The Indian government is in a crisis, and will soon face a test of confidence, the outcome of which is going to determine whether it remains in power. This is because the Congress party, which forms part of the ruling coalition, called the United Progressive Alliance, or the UPA, has decided to go ahead with the nuclear deal that it signed with America two years ago.
The deal, which was finalized between Indian Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh and President George Bush during the latter's visit to India in March 2006, was seen as historic and unprecedented. But it drew as much criticism as praise, from both India and America.
In India, the ruling coalition's leftist allies, primarily the Communists, have been staunchly against the deal, denouncing it as intrusive "American Imperialism". They are vehemently against the idea, as they see it, of India tying its nuclear future to the U.S. After threatening for two years, they have finally pulled the rug from beneath the coalition party's feet, putting the government in a somewhat precarious position of proving their majority without the Left's support. The Left has even threatened the government with dire consequences, if the latter went ahead with the deal despite losing the trust vote.
So, the UPA faces a vote of confidence, which is to be held on the 22nd of July. Understandably, ever since the Left withdrew its support, the UPA has been out frantically looking for allies in other parties. It's found some unlikely friends in the Samjwadi Party, S.P. - the Socialist Party - which, in turn, is trying to convince its members to turn up for the vote and support the deal.
But though this immensely helps the UPA, it is not going to be enough to get them into the safety net; they still need to garner some more support, which, at first looked likely, but on the eve of the vote, the race has become so tight that a single vote could topple the government.
In the U.S., the road has not been smooth either. Just as Dr. Singh had the unenviable task of convincing members of the ruling coalition as well as other Members of Parliament about the virtues of the deal, President Bush too had to answer many-a question from the U.S. Congress, which needed to give the go-ahead to the pact. The latter was sharply divided about the issue, its main concern, amongst others, being around India's refusal to sign the Nuclear-Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). Still in 2006, Congress passed the Hyde Act, as the legislation was called. It requires, however, that the Congress be in continuous session for 30 days before it giving final approval to any deal. In this stop-and-go U.S. election year, it is not certain if the deal will get this final approval.
The issue has been polarizing in both countries, and in both places those who support as well as oppose the deal seem to have very good reasons for doing so.
Singh is betting his government's survival on this nuclear deal, which he insists is in India's best interest as it will end a thirty-year U.S. ban of sale of nuclear fuel to India, something the country, with its immense energy requirement, badly needs. But even before it can sign the deal, India has a lot of work to do. It must have an agreement with the IAEA - the International Atomic Energy Agency - and also get an approval from the Nuclear Suppliers Group, which consists of more than forty nations. Only then can the issue be brought before the U.S. Congress again.
But, first things first, the UPA must keep working on getting allies for the deal and, for its survival. The political drama in India, at the moment, is at it's peak - MPs being fought - read bought - over, carrots being dangled, and loyalties shifting - even as I write this.
The country now watches with bated breath as the media frenetically tracks the events. And the reason why this could be anyone's game, is because there are many Members of Parliament who have yet to make up their minds, or, as they put it, to make known their minds. Then there are those who agree with the deal but have criticized the government for its poor performance on the domestic front, mainly for the steep rise in inflation - at 11.42% it's a 13-year high - so even though they might think that the deal is good for the country, they are wondering if this is the right time to show their dissent.
Dr. Singh, on his part, along with his party, has been fighting tooth and nail for survival, generously doling out incentives, or granting any wish of undecided MPs. Yet, the UPA, needless to say, seems to be panicking, though not outwardly, because at this point one single vote can do the damage.
On paper they appear to have just about enough numbers, if, the crucial if, there are no last minute surprises and wild cards. My prediction is that they will scrape through, if only by a hair's breadth.
Sweet, sugary and ubiquitous around the world, Coca-Cola has run into trouble in many places.
In India the soft-drink giant has been in and out of controversies, mainly those concerning pesticide levels and ground water extraction, and there have been many a sign of unhappiness with the multinational: NGOs crying blue murder, bottles being smashed in public, court orders being issued, then overturned, angry citizens staging protests - the list goes on.
The company is now keen to correct its sullied image through various efforts, happily donning the mantle of corporate social responsibility. With reason; Coke was asked to leave the country once, back in 1977, so it is not taking any chances these days. Late last year it set up a Coco-Cola India foundation with $10 million allocated for community development and, for "a range of activities including water, the environment, healthy living and social advancement." Whether it will achieve these ambitious goals is yet to be seen, but some notable efforts can be seen.
In the arid, water-starved western state of Rajasthan, Coca-Cola has made a few initiatives that are being hailed by the locals. In one, the company has restored an ancient, decrepit well, which actually had a capacity of eight million liters, but had become, in the absence of funds to revive it, a garbage pit. Coca-Cola, in collaboration with the municipal authorities began restoration work on that well four years ago and today, with the successful completion of the project, the water has pumped a new life into the village. Its women no longer have to walk miles just to get drinking water. The locals, needless to say, are thrilled.
Another program that has helped Coke's image is the drip-irrigation project, which is said to have brought down water usage in some areas by as much as 50 percent by wasting less water in farming, a good idea in a parched state like Rajasthan, which has seen severe water shortages in recent years.
Coke has also reduced water usage in its bottling plants. But with all this, it has still not managed to stay completely out of controversy. Although Coke is trying to "give-back" what it takes from the ground, many questions still remain and skeptics are still not impressed with the company's efforts.
Ironically, in the very same state where the company has implemented these water projects, Rajastan, it has been asked, by the Energy and Resources Institute (TERI), to close down its bottling plant as the state is facing a severe water shortage. Also, Coke hasn't addressed the suggestion that it provide compensation to the residents in Plachimada, a village in the southern state of Kerala, which is where protests against the company began. Alarming levels of pesticide were found in the ground water near the bottling plant.
The company's trials in India are not going to be a thing of the past anytime soon, but, as it often happens in India, controversies come and go, newspapers howl, debates ensue, but, at the end of the day, if the brunt is being taken by some hapless villagers in remote corners, the country moves on, while petitions languish in courts for years. Till, one day, someone points out another alarming fact, and the whole circus is replayed. It seems as though Coca-Cola's efforts to burnish its image will help the debate about what happened in Plachimada follow this sadly predictable course.
Coke, thus, need not worry. As long as it carries its less attractive activities in far-off corners of the country, and continues to work on its image, not much will come of these protests.
New Delhi, India's capital, witnessed its first queer parade on June 29. While that's not a big deal in places like San Francisco - which held its 25th event this year - it was something of a historic moment for India. This was the first time such a parade was held in three cities across the country - people in Kolkata, in the east, and in Bangalore, in the south, also took to the streets on the day chosen to coincide with the pride weeks being held in various parts of the world to mark the Stonewall riots of New York in 1969.
That such a parade was held, and held successfully, is something that Indian gays and lesbians are celebrating as a small but important step in their long struggle against discrimination. Homosexuality is illegal in India under Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code - a law brought into effect in the 1860s by the British rulers. But even after 148 years, the law, which has been repealed in the U.K, remains unchanged in India, terming homosexual relations as unnatural acts "against the order of nature". The offence can lead to imprisonment, anywhere from ten years to a lifetime.
The fact of the matter is, that in India homosexuality is seen as unnatural not only in the eyes of the law, but in the eyes of the conservative populace as well; both the former and the latter look upon gays and lesbians as somewhat abnormal beings. And though this attitude may not be very different from, say the American society, it is really a question of degree. In India the main reason why homosexuals prefer, or are forced to, keep their sexuality under wraps, is because once the truth emerges they are, more often than not, ostracized, not only by the society at large, but even by their own families, whose response, often, is to deny and then to "cure" what they see as an ailment. Also, since the Indian society is extremely focused on marriage, in many cases the parents try and push their children into it, firmly believing that conjugality, with the opposite sex, of course, would be the wonder drug. Marriage, in fact, is the society's way of dealing with everything that may not be palatable, especially in men, be it homosexuality, alcoholism or even womanizing. The belief is, that once a man is burdened with family pressures, everything, miraculously, gets fixed.
This mindset is the main difference between homosexual issues in the West and in India. In the U.S, for instance, the issues, right now, are more around same-sex marriages rather than homosexuals in general. Which is not to say that gays and lesbians there are accepted with open arms, but neither are they shunned the way they are here. In India, even the educated, so called liberal people, largely, are not accepting of, what are called, sexual minorities. Many parents threaten suicide when they discover the truth, or even if they find that their children have homosexual friends, they try and sever the ties, as if it were some sort of a contagious disorder.
But, with modernity comes change, and, as with some parts of the west, there is now a slight change in modern India's attitude towards homosexuality. Not only was this parade, in itself, a sign of that change but the elements within it too reflected this shift in attitude. There were families who walked with their loved ones in a show of support and solidarity; many of the participants came wearing masks but many didn't since they were happy to be recognized. Also, many heterosexuals joined their friends to show their support and also stand up for the cause, openly stating that its time India repealed this archaic law.
The authorities, however, have remained unmoved, at least so far. And it's not like organized efforts have not been made to revoke the law. In 2001 an HIV and Aids organization called the Naz Foundation filed a petition in the Delhi High Court against Section 377 arguing that the law gets in the way of HIV/AIDS prevention efforts and violates Indians' constitutional right for equality and privacy. The High Court initially rejected the petition by nebulously stating that those who are not affected by a law cannot challenge its validity. But, after a series of long fights, seven years later, the petition has finally come up for hearing in the High Court.
What will come of the proceedings is yet to be known, and it's evident that things are not going to change overnight. After the petition was filed by the Naz foundation in 2001, its office was raided on the pretext of finding the staff engaging in unnatural sexual acts in violation of Section 377. So it's safe to say that the battle for gays and lesbians to find acceptance - especially in the eyes of the law - is going to be a long one.
The past five years have been remarkable for India's growth, especially for it's middle and upper middle classes - abundant jobs, unprecedented salaries, better living standards - all made possible by the vibrant economy, which has grown at 8% in the past four years. And understandably, there has been much celebration around the fact. But, unfortunately, there is a flip side to this happy story, and of late, it has been raising its dark head a little too often for comfort.
India has always been the land of baffling dichotomies and stark disparities, but, with one segment of the population reaping the immense benefits of the buoyant economy, and the other being left out, this contrast is now more glaring than it has ever been. Doomsayers have long warned of the consequences of this, and now the signs of the inequalities are beginning to show, especially in the metropolitan cities where immense, in-your-face-wealth and abject, not-enough-to-eat-poverty live side by side.
Take, for instance, New Delhi, India's capital. The city has seen a steep rise in crime in the past few years, the very years that have witnessed a healthy ecomony. Every few days the papers report gory stories about robberies and murders, which seem to be getting more and more bold, many of them not done in the dead of the night in some secluded spot, but in broad daylight in busy streets or people's homes.
In many cases people, both old and young alike, are robbed and killed by their domestic helpers, mostly young men and women who've come to the city in search of work from distant poverty-ridden villages. Once here, they find it difficult to survive in the city, and they are dazzled by the overabundance and garish wealth that stares them in the face. The disparity, and temptation, often leads them to try and take the quick road to money, the road that lies on the wrong side of the law.
The police are of little help in most cases. And while it's not always the domestic helpers who are to blame, they are often the first to be suspected, interrogated and even arrested .The gruesome murder of a fourteen year old girl, who was killed in her bed as she slept in the room next to her parents', is one such example that exposed the shoddy police work that has raised many questions about the case. Here, again, the police promptly blamed the absconding servant as the prime suspect, but when, a day later, his body was discovered, with the throat slit on the terrace, and that too by a neighbor, they didn't have any answers to explain why the area had not even been searched more thoroughly and the body discovered earlier. It is still not clear who killed the girl and why.
Kidnappings, robberies, car jackings and murders are now becoming more and more common, and are happening closer to home than ever. It's the dark side of India's growth, and things are only going to get worse, as life gets tougher for the common man, while the rich stay largely unaffected.
India needs, urgently, to correct this inequality. Till then, unfortunately, crime will only rise as the deprived try and get their piece of the pie, by hook or by crook.
That Bangalore is India's Information Technology capital is no news to anyone, since the city is almost always referred to as India's Silicon Valley. But, of late, it's been making news for the wrong, though somewhat related, reasons.
Bangalore, with its high stress life, is now being called the suicide capital of India. The figures are alarming - 35 suicides per 100,000 people.
What's causing so many people to take their lives? It's the usual suspects - high stress jobs, no work-life balance, long hours and the like, reasons largely alien to the city, the site of an Indian Army base, before the IT boom. The increase in suicides is an ugly side of development and growth, which many urban Indians find themselves ill-equipped and ill-prepared to deal with.
Like the nation it represents in the mind of many Americans, Bangalore has grown faster than either its people, infrastructure or traffic have been able to keep up with. High paying jobs, especially in the IT and BPO - Business Process Outsourcing - industries, have come with high stress and long hours. Family members don't seem to be able to find the time for each other, as people become more and more lonely in a competition-driven city.
Other Indian cities like Delhi and Mumbai are not far behind Bangalore; they have seen a significant rise in teen suicides. Exam stress is the main culprit in these cases. Parents are pushing their children to work harder to better grades, in the hope of gaining admission in the right institutions.
And competition is tough - this is a crowded nation - so even those who score 90% in their high school examinations are not guaranteed admission to the better colleges. It's a pressure that many teens are succumbing to, something most admit in the grim letters they leave behind.
The situation has led many companies and schools to set up counseling services for its employees and students. Parents, especially, are being advised not to pressure their children and to be there for them, something that many are unable to do due to long work hours and their own stresses at work. It's a vicious cycle.
India has grown fast in the past decade, but the growth and change has happened so quickly that many have not been able to keep up. What were once seen as evils of the West - little family support, fast-paced life, high-stress work - are now very much a part of the urban Indian's life. Those are the very reasons that are driving many to the ledge.
In the good old days, birthday parties meant treasure hunt games, colorful streamers, chocolate cake and Mama-made goodies at home with some good friends. They were intimate affairs, and used to be a lot of fun. But that was in the India of the eighties. They don't do it that way anymore, and it's a shame.
Birthday parties are now a big business in India, especially in its metropolitan cities like Delhi and Mumbai, where dual income families, with big paychecks, are going all-out for their kids (so they think), spending thousands of dollars on two-year-olds. These misguided efforts to provide children with "the best," and, at the same time, trying to prove the family's monetary worth to the world are, sadly, anything but intimate affairs.
India's middle, upper-middle and upper classes now have more money than they know what to do with, thanks to the booming economy, and they are looking for ways to spend it, especially on their kids. As a result, child-specific businesses have seen a tremendous rise in the past five years, especially when it comes to birthday parties.
Most have a theme, which is primarily decided by the child in question, depending on what he or she likes. The popular ones are Disney's various princesses, Powerpuff Girls, Noddy, Dora The Explorer and the like (most of which are shown on Cartoon Network which children are glued to all day, in the absence of their working parents.) Once decided, everything then matches the theme, from the birthday dress, to the cake, the decorations, the caps, plates, balloons, individually packed and named return gifts, et ell. And the madness does not stop here. To entertain the kids at the party there are tattoo painters, magicians, bouncies, trains, battery-operated cars, craft corners, you name it. Then, there's the food - everything from Thai, Italian, Chinese and Indian is served in style by professional waiters clad in their black and white crisp uniforms. The cost for it all: thousand dollars upwards, sometimes going up to crazy sums like ten thousand dollars, depending on the venue, the number of people invited, the decorations, accessories, food etc. Most spend between $2,000 to $4,000.
So popular are such events that Cartoon Network has joined hands with Pizza Hut to organize birthday parties, called Birthday Bang, at the latter's outlets across India. They host parties with popular themes like Johnny Bravo and Powerpuff Girls where, again, everything from the invitation cards to the return gifts are in sync with the theme.
It's not only big companies that have ventured into this business. Watching this new trend, many entrepreneurs have left well-paying jobs and are now doing brisk business, earning multiple times their previous salaries by providing turnkey services, where they manage everything from the theme to the food.
One reason why such businesses are flourishing is because India is a young nation, with over 65% of its population, some 700 million people, under 35 years of age, which is when most couples decide to start a family. Added to this is the fact that the earning power of India's youth has seen a tremendous rise in recent years. So, you have millions of young Indians making several times the money their parents did, and wanting to spent it on their kids, for whom they have the money, but not the time. Also, that's not the only thing that's changed from the previous save-it-for-a-rainy-day generation, which, even if it had the money, didn't believe in throwing it away or in garish display of it. Now, however, the thinking is that if you have the money, you spend it lavishly and live it up.
This thinking is what leads people to go all out for their kid's parties. Take, for instance, a friend of mine who recently hired a event management company to do an "aqua" theme for her two-year old daughter's birthday. The invitation cards that the organizer sent out comprised of a sequenced glass bowl with water, artificial fish and rockery inside it. Each bowl was wrapped in glittering silver tissue that was tied with ribbons, which matched the sequence on the bowl. Each card, of course, was hand delivered, since, I assume, you could hardly mail something like that. There were over a hundred invitees. The party cost her upwards of $2,500, but she didn't bat an eye. And this is something she is willing to do every year!
Call me old fashioned but I miss the good old days when birthdays meant playing musical chairs or running around in a friend's backyard looking for clues in a treasure hunt game, and eating homemade cheese and mint sandwiches. Sadly, that's now a thing of the past. For my daughter, unfortunately, friend's birthday parties will be synonymous with Disney characters and Cartoon Network.
That's a depressing thought. Maybe because I grew up in an India that was still, largely, free of Western influences, when toys did not mean Fischer Price and dolls did not mean Barbies, I find this change difficult to take. To see six-year-old girls at birthday parties with Barbie accessories, from top-to-toe, saying words like "totally" seems something of an anomaly.
Change they say is good, but I am not sure if this invasion of American style living on a certain section of India's class is really a good thing.
Two years ago, if someone had told me that the Washington Redskin cheerleaders would come to India to cheer for a cricket team, I would've scoffed, if not choked, at the idea. But no thought, it seems, is too far-fetched in the new India.
On the 19th of April, the newly formed Indian Premier League (IPL), which boasts the world's best players in its eight cricket teams, kicked off in Bangalore, India. And right there on the grounds, were the Washington Redskin cheerleaders bobbing about in all their glory, much to the delight of the merry spectators. The women were flown in to cheer for the Bangalore Royal Challengers, a team belonging to Mr. Vijay Mallaya - India's airline and liquor tycoon, known as much for his business ventures as for his flamboyant yacht-owning-island-hopping lifestyle.
India has always been crazy about cricket - once described by comedian Robin Williams as "basically baseball on valium" - a funny but inaccurate definition of the delightful game. Even before its new avatar - called the 20-20 cricket, a much shorter and thus more energetic version of the game - cricket had the ability to bring India to a standstill. Such was, and still is, the power of the game that if a match promises to be exciting, such as an India-Pakistan one, then the entire country does nothing except sit in front of the TV biting their nails. Employees call in sick, shopkeepers bring down the shutters, children skip homework and housewives abandon the kitchens.
It is no surprise then that the game has now been taken to an entirely different level, especially financially - unimaginable even about a year ago. And it's all happened with the forming of The Indian Premier League - think NBA - that consists of eight teams. They're backed by the rich and famous of India, many of them Bollywood bigwigs, the most famous one being Shah Rukh Khan - a mega-mega movie star like Tom Cruise.
Though this is an entirely new concept in Indian sport, especially in cricket, what makes this particularly unprecedented is the amount of money that's flying around. Be it player fees of more than a million dollars each, for some, or selling of website rights for $50 million, it boggles the mind. This is, after all, still a developing nation that not many would have thought capable of spending such astrominical amounts to lure the world's best players into its realm.
And yet, that's what has happened. The crème-de-la-crème of international cricket have turned up on IPL's doorstep and are now in India playing the six week long series that of fifty-nine matches, while the Washington Redskin cheerleaders do their jigs. The cheerleaders, apart from providing the glam in the game will apparently train some chosen Indian women on cheerleading, so the ritual - and one assumes, the excitement - can be carried on after they've left.
India has changed, we all know that, but yet it was a little surreal to be watching the opening ceremony and the first game of the IPL. Cricket will probably never be the same again.
Mr. Williams should probably consider revising his definition of the game.
Think of a gang of women clad in pink and you'd probably picture the gum-chewing-party-hopping teenyboppers like the Pink Ladies in the musical, Grease. Or perhaps the anti-war activists from CodePink. But, in an obscure village, called Banda, in the state of Uttar Pradesh in India, there thrives a group of women whose members wear pink, but who could not be more different than the pretty ladies of Rydell High.
The Indian women, often illiterate, belonging to the lower castes and they have come together for a common purpose - to fight for their rights and against social injustice. Dressed in pink saris and carrying sticks and axes, they call themselves the Gulabi Gang - "gulabi" meaning pink - and think nothing of storming police stations or hunting down corrupt officials, brandishing their wooden arms, roughing up offenders and demanding justice. Given such tactics, it's no wonder they've been more effective than their similarly clad sisters protesting the U.S. war in Iraq.
Banda, the village where these women are from, is one of the poorest and most notorious regions of the overpopulated, drought-ridden Uttar Pradesh, with no running water, and, more often than not, no electricity. Most villagers live in mud caked huts and don't get enough to eat, many die of hunger and malnutrition. In such a situation, women take the brunt of it all. Denied education and married off in their childhood, they are condemned to a life of incessant house and fieldwork often by abusive husbands. What's worse, they are ill-treated outside their homes as well, often sexually assaulted and cheated by local, mostly upper-caste, men. Caste wars in this region are common, often ending up in gunfights. Corrupt policemen and officials, far from helping the poor, only add to the problem.
Tired of the situation, one woman, Sampat Pal Devi who was married off at nine, and who had her first child at thirteen, started the Gulabi Gang, to bring justice, mainly to the poor, lower-caste, women. She doesn't look the part in her bright pink sari, but she's unforgiving and relentless. She teaches wielding of a "lathi" - Hindi for a long, sturdy cane - for self-defense. When needed, it is used to thrash wrong doers, from abusive men, to corrupt officials. The Gulabi Gang now has hundreds of members, not all of them women, since it is not a group against men, but against all forms of injustice.
The gang has had many successes in setting things right for the deprived poor - ensuring the right distribution of food sanctioned by the government, restoring electricity in their homes or bringing abusive men to face charges, to name a few - all by showing up in great numbers and waving their lathi in front of local officials. So far, they've been able to make it work although there have been some cases of criminal charges being brought.
It is a commendable effort, especially when you consider that many of these women are India's rural poor, brought up in an extremely chauvinistic, male-dominated society, and not even been allowed basic education.
Pink, it seems, in some parts of India anyway, is the new power color.
It happened in the wee hours of the morning of Dec 3rd 1984. As people lay asleep in their homes, in the Indian city of Bhopal, 40 tons of a deadly, toxic gas called methyl isocyanate (MIC) - leaked from the Union Carbide plant near the city, and all hell broke loose.
It became the world's worst industrial disaster, killing an estimated 15,000 people. But, that, unfortunately, was just the start of it. The city was never to be the same again.
Twenty-three years since, the nightmare is far from over. The factory remains, in worse condition than before with toxic waste - an estimated 8,000 tons of carcinogenic chemicals - still strewn about its grounds. Since the leak, waste from the plant has continued to infect the groundwater of the nearby residential areas. More than 100,000 people suffer from all sorts of acute medical conditions - from tuberculosis, blindness, cancer - as well as serious birth defects and Union Carbide's is blamed.
After the disaster - which, according to many, was just waiting to happen because of the extremely poor safety norms followed by Union Carbide - the company tried to cut its losses and leave the site - and the country - as soon as possible. It was aware of the fact that laws had been flouted in the past, since smaller leaks had occurred before and had even led to some workers being killed, but no action had been taken. There were those within the company who had worried about safety before the incident, but their voices had fallen on deaf ears.
Warren Anderson, the then CEO of Union Carbide, was briefly arrested, but then let go. Right after the incident, he did precious little to contain the damage, not even sending in a team to clean up the toxic waste that, two decades later, still seriously affects the residents. What's worse, that at the time the company did not even disclose the composition of the poisonous gas. It was afraid that people would realize the extent of damage it could cause. This was a particularly cruel act, for it prevented doctors from treating the victims who were swarming the hospitals, many choking and dying on the streets on their way.
Mr. Anderson fled to the United States and has since ignored all summons by the Indian courts, which have charged him with homicide. The U.S. has ignored India's demands for his extradition, while he lives in luxury in the Hamptons.
In 1989, Union Carbide made an out of court settlement and paid $470 million to the Indian government as compensation, which gave between $300-$500 to the victims for their lifelong disabilities - the fact that the number of victims had increased some five times (and still counting) was not considered, thus the paltry amount per person. But in 1999, Union Carbide was bought by Dow Chemicals which wanted nothing to do with Bhopal and its aftermath. It insisted, and still does, that it did not inherit the liabilities and refused to either pay for cleaning up the site, or to compensate the victims for years of contamination.
But the residents of Bhopal have had enough. On Feb 20th of this year, some fifty people, ranging in age from 11 to 80, started a 500-mile march from Bhopal to New Delhi to meet Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, and plead their case. Many of them have walking disabilities and have made the journey by stopping at temples and hostels along the way, arriving into the capital on March 28th. It's part of a campaign to demand that Dow clean up the site and that they be compensated for their sufferings.
A similar march had taken place two years ago and many promises had been made - the usual committees set up, funds allocated, and so on- but little concrete action's come of any of this. Still, Bhopal's victims are not giving up their demand for justice. They have, so far, been failed by both the Indian government, as well as the American giants - both Carbide and Dow - who owe moral responsibility to clean up the mess.
The question that then comes to mind is, that if such a disaster had not happened in a developing country like India, but had happened, say in the U.S., would the conglomerates have got away with it?
Not a chance.
On 18th February, a young British schoolgirl, named Scarlett Keeling, was found dead on a beach in Goa, a western Indian state extremely popular with foreigners, especially those on shoestring budgets looking for sun and sand.
What, at first, was hurriedly passed off as a case of drowning due to inebriation later turned out, at the insistent calls for further investigation by her mother, Fiona MacKeown, to be rape and murder.
The unfortunate incident made headlines, both in India and abroad, pretty much displacing stories of Madeleine McCann, the young girl abducted in Portugal in the British tabloids. Suddenly, Goa - the perfect holiday haven, that attracts millions of foreign tourists each year, a majority of them British - is not being talked about for its sandy beaches, great food, or for its quaint churches, but for all that is wrong - sex, drugs, rave parties and mafia connections - with this seemingly perfect tourist spot.
The Goa of today is very different from its hippy days of the 1960s, it now attracts all kinds of tourists, including gap year students. But Scarlett Keeling was one of the millions of young men and women looking for cheap accommodation and wild partying who end up in Goa. Scarlett, according to police reports was no stranger to this scene, even at 15. In her diary she is said to have written, in graphic detail, all about sex and the hallucinogenic drugs that she took even when back home in Britain - before leaving on the six-month trip to India.
The day Scarlett was killed, she had been partying alone with local men till the wee hours of the morning, high on a cocktail of drugs. This doesn't, of course, condone what happened, but, the fact that she was a minor and alone did lead many to wonder what her mother was thinking. She had decided to leave Scarlett by herself in Goa in the "care" of a local tour guide without any money or a mobile phone, while the rest of the family - the mother, her boyfriend and six other children - toured adjoining Indian states. MacKeown has denied negligence and said that, in hindsight, she was simply too trusting - that was her only mistake. She also claims this huge cover-up of her daughter's death involves high officials in the government and the police, who are protecting powerful drug dealers.
That may or may not be true, but the fact of the matter is that leaving her minor, drug-addicted daughter alone in a foreign land without money even for accommodation was not the smartest thing for a mother to do. MacKeown has, thus, had to appear in court to answer questions of negligence.
But the incident has revealed a more sinister aspect to Goa's partying. There's always been an easy access to drugs, but the state has become an international hub-of-sorts for drug trafficking, primarily to Europe. And minors are often carriers, since they are the least suspected. It's not surprising then, that increasingly, foreigners are being arrested for their involvement in local crime, and many have even lost their lives due to drug use.
The mystery of Scarlett's murder is still not solved, though there have been some arrests, Whether this was a case involving the drug lords is hard to say. The point, however, is that the death has forced the government to address some pressing issues about tourist and locals' behavior and the growing presence of illegal activity. Some policing has been stepped up since the murder, with enforcement and restrictions on alcohol sales and partying but cleaning up is not going to be easy, since the drug trade is rampant in the state and it's clearly been done with the knowledge and involvement of local officials.
Meanwhile, Goa is trying to get back to normal. But with some new restrictions in force, locals say that it may not be the same again. Many worry that Goa's image has taken a beating with the news of Scarlett's murder and her mother's behavior. Still, even with the headlines, tour operators in Britain disagree, saying that chartered flights from Britain are still landing into the state, which is nearing the end of its tourist season.
