No Nuclear Heads, Please

War Clouds Gather.

Hannah Arendt famously wrote on the significance of common sense. She argued that often we believe, in the Humanities, that common sense does not aid us in our rational pursuit of scientific truth. Yet, common sense is what keeps people alive, allows them to hope, and returns them to  a sense of order. Why must we believe that the sun will rise tomorrow, that human beings will live in co-existence, that they will be ready to hear one another out? The will to live is the most important thing we have, and it is the legacy we leave for our children. The devastation brought by war are so huge, we see it all around us. Those who are wired into television and the net, respond to the crises of impending war, by continuously following the barrage of news reports, the continuous hectoring, and the ways in which the State responds to a crises.

We need to believe that the relations between two countries will represent the will of the people to live, and not to die. To succumb to the threats of terrorists who attack both our countries, Indian and Pakistan, simultaneously, would be to set up a huge morass of destruction. It is to fall into the hands of the enemy itself. The enemy lies secretly waiting to bring life to a halt. The nation state becomes its chamber maid, clearing up after its mindless terror tactics. The socialization of young people through theological motifs of the  imminent end of the world is its hidden weapon. It does so, which ever religion pushes its cards forwards, by feeding young people the rhetoric of death as cleansing. It is a Malthusian exercise, which believes that the poor are indeed excess,  that they are human masses, who can be rendered extinct in active or passive ways.

War as vengeance is part of this rhetoric, which ceaselessly works to collect people together as an ideological machine, well oiled and constantly moving into war zones. Once war is declared between two countries, it takes years to counter the physical suffering it brings forth. The number of people who die from cancer, from poverty, from neglect is the consequence of the daily costs of development. Unless we are able to count our losses in demographic terms, which involve understanding the fate of the Dalits in our country, we cannot proceed to present ourselves as Developed. The material symbols of development show that the functional aristocracies of post modern societies are well placed, and the scientists and technologists control the landscape of representation. Yet, while putting space ships in orbit, what have we done to alleviate the suffering of the poor? Our continuing and unabated indexes of poverty are an embarrassment to us.

To move into the realm of issuing orders that define victory, a free rein to the Army, crossing the LOC,  constitutes breaking the rules of democratic governance and comes as a real shock to the Nation. Neglect of the poor leads to more deaths in any country, than threats of war.

 Capitalism believes in war as a necessary axiom of its own ideology. The working class must remain enslaved in the factories of production, agriculture must submit to chemical infusions of excessive degree, technology must take the onus of mass production, 19^th century  type genocides of the peasantry, through starvation, or as voluntary cannon fodder must proceed. Not surprisingly, the drug and medical industry treats the harm caused in war and by environmental damage for its own monetary profits, as an intended consequence of iatrogeny.

There is no  quick solution to climate change, which some Prime Ministers and Presidents do not even accept as a life style induced conflagration of the ozone. We can only slow down the degree by which gassing of peaceful populations by consent of industrialists and politicians takes place. How did Punjab for instance allow gmt crops to be planted, and the stalks to be burnt by the farmers? Was it common sense to allow the city of Delhi to be submerged in dense smog for four months? How do we benefit from the decisions made by the government which includes using petroleum carbon to be used as a fuel in Delhi? Does more instant electricity for malls in Delhi make up for the damage the air quality does to the lungs and blood circulation of newly born infants?

All these questions are surely  worthy of debates in parliament. Hierarchical federal politics, like hierarchical pluralism is a problem in itself.  We cannot run into war without debate, without legal ramifications. Indians always remained aware that their country was blessed by a certain luminousness,  in which ideas prevailed, that wisdom could come from anywhere. Adi Sankara had to respond to the Chandal, he had to reconfigure his own opinions. We, as a people, have always reacted to urgent crises in myriad ways.

Once war is declared, our freedoms will be taken away from us, our daily routines will be marked by the dirge of listening to the lists of dead every day, announced over radio and tv. We will be rationed for food, standing in queues, listening to the confounding rhetoric of an  ‘eye for an eye’ theology, quite misplaced in today’s creative global citizens and human rights forums, where people of different countries work side by side.

Prof Susan Visvanathan is the author of  The Children of Nature – The Life and Legacy of Ramana Maharshi  published by Roli  Lotus imprint, 2010

Bomb Blasts in Jammu

Terrorists Attack in Pulwama on 14^th February 2019

Delhi gets its political climate, and its seasons from its North West and North East borders. The British built the capital in 1912, in order to establish their sovereignty over India, and to be closer to Shimla. Yet, the people of Delhi inheriting all the venom of the past, have always remained loyal to the city, with its dust storms from Rajasthan desert Thar, and the cold winds that blow from the Himalayas, and the view of the Terai as a silver line in the clouds, that greets them when they fly back from the North East.

Delhi - ites are least sympathetic  to or intimidated by terrorists. The call to arms made to college students and to the unemployed, whether in Jammu and Kashmir, or in Assam, or in Jharkhand, or in the various states of the North East leaves the migrant worker to Delhi baffled. The rural population moves to Delhi for work, and in slum settlements, and instant housing prefabricated by noveau riche magnates, they quickly make their living, for the wages are better than where they lived earlier. When luck runs out, they return to their villages for brief periods to recuperate, but they are back as soon as they are employed in the city.

The paramilitary forces who risk their lives in the borders are people who see serving their country as an honourable profession. They are not mercenaries. They come from farming families, and thousands compete against one post, which also represents gainful employment. It involves repayment of debts, education for their children, and the hard won gains of having gone to courts to settle the matter of pensions payable to them. The paramilitary is part of the grid operations of the Army, Police and State and Centre representatives, who discuss the mode of operation, in places where civil war is imminent.

Needless to say, the citizen’s forum is always active on behalf of the people who are being monitored. Wherever rape or injury has been committed, there is immediate reporting by journalists. The documentation of war crimes are part of the occupational obligations of many Human Rights Organisations, who make this data available. The Military and Police represent the coercive arm of the state, and is under the jurisdiction of Parliament and Judiciary. The idea of democracy is therefore legally represented by the constitutional impetus of keeping institutions alive.

Each of the forty men who were killed in the bomb blast at Pulwama  on 14^th February 2019 had obligations to family, which they had set aside, to return to duty. What were their thoughts as they set out on a new assignment? Was it a job like any other, to drive out into the cold and lose their lives in a fraction of a moment? The tragedy was something that the Nation experienced sorrowfully, so soon after Republic Day. One of the soldiers  killed came from Lakkidi village in Wayanad, Kerala. It is an obscure village, where there is a temple to Sita, for it is believed that it was here that Luv and Kush were born, and that she was absorbed into the Earth. These legends are what the Indian subcontinent is always composed of, where extra terrestrial time, and local time converge. The soldier had hoped to retire from the CRPF in two years, and focus on his children.

His brother told journalists that they were sorry to lose him, but proud that he had died for his country.

In these deaths, the Nation comes together, because the sacrifice soldiers make for their country are expressions of how they represent their love for the country as being the sole goal, in their possible martyrdom.

Kashmiris have presented themselves as scapegoats in the confrontation between the Military and their dream of a promised homeland. The pellet injuries that Kashmiri children have been blinded with become the most terrible evidence of how the Nation state sees forms of warfare as legitimate in contexts of civil war. How can human rights activists deal with the infiltration of terrorists among the Kashmiri civilians? India has a political sensibility which while not trying to get back Pakistan occupied Kashmir, will not give up Jammu, Ladakh  and Kashmir. There is no possibility of the further severance of the subcontinent.

Kashmiri school children doing  Central School examinations know that the idea of the homeland is tied inextricably with the Nation. Pakistan becomes an ally of Saudi Arabia,  and of China, when it requires aid. Kashmiris are to be found in every nook and corner of India, either as merchants or as refugees. The problem of borders cannot be solved by expressing enmity with neighbouring countries, whether it is China or Pakistan. The first step towards healing is for the presentation of occupational rights to Defence personnel, along with the line of duty which premises that citizens cannot be treated as if they are enemies. The unholy alliance that terrorists have with anybody who provides them with guns and money is something that cannot be condoned.

Miners Lives

 The drowning  of miners, in mid December 2018, who were working  manually, in rat hole mines in agricultural land, in the Jaintia hills in Meghalaya, came as a  severe shock to readers of newspapers. However, they  naturally presumed that the State would handle it, and went back to their duties. What a shock it was, when no help was forthcoming, and the miners died the most terrible and tragic death, where the water rushes in, and the lungs burst, and their tears wash away in the mud, and their screams cannot be heard. They would have thought of their families in those last seconds, being aware that they had not thought that when they left home, they would never see their homes again.

Rockets to Mars, and the space mission are domestic subjects of great pride. However, rural populations are left to their own devices. When the State camouflages as a political party with vested interests, then it dips into the exchequer to spend more money on defence, beat up the drums of battle, and cuts on those grants which provide relief to  the rural poor, such as medical aid and education.  JNU Professors, such as Mohan Rao, Geetha Nambissan and Rama Baru, have presented us with important data describing the prioritization of primary health care and school education in the post 1947 era. What followed was the rampant corporatization of these, when the rapid industrialization ideology placed itself over the economic bases of village India. Those who are biased toward rapid industrialization have not learned from the lessons that the 19 century placed before us. The genocide of the peasantry was a given, because the need to move faster and faster into modernism, factory production and rapid transport meant that whole villages would be decimated of their  working population. The move to Mars, and the six newly discovered hospitable planets {six new planets discovered.www.phys org.) are only the  proverbial carrot to the donkey, since  humans are being told by the conglomerate elites of the war industry, combined with telecommunication, medicine and food industries, that the end is in sight, and lets just give up on planet earth.

Since there are no medical facilities available in rural areas, or viable schooling, the Alternatives project has gained momentum in India. People know that they have recourse to traditional healing, and so the State machinery has also promoted it as one way of thinking about palliative medicine as a back up for diseases like cancer and life style induced illnesses. What follows is the corporatization of  production of herbs to be found in hilly or mountainous areas. The tribals are pushed out of their homes as a result of plantation economies which affect their way of life. Consequently they join the labour force, and the fight for wages is something that affects them on a daily bases.They travel vast distances, keeping with them their sense of honour about being wage workers, and survive with difficulty. The middle man, or contractor is always present to glean his commission from the little that they earn.

Philanthrophy in India is still a minimal contribution  usually made to a religious organization, and shown as tax deductible.  This is a good economic measure which benefits those who are in power, as not only do they get to skim off large sums of money by cheating the poor of their citizenship rights, they also come away with an aura of having done their duty to them, by pledging petty sums. By using the idea of karma, the concept of religious duty is also fulfilled, as the philanthropist completes his ledger after providing tin sheds to workers, and crèches to the children of the working class. Like any other occupation, the charitable organization uses its profits to pay salaries and leave  a carbon trail of hotel stays, foreign visits and seminar lunches. The solution is proper wages and health and educational rights to workers, not charity.

Manual scavengers, and miners know that they are entering the bowels of the earth. They depend on luck, and accept their fate as the poorest of the poor. Jawaharlal Nehru University, for instance, has still not invested in a waste water removal truck, which the neighbouring IIT has. The manual scavengers, come to work on motorcycles, bringing their children along on some days when they cannot be looked after at home. The children watch their fathers divesting themselves of their  outer clothing and entering into the sewers without masks or gloves or sufficient compensation. No health insurance is provided to them. Sulabh Latrines has made a rational organization the bases of social reformation, the pioneer being a JNU trained Sociologist Dr Pathak, who was Prof Yogendra Singh’s student.

 The construction of an engineering college is now being presented to the Faculty as fait accompli decision of the vice chancellor, Prof Jagadish Kumar, who has allegedly taken a loan, and has placed faculty as the loan debtors,  which means the faculty is  named as responsible for the loan repayment.  This news  follows a report in The Wire on 2nd April  2018 , that UGC has not promised the VC funding for his proposed college on JNU campus. Kerala has 168 engineering colleges, and its return to farming by the new age farmer is a response to the entropy induced by overbuild in its rice lands, and coastal zones.

Looking for body parts after a disaster is one of the most frightening aspects of the routine work of rescue teams. We have to return to the idea of being human and having empathy for others as a return to the normal, rather than succumbing to the vision of a selected few entering space crafts to enjoy the splendor of the universe.

Gender Studies Banished in CEU

The Central European University, Budapest, like Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi has been going through a tremendous period of unrest, as there is danger of it  partially closing down, in Hungary. The Hungarian Prime Minister believes that since CEU has American funding from the billionaire Soros, it implies the degradation of the  nationalist values of the  present Hungarian government. Conclusively, the greatest alarm that Prime Minister,  Viktor Orban experiences is regarding the Gender Studies Department at CEU.

Gender Studies is a discipline which has specialized, in the last couple of decades, in sensitizing students to the questions of biology and social orientations. As a result, it communicates that sex is a social question, and men and women are socialized to their specific tasks, in uniquely different ways, in different societies. This is not acceptable to the Orban government, because the post modern questions of  the legal rights of third-gender citizens, human rights, androgyny, and same sex love, are all essentially problematic to the present Hungarian government, who are seeking to return to the fascist preoccupation with kitchen, church and kindergarten as the sole interests of women. As a result, this has meant that for several months now, the Director of the CEU has been busy finding an alternative space for its afflicted departments in Vienna, so that students applying to the Gender Studies Course in 2019, can do so with accreditation from Vienna, and the course will continue to be taught.

Ofcourse, the more general shunting of CEU to Vienna has gone side by side, so that  a partial exodus to the Vienna campus, is planned next summer. The heads of academic Departments have been busy all year, in planning the survival of their units, and the preparation of new syllabus in the 2019 academic year, which includes undergraduate courses they have not taught before.  Administrative officers in the CEU are anxious that they will lose their jobs, as they may not be able to learn the legal rules for a new Viennese campus in time, involving new language skills in another country. The teaching faculty, however,  have been essentially problematized by the certainty of the Vienna campus,  affecting their present routines. The roster of faculty who can stay back in Budapest had to be made in time for the advertisement of courses so that  fresh candidates applying for courses know which campus they would be going to.  Since many courses are interdisciplinary, these have created new hurdles for teachers and students alike.  A two-campus attendance is essentially a financial burden as teachers and students would have to oscillate between Vienna and Budapest, a distance of three hundred miles. CEU library is a public library, open to the public, which will be adversely affected with the departmental transfer. So also the café culture, so charming to all university environments will be adversely affected.

All these problems are essentially because under the name of nationalist loyalties and interests, the present Hungarian government is trying to shut down a very popular university, with a thriving international student presence, including many Indian students availing scholarships. Michael Ignatieff, the Director of CEU, a well known sociologist of Borders, Boundaries and Ethnic Violence,  finally decided  that the threats by Prime Minister Orban was too hard to handle from  year to year, and as a result, laid down the operative rules for the migration of those departments which did not have Hungarian creditation, along with  their American certification. Sociology, for instance, did not have this, as courses were not taught in Hungarian, and did not have sufficient courses with content relating to Hungary. So for teachers and students of Sociology and Gender Studies, the shift to the Vienna campus is fait accompli. The question for faculty now is how to get their children transferred to schools in Vienna, how to find residential accommodation in a short time, how to organize the daily routines of old people living with them, and how to arrange for their spouses to accompany them, or transfer their existing employment responsibilities to a new work place. Commuting from Budapest to Vienna would take three hours everyday, like travelling from Delhi to Agra, and while it can be done, it would be expensive and time consuming.

As a result, the demonstrations by students who have taken to the streets in freezing winter conditions has now expanded to include workers resisting dictatorial rule. The numbers demonstrating on the square outside Parliament, at Kossuth metro station is huge. There are lectures and theatre performances, and the intelligentsia and the working class are very adamant that freedom of expression depends on their daily attendance and  informed participation at these. Why do politicians fear feminist theory so much? Gender Studies was the legal manner in which feminist engagements entered the classroom. This was supported by democratic political institutions, which are present even in fundamentalist and totalitarian state craft. Feminism demands that those who are enslaved would benefit from the ideologies of emancipation and freedom, and this includes younger sons and slaves, who have not the benefits in patriarchy, of the free citizen.

Sociology, further is fearsome to fundamentalist political organizations, because the basic axiom of Sociology rests on its methodological atheism. It presumes that since there is so much diversity in religious belief, and the variability of these are so vivid, the Gods are constructed by humans. The Greek Gods/Goddesses slipped into oblivion after the Romans domesticated and renamed them, and the Egyptian and Roman Gods later had no followers except in literature and art, for they had been obscured by civilisations which followed. Whether in Hungary or India, the orthodoxies are confounded by the rationality of the University intellectuals and seek to suppress them.

Generation Gap between the Older and Younger Feminists in India

The Generation Gap Between Indian Feminists Over the issue of “me too”.

When the “me too” movement began in 2006, initiated by Tarana Burke, and was popularized by Alyssa Milana on  October 15, 2017, in support of the victims of sexual predators, no one thought the movement would become a global one. Men and women get raped, seduced and molested, and parents spend most of their time, worrying about the eventualities of these, without turning the children, in turn, into nervous zombies. How can one protect young people of the dangers that lie in the world outside, how can one make sure that they don’t get attacked in a hotel room, or a bus, or on the train, in the staircase, or in the backyard, or the front porch? Or in the classroom?

Parents in India presumed that  their own vigilance would be one way,  and so, middle class kids got escorted everywhere. Their parents waited for them at bus stops, and constantly, in the mobile phone era, kept track of their movements, and gated them if they came later than the prescribed hour. However, the trusted neighbor, the uncle who dropped in for meals, the family friend, all evaded the eyes of the guardians. The child would whisper the awful secret to a sibling, and they would be very careful to avoid the prying hands of the adult relation of the inner circle. They would never forget the trauma, the desire to run and hide, the desperate urge to tell parents never to let that person into the house again, but they could not…the intimacy was too close, the parents were dependent on that person. His guile was too subtle, and he never got caught. Quite often, these were men who were respected in their religious organisations, and had a wife and children of their own, and rose to occupational positions of some worth. In the white collar classes, these men were known to travel, own houses and cars, including holiday homes and were occupationally respected.

The reason women never told their guardians was that they would not be believed. The response would be ”Oh no, you misunderstood. He is a sweet loving fellow! Doesn’t mean anything.” That is why, the predator continued to fondle in private. Because no one really believed the victim. If they had, then the entire known structure would collapse like a house of cards.

Between a child’s fear and a young women’s rage is a quantum of emotion. The pederast remains a type of his own, may he rot in hell as long as he lives.

The adult who molests a woman at work is not very different from that friendly uncle or intrusive cousin.

So why did the feminists in India fall into two groups, and ignore the warning signs that came with the notice that Raya Sarkar had asked women to name predators, on whose behalf she would fight court cases? The very fact that women came up to name a large number of academics is a statement of great significance, as it is not easy to go public on questions of sexual intimidation. These young women felt that they now had the backing  which society gave them, that there was world-wide attention being given to a pathological mode of interaction, and silence was not an option.

Many of us as young women, whether married or not, had been  ourselves subject to sexual advances. We ignored them. The predator was insistent, and   beguiling, while he used the cloak of the family to protect himself. The wife was someone who did not understand him, therefore the field was open for a new relationship. The guarded nature of this liason was that it was made clear the man would never leave his family. Sexual misconduct was not the question, as seduction requires two people to be in an entranced relation. Ofcourse, the woman could not complain to  university administration against a friend. She had been invited or forced into a relationship, the terms were very clear. The oppressiveness of the situation was more than evident, and yet, hierarchy, youth, horror, disgust, fear, sorrow, incapability of release from a situation which locked her in, made her the unwilling recipient of these advances. Although she spoke to many friends, no   one could help her to escape the familiar, the contemptuous, the sense of being forced into emotional slavery in a secret relationship. This dyadism is born of an intellectual dependence, of loving the subject, or  the discipline one studies more than one’s life, of finding an intellectual soul mate, but a fearsome one,  older than one, with whom to share ideas and work. This Heloise and Abelard type relationship, however,  has no legitimacy, no core of love or recognition, but  intimate proximity in terms of time and space holds the card. When the project is over, there is no wrenching for the man, as his stakes are higher, he has to keep continually moving. For the woman, it is the remembrance of something to which she was drawn into, against her better judgment, because the more powerful one said, “Enter here, of your own free will.”

Since these are relationships which are born of mutual understanding of shared interests, and women are generally trained to be subservient to powerful men, particularly if they are their teachers, not a word reaches the rest of the world. Too much was at stake…careers, future employment, and the possibility that in the end, freedom from the male supervisor after submission of the theses,  would be the only way that this captive relationship would end.

But we do have cases of young women holding older male professors to ransome. No sex is to be had out of these relations, except the cuddling and handholding, and expense account configurations which are typical of such liaisons. The elderly professor has already finished with procreation and is now looking for a comfort zone in which he can continue his productive work. Out comes the whip, from the female’s unisex belt, and what follows is  the mirage of false promises, and the transcendental space of  continual ‘making up’. Society is aware of this, but turns a blind eye. Female agency, youth and ambition all combine, but once the work is completed, and middle age with its slowness and calming sensibilities has set in, the woman looks for marriage. This is the institution which she herself had lewdly reviled while entering knowingly into a relationship which promised gratification and knowledge.

The older generation of feminists, who have been victims themselves at some point or the other, only wish that the younger women who have lined up to point  accusing fingers at other women’s husbands, would be specific. There is a point they are making. Give it in writing, not to Raya, but to the authorities, they all nobly proclaim, though as radicals they have no real belief in their institutions, seeing it all as  enforced red tape today. Here, it must be remembered that these older feminists came out with some significant achievements. The Vishaka Guidelines in 1997, which laid down norms for women in the workplace, essentially drew from a long and interesting sojourn in seminar rooms in JNU, the leaders of which were Ayesha Kidwai and Aniya Loomba,  two of the scribes of the deliberations being Karuna Chanana and Zoya Hasan. Men and women joined in these meetings,  which led to the recommendations of the GSCASH or Gender Sensitivity Against Sexual Harassment. It is this institution which has been disbanded by the present Vice Chancellor of the JNU, who owes his meteoric rise to RSS allegiance.

 Essentially, older professionally stable feminists, which includes males sympathetic to feminism, are saying that, “You cannot name a person as predatory, unless you do it institutionally, and wait for due process.” There are friends they have in the list, who are part of their circle, people whom they trust and know, and they cannot imagine that such people would be vile or sexually pathological. Because they themselves, are strong women, who if touched, against their will,  verbally assaulted, molested or raped, would immediately go to the authorities, they believe that this list, projects names with the intent to ruin reputations, and might well be the result of unrequited love by the student. There is no dialogue possible between the powerful feminists, and the angry young women out there, because finally, the women who have signed up with Raya are saying that they were treated badly, in positions of mutual trust and are ready to go to court. Why would they say that, except that they have been wounded severely in the dirty touching game, and are willing to pay the costs of their speech acts, including the publicity and the exclusion that quickly follows, when women own up to having sexual relations, whether willingly or unwillingly?

Society, we believe, has mechanisms of  legal redressal, for those who are innocent, and those who are depraved. The truth is that, statistically, the women who have been molested, usually  have to leave the work place, and the men continue to be gainfully occupied. When the men are named, they tend to say that it was a mistake on their part, and they should be allowed to go on sabbatical. So the system gives them a reward for their omission. As for the woman she never forgets how she was humiliated, abused, scorned, and pushed aside. If we had a system where men admitted their mistake, and were willing to be cross examined, the bases of the benefit of doubt may be placed, after the statements are compared. Was it a mistake,  (like, falling in love with a student), or was it intentioned as lascivious behavior, or worse, rape? Alas, the fact is that, the male professor always confirms his innocence, in the face of the weeping student, who has visited his apartment at night, because she was summoned by him. When men and women professors as elders protect the predator, it is an offence by law.                                                                                                                             

This generation of young women say that they want to take names, and don’t care for the consequences of their  carefully considered action, because a 24 year old lawyer called Raya Sarkar is offering them a chance to have their trauma told in court. So be it.

Susan Visvanathan is Professor of Sociology at JNU, and is the Professional Excellence Award Fellow at Department of Sociology, Central European University, Budapest for 2018. She is the author of Adi Sankara and Other Stories, Papyrus Press, 2017.

Urban Rehabilitation Transcends Town and Country

 As cities get flooded because of climate change, and  the unusual circumstances following from this, people live in daily dread. They have no idea from where they will get their water and electricity  or food in the days to come. Two weeks of heavy rain are again expected (weather.com  Warmer conditions expected across India, with heavy rains in South, 30^th September 2018).

The intense gravity of the situation is represented by the idea that Iddiki dam will flood over again. Planet Earth does its own thing, and by controlling nature, we imagine that we have won the battle. The real question is, how will people survive the waiting period, whether in relief camps  or at home? One of the ways in which people cope with the ‘new normal’ is to transcend it’s pathological aspect and derive comfort from the lowest common denominator aspect of it, that is, they are still alive.

The desperation that survivors feel is evident in terms of the records that they leave behind for us, which includes the written word, or other forms of documentation. Lewis Mumford in “The Highway and The City” (1958), one of the most lucid books that Sociologists have the pleasure to read, wrote about planning for rebuilding cities after World War 11. He was the  disciple of Patrick Geddes, who had written useful texts on urban planning in the third world.  Urban planners are necessary, in order to visualise  how India thinks about rehabilitation. The losses are so huge, that building again for people who may face the same grievous losses time and time again, requires some consideration and imagination.

When Laurie Baker was called in to construct buildings for Latur, after the earthquake in 1993, he took along his expertise with building in Kerala, for decades, with local materials and artisans. However, while the community endorsed Baker’s plan for neighbourhood resettlement, and his ideas were lauded, Atul Deulgaonkar writes that  Sharad Pawar and the NGOs were too quick to define rehabilitation as a speedy time bound process, and ignored Baker’s advice.(www, frontline,in/static/html/fl2020 Latur  Revisited). Baker’s beautiful drawings and terse but dynamic vision can be seen in the report ‘Earthquake’,  which is a composition written for the government, with regard to rehabilitation in Chamoli and Uttarkashi (htps.//archive. org/details Earthquake – Laurie Baker- English). Here, he suggests to the government, the need for salvaging raw materials, and for reusing them, and the employment of local masons.. The extensive use of photography is necessary for the purposes of record keeping and recompense. As traditional houses, which used local materials, provide for greater safe keeping of inhabitants,  Laurie Baker suggested that rebuilding should use traditional wisdom rather than extravagant and quick fix solution for rehabilitation purposes.

In Kerala, it is famously noticed that the distinction between town and country is not very visible. This is because rural economies in ancient times were dependent on market towns. Weber wrote in ‘The City’ about the medieval peasant being linked to the town, for purposes of sale and purchase of goods. The autonomous city, which developed in the West, is not to be found in Kerala. The occidental medieval city, depended on the appearance of ‘free’ men, those who had migrated from previous settlements, in search of burghers who would apprentice them, or the rentier class who protected them as landholders, by the rights of citizenship.

 Kerala’s modernity has depended on the right to ‘return home’, which Malayalees guard jealously, Affectual ties are maintained by annual visits home, or through skype and mobile phone calls. People see the world as essentially interconnected, but will risk their lives to see their ancient parents one more time, living with kin, or friends, till they can  make their journey to the homestead/farm, which has been devastated by flood.

The extra terrestrial nature of communication  in the globalized world, means that Malayalees strategically place themselves in the present. If they accept that their bodies are their home, which is  conventional advaitin practice, they tend to resolve the crises of physical discomfort for their families. This is a cultural tradition, which had made Malayalees believe in the dignity of labour where ever they find themselves. Unlike the Tsunami of 2004, where religious organisations were accused of  favouritising their communities, in the present crises, the Malayalees have stood together, regardless of party  or religious association. Katherine Hankins and Deborah Martin in an essay  in the book Urban Politics, (2014) have suggested that the way in which communities which have faced immense suffering can be helped, is through strategic neighbouring. This means, that people  who personally  have the vocation, come to live as neighbours,  with those who have experienced great loss, and help them with daily challenges, such as visiting banks, helping out with children, seeking to revitalize the environment by planting or replanting gardens.  Ofcourse, the capitalization of loss by  professional agencies who profit from philanthrophy would be safeguarded against. To believe in the here and now, and to believe in tomorrow, and to trust others is the need of the hour.