be just like China”(Adiga 156).This pro-capitalist bourgeoisie outlook of the upper class and their perpetual contempt ofall systems of governance and their apathy for the downtrodden are a greater part of thecontemporary Indian social reality.

The unequal distribution of wealth and the oppression meted out by the wealthy class,their callousness and utter disregard to the downtrodden are etched deep in the social fabricof India and it caused putrefaction of the body of India. The have-nots are always avariciousowing to the growing demands and their urge to come out of the wretchedness they havefallen. The splendor and extravaganza of the wealthy lay in contrast with the utter povertyof the working class. Balram’s thoughts are right when he thinks that the weight of the cashbag Ashok has entrusted with him is similar to the human weight his father had used toencounter while carrying them in his rickshaw.

He took the red bag and went in, and I saw him inside the glass booth, pressingthe buttons of the cash machine. When he came back, I could feel that theweight of the bag on the back seat increased. We went from bank to bank, andthe weight of the red bag grew. I felt its pressure on my lower back-as if I weretaking Mr.Ashok and his bag not in a car, but the way my father would take acustomer and his bag in a rickshaw (Adiga, 281)

Seven hundred thousand rupees are too strong a temptation to resist for a fellow like Balram.He could find an end to all his struggles and humiliations if he could get hold of that money.That is why he killed Ashok. Just like ‘the way Muslims kill their chickens’ (Adiga, 286).

Balram is the conscience of the lower class-their anger, frustration, protest and revengeand readiness to adopt a new moral code of conduct to succeed in life. Murder of Ashok by

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Balram is the reaction of deep-rooted frustration of the lower class experiencing the polaritiesbetween the upper class and the lower class. Apart from these, pollution, hectic routine oflife, harmful effects of mobile phone, impact of city culture, etc, create new territories ofDarkness in India.(Singh,2009;p.108) (Quoted in Radika, 36).

The final impression of the novel is that it justifies every kind of trick to succeed in life.The rise of Balram Halwai from Munna to Ashok Sharma justifies this proposition. In thisconnection, Richard Marcus writes, “Adiga not only peels back the gloss of the economicmiracle to expose the rot beneath, he instructs us in the means by which a small minority ofthe population are able to subjugate the majority”(Quoted in Radika, 32)

Manju Kapur and Aravind Adiaga are the proud successors of the great Indian realist likeR.K.Narayan, Mulk Raj Anand, Vikram Seth at el. Realism has its rebirth in the fictions ofthese prominent Indian writers. Though writers like Salmon Rushdie and Vikram Chandramade tremors in Indian fiction in English with their magical realist style and hyperbolicmetafictions, realism stood with its new found vigour in the fictional world of majority of ournew generation writers. It can’t be otherwise when India bleeds through its many woundsinflicted by a society built upon by inequalities and injustices.

Works cited

Adiga, Aravind. The White Tiger. New Delhi: Harper Collins, 2008

Chopra,Radika. “Social Criticism in Aravind Adiga’s The White Tiger” IUP V.3.(2010):

Kapur,Manju. Difficult Daughters. London: Faber and Faber,2010

Mukherjee,Meenakshi. Realism and Realitiy. The Novel and Soceity in India, London :Oxford University Press, 1985

Srivastava,Swati and Rizvi Fatima. “The Concept of Self in the Creations of Manju Kapur”IUP V.1,2(2010):

Walder, Dennis.(Ed). The Realist Novel. London & New York: 1995 Routledge, 1995

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About the Authors

Tojo JosephHOD, Economics Department Government College, Manimalakunnu

Ajomy Maria JosephM.Phil ScholarInstitute of English, Kerala University, Thiruvananthapuram

Saju JosephSt: Dominics CollegeKanjirappally, Kottayam Kerala, India

A.ManjuResearch Scholar, R & D Centre,Bharathiar University, Coimbatore (Lecturer, MGUCTE, Elanthur, Kerala)Dr. T.M. MollykuttyAssociate Professor,St. Thomas College of Teacher Education, Pala, Kerala

Dr. Rosamma MathewAssociate Professor& Research Guide in HistoryK.E. College Mannanam Kottayam, Kerala

Dr. Mary Senterla P.S.Head, PG Department of Political Science, Alphonsa College, Pala.

Sijo K. Manuel

Bhagyalakshmi Mohan

Dr. Sr. Elsy P.A. and Teseena P. EmmattyDepartment of Commerce, Vimala College, [email protected], Ph: 0487-2332380

Biju T. GeorgeAssociate Professor, Postgraduate Department of CommerceBishop Abraham Memorial College, Thuruthicad, Pathanamthitta DistrictE-mail Address: [email protected] Jose SebastianAssistant Professor, Postgraduate Department of CommerceDeva Matha College, Kuravilangad, Kottayam DistrictE-mail Address: [email protected]

P.P.SajeevResearch Scholar, Baselius College, KottayamEmail id: [email protected], Phone :9497693340

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Revival of Realism in Indian Fiction in English

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