Founder: Vishwa Nath (1917-2002) 70-6.

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Editor-in-Chief, Publisher & Printer: Paresh Nath MAY 2017

cover story / government

30

Down the Drain

How the Swachh Bharat Mission
is heading for failure
sagar

Narendra Modi has trumpeted the Swachh Bharat Mission, the

most ambitious cleanliness campaign in Indian history, more
loudly than perhaps any other initiative of his administration.
Halfway to the campaign’s 2019 deadline, the country is on
a latrine-building spree, and the government has declared
impressive results in eradicating open defecation. But the
situation on the ground is dispiriting, and does not reflect many
of the government’s claims. Entrenched insanitary habits persist,
and many promises, like that of ending manual scavenging, are
being betrayed. The government is disbursing massive sums of
money, but has no credible proof of how it is being spent. Like all
of India’s cleanliness campaigns in the past, this one too is set to
fail—only at vastly more expense than any of its predecessors.

perspectives

30

26

politics
20 Warming Up
Naveen Patnaik adopts a softer style as an
aggressive BJP guns for Odisha
sandeep sahu

law
24 Lowering the Bar
How the Bar Council of India undermines
legal education in India
56 alok prasanna kumar

environment
government 26 Seeing Through Smoke
56 Raising a Stink Rural India’s overlooked crisis of outdoor
How people power forced a waste-management revolution in Kerala air pollution
kushanava choudhury sangita vyas

MAY 2017 3
 the lede

10

business
8 Game Changers
How lobbyists are redeeming poker in the
eyes of the law
malay desai

sport
10 Fighting Chance
The Olympic aspirations of Punjab’s
small-town judo hub
vikas prakash joshi
70
communities
14 Called to Order
India’s new society of women Freemasons
jaiveer kohli mariwala

labour
16 A New Leaf photo essay / art
A museum for Sri Lanka’s Malaiyaha Tamils 70 Portrait of a City
smriti daniel An intimate view of
Kabul’s arts scene
media lorenzo tugnoli
18 Rare Bird
The satirical weekly that leads journalism
in France
antoine guinard

books
90

literature
82 Write of Passage
How Vasudhendra became
Kannada literature’s first openly
gay writer
prathap nair

the bookshelf 88
showcase 90
82
editor’s pick 98

4 THE CARAVAN
 editor Anant Nath
executive editor Vinod K Jose
political editor Hartosh Singh Bal
senior associate editor
Ajay Krishnan
associate editor Roman Gautam
contributors books editor
Kushanava Choudhury
senior assistant editor
THE LEDE 8 Malay Desai is a freelance journalist based in Mumbai and writes on sports and culture. He is
Martand Kaushik
currently authoring his first non-fiction book, on cricket. copy editor Aria Thaker
10 Vikas Prakash Joshi is an independent journalist, podcaster, translator and writer. He has web editor Nikita Saxena
been published in The Wire, DNA and The Hindu, among other publications, and has worked assistant editors (web)
in the field of Right to Information. Surabhi Kanga and Arshu John
14 Jaiveer Kohli Mariwala is an intern at The Caravan. contributing editors
16 Smriti Daniel is a freelance journalist whose work has appeared in Al Jazeera, Vice, the Deborah Baker, Fatima Bhutto,
Sunday Times, Scroll and The Hindu among others. In 2013, she was named feature writer of Chandrahas Choudhury,
the year by the Editor’s Guild of Sri Lanka. Siddhartha Deb, Sadanand Dhume,
18 Antoine Guinard is an independent journalist based in Delhi, where he has been working for Siddharth Dube, Christophe
the past eight years. A French and American national, he is the South Asia correspondent for Jaffrelot, Mira Kamdar, Miranda
Radio France Internationale and a regular contributor to Public Radio International. He is also Kennedy, Amitava Kumar, Basharat
the correspondent in the region for the leading French weekly L’Express. Peer, Samanth Subramanian and
Salil Tripathi
PERSPECTIVES 20 Sandeep Sahu is a senior Bhubaneswar-based journalist, who has worked for various local, staff writers
national and international media houses for over three decades. He has been reporting for the Praveen Donthi, Priyanka Dubey
BBC from Odisha for over 22 years now. and Atul Dev
24 Alok Prasanna Kumar is an advocate based in Bengaluru. He has practised at the Supreme web reporters Sagar and
Court of India in the chambers of the former solicitor general, Mohan Parasaran, and has been Kedar Nagarajan
a senior resident fellow at the Vidhi Centre for Legal Policy. editorial manager
26 Sangita Vyas is a managing director at r.i.c.e., a research institute for compassionate Anoop Sreenivas
economics. Her work focusses on the causes and consequences of air pollution and poor fact checker Nileena MS
sanitation. photo editor Tanvi Mishra
photo coordinator
REPORTAGE 30 Sagar is a web reporter at The Caravan. Shahid Tantray
AND ESSAYS 56 Kushanava Choudhury is the books editor at The Caravan. design FN
graphic designers
PHOTO ESSAY 70 Lorenzo Tugnoli is a photographer based in Beirut. Paramjeet Singh and
Francesca Recchia is an independent researcher and writer. Sandhya Visvanathan
editorial interns Abhay Regi and
BOOKS 82 Prathap Nair is an independent journalist who lives in Stuttgart, Germany. Jaiveer Kohli Mariwala
editorial management intern
COVER Design: FN Illustration: Mayur Mengle Alisha Lobo
photo intern Debasish Sarmah

Correction:
Sumit Ganguly’s “A New Don,” published in March 2017, stated that a US bill that aimed to impose restrictions editor.thecaravan@delhipress.in
on the H-1B visa programme sought to make it more expensive for all companies to hire workers under the
programme, and to revoke a provision that allowed 20,000 foreign nationals “in excess of the annual H-1B
quota to avail of the visa if they hold a Master’s degree.” In fact, the bill proposed to target specific categories
of companies that relied heavily on H-1B visas, and sought to make it more difficult for them to bypass certain
procedural requirements of applying for the visas. facebook.com/TheCaravanMagazine

The Caravan regrets the error.

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6 THE CARAVAN
THE LEDE
Game Changers
How lobbyists are redeeming poker
in the eyes of the law / Business

/ malay desai minded people to play poker.” Suresh High Court directing the police to stop
hoped that the IPA could become, for interfering in the IPA’s poker games
On a night in late October, in 2011, an poker, a regulatory body similar to and the Calcutta High Court reiterat-
advocate named KN Suresh hosted a what the Board of Control for Cricket ing that poker was a game of skill and
card-playing party at his house in the in India is for cricket. In 2013 and completely legal.
posh area of Indiranagar, Bengaluru. 2015, reacting to separate incidents of Rajat Agarwal, a co-founder of a
Wealthy techies, doctors and realtors more police harassment of poker-room successful online poker start-up, told
were reportedly in attendance. Later operators, he filed petitions with the me that Suresh’s lobbying had paved
that night, a few guests showed up Karnataka High Court and the Cal- the game’s path to greater legitimacy
uninvited: a special squad of the Ben- cutta High Court to request permission under Indian law. The Karnataka High
galuru city police raided the house, to legally convene poker tournaments, Court’s ruling, he said, “was significant,
reportedly confiscating liquor bottles, and to exclude the game from the am- as it not only set a precedent for poker
card paraphernalia and cash. The po- bit of gambling. He received favourable to mushroom in other states, it also
lice also arrested Suresh, along with responses to both within weeks of fil- revived the poker scene in Bangalore”—
eight of his guests. ing the petitions, with the Karnataka which, he said, had declined due to
Over the phone in February, Suresh
recalled the night, and told me that
he and his guests had been “wrongly
booked for playing andar-bahar”—an
illegal card game commonly played on
the street, which decides winners pure-
ly on chance. Instead, they were playing
poker: a game that involves both skill
and chance. “It was harrowing,” Suresh
said, to see the police seize the poker
chips he had brought from abroad.
The arrested individuals were bailed
out the following day, and their cash
and belongings returned to them. Still,
they were booked under the colonial-
era Public Gambling Act of 1867. Suresh
challenged these charges in the Kar-
nataka High Court, he said, and suc-
ceeded in getting the matter quashed.
Nevertheless, the raid spurred him into
action, turning him into a lobbyist for
poker. In the years since then, Suresh’s
efforts, and those of poker lobbyists
like him, have contributed to the rise of
vijay mathur / reuters

poker in India.
About a year after the raid, Suresh
established the Indian Poker Associa-
tion—an initiative he undertook, he
told me, to “find safe havens for like-

8 THE CARAVAN
 the lede

opposite page: Over the past year, laws

governing poker have become more relaxed,
especially since Nagaland passed a law that
enabled the state to award licences to at
least four poker websites.

raids such as the one on Suresh’s home. were picked up within days, and there in his prepared petition before filing it
Now, Rajat told me, the city “boasts of is huge corporate interest in poker be- in courts. Suresh is now one of three
having over 15 poker rooms and some of cause a lot of their employees are play- petitioners at the Gujarat High Court,
the finest players in India.” ing it,” he said. Adda52 has been suc- seeking its nod to allow poker games to
Aditya Agarwal, Rajat Agarwal’s cessful as well, accumulating, in its five be played without police intervention.
brother, is one of India’s most popular years, a player base of over one million. According to Sayta, the government of
poker players. Together, the broth- Laws governing poker have also be- Kerala is considering adding poker to a
ers have mentored many budding come more relaxed since about a year notification it passed in 1976, classify-
poker talents in the country. When I ago, when Nagaland passed the Online ing rummy, dart and other card games
interviewed Aditya over the phone, Games of Skills Bill. This law has ena- as games of skill.
he credited the Karnataka and Kol- bled the state to award licences to at The All India Gaming Federation,
kata judgments for giving him and his least four poker websites. Jay Sayta, a which has supported this change in
brother more leeway to organise poker corporate lawyer who runs GLaws, a Kerala, is also lobbying the central
functions. He said he and Rajat have news website about Indian gambling government to rejig the current tax
“held talks at Rotary Clubs, visited col- laws, is among many who believe the structure as it applies to money earned
Nagaland law was a landmark. “This through such games. The federation’s
Suresh was emphatic that law envisages a regulatory regime CEO, Roland Landers, told me over
for online skill games such as poker, email, “Winnings from poker are taxed
poker is a game of skill.
rummy, fantasy sports, bridge, virtual at flat 30 per cent and not at the slab
“Have you seen a cricket games,” he said. “Poker sites were op- rate, making it unreasonable. It’s un-
tournament with a cash erating even earlier, but the law added fair.” With the Goods and Services Tax
prize for the winner? It’s more credibility to the online poker coming into force in July, the federation
the same with poker.” business and dispelled the gambling has already asked that the GST Council
notion associated with poker.” consider special provisions for the gam-
ww Poker players often argue that the ing industry.
game is not gambling, because winning Some players in India even rely on
leges, hosted charity tournaments”—all at it involves a considerable degree of poker for their primary income. Kan-
of which would have been much more knowledge and skill. “Chess grand- ishka Samant, a Mumbai-based resident
difficult without the revised legal un- master Garry Kasparov says that poker in his twenties, got hooked to poker
derstanding of the game. is more challenging and stimulat- by playing it on Facebook. In 2011, he
In December, poker hit mainstream ing than even chess,” Sayta said, also left his job as a research analyst to play
news in India like never before. Amit mentioning that elite universities such full time, and has now developed an
Burman, a scion of the company Dabur, as Harvard and the Massachusetts impressive reputation in online poker
partnered with the popular poker web- Institute of Technology have made circles. Over the Republic Day weekend
site Adda52 to launch the Poker Sports formal efforts to study poker. Suresh this year, he and three other entrepre-
League, or PSL—which is structured was similarly emphatic. “Have you neurs went to Gangtok, in Sikkim, and
similarly to cricket’s Indian Premier seen a cricket tournament with a cash conducted the Mahjong Aquarium Pok-
League. The PSL currently has 12 prize for the winner? It’s the same with er Championship—which he claimed
city-based poker teams, and facilitates poker,” he said. was the biggest poker tournament in
games both online and in actual poker Efforts to legitimise poker are cur- north-east India. “Poker is a game of
rooms. In January, Burman told a rently underway in other states. Agar- information,” he said. “The more you
newspaper that he was surprised by wal told me that Suresh continues to be gather about your opponent, the more
the enthusiastic response the league a key player in such initiatives, always you win. Chance is a factor too, but one
had received. “A majority of the teams ready to change the names and dates can’t ride that in the long run.” s

MAY 2017 9
 the lede

Fighting Chance
The Olympic aspirations of
Punjab’s small-town judo hub / Sport
harsha vadlamani

/ vikas prakash joshi Judo Training Centre—where the young men were
sparring that day—has produced 26 internation-
In a small hall inside a red-brick school building in ally competitive judokas. These have included
the town of Gurdaspur, Punjab, around 15 young Jasleen Singh Saini, who, like Maan, won a gold
men sparred in pairs, throwing one another to the medal at the South Asian Games in 2016, and
ground in white judo suits. About the same num- Avtar Singh, who competed in the Olympics last
ber of players watched from the sidelines, waiting year in Rio de Janeiro. Of the eight players on In-
for their turn to practise. dia’s senior national men’s team, four come from
Among the judo players—judokas—sparring that the centre in Gurdaspur. The centre coaches over
March day, Karanjit Singh Maan, standing at a 150 boys and young men, from ages six to 25, in-
burly six-foot-two, cast an impressive figure. Maan cluding players from Punjab’s other districts, and
above: In Punjab’s won a gold medal in the South Asian Games in even from other states.
Gurdaspur district, 2016, and is a member of the Indian senior nation- I visited Gurdaspur to better understand how
many young people al men’s judo team. When I asked him if he wished it became a national hub for judo. The small town
are attracted to to represent India at the Olympics, he replied, “I lies in northern Punjab’s Gurdaspur district,
judo because it can
want to win an Olympic medal in judo, not just which abuts the India-Pakistan border. From Am-
provide a leg-up
in the application participate.” ritsar, I took a two-hour bus ride north-east on
process to His ambition is unsurprising, given that the the Amritsar-Pathankot highway, passing fields of
government jobs. Shaheed Bhagat Singh Judo Federation of India wheat, sugarcane and mustard.

10 THE CARAVAN
fighting chance · the lede

In Gurdaspur district, however, ag- seventh person, it would be soaked with do not come to this centre or to judo
ricultural prospects are not as ripe as the sweat of all the players before him.” as a game.” Nisha Saini, the mother of
they are elsewhere in Punjab, in part The 1980s in Punjab were also a time Jasleen Singh Saini, also told me about
because the district lies between the of the Khalistan movement, which the steep cost of raising a competitive
Beas and Ravi rivers, making it prone to demanded a separate state for Sikhs. judoka. The monthly expenditure on
flooding. It also has very few factories “Bullets would fly outside while we a player’s diet alone, she said, can be
or industrial warehouses, limiting the practised inside,” Shastri, who is not a around R10,000—to say nothing of the
employment opportunities available to Sikh, told me. “Militants would come to costs of protein supplements and trav-
working-class men. our school and order us to stop classes elling to tournaments.
Amarjit Shastri, the founder of the from time to time. I had to wear a tur- Gurdaspur’s judo community also
centre, said that this dearth of oppor- ban when I would accompany children suffers from a lack of government
tunities actually plays a major role in outside so militants wouldn’t be able to support. There are no coaches at the
encouraging young people to play judo. identify me.” He said that judo training centre who have been approved by the
“As this is a border district, private- even proved “a way of weaning people Netaji Subhas National Institute of
sector employment opportunities are away from the insurgency” because it Sports Patiala or the Sports Author-
almost nonexistent,” he said. “So the offered a pathway to government em- ity of India. There are only two active
youth of the district traditionally look ployment. coaches at the centre—far too few to
to the armed forces, the Punjab Police By 1989, the centre had over 30 give enough attention to all the judo-
and government as their only em- students, and had produced several kas. In addition to this, in 2015, the
ployment option. Winning medals in national-level judokas. Over the years, union government stopped providing
judo helped them secure coveted jobs as judokas from the district secured grants to the Judo Federation of India,
through the sports quota.” Over 100 coveted government jobs, other young the sport’s national administrative
pupils of the centre, he told me, have people flocked to the sport. body. Dev Singh Dhaliwal, the general
been selected to the armed forces and While Shastri’s centre only trains secretary of the Punjab Judo Asso-
the Punjab Police. boys, there is a female judo training ciation, told me over the phone, from
According to Shastri, who is 57 years centre in Batala, about 30 kilometres Bhatinda, that the PJA has an annual
old, the prevalent cultural beliefs in away, where around 40 young women budget of only R2 lakh. He said that al-
Gurdaspur also helped judo prosper. currently train. Several of these young though crores of rupees had been spent
“In this part of Punjab, being weak eco- women, Shastri said, have played at the on athletics initiatives such as Khelo
nomically was considered acceptable, national level, and one is currently a India, “the benefits to the players are
but physical weakness was frowned constable in the Punjab Police. very minimal.” This means, he said,
upon,” he told me in his office—a Shastri’s centre has lacked a stable “it is pointless to compare ourselves
cramped room at one end of the cen- home base for most of its life, getting with China or Russia, which have huge
tre, which also serves as a makeshift moved between different schools. In budgets.”
kitchen and transit room for judokas 1990, he said, the centre moved to the Many of the people I spoke to said
who travel to the centre from far-off Government Model Senior Secondary that such factors mean that India will
villages. School (Boys), and was almost con- need to devote many more resources
Shastri began learning judo in 1982 stantly shifted between different un- to judo if it hopes to perform well at
from a coach at the Mahatma Gandhi used classrooms. Only in 2010 did the the Olympics. Satish Kumar, one of the
Memorial Secondary School, where he school give the centre its own space, in coaches currently working at the cen-
taught Sanskrit. He started coaching the hall where I visited them. tre, made no effort to hide his irritation
students about two years after that, and Even now, funding is a major chal- when I asked about this. “Every four
founded the centre in 1986. Back then, lenge for the judokas. The centre only years there is a lot of hype about India
he told me, there was hardly any aware- charges students R50 per month, and not winning medals at the Olympics,”
ness of the sport in the district. those from poor families are exempt he said. “But if we have to compete
In the early days of judo in Gurdas- from the fee. In most months, the cen- internationally, we need scientific sup-
pur, Shastri said, “I would often take tre’s expenses exceed what it can raise port, assistance and nutrition through-
mattresses to different schools and through these payments. This lack of out the four years. We need a sports
colleges in villages to demonstrate funds reveals itself in the centre’s rust- doctor who can understand athletes’
judo techniques, as mats were unavail- ing gym machines, as well as its make- needs. Holding a camp just before the
able.” Varinder Singh Sandhu, a former shift “ice bath”: a Sintex water tank that Olympics is of little use.”
national-level judo player, who is now has been cut in half. But above all, Ravi Kumar, a junior
a police superintendent in Hoshiarpur, According to Naveen Salhotra, a coach at the centre, cautioned that the
was one of the centre’s early pupils. In trainer at the centre, “An international government needs to think about ju-
those days, “there were only two judo standard judo kit alone costs R8,000 to dokas’ financial security. “There is no
kits and 12 mats and we would have to R10,000. You need a lot of expenditure point winning medals,” he said, “if the
share them among ourselves,” he said. to compete at an elite level in any sport, player has to then struggle for employ-
By the time a kit “reached the sixth or and students from rich families largely ment afterwards.” s

12 THE CARAVAN
the lede

Called to Order
India’s new society of women Freemasons
/ Communities

/ jaiveer kohli mariwala example, Sadhana was asked whether similar sentiments when I talked to
Freemasons practised “Satanic rituals.” them. I met Smitha Rao—the current
In the winter of 2012, Sadhana Rao In time, “co-Masonries” were secretary of Lodge Bharati, whose hus-
disembarked from her flight in Delhi formed—lodges consisting of both men band is also a Freemason—in her apart-
after having been to London for the and women. The HFAF used to be one ment in Noida. For four years, Smitha, a
third time in 18 months. At the end of of these, but, around the start of the dentist, volunteered at the General Wil-
her final trip, she had been initiated twentieth century, its members decided liams Masonic Polyclinic, a charitable
as a Master Mason into the Honorable to stop admitting new male members. institution that is associated with the
Fraternity of Ancient Freemasons, or It eventually became a fully female GLI, located near the Masonic temple
HFAF: a women’s-only Masonic fra- Masonic order. The HFAF shares its in Connaught Place. From the windows
ternity from London. For the next five traditions, symbols, and allegory with of the polyclinic, Smitha could see the
years, however, she would remain the the United Grand Lodge of England, or big red building every day: an impos-
only woman Freemason in India. UGLE—the largest Masonic organisa- ing symbol of what she could not fully
“I remember that feeling of excite- tion in the world, in London. be a part of. “Whenever I used to walk
ment, and how different I felt before Freemasonry was brought to India by, I used to feel this pang in my heart,
and after the initiation ceremony,” she well before the HFAF became a wom- you know? Being so close to it but also
told me when I visited her apartment in en’s order. British colonial officers who so far.”
Gurugram this March. “I also remem- were keen to maintain their relations Being on the margins of the commu-
ber wanting to share that experience with their Masonic orders during their nity for so long eventually drove Sad-
with someone, and realising sadly there time abroad founded lodges on the sub- hana to become a Freemason herself.
was no one here to share it with.” Sad- “My husband used to say that Freema-
hana’s disappointment would eventu- sonry had to do with ‘making good men
ally lead her to found Lodge Bharati, a
“My husband used to say better,’ and I thought, why just men? I
Masonic lodge exclusively for women— that Freemasonry had to want to do that,” she said. From 2008
the only such one in all of Asia. But, she do with ‘making good men onwards, with the encouragement and
said, “At that time I could not have ex- better,’ and I thought, why advice of Devinder Gupta, the former
pected how difficult it would be.” just men? I want to do Chief Justice of the High Court of
The HFAF is one of only two Mason- Andhra Pradesh, and also the former
that,” Sadhana said.
ic orders for women across the world. Grand Master—the head—of the GLI,
For most of its history, however, Free- ww Sadhana began to do online research
masonry was solely for men. Masonic about Freemasonry. She learnt that
fraternities began as guilds for crafts- continent as early as 1730. Lodges re- there were orders that admitted wom-
men in Europe in the late fourteenth main peppered across India today. The en, wrote to two of them, and, “Within
century, as stonemasons came together Masonic temple of the Grand Lodge a week the HFAF had responded to
to form organisations to regulate their of India—which is affiliated with the me.” When they asked her why she
professional practices. In time, Mason- UGLE, and is also the governing body wanted to join, she explained that hear-
ic lodges promulgated across the con- of all Masonic lodges in India—is locat- ing about her husband’s experiences
tinent, in the process welcoming mem- ed in central Delhi’s Connaught Place. with Freemasonry made her want simi-
bers who were not craftsmen. They When Sadhana married her husband, lar ones for herself. The HFAF invited
began hosting intellectual and spiritual GD Rao, he had already been a Freema- her to join the order, and she went to
discussions, and developed a complex son associated with the GLI for several London for her initiation. The process
system of allegory and symbolism to years. “We used to attend all these occurred over three separate trips,
foster these discussions. Though the dinners, and after the meal and some during each of which Sadhana was con-
existence of these organisations was no toasts, all the men would retreat into ferred a different degree related to her
secret, only Masons were privy to their one room and the wives would be left level of knowledge of the rituals and
allegory and rituals. The combination outside,” she told me. “I used to won- allegory of the HFAF.
of this secrecy and the heavy use of der what they were doing inside, but of After her initiation, Sadhana visited
symbols meant that Freemasonry was, course my husband couldn’t tell me.” London once every year from 2012 to
and continues to be, easy fodder for Lodge Bharati almost entirely con- 2015, both to attend meetings with the
conspiracy theorists. In an interview sists of wives of Freemasons, and the HFAF, as well as to negotiate a path to
with an Indian newspaper in 2012, for other members I spoke with expressed recruit fellow women from India. One

14 THE CARAVAN
 the lede

In November 2016, 20 new members were initi-

ated into the HFAF, in a ritual presided over by the
order’s Grand Master from London. The ceremony
also conferred Sadhana with the title of Worship-
ful Master—the head—of Lodge Bharati, and es-
tablished Women Freemasons of India: a body to
facilitate the formation of provincial lodges within
India. “I was astonished. It was like a dream come
true,” said Richa Chandla, the Master of Ceremo-
nies of Lodge Bharati, who organises and conducts
the lodge’s meetings. “If Sadhana were not there,
if she were not firm, this could never have hap-
pened.”
The uniqueness of the space the new Freema-
sons created is not lost on them. “For women in
India,” Smitha explained, it can be a “struggle to
even travel outside the house.” Because of that,
she said, “Freemasonry becomes that go-to place
for comfort. It becomes a safe haven, a place for
women to just be themselves and to discuss what
it means to be better human beings.” The members
of Lodge Bharati also have plans to create a char-
ity focussed on girls’ education in India.
Lodge Bharati now has 27 members, and Sad-
hana expects it will have nearly double that by the
end of the year. They certainly have a large pool to
pick from: the only two requirements to apply are
shahid tantray

a minimum age of 18, and some sense of spiritual

belief in a higher power.
But not all of India’s Freemasons openly ac-
knowledge the success of Lodge Bharati. Accord-
above: Sadhana sticking point proved to be the initiation process: ing to the women I spoke to, the GLI, in adherence
Rao founded Lodge many of the potential members in India could not to a few archaic traditions of the UGLE, which bar
Bharati, a Masonic manage three trips to London, either because of their lodges from officially recognising any Ma-
lodge exclusively
the financial resources it required, because they sonic orders of women, does not share the spaces
for women: the only
such one in India, had too many family obligations, or both. “It was of their lodges or conduct official events with
and even in all of the problem of the Indian woman’s family com- Lodge Bharati. As a consequence, instead of meet-
Asia. mitment,” Sadhana said. “You have to worry about ing at the GLI’s Masonic temple in Janpath, the
in-laws, parents, kids, spouses. It’s hard to just women of Lodge Bharati conduct their meetings
leave everything like that.” in a rented space in Gurugram. When I contacted
In late 2015, after four years of discussion, the current members of the GLI, including Devinder
HFAF agreed to send 20 of its members from Lon- Gupta, they would not speak to me about Lodge
don to India in late 2016, to conduct the initiation Bharati.
and consecrate Lodge Bharati. This marked the But when I asked Sadhana about the male Free-
first time the HFAF had sent anyone abroad to masons’ reaction to the new lodge, it was clear
initiate new members. To find people interested that she found the matter almost irrelevant. “From
in joining, Sadhana reached out through Wives the beginning we knew we would have their sup-
of Freemasons: a national network for spouses port, but not necessarily their cooperation,” she
of male Freemasons. The costs of the ten-day said. “What I care about is that we have achieved
ceremony were funded by the new members and what we wanted to achieve in the beginning. We
Bharti Patel, an HFAF member from London. have brought about a change in ourselves.” s

MAY 2017 15
 A New Leaf
A museum for Sri Lanka’s
Malaiyaha Tamils / Labour

/ smriti daniel to chase away the devil. Not long ago,

these objects could be found in the LETTER FROM
The town of Gampola in Sri Lanka’s homes of Sri Lanka’s Tamil planta- SRI LANKA
Kandy district houses a 100-year- tion workers—also known as Malai-
old structure comprising five “line yaha, which means “mountain,” or
rooms”—each windowless square, just up-country Tamils. The community is
ten by 12 feet in size, was once home considered distinct from “Sri Lankan is hand-drawn and coloured; both the
to an entire family of estate workers. Tamils,” who have been settled on the poetry that is pinned to one side of a
Though elsewhere people still live island for much longer than the former long board, and the legal documents
in such cramped accommodations, group. that occupy the other, are basic print-
this particular row of rooms has been Over a course of ten years, the activ- outs. But the community is proud of
turned into a museum that boasts a ist P Muthulingam convinced many Muthulingam’s efforts, nevertheless.
peculiar collection of objects: including Malaiyaha Tamils to donate their pos- “There are other museums in Kandy,”
images of Subhash Chandra Bose and sessions to the Tea Plantation Work- K Yogeshwari, one of only a handful of
Mohandas Gandhi, an incense-stick ers’ Museum and Archive, which he women to lead a trade union here, told
holder with Jawaharlal Nehru’s face founded in 2007. The museum’s small me in December. “However, they look
on it, drums once used to announce budget is evident: a map that traces the at only the production aspects of how
malaka mp

news of funerals and marriages, and path the migrating workers took from tea is made. This is the only museum
an ooduku, or small drum, that is used south India to Sri Lanka’s hill country dedicated to the workers. No one knows

16 THE CARAVAN
 the lede

opposite page: Not long ago, the objects provements in wages and labour condi- crease. The establishment eventually
displayed in the Museum could be found in tions that have benefitted workers in responded with some concessions, but
the homes of Sri Lanka’s Tamil plantation other industries across the island. Muthulingam believes only a dramatic
workers—also known as Malaiyaha, which
means “mountain,” or up-country Tamils.
Despite this, many Malaiyaha Tamil restructuring of the system will be able
families still contend with debilitat- to stem the flow of labour away from
ing poverty. Maternal and child health the plantations.
how much our community has contrib- statistics are poorer than the island “The plantation system itself is under
uted to this country.” average, seeing some of the highest some crisis,” PP Devaraj, a former min-
The Malaiyaha Tamils were brought rates of stunting in children due to ister, who also belongs to the Malai-
to Sri Lanka by the British around the malnourishment. The community also yaha Tamil community, told me in De-
mid-nineteenth century to work on tea grapples with rampant alcoholism and cember. Figures issued by Sri Lanka’s
plantations. Hailing from places in Ta- gender-based violence. Both Sri Lan- central bank reveal that tea exports
mil Nadu such as Tirunelveli, Tiruchi, kan Tamils and the Sinhalese majority have declined; climate change is tak-
Madurai and Thanjavur, many of them see Malaiyaha Tamils as outsiders, ing a toll on the agricultural produce
had fled poverty and famine, and came Yogeshwari told me. Women are at a and international markets are in flux.
as bonded labourers. further disadvantage, she said, point- A model of labour at least 150 years
Muthulingam, who runs the non- ing to domestic violence, higher rates of old, in which workers live and work on
profit organisation the Institute of illiteracy, sexual abuse in the workplace the plantations, also no longer appears
Social Development, or ISD, wanted to and constrictive roles at home. sustainable. “The workers are moving
familiarise new generations with the Yogeshwari is one of a long line of out of the plantations, and the estate
community’s history of struggle, and impassioned activists to arise from management are finding them difficult
also with its rich culture and traditions. the plantations. Muthulingam has col- to run,” Devaraj said. In this context,
Some of the objects in the museum lected many stories from Malaiyaha he admits his reaction to the museum
have dark backstories—for instance, the Tamils, in the form of documents and itself is complicated—he appreciates it,
thappu drums lined up on the lawn out- oral histories. He hopes to make these yet believes the community should look
side. Until the 1930s, tens of thousands accessible to visitors soon. One such ac- more to the future and less to its past.
of Indian Tamils crossed the narrow count is that of the 94-year-old woman But activists such as Yogeshwari
ocean in canoes and made an arduous activist Sivapakkiam Kumaravel. In the bring a different perspective to the
238-kilometre trek from the west coast 1940s, Kumaravel was a powerful cam- museum. Her organisation, among oth-
of the Mannar island on foot. Disease paigner who fought to establish a six- ers, has been arguing that the Malai-
dogged their steps and many died on hour workday for tea pickers. Another yaha Tamils should be recognised as
the way. They were buried in shallow, woman Muthulingam hoped to feature, a minority, independent of the Tamils
inexpertly dug graves, and many ani- he told me, was only a child when her of the north and east, and that they
mals dug up their corpses, so the route family was torn apart by the repatria- should have better representation in
was strewn with bones. Often, they had tion process—she was away from home local government. “You can see that
to move through dense forests, where when military personnel came in a socially, culturally, politically and even
the migrants beat the thappu and sang green van and forcibly deported her financially, the two groups have very
to scare away leopards and elephants. parents. different issues,” she said. “Being able
After Sri Lanka, then known as Another of Muthulingam’s projects to contribute our ideas for the new
Ceylon, gained independence in 1948, will catalogue the experiences of those constitution is for us a historical oppor-
a few members of the Malaiyaha Ta- who fled the plantations in the wake tunity. A sense of our ethnic identity is
mil community got citizenship under of the ethnic riots that punctuated the very important now.”
a government scheme (Yogeshwari’s decades from the 1950s to the 1980s. Most importantly, the museum seeks
father was among them). Others lived Seeking safety in the Tamil-majority to honour the dead. Muthulingam’s es-
under the threat of deportation—over north and east, they found themselves tablishment has prominently displayed
500,000 people were sent back to In- surprisingly unwelcome refugees, and a poem by CV Velupillai, the “bard of
dia. Having only ever known life in Sri till date many remain landless. the plantations.” It reads simply:
Lanka, the community resisted. They For years now, Muthulingam has
organised protests where many burned been in the thick of the action as trade They lie dust under dust
their Indian passports. In 2003, the unions from this area have agitated for beneath the tea
crisis was finally resolved when the last better working conditions. The last few No wild weed flowers
of the Malaiyaha Tamils who were still months have been particularly tumul- or memories token
stateless—some 300,000 people—were tuous. In late 2016, thousands of work- Tributes raise
granted citizenship. ers across the tea-plantation sector Over the fathers’ biers!
Over time, this community of more went on strike. Protestors carried post- O shame! What man ever gave them
than 800,000 people has emerged as ers condemning “Ceylon Blood Tea” a grave
a political force to be reckoned with, and burnt tires both in the hill country Only God in his grace
with trade unions bargaining for im- and in Colombo, demanding a pay in- covered them with grass. s

MAY 2017 17
the lede

Rare Bird
The satirical weekly that leads
journalism in France / Media

/ antoine guinard

On 1 February, Le Canard Enchaîné, a

weekly satirical newspaper in France,
ran a characteristically tongue-in-
cheek front-page headline: “I Keep
Telling You That Penelope Hasn’t Done
Anything!”
The headline was a fictional quote
from François Fillon, a former prime
minister of France, and at the time, a
prominent presidential candidate in
the country’s upcoming general elec-
christophe archambault / afp / getty images

tion. (In late April, Fillon lost in the

first round of the election.) Le Canard‘s
headline was alluding to an explosive
story that had broken the previous
week revealing that Fillon’s wife, Pe-
nelope, had been officially employed—
and handsomely paid—as her husband’s
parliamentary assistant for years, de-
spite never doing any such work. This
scandal, which later widened in scope
to similarly phony positions for Fillon’s
children, tarnished the candidate’s monds from the head of state of the
carefully crafted image of a righteous Central African Republic. The story LETTER FROM
family man. stuck to d’Estaing all the way to the FRANCE
What may surprise those unfamiliar 1981 general election, which he lost.
with French media is that, despite the In 2005, Le Canard printed allegations
newspaper’s satirical bent, it was Le Ca- that Finance Minister Hervé Gaymard
nard that broke the scandal. Le Canard had rented an apartment for his family Wednesday morning,” Liffran said. He
Enchaîné—which directly translates to on public money, despite having already added that for the issue after that, “we
“the chained duck,” but is also a play been provided one by his ministry. He sold 500,000 copies, and we could have
on “canard,” slang for “newspaper”— resigned less than two weeks after the sold many more.”
publishes satire, humour and cartoons story broke. In 2011, Foreign Affairs Le Canard’s journalists investigated
alongside hard-hitting reportage. The Minister Michèle Alliot-Marie stepped deeper after that, unearthing other
weekly often runs investigative stories down after Le Canard revealed she scandals that weakened Fillon’s can-
that other outlets, including high-pro- used a private jet belonging to a close didacy. In March, the weekly revealed
file dailies, have missed. Le Canard also friend of the Tunisian dictator Zine that he had received an undeclared,
does not publish ads, has a sparse on- El-Abidine Ben Ali to holiday in the interest-free loan of ¤50,000 from
line presence, and is collectively owned country, while the Arab Spring was in Marc Ladreit de Lacharrière, a billion-
by its staff members—characteristics full swing. aire businessman. Lacharrière is also
that distinguish it from virtually all On 11 February, I spoke over the the owner of a literary and cultural-
other French media outlets, making it phone with Hervé Liffran, one of Le affairs magazine, where Penelope Fil-
an unlikely leader of the pack. Canard’s senior journalists. The pub- lon was employed for over a year with a
Founded in 1916, Le Canard has bro- lication, which has a subscriber base monthly salary of ¤5,000—but to which
ken several scandals that have taken of 70,000 and a typical circulation she had barely contributed a couple of
down prominent politicians. For ex- of around 400,000, was still riding articles. Two weeks later, Le Canard
ample, in 1979, the newspaper revealed high on the Fillon scoop. “We printed reported that, in 2015, while prime
that France’s president, Valery Giscard 100,000 extra copies for our February minister, Fillon arranged a meeting
d’Estaing, had received a set of dia- 1 issue, and everything was gone by between a Lebanese businessman and

18 THE CARAVAN
 the lede

opposite page: The headline of Le Canard’s

1 February issue referred to an explosive
corruption story that the publication
had broken the previous week about the
presidential candidate François Fillon.

the Russian president Vladimir Putin “There is a fear that Le Canard be- Le Canard does not
for the price of $50,000. comes a kind of ‘fight club’ of politics,
publish ads, has a sparse
The weekly comes out every Wednes- that politicians will use it to settle their
day, but its subscribers also have the scores with each other,” Pierre Monégi-
online presence, and is
option of picking it up on Tuesday er, an investigative television journalist, collectively owned by its
nights from the magazine headquar- told me on the phone on 10 February, staff—characteristics that
ters, an elegant, high-ceilinged building two weeks after Le Canard broke the distinguish it from virtually
a stone’s throw away from the Louvre Fillon scandal. “But this is unfounded. all other French outlets.
museum in central Paris. Liffran said On the contrary, its journalists tend to
that many of those who do this are em- be wary of those that try to manipulate ww
issaries of politicians who want to stay them.”
a step ahead of the media cycle. A few days later, I contacted Louis- Recently, the two publications have
The fact that Le Canard contains Marie Horeau, the editor-in-chief of been united by more sinister events.
no advertisements, and that it is not Le Canard. Speaking with a calm, dry In early April, employees of both Le
owned by any individual or private en- humour, Horeau brushed aside a recur- Canard and Mediapart—which also
tity, ensures that it is far more indepen- ring accusation that the paper publishes came out with its own damaging rev-
dent than most publications in France. the results of investigations piecemeal elations against Fillon during the cam-
Liffran explained to me that the paper’s over several weeks, in order to boost paign—received death threats in the
employees are given shares, but that sales. “This idea that we are distilling form of letters. The missives, each of
these are “demonetised,” meaning that information bit by bit is simply false,” which contained a bullet and a picture
they have only decision-making value, he said. “It’s impossible to do that given of a coffin, were signed by a group that
not monetary value. “I was given shares the strength of the competition.” called itself the “Collective for purifica-
after I joined the newspaper full-time, Although much of this competition tion 2J.” (Some media reports have in-
but will have to give them back when comes from the web, Le Canard has terpreted “2J” as a threat to journalists
I leave,” he said. At Le Canard, Liffran resisted the push towards boosting its and judges, because some judges have
told me, “There is no distribution of online presence. The publication’s web- also received similar letters.) According
profit, everything is put back in our re- site, which was created in 2012, only to Liffran, these threats are “symptom-
serve. All our revenue comes from sub- releases headlines, encouraging readers atic of a worldwide hostile sentiment
scription and newspaper sales, and we to buy print copies. towards the press, not just in France.”
don’t have the benefit of any subsidies.” The internet does, however, affect Le But it was Fillon’s response to such
Given this setup, Le Canard’s fi- Canard’s business. Nicolas Brimo, the threats that Liffran found especially
nancial success is perhaps even more paper’s managing director, told me that notable. That very week, after some
impressive. It boasts a reserve of ¤100 earlier, “A big scandal could have a shelf reporters were assaulted at one of Fil-
million and, in 2016, netted a profit of life of four or five issues.” Now, he said, lon’s rallies, the politician “said in a
¤2 million. Moreover, the newspaper’s “we can make record sales on the first television interview that he condemned
retail price of ¤1.20 has not changed issue,” but after that, the competition the violence against journalists … but
since 1993. from digital outlets makes it difficult that they should also ask themselves
Le Canard has not been immune to for subsequent issues to sell as well as about the reason behind this violence,”
criticism. In 2008, two journalists pub- they would have in earlier years. Liffran recounted. “So he’s basically
lished a book entitled Le Vrai Canard— The weekly’s closest competitor is justifying it, which is perplexing.”
The Real Canard—in which they accuse Mediapart, an online investigative Le Canard, however, has a history
the publication of being too close to media platform. Mediapart, however, of responding to attacks and threats
particular politicians, and of providing adopts a much more serious tone than with irreverence. In 1973, government
a platform for the cloak-and-dagger Le Canard—even an accusatory one, agents disguised as plumbers were
games of the political class. The news- according to Horeau. “Our stance is to caught trying to bug the publication’s
paper’s response was cutting. Along laugh at things, while they tend to take headquarters. Today, a hole in the wall
with a two-page editorial defending its on the role of a prosecutor,” he said. that the agents made in their failed at-
practices, it printed a letter of applica- “We don’t have any ambition to have tempt has remained unfilled. A plaque
tion that one of the two authors had an immediate impact on events. We hangs above the hole, reading, “A gift
sent years earlier, in an unsuccessful just want to give useful, interesting and from Marcellin, Interior Minister
bid to join the ranks of the weekly. amusing information.” 1968-1974.” s

MAY 2017 19
PERSPECTIVES
Warming Up
Naveen Patnaik adopts a softer style as an
aggressive BJP guns for Odisha / Politics

/ sandeep sahu naik senses an imminent threat to his rule from

the Bharatiya Janata Party, which, after scoring
Customers at a popular bookshop in Bhubaneswar significant victories in several state elections,
had a pleasant surprise recently when the chief seeks to conquer Odisha in 2019.
minister of Odisha, Naveen Patnaik, arrived there The clearest measures of the threat to Patnaik’s
in the company of his elder sister, the well-known party—the Biju Janata Dal, or BJD—were the
writer Gita Mehta, to buy some books. The elabo- results of the three-tier panchayat elections in
rate security entourage that has become such an February this year. Though the party retained its
integral part of Patnaik’s persona was conspicuous pre-eminent position in the political sweepstakes,
by its absence. It was perhaps this that encouraged it ended up with 473 zilla parishad seats—the
an excited young girl to approach the chief min- only ones fought on the party symbol—178 less
ister for a “selfie.” She was thrilled when Patnaik than the 651 it won in 2012. More worryingly, the
obliged with a smile—he then went on to pose with BJP, which had bagged a paltry 36 seats last time,
several others, who happened to be at the book- gained massively to finish with an impressive 297
shop at the time. seats, leaving the Congress a distant third with
Even as people wondered whether the presence just 60.
of Patnaik’s sister had anything to do with his sud- The vote shares of the three parties, too, tell a
den and unexpected act of magnanimity, there story. According to figures compiled by the daily
came another occasion when the chief minister, Sambad, the BJD, which had won 43.4 percent of
on a visit to a research farm of a local agriculture the votes in the 2014 assembly election, lost less
university, happily posed for photographs with than 3 percent of its vote share to end up with
the students and chatted with them, overshooting 40.8 percent. But the BJP leapfrogged from just
his stay by nearly half an hour. A few days later, he 18 percent to 33.03 percent in this election, a mas-
invited a group of girls from a local government sive jump of over 15 percentage points. For its part,
college into his office chamber to discuss the is- the Congress nosedived from a respectable 25.7
sue of their photos being uploaded onto Facebook percent in 2014 to just 18 percent this time. Though
without their consent. It was a style of interaction the results still left the BJP considerably behind
that would have been unthinkable for the chief the BJD, they pointed to gradual erosion in support
minister till a few weeks ago. for the BJD and an upswing in the BJP’s fortunes.
Patnaik’s recent public outreach efforts show a The major gains made by the BJP in the pan-
clear pattern. There are unmistakable signs that chayat polls in Odisha were significant enough for
the man who arrived on the political scene two Prime Minister Narendra Modi to mention them
decades ago and has ruled Odisha for 17 uninter- on at least three different occasions during the
rupted and unchallenged years has now decided to campaign for the assembly elections in faraway
attempt to shed his aloof image. It is clear that Pat- Uttar Pradesh. Soon after its stupendous victory in
that state election, the party announced its deci-
Though the results of the panchayat elections still sion to hold the two-day meeting of its national ex-
left the BJP considerably behind the BJD, they ecutive in Bhubaneswar, the capital of Odisha. The
pointed to gradual erosion in support for the BJD meeting, apparently designed as a kind of morale
booster for the party’s state unit as it prepared for
and an upswing in the BJP’s fortunes.
the 2019 election, was the clearest indication yet of
ww the importance of Odisha in the BJP’s plans.

20 THE CARAVAN
 perspectives

below: Odisha’s chief minister, Naveen

Patnaik, has of late been more accessible to
party leaders, even as BJP leaders bragged
that several of his MPs and MLAs were “in
touch” with their party.

Sensing that the time was right for some politi-

cal machinations, the BJP embarked on a carefully
orchestrated exercise to spread doubt and confu-
sion in the BJD ranks. Senior leaders of the party,
including the union tribal-affairs minister and
state MP Jual Oram, as well as Arun Singh, who
is in charge of the state unit, openly bragged that
several BJD MPs and MLAs were “in touch” with
the BJP. This led to ominous whispers of a pos-
sible split in the ruling party.
That such talk was not idle gossip fuelled by the
BJP’s formidable propaganda machinery became
clear when, in a series of tweets on 27 March, Ta-
thagata Satpathy, the BJD MP from Dhenkanal
and the chief whip of the party in the Lok Sabha,
accused the BJP of working overtime to engineer
a split in his party—and a fellow party MP of help-
ing the BJP in its designs. Baijayant “Jay” Panda,
the BJD MP against whom Satpathy appeared to
insinuate without actually naming him, responded
immediately by pointing to Satpathy’s suspension
for anti-party activities in the past. He followed it
up with a lengthy article in the leading Odia daily
The Samaja the very next day, hinting that Patnaik
had tolerated corruption and protected criminal
elements in the party and calling on him to “intro-
spect.” With this, the cracks in the hitherto im-
pregnable BJD fortress became clearly visible.
The exercise to repair these cracks has now be-
gun in earnest, as Patnaik himself leads the way
with an image makeover. He has already hinted at
an overhaul of both the party organisation and his
council of ministers. More important, however,
are the changes in his style of working. Though he
has always been happy to have someone else run
the party on his behalf, there is now a discernible
tribhuvan tiwari / outlook

effort to get into the nitty-gritty of party affairs.

In a visible departure from past practice, Patnaik
met panchayat representatives elected in February
in batches for extended deliberations in an effort
to understand the problems the party faces, and
to draw a road map to regain its unassailable posi-

MAY 2017 21
warming up · perspectives

tion in the state’s politics. He followed it up with a But the big question is: will these changes prove
meeting with all BJD MPs in Delhi in the second sufficient to arrest the downslide, especially with
week of April. a resurgent BJP constantly breathing down his
Patnaik’s sudden opening up to party members neck? Among other moves, the Narendra Modi
has been accompanied by a conscious effort to live government has announced its intention to bring
down his image as someone completely dependent back into focus a meandering CBI investigation
on bureaucrats—not just to run the government, into a widespread chit fund scam that flourished
but even the party. In one clear indication of this, in the state between 2006 and 2013, allegedly un-
in early April, he overshot his schedule for an der the patronage of BJD leaders. Ground reports
interaction with elected panchayat representa- suggest that a majority of the estimated one mil-
tives, and kept bureaucrats waiting for around an lion people—and their families—who were finan-
hour for him. The chief minister appears to have cially ruined by the chit fund scam voted against
realised that it has been a mistake to be over- the BJD in the panchayat elections. A possible CBI
dependent on the bureaucracy and that there is no probe into a mining scam, worth at least R60,000
substitute for political counsel. Party members are crore according to a commission of inquiry headed
not complaining. by Justice MB Shah, could be even more damaging
His interactions with the media, too, have un- for the BJD. The commission’s report has impli-
dergone a dramatic change in the period since cated the state’s bureaucracy and political leader-
the panchayat polls setback. Gone is the haughty ship in the scam and recommended a CBI inquiry
Patnaik, who, every time he had to appear before into it.
television cameras, would read out from a written The CBI’s pressure on scams, however, is only
text and then leave in a huff without so much as a small part of the elaborate strategy drawn up by
a “thank you,” even as reporters shot questions at the BJP to dislodge the BJD and capture power in
him. Instead, Patnaik now smiles, speaks extem- 2019. For over two years now, party workers have
fanned out into the countryside to recruit new
An important part of the BJP’s strategy to win members. The party claims that two million new
members have been added during this period. BJP
Odisha has been the building up of the union
workers have adopted a two-pronged strategy to
petroleum minister Dharmendra Pradhan as the win support at the grassroots. On the one hand,
chief ministerial face for the next election. they have been selling the Modi government’s
ww flagship schemes such as Ujjwala, Jan Dhan and
Bima Yojana—aimed at providing gas connec-
pore and actually waits for questions from report- tions, financial inclusion and insurance schemes,
ers. Journalists, therefore, are not complaining respectively—to the people. On the other, they
about the change either. have been highlighting the alleged corruption and
While it is easy to see the idea behind these anti-people measures that have characterised the
moves, some of his other steps have confused BJD’s long years in power. Simultaneously, the
people. In one of his first acts after the panchayat BJP has embarked on a public-relations onslaught
elections, Patnaik asked one of his party MPs in with a particular focus on the use of social media
the Rajya Sabha, Bishnu Das, to resign from his to get the youth on its side.
seat. It was soon after this that his sister Gita and An important part of the BJP’s strategy to win
her husband, the publisher Sonny Mehta, landed in Odisha has been the building up of the union
Bhubaneswar. They spent nearly a week at Naveen petroleum minister Dharmendra Pradhan as the
Nivas, the chief minister’s residence, fuelling chief ministerial face for the next election. For his
speculation that she might replace Das. Somewhat part, Pradhan has systematically nipped in the
fanciful theories were floated about Patnaik leav- bud any possible challenge to his emergence as
ing for the United States for a surgery that he had the party’s face in Odisha with the blessings of the
allegedly been postponing, leaving the party in big two in BJP—Modi and party chief Amit Shah.
his sister’s care in his absence. While Patnaik dis- Patnaik has long benefitted from what is often
missed all speculation about his health problems called the there-is-no-alternative, or TINA, factor,
almost immediately after a story about his impend- but Pradhan’s emergence threatens to change the
ing US visit appeared on the website Narada News, equation.
he took nearly a week to set the record straight There is little doubt that Patnaik faces a for-
about his sister, and make clear that she had no midable challenge, perhaps the biggest in his
intention of taking any political post. Two party 20-year-long career, in the shape of a gung-ho
MPs told me that he wanted to replace Das with a BJP. He has given enough indication that he has
trusted person who could warn him in time if his realised the gravity of the situation and is going to
party MPs began building bridges with the BJP. pull out all stops to meet the challenge in 2019. s

22 THE CARAVAN
perspectives

Lowering the Bar

How the Bar Council of India undermines
legal education in India / Law

/ alok prasanna kumar

On 3 March, the Supreme Court stayed

the operation of a circular issued in
September by the Bar Council of In-
dia, or BCI, that imposed age limits on
people enrolling for law degree pro-
grammes in the country. The circular
barred anyone above the age of 20 from
entering five-year programmes, and
anyone above 30 from entering three-
year programmes (with relaxations for
students from communities entitled
to reservations). The court’s decision
came as a relief to those who had been
affected by the rule, which has a tumul-
tuous history.
The BCI, which is responsible for
tsering topgyal / ap

regulating both legal education and

the legal profession in India, first in-
troduced the rule in 2008. It was chal-
lenged in multiple courts in the years
that followed. Confusingly, different Lawyers in Delhi protest in February 2016 against alleged “anti-national” activities. Over the
courts reached varying conclusions years, several lawyers’ protests across the country have taken a violent turn.
about the legality of the rule: the Ma-
dras High Court upheld it as valid and future, the BCI will continue to impose In addition to producing poorly
constitutional, but the Bombay High poorly thought-out rules on an already equipped lawyers, this has also affected
Court and the Punjab and Haryana stressed legal system. the academic output of Indian insti-
High Court struck it down as unconsti- The BCI draws its mandate from tutes. Academic training in the law can
tutional. Then, in September, the BCI the Advocates Act of 1961. Some of the be applied to a wide field of work be-
issued a circular declaring that the rule body’s responsibilities, as listed in the yond litigation. Those with law degrees
was “restored.” act, include laying down “standards of can undertake research, join think
The situation has also long been professional conduct and etiquette,” tanks, carry out international legal ne-
muddled by the BCI’s failure to explain safeguarding “the rights, privileges and gotiations, and perform multiple other
what an individual’s age has to do with interests of advocates,” and specifying functions that may not require them to
their suitability for a law course. Its standards for legal education “in con- step into a court. These aspects of legal
members and lawyers have made vague sultation with the universities in India education have received little attention
statements about improving “quality” imparting such education” to the state from the BCI. Its expertise in consider-
and ensuring “commitment” to the pro- bar councils. It is also responsible for ing these concerns is limited consider-
fession, but the BCI has never made a recognising universities “whose degree ing that, currently, its Legal Education
cogent case for the rule. in law shall be a qualification for enrol- Committee, which is appointed by the
The BCI’s now-thwarted effort raises ment as an advocate.” council and which oversees legal edu-
larger questions about its role as a regu- The legal-education system has stag- cation, has only two academics out of
lator. It has great power over legal edu- nated because of the domination of the its ten members—only one of the two is
cation and the legal profession, but its BCI by practising lawyers with little a legal academic.
performance as a regulator has been far pedagogical experience. Apart from a The lack of academic expertise in
from satisfactory, and its actions have few select institutions, colleges have the body overseeing legal education is
often been detrimental to both. Mean- largely adhered to an old-fashioned reflected in the still-nascent state of
while, attempts by the government to format of teachers delivering lectures, legal research in India. There is very
reform its role, have not made headway, offering students insufficient practical little rigorous commentary or analysis
making it likely that for the foreseeable training and conceptual grounding. of cases decided by courts, or empirical

24 THE CARAVAN
 perspectives

legal research—which deals with ob- Bengaluru in 2012 and Rohtak in 2016, The BCI, however, resisted this
servable evidence, instead of just com- to cite a few examples. Some lawyers move, submitting a detailed memoran-
mentary and analysis—carried out in also run rackets that are effectively dum opposing it to the standing com-
Indian universities. With a few notable organised crime—one such story on mittee examining the bill. In 2014, the
exceptions, much of the path-breaking the Egmore magistrate court in Chen- National Democratic Alliance govern-
empirical research over the decades on nai, on the website the News Minute, ment withdrew the bill.
Indian laws and legal institutions has described how lawyers systematically Another opportunity to move to-
been done by scholars from outside In- extorted people who came to the court. wards reforming the BCI was missed
dia. A prominent example is the work of Strikes, often accompanied by vio- in the Law Commission’s 266th report,
George H Gadbois Jr, whose magisteri- lence, are par for the course. The 266th which stated that legal education
al study, published in 2011, of every Su- report of the Law Commission lists the “should also prepare professionals
preme Court judge appointed between number of working days lost to strikes equipped to meet the new challenges
1950 and 1989, remains unparalleled in between 2011 and 2016 in various dis- and dimensions of internationalisation
its wealth of detail. tricts across the country. Some of the where the nature and organization of
More pernicious problems have also numbers are staggering: out of a pos- law and legal practice are undergo-
arisen under the BCI’s watch, such as sible 1,325 working days in five years ing a paradigm shift.” It recognised
the mushrooming of law colleges with (or 265 days a year) in Uttar Pradesh the need for improving the country’s
no permanent faculty and insufficient courts, 791 days were lost to strikes in academic output, noting that “there
facilities, many of which run degree- Muzaffarnagar, 689 in Faizabad, 594 is need for original and pathbreak-
for-cash rackets. Within legal circles, ing legal research to create new legal
accounts of BCI members taking bribes knowledge and ideas that will help
The Indian legal-education
to approve colleges have circulated for meet these challenges in a manner
many years. One such case, in Ghazi- system has stagnated responsive to the needs of the country
abad, is currently being prosecuted by because of the domination and the ideals and goals of our Consti-
the Central Bureau of Investigation, of the BCI by practising tution.”
and several of those involved, includ- lawyers with little But the report makes only general
ing BCI members, have already been recommendations towards these aims.
pedagogical experience.
convicted. About the Legal Education Commit-
Further, the BCI was slow to imple- ww tee, it suggests that as “mentioned
ment a bar exam—the Law Commission in the 184th Report of the Law Com-
of India recommended introducing one in Sultanpur and 529 in Chandauli. mission, the composition of the Legal
in 2002, in its 184th report, but the BCI The situation in Tamil Nadu was just Education Committee may need to be
did not do so until 2011. In fact, prior to as dire. Of 1,100 possible working days changed to accommodate specialized
1961, when lawyers were divided into between 2011 and 2016, courts were and dedicated persons in the education
multiple classes, certain classes had shut for 687 days in Kancheepuram, sector while also ensuring that legal
to clear a bar exam before they could 585 days in Kanyakumari, 577 days in education remains relevant to rapid
practice in high courts—but the exam Madurai, 461 days in Cuddalore and developments in legal practice.” It goes
was done away with entirely once the 408 days in Sivaganga. no further in suggesting changes to the
Advocates Act came into force to gov- The problems with the BCI’s role and regulations governing the Legal Edu-
ern all bar councils. Many countries functioning have not gone unnoticed. cation Committee, or specifying how
use bar exams to test the outcomes In 2011, the United Progressive Alli- the “specialised and dedicated persons
of legal education that students have ance sought to curb its powers by sepa- in the education sector” should be ap-
received, specifically with respect to rating the regulation of legal education pointed. It does not address the ques-
their readiness for litigation. The exam from the regulation of the legal profes- tion of whether legal education should
prevents unprepared graduates from sion. Its Higher Education Bill, 2011, be taken out of the purview of the BCI
practising law. proposed an “expert advisory group” at all, making for a disappointing end to
In India, the combination of a rotten to be presided over by the head of the a promising exercise.
legal-education system and the lack of a BCI, which would make recommenda- It is vital that people involved in legal
professional qualification exam allowed tions to the National Commission of education and the legal profession con-
lawyers to enter the system unchecked Higher Education and Research, or tinue to discuss the future of legal edu-
for years. This has led to a drop in the NCHER, which falls under the minis- cation in the country. The BCI’s flaws
quality of legal professionals, as well try of human resource development. In significantly hamper India’s progress in
as considerable turbulence within this model, the BCI would play a role the field of legal research and contrib-
the profession itself. Unable to attract in legal education, though the NCHER ute significantly to the persistent delays
enough work to be able to practise law would wield the final authority. The and inefficiencies of the legal system.
and make a living, lawyers have regu- BCI, meanwhile, would continue to These problems detract from India’s
larly been involved in violent protests prescribe standards necessary to enter attempts to become a just society gov-
and clashes, as seen in Chennai in 2009, the legal profession, and to regulate it. erned by the rule of law. s

MAY 2017 25
perspectives

Seeing Through Smoke

Rural India’s overlooked crisis of outdoor
air pollution / Environment

/ sangita vyas using a portable measuring device. In acid precipitation programs and satel-
Lucknow, the nearest place where the lite photos show clearly that rural areas
In a village in Uttar Pradesh’s Reusa government collects air-quality data, can contribute substantially to total
block this January, I met Pushpa Devi, outdoor pollution levels over the same emissions.”
a young mother. As we spoke, she fed week were often lower than those I The World Health Organisation has
her tiny daughter milk from a spoon— recorded in Reusa. The popular refrain estimated that outdoor air pollution,
the baby was too weak to breastfeed. “gaon ki hawa, sheher ki dawa,” equat- both urban and rural, led to the pre-
Even at one month old, she looked ing village air to a city’s medicine, ap- mature deaths of three million people
to be under 2.5 kilograms, the limit peared far from true. across the world in 2012. This repre-
below which newborns are considered Over the years, the Indian govern- sents a threefold increase from 2005 es-
to be low birthweight. Several factors ment and international development timates, which is partly due to greater
contributed to the fragility of Pushpa agencies have spent many millions recognition that rural populations are
Devi’s daughter, and the air she was of dollars trying to reduce indoor air also exposed to outdoor pollution. In
breathing was certainly one of them. pollution in rural India. This menace India, over 620,000 premature deaths
Every winter morning and evening, is mostly attributable to chulhas—tra- were attributable to outdoor air pollu-
in thousands of villages across north ditional cookstoves fuelled by dung, tion in urban and rural areas in 2012,
India, people without adequate housing wood or crop residue. But the problem according to the WHO’s figures.
or warm clothing huddle around small of outdoor air pollution in rural India The task of monitoring and pre-
fires to try and keep the chill at bay. I is rarely acknowledged, even though venting air pollution in India goes to
saw countless such fires in the week the Central Pollution Control Board,
I spent in Reusa, as well as farmers The Central Pollution or CPCB, under the ministry of the
burning sugarcane thrash to clear their environment and forests. In 2003, the
Control Board has set up
fields after the harvest, and small fac- CPCB issued its Guidelines for Ambient
tories burning sugarcane pulp to make more than 600 air-quality Air Quality Monitoring, which distin-
gur. Closer to Lucknow, 90 kilometres monitoring stations in over guished between types of pollution
to the south, coal-fired power plants 260 cities and towns, but affecting urban and rural areas. For
and factories such as brick kilns emit- not a single one in a rural rural areas, the document mentioned
ted constant streams of smoke. These indoor air pollution caused by burning
area.
and other sources of air pollution leave solid fuels such as dung and wood, but
rural north India under a thick layer of ww made no mention of outdoor pollution
smog throughout winter. or its sources. The CPCB has set up
According to India’s National chulhas contribute to it too when the more than 600 air-quality monitoring
Ambient Air Quality Standards, the smoke they produce drifts outdoors. stations in over 260 cities and towns,
permissible outdoor concentration of Until now, concern and action re- but not a single one in a rural area.
particles smaller than 2.5 micrometres garding outdoor air pollution in India In the state capital, I visited the
in diameter, averaged over 24 hours, is have focussed on Delhi and other large regional officer overseeing Lucknow
60 micrograms per cubic metre. These urban centres. However, 30 percent of district for the Uttar Pradesh Pollu-
are particles so small they can enter Indians live in rural Punjab, Haryana, tion Control Board. “There aren’t any
deep into the lungs, and even into the Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, which satel- stations in rural India because there
bloodstream. Levels of outdoor air lite images show falling under a cloud aren’t any polluting activities there,” he
pollution in Reusa regularly hovered of dirty air every winter. As Kirk Smith, told me. When I told him what I saw in
at two to four times this limit during a professor of global environmental Reusa, he admitted that such activi-
my visit, and rose to around ten times health at the University of California ties occur outside cities, but justified
the limit one night. Air this polluted in Berkeley, wrote in a report to the his agency’s urban focus by saying that
can kill babies and old people, impede United Nations in 2006, “There is a they “only happen for a short period of
healthy development in children, and tendency to think of health-damaging time” annually, while “cities have pol-
give everyone else respiratory infec- air pollution as an urban phenomenon, lution 365 days a year.”
tions. but globally the total health burden It is probably true that outdoor
There are no government pollution from air pollution falls predominantly air quality in rural areas is better in
monitors in Reusa. I collected data on on rural populations. … Emissions summer than in winter, just as it is in
my own, in fields and public spaces, inventories done as part of climate and cities. However, villagers burn fires for

26 THE CARAVAN
 perspectives

warmth for four to five months of the year, and Pradesh. However, the state environmental secre- above: The National
emissions from chulhas and rural industries occur taries, state pollution control boards and district Green Tribunal’s
year-round. Regardless of how good rural air may magistrates in these territories are not enforcing ban on crop-
burning in much
be in the summer, the certainty that it is highly the ruling effectively. Crucially, the ban is highly
of north India is
polluted for almost half the year merits notice and impractical for farmers, many of whom have no highly impractical
investigation. means or incentive to clear their fields in any other for farmers, many
State pollution control boards, among their way. The government offers subsidies for ma- of whom have no
other functions, must inspect factories and power chines that help farmers plant new crops without means or incentive
plants to ensure compliance with emissions stan- having to remove the dry stalks from the previous to clear their
harvested fields in
dards. But enforcement is lax. For instance, a 2011– harvest, but these are still too expensive for most.
any other way.
2012 survey of 47 coal plants by the Centre for At present, India has relatively few biomass-
Science and Environment, a research and advo- based power plants, which use crop residue to
shammi mehra / afp / getty images

cacy organisation, found that roughly two-thirds generate electricity and can create a market for
of them, in both urban and rural areas across 16 what is now largely a waste product. The NGT and
Indian states, routinely violated emissions norms. some environmental activists have called for the
Other measures that could improve rural out- construction of more such power plants, but there
door air quality are also falling short. In Decem- are barriers in the way: the tariffs for biomass-
ber 2015, the National Green Tribunal, or NGT, based power set by some state governments are
banned crop-burning in the National Capital not attractive enough to encourage investment,
Territory, Haryana, Punjab, Rajasthan and Uttar and there are insufficient mechanisms to ensure

MAY 2017 27
seeing through smoke · perspectives

sustained supplies of biomass at reason-

able prices.
There is some cause for optimism, CONCENTRATION OF PARTICULATE MATTER
even if limited, in the efforts to address
pollution from chulhas. One major step
WITH A DIAMETER OF 2.5 MICROMETRES OR LESS, 2015
in this campaign came in mid 2016,
when the central government launched
the Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana,
a scheme to subsidise LPG for poor YEAR-LONG AVERAGE
households. So far, the government IN MICROGRAMS
claims to have set up almost 20 mil- PER CUBIC METRE
lion new LPG connections under this
programme, which aims to reach 50
100-120
million households in all.
The scheme is not without its hic-
cups, though. In Reusa, many of the 80-100
households I visited had received a
cylinder and stove through the Ujjwala 60-80
Yojana, but did not use LPG exclu-
sively. One family used an LPG stove to
40-60
make chai for me while simultaneously
cooking rice on a chulha. A commonly
held belief across north India is that 20-40
food cooked on a chulha is healthier
than that cooked on an LPG stove. To 0-20
make matters worse, refilling an LPG
cylinder costs almost half the average
monthly per-capita expenditure in
rural India, and rural households often Visualisation by Sujoy Bhattacharyya; Data from Aaron van Donkelaar (Dalhousie University) et al.
(www.fizz.phys.dal.ca/~atmos/martin/?page_id=140)
go through a cylinder each month. (By
way of offsetting the initial subsidy for
setting up new connections, beneficiary
households pay full rates for roughly ity: outdoor air quality throughout the issue in a report that emphasised the
the first nine of their refills—the calcu- Indo-Gangetic plain, in both urban and importance of addressing pollution and
lation can change with shifts in subsidy rural areas, is estimated to be the worst health in an integrated manner in both
rates—and only then qualify for sub- in the country, and consistently bad urban and rural areas. Other organs of
sidised refills.) Moreover, the scheme enough to make people sick. In 2015, the government should follow suit.
only aims to reach half of the at least the most recent year for which data Unfortunately, the Indian govern-
100 million households that did not are available, the estimated average ment seems to be taking large steps
use LPG before it started. Given that outdoor pollution in much of this re- backwards on air-pollution policy even
many households will not receive LPG gion was above the Indian government as it takes small steps forward. Several
through the Ujjwala Yojana, and many standard. times over the past year, Anil Dave, the
beneficiaries continue to use chulhas, A first step in seriously addressing minister for the environment, has ques-
improvements in pollution exposure rural outdoor air pollution would be tioned estimates of deaths attributable
and health as a result of the scheme for the CPCB to start monitoring it on to air pollution in India, such as those
may be much smaller than expected. the ground. Government-collected data published by the WHO. In February,
The rising awareness of outdoor will be important both for understand- Dave told the Rajya Sabha that “there
air pollution in rural areas in forums ing variations in air quality over time are no conclusive data available in the
such as the UN is in part the result of and space, and for convincing relevant country to establish direct correlation-
recent advances in computer modelling agencies of the problem’s gravity. ship of death exclusively with air pollu-
and satellite technology, which have (Policies on industrial pollution, crop tion.” Monitoring of outdoor air pollu-
allowed experts to estimate air quality burning and cooking fuel all fall under tion in rural areas may be a long way off
using satellite data. These estimates different parts of the government, if the head of the ministry responsible
cannot capture the same level of detail including the ministries of the environ- for it still questions the health ef-
that on-the-ground monitors do, but ment, agriculture, renewable energy, fects of pollution exposure. While the
they are indicative of the scale and and petroleum and natural gas.) In government dilly-dallies, millions of
severity of the problem. Applying this 2015, the ministry of health and fam- Indians such as Pushpa Devi’s daughter
approach to India reveals a bleak real- ily welfare officially recognised the struggle for breath. s

28 THE CARAVAN
Down the Drain
How the Swachh Bharat Mission
is heading for failure
 reportage

One afternoon this January, I took a 40-minute

bus ride south-east from the centre of Ahmedabad
to Maninagar, an area that thrice elected Modi as
its MLA over his tenure as Gujarat’s chief min-
ister. I walked past prosperous shops and offices
in the area’s main bazaar, then down a road with
high-rise apartments on one side and a slum on
COVER STORY / GOVERNMENT the other, and, after about 20 minutes, arrived
at Millat Nagar, a Dalit and Muslim ghetto. The
SAGAR cramped, garbage-strewn lanes were lined with
a few basic businesses—television-repair kiosks,
butcher shops, simple eateries—and clusters of
young men loitered everywhere. Following my
on 2 october 2014, just months into his job as guide, a social activist and local resident named
prime minister, Narendra Modi launched the Shakil Ahmad, I jostled my way through the
Swachh Bharat Mission, the most ambitious clean- crowds and out to some open ground at the far
liness campaign in Indian history. Not by coinci- side of the settlement.
dence, this was the very date of the birth anniver- Before us was a large reservoir, called Chandola
sary of Mohandas Gandhi. Modi, in dramatic style, Lake, with slums dotted along its rim. Where we
appeared before a battery of cameras to sweep the stood, and all across the roughly ten-metre-wide
courtyard of a police station in a Dalit residen- bank leading to the water, the ground was littered
tial colony in central Delhi. “A clean India would with human faeces. Flies buzzed all around. A
be the best tribute India could pay to Mahatma small boy squatted down in plain sight to defecate.
Gandhi on his one-hundred-and-fiftieth birth an- Ahmad told me that most of the people living
niversary in 2019,” he said, promising to transform on this side of the lake were Muslims, and most
sanitation and waste-management in the country of those on the other Dalits. Millat Nagar, he said,
by that day. had no sewers or municipal piped water. Its people
Since the launch, Modi has put enormous effort depended on groundwater, and some homes had
into making the Swachh Bharat Mission a flagship single-pit latrines—essentially, crude pits. He
programme of his rule. He spoke of it in his annual said that a large share of Dalits and Muslims in
Independence Day speeches, televised live from Ahmedabad lived in similar ghettos, under similar
the ramparts of Delhi’s Red Fort, and at campaign conditions.
rallies in election-bound states. He roped in every A mobile latrine—a small van with two cabins
layer of India’s vast government—from the cabinet, perched on its back—stood nearby, surrounded
through the ministries and state and district by faeces. An emaciated young man in an orange
administrations, down all the way to individual vest with reflective stripes stood guard beside
urban authorities and village panchayats. He also it. I asked why he had not told the boy to use the
imposed a cess of 0.5 percent on all taxable ser- mobile latrine. Its container was full, he said, and
vices to help raise money for the campaign. Late needed to be emptied, but to do that he had to
last year, after Modi demonetised the country’s wait for his boss, a field supervisor, to arrive and
entire supply of high-value currency notes, the re- authorise it.
placement notes, which millions were desperately Ahmed and I later drove all the way around the
queuing for, appeared carrying the Swachh Bharat lake on his motorcycle, taking whatever roads and
Mission logo—Gandhi’s signature round glasses. It lanes kept us closest to its rim. We passed through
was a move indicative of the government’s incred- slum after slum, and wherever the lake peeked
ible zeal for drawing attention to the campaign. out from between the shacks and crude houses I
On the second anniversary of the Swachh saw its banks littered with trash and excreta. On
Bharat Mission came the proclamation of one of two occasions, I spotted children defecating in
its most touted successes. To mark Gandhi’s birth the open. Othen than the mobile latrine stationed
and the campaign’s founding in 2016, some of the behind Millat Nagar, we did not find a single pub-
top leaders of Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party gath- lic sanitary facility, whether mobile or otherwise,
ered at Porbandar—Gandhi’s birthplace on the anywhere along the way.
Gujarat coast. There, they declared that Gujarat, The man beside the mobile latrine introduced
Modi’s home state, had eradicated open defecation himself as Pankaj Kumar. He said he was a Dalit,
in all urban areas. The minister for urban develop- from the east of the state, working for a firm
aditya kapoor

ment, M Venkaiah Naidu, beamed in via live video contracted by the Ahmedabad Municipal Corpora-
to hail this “interim gift” to Gandhi, which was to tion. Besides maintaining the latrine, his job was
set the stage for the “final gift” in 2019. to drive it to specified areas every day, keeping it

MAY 2017 31
 down the drain · reportage

How the mission performs on this

last promise will be a major indicator
of how it performs on an array of its
other goals. The first step in eliminat-
ing open defecation is to make sure that
people have latrines to use in the first
place—and on this the mission is mak-
ing significant headway. To end manual
scavenging, these latrines must be of
the kinds that eliminate the handling
of fresh excreta, and must be used as
per design. But, as the mobile latrine
nandan dave for the caravan

surrounded by faeces near Millat Nagar

showed, having infrastructure alone is
not enough. Maintaining sanitary fa-
cilities also requires systems to handle
the sewage they capture—and on this,
the Swachh Bharat Mission raises ques-
tions for which the government does
not appear to have adequate answers.
All the places I went are closely tied to Modi. Manual scavenging exists in the yawn-
ing gap between the amount of excreta
Ahmedabad is the largest and most prosperous produced by India’s enormous popula-
city in the state he ruled for 13 years. Delhi is the tion and the country’s existing capacity
for processing it sanitarily. If that gap
seat of his current government. Varanasi is Modi’s is not closed, especially as the govern-
Lok Sabha constituency. Nageypur and Jayapur ment strives to get more than half a
billion people who did not previously
have been “adopted” by him. use latrines to start using them, it will
perpetuate the same old practices.
parked for a few hours at each one, over The Swachh Bharat Mission makes it There is also another factor in getting
a 12-hour shift. He had no gloves, mask, a major objective to completely elimi- all of India’s households and communi-
or any other cleaning or safety equip- nate open defecation in India. This is an ties to use latrines, and to take collec-
ment. To clean the latrine and empty enormous goal, and an admirable one, tive responsibility for their upkeep.
out its container, he had to use his bare but the mission does not stop there. To Many of the current practices respon-
hands. succeed, it must, by its deadline in 2019, sible for the abysmal state of sanitation
make rapid progress in fighting some in the country are rooted in traditional
as of 2011, according to India’s latest of India’s most stubborn and appall- notions of purity and hygiene—of-
census, 53.1 percent of the country’s ing practices of hygiene and sanitation. ten the same ones that normalise the
246.7 million households had no latrine Besides ending open defecation, it has allocation of sanitation work to the
on their premises. Of these, a small pledged to deliver door-to-door col- oppressed castes. Transforming sanita-
share used public latrines, and the vast lection of all of the country’s garbage, tion in India will require a large-scale
majority—half of all the households in the processing of all inorganic trash to change in these beliefs, yet here again
the country—practised open defecation. generate energy, giant strides in the san- the Swachh Bharat Mission is faltering.
The United Nations, in a report on itary treatment of sewage, and a mass Last month marked two and a half
water access and sanitation in India transformation in popular belief and years since the Swachh Bharat Mis-
released in 2015, said that 564 million behaviour. The campaign also aims to fi- sion began, bringing it halfway to its
of the country’s people still defecated nally deliver on a promise that has been deadline. In anticipation of that mile-
in the open. They accounted for nearly made and broken many times before: to stone, I began to study the campaign,
half of the country’s population, and completely end the barbarity of “manual to understand how it has performed so
for over half of the 1.1 billion people scavenging.” This is a euphemism for far and whether it is on course to meet
across the world who practised open the disposal of excrement by hand that, its targets. This meant looking beyond
defecation. The UN estimated that for centuries, has been the exclusive lot the giant billboards, grand official
65,000 tonnes of uncovered, untreated of people at the very bottom of the caste pronouncements and celebrity photo
faeces—equal to the weight of around hierarchy. The employment of manual ops that have generated a great deal
180 Airbus A380s—were being intro- scavengers, and the construction of of attention for the campaign so far,
duced into the environment in India latrines that rely on their services, is and asking questions about its design,
every single day. prohibited by Indian law. finances and performance. I read

32 THE CARAVAN
 down the drain · reportage

reports, interviewed experts and filed a barrage of have a massive incentive to make the campaign opposite page and
queries with government offices under the Right succeed. The status of the Swachh Bharat Mission below: As part of
to Information Act. To see what impact the cam- in them offers an indication—likely a positively the Swachh Bharat
Mission, the Gujarat
paign was having on the ground, I also travelled biased one—of its overall progress elsewhere.
government has
through Ahmedabad, Varanasi and Delhi, as well Most of what I saw, heard and read was not declared that all of
as the villages of Nageypur and Jayapur, both on encouraging. India is in the midst of a latrine- the state’s urban
the outskirts of Varanasi. construction spree. In April, official numbers areas, including
Modi, in his speeches and on his social-media from the Swachh Bharat Mission-Gramin and the Ahmedabad, have
feeds, has trumpeted the Swachh Bharat Mission Swachh Bharat Mission-Urban—respectively, the eradicated open
defecation. Yet the
to the point that it is inextricably associated with campaign’s rural and urban components—said
practice continues
him. Much of the promotional material associated that over 42.6 million latrines have already been in Maninagar, an
with the scheme has bolstered this connection too, built. (The Swachh Bharat Mission also has three area in Ahmedabad
aggressively deploying the prime minister’s image other, relatively small, “sub-missions”: one to en- that thrice elected
alongside iconography invoking Gandhi. sure that there are latrines in all of the country’s Narendra Modi
All the places I went on my reporting are closely public schools, a second to ensure that there are as its MLA, and in
other parts of the
tied to Modi. Ahmedabad is the largest and most latrines in all of its anganwadi centres, and a third
city too—belying
prosperous city in Gujarat, the state he ruled for 13 to build latrines as part of other government pro- the government’s
years and which his party rules to this day. Delhi grammes, such as the National Rural Employment claim.
is the seat of his current government, and for a Guarantee Act and the Pradhan Mantri Awaas
decade now the BJP has run the Municipal Corpo- Yojana.) But there are indications that even those
ration of Delhi, the largest of the national capital’s with access to new latrines do not always use
three municipal authorities. Varanasi is Modi’s Lok them, that latrines are being denied to particular
Sabha constituency. Nageypur and Jayapur have marginalised groups, and that not enough is being
been “adopted” by him under the Saansad Adarsh done to end manual scavenging. There are also
Gram Yojana, which urges members of parliament concerns that the mechanisms for verifying the
to promote development initiatives in villages of productive use of funds under the campaign are
their selection. In these places more than any- not sufficiently strong. Evidence on the ground
where else, the prime minister and his government calls into question many of the government’s
nandan dave for the caravan

MAY 2017 33
down the drain · reportage

claims of success so far, pointing to the “Modi-ji has the art and ability of creating an
unreliability of data being produced by
the authorities. The government and event which is seen 24-7 across TV channels,” and
the World Bank have signed an agree- the Swachh Bharat Mission “fits well in his scheme
ment for a loan of $1.5 billion to support
the Swachh Bharat Mission-Gramin, of lots of sound but low substance.”
but the release of this funding has been
stalled for over half a year due to the Against that, the R2.23 lakh crore that explained, served as an open toilet, and
government’s delay in commissioning the Swachh Bharat Mission is estimated he came here every morning to clean
a promised independent verification to cost—$36.3 billion, by the exchange it. According to the 2011 census, some
of official data on the present state of rate at the time the campaign be- 28,000 of the 1.2 million households
sanitation in rural India. gan—seems a prudent investment. But under the Ahmedabad Municipal Cor-
That verification is meant to cre- as Manoj Kumar Jha, the head of the poration had no sanitary facilities, and
ate a trustworthy baseline against department of social work at the Uni- their members defecated in the open. Of
which to measure the performance of versity of Delhi, told me, “Modi-ji has the households that did have sanitary
the Swachh Bharat Mission-Gramin. the art and ability of creating an event facilities, 188 had dry latrines cleaned by
As it is designed, this campaign, like which is seen 24-7 across TV channels,” hand, and just under 6,000 had single-
the Swachh Bharat Mission-Urban, is and the Swachh Bharat Mission “fits pit latrines, which are often emptied
meant to have its progress regularly well in his scheme of lots of sound but manually. About 73,500 had latrines
verified through independent evalua- low substance.” If Jha is right, much of linked to septic tanks, which are also
tion. As I discovered, these measures the money being spent for the campaign typically drained by manual scavengers.
are not functioning as they should. is going down the drain. Solanki carried a long-handled
The government’s behavior suggests instrument that resembled a wooden
a disturbing resistance to transpar- in the middle of chamanpura, a resi- mop, but the crosspiece, instead of a
ency and accountability—a possibility dential area about a 20-minute drive rag, sported rows of iron spikes along
reinforced by the rejection of many of across the Sabarmati River from the its bottom. Solanki used it to scrape fae-
my RTI requests on thin procedural centre of Ahmedabad, is a wide rectan- ces off the ground prior to sprinkling
grounds. As my reporting proceeded, I gle of bare ground. A road runs along the area with the powder—bleaching
became increasingly convinced that the one side of it, a narrow lane leading to a powder, as it turned out, which is a
government’s data and claims on the slum runs along another, and a low wall disinfectant. Once he scraped together
Swachh Bharat Mission should be met bounds its remaining edges, separat- a pile, the men with the shovels threw
with scepticism until they are checked ing it from the rough shacks beyond. A it into the tractor along with the trash,
by credible non-government agencies, hulking green trash container stands to be dumped in a landfill.
and until their findings are released for to one side. Some graffiti on the wall Solanki had no water to use for his
public scrutiny. shows a man with a broomstick stand- job, and there was not a single tap in
India’s crisis of sanitation has huge ing beside a tree and an Indian flag, sight. He lifted one of his slippered feet,
costs. The UN estimates that around with the words “Clean India” floating sole to the top. It was caked thickly in
117,000 of the deaths of Indian chil- above him. the same mixture I had stepped in.
dren under the age of five in 2015 were I approached this place on a bright It was not easy to catch Solanki at
caused by diarrhoea, the incidence morning, at around 6 am, on the back work. What he does, and what other
of which correlates closely with the of a motorcycle driven by Purshottam sanitation workers in Ahmedabad do, is
quality of sanitation in an area. This Vaghela, a Dalit activist employed by rarely witnessed by the majority of the
means that 10 percent of all deaths Janvikas, an NGO that works with city’s residents, including the people
under the age of five in the country are manual scavengers. One man stood in they clean up after. Those who def-
due to the disease—among the highest its centre, sprinkling a white powder on ecate in the open tend to do so before
proportions of anywhere in the world. the ground, while two others shovelled daybreak, when darkness affords them
Diarrhoea and other diseases tied to trash from the container into the back some privacy. Most sanitation workers,
poor sanitation can have debilitating of a tractor. As I walked towards the in Ahmedabad as in other cities, begin
long-term effects, such as malnutri- man in the middle, I felt myself step on their shifts very early, and by the time
tion and stunting. They also have costs something mushy, and realised that it the whole city begins its day their work
in terms of decreased productivity, had stuck to my shoe. I looked, and saw is done. This makes their labour largely
expenditure on treatment and prema- that it was a paste of the white powder invisible—though if they ever stopped,
ture deaths. A 2015 report on the global and fresh excrement. the results would be all too noticeable.
costs of poor sanitation, co-authored by The man was Kaushik Kalubhai I spent three days in Ahmedabad,
the charity WaterAid, valued the loss to Solanki. He looked to be somewhere visiting scores of neighbourhoods and
India’s economy at $106 billion per year, in his thirties, and said he was a Dalit, meeting several activists and social
or over 5 percent of its gross domestic working full-time with the Ahmedabad workers. For the first two days, I set off
product. municipal corporation. This place, he into the city in mid morning, by which

34 THE CARAVAN
 INSTITUTIONAL STRUCTURE OF THE
SWACHH BHARAT MISSION
SBM-GRAMIN SBM-URBAN OTHER SUB-MISSIONS
(Ministry of drinking water and sanitation) (Ministry of urban development)
Latrines for public schools
(Ministry of human resource
National authority development)
National Scheme-Sanctioning Committee: National Advisory and Review
headed by the secretary of the ministry of Committee: headed by the Latrines for anganwadi centres
drinking water and sanitation secretary of the ministry of (Ministry of women and child
urban development development)
National Mission Director: headed by the
secretary of the ministry of drinking water National Mission Directorate: Latrines to be built as part of
and sanitation headed by an officer of joint- the National Rural Employmnet
secretary rank Guarantee Act and the Pradhan
Mantri Awaas Yojana (Ministry
of rural development)
State-level authority
Apex Committee: headed by the state’s High-Powered Committee:
chief secretary headed by the state’s chief
secretary
State Mission Director: headed by the
secretary of the department leading the State Mission Directorate:
state mission (each state can assign the headed by an appointed senior
mission to its department of panchayati raj, official
rural development, or drinking water and
sanitation)

State Mission Directorate: headed by a .3%

senior state-level official, supervised by the
state mission director 1.1% 10.7%

State-Level Scheme-Sanctioning Committee:

comprised of technical experts
27.7% 60.1%

Authority at level of district or Urban Local Body

District Water and Sanitation Committee: Municipal corporations
headed by the chairman of the zilla and municipalities
parishad

District Swachh Bharat Mission ESTIMATED COST OF THE

Management Committee: headed by the
district collector or district magistrate
SWACHH BHARAT MISSION
(in crores)
Block-level authority
TOTAL K2,23,692
} SBM-G K1,34,386
Block Programme Management Unit:
headed by a block sanitation officer
} SBM-U K62,010
} Latrines for public schools K2,528
Gram Panchayat-level authority
} Latrines for anganwadi centres K768
Village Water and Sanitation Committee:
headed by the village sarpanch } Latrines to be built as part of the NREGA K24,000
sources: SBM-U and SBM-G guidelines source: Report of Sub-Group of Chief Ministers on
Swachh Bharat Abhiyan, October 2015
down the drain · reportage

below and point sanitation workers had already cleaned help him clean. Jitendra Rathod, another activist
opposite page: the spaces where open defecation occurs. I spent with Janvikas, later told me the municipal corpo-
In Ahmedabad’s several hours driving around neighbourhoods ration operated no more than half a dozen such
Chamanpura area,
near the city centre with Saumil Fidelis, a young vans, far from enough to cover the whole city.
as in many places
across the city and Janvikas activist. He was pleasantly surprised that It did not take long to spot sanitation work-
also in Varanasi and we did not see signs of open defecation, and told ers clearing faeces from places much like the
Delhi, sanitation me the situation in these places had improved. “It one where I saw Solanki, and also from many
workers have only seems there has been some action on our com- roadsides and footpaths. I met Gayatri Ben on a
the crudest tools plaints,” he said. footpath in central Ahmedabad, working in the
and no protective
On the third day, on which I met Solanki, I woke dark. A Dalit, from the Bhangi caste, she said she
equipment. These
workers are up two hours before dawn to join Vaghela on a mo- left home before dawn every day to roam the city
most often from torbike tour of places such as Odno Tekro, Sarki- streets picking up excrement, armed only with
oppressed castes, vad, Nagorivad and Juna Vadaj—slums largely a broom and a metal dustpan. She said she was
and continue the occupied by Dalits and Muslims. The sanitary con- employed by a firm contracted by the municipal
stigmatised work of ditions in all the areas we visited were very poor, corporation, and was paid R6,000 a month. Nar-
cleaning faeces with
though slightly better than in Millat Nagar. Some endrabhai Fakira, another sanitation worker and
their bare hands
that has been their
areas had public latrines with sewer connections, also a Dalit, stood nearby with his hands covered
communities’ lot for but even in these, the cleaners, all employed by in bleaching powder. He initially thought I was a
centuries. contractors running these latrines for the munici- municipal officer out on inspection, and appeared
pal corporation, had only brooms and crude tools nervous. When assured that he had nothing to
to work with, and no safety equipment at all. fear, he complained that he did not get so much
In Sarkivad, a slum in the Shahpur area, we as water to help him do his job. He carried a long
pulled up next to an eight-cabin public latrine that stick with a flat blade attached to one end, which
Vaghela said served roughly a hundred house- he used as a scraper and a shovel.
holds. Scores of men and women headed towards When I sat down to speak with Rathod, I learnt
it, each carrying a plastic bottle or a lota full of that nothing that I had observed was exceptional.
water. Inside, each of the stalls had a tap, but when Rathod regularly leaves his home before dawn,
I checked none of them had any water. with a camera in hand, to document open defeca-
When I stepped back outside after looking into tion, uncovered excreta and the labour of sanita-
the stalls, I saw that a small van with a water tank tion workers. On the screen of his small digital
and pump on its back had been parked nearby. camera, he pulled up some of his photographs and
Lettering on its side said it was on duty for the videos. An entire collection of images showed chil-
municipal corporation. Two men unfurled a hose dren defecating in the open. One series of videos,
that started spewing water. The latrine’s caretak- shot in public latrines in various parts of the city
er, pinching the end of the hose to form a jet, used last year, showed floors almost completely covered
it to flush the faeces in the stalls into the drains. in faeces, and sanitation workers cleaning them
This was the only time in the day he got water to with brooms and other crude tools, sometimes
with the help of a few buckets of water. The scenes
were far worse than anything I had seen in the
city’s public latrines myself, and, even watching on
the tiny screen, I felt a violent revulsion. On sev-
eral occasions, unable to watch any more, I asked
Rathod to stop the footage.
Rathod said he and his colleagues regularly sent
such videos and photographs to municipal offi-
cials. They made it a point to send a large batch of
them out to officials in September last year, just as
Gujarat was preparing to declare the end of open
defecation in all urban areas. That did not stop the
government from going ahead with the declaration.
As of mid April, on the Swachh Bharat Mission-
nandan dave for the caravan

Gramin website, a ranking of districts “based on

IHHL+ODF coverage”—that is, on the availability
of individual household latrines and the absence of
open defecation—showed Ahmedabad district as
the best in the country, with “100.00%” coverage.
The top 14 spots in the ranking were all occupied
by districts in Gujarat.

36 THE CARAVAN
 down the drain · reportage

nandan dave for the caravan

there has, at best, been little action un- the parliament passed the Employment
der the Swachh Bharat Mission to end of Manual Scavengers and Construc-
the employment of manual scavengers, tion of Dry Latrines (Prohibition) Act.
to rehabilitate them, or even to improve The act came into force in 1997, and
nandan dave for the caravan

their working conditions. What I saw applied automatically in all Union Ter-
in Ahmedabad was a breach of the ritories and in the six states that had
law against manual scavenging by the earlier passed resolutions asking for
government itself—Solanki said he was it—Andhra Pradesh, Goa, Karnataka,
employed directly by the municipal Maharashtra, Tripura and West Ben-
corporation—or by firms contracted gal. Because sanitation is a state subject
by it—who employed all the other under the constitution, each of the
sanitation workers I met in the city. remaining states had to pass its own
The hiring of manual scavengers by resolution to enact the new law in its into sewers or septic tanks without ad-
government contractors was evident in jurisdiction. Many states never brought equate safety equipment, and that the
Varanasi and Delhi too. When I raised the act into practice at all. Even where family of any manual scavenger who
concerns about this with government it was in force, it never produced a has died while cleaning a sewer since
officials, the overwhelming response single conviction. 1993 shall receive official compensation
was apathy. In the years that followed, there of R10 lakh. This came seven months
This apathy continues a long legacy were numerous legal petitions against before the start of the Swachh Bharat
across much of India. In Gujarat, I the act’s lacklustre implementation. Mission, and 11 years after a petition
found it to be as deeply rooted as Following pressure from the Supreme on these matters was submitted to the
anywhere. Modi, at least rhetorically, Court, in 2013 the parliament passed a court by the Safai Karmachari Andolan,
has championed the end of manual revised law, the Prohibition of Employ- a national organisation for the welfare
scavenging under the Swachh Bharat ment as Manual Scavengers and their of manual scavengers.
Mission, but in all his years in charge of Rehabilitation Act, or MS Act, which In Gujarat, Rathod, with the help of
Gujarat his government did nothing to was designed to automatically take ef- colleagues and volunteers, has been
further this goal. fect across the entire country. documenting the deaths of manual
The struggle to get provisions against The following year, in March, the scavengers engaged in cleaning sewers,
manual scavenging into Indian legisla- Supreme Court ruled that it is a punish- and trying to secure compensation for
tion was painfully drawn-out. In 1993, able offence to send manual scavengers their families under the Supreme Court

MAY 2017 37
down the drain · reportage

ruling. Rathod told me he has identified I asked Jagan Shah, who holds a seat on the top
146 such cases dating from 1993 to the
present. administrative body for the Swachh Bharat
Rathod said that the actual number Mission-Urban, about efforts to end manual
of such deaths over this period is likely
much higher. His tally only includes scavenging. “Usko jyada tawajjo nahi diya gaya”
cases that have come to light via the (It was not given much consideration), he said.
media, and in which the organisation
has been able to secure death certifi-
cates and First Information Reports to “fall in pit/manhole”— in 2014, for been no change in this since the launch
confirming the circumstances of death. instance, the record shows 780 fatal of the Swachh Bharat Mission.
Often, Rathod said, deaths of manual falls into pits, and 195 into manholes— In January 2007, the central govern-
scavengers in sewers are registered but has no indication as to how many of ment introduced the Self Employment
as “accidental” events by the police, these involved manual scavengers. The Scheme for Rehabilitation of Manual
obscuring what actually happened. Safai Karmachari Andolan has identi- Scavengers, to be implemented by the
All the cases Rathod has identified fied 487 deaths of manual scavengers ministry of social justice and empower-
are from cities and towns. “We don’t on the job since 1993, but this only in- ment. Under the scheme, after revi-
know if manual scavengers are dying cludes cases with corroborating docu- sions in the wake of the MS Act in 2013,
in septic tanks in the villages,” he said, mentation, from only 16 states. Sana each family that includes a manual
“because it’s difficult to get news from Sultana, the SKA’s media coordinator, scavenger is eligible to receive, among
the villages.” told me the organisation does not have other things, a one-time cash grant of
In 2014, Rathod and his partners the resources to monitor the numbers R40,000, skill-development training for
began approaching government agen- across the rest of the country. By the two years supported with a monthly
cies in Gujarat to secure compensation SKA’s count, so far only 57 families of stipend, and loans of up to R10 lakh
for eligible families under the 2013 deceased manual scavengers have been to help establish alternative sources
Supreme Court ruling. Over two years, paid the compensation due to them of income, going up to R15 lakh for
they contacted the state departments of under the Supreme Court judgment. “sanitation related projects like vacuum
urban development, rural development What is clear is that manual scav- loader, suction machine with vehicle,
and social justice, as well as numer- engers continue to work in sewers in garbage disposal vehicle, pay and use
ous municipal corporations, but were dangerous conditions, and to die doing toilets etc.”
rebuffed everywhere. Officials “did so. This March, in Bengaluru, three Going by numbers from the minis-
not know whose work it was to award manual scavengers died of asphyxia- try, the scheme’s implementation has
compensation to manual scavengers,” tion while trying to clear a congested been very patchy. At its height, in the
Rathod said. sewer without any safety equipment. 2008–2009 financial year, the scheme
Then, an organisation of manual (The gear for such work should include disbursed R100 crore. But over the next
scavengers called Manav Garima, breathing apparatus, protective cloth- four years, this sum fell sharply, and for
which collaborates with Janvikas, ing, proper lighting, and detectors of two years the scheme registered no ex-
approached the Gujarat High Court to poisonous gases such as methane, as penditure at all—indicating that it had
seek an order for government action well as mechanised cleaning equip- not yet used up the funds allocated to it
on the compensation. In December ment such as suction pipes.) All three earlier. In the 2013–2014 financial year,
2016, following a court directive, the were employed by a firm contracted by the scheme was promised R570 crore
department of social justice designated the local water board, and owned by under the union budget, suggesting a
responsible authorities to handle com- the Ramky Group, a Hyderabad-based massive increase in the government’s
pensation applications and payouts: the company with interests in real estate ambitions for it, but actual expenditure
department of urban development for and waste management. (The company came to only R35 crore. That pattern,
deaths in urban areas, and the depart- has been contracted to build numer- of results not matching ambitions,
ment of rural development for deaths in ous waste-processing plants under the has repeated ever since, even with
rural areas. Swachh Bharat Mission.) The Karna- the Swachh Bharat Mission in place.
This is as far as the matter has come. taka government announced that it Despite the union budget earmarking
None of the families in the 146 cases would pay compensation to the families over R400 crore for the scheme in each
identified by Rathod have yet received of the dead workers, and registered an of the two following years, the sum of
any compensation. Manav Garima’s FIR against the contractor. these funds expended in both years was
petition is awaiting its next hearing The struggle for compensation for nil. On its website, the ministry quali-
before the high court. deaths on the job is only one part of fies this statistic by noting “Adequate
Nobody has a reliable count of how the larger struggle to secure safety and fund available with NSKFDC”—the Na-
many manual scavengers have died on dignity for manual scavengers. Sadly, tional Safai Karamacharis Finance and
the job in India. The National Crime progress on all fronts of this struggle Development Corporation, a financial
Records Bureau counts deaths due has been painfully slow, and there has body that disburses the scheme’s funds.

38 THE CARAVAN
 down the drain · reportage

Simply, this means that the fund has still not spent officials that, when considered against census data
the money it was allocated prior to the 2013–2014 showing well over 20 lakh insanitary latrines in
financial year. In response to a question in the Lok the country, a national total of somewhere in the
Sabha in March 2016, the ministry of social justice vicinity of 12,000 manual scavengers “is unreal-
and empowerment reported that, between 2013 istic as so many insanitary latrines will not clean
and 2016, the scheme’s actual spending came to themselves.”
R37.7 crore—only 2.5 percent of the funds it was In a “Comprehensive Action Plan for Swachh
promised in the union budget over this period. Bharat Mission,” submitted to the union cabinet
A major hurdle to reaching all of India’s manual two months after the campaign was launched, the
scavengers with this or any other scheme is the ministry of social justice promised “implementa-
fact that the government has never reliably identi- tion of Manual Scavenging Act, 2013 including
fied and counted all of them. The Socio-Economic identification and conversion/demolition of all
Caste Census 2011 shows 180,000 households insanitary latrines by 2015.” I sent the ministry an
earning a living through manual scavenging, but RTI request for state-wise numbers of insanitary
numerous critics have identified mistakes in the toilets demolished or converted since 2014.
data behind this document, and its release was The ministry forwarded my request to the
delayed for several years as the government ad- NSKFDC, which comes under its supervision. (It
dressed errors. is standard procedure for offices to forward re-
The Supreme Court, in its 2014 ruling on the quests for information they do not have to authori-
case filed by the SKA, observed, “Due to mounting ties that they believe might have it.) The NSKFDC
pressure of this court, in March 2013, the cen- turned my request down, noting that it “provides
tral government announced a survey of manual financial assistance to target group at concessional
scavengers. The survey, however, was confined rates of interest and also provide skill develop-
only to 3546 statutory towns and did not extend to ment training programmes. Therefore, the matter
rural areas. Even with this limited mandate … the under reference doesn’t comes under the purview
survey has shown remarkably little progress.” of NSKFDC.”
Responsibility for the survey also falls to the Another item under the ministry’s plan of action
ministry of social justice. In a document uploaded is “three sanitation relating schemes of NSKFDC
to the survey’s official website, the ministry states which includes target of 821 pay toilets in five
that “no credible data regarding the number of years.” I sent an RTI request to the NSKFDC for
manual scavengers in the country is available. the number of toilets that have been built under
However, the Census 2011 data shows that there these schemes, but it was turned down with a
are still some 26 lakh insanitary latrines”—by the note stating, “the information in this regard is not
document’s definition, ones “in which nightsoil is available with the office.” The response noted,
serviced by humans and animals, and “from which however, that the NSKFDC had disbursed R4.36
nightsoil is disposed into open drain.” crore to the states of Jammu and Kashmir, Kerala,
In response to an RTI request, the ministry of Madhya Pradesh and Odisha for the construc-
social justice wrote to me that “the Chief Execu- tion of pay-and-use toilets to be managed by the
tive Officer of the Municipality/Municipal Corpo- “target group.” It did not say how much of the
ration is responsible for undertaking the survey disbursed money had been utilised.
of manual scavengers in the urban and rural areas Documents directly from the Swachh Bharat
respectively. The details of identified manual Mission also raise doubts over how seriously
scavengers are required to be uploaded by the the campaign is taking manual scavenging.
state government/Union Territory administration The guidelines for the Swachh Bharat Mission-
concerned.” As of 31 January 2017, the ministry’s Gramin, which is run by the ministry of drinking
reply said, a total of 12,725 manual scavengers water and sanitation, state that the construction
had been counted, in 13 states: around 10,000 in of insanitary latrines is not to be permitted in
Uttar Pradesh, and the rest all in Andhra Pradesh, rural areas, but do not explicitly list the eradica-
Assam, Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Karnataka, Madhya tion of manual scavenging as a goal. In stating the
Pradesh, Odisha, Punjab, Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu, goal of achieving open-defecation-free status, the
Uttarakhand and West Bengal. Gujarat is among guidelines did not initially, when they were first
the states missing from the list. issued in December 2014, include any criteria by
Even the numbers the ministry has gathered which to judge if an area had secured it. In June
cannot be trusted. Thawar Chand Gehlot, the 2015, the ministry of drinking water and sanita-
minister for social justice and empowerment, tion issued additional guidelines that established
admitted this in July last year, in a meeting of the the following criteria: “no visible feces found in
National Commission for Scheduled Castes. Ac- the village/environment,” and “every household as
cording to the minutes of the meeting, Gehlot told well as public/community institutions using safe

MAY 2017 39
 down the drain · reportage

ness is very high.” In February 2014,

Modi launched a statewide cleanliness
campaign named the Mahatma Gandhi
Swachhata Mission. Parmar said that
Gujarat had already been building la-
trines under the Nirmal Bharat Abhi-
yan—a national cleanliness campaign
under the United Progressive Alliance
government that was superseded by the
Swachh Bharat Mission. But with the
Mahatma Gandhi Swachhata Mission,
he told me, the state began campaigning
rigorously to make sure that people used
them. That, according to Parmar, laid
the ground for the state’s achievements
in ending open defecation. “It’s not hap-
enrico fabian

pening by simply providing toilets.”

What I saw in Ahmedabad belied
Parmar’s praise for Modi’s past com-
mitment to public sanitation. So did a
technology option for disposal of faeces 2014, he had suggested presenting new recent report on socio-economic condi-
(tip: safe technology means no contami- equipment to sanitation workers, and tions in Gujarat by the Comptroller and
nation of surface soil, ground water or instituting annual prizes for them. Auditor General, a constitutional body
surface, excreta inaccessible to flies and But, he told me, the committee had tasked with scrutinising all government
animal, no handling of fresh excreta rejected the idea, saying, “Arre woh toh work. The CAG found that, despite the
and freedom from odour and unsightly contractor ke log hain” (They are the state government’s claims of significant
condition).” In December 2016, the contractors’ employees). In his view, progress on managing waste, less than
ministry issued additional “ODF the government had raised the issue of 3 percent of Gujarat’s municipalities
sustainability guidelines,” on how an manual scavenging “euphemistically have any segregation systems in place,
area can maintain open-defecation- only.” And, he continued, “Aur usko and none of its municipal corporations
free status after initially achieving it. jyada tawajjo nahi diya gaya” (It was not have segregation rates of more than
These omitted the phrase “no handling given much consideration). 18 percent. Further, none of the state’s
of fresh excreta” from the criteria for municipalities have working sewage-
open-defecation-free status. in the state secretariat in Gandhi- treatment facilities, and only one has
The guidelines for the Swachh nagar—Gujarat’s capital, situated 25 anything close to comprehensive sewer
Bharat Mission-Urban, which comes kilometres north of Ahmedabad—I met coverage.
under the ministry of urban develop- Poonamchand Parmar, an additional There is also plenty in Modi’s past to
ment, do make the “eradication of chief secretary of the state department call into question his claim to be a cru-
manual scavenging” an explicit aim. of urban development and the per- sader against manual scavenging.
However, they have no indication of son responsible for implementing the In November 2007, the Times of India
how the ministry understands open- Swachh Bharat Mission-Urban in the carried a brief report titled “‘Karmayo-
defecation-free status. state. Over a 20-minute conversation, gi’ swears by caste order.” The journal-
In March, I telephoned Jagan Shah, Parmar gave me numerous assurances ist Rajiv Shah wrote:
the director of the National Institute of of the campaign’s ongoing success. I
Urban Affairs, an autonomous organi- asked why settlements around Chan- In a yet unreleased book, ‘Karmayog’,
sation that provides research and train- dola Lake, and also in numerous Chief Minister Narendra Modi has
ing to support the ministry of urban other parts of the city, still lacked basic stirred the hornet’s nest by writing
development. As its director, Shah sanitary facilities, but the question did that scavenging was an ‘experience
holds a seat on the National Advisory not faze him. He picked up the phone in spirituality’ for the Valmikis. This
and Review Committee, the top admin- to speak to his staff, and asked them sub-caste among Dalits have been
istrative body for the Swachh Bharat to send someone to the Chandola Lake condemned to scavenging jobs for
Mission-Urban, which brings together area. Then he went back to describing centuries. … About 5,000 copies of
representatives of various ministries the successes of sanitation in Gujarat. the book—authored by Modi and
and government bodies under the lead- Throughout, Parmar lauded the ef- published in October 2007 by the Gu-
ership of the secretary of the ministry forts of Modi. From “his very first day” jarat government’s state information
enrico fabian

of urban development. as chief minister, Parmar said, “Naren- department—could not be released
I asked Shah about efforts to end dra bhai was very keen about cleanli- for public distribution because of
manual scavenging. He said that, in ness. … His basic concept of cleanli- electoral code of conduct. Sponsored

40 THE CARAVAN
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by Modi’s favourite public sector undertaking, luctant man, whether I could have the book. The opposite page and
Gujarat State Petroleum Corporation, Modi’s top Modi aide looked at me suspiciously, smiled, below: Manual
aim in this 101-page booklet is to spread his and after some bit of hesitation, forwarded the scavenging
continues in India
ideas of karmayoga. But his blatant casteism has book to me. “No mischief, Rajiv”.
despite being
outraged Dalit groups. banned by law.
In his report, Shah quoted from the book: Gandhi, in 1936,
I met Shah, and asked how he had managed to wrote of his belief
procure this unreleased volume. He told me that I do not believe that they (Valmiks) have been that manual
he was a political correspondent for the Times of doing this job just to sustain their livelihood. scavengers should
approach their work
India at the time, and often met with senior bu- Had this been so, they would not have contin-
“only as a sacred
reaucrats. He came across the book by accident, he ued with this type of work generation after duty.” Modi, in his
said, in the office of Kuniyil Kailashnathan, Modi’s generation. … At some point of time, somebody book Karmayog,
principal secretary. must have got the enlightenment that it is their describes their
Shah recounted this encounter with Kailashna- (Valmikis’) duty to work for the happiness of assigned role in
than in a 2012 blog post for the Times of India: the entire society and the Gods; that they have the caste order as a
“job bestowed upon
to do this job bestowed upon them by Gods;
them by Gods.”
A just-published book was lying on his table, and that this job of cleaning up should continue
“Karmayog”, authored by Modi. It was actually as an internal spiritual activity for centuries.
a collection of Modi’s what seemed to many a This should have continued generation after
babu erudite lectures at the annual bureaucratic generation. It is impossible to believe that their
conclave called Chintan Shibir. I asked Kailas- ancestors did not have the choice of adopting
hnathan, whom I have always found a very re- any other work or business.

MAY 2017 41
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Shah described in his blog post how he met Through the years of these programmes, India
Kailashnathan again a few days after his report did make some progress on sanitation; between
appeared. The bureaucrat blamed him for creat- 1990 and 2015, the UN reported, some 394 million
ing “havoc,” and demanded the book back. Shah Indians stopped defecating in the open. But the
obliged. “Later,” he wrote, “I was told, the Gujarat overall situation remained dismal, and the govern-
information department, on instructions from ment’s sanitation programmes have been widely
Modi, withdrew the book from circulation.” acknowledged as failures. The Total Sanitation
Before he returned the book, Shah had it Campaign aimed to make sure that every Indian
scanned for his own records. He shared a copy of household had an individual latrine by 2012, and
the text, published in Gujarati, with me. that each of the country’s public schools and an-
There is a striking resemblance between Modi’s ganwadi centres had a communal latrine by 2013.
view of manual scavengers and those of the That target was never reached. The CAG report
mascot of the Swachh Bharat Mission, Mohandas noted that less than half the number of household
Gandhi. In an article published in 1933, Gandhi latrines the scheme aimed to build between 2009
wrote in his Hindi weekly, Harijan Sevak: and 2014 were ever constructed. The UN’s 2015
report on water and sanitation said that 60 percent
So far as the work of the so-called untouchables of Indians had no access to “improved sanita-
is concerned, if by reform of their work it is tion”—facilities that prevent direct human contact
meant that they should give up their trades, it is with raw excreta.
not only unnecessary but also harmful, because The audit report also listed a slew of other
these trades are of the nature of public service. failings. In the 53 districts that the auditors
The washerman, the barber, the cobbler, the studied as test cases, over a third of the latrines
Dom, the scavengers are all true servants of the constructed were not in use, “due to reasons like
people. If they were to give up their work, the poor quality of construction, incomplete struc-
people would be doomed. The reformers believe ture, non-maintenance, etc.” Across the country,
that in treating these people as untouchables, “due importance was not given to IEC”—informa-
caste Hindus have made a mistake. It is the firm tion, education and communication—although
conviction of the reformer that the work of the these are “very critical for creating awareness
scavenger and the Dom is sacred. about the benefits of sanitation and hygiene.”
Only a small fraction of the funds earmarked for
In another article, published in the English- monitoring and evaluation were ever used for
language Harijan in 1936, he stated that “an ideal these purposes, “there was no system” to verify
Bhangi, while deriving his livelihood from his oc- implementation data submitted by authorities
cupation, would approach it only as a sacred duty.” on the ground, and “physical progress was over
Gandhi’s views on manual scavengers have been reported.” Often, programme funds remained
extensively criticised. Modi’s views in Karmayog “parked/unutilized” for long periods of time after
merit nothing less. As the poet Nirav Patel, quoted they had been released to individual states, and
in Shah’s 2007 report, asked in response to the advances paid to “various implementing agencies
book, “Why didn’t it occur to Modi that the spir- were outstanding.”
ituality involved in doing menial jobs hasn’t ever In conclusion, the report lamented that “the
been experienced by the upper castes?” lessons learnt and experimentations through this
long journey do not seem to have made much im-
the swachh bharat mission is not the Indian pact on the sanitation status in the country.” With
government’s first attempt at solving the coun- the Swachh Bharat Mission, the same trend looks
try’s sanitation crisis. In 2015, the CAG released likely to repeat itself. On paper, the campaign has
its last performance report on the Nirmal Bharat responded to at least some historical lessons. In
Abhiyan. The report notes that a “rural sanita- practice, however, it appears to be proceeding
tion programme has been in existence in India, much like the programmes that came before it.
in some form or other, since 1954.” That effort In December 2014, in preparation for formally
was significantly ramped up in 1986, when the partnering with Swachh Bharat Mission-Gramin,
government launched the Central Rural Sanita- the World Bank released a “concept stage” report
tion Programme—described in the report as an on the rural campaign’s feasibility. In light of the
“infrastructure oriented programme with high past, it noted possible risks to the programme’s
levels of subsidies for latrine construction.” Then, success, including “weak implementation of poli-
in 1999, “not satisfied with the slow growth of sani- cies to ensure social inclusion, non-availability of
tation coverage under CRSP, Government of India private land with poor and vulnerable household
launched Total Sanitation Campaign,” which, in for toilets and weak participatory process involv-
2012, was rechristened the Nirmal Bharat Abhiyan. ing women and other vulnerable groups at plan-

42 THE CARAVAN
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The World Bank reported that “over the 1999-2013 water storage facility at the toilet, help-
ing to ensure sufficient water for flush-
period,” India’s central and state governments ing and hand washing.” But, it added,
“are reported to have expended INR 150 billion “a change in guidelines is not in itself a
greater assurance of achievement and
(USD2.4 billion)” on cleanliness campaigns. By all sustenance of results.”
accounts, much of that money was wasted. The In November 2015, a year into the
Swachh Bharat Mission, the World
Swachh Bharat Mission proposes to spend around Bank released an appraisal report on its
15 times that in just five years. proposed loan of $1.5 billion in support
of the Swachh Bharat Mission-Gramin.
It stated that the campaign is “techni-
cally sound,” but also warned that, go-
ning and implementation.” From what data on the execution of the Swachh ing by past experience, its targets were
I saw in Ahmedabad, and elsewhere on Bharat Mission. vastly unrealistic. It noted, “the time-
my travels, the Swachh Bharat Mis- There is also a lack of transparency in frame provided for the Operation (i.e.,
sion has not done enough to mitigate the government’s data on the spending completion by October 2, 2019) does
this concern, and socially marginalised of campaign funds. The accounts made pose challenges. The short time frame
groups are often excluded from the public so far disclose the sums that ramps up the coverage targets to about
benefits of the campaign. have been released to individual states five times the best historical perfor-
In November 2015, a World Bank or for individual initiatives, but do not mance, even for the better-performing
report of the campaign’s prospective include proof of how these funds have states … Several of the states with high
environmental and social impact ob- been used, or if they have been used at prevalence of open defecation are yet to
served that the “past approach mainly all. Since this was a recognised problem put in place the institutional frame-
focused towards toilet construction in the past too, the guidelines for the works and the strategies for achieving
to improve coverage and access,” and Swachh Bharat Mission make it clear the goals of rural sanitation.” Further,
said that the proposed approach of that the release of new instalments of it stated that the ministry of drinking
the Swachh Bharat Mission-Gramin funding to the states will be contingent water and sanitation “is thinly staffed
“has shifted on usage of toilets and upon them showing evidence that pre- and currently does not have sufficient
behavioral change.” As I was to see in vious funds have already been spent. institutional capacity and person-
Nageypur and Jayapur, there is little But as a World Bank report on the nel in house to provide the support to
evidence of this being implemented financial management of the Swachh states with respect to delivering on the
on the ground. The report also noted Bharat Mission-Gramin, released in ambitious goal of SBM. Thus, there is
that the government’s definition of November 2015, observed, “the quality considerable scope for improving the
open-defecation-free status “includes of actual expend reported at national program’s processes and institutional
safe disposal of excreta,” and that this and state levels are based on fund arrangements.”
“needs to be adhered to in implementa- releases and therefore, do not facilitate All of this is particularly troubling
tion.” Unfortunately, it has not been. meaningful assessment of financial given the enormous sums of money
The CAG report on the Nirmal performance.” involved in the Swachh Bharat Mis-
Bharat Abhiyan warned that without Another historical lesson that the sion. In its first report on the campaign,
“realistic planning and … large scale Swachh Bharat Mission has not suf- in November 2014, the World Bank
Information, Education and Com- ficiently responded to is the fact that said that “over the 1999-2013 period,”
munication campaigns to bring about improvements in sanitation are closely India’s central and state governments
behavioural changes,” and unless linked to improvements in access to “are reported to have expended INR
“overall governance at the grass root water. The government’s twelfth Five 150 billion (USD2.4 billion)”—that is,
level improves, mere deployment of Year Plan, which came into effect in R15,000 crore. By all accounts, much of
resources may not have any significant 2012, noted that “many slip-backs in that money was wasted. The Swachh
impact.” Among its recommendations the NGP”—an initiative under the Nir- Bharat Mission proposes to spend
for “achievement of desired goal of mal Bharat Abhiyan to reward villages around 15 times that in just five years.
Swachh Bharat,” it called for an “effec- that eliminated open defecation—“have
tive mechanism for independent evalu- been attributed to non-availability of it took 40 minutes by bus from Varana-
ations,” and “ensuring data integrity water.” The World Bank report on the si’s main railway station to cover the 25
which alone can provide reliable peri- feasibility of the Swachh Bharat Mis- kilometres or so due west to Nageypur.
odic status check and timely remedial sion-Gramin noted that the campaign The village, which falls within the dis-
measures.” As Gujarat’s false declara- has taken “cognizance of linkages trict of Varanasi, is small and agrarian.
tion of having eliminated open defeca- between water supply and toilet usage,” When I visited, in early February, the
tion shows, there are major problems and that “the financial incentives for villagers I spoke to put its population at
with the reliability of the government’s toilets has been enhanced to provide a a few thousand at most, and were quick

MAY 2017 43
down the drain · reportage

to break this down by caste. They said Rajbhars

make up about half the village, and Patels and
Mauryas—both, like the Rajbhars, categorised un-
der the Other Backward Classes—perhaps another
quarter. The rest of the village, they said, is Dalit.
Each community lived in an enclave of its own,
making the village an archipelago of clustered
homes amid a sea of green fields. As I roamed,
the villagers identified each cluster: the Rajbhar
basti, the Patel basti, the Maurya basti. The Dalit
enclave stood some distance apart from all of the
rest. The OBC villagers called it the Harijan basti.
(“Harijan” was Gandhi’s preferred term for those
at the bottom of the caste ladder, and he translated

anand singh for the caravan

it as “children of god.” Most people from the op-
pressed castes find the term condescending.)
In the OBC enclaves, I spotted latrines outside
almost every house, many of them clearly new.
It was common to see more than one latrine for
a single house. In the Maurya basti, I found five
latrines lined up along a 20-foot stretch. Some
local men told me that the nearby house was home villager told me that latrines left him itchy, so he above: Nageypur’s
to five brothers, all of them married, and each avoided them. One man in the Patel basti told me OBC enclaves often
one had gotten a subsidised latrine. This was in that the corrugated-sheet walls of his latrine made have multiple
latrines for a single
violation of the Swachh Bharat Mission-Gramin it too hot to sit inside, even in the middle of winter.
house, in violation
guidelines, which allow for only one subsidised Several villagers told me that there were similar of Swachh Bharat
toilet for each household. complaints against the latrines built here under Mission guidelines,
The Dalit enclave, meanwhile, had barely any an early phase of construction under the Swachh while the village’s
latrines at all. The villagers here told me that only Bharat Mission, and that those who started build- Dalit enclave has
26 of the 150 houses in the enclave had had toilets ing later had instead gotten brick-and-cement barely any latrines
at all.
built under the Swachh Bharat Mission. Four or cabins, which are more expensive.
five of these were the houses that sat closest to There were more serious complaints too. I did
the village road, creating a misleading facade. A not see a single latrine in Nageypur with a piped
resident named Dharmadevi told me that she had water connection. Several of the villagers I spoke
already gone five times to the village’s sarpanch, to said that their latrines, since they had no water
a Rajbhar man, asking for assistance to build a for flushing, had become filthy and begun to stink.
latrine, but had been turned away every time. The guidelines of the Swachh Bharat Mission
I saw only one public latrine in Nageypur, situ- allow the construction of several types of latrine.
ated a short walk from the Dalit enclave. I looked There are those that connect to sewage lines, but
into its stalls, and found them dirty. There was no sewage lines are not available in rural areas. There
water in the taps. are also those connected to a septic tank, but these
Close by, separated from the latrine by a low are also expensive. Besides these, there are twin-
brick wall, was a statue of the anti-caste icon pit latrines, in which excreta is channelled into
Bhimrao Ambedkar. Three metal benches had one of two pits that are alternately sealed when
been installed nearby. Branded into the backrest full, at a frequency of several years. The excreta
of each one was one of Modi’s favourite slogans, in the sealed pit is allowed to digest in situ, leav-
“Sabka saath, sabka vikas” (Together with every- ing behind a harmless residue that can then be
one, development for everyone). The prime minis- manually removed. Other options include more
ter’s name appeared prominently underneath. advanced “bio-digester” and “bio-tank” latrines,
As of the 2011 census, 73 percent of Varanasi which use bacteria to digest excreta and leave no
district’s rural households did not have latrines, residue behind.
and 71 percent practised open defecation. Only 1.8 Twin-pit latrines are the cheapest of these. The
percent of rural households had access to public Swachh Bharat Mission-Urban guidelines esti-
latrines. No villages in Varanasi district have been mate that each of these costs between R15,000 and
declared free of open defecation. R20,000 to build. All the others are estimated to
Most of the latrines I saw in the OBC enclaves cost upwards of R20,000 each. The Swachh Bharat
were kept locked up. The people who owned them Mission-Gramin allows a R12,000 subsidy for
had some strange reasons to explain this. One every household building a latrine. The economics

44 THE CARAVAN
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of all of this make twin-pit latrines the institute, is a co-author of ‘Understand- think tank, conducted a survey of the
default choice for most households. ing Open Defecation in Rural India: implementation of the Swachh Bharat
The ministry of drinking water and Untouchability, Pollution and Latrine Mission-Gramin. The survey looked at
sanitation does not publish a type-wise Pits,’ a paper published earlier this year 7,500 households across 10 districts in
breakdown of the new latrines built following a survey of 3,200 households five states—Himachal Pradesh, Rajas-
under the Swachh Bharat Mission- across Uttar Pradesh, Haryana, Mad- than, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh
Gramin. However, I did not see a single hya Pradesh, Gujarat and Tamil Nadu and Bihar—and compared its findings
bio-digester or bio-tank latrine in Nag- over several years. The paper states to the government’s data on them.
eypur, or in any other place I visited. that “widespread open defecation in ru- Roughly a third of the households
As common as open defecation is ral India is not attributable to relative that the government data claimed had
in India’s cities, the real front line in material or educational deprivation, latrines did not actually have them. In
the battle against it runs through the but rather to beliefs, values, and norms numerous cases, the name of a single
country’s villages. According to UN about purity, pollution, caste and un- beneficiary seemed to have been dupli-
estimates, around two-thirds of people touchability that cause people to reject cated to produce additional entries in
in rural India defecate in the open, affordable latrines.” the government’s “achievement list.”
compared to around an eighth of those A 2014 report by the institute, based A quarter of the new latrines in these
in urban areas. The Swachh Bharat on a survey of “sanitation quality, use, areas had been built with no govern-
Mission has allocated resources accord- access and trends,” found that “over ment assistance.
ingly, and the projected spending on 40% of households with a working Yamini Aiyar, a senior fellow at the
its rural component is R1.34 lakh crore, latrine have at least one member who think tank, told me that “we know from
60 percent of the campaign’s total pro- defecates in the open,” and that many our own survey that there are gaps”
jected outlay. (The World Bank, using a respondents believed there are benefits in the government data. The survey
fixed conversion rate of R60 per dollar to defecating in the open. The report teams, she said, “sometimes could not
for its calculations, equates this sum to emphasised that latrine construction find habitations” listed in the official
$22 billion). It aims to build 68 million alone is not enough to change open- records. She added that local adminis-
household latrines. The website of the defecation patterns, and that “If the trations have lately been under a lot of
Swachh Bharat Mission-Gramin stated government were to build a latrine for pressure to fulfil stipulated targets for
in late April that 39 million of these had every rural household without one, latrine construction. The survey had
already been built—57 percent of the without changing sanitation prefer- not looked at the campaign’s finances,
total target. The ministry of drink- ences, most people in our sample states but, Aiyar cautioned, it is general prac-
ing water and sanitation has reported where it is most common would still tice for the government to pass all mon-
to the Lok Sabha that the Swachh defecate in the open.” ey released for a welfare programme off
Bharat Mission-Gramin has consist- Over the phone, Vyas reiterated that as expenditure even if much of it is not
ently exceeded its annual targets for no sanitation campaign in India can be really being spent.
household-latrine construction since successful unless it addresses untouch- As of late April, the ministry of
it began, and that the rate of their con- ability. Manoj Kumar Jha, the profes- drinking water and sanitation listed
struction is constantly rising. Accord- sor at the University of Delhi, told me 132 districts—around a fifth of all those
ing to the ministry’s numbers, an aver- much the same thing over email. “Any in the country—as having eradicated
age of over 34,500 household latrines mission which wishes to make impact open defecation. The Swachh Bharat
were built every day in the 2015–2016 in terms of cleanliness and sanitation Mission-Gramin guidelines promise
financial year, and that figure climbed has to have serious engagement with independent annual verification of such
to over 47,000 in the next one. the idea of pollution and purity, which claims, but none has been conducted
The swelling number of latrines is is the hallmark of the Hindu caste yet. The ministry has also reported
the only metric on which the Swachh structure,” he said. “It requires a huge that 3,226 public latrines were built
Bharat Mission can claim a major political will to come out of the Brah- between April 2015 and December
success so far. The statistics on the minical mindset.” 2016. There has been no independent
construction boom, however, mask On its website, the ministry of drink- check of how many of these are actually
numerous vital issues facing the cam- ing water and sanitation has published functional.
paign—including, as I saw in Nageypur, dozens of documents for training and I made numerous phone calls to the
the social exclusion of marginalised education, including material specifi- office of Parameswaran Iyer, the secre-
groups, and the lack of behavioural cally intended for the Swachh Bharat tary of the ministry of drinking water
change. Mission. None of these mention caste or and sanitation and the national head of
Sangita Vyas, a research director manual scavenging. the Swachh Bharat Mission-Gramin.
with the non-profit Research Insti- Even setting this aside, the gov- I was given an appointment with him
tute for Compassionate Economics, ernment’s rosy numbers on latrine in February, but he cancelled it at the
has closely studied sanitation-related construction must be seen as inherently last minute. Although I contacted his
behaviour in rural India. Vyas, along- suspect. In December 2015, the Centre office again, I was never given another
side several of her colleagues from the for Policy Research, a Delhi-based appointment.

MAY 2017 45
down the drain · reportage

opposite page: the entrance to jayapur is marked by a “yatri pra- one, he could afford to keep this one locked. Both
The communal tikshalya,” a visitors’ shelter. It has a metal roof, latrines, he said, had been built under the Swachh
latrines in Jayapur and six benches—one of them a duplicate of those Bharat Mission.
were built to have
I saw in Nageypur, down to the slogan and Modi’s The existence of multiple subsidised latrines for
running water, but
the taps were dry. name on the backrest. A billboard with Modi’s individual households was not the only parallel
Many new latrines portrait graces the rear of the structure. Beyond I found between Jayapur and Nageypur. Here
have no water it is a stretch of open ground that hosts the local too, the arrival of latrines did not seem to have
connection, and panchayat office. When I arrived, on a Saturday changed the behaviour of many residents.
the lack of water is afternoon, it was closed. Almost all of the latrines I saw were locked. I
a common reason
Beside the office, I saw two prefabricated latrine got a few of these opened by their owners, and
for them becoming
filthy and being cabins made of fibre-reinforced plastic—the locals found them in pristine condition. Despite none
abandoned. called this “fibre”—both emblazoned with the of these latrines showing any signs of use, their
Swachh Bharat Mission logo. One stall, meant owners said they did use them. Several of these
for women, had holes punched through its door. villagers, however, complained that their neigh-
Inside, the latrine seat had been broken, as had the bours never used their latrines, and continued
sink. The neighbouring stall, reserved for men, to defecate in the open. At one house, I noticed a
had had its door completely destroyed, and was latrine left unlocked. When I looked inside, I saw
damaged inside too. that it was being used as a storage space.
There is no transport directly from Varanasi to Another pattern from Nageypur that repeated
Jayapur. To get here, I travelled around 20 kilome- itself here was the large gap, in terms of distance
tres west of the city by bus, to Rajtalab, and found and also of quality of life, between the Dalit and
a shared auto heading in the village’s direction. non-Dalit parts of the village. To get to Jayapur’s
It was past noon as we drove, and along the way Dalit enclave, I had to walk over a kilometre
I saw children returning home from school. All of beyond the rest of the village. The village road was
them, both boys and girls, wore khaki uniforms. covered in gravel, and was waiting to be asphalted.
I found this curious, since khaki is not a common An election for the Uttar Pradesh state assembly
colour for school dress. Things are different here, I was looming, and the road was being resurfaced—
was told at the house of the Jayapur sarpanch. The on Modi’s orders, the labourers doing the work
sarpanch was away, but his young nephew, Abhay claimed. The roadwork stopped abruptly near the
Singh, was happy to give me the lay of the land. Dalit enclave. A resident of the enclave told me
Long before Modi adopted the village, he told me, that the contractor had said that the order was to
the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh—the parent only build the road that far.
of the Bharatiya Janata Party and a host of other All the houses in the enclave were small, and
Hindutva outfits, and the group that launched many of them were built of mud. Only a handful
Modi into politics—had established a strong pres- had latrines. The main source of water here was a
ence here. (Later, I saw media reports that said the well.
RSS had adopted the village in 2006.) The RSS has Just outside the Dalit enclave, I found two
a strong penchant for khaki clothing. Singh told more prefabricated latrine cabins, like those I
me that almost all the boys in the area were mem- saw beside the panchayat office. A shopkeeper
bers of shakhas, the RSS’s local branches. Singh, with a small store nearby told me that the women
who is in his twenties, had been a shakha member of the enclave had initially used the cabin meant
since childhood. for them, but had not been able to clean up after
Singh told me that around two-thirds of relieving themselves since the cabin had no water
Jayapur’s residents are Bhumihars—members of supply. After the cabin became filthy and was
a traditionally dominant caste—or Patels. Most of abandoned, he said, someone broke its door. The
the rest are Dalits—whom the non-Dalits of the men’s cabin had also become fetid, and had been
village called Harijans, just as in Nageypur. locked—the shopkeeper did not know by whom.
Also as in Nageypur, each community here lives According to the Census 2011, only around a
clustered together. The areas closest to the village third of India’s rural households had a piped sup-
entrance were those of the Patels and Bhumihars, ply of water. In urban areas, slightly over two-
and their double-storied brick-and-cement houses thirds of households did. As of 2016, the National
suggested considerable affluence when compared Rural Drinking Water Programme, a campaign
to the smaller, shabbier buildings typical in vil- by the ministry of rural development, was still
lages such as Nageypur. All of these houses had a working to ensure that half of all rural households
latrine, and several had more than one. A resident would have water connections by this year.
of the Patel colony showed me a latrine so clean it Later, I spoke with the village sarpanch, Naray-
seemed to never have been used. He told me that an Patel. He complained about the quality of
he had a second latrine too, and while he used that many of the toilets installed in the village. Modi,

46 THE CARAVAN
 down the drain · reportage

Modi, as part of his adoption of Jayapur, which attracted enormous crowds. On

each of those evenings, the portable
appointed Chandrakant Raghunath Patil, an MP latrines were locked.
from Gujarat, to oversee development work in By outward appearance, the cleanest
public facility I saw was a urinal com-
the village. The sarpanch said Patil supervised plex at Maldahiya Crossing, near the
the installation of over 400 prefabricated “fibre” railway station. Inside, it was passably
clean, although it had no running water
latrines. He had not approved this, the sarpanch and a strong stench.
said, because these latrines were of poor quality. I visited the office of the Varanasi
municipal corporation, the administra-
tive authority of the Swachh Bharat
Mission in the city, and located the
building’s restroom for the public. It
was flooded, and the stench was over-
powering. Nobody was going inside,
and I could not bring myself to either.
The only area that could be described
as clean was the campus of Banaras
Hindu University, located near the
city’s southern edge. Near it, however,
was one of the most unsanitary areas
I saw anywhere during my report-
ing. A ten-minute walk out of a gate
anand singh for the caravan

near the campus’s famous Vishwanath

temple was the residential colony of
Ravindrapur. In the midst of it, down
an alley too narrow to allow two people
to pass each other, was a dense cluster
of several dozen shacks, most of them
too low for a grown person to stand
up straight in. Tall walls penned the
as part of his adoption of Jayapur from cement blocks. I never gave them settlement in on all four sides, allowing
under the Sansad Adarsh Gram Yojana, ones made of fibre.) Patil said that he very little light in. I would never even
appointed Chandrakant Raghunath could not remember how many latrines have noticed the tiny entry to the alley
Patil, an MP from Gujarat, to over- he had gotten built in Jayapur, since it from the nearby road. The only reason I
see development work in the village. had been two years since the work was found the place was because a few Dalit
Patel told me that Patil supervised the done. and OBC students of the university
installation of over 400 prefabricated brought me here.
“fibre” latrines, which minimise labour i spent five days in and around Varana- The inhabitants of the shacks are
as they only require the construction si in early February. On the days I was from the Musahar caste, one of the
of pits. Patel had not approved this, he not in Nageypur or Jayapur, I roamed lowest in the traditional hierarchy.
said, because these latrines were of the city itself. It was filthy. I saw huge In recent years, they told me, their
poor quality. puddles of leaked sewage, streets neighbours in the surrounding area had
When I called Patil to ask about the strewn with garbage, open drains, and, raised the walls around the settlement
state of the latrines I saw in Jayapur, he especially after evening fell, men uri- higher and higher. There was no source
said “Humne toh bohut badiya banakar nating in the open, including along the of water here, and none of the shacks
diya tha. Ab koi jaan bujhkar tod dega city’s fabled ghats. had a latrine. Those I spoke to said they
toh kya karenge?” (I gave them very There were few public latrines, walked to the university to use a public
well-built latrines. But if someone and none that were well maintained. latrine on its premises, and to collect
deliberately breaks them, what can At Dashashwamedh Ghat, one of the water from its taps. They complained
be done?) When I told him about the city’s most famous locations, I found a that the police regularly chased them
sarpanch’s complaints, he played them handful of fetid portable latrine cabins. off the campus.
down, and asked me if I had gone to the The floors were wet with urine, the Census numbers from 2011 showed
village to see things for myself. I told latrine seats were stained with excreta over 26,000 households in urban
him I had. At this, he told me, “Humne and sometimes cracked. Over three Varanasi— around 11 percent of the
toh block-wala banwaya tha. Fibre ka evenings of my stay in the city, the ghat city’s total—without latrines on their
toh diya hi nahi.” (I had built latrines hosted a grand aarti for the Ganges, premises. Of these, only an eighth had

MAY 2017 47
 down the drain · reportage

below: The access to public latrines, and the rest defecated in When any of the city’s numerous stray dogs or
Musahar settlement the open. cows died, the work of disposing of the carcasses
near Banaras Hindu In Varanasi, as in Ahmedabad, whatever was left to them too. The tools they used were
University has no
benefits the Swachh Bharat Mission might have the same ones that I saw sanitary workers use in
latrines and no
source of water. brought do not seem to have reached those at the Ahmedabad.
Residents said they margins of society. And, again as in Ahmedabad, On top of all this, they were called upon to dive
went to the campus here the campaign has done very little, if anything into and unclog any choked sewers. One of the
to use its latrines at all, to address the inhuman working condi- men, Shyamhari Choudhary, described how the
and taps, but tions for sanitation workers, and the entrenched only precaution they could take was to rub their
were often chased
discrimination against them. bodies with mustard oil before diving in, to keep
away. In Varanasi,
as in Ahmedabad, In comparison to Ahmedabad, Varanasi had sewage from sticking to them. If workers ever
whatever benefits few sanitation workers on the streets. In search of demanded any equipment, he said, “the contractor
the Swachh Bharat them, I found my way to Jawaharnagar, a neigh- will abuse us and fire us immediately.”
Mission might bourhood situated a few hundred metres behind The only clear change in the life of the settle-
have brought do the ghats, and to a settlement of around a hundred ment since the launch of the Swachh Bharat Mis-
not seem to have
dilapidated houses inhabited by Doms, whose as- sion, Choudhary told me, was that the incidence
reached those at
the margins of
signed occupation under the caste system is sani- of malaria and dengue had gone up here since a
society. tation work. The settlement had few latrines, and trash-processing project was built in the vicin-
no hygienic source of water. A wide, uncovered ity as part of the campaign. One man agreed to
drain flowed along one side of it, and served as a take me to see it, and a young boy decided to come
public latrine. The settlement’s residents told me along too.
that they get drinking water from a tanker truck, Under the Swachh Bharat Mission, settlements
and for all other purposes they had no choice but of up to 500 households can receive up to R20 lakh
to use water from the drain. from the central government to finance facilities
I met a group of men and teenaged boys all for treating “solid waste”—that is, garbage—in-
employed as sanitation workers by contractors. cluding plants that can generate energy from
Their jobs, they said, entailed cleaning the city’s refuse. For large cities, the central government of-
community latrines early every morning, and also fers to provide 35 percent of the funds to construct
sweeping the streets of human and animal faeces. such facilities.
anand singh for the caravan

48 THE CARAVAN
 down the drain · reportage

They were called upon to dive into and unclog any starkly in Ahmedabad. On the outskirts
of the city, just off a major road heading
choked sewers. Shyamhari Choudhary described south, is the Pirana dump, the main
how the only precaution they could take was to disposal site for Ahmedabad’s garbage.
From more than a kilometre away, it
rub their bodies with mustard oil before diving in, rears up on the horizon, with the sil-
to keep sewage from sticking to them. houette and dimensions of a mountain.
According to information submitted to
the Gujarat High Court, the dump site
The plant stood right at the edge of solid-waste management facilities were is spread over 84 hectares, of which
the Dom settlement. We approached struggling, and the sector needed help at least 65 hectares have already been
it across a large compound with dry to raise more capital and bring in new covered in trash—an area the size of
garbage piled to one side and wet technology. roughly a hundred football pitches. Of-
sludge dumped on the other. A path in In March, the ministry of urban ficial figures from 2011 put the quantity
between led to a machine the size of development tweeted that “close to of trash produced by Ahmedabad’s
several double-decker buses. One man 60 waste to energy plants are under populace each day at 2,300 tonnes, of
sat in a chair beside it, and another was construction across 23 states as part which only 400 tonnes were separated
working on a computer nearby. Every- of the Swachh Bharat Mission.” The out and composted.
thing stood under the open sky. website of the Swachh Bharat Mission- Right at the foot of the mountain
I approached one of the seated men, Urban does not have any data on the of garbage is the Muslim ghetto of
and asked to speak to whoever was number of such plants in operation or Bombay Hotel. The ghetto includes the
in charge. He stood up and told me to under construction, or on how much settlement of Citizen Nagar, home to
follow him, then turned to my compan- of India’s trash is processed to produce people permanently displaced by the
ions and told them sternly to stay where energy. I asked the ministry of urban 2002 anti-Muslim pogroms in Gujarat.
they were. development for this information under On paper, Citizen Nagar simply does
I met the plant supervisor on the the RTI act, but was turned away. The not exist. The state government refuses
other side of the machine. He refused ministry wrote, “You have sought to recognise the existence of settle-
to give me his name, but agreed to de- detailed information on various issues ments of pogrom survivors, and insists
scribe how the plant worked. The plant and aspects of Swachh Bharat Mission that all of them have returned to their
receives around 10 tonnes of unsegre- (SBM) which requires to be compiled original homes.
gated garbage every day, he said. This from various sources and authorities, The sanitation infrastructure at
is segregated, and the organic waste is including all the state mission director Bombay Hotel was no better than that
fed into the machine, which composts of SBM and municipalities all over the at Millat Nagar. There is no water con-
it and produces biogas. The biogas is country, which is not desirable under nection, and residents collect drinking
then used to generate electricity—the the RTI Act.” The Central Information water from a tanker. There are no sew-
plant has a generation capacity of 45 Commission has in the past ruled that age lines, and only a small number of
kilowatts, the supervisor said—which is this does not constitute a valid reason insanitary latrines.
supplied to the city. He explained that for dismissing an RTI request. In one of the 40 one-room homes that
“inorganic waste has no use for us,” and However many solid-waste-manage- make up Citizen Nagar, I met an elderly
so is sent away to be dumped. ment facilities India may have, it is safe man named Mohammed Nizamuddin.
In January 2016, the central govern- to say that, at present, they do not have The room had space for a bed, a bench,
ment made it mandatory for power- anywhere near the capacity to handle and little more, and Nizamuddin shared
distribution companies to buy all the all the garbage the country produces. it with his wife, two sons, a daughter-
power generated by waste-to-energy According to data from the ministry in-law and two grandchildren. They
plants. The government has also set of the environment, in the 2014–2015 had no latrine, and Nizamuddin said
a fixed rate for the purchase of this financial year India’s towns and cities the family defecated on the dump. The
power. At a conference held this Febru- produced 141,064 tonnes of trash every air was filled with the smell of rotting
ary, Goutham Reddy, the head of a day, of which 90 percent “is reported garbage. Nearby, there were numerous
major waste-management firm owned to be collected” and just over a quarter large plants, several of them produc-
by the Ramky Group, lauded that deci- is treated in some way. I sent queries ing chemicals. Wafts of noxious fumes
sion. But he added that there was still to the ministry asking what shares of floated through. Nizamuddin’s seven-
no set pricing for the purchase of power trash are treated in what ways, and year-old granddaughter, Nikhat Bano,
generated by various types of waste-to- what share ends up in landfills, but showed me some grainy red rashes on
energy plants—such as “refuse-derived was told that it does not “compile the her face, and I was told that her parents
fuel” plants that use all combustible information as required through the had similar rashes too. Nizamuddin
waste as fuel—and that waste-to-en- RTI application.” said that a doctor had told them that
ergy plants were still often not com- I saw the consequences of the coun- this was the consequence of chemi-
mercially viable. In his view, Indian try’s inability to process its trash most cal pollution. If he could have left this

MAY 2017 49
down the drain · reportage

below and place, he said, he would have years ago, but he had ment plants were capable of processing only 37
opposite page: nowhere else to go. percent of the sewage generated by all the coun-
Citizen Nagar, When I described what I saw at Bombay Hotel try’s cities and towns.
a settlement
to Poonamchand Parmar, the head of the Swachh In March, during a sitting of the Lok Sabha,
of survivors of
Gujarat’s 2002 Bharat Mission-Urban in Gujarat, he told me the a parliamentarian asked Ramesh Jigajinagi, a
anti-Muslim state government is planning to build solid-waste minister of state for drinking water and sanitation,
pogroms, is located treatment plants that would improve conditions. if the central government had a national plan for
at the Pirana His staff later gave me a data sheet which stated “disposal of human waste and waste water from
landfill, the main that Gujarat’s cities and towns generate 10,500 new toilets under Swachh Bharat Mission.” In
dumping site for
tonnes of trash each day. The document also stated response, Jigajinagi pointed to the National Policy
Ahmedabad’s trash.
Living conditions that only seven cities or towns disposed of their on Faecal Sludge and Septage Management, which
here are dire, trash in sanitary dump sites. It added that five was released by the ministry of urban develop-
and the Gujarat major waste-to-energy projects in the state were ment just this February, almost two and a half
government at various stages of preparation. At present, ac- years after the Swachh Bharat Mission was inau-
refuses to recognise cording to this document, Gujarat does not have a gurated. This, however, is little more than a policy
the settlement’s
single waste-to-energy plant. document that, in its own words, is only meant to
existence.
After my short tour of the composting plant in set “context, priorities and direction for states and
Varanasi, I did not find my companions from the cities.” It sets no targets or timeline, and has no
Dom settlement in the plant compound. I saw plan on how to fund relevant work. If anything,
them back where we had first met, and went up to the document sounds a warning regarding the
say thank you. Before I could speak, Ramani told Swachh Bharat Mission’s complete lack of action
me, “You saw what happened there! People con- on improving sewage management. It states:
sider us untouchable. This is our home, our basti,
but we cannot enter that gate.” Currently on-site pit latrines and septic tanks
The boy who had accompanied us said he had account for a substantial proportion of toilets in
been told, “Tum log yahan mat aana” (You people urban India—over 47% of urban Indian house-
should not come here). holds depend on onsite facilities (Census 2011)
One of the things that struck me most about and this proportion is increasing. Further, as ur-
Varanasi as I roamed the city was the absence of ban households without toilets obtain facilities
any significant work on the city’s sewage system. over the next few years under SBM, it is likely
Nowhere in Varanasi—or anywhere else—did I see that many will acquire on-site arrangements
or even hear of sewage lines being laid or repaired. like pit latrines and septic tanks in cities at loca-
So far as the Swachh Bharat Mission-Urban is tions where sewerage systems are not available.
concerned, addressing this lacuna is not a priority. Thus, while the containment of human waste
The campaign’s guidelines show no plans at all to will be largely achieved under SBM, its treat-
improve sewage collection or treatment. Figures ment still poses a huge challenge.
from the ministry of the environment show, that
as of March 2015, India’s existing sewage treat- if the government’s original estimates prove
true, the Swachh Bharat Mission-Urban will come
to cost R62,000 crore—28 percent of the entire
spending on the Swachh Bharat Mission. The
central government has promised to put in R14,600
crore from its budget, and the states an additional
R4,900 crore from theirs. The remaining funds,
the campaign’s guidelines say, have to be gener-
ated through other means, including investments
from the campaign’s beneficiaries, partnerships
with private firms, donations from individuals and
corporations, borrowing on the open market and
revenues gathered from some of the campaign’s
projects, as well as assistance from multilateral
sam panthaky / afp / getty images

agencies such as international development banks.

For instance, each urban household without a
latrine is to receive only R4,000 to subsidise one,
and is expected to meet all costs above that limit
on its own. For shared latrines built for and run by
individual communities—say, particular settle-
ments—government funding is to cover only 40

50 THE CARAVAN
 down the drain · reportage

located to it in the 2016–2017 financial

year, and R2,400 crore in the previous
one. The same amount of cess funds,
it continued, had been released to the
states, but, since these are released as
part of general disbursals under the
Swachh Bharat Mission-Gramin, it has
no specific data on how they have been
spent.
The funding and spending models of
both the rural and the urban compo-
nents of the Swachh Bharat Mission are
designed to have built-in mechanisms
for the verification of on-the-ground
results. As things currently stand, how-
ever, these do not appear to be working
as intended.

arun vijai mathavan

Under the Swachh Bharat Mission-
Urban’s guidelines, 60 percent of all
funding is reserved for project expendi-
ture, to fund such things as latrines and
trash-management facilities. Another
20 percent is to be spent on awareness
percent of all costs. Public latrines were 2015 the government has imposed the work, administration and research. The
originally to be funded entirely through Swachh Bharat cess, a countrywide remaining 20 percent is meant to be
such means as corporate donations, levy of 0.5 percent on all taxable ser- used as reward money, to be released to
pay-and-use revenue models and “land vices. individual municipal corporations that
leveraging”—for instance, hiring out In response to an RTI request, the show good results from the use of ear-
space for advertising. After an amend- department of expenditure informed lier funds. The guidelines promise that
ment to the guidelines last year, the me that the Swachh Bharat Kosh the release of these funds will be based
government now offers to cover 40 had received R471.5 crore, until mid on third-party evaluation of results
percent of the costs for building public February. The large majority of this conducted by “independent project
latrines too. had come from private corporations review and monitoring agencies.”
The Swachh Bharat Mission-Gramin and public-sector undertakings—that It is not clear what agencies are
is also meant to draw on a complex is, state-owned enterprises—but with currently doing these evaluations. I
mixture of budget funds from the cen- contributions from private individuals submitted an RTI request to the minis-
tral and state governments, contribu- too. Under the fund’s guidelines, these try of urban development asking for the
tions from beneficiaries and private donations should be spent on build- names of independent evaluation agen-
partners, donations from both individu- ing new latrines, repairing defunct cies it had engaged, the status of their
als and organisations, and international ones, installing water connections for work and the money spent on them. In
assistance. constructed latrines, and on projects March, the ministry replied that it had
The central government has made for trash and sewage management. “no such information.”
several formal provisions to raise Through the end of January, the de- The protocols of the ministry of
money for the Swachh Bharat Mission. partment stated, the Swachh Bharat urban development state that once an
To attract donations, it has set up the Kosh had spent R66.3 crore—only 14 urban authority declares its jurisdic-
Swachh Bharat Kosh, a fund admin- percent of what it had received. The tion free of open defecation, “a third
istered by an autonomous governing RTI response showed that all of this party verification process (swachh
council headed by the secretary of the money had gone to the construction certification) is to be adopted for the
department of expenditure, which of new latrines, and no money had yet final ODF certification. Subsequently,
falls under the ministry of finance. By been spent on repairing or improving recertification of ODF will happen at
law, Indian corporations must allocate existing latrines or on trash or sewage fixed intervals (every six months) so
2 percent of their profits to charity— management. as to ensure that there is no slippage
“corporate social responsibility,” or The ministry of drinking water and of the ODF status.” In February, Rao
CSR. These funds are typically not sanitation has reported in parliament Inderjit Singh, a minister of state for
exempt from taxation, but, under rules that, until this January, the Swachh urban development, reported in parlia-
introduced in February 2015, all CSR Bharat cess raised R13,000 crore. The ment that 564 statutory towns across
contributions to the Swachh Bharat ministry, replying to my RTI request, the country had declared themselves
Kosh are. In addition, since November stated that R10,000 crore of this was al- free of open defecation, and that these

MAY 2017 51
down the drain · reportage

opposite page: declarations had been certified by a third party in

Modi, the Dalit 481 cases. These included the declarations by all of
Since the agreement was
activist Chandra Gujarat’s cities and towns—including Ahmedabad. signed last March, this means
Bhan Prasad said, The fact that the ministry’s verification mecha-
reinforced the the Indian government
nisms confirmed what was clearly a premature
notion that people
from the oppressed declaration of an end to open defecation in the city already owes the World Bank
castes are unclean raises doubts as to whether these mechanisms are some $3.75 million, or roughly
by choosing to sufficiently rigorous.
launch the Swachh In 2016, the Quality Council of India, an autono- K24 crore, even though it has
Bharat Mission from
a Dalit settlement.
mous body established by the government, con- not put the loan money to use.
ducted an assessment of sanitation and cleanliness
Prasad also
criticised the optics in Indian cities. The QCI published its results as
of the campaign, the Swachh Survekshan 2016, which it described and shortlisted six of them, but that is as far as
particularly for as “a survey commissioned by the Ministry of the process has come. The World Bank has not
making the broom, Urban Development—the first for Swachh Bharat released a single tranche of loan funding.
a crude tool, its Mission.” Whether this agency qualifies as an in- The National Sample Survey Office conducts an
main symbol of
dependent evaluator is debatable. The QCI’s board annual countrywide survey of sanitation for the
cleanliness.
is comprised in large part of government bureau- ministry of drinking water and sanitation. This
crats, and, as its website makes clear, is chaired body, however, falls under the ministry of statis-
by a nominee of the prime minister. The Swachh tics and programme implementation, and so is not
Survekshan is meant to be an annual exercise. For a fully independent evaluator.
2016, the QCI surveyed and ranked 73 cities. This If the ministry of drinking water and sanita-
year, it promises to rank 500. tion were to hire an independent evaluator this
The guidelines of the Swachh Bharat Mission- May, the first 20-week survey promised under the
Gramin did not originally provide for any result- agreement with the World Bank could be complet-
based funding. This changed, however, in March ed in September. That could allow for the release
2016, when the government signed an agreement of the first tranche of funding that month. The
with the World Bank to create the Swachh Bharat first release of reward funds for rural areas could
Mission Support Operation. (Parameswaran Iyer, then occur in the July-to-September window next
who currently heads the Swachh Bharat Mission- year. That would allow a year for these funds to
Gramin, formerly worked for the World Bank, and be put to use before the Swachh Bharat Mission’s
was part of its negotiating team for the agree- deadline, in October 2019. Any further delay by
ment.) Under this, the World Bank has committed the ministry, however, could delay the release
to providing a loan of $1.5 billion, the vast majority of the first tranche of funding by another year,
of which is meant to be disbursed to individual which could mean that the first reward funds will
rural areas as reward for achieving and sustaining reach rural areas just months before the campaign
defined standards. The loan earmarks $25 million expires.
for the government to create a project-manage- I wrote to the World Bank with questions on
ment unit to administer the funding, and $147.5 the status of the Swachh Bharat Mission Support
million for this unit to hire an independent agency Operation. In mid April, a World Bank spokesper-
that will carry out a National Annual Rural Sani- son forwarded me a message stating that once the
tation Survey, meant to evaluate on-the-ground results of the independent survey are received,
performance. “the World Bank will move speedily to release the
Under the agreement, the first such survey, first tranche of loan proceeds.”
which would act as a baseline for all future evalu- Meanwhile, the agreement stipulates that the
ation, was to have been started by June 2016. Indian government must pay a “commitment
This was to be completed in 20 weeks, and the charge” of 0.25 percent per annum on un-with-
first tranche of loan funding was to be released drawn loan funds, which “shall accrue from a date
between July and September—an annual window sixty days after the date of the Loan Agreement to
stipulated by the World Bank. A second survey a the respective dates on which amounts are with-
year later would trigger more funding, including drawn by the Borrower from the Loan Account or
reward money for rural areas that had shown im- cancelled.” Since the agreement was signed last
provements since the first one. This cycle was then March, this means the Indian government already
to be repeated every year. owes the World Bank some $3.75 million, or
To date, the government has not hired an roughly R24 crore, even though it has not put the
independent agency to conduct the survey. The loan money to use.
ministry of drinking water and sanitation invited A World Bank spokesperson told me that the
interested agencies to approach it in May 2016, organisation has not received this charge from

52 THE CARAVAN
 down the drain · reportage

Survey to be carried out during the

year 2017.”
The ministry of urban development,
in response to RTI requests regarding
studies of the social and environmental
aspects of the Swachh Bharat Mission-
Urban, replied that it too had not
conducted any social audits or environ-
mental-impact assessments.
As of late April, the Swachh Bharat
Mission-Gramin listed three states—
Himachal Pradesh, Sikkim and
Kerala—as free of open defecation. The
Swachh Bharat Mission-Urban listed
atul yadav / pti

Gujarat and Andhra Pradesh as being

free of open defecation in all urban
areas. As part of the Swachh Bharat
Mission’s other sub-missions, the
ministry of human resource develop-
ment claims to have ensured that every
public school in India has a latrine; the
ministry of women and child develop-
ment, in figures reported in parlia-
ment in February, claimed that almost
two-thirds of anganwadi centres across
the country now have latrines; and the
ministry of drinking water and sanita-
ajay aggarwal / hindustan times / getty images

tion claimed in an RTI reply that, as of

mid March, over 2 million household
latrines have been built since the start
of the campaign under the National
Rural Employment Guarantee Act and
the Pradhan Mantri Awaas Yojana.
Like the Swachh Bharat Mission-
Urban and the Swachh Bharat Mission-
Gramin, none of these sub-missions
have published independent verifica-
tion of their claimed results.
Meanwhile, new reports continue to
the government. I sent an RTI request that the campaign “in principle ad- cast doubt on many of the government’s
to the ministry of drinking water and dresses the risk of social exclusion”— claims of success. In April, the Hindu-
sanitation asking if the government the campaign’s guidelines promise stan Times reported on the existence
had paid any commitment charge to periodic “social audits”—but called for of open defecation, dry latrines and
date, and got a reply that restated the strong monitoring systems “to track manual scavengers in several areas
relevant conditions of the loan but said inclusion indicators.” When it came to of Uttarakhand, which the Swachh
nothing else. potential environmental effects, the Bharat Mission-Gramin claims has
In a status report on the Swachh report again said that the campaign 100-percent coverage of sanitary la-
Bharat Mission Support Operation was sound in principle, but noted that trines. When the journalist who wrote
released in February, the World Bank the “challenge is implementation of the piece described what she had seen
rated the “overall implementation pro- the environment related policies.” In to government officials, many of them
gress” of the programme as “moder- reply to my RTI query about environ- continued to claim that such things no
ately unsatisfactory.” mental assessments, the ministry of longer exist in the state.
This is not the only front on which drinking water and sanitation replied,
the World Bank’s efforts have failed to “No studies on the environmental of all the public latrines I visited, one
yield results. The organisation’s No- impact have been conducted by this of the best was in Bhikaji Cama Place, a
vember 2015 report on the prospective Ministry.” As for social audits, it only busy commercial area in south Delhi. It
environmental and social impact of the said, “This Ministry has proposed consisted of a series of “Namma” cab-
Swachh Bharat Mission-Gramin said a National Annual Rural Sanitation ins—specially designed prefabricated

MAY 2017 53
down the drain · reportage

units, with water-saving features and Myriad politicians and celebrities had posed
solar-powered lights—lined up next to
each other near a taxi stand. A large for photographs wielding brooms, Bezwada
tank perched above the cabins supplied Wilson said, but he had yet to see any of them
running water, and all the cabins had
working taps. There were no unpleas- photographed cleaning a latrine.
ant smells. The Swachh Bharat Mission
logo was displayed prominently on one
wall, next to signage announcing that Delhi. Both were in terrible condi- the preceding two years. Officials of the
the latrine had been funded by NBCC tion. The cabins were filthy, with toilet MCD denied the party’s claims.
(India) Limited, a major state-owned seats stained with faeces and puddles Even in the cleanest latrines I saw
enterprise. of urine on the floor. Lights and taps in Delhi—which were by far the best I
Yet even here, where it was clear that inside the cabins had been ripped out. saw anywhere in the country—I never
considerable planning and money had I did not find any sanitation workers saw sanitation workers with anything
gone into the latrine, the conditions responsible for either site. other than the most basic equipment.
for sanitation workers left much to be Besides these, I visited roughly 20 This meant that they often had to re-
desired. Kishan Chand, a short and other latrines in the city between sort to cleaning the latrines with their
quiet 65-year-old, told me he received September and March. These were all bare hands, as they have been doing
R7,500 per month to clean the place. He of a different build, with sturdy cement for years and years. On this front, the
was employed by the OP Jindal Group, walls enclosing the entire complex and Swachh Bharat Mission had brought
as part of its CSR work, and wore a carrying advertising on their outsides. no improvement. Though politicians,
fluorescent jacket with the conglomer- Besides one latrine, near the Akshard- including Modi, have made much of the
ate’s logo on it. I visited the latrine first ham metro station, all of them were in campaign’s aim to end manual scaveng-
in September and again in March, and useable condition. In all of them, the ing, nowhere in its documents is there
both times found Chand at work with- conditions faced by sanitation workers any mention of the hazards of sanita-
out gloves, a mask, or other protective were no better than those I saw at the tion work or the need for safety equip-
equipment. For cleaning gear, all he had Namma latrines in Bhikaji Cama Place, ment, or of arming sanitation workers
was a broom and some brushes. He said and frequently they were worse. with mechanised equipment to clean
he did not receive detergent or disin- A sanitation worker at a public latrine latrines and dispose of faeces.
fectant for the job. near the All India Institute of Medi- Of the ten sanitation workers I
He described how he had to get down cal Sciences, which attracts enormous interviewed in Delhi, nine were Dalits,
on his knees and brush the squat- crowds of people seeking medical at- and one was from the Other Backward
latrine seats clean after every time that tention, told me that the latrine’s water Classes.
someone defecated. The cabins did not connection had been broken for over Chandra Bhan Prasad, a Dalit activ-
have flushing mechanisms—only a tap a month. He had complained to the ist and an advisor to the Dalit Indian
and a plastic mug. Most people do not contractors responsible for the site, but Chamber of Commerce and Industry,
flush after themselves, Chand said. there had been no effort yet to fix the pointed this out to me over the phone in
“Few do, but not properly, like they problem. To keep the latrine clean, the April. In 2014, soon after Modi inau-
would do in their homes.” sanitation worker had to continually gurated the Swachh Bharat Mission,
The latrine at Bhikaji Cama Place fetch water from a public tap across a Prasad criticised the presentation and
falls within the jurisdiction of the nearby road. symbology of the campaign when he
Municipal Corporation of Delhi, which At another public latrine in Bhikaji appeared on a panel on Rajya Sabha TV.
runs eight of the national capital’s 11 Cama Place, not far from the one with Instead of promoting the mechanisa-
districts. Under its policies, the respon- Namma cabins, a sanitation worker told tion of faecal disposal, Prasad had said,
sibility for maintaining public latrines me that the roof leaked when it rained, Modi picked up a broom, making this
is given to contractors. At the latrine in and that the latrine had no electricity. crude tool the Swachh Bharat Mission’s
Bhikaji Cama Place, this system seemed Again, his complaints to the contractor ultimate symbol of sanitation. Over the
to be working, though clearly it did not had been ignored. phone, Prasad said that Modi should
provide safety or dignity for the sanita- The public latrine at Akshardham, have used modern tools—things such
tion worker. Elsewhere, it had failed which I visited in December, had no as suction pumps and high-pressure
completely. running water, filthy toilet seats, and hoses. The prime minister, he contin-
In October, I visited two more no sanitation worker to be found. The ued, is “taking India to some antiquity.
latrines with Namma cabins in the stench inside was overpowering. He is more past-centric than forward-
capital—one at Shastri Bhawan, an area In January, the Swaraj India party looking.”
dense with government offices and published allegations that the Munici- Prasad also criticised Modi’s choice
located just a few hundred metres from pal Corporation of Delhi had used only of location for the launch of the cam-
the parliament building, and the other 1 percent of the funds it received under paign. By starting it in a Dalit settle-
at Preet Vihar, a residential area in east the Swachh Bharat Mission-Urban in ment, he said, Modi had, knowingly or

54 THE CARAVAN
 down the drain · reportage

left: Towards the

end of last year,
the Municipal
Corporation of
Delhi began inviting
new tenders for
the maintenance
of some of its
public latrines.
One tender offer
stated that “any
person employed
by any firm shall
remain employee
of the firm,” and
that the municipal
body “shall have no
concern with them
in any manner.”
shahid tantray

unknowingly, reinforced the notion that people set down any requirements on working conditions
from the oppressed castes are unclean. “A man or equipment for sanitation workers. Instead, it
with good intent,” he continued, should have stated that “any person employed by any firm shall
started the campaign in some place with affluent, remain employee of the firm. NDMC shall have no
dominant-caste residents “who only create dirt concern with them in any manner.”
and never clean” after themselves. The sanitation workers I met in Delhi all earned
Bezwada Wilson, who has received the prestig- between R7,000 and R12,000 a month, depend-
ious Ramon Magsaysay Award for his work with ing on the number of hours they worked and the
the Safai Karmachari Andolan, also criticised the contractor they were paid by. Several said they
Swachh Bharat Mission’s lack of attention to the put in night shifts to earn a little more. Chand, at
conditions of sanitary workers. “Why does this Bhikaji Cama Place, told me his employer initially
government and Modi not make investments in paid him R8,500, for working eight-hour shifts
cleaning technology?” he asked. Even with the seven days a week, but his pay was suddenly cut
campaign underway, he said, manual scavengers to R7,500 after a few months on the job. “When I
were still not being given crucial equipment such objected they said I can leave the job,” he said.
as suction pumps to aid in their work. He took is- I asked him why, at his age, he worked for such
sue with the way the campaign has been promoted meagre pay in such hazardous conditions. He re-
too. Myriad politicians and celebrities had posed plied, “Bhangi hain sahab. Aur kya karenge?” (I am
for photographs wielding brooms, he said, but he a Bhangi, sir. What else will I do?)
had yet to see any of them photographed cleaning In February, I called up Sandeep Mishra, a spe-
a latrine. With the campaign proceeding as it is, he cial secretary with Delhi’s department of urban
told me, he feared that it would simply create more development and the mission director for the
unsanitary latrines that will require more manual Swachh Bharat Mission-Urban in the city. I had
scavengers to clean them. questions about the campaign’s progress under his
Towards the end of last year, the Municipal Cor- watch, and asked that we meet for an interview.
poration of Delhi began inviting new tenders for Mishra said he was busy through the following
the maintenance of some of its public latrines. One day, and could not accommodate me. I asked if
tender offer by the North Delhi Municipal Corpo- we could meet on some later day. Mishra replied,
ration, which forms part of the MCD, stipulated “Kuch khas ho nahi raha hai Delhi mein. Bahut en-
that the bidder could charge R5 for each use of a couraging nahi hai.” (There is nothing remarkable
latrine, and hire out latrine walls for advertising. happening in Delhi. It’s not very encouraging.)
The document also mandated that latrines were to After a pause, he added, “Toh usme kuch bulane
be washed every day with disinfectant, and set out ka bhi koi fayeda nahi hai” (So there is no point in
numerous other conditions. It did not, however, meeting). s

MAY 2017 55
reportage

RAISING A STINK

How people power forced a

waste-management revolution in Kerala
/ GOVERNMENT
KUSHANAVA CHOUDHURY

56 THE CARAVAN
 reportage

in february 2012, trucks of the Thiruvananthapu- with earth and grass and create a moat to prevent opposite page:
ram Corporation, loaded with garbage, made their pollutants from leaching into the water supply. But People in the
way out of Kerala’s capital, with several hundred the garbage kept coming and kept piling up—300 Vilappilsala village
protest against
policemen in tow. The garbage was to be dumped tonnes of it a day, the refuse of the million people
Thiruvanantha-
at a site in Vilappilsala village, about 15 kilometres who lived in the state capital. A local organisation, puram
outside the city. the Vilappilsala Janakeeya Samara Samithi, had Corporation’s
At the Vilappilsala panchayat limit, the trucks been fighting for the rights of the villagers. Now, waste-treatment
were confronted by around 5,000 protestors, the residents wanted the city to stop dumping in plant in the area.
mainly women and children, led by the local their village, period. The agitation would
go on to change
panchayat’s president, Sobhana Kumari, formed Sobhana Kumari became a councillor and the
the power dynamic
a human wall several hundred metres long. The panchayat president for the first time in 2010. That between cities and
policemen, deployed to disperse the residents, year, her ward seat and the panchayat president’s villages in Kerala.
lathi-charged and lobbed tear gas, but the protes- position had both become reserved for women.
tors refused to make way. Kumari and others were Kumari had been a Congress party worker and
arrested. Prohibitory orders under Section 144 the chairperson of the local Kudumbashree
were imposed in the panchayat. But the Thiru- programme—a massive women’s employment and
vananthapuram Corporation had to take its trucks self-help programme in Kerala. She decided that
back. the health problems of the people living next to
It was a do-or-die situation, Kumari told me the landfill were going to be one of her central
when I met her in December, and her side had concerns as panchayat president.
prevailed. These residents had been struggling since 2006,
The confrontation was the result of a conflict Kumari told me when we met in Vilappilsala. “We
that had been brewing for several years. In 2000, felt there was no option but to fight.” At the time,
the city of Thiruvananthapuram, formerly known the panchayat was controlled by Kumari’s party,
as Trivandrum, contracted a private firm to run the Congress, but there were panchayat members
a waste-treatment plant on land that the city had who belonged to the Bharatiya Janata Party, as
bought in Vilappilsala. Initially, the plant ran well as to the Communist Party of India (Marxist).
efficiently—but problems emerged after a few The CPI(M) led the ruling coalition in the state
years. All the waste provided to the firm was not government and also controlled the Thiruvanan-
proving viable for the firm to process. Thus, only thapuram Corporation. “All people rose above
a third of it was being turned into fertiliser. The party for this issue,” Kumari said, “We transcend-
rest was being dumped, untreated, in an adjoining ed parties to fight the corporation.”
valley. Soon, the valley was covered by a heaving After Kumari took charge, she started fresh
mountain of garbage. Many of the people who talks with the corporation about the waste plant in
lived around it sold their plots to the Thiruvanan- her panchayat. The city promised to supply clean
thapuram Corporation and left. Their lands were water in tankers to the villagers to alleviate health
absorbed into the landfill. The mountain grew. concerns. It also offered jobs at the plant to locals.
The stink could be whiffed up to three kilometres But the panchayat’s stand was simple. “We wanted
away. Outsiders avoided visiting the area because the factory shut down,” Kumari said. As Kumari
they would have to bathe immediately afterwards. told me, the corporation did not yield. “They said
Young people in the locality found that prospec- moving the factory was impossible.”
tive partners were reluctant to marry them. Instead, the corporation proposed a new
In 2008, the corporation took over the plant leachate-treatment plant to solve the water-pollu-
from the private firm, and transferred opera- tion problem. The panchayat was not interested.
tions to a non-governmental organisation—but The previous technical fix, of building a moat to
conditions did not improve. Children developed prevent leaching in 2009, had turned out to be a
respiratory problems and skin diseases. Some even stopgap measure, which failed to fix the problem
had swollen limbs. Many could not go to school. because more garbage continued to be dumped
Agricultural land was becoming unusable, and at the site. The panchayat stood by its demand to
livestock were falling ill. Worst of all, the creeks shut the factory down. Thiruvananthapuram, the
that supplied the village water became black with villagers said, should no longer dump its waste in
courtesy madhyamam

leachate, a tar-like substance that oozes out of un- their backyard.

treated waste. As matters got worse, the Vilappil- But the trucks kept coming. In 2011, a Congress-
sala panchayat approached the corporation with led United Democratic Front coalition came to
its constituents’ concerns. In 2009, the corpora- power in the state. Kumari, who hails from a Con-
tion contracted a firm to cover the garbage mound gress family, approached her party’s state leader

MAY 2017 57
raising a stink · reportage

right: The creeks and the new chief minister, Oommen Chandy, This was when people
that supplied to resolve the conflict between the city and the
Vilappilsala water panchayat. Chandy agreed that the plant should became enraged, Kumari
became black
with leachate, a
be removed and asked for six months to find an said. An indefinite hartal was
alternate site for it, she said. But the time expired
tar-like substance
that oozes out of and no new site was found. called across the panchayat.
untreated waste. In December 2011, the panchayat leaders and Protestors shut down schools
affected villagers staged a sit-in by blocking the
road leading into the panchayat from Thiruvanan-
and colleges and blocked
thapuram. Trucks full of garbage had to be sent roads. Political activists
back to the city. The battle had begun.
For the next ten months, Vilappilsala came
patrolled the streets.
under siege. The corporation filed a petition with
ram kumar / dool news

the Kerala High Court. The court ruled in the brought up the plan to introduce a leachate-treat-
corporation’s favour, ordering that garbage trucks ment plant at the site. In August that year, the city
would continue to dump in Vilappilsala, with sent machinery to install the plant, but when the
the state providing police protection, and even truck with the machinery reached the panchayat,
mobilising Central Reserve Police Force personnel it was met with thousands of local residents, many
if necessary. The panchayat appealed the ruling of them women and children, led by the panchayat
in the Supreme Court, but the court only reduced members. The police started arresting and remov-
the limit of garbage that could be sent, from 300 ing the protesters to allow the truck to pass. In
tonnes to 90 tonnes a day. The city had the author- response, the residents lit bonfires on the road to
ity to run the plant, the court said. Thus, it was block the truck and the police. To douse the fire,
with the backing of the court and the police that police used water cannons. The protesters fought
garbage trucks had attempted to return to Vilap- back with stones. The battle went on for two
pilsala in February 2012. hours before the district administration finally
Chandy’s government told the corporation withdrew the police. They left the machinery at a
to wait four months before sending any more local police station and retreated. The panchayat
trucks. After four months, the corporation again thought the battle was over.

58 THE CARAVAN
 raising a stink · reportage

Then, one rainy October night, at around 3 am,

Kumari got a call. “Corporation people had gone
in the middle of the night and fixed the machine
there” at the plant, she said. “They then filed a
status to court that there was no more water pollu-
tion problem.”
This was when people became enraged, Kumari
said. An indefinite hartal was called across the
panchayat. Protestors shut down schools and
colleges and blocked roads. Political activists
patrolled the streets. Running out of options,
Kumari started an indefinite hunger strike. By
then, the movement, which was being beamed on
24-hour television news networks, had garnered
popular support across the state. Well-known
intellectuals, such as the activist and poet Sugatha
Kumari, went to Vilappilsala to show solidarity
with Kumari. After four days, her health condition
deteriorated and police arrested and hospitalised
her. Four other panchayat members, of differ-
ent political parties, continued the strike, until,
finally, a deal was brokered by mediators. The
corporation would not reopen the factory, and
could not use the site for dumping. A panchayat
had taken on a city, and won.
Meanwhile, a case between the corporation and
the panchayat, which was ongoing in the high
court, was moved to the National Green Tribunal
in Chennai. In 2015, the NGT ruled that the plant
was polluting the local water supply and was
steevez rodriguez for the caravan

injurious to health, and that it should be disman-

tled. Vilappilsala’s struggle was the biggest mass
movement in Kerala since the one in Plachimada
village, where locals had successfully thrown out
a Coca-Cola bottling plant that was polluting the
water supply. But while Plachimada’s struggle was
to defend local interests against those of inter-
national capital, Vilappilsala’s was one to assert
political equality between villages and cities.
marginalised groups became more powerful and above: Sobhana
across the world, the most common way to dis- fewer dumps were permitted next to populated Kumari,
pose of urban garbage is to dump it in landfills. In areas. The term “Nimby,” an acronym for “not in Vilappilsala’s
panchayat
the United States or Canada, which have vast open my back yard,” emerged to describe protest move-
president,
spaces, more than half of all garbage ends up in ru- ments against proposed landfills or waste-treat- successfully led
ral landfills. Even when the garbage is sorted at its ment plants. In time, some began using “Nimby” the protests
source, unrecyclable materials are sent untreated pejoratively, to describe people who objected against Thiruvana-
to landfills. Elsewhere, as in Germany, waste is to the setting up of unpleasant and hazardous nthapuram’s waste
sorted and then the unrecycled waste is burned to projects in their own neighbourhoods, but had being dumped in
her village.
ash in incinerators before being sent to landfills. no objections to them being set up elsewhere. As
These dumping grounds often cause grave prob- these protests gained prominence, in many cases,
lems for towns and villages located near them. the Third World had to host what the West did
The use of landfills has become better regu- not want in its backyard. By the 1980s, millions
lated since the 1970s, when the environmental of tonnes of waste were shipped from First World
movement emerged and forced governments countries to the Third World to be dumped. The
to limit and control these sites. In the US, as most infamous case of this involved the US city of

MAY 2017 59
raising a stink · reportage

above: In 2006, a Philadelphia, located in the state of Pennsylvania. The transfer of the First World’s waste prob-
shipbreaking yard The city had been dumping ash in neighbouring lems to the Third World is often called “toxic
in Gujarat’s Alang New Jersey, until that state protested. In Au- colonialism.” In India, cities and states impose
denied entry to
gust 1986, 14,000 tonnes of ash were loaded onto similar process on their neighbours or parts of
a French warship
because it was a ship to be dumped abroad. In January 1988, themselves. But as recent events in Kerala show,
believed to be roughly 4,000 tonnes of this were dumped on when people on the periphery are able to exercise
carrying hazardous a beach in Haiti. When other countries refused political power, they stand up against their homes
waste. to accept the rest, another 10,000 tonnes were being turned into dumping grounds for other
dumped, secretly, into the Indian and Atlantic people’s rubbish. The movement that Sobhana
Oceans. The case led to the creation, in 1989, of Kumari led in Vilappilsala changed the power
the Basel Convention, which seeks to limit the dynamic between villages and cities across Kerala.
transport of hazardous waste across international It caused a cascade effect statewide. Within
borders. This treaty has seen multiple violations months, almost all panchayats that had municipal
since, as electronic and other forms of waste from waste-treatment plants or dumping yards in their
the West continue to be dumped in West Africa, jurisdictions launched political movements to get
South Asia and China. them shut down.
Shipbreaking yards in the Third World can often As for Thiruvananthapuram, when it violently
be used to offload hazardous waste. In 2006, the fought the panchayat in 2012, its municipal body
Clemenceau, a French warship carrying tonnes of argued that the closing of the Vilappilsala site
asbestos was denied entry to shipbreaking yard in would be catastrophic for the city’s million resi-
Gujarat’s Alang because it was believed to violate dents. It was not. Four years later, it is the only
the Basel Convention. Indian city of a million or more people that has

60 THE CARAVAN
 raising a stink · reportage

neither a centralised waste-treatment plant, nor Within months, almost all panchayats which
any landfill site. Faced with a shift in power, the
city had to innovate. had municipal waste-treatment plants or
dumping yards in their jurisdictions launched
about 130 kilometres north of Thiruvananthapu-
ram, the municipality of Alappuzha faced a simil- political movements to get them shut down.
iar crisis. Alappuzha is a picturesque city on the
Arabian Sea, often called “the Venice of the East.”
It is shaped by two central canals that lead from sis was on residents sorting garbage into organic
the sea into an elaborate network of man-made and and man-made waste at home, and then treating
natural channels and waterways. These are called the organic waste at the source. He also proposed
the kayal, or Kerala’s famed “backwaters.” Each neighbourhood-level units to process organic
year, thousands of tourists from all over the world waste into compost. Man-made waste would be
come to the city to take houseboats through them. collected by municipal workers on a weekly or
For decades, Alappuzha had been dumping its monthly basis. There would be no daily garbage
garbage in Sarvodayapuram, a village within the collection, no centralised waste processing and no
Mararikulam South panchayat. A conflict devel- landfills.
oped between the municipality and panchayat I asked Isaac what gave him this idea. “I have
that mirrored the one in Vilappilsala. A waste- always been a believer in decentralisation,” he
treatment plant had been built in Sarvodayapuram said. “Anything that can be done at the lowest
and was run by a contracted firm that failed to level should be done at the lowest level. Delegation
process all the garbage that was sent there daily. should be the opposite: not what the top gives, but
The unsorted waste was dumped on site, causing whatever can be done at the lower level should be
a stench, leakage into the water supply and health left to them. Only the residuals should go up. It’s
problems for local residents. called the principle of subsidiarity.”
In 2012, inspired by the success of Sobhana Ku- Isaac is an economist by training. For many
mari’s campaign in Vilappilasala, the panchayat years, he was a faculty member at the Centre
leadership in Mararikulam South also decided for Development Studies, a research and policy
to act against the dumping, locals blocked roads think tank in Thiruvananthapuram. He had done
and threw stones at garbage trucks coming from his PhD at CDS as well, writing his thesis on the
Alappuzha. When this happened, the municipal unionisation of the coir industry in Alappuzha
government stopped collecting garbage in Alap- in the years between the First and Second World
puzha. Hills of trash formed at many junctions of Wars. Since then he has authored several books,
the city. in English and Malayalam, on workers’ coopera-
Both the municipality and the panchayat were tives, local government and decentralised waste
then controlled by the CPI(M), but party disci- management.
pline could not paper over panchayat defiance. When we met, he was rushing from one event to
As in Vilappilsala, the issue transcended partisan another. We kept talking through a lunch of rice
politics. and fish curry, and then I accompanied him to the
Sarvodayapuram and Alappuzha fell within Ernakulam Junction train station, where he was
the assembly constituency of TM Thomas Isaac, to take a train for Kollam. At the station, police
the current finance minister of Kerala, who had officers straightened up to salute him. Ordinary
also held the post in the previous CPI(M)-led Left citizens came up to say hello, share a few words
Democratic Front government. As the area’s MLA, or shake his hand. A senior station official came
Isaac was particularly well-placed to tackle this out to invite him to a new air-conditioned waiting
problem. lounge. “That’s okay, sir, I don’t want it,” Isaac said
“I think it was very good that the rural areas in Malayalam, before continuing to speak with me
said ‘No, we won’t accept your waste,’” he said, in English. We crossed a bridge over some tracks
when we met in Kochi in January. “So you have no to his platform, settled on a concrete bench next to
choice. If centralised processing is not an option, a family with a child, and continued our conversa-
then what other option do you have? You have to tion until his train arrived.
amit dave / reuters

decentralise, either in the house or in your neigh- When he speaks, Isaac seems like a university
bourhood.” professor, rather than a politician. In the last two
He proposed a series of small steps to decentral- decades, many LDF policy innovations, from the
ise waste management in Alappuzha. His empha- campaign for decentralised waste managements,

MAY 2017 61
raising a stink · reportage

opposite page: In to programmes for organic farming and palliative of Gandhian simplicity, was also a proponent of
1991, the legendary care, have had Isaac’s imprint. In Kerala politics, democratic decentralisation, which he believed
Gandhian architect he has always been associated most with the empowered workers and peasants against elites.
Laurie Baker
People’s Planning campaign of the mid 1990s, in Namboodiripad, long after his political retirement,
published a book
of sketches on which he played a key role. was made the honorary chairman of the guidance
Alappuzha, called The campaig brought to life the principle of committee of the People’s Planning campaign. In
Venice of the East, subsidiarity that Isaac mentioned. In 1993, the each village, public meetings were held with the
which described Congress-led central government passed these active participation of local people, to draft plans
its potential as a amendments, which brought forth a new layer of for village-level development. At the time, Kerala
tourist destination
government: the district, block and gram pan- had three municipal corporations, more than
if its garbage
problems could be chayats. The statutes ensured regular elections of 63 municipalities and roughly 990 panchayats.
managed and the panchayat members, with 33-percent reservation Three million people attended these meetings and
canals cleaned up. for women, and reservations for Scheduled Castes assemblies, and 120,000 people participated in
and Scheduled Tribes in proportion to their pres- the planning process. Many of the plans involved
ence in the local population. The idea was to move water purification, improved health services, or
power away from state governments and un- the construction of “women’s roads,” which would
elected civil servants and into the hands of elected enable women to travel to get water or firewood
local bodies. more easily.
The new laws broadly expanded the powers of From 1996, the state government devolved
democratically elected village bodies in relation power over between 30 and 40 percent of the
to state governments. But some intellectuals, led state budget to local governments (panchayats,
by KN Raj, the director at CDS, felt that they did municipalities and corporations). These reforms
not go far enough. They saw the Panchayati Raj established a new structure of governance, which
Act as an opportunity to institute real bottom-up was based on rural and urban parity. Many critics
democracy. In 1996, a CPI(M)-led coalition came pointed out that the money was not well spent,
to power in Kerala and passed sweeping reforms or not spent at all, because panchayats lacked the
that expanded the centre’s legislation. Isaac, expertise to plan and administer complex projects.
then a professor at CDS, joined the state planning Others said that the planning campaign was un-
board, and was put in charge of the decentralisa- able to institutionalise its innovations once the
tion campaign. The state government also passed initial euphoria died off. But one outcome of the
a radical law which stated that all local governing reforms was clear nearly two decades later.
bodies, be they panchayats, municipalities or cor- I asked Isaac if he ever imagined that democrat-
porations, were to be given equal powers. ic decentralisation would lead to the events that
Kerala’s key innovation was to take planning unfolded in Vilappilsala. “I did not think of this
outside the closed chambers of the state planning outcome,” he said, laughing. “But we did expect
board and to the panchayats. Planning thus far that rural areas and communities would be stand-
had been a highly centralised process. In both the ing up. There is a tremendous confidence in the
union government and state governments, it was rural governments.”
conducted by unelected bodies, called the plan-
ning commission or the planning board. The goal in alappuzha, for the first few months after the
of the People’s Planning campaign was to shift garbage trucks stopped running, the municipality
planning to the panchayat level. It recruited ex- buried garbage within city limits. But soon, these
bureaucrats as well as local people with technical landfills became full. In 2013, under Isaac’s leader-
know-how, such as retired school teachers, health ship, the municipality picked 12 out of the city’s 52
workers and engineers, to draft plans. They drew wards for a pilot project that focussed on at-source
on ideas of participatory planning and budgeting sorting of organic and man-made waste and the
that had emerged in Porto Alegre in Brazil, where treatment of organic waste with pipe-compost
local communities, along with local experts, delib- units and biogas plants.
erated over and determined annual budgets. MR Prem, a schoolteacher, was a first-time
The Kerala Shasthra Sahithya Parishad, the left- CPI(M) councillor in one of the chosen wards. He
ist grassroots organisation that had spearheaded himself was initially a sceptic. “How can a whole
a statewide science and literacy campaign in 1989, municipality’s garbage be handled like this?”
now mobilised thousands of volunteers. Kerala’s Prem recounted wondering. “We didn’t think that
first communist chief minister, EMS Namboodi- a whole town’s municipal waste will go into com-
ripad, a man whose personal life was a model posting. Where? How?”

62 THE CARAVAN
 raising a stink · reportage

“I think it was very good that the rural areas said In his ward, the majority of people
opted for pipe-compost units, which
‘No, we won’t accept your waste,’” Isaac said. “So yield manure rather than cooking gas,
you have no choice. If centralised processing is not and are cheaper to set up. He showed
me the pipe-compost mechanism: noth-
an option, then what other option do you have? You ing more than two thick white tubes
have to decentralise.” as fat as drainpipes, planted into the
ground, with holes at the top to allow
for aeration. A user keeps dumping
Nevertheless, Prem and other local plants in more than 180 households, organic waste into one pipe until it
leaders went from door to door in his he told me. The gas plants look like is full, and then closes it in a month.
constituency to install pipe-compost oversized kettles as tall as letter boxes. In a month, the contents turn into
units and biogas plants in people’s The state offered them at a 75-percent manure. Meanwhile, the user can fill
backyards. “Whenever Isaac came up discount. This meant that a portable bi- up the second pipe instead, and then
from Thiruvananthapuram, he would ogas plant would cost the householder keep alternating between them. Most
also go,” Prem said. “And people would around R3,400, from which they could people use the manure as fertiliser in
be in for a big surprise to see the ex- get 1.5 hours’ worth of cooking gas a their gardens. The pipes’ functioning
finance minister going to each house- day. Prem himself installed a costlier, replicates the manner in which com-
hold to talk to them about biogas.” but more effective, fixed gas plant in posting has always taken place in the
“Initially everybody laughed,” Isaac his home. He gets 3.5 hours’ worth of countryside, where people simply dump
said. “They also had no choice.” cooking gas a day, he said—four hours’ their garbage onto fallow land and let
There are 52 wards in Alappuzha, worth on days when he also gets waste it rot into manure. The total cost of the
each with about 1,000 households. In from the vegetable seller’s shop next pipes is about R1,000, but in Alappuzha
Prem’s ward, residents installed gas door. a combination of state and municipal
courtesy costford

MAY 2017 63
raising a stink · reportage

subsidies brought the price down to R150. The “People would be in for a big
system is so low tech and user-friendly that it is a
wonder that it is not used everywhere. surprise to see the ex-finance
Today, in Prem’s ward, 80 percent of all house- minister”—Thomas Isaac—
holds have installed pipe-compost or biogas
units. In the past, biogas plants and other such “going to each household to talk
technologies have failed to be adopted elsewhere, to them about biogas,” Prem
even in other parts of Kerala, despite economic
incentives such as subsidies. People perceived the
told me. “Initially everybody
initiatives to be impractical and cumbersome. laughed,” Isaac, who is back as
The plants seemed difficult to operate and people
worried that they would break down. One of the
the state’s finance minister, said.
innovations in Alappuzha was to train Kudum- “They also had no choice.”
bashree women, who formerly collected garbage
from door to door, to repair biogas plants. Every
ward now has technicians who can be called if a The city carried out a large-scale awareness
resident does not know how to use a plant or if one campaign, among everyone from political work-
breaks down. ers, business owners and children. There were
After the success in the 12 pilot wards, the bi- environmental clubs set up in schools. Through all
ogas and pipe-compost programme was expanded these measures, the municipality’s main accom-
to all 52 wards in the city. Moreover, the city plishment has been to educate people on the im-
installed aerobic composting plants in 14 sites. portance of at-source sorting. A change of attitude
Each site has about ten concrete bins, which look has taken place in the city.
like stables for farm animals, located inside a grill- In 1991, the legendary Gandhian architect Laurie
enclosed shed. They are known as Thumburmuzhi Baker, who lived in Thiruvananthapuram and
bins, after the place in Thrissur district where specialised in construction from low-cost, locally
they were developed, by a veterinary university, available materials, published a book of sketches
as a means to decompose animal carcasses. The on Alappuzha, called Venice of the East. Baker de-
municipality’s former sanitation workers, who scribed the city’s potential as a tourist destination if
used to load the garbage trucks that went to Sar- its garbage problems could be managed and the ca-
vodayapuram, are now the technicians who run nals cleaned up. Even before the Sarvodayapuram
these sites. Each bin is first layered with organic shutdown, the dumping of garbage on roadsides
waste and then with dry leaves sprayed with and in the canals was common practice. The cam-
inoculum, a bacteria that hastens the composting paign in Alappuzha brought about a cultural shift
process. The plants look like car sheds, and are set in how residents viewed their waste, and their city.
up along major roads in Alappuzha city and next The change is apparent if you visit neighbour-
to its canals. ing towns in the district. Cherthala, 15 kilometres
Jayakumar C, a junior health inspector at the north, is a smaller town, with canals and temples,
municipality, oversees the decentralised waste- and an image of what Alappuzha was like before.
management process in Alappuzha. Jayakumar Hills of white bags filled with garbage line the
patrols the city on his yellow scooter, wearing a roads. Many of the canals are filthy. Cherthala
yellow helmet, scouring the streets for any waste resembles the Alappuzha described in Baker’s
out of place. “Ten percent of people still dump in Venice of the East. By contrast, Alappuzha today is
the street,” he said. “We have five autorickshaws the kind of city Baker had hoped it would become:
go every morning to pick up waste that we find in a destination for travellers from across the globe.
the street. If we catch someone, it’s a R2,500 fine.” The streets are clean and dotted with homestays.
The municipality also has a night-patrol squad: Tourists cycle through the city and ride on boats
officials who drive around in an SUV after dark to along its famed canals.
catch illegal dumping along roads or in the canals. Last year, the Delhi-based Centre for Science
If they catch someone, they call the police. Most and Environment rated Indian cities on the basis
of the culprits are owners of restaurants, juice of cleanliness. The purpose of the exercise was to
shops and fast-food joints, Jayakumar said. A first identify new approaches to waste management
offence is punished with a R2,500 fine; a second at the municipal level that were already working
offence means an establishment’s licence is sus- in Indian cities, and could be emulated. It aimed
pended, and it is closed for three weeks. to save Indian cities from importing expensive

64 THE CARAVAN
 raising a stink · reportage

left: In January
2016, the smoke
from fires that
broke out at the
Deonar landfill, the
primary site for
Mumbai’s waste,
engulfed high-rise
housing societies
in the more well-
heeled parts of the
area, causing many
schools to shut
temporarily and
creating respiratory
problems for
residents.
shailesh andrade / reuters

technology and unsustainable waste-manage- Landfills have a life expectancy, usually of

ment ideas from Europe or North America—an between 30 and 50 years, and a height limit, usu-
approach the central government seems to be ally of 20 metres. Once they exceed either, they
promoting through the Swachh Bharat Mission. In are meant to be capped. Ghazipur, Bhalswa and
the CSE survey, Alappuzha was judged the clean- Okhla are all past their expiration dates, and over
est city in India. 40 metres high. The bottoms, or the boundaries,
of these sites are not sealed, and so the leachate
alappuzha’s success raises questions about the seeps into Delhi’s groundwater. The smells from
efficacy of centralised waste management, a model these enormous open sites spread several kilome-
followed widely in rest of the country, and indeed tres in all directions, like foul spirits guarding the
all over the world. In Kochi, Isaac had told me that city’s northern, eastern and southern limits. Since
he was against the very idea of a dumping yard. most of the garbage is unsorted, an industry of
When I asked him if he thought a major metropo- ragpicking exists on these landfills, mostly run by
lis such as Delhi or Mumbai could manage without children who traverse the hills of waste without
landfills, he pointed to the examples of Alappuzha gloves or any protective gear. Stories of children
and Thiruvananthapuram. being attacked by rats and dogs are rampant.
“Why can’t Delhiites process their kitchen Worst of all, the sites are always on fire. Trapped
waste?” he asked. “It’s such a simple thing.” pockets of methane from decomposing organic
In Delhi, India’s capital, as the CSE report matter erupt in flames in unpredictable patterns.
recognises, no coherent waste-management pro- One Indian Institute of Technology study revealed
gramme seems to exist. According to the Munici- that the burning garbage in Delhi’s landfills ac-
pal Corporation of Delhi, the city generates more counts for between 7 and 9 percent of the city’s air
than 9,000 tonnes of garbage per day. There are pollution.
no efforts to segregate this waste at its source in The situation in Mumbai is even more infer-
any organised way. Rather, whatever is not picked nal. The city produces roughly the same amount
off by ragpickers and scrap dealers ends up in of trash daily as the national capital, the largest
four municipal landfills: one each in Ghazipur, portion of which is dumped in one site, in Deo-
Bhalswa, Okhla and a newly opened site at Narela- nar, located in the M East ward in north-eastern
Bawana. Some of the waste at Narela-Bawana is Mumbai. Each day, 5,500 tonnes of trash is depos-
processed, but at the other three sites all of it is ited here. The waste here rises to a height of 55
simply dumped. metres. The landfill has been in operation for 90

MAY 2017 65
raising a stink · reportage

years. A 2016 IIT study found that there bare hands—and then sold the recycla-
are tonnes of methane at the Deonar ble materials. On school holidays, their
landfill. The gas causes regular fire children would join them. Around
outbreaks. them, there was always an aggressive
In January 2016, the smoke from gang of dogs sitting in wait for a new
these fires engulfed high-rise housing stash of garbage, hoping for food. In
societies in the more well-heeled parts the spring, the dogs had puppies and
of Deonar, causing many schools in the their population grew. By the winter,
area to shut temporarily and creating gangs of dogs roamed the colony and
respiratory problems for residents. The began biting passersby.
fires made national and international The men and women who collected
news. NASA satellites showed images our colony’s garbage were frequently
of thick smoke emanating from the berated by the residents. They arrived
dump. But many ragpickers in Deonar late, sometimes they arrived drunk,
said that it was business as usual. The sometimes they did not arrive at all.
only change was that the wind had On the days that they did not come, I
caused a whiff of their hard reality to would drop garbage off at the dump

courtesy dc books
drift into middle-class Mumbai. myself. Seeing them spend their days
Around 600,000 people live in sorting through trash, I wondered what
Deonar. There is no boundary between I would do if I had to live like this.
the dump and the neighbouring slum. The incongruity of the malls and the
As in Delhi’s landfills, ragpickers work multi-crore properties alongside the Thakazhi Pillai’s 1947 novel, titled
on the site without gloves or any other open dump reminded me of what the Thottiyude Makan—translated into English
protection. According to the Mumbai author Jane Jacobs once wrote about as Scavenger’s Son—initiated a cultural
shift away from the practice of manual
Corporation’s own human-development innovation in ancient Rome. The impe-
scavenging in Kerala.
report, published in 2009, the M East rial capital, Jacobs wrote, was justly
ward is by far the worst place to live in famous for its magnificent aqueducts
the city. Most of the adults here are il- but excrement still had to be carted the waste away. The “night soil,” as it
literate and most of the children do not out manually from private houses by was euphemistically called, collected in
go to school. One does not survive very slaves. The problem was not one of a the trough, and the scavengers would
long in these conditions. According to lack of technology, but of a distribution go each morning from door to door
the ward’s records, the average age of of power. There was no pressure on with a broom and a bucket, cleaning out
death is 39 years. Rome’s citizens to change the system. the excrement from the latrines. This
Even in some of India’s most pros- The work could be passed on to slaves, practice has still not disappeared from
perous localities, the situation is dire. who had no power to effect any change. homes in many parts of north India,
For a year, I lived in Saket, a neigh- For Jacobs, the Roman case held an even though it was outlawed across the
bourhood in south Delhi, which has important economic lesson: for cities county in 2013. In the Indian Railways
three high-end shopping malls that to innovate, oppressed groups have to manual scavengers remain a part of the
stock luxury brands from all over the have the power to force through ways workforce, collecting excrement that
world. There were properties in our to improve their own condition. drops directly onto tracks from moving
residential colony which were worth trains.
several crores of rupees, many of if the radical shift in Kerala’s attitude Until the 1950s, all municipalities in
them homes of retired army men and to waste management in the last few Kerala engaged manual scavengers. In
bureaucrats. Yet within our colony, years can be attributed to a legislative 1947, a young writer named Thakazhi
a stone’s throw from these pricey measure—the Panchayati Raj Act—a Sivasankara Pillai published a novel
properties was an open garbage dump. similar upheaval in the state’s approach that changed this. Pillai eventually won
Each day, two people would come with to manual scavenging was sparked by a a Jnanpith award, and is remembered
a rickshaw and collect the garbage novel written nearly 70 years ago. today as one of the canonical writ-
from our door with their bare hands, Back then, most households, ho- ers of twentieth-century Malayalam
no uniforms, no masks, no gloves. They tels and restaurants in India that had literature. His book, titled Thottiyude
would then cart it to the garbage dump, indoor toilets were serviced by manual Makan—translated into English in 1993
which was simply an uncovered hill scavengers. Latrines consisted of toilet as Scavenger’s Son—describes the lives
of the area’s collective rubbish. The bowls that collected excreta, were not of manual scavengers in Alappuzha in
workers spent most of the day there, connected to a septic tank or a sewer minute detail, including their morning
sorting the garbage—again with their line, and had no water supply to flush routines of collection. A work of social

66 THE CARAVAN
 raising a stink · reportage

realism, it was one of the first novels in Malay- down. Police fire on their demonstration, killing
alam to feature the poorest of the poor as central most of the protestors, including Mohanan.
characters. As critics noted at the time the novel was
In the years between the First and Second published, Pillai’s key innovation was showing
World Wars, Alappuzha was the centre of a trade characters never before seen in Malayalam litera-
union movement in Kerala. The Travancore La- ture. Scavengers were people no one wanted to
bour Association had begun organising coir work- see, who did work no one wanted to do. People did
ers across caste and community lines in the 1920s. not want to look at their work, and kept a physi-
Gradually, union members took on issues of caste, cal distance from their stench. The literary critic
such as entry rights into temples and untouchabil- and communist leader Joseph Mundassery wrote,
ity, and spread their organising to other industries “Only the life of the scavenger is told; but within
across Alappuzha district. Pillai was writing in the that echoes the whole range of bourgeois life in a
context of these changes. modern town.”
Scavenger’s Son is the story of three generations The novel made people’s wilful blindness impos-
of scavengers in Alappuzha municipality. The sible. Soon after the book was published, scaven-
father dies in the first scene and for the first third gers’ unions were recognised in municipalities
of the book, the family struggles to find a way to and cities across Kerala, manual scavenging was
dispose of the body. There’s a gruesome scene outlawed throughout the state.
where his body is buried in the “night soil depot,” In the 1950s, Alappuzha’s scavengers became
after which dogs dig into the earth and excavate waste collectors. More than 60 years later, after
his half-decomposed remains, and then gnaw at the 2012 agitations, the town’s sanitation workers
the rest of him. A blue fluid oozes out of the corpse became technicians, who now manage the 14 com-
and his son, Chudalamuttu, witnesses the scene. munity aerobic plants and train people in how to
He determines that he will not suffer his father’s handle their home compost bins.
fate. He attempts to become a new sort of person, Reading Scavenger’s Son today, the novel feels
thrifty, clean, god-fearing and full of self-respect. somewhat dated and didactic. Pillai himself moved
Over time, he becomes a fixer for the municipality away from this mode of narration, and from leftist
president, who rewards him generously for break- politics, in later works such as Chemeen and Coir,
ing up a scavengers’ union. Chudalamuttu gets which are classics of twentieth-century Malay-
married and has a son. He keeps saving money, alam literature. But Scavenger’s Son’s social impact
dreaming of building a house with a boundary is undeniable. The novel provoked a cultural shift
wall. He is determined that his son will not be a in Malayali society. After its publication, people
scavenger. He gives the boy a posh name, Mo- could no longer treat their excrement as some-
hanan, dresses him in nice clothes and admits him one else’s problem. They had to deal with their
to a school attended by the children of the most waste in their own homes. The novel showed that
powerful people in the city. He never even touches there was no real need for scavengers as such. As
Mohanan because he does not want the boy to Mohanan says, theirs was a miserable occupa-
have his stench. It is as if the father believes that tion which had been created by governments. The
scavenging is a contagious disease that he could same governments could put an end to it if there
pass on to his offspring. was sufficient social consciousness and political
In the book, a deadly epidemic of something will. What happened with manual scavenging in
like small pox or cholera sweeps through Alap- the 1950s in Kerala, is now happening with the
puzha every few years. In one such outbreak, both state’s waste management. When such a cultural
Chudalamuttu and his wife die on the same day, shift takes place, what seemed normal earlier
leaving Mohanan an orphan. The boy drops out of becomes denaturalised. And what seemed impos-
school and becomes a scavenger. Unlike his father, sible seems necessary, even self-evident.
he joins a scavengers’ union and takes part in a
strike, during which he realises, as he famously as growing urbanisation across India leads to
says in the last chapter to his comrades, “It is not more consumerism and waste, the question is
the individual boss who is the worker’s enemy. whether its urban spaces will look more like Deo-
It is the boss’s government.” He leads a peaceful nar or like Alappuzha.
demonstration of strikers, but is then carried away In Thiruvananthapuram, the corporation
by personal feeling: wanting to avenge his father, stopped collecting garbage when the Vilappilsala
whose lifelong savings the municipal president site shut down in December 2011. Initially, there
took away, he burns the president’s new mansion were large metal bins parked at various points in

MAY 2017 67
raising a stink · reportage

Alappuzha’s success raises questions about composting that could be installed on a rooftop or
in a parking area to deal with the building’s collec-
the efficacy of centralised waste management, tive organic waste.
a model followed widely in rest of the country, Besides all this, the city also built 50 commu-
nity biogas plants. These plants were prone to
and indeed all over the world. frequent malfunctions, after which people would
simply dump their garbage next to them, creating
a mess. Though the biogas plants are still func-
the city, where residents dumped their garbage. tional, the city is not investing in them anymore.
For the first few months, the corporation buried Now it has built 17 community aerobic-bin units
the waste from these sites on empty plots within similar to the ones in Alappuzha, where locals can
city limits. Soon, it ran out of landfills. People sim- bring their organic waste. Citywide, it has also
ply littered on roadsides, producing mountains of installed 87,000 pipe-composting units, and more
trash-filled plastic bags. The open garbage attract- than 2,500 portable biogas plants in households,
ed rats and dogs. There was widespread fear that and introduced myriad disaggregated schemes
a plague would hit Thiruvananthapuram, as it had to deal with waste from commercial establish-
Surat in 1994—fortunately, no such catastrophe ments. Waste from chicken shops, for instance, is
occurred. For a few months, the city had collec- processed into fish food.
tion points for organic waste which was dumped In the ten days that I spent in the state’s capital
in pits in a 1,000-acre rubber plantation in a in December, although I did notice a few isolated
nearby panchayat, to make manure. By mid 2012, areas where unsorted garbage was piled in the
decentralised alternatives such as pipe-compost street, and, more commonly, where garbage was
units and biogas plants were being introduced. burned illegally, these problems were by no means
Initially, they proved difficult for residents, who widespread. Thiruvananthapuram is a clean city
had not been educated in how to use them. Many relative to most Indian metros, including Kochi,
complained that the units were messy, or that they the Kerala’s business centre, which still has a tra-
smelled. Residents did not have the habit of sort- ditional door-to-door garbage-collection system.
ing garbage at home. Moreover, the biogas plants Currently, the 30 wards that were part of the
would break down and the city did not have a good kitchen-bin campaign are producing zero waste,
system for repairing them. While the corporation Roy told me. The challenge in the remaining 70
tried to deal with these glitches, garbage con- wards is that people are not sorting at source.
tinued to be dumped in open spaces and burned “They are still burning garbage,” he said. Though
across the city of Thiruvananthapuram. the police have started handing out notices to
In November 2014, the corporation started those who do this, they have not introduced any
the Ente Nagaram, Sundara Nagaram—or My kind of punishment yet. “We want to educate peo-
City, Beautiful City—campaign, run by Anoop ple first to not do this,” Roy said.
Roy, a health inspector. The campaign drew on The programme is now targeting students,
the holistic approach of the Alappuzha model hoping they will be catalysts for behavioural
by focussing first on a few pilot wards and going changes in the household. Isaac wants to turn
door to door. It adopted special kitchen bins, every kitchen bin in the city into a science project,
developed by a scientist in Coimbatore. These had with students observing the bins in their houses
the familiar shape of a dustbin, but contained ten and writing reports. “I will spend one crore so
kilograms of inoculum in a coir pit at the bottom. that every kid who writes a project on the kitchen
The bins were simple, clean and easy to use. The bin in his house will get a book,” he said. “They
corporation launched a pilot project by distribut- will want a kitchen bin in their house just so that
ing over 15,000 kitchen bins in 30 of the city’s 100 they can write a project.” Isaac said that the sum
wards, Roy told me. A contracted NGO periodi- devoted to giving children’s books as prizes will
cally replenished the inoculum. The processed be money well spent if it can provoke the kind of
waste became manure. Unlike in Alappuzha, cultural shift that Pillai’s novel started. “How
where houses with backyards are common, a large much is the cost of a centralised plant?” he asked.
section of Thiruvanathapuram’s population lives “It costs hundreds of crores.”
in high-rise apartments. The compact bins were Recently, in what seems to be a natural progres-
an effective alternative to the pipe-compost and sion from events in Alappuzha and Thiruvanan-
biogas units used in Alappuzha. The municipality thapuram, the Public Policy Research Institute,
also introduced “bio bins”—larger plastic bins for the state’s government think tank, called for an

68 THE CARAVAN
 raising a stink · reportage

right: Kerala’s finance minister, Thomas

Isaac, wants to turn every kitchen bin in
Kerala into a science project, with students
observing the bins in their houses and
writing reports.

end to centralised waste manage-

ment in Kerala. The institution noted
how the Kerala experience shows that
private firms contracted to run cen-
tralised treatment plants fail to make
waste treatment profitable and clean.
Moreover, the institute said, technolo-
gy-intensive solutions—which are being
adopted widely across urban India—are
too expensive for most Indian munici-
palities and corporations. As a result,
new solutions have to be imagined.
The state government has now adopt-
ed a policy of decentralised waste man-
agement for all municipalities. It has
sent guidelines to all cities and towns
on how to segregate garbage at home,
and how to collect and recycle man-
made waste that cannot be composted.
Keeping with Kerala’s tradition of
decentralised planning, the municipali-
ties will develop their own solutions
and policies based on these guidelines,
rather than being forced to adopt a
uniform state model. In December, the
state government launched the Haritha
steevez rodriguez for the caravan

Keralam, or Green Kerala, mission,

which includes waste-management
projects headed by K Vasuki, an IAS
officer. The mission aims to craft inte-
grated policies on water management,
waste treatment and organic farming.
The three issues are connected, Vasuki
told me, as untreated waste invariably
ends up polluting the water supply and
because converting organic waste into multiple times, its fate becomes unclear in the novel where Chudalamuttu’s fa-
compost can be a step towards invigor- and it is possible that some of it ends ther was buried is based on a real place.
ating urban organic farming. up in landfills. The Kerala government It was located in the village of Sarvo-
Currently, though treating organic plans to move away from this system dayapuram. When manual scavenging
waste at home is becoming increasingly of outsourcing dealing with man-made ended, the same site became Alappu-
common, there is not a widespread so- waste and establish recycling plants, zha’s municipal dump, over which local
lution for processing dry waste. Many especially to process plastic, in indus- panchayat and municipality did battle a
municipalities contract Tamil Nadu trial areas in each district. Vasuki said half-century later. The Alappuzha mu-
firms to cart away non-biodegradeable that the challenge of managing plastic nicipality still owns the plot of land. It
refuse. Once the waste is transported is also an opportunity: these factories has lain unused since the 2012 protests,
to Tamil Nadu, its management is sub- can begin a new industry, and bring but soon there may finally be a sense of
contracted to informal firms and deal- new jobs to the state. closure. “We are thinking of turning
ers who sort and recycle it. After this It has been 70 years since Scavenger’s the site into flats,” Prem, the councillor,
waste leaves Kerala and changes hands Son was published. The night-soil depot said. “Or a stadium.” s

MAY 2017 69
 Portrait of a City
An intimate view of Kabul’s arts scene
PHOTO ESSAY / ART

PHOTOGRAPHS BY LORENZO TUGNOLI

TEXT BY FRANCESCA RECCHIA

70
over the last three decades, Afghanistan has been visually
over-represented. Cast against a striking landscape, images
of war, poverty and inequality in the country have filled the
pages of international newspapers and magazines. In 2011,
Lorenzo Tugnoli, a freelance photojournalist, and I, an in-
dependent researcher and writer, started working together,
looking for an unexplored narrative space within Afghani-
stan. The result of this collaboration is The Little Book of Ka-
bul: a book that depicts a portrait of Kabul through the daily
activities of artists who live and work in the city.
The Little Book of Kabul was released in 2014, in a limited-
edition print run of 500 signed copies. The research and
production for it was partly supported by a crowd-funding
campaign. We self-published the book to guarantee our full
autonomy in its content and aesthetics.
Through 20 short stories and 47 photographs, The Little
Book of Kabul provides a close-up view into the lives of three
protagonists: Kabul Dreams, an indie-rock band; Rahim
Walizada, an interior and carpet designer; and the Center
for Contemporary Arts Afghanistan, or CCAA, a contempo-
rary arts school. Around these central figures move other
characters, including visual artists, musicians, poets of the
Pashto Poetry Society and actors of the Afghanistan National
Theater.
For almost two years—from August of 2012 to July of 2014,
when the book was published—Lorenzo and I lived and
worked in Kabul. The choice to work independently gave us
the privilege of time. Our proximity to the artists allowed
us to build trust with them, and the borders between the
professional and the personal began to blur. These friend-
ships allowed us to appreciate the human dimensions that
informed the artists’ creative practices. Our interactions
with Rahim Walizada turned us into witnesses of his diverse
entrepreneurial attempts, from the construction of his dream
house to several—not always successful—business invest-
ments. The timeline of our project coincided with that of the
production of Kabul Dreams’ first album; Lorenzo and I be-
gan working on the day they started recording, and finished
at the same time as their album’s launch concert. And at the
CCAA, thanks to the interactions we had there for our book,
we found ourselves giving lectures and mentoring students.
These close relationships with the people featured in The
Little Book of Kabul helped us understand the difficulties that
artists there face when negotiating with their surroundings,
and with prevailing social customs and constraints.
One image that is a result of this slow approach is a close-
up that Lorenzo took of Arifa, a student at the CCAA. She
is wearing a burqa folded over her head, her eyes are closed
and she smiles peacefully; sunlight shines in diagonally from
a window. Arifa was posing for a photograph that was being
taken by one of her colleagues; the lens of her friend’s camera
can be seen on the left side of the frame. In Afghanistan, it is
very difficult to take a photo of a woman at such a close dis-
tance without making her uncomfortable. This shot was pos-
sible because, at the time it was taken, we had already spent a
lot of time at the CCAA, and the students there knew us well.
The quest for moments like these was crucial to our col-
laboration. Our decision to collaborate on this project came

71
at a point in both of our careers when we felt the urge this, I put my notebook away, choosing to remain in
to question the scope of our professional languages. the moment rather than constantly gathering factual
For a photojournalist like Lorenzo, the challenge was evidence.
to move beyond visual stereotypes. He shot the images Reflecting on The Little Book of Kabul more than two
for The Little Book of Kabul in black-and-white film years after its release, it is clear that the work captured
with a Leica M6 camera. Working with film, which is a unique moment in the city’s life—a vibrant phase that
costly and time-intensive, pushed him to think more is now past. The United Nations recently declared 2016
deeply about what he was shooting, and how. This to be the worst year for civilians in Afghanistan since
labour meant taking time on every shot—different from the US invasion in 2001. Many of the people featured in
the fast pace required of photographers working on the book have left the country in search of a safer life
newspaper stories. Meanwhile, for an academic like and better professional opportunities. Our book can
me, the challenge was to leave behind the jargon of be read as a glimpse into what the city once was, in the
international aid and development to produce a new hope that better times will soon allow the arts to flour-
narrative that was both rigorous and poetic. To achieve ish there again.

72
73
74
75
76
77
78
79
80
page 70: Students draw and paint in the library of the Center for Contemporary Arts
Afghanistan, or CCAA.

page 72: A corner of Ustad Rahraw Omarzad’s office at the CCAA.

page 73 top: One of the actors of the Afghanistan National Theater smokes a cigarette
before a performance at the Ministry of Information and Culture.

page 73 bottom: Students’ sketches and scribbles on a white board at the CCAA.

page 74: The young artists Baqir Ahmadi and Shahram Rahimi attend an exhibition in
the studio gallery of the CCAA.

page 75: Arifa, a student at the CCAA, poses for a photograph for one of her colleagues.

page 76 top: Students work in the studio gallery of the CCAA.

page 76 bottom: Khadija Hashmi poses for a portrait series by Sara Nabil in the studio
gallery of the CCAA.

page 77 top: Kabul Dreams, an indie band, play during the shooting of the music video
for their song ‘Good Morning Freedom.’

page 77 bottom: Young skaters practise in the garden of the Institut Français
d’Afghanistan during the Sound Central Music Festival.

page 78: A view of Kabul from the ruins of Darulaman Palace.

page 79: An actress runs through the ruins of Darulaman Palace during the recording of
a music video filmed by Jump Cut, a collective of young independent filmmakers.

page 80 top: A broken poster from Mecca hangs on the wall of Rahim Walizada’s factory
in Kabul.

page 80 bottom: Families attend a performance of the Afghanistan National Theater in

the hall of the ministry of information and culture.

page 81: A view of Kabul from the ruins of Darulaman Palace.

81
BOOKS
Write of Passage
How Vasudhendra became Kannada literature’s
first openly gay writer
/ LITERATURE
PRATHAP NAIR

82 THE CARAVAN
 books

for years, six short stories, written in Kannada, of his sexuality, even as he shifted from his sti-
about a man and his travails in rural Karnataka flingly conservative village in rural Karnataka to
and Bengaluru, sat in the writer Vasudhendra the relative anonymity of Bengaluru. These were
Shroff’s work folder on his computer. From time to themes that had never been written about in Kan-
time, he would reread them and edit the prose for nada literature before, at least not with the kind of
clarity, but Vasudhendra, a successful Bengaluru- sensitivity that Vasudhendra brought to his mate-
based writer of short stories, essays and novels, rial. The book’s narrative power came from the
who goes only by his first name, did not dare to fact that it drew so heavily on Vasudhendra’s own
send them out for publication. He had little doubt experiences.
that the stories in his folder would be accepted for Unlike his earlier books, Mohanaswamy was
publication by a Kannada newspaper or magazine. largely ignored by critics, who were perhaps wary Mohanaswamy
He had, nevertheless, a lingering sense of fore- of the repercussions of reviewing a book that nor- Vasudhendra
boding. The stories were semi-autobiographical, malised homosexuality in a country where it is Translated by
Rashmi Terdal
derived from his experience as a closeted gay man. still criminalised. Many readers, too, reacted with
Harper Perennial
Though the process of writing the stories had felt dismay. But many were accepting, and apprecia- 280 pages, T399
cathartic, they were also intensely personal. Pub- tive of the stories’ intimate examination of male
lishing them would effectively mean disclosing his sexuality.
sexuality to the world. Vasudhendra’s readers across rural Karnataka,
Even in his early forties, Vasudhendra had a in particular, embraced the work. Mohanaswamy
fear of homophobia that was deeply internalised. sold 1,000 copies in the first two weeks after its
Growing up in Sandur, a small town in Bellary publication, and topped the Kannada bestseller
district, jokes about gay men had been common chart for three weeks. The book became a topic
among his school friends. He continued to encoun- of discussion on Facebook posts and book blogs.
ter them when he went to engineering college and Many of his women readers called him to express
then began work as a software engineer in Ben- their solidarity. Closeted homosexual men from
galuru. He went on to become an author of some rural Karnataka called Vasudhendra because they
standing in contemporary Kannada literature. found a sympathetic voice in him. The English
Writing about a gay man’s private life could pose translation of Mohanaswamy was released in
a threat to that status. He feared that his read- November 2016, and with it, Vasudhendra gained
ers would abandon him, and that the experiment wider critical acclaim. As the book’s popularity
would scar his literary career forever. rose, Vasudhendra transformed from a writer who
“I didn’t have the nerve to put them out for pub- had disclosed his sexuality through a work of fic-
lication,” he told me when we met in early March tion to a figure of support for closeted gay men
in his home in an upscale apartment block in south across the state.
Bengaluru. Spring had brought the petunias out
in bright blooms of violet and pink. They lined the vasudhendra grew up in a conservative, devout
apartment’s cobblestone walkway. From where Hindu family in Sandur. He excelled in academics
we sat, out on his balcony, we could see a week- from a young age, topping his school and engineer-
end tae-kwon-do session in progress on a nearby ing college exams, and subsequently performing
tennis court. “Usually when I submit a story to a well in the GATE exam, for admission to master’s
publication,” Vasudhendra added, “it goes to print courses in engineering. He obtained an MTech in
practically the next day or the next week.” mechanical engineering at Bengaluru’s prestigious
opposite page:
It took several years before he mustered the Indian Institute of Science, and completed further Vasudhendra at
courage to publish one of these stories in a liter- studies in computer science, leading to a job in the his London home
ary magazine. After he had written more, the city’s booming IT industry in the 1990s. His biog-
all images courtesy vasudhendra

around 2000. The

stories were eventually reshaped into a collection raphy seemed like that of thousands of techies of writer produced
of ten connected short stories, titled Mohanas- his background and generation. work prolifically
wamy, which was published in 2013. The book’s In 1998, Vasudhendra moved to London to work during his four
years in the city,
interlinked stories talked about the narrator Mo- in a software firm. His literary output till then
seeking to recreate
hanaswamy’s homosexual longings, his denial had been one minor collection of short stories, the Kannada-
of his own sexuality, his attempts at reforming Maneeshe (Learned Woman), about poor Brah- speaking world he
himself, and his struggles with the taboo subject min widows in Bellary. He had to pay R10,000 to missed.

MAY 2017 83
write of passage · books

ers and only two responded—saying

that they could not accept his work. In
January 2004, still without a publisher
for his manuscripts, he started his own
publishing house, Chanda Pustaka,
and published a short-story collection,
Ugadi (the Kannada new-year festival),
and a collection of essays, Kothigalu
(Monkeys). These works found im-
mediate acceptance from the read-
ing public. Bookstores in Karnataka
started requesting him for reprints of
his work. Vasudhendra also reprinted
Maneeshe, his earlier novel on the wid-
ows of Bellary, which went on to sell
over 6,000 copies.
Vasudhendra’s writing after his
return from the United Kingdom un-
derwent a dramatic change, accord-
ing to Nagaraj. Stories tinged with
nostalgia were replaced by starkly
sketched views of contemporary real-
ity. “Whether it was about how mining
get the book published, and it hardly Readers consumed the NRI literature was plundering resources in Bellary, or
sold any copies. In England, isolated with curiosity, albeit with a hint of about the loss of close family members,
and homesick, he began writing in envy, because these writers had the emotions became juxtaposed with
earnest, to recreate the Kannada- luxury of being nostalgic for a world in introspective narrating in his works,”
speaking world he remembered. He which the readers were still living. she wrote.
was one of several non-resident Indian, When he returned from the United Vasudhendra’s literary reputation
or NRI, Kannada writers who entered Kingdom in 2002, Vasudhendra de- was cemented by his 2006 book Nam-
the fray of Kannada literature in the cided to become serious about his liter- mamma Andre Nanagishta (I Am Fond
late 1990s. Vasudhendra began by ary ambitions. In his four years abroad, of My Mother), his all-time bestseller.
writing for online Kannada magazines, he had written numerous short stories, It has sold over 18,000 copies in a mar-
such as thatskannada.com and kanna- essays and translations, which he com- ket where midlist books sell between
dasaahithya.com. Gradually, he began piled into three books that were ready 4,000 and 8,000 copies, and earned
contributing to Kannada newspapers for publication. He was, however, un- him a Karnataka state Sahitya Aka-
back home as well. able to make a breakthrough with pub- demi Award. The collection of autobio-
“Vasudhendra was among those lit- lishers. He queried around 50 publish- graphical essays charts the changing
erary talents that benefited from the dynamics of his relationship with his
advent of internet in the Kannada liter- mother from his childhood in Sandur
ary world,” the writer and journalist through every stage of his life and
Preethi Nagaraj, who has followed the career. It shows how, as time passed,
writer’s career since his days in Lon- the role of his mother in his life shifted
don, wrote to me in an email. Others from being his protector to someone
on that list included Guruprasad Kag- who gave him complete acceptance in
inele, Srivathsa Joshi, Harihareshwara, everything he did—everything except,
Triveni Srinivas, MR Dattathri, and perhaps, his homosexuality, which
Satish Kumar. These NRI writers wrote finds no mention in the book. “My
on a mix of subjects, most of which mother would not have understood it,”
stemmed from the sense of alienation he told me. “It would have confused
they experienced while living abroad. her.” (Vasudhendra’s mother died in
“Initially Vasudhendra’s writings 2000, many years before he began
seemed typical—nostalgic about India, considering writing publicly about his
his village, his roots with a smattering sexuality.)
of the privilege globalisation had given His experiments till then with writ-
him,” Nagaraj wrote. ing about homosexuality had left him
For the average Kannada reader, this wary. The same year, he had included
opened up a whole new set of themes. a short story, ‘Anagha,’ (The Sinless) in

84 THE CARAVAN
 write of passage · books

this spread: Vasudhendra’s notable books

include (clockwise from opposite page,
top) Chelu, Mohanaswamy, Maneeshe and
Namamma Andre Nanagishta.

his short story collection Chelu (Scor-

pion). The story was about a gay teen
in an unnamed village and his father’s
attempts to cure his sexuality. Readers’
reactions to this story were unpleasant.
“A reader was so angry after reading
the story, he called me up and asked me
if I was gay,” Vasudhendra said. “I put
out a brave front and denied his accusa-
tions. That night, I wept.”

vasudhendra began writing the sto-

ries that would eventually comprise
Mohanaswamy around this time. “I was
already in my mid thirties and wasn’t
happy with whatever I had done with
my life,” he said. “I mean, I was good-
looking, successful, but something else
was missing.” He was also slowly slip- States and wanted to return to his roots physicality of a gay relationship, he
ping into depression. Vasudhendra was in Bengaluru. Kaginele built the char- thought this could have been handled
tied to a social world that made little acter based on his encounters with gay better,” Kaginele said.
space for a man to be openly gay. Even friends in the United States. Around The stories emboldened Vasudhendra
at that age, he had yet to accept his sex- the same time, Kaginele also emailed to share his own work. Within a few
uality, and was still closeted to the rest Vasudhendra a short story by another days of reading Guna, Vasudhendra
of society. Vasudhendra had made no writer, Nagaraj Vastarey, which fea- sent Kaginele two stories: “Kaggamtu”
gay friends even in the four years that tured gay characters. Kaginele re- (Knot) and “Ollada Tambula,” (Unwant-
he spent abroad. counted that Vasudhendra had a mixed ed Offerings). Kaginele says he had
Many men of Vasudhendra’s back- reaction to the portrayal of gay men in long thought that Vasudhendra might
ground and in his situation end up get- these works. “While he mentioned that be gay. Still, reading the stories were
ting married under pressure from their he liked several aspects of the portrayal a revelation. “At that instant, I knew
families, or for fear of spending their of gay characters, when it came to the that only a gay man can write from this
lives alone. Vasudhendra, however, re- viewpoint,” Kaginele said.
fused when his parents suggested that Reading the stories, he saw also that
he do so. “My parents never forced me Vasudhendra was going through a great
and my refusal was enough to silence deal of mental turmoil. Kaginele was
them,” he said. Still, he kept his sexual- concerned for his friend’s welfare. “I
ity hidden, and his homosexual liaisons was honestly worried about his physi-
were all surreptitious and short-lived. cal and mental health,” he said.
On a lonely night, he began writing Around the same time, Vasudhendra
about these experiences, saving the sto- sent one of the stories, titled ‘Moha-
ries on his computer, hidden from the naswamy,’ to his friend and fellow
world. He considered his sexual identi- writer Vivek Shanbhag, who then ran
ty as integral to his identity as a writer. a literary magazine called Desha Kala.
But coming out did not seem like an (Shanbhag is best known outside the
option even after achieving publishing Kannada literary scene for his novella
success in Kannada literature. Ghachar Ghochar, which was translated
In 2010, Chanda Pustaka published into English in 2016.)
the US-based Kannada writer Guru- Many of the elements that char-
prasad Kaginele’s novel Guna (Qual- acterised Vasudhendra’s style were
ity). Kaginele and Vasudhendra were present in the story—a linear narra-
friends, part of the NRI generation of tive structure, a liberal use of common
writers in Kannada. The novel included metaphors, familiar characters. But
a gay character who lived in the United the content of the story was startlingly

MAY 2017 85
write of passage · books

new. “This is probably the first story that brought

the politics of the male body to the fore,” Shan-
bhag told me about his initial reaction to the story.
“It was a different experience for the readers to
read about a man desiring another male body. This
suddenly changed everything.”
Impressed by its originality, Shanbhag imme-
diately offered to publish the story. He told me
that he had no prior knowledge of Vasudhendra’s
sexual orientation, and “decided to publish the
story because it was a fine story, and not because
it was a gay story.” Concerned about his privacy,
Vasudhendra suggested using a pseudonym,
and the story subsequently ran under the name
Shanmukha S. It appeared in the January–March
2012 issue of Desha Kala—the magazine’s last
edition.
After the story was published, Desha Kala was
flooded with responses from readers. Vasudhen-
dra told me that after the story was published, “I
became unburdened.” He developed the character
of Mohanaswamy further and wrote more stories
in the series, which began “transmuting into a
novel.” But the writer shaped the material into
a form he was more comfortable with. “I believe
I’m more successful as a short story writer,” he
said. “So I pulled out a lot of chapters from what
was supposed to be a novel and made it into a
short story collection.” Mohanaswamy, the book,
was born.

gay characters and the theme of homosexual

love were not entirely unknown in Kannada lit-
erature before Mohanaswamy, but the portrayals
were rarely sympathetic. For example, the titular
character in the Jnanpith-award winner K Shivar-
am Karanth’s classic 1968 novel Mookajjiya Kana-
sugalu (Dreams of a Silent Grandmother) views by men ridden with guilt, done under some inevi- above: Vasudhendra
physical relationships between men and women as table circumstances and against nature,” Vasud- (centre), at age 20,
holy and denounces lovemaking between men as hendra said. with two childhood
friends in his
vile and disgusting. In the end, the novel projects But in the past decade, there has been some
hometown, Sandur,
same-sex love as a phenomenon that contributes incremental change in Kannada literature. In her in Bellary district.
to the degeneration of human society. The depic- short story “Hoovina Puje” (Flower Offerings), Like his character
tion of queer characters is no more empathetic Mitra Venkatraj views lesbian relationships in a Mohanaswamy, he
in Kamaroopi’s 1974 novel Kudure Motte (Horse favourable light. Other writers, including Sudhesh grew up in a society
Egg), in which a sexual predator tries to force a Shetty, Chidananda Sali, Nagaraj Vastarey and KV where the concept
of being gay did not
young boy into sex. Akshara have attempted to portray gay characters
exist.
In other Kannada fiction, gay sex has been in their stories and plays. According to Vasudhen-
portrayed as the recourse of confused individuals dra, however, “in-depth literature,” which depicts
who turn to homosexuality owing to a lack of ac- gay characters as complex individuals with the
cess to women. One such example is the character right to live full lives, “can come out only from
of an Englishman named Stewart in the Jnanpith- writers within the gay community.”
awardee UR Ananthamurthy’s short story ‘Clip Mohanaswamy was Vasudhendra’s profile name
Joint.’ Stewart has homosexual inclinations while on an online dating application. “It was quite
studying in a public school in England, but these unique, so I retained it for my protagonist,” he
later recede when he finds the company of women said. The collection of ten stories is a meditation
at university. “They are forced to see gay love as on sexual desires, body politics and the growing
a perversion, a frightening prospect, carried out pains of a queer boy in rural Karnataka, who is

86 THE CARAVAN
 write of passage · books

subjected to blackmail with the threat “The age range was wide, from teens saying that they found similar traits in
that he will be exposed. to late eighties,” Vasudhendra said. their sons. Some young gay men told me
Vasudhendra made it a point to depict “Some of them are married, with chil- that I was the first person in whom they
gay sexuality explicitly in the stories. dren, yet closeted.” Many of these read- confided about their sexual identity. So
He pointed out that the way he writes ers would call Vasudhendra not to seek there I was, reaching out to people of
about love and sex in Mohanaswamy solutions, but only to talk to someone the gay community and becoming their
would not be shocking to readers if the who would listen. voice in a way.”
characters were heterosexual. Hence, Bengaluru, where Vasudhendra lives, Many of the gay men who called
he added, he chose at times to be ex- has for many years been a prominent Vasudhendra said that they were HIV
plicit as a way to normalise queer life. centre of queer activism in India. The positive. They faced enormous social
The writer also decided to publish the Alternative Law Forum, an organisa- stigma and had no access to counsel-
book under his own name. “There was tion that has been part of the fight to ling services. Vasudhendra met some
too much at stake for me—my reputa- repeal Section 377, is based in the city. of these men—in coffee shops or even
tion as a writer and my literary career,” The socially active queer community in his home. The writer realised that
he said. “But I decided it’s pointless to can be seen in full attendance at the many of these readers needed profes-
wait.” Age played a part too; he was annual Pride Parade and the Bangalore sional help. He decided to assist them
already 40. “I didn’t know what I was Queer Film Festival. The Karnataka directly, since he had already com-
waiting for. I asked myself and came up state government, too, has recognised pleted a one-year certification in basic
short for an answer.” In an ironic coin- queer activists: in November 2015, it counselling skills, through the Benga-
cidence, Mohanaswamy was released on honoured one of the foremost transgen- luru-based organisation Parivarthan,
11 December 2013, the day the Supreme der voices of the city, Akkai Padmash- which trains counsellors in a wide
Court delivered a verdict upholding the ali, with the state’s second-highest range of specialisations, from couples
archaic Section 377 of the Indian Penal civilian honour, the Rajyotsava Award, counselling to youth counselling. Since
Code that criminalises gay sex. for her work for sexual minorities. then, Vasudhendra has been active as
Kannada literature is consumed Organisations such as Swabhava run a counsellor with the queer-support
far beyond cities such as Bengaluru, telephone helplines for sexual minori- group Good As You.
and has a wide following of readers in ties, while queer help groups such as These days, the writer travels regu-
small towns and villages across Kar- Good As You provide a safe platform for larly on speaking assignments across
nataka. Many of these readers live in people from the community, and offer south India, where he addresses issues
places such as Sandur, and belong to group counselling on issues ranging that he explored in Mohanaswamy:
conservative religious families much from coming out to legal advice. growing up gay in rural Karnataka,
like Vasudhendra’s own. These readers But many of the men who contacted queer identities, denial, coming out. He
had embraced Vasudhendra when he Vasudhendra were beyond the reach has spoken at diversity seminars in the
had written his acclaimed collection of queer activist groups based in the National Institute of Technology, Cali-
of essays on the relationship between a city. They read only in Kannada, and cut, Manipal University and elsewhere.
mother and a son. thus had no access to queer literature Vasudhendra, however, does not want
When Mohanaswamy came out, he published in English. “The identities his work to be coloured by activism.
began getting phone calls from such of youth of different sexual or gender “I’m not comfortable calling myself an
regular readers who had contradic- minorities are not as clean-cut as gay activist,” he said. “I think if I become
tory reactions to what he had written. and lesbian,” said Vinay Chandran of one, my ideologies will influence my
“I recall an elderly woman, my reader, Swabhava. He added that terms such writing and I want to keep my creativ-
called me and mid-conversation, she as “gay” and “queer” were relatively ity free of influences.”
broke down in tears,” Vasudhendra unfamiliar to many people in rural He also refused to be typecast as a
said. The woman wanted to show Karnataka. queer writer. Since Mohanaswamy, he
her support and express solidarity Mohanaswamy resonated with these has published two more books, which
with him. She ended the conversation readers because the title character have nothing to do with the queer
with, “I would’ve disowned you if you faced similar struggles in understand- experience: a Kannada translation of
were my son, but you are my favourite ing and articulating his sexuality; the Jon Krakauer’s Into Thin Air, titled
writer.” book offered a register of experience Everest, in 2015, and a collection of
Despite the initial bewilderment, that readers could recognise, and which essays called Aidu Paise Vardakshine
people read Mohanaswamy in large thus helped them come to terms with (A Dowry of Five Paise), in 2016. “To
numbers and spread favourable reviews homosexuality in a Kannada-speaking me, it looks like all his writings were a
of it online. Most of the initial respons- context. In an interview, quoted on the preparation of sort for Mohanaswamy,”
es came from his considerable base of back cover of the English translation said the journalist Preethi Nagaraj.
women readers. Then, he began getting of Mohanaswamy, Vasudhendra said, “Mohanaswamy was his destination till
calls from men from all over Karnataka “Some called me up, some wrote to me the book was out.” With that goal at-
who identified with the character of and some met me personally. Many tained, she added, “He can now afford
Mohanaswamy. worried mothers also approached me, a free run.” s

MAY 2017 87
THE BOOKSHELF

YESTERDAY’S FILMS TEMPORARY

FOR TOMORROW PEOPLE
PK Nair Deepak Unnikrishnan

This volume of essays com- This novel is made up of a

prises the collected writ- series of connected stories
ings of PK Nair, who was that explore the precarious
the archivist at the National Film Archive of India for over lives of migrant workers in
25 years. He salvaged the films of Dadasaheb Phalke, India’s the Gulf. Unnikrishnan’s family is from Kerala, but he was
first filmmaker, as well as the works of many other Indian raised in the United Arab Emirates and then studied in the
directors. These essays share Nair’s experiences of travelling United States. He writes in the comic and absurdist traditions
across India to collect and preserve rare films, posters and of both English and Malayalam, echoing Vaikom Muhammad
ephemera, and are invaluable documents of the history of Basheer as much as Kurt Vonnegut. The novel was published
Indian cinema. by Restless Books in the United States last year, after it won
the publishing house’s contest for New Immigrant Writing.

film heritage foundation, 312 pages, S495 simon & schuster india, 272 pages, S399

THE SMALL-TOWN LORDS OF THE

SEA GLOBAL VILLAGE
Anees Salim Ranendra
Translated from Hindi
by Rajesh Kumar

The Small-Town Sea is a novel about a young boy coming to In this novel, a schoolmaster gets a job near a bauxite-mining
terms with the death of his father—a writer who hopes his town in Jharkhand, and the narrative unfolds as a predict-
son will follow in his footsteps. The narrative is set in a sea- able conflict between mining interests and Adivasis. The
side town that is also the venue for many of the dying father’s book soon becomes more spectral, however, as the narrator
books. Salim’s latest deftly explores growing up and the lega- uncovers myths about the Asur people who live in the region,
cies we carry. whose cultural annihilation echoes the decimation of the
indigenous people in the Americas.

penguin random house india, 304 pages, S599 speaking tiger 166 pages, S250

88 THE CARAVAN
 THE BOOKSHELF

A GIFT OF THE MAN WHO

GODDESS LAKSHMI BECAME KHALI
Manobi Bandopadhyay Dalip Singh Rana with
with Jhimli Mukherjee Vinit K Bansal
Pandey

This autobiography by This autobiography of Dalip

Manobi Bandopadhyay is a Singh Rana, better known
frank account of what it is as the Great Khali, opens
like to grow up feeling like a with a moving first-person
girl trapped in a boy’s body account of the daily humili-
in small-town West Bengal. Bandopadhyay writes of the role ations of being a daily-wage labourer in India today. Rana’s
played by progressive theatre, political groups and mentor- great size—he is 7’1” and weighs over 150 kilograms—spurred
ship by professors during her student life, which provided her him to international stardom on World Wrestling Entertain-
with the social space to come out as transgender. She went ment as the first Indian wrestler on the programme. This
on to do a PhD in Bengali literature and is now the principal book is a window into what it is like to be a poor, uneducated
of a women’s college in Krishnanagar, a district town in West man from rural Himachal Pradesh who almost unwittingly
Bengal. becomes a global pop-culture star.

penguin random house india, 187 pages, S399 penguin random house india, 178 pages, S250

THE CASE FOR INSOMNIAC CITY

IMPEACHMENT Bill Hayes
Allan Lichtman

Allan Lichtman, a his- The photographer Bill Hayes

tory professor at American moved to New York City
University, outlines eight in his middle age, after the
possible ways in which the death of his partner. He
US President Donald Trump found a city that enchanted
may be impeached—and him as an artist, as he
perhaps removed from office—by the US Congress. Lichtman strolled the streets of Manhattan at night with his camera.
focusses on several of Trump’s points of weakness, such as Unexpectedly, he also fell in love with his new neighbour,
his business-related conflicts of interest as well as the myriad the legendary neurologist and writer Oliver Sacks. The two
allegations about his relations with Vladimir Putin, to show remained together until Sacks died in 2015. This memoir is an
how he is particularly vulnerable to impeachment. homage to a city, a man and an undying bond.

harper collins, 320 pages, S399 bloomsbury, 304 pages, S599

MAY 2017 89
SHOWCASE

Art

Graphic Prints by
Gaganendranath
Tagore, Ramkinkar
Baij, Mukul Dey &
Rani Chanda
22 APRIL TO 30 JUNE
GALERIE 88, KOLKATA

Galerie 88 will host an exhibition of some of the most tal-

ented printmakers in Indian history, with works on display
that will cover a range of different print formats: lithographs,
woodcut prints, and hand-etchings. From the coloured and
images courtesy galerie 88

almost comical caricatures of Indian society by Gaganendra-

nath Tagore, to the stark, thick black lines of Rani Chanda,
the exhibition promises to exquisitely showcase the versatile
art of printmaking.

For more information, write to mail@galerie88.in

90 THE CARAVAN
 SHOWCASE

Music
Lucy Rose:
Cinema Tour
23 TO 27 MAY
MULTIPLE VENUES, DELHI,
MUMBAI & BANGALORE

Following performances in Chile and

Mexico, the indie-folk musician and
former vocalist of the Bombay Bicycle
Club, Lucy Rose, returns to India for
her second tour in as many years.
Known for her mellow chords and hits
courtesy laura lewis

like “Shiver,” Rose will enthrall audi-

ences with songs from her first two
albums Like I Used To and Work It Out,
ahead of the release of her third, later
this summer.

For more information, write to

lucyrosetour@hotmail.com

Exhibition
The Theatre
of E Alkazi
27 MARCH TO 6 MAY
JAWAHAR KALA KENDRA, JAIPUR

The Jawahar Kala Kendra is hosting a

retrospective exhibition of theatrical
work by Ebrahim Alkazi, the Padma
Vibhushan awardee and legendary
exponent of theatre. Curated by his
© alkazi foundation for the arts

© alkazi foundation for the arts

daughter, the playwright Amal Allana,

the exhibition will consist of rare pho-
tographs, objects, archival documents
and models of stage sets. The event will
also bring to the public domain—for the
first time—some of Alkazi’s rare work
from the 1940s and 1950s.

For more information, write to

amrita.kapoor@flint-pr.com

MAY 2017 91
showcase

Film Literature

courtesy of the artist and whitechapel gallery, london

courtesy of the artist and whitechapel gallery, london

Artists’ Film International Alok Vaid-Menon

20 APRIL TO 10 MAY 18 MAY
PROJECT 88, MUMBAI FORPLAY, KOCHI

Artists’ Film International, hosted every year since 2009 by London’s Alok Vaid-Menon, the gender non-conforming per-
Whitechapel Gallery, showcases artists working with film, video, and formance artist, writer, educator and entertainer,
animation, selected by 16 partner organisations around the world. This will be at Forplay, Kochi, for one night of poetry,
year’s edition, held at Project 88 in Mumbai, centres around the theme comedy and performance. The international trans
of “collaboration,” and will exhibit works by the Desire Machine Col- activist, who has been featured in various outlets
lective, Mikhail Karikis and Wojciech Bąkowski. The selected films ad- across the world, uses their performances as a plat-
courtesy mukul bhatia

dress the tensions between the individual and the collective that grow form to discuss the constraints placed by society on
out of socio-economic and political circumstances. femininity and gender-non-conforming people.

For more information, For more information,

write to contact@project88.in contact Forplay at +91-9895104765

92 THE CARAVAN
 showcase

Exhibition
You Deserve to DIY
22 APRIL TO 11 MAY
CHATTERJEE AND LAL, MUMBAI

Hosted in collaboration with Bombay

Underground, a group that aims to bring
attention to undocumented works of cre-
ative expression, You Deserve to DIY is
an exhibition of independently published
books, literature, and in particular, zines.
Traditionally published by marginalised
and dissident groups, the zine is a form
of self-published work intended for
small circulation, and uses a combina-
images courtesy himanshu s

tion of original and appropriated text

and images. The members of Bombay
Underground will be present throughout
the exhibition, working on new self-pub-
For more information, write lished materials, and will also invite visi-
to info@chatterjeeandlal.com tors to participate in the displayed works.

Theatre Film
Gajab Kahani Mumbai Queer
20 TO 28 MAY Film Festival
G5A FOUNDATION FOR CONTEMPORARY CULTURE,
MUMBAI 24 TO 28 MAY
MULTIPLE LOCATIONS, MUMBAI
Gajab Kahani is a play performed by Aasakta
Kalamanch Pune, one of the leading contempo- Currently in its eighth edition, the
rary theatre organisations in Marathi theatre. Mumbai Queer Film Festival will
Loosely based on Elephant’s Journey by José be hosted by KASHISH, a not-for-
courtesy kashish

Saramago, the play tells the tale of Solomon profit arts foundation that aims to
the elephant and his mahout Subhro, as they arrange and organise programs in
make their way from Goa to Lisbon and Vienna, arts and culture. This year’s pro-
and the characters they meet along the way. gramme will centre on the theme of
The play will be hosted in collaboration with “Diverse, One,” echoing both senti-
Aadyam Theatre, and will be directed by Aas- ments of togetherness and uniqueness. The festival will be held across
akta’s award-winning Artistic Director, Mohit the Alliance Française of Mumbai and Liberty Cinema, and will also
Takalkar. include panel discussions and interactions with the filmmakers, among
other events.
For more information,
contact Aadyam at +91-7045401584 For more information, contact KASHISH at +91 22 28618239

MAY 2017 93
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 Editor’s Pick
central press / getty images

mohammad reza pahlavi, then the power to the disenfranchised—in par- try with his family, and the monarchy
shah of Iran, holidays at a luxury ski re- ticular, to the peasantry and the work- was replaced with an Islamic republic.
sort with his wife and three children in ing class. These policies were collec- This brought an end to more than 2,500
February 1969. Almost exactly a decade tively termed the White Revolution. years of continuous monarchy in the
later, political revolution forced them to The White Revolution’s reforms, region.
leave Iran, and the monarchy was for- combined with Mohammad Reza’s sec- Following his exile, Iran’s Central
mally abolished. ular ideology, brought him into direct Revolutionary Court declared on 13
Mohammad Reza ruled for 38 years, conflict with Iran’s landed elites and May 1979 that Mohammad Reza, his
from 1941 to 1979. Educated in Switzer- Shia clergy. Following a year of dem- supporters and his family had been sen-
land, and trained as a professional pilot, onstrations and strikes by students and tenced to death. He never returned to
Mohammad Reza intended to consoli- religious groups led by the then-exiled Iran, and died in exile in Egypt, where
date his rule by implementing policies religious leader Ruhollah Khomeini, he was granted asylum by the then
that would “westernise” Iran and shift the shah was forced to leave the coun- president Anwar El-Sadat.

98 THE CARAVAN