ISS celebrates 60 years

Indian Sociological Society celebrated its 60th anniversary, and yes, it was in JNU. It was quite amazing seeing 1500 delegates gather in one place, and Vice President Hamid Ansari in his very elegant way gave the baton back to the intellectuals saying that they would interpret society fearlessly for that was their vocation. Three happy days went by, heroically managed by the research scholars, many of them having spent sleepless nights. The queues for food were really long, but there was enough to eat, inspite of the dazzling sunshine, people stood in the glare talking, laughing, debating. All the sessions were crammed with listeners, and the symposiums were very well attended, so much so that tea and television screens outside benefitted those who could not enter the auditorium. It was my first ISS conference, and I really enjoyed seeing the crowds, quite perplexed by the numbers, since the delegates had brought friends and family to hear them. The estimated number present for those three days is thought to be five thousand...
JNU is a hospitable hill, and so we never felt that five thousand was a mythic number. Yes, they must have been uncomfortable in their lodgings, but on the last day, the representatives said "Discomfort in large meetings is frequent, and to be expected, but the intellectual fare and the general excitement of ideas was wonderful and made up for it." That was courteous of them, since many had travelled three days from very distant places, and Delhi is very cold. I am now ready to go to the ISS conferences every year. I didn't go previously for the plain reason I don't like crowds much, and dread the physical discomfort of strange lodgings. Once I was booked to be at a  World Tamil conference, about 17 years ago, and then I backed out, because my youngest daughter was only a year old, and I didn't feel like leaving her to attend the conference where other scholars. like Dennis Hudson (a very dear friend from Massachussets) were  also expected. However, after I returned to Delhi from Chennai, every month for about two years, I would recieve an envelope with a Paris stamp and a handwritten address, and a photograph of the  exiled Tamil LTTE leader Prabhakaran. I found that quite scary!

conferences at JNU

We have three important conferences happening at JNU. The first is the ISS conference next week (10th-13th December 2011). The ISS conference  will have two thousand sociologists visiting the Centre for the Study of Social Systems. It has a joint meeting point at the IIT, Delhi, where the young sociologists will gather. The second conference is on Alternative Education Networks and The Right to Education, where school teachers from Karnataka and Tamil Nadu will be in dialogue with JNU scholars on 10th and 11th February 2012. The third conference is on Arts and Aesthetics in a Globalising world (www.theasa.org/ASA12) which is hosted by the Association of Social Anthropologists, U.K and convened by Centre for the Study of Social Systems, JNU and School of Arts and Aesthetics, JNU in the first week of April 2012.

Malampuzha Dam

This visit to Kerala had me visit the Malampuzha Dam  again. It is 10 kms from Pallakad. Last visit was in April 2011. I had met some engineers there, to ask them some questions about the release of water in summer. They were busy that day, so getting any information was hard. A Sociologist hanging around the precincts when they had an important meeting, on a very hot day was so irritating, that to my surprise, they locked the engineers in the room where they had a meeting, locked them in with a padlock. I went around hoping to meet someone who would tell me what they were discussing. Everything is a secret, so finally I was told that they were discussing the opening of the park since there were complaints from the tourists from Tamil Nadu that without the Park being open it was not at all enjoyable to come to the Dam. I am sure there were other  matters too such as the installation of CCTV cameras, but an interview with one of the officers who was available to talk to me, conveyed that the dam has been renovated, that in summer they provide water to the farmers and to Pallakad town, and after the rains, ofcourse there is no worry of any kind. So this visit, in November was useful, because the flower gardens were open, the picnic groups were out and the idea of people visiting from far off places to see the water works was clearly evident. "Its a big dam by Kerala standards, but a small dam by other standards." When things are in order, there is not much to say.

Mullaperiyar

Thekkadi is lovely from my memories of 1968. My father's sister's husband took us there for a weekend, and I cannot remember if we saw  elephants or not. The word dam was not in our vocabulary, nobody thought Thekkadi was a dam.
Now that the debates on Dam sites, seismic zones and the advantage of small dams are well in place, why should there be a discussion of Kerala's intention to protect its people? Kerala and Tamil Nadu are symbiotic, Kerala's vegetables come from Tamil Nadu. Quite often people miss their flights from Coimbatore if they do not leave well in time from Pallakad because of the truckers jamming the road both ways. Its an old relationship, older than Madras Presidency, and the crafts of the two lands were entrenched by frequent crossings, and a common vocabulary. The Malayalis and the Tamils understand each other perfectly. The Malayalis are well aware of the dangers of construction being one of the greatest producers of engineers. Just ask the question "How many engineering colleges do you have in Kerala?" as I asked of a engineering Professor who was on the train from Haripad to Trivandrum going to a conference, and the answer would dazzle anyone. My friend Tara and I travelling through Pallakad, Haripad, Allapuzha and Trivandrum realised suddenly thats why the humanities do not show up significantly in general education. But then, what about the Kerala Sociologists conference? How many turn up for those? The number there too is stunning. Or for the Film conferences in Trivandrum initaited by Beena Paul. And now the Literature conferences too show how involved the Malayalis are with postmodernity and its questions. The dam is not about control, it is about a  continuing relationship which includes town, country and tribal settlements, and the survival of several millions of people. Small dams are the political motif as the save ganga projects have clearly communicated, and this dam too must be rethought for the future of the earth in just such terms.

FDI and other things

Long ago I was invited to a discussion on industrialisation of agriculture and was quite aghast to see the then President, Prof Abdul Kalam and all the industrialists completely ready to industrialise agriculture without preliminary debate. Science had won it seemed, as they all smiled urbanely at one another in FICCI auditorium. Regardless of the plight of the farmers who produce bumper crop season after season without consideration of their own dreadful poverty, the state keeps suggesting that industrial farming is what will get us to occupy Mars at the earliest. The offer is ofcourse valid, but do we want to take it? Definitely not. Cash crop agriculture is one thing, but industrialised farming is quite another. The loss of lives in the rural sector should first be handled because multinationalism is not going to address this. The problem with politicians is that they cannot hear themselves, and they think everyone else is outdated. Learning from the mistakes of the west is something they never even imagine to be part of what they do. Ridding the countryside of the farmers who do form co-operatives, who can communicate what they need very clearly seems the obligation of the politicians ruling today. The jobs promised to the displaced rural youth is a small token while taking away livelihoods from millions of their kin. Since nothing happens without the consent of the people, it is unlikely that this move will succeed. Party affiliation is not obligatory to have freedom of speech, or to demand discussion over the most important events of the moment.

Murder most foul

I was flying over Cochin at 6 pm last evening, and told my friend Tara who was travelling with me that I loved Cochin.  I have never lived there, but often travelling over Kerala by bus, I ride through peaceful lovely Kochi, with its Chinese sails and limpid waters. Time stops still in Kochi. As we reached Delhi last night, at 10.45 p.m the lights over the city were symmetrical, titanium lights which was the same colour as the chopped up orange brown moon which echoed the street lights of the ordered night of the capital city. How tragic that Sr Valsa John was killed in Jharkhand for protecting the indegenous people of that terrain. We use so much electricity all the time, and the coal merchants have their empires too. Today walking to Munirka, I saw some children climbing a tree for firewood, for the dead branches which were very high up. The girl who was straddled on the branch in the dusty middle class suburb of Delhi was foraging for fire wood, not breaking or chopping, but collecting dead wood.

Diwali

Ten years ago I had a terrible cereberal stroke the day after Diwali. Delhi got so heated up with crackers, that it set off a condition I did not know I had, that is multiple sclerosis. I landed up in hospital with the left side of my face twisted, and a clot in my speech centre. By the kindness of friends and family, and the amazing ability of my physicians at Apollo hospital, Dr Vinit Suri and Dr Prasada Roy, I recovered, and then have never returned to the hospital, because of the tremendously creative powers of palliative medicine. Once every month I go to Dr Qasim's clinic in West Nizamuddin, and collect my dose of homeopathic medicine. He treats me symptomatically. From April to October, I am always telling him I cannot cope, I have problems with sleep, memory, stiffening of joints and sometimes familiar mind shattering migraines. From October to March, I am fine, though the sclerosis manifests itself sometimes through arthritis, since the absence of mylin means the cold can be a catalyst to disrepair too. For that, there are oils which the JNU yoga teacher gives me.
Crackers really heat up the atmosphere. So this time, I thought I would buy plants instead. I went to the nursery near the Homeopathy clinic, and got bush roses, (they are called desi gulab) and two hybrid,  (red and yellow) which are called English roses, and an odd delicate croton in a pink, which looked like a maze of cappilaries on green. I also got azalea, which the gardener told me would have crowds of red flowers.
Sita waters the earth, they say, and in Sara Joseph's version, Ravana sleeps eternally, absorbed by the earth for his frugal ways and the honour he gave her by not abusing her. As opposed to the Draupadi myth, where kinsmen and neighbours wrest clothes off their kinswoman, the battle of Kurukshetra so close at hand, this is an interesting motif in the South Indian narrative tradition.
Niranam, where my father's clan lives, had its own poets who wrote a 13th century Ramayana. They are called the Niranam poets, and they  all came from the same family. Niranam was known as Nelycynda to the Greeks and Romans. It is a calm and gentle place, where St Thomas the Apostle is supposed to have made his first convert to Christ's teachings.