2G: Courting Questions,

Institutional checks and balances are imperative in liberal societies, devolved upon through processes that respect honesty and integrity.


Judicial activism is one thing, but the court in India having to take over the role of the executive is a nightmare gone terribly wrong. It’s going to corrode Indian democracy and even destabilize South Asia, as someone said. It’s like having martial-law ruling within a democratic framework.

The 2G spectrum scam [can one avoid hearing about it?] seems to have queered the pitch. A Central cabinet minister went to jail. This was seen as a move against corruption in Delhi. Corporate executives followed the minister to jail, The arrested employees did not get bail, but those who ordered them to do the wrong roam free.

Why arrest and deny bail to men who were following orders, and let their bosses free to conduct their businesses and [who knows?] even tamper with evidence? Why have the bureaucrats and politicos who facilitated the fraud gone unpunished? These question raise other possibilities. Are some being made scapegoats? Why are some people being protected and others being denied bail?

A spectrum of questions... answers anyone?

Don't expect miracles in West Bengal

The Trinamul Congress-Congress combine ousted the Left after 34 years of uninterrupted rule in office and now the Left have merely 62 seats in an assembly of 294. With 227 seats, Mamta Banerjee’s comfortable majority should enable her to push through her agenda of change and reform.


The common man is not overtly enthused at this prospect. There is a general feeling that the new Chief Minister of Bengal will face considerable difficulty in implementing her policies, since the Opposition would be in no mood to oblige her. The Left , in all probability, may spurn any overtures for consultations and retaliatory politics may be the order of the day. As Mamta goes about overhauling institutions, administrative and advisory bodies set up by the left, conflict is bound to happen. Chaos, bloodshed and uncertainty may linger on.

The person in the street does not expect miracles, and would be content if he has his roti, kapda aur makaan, and a life of peace and dignity.

The foremost priority of the new government should be to improve the delivery mechanism for policies and programmes, and to ensure convergence to reach the target groups. The staff in government, municipal and local bodies have to be made to to stand up and deliver. The poor work culture is mainly due to poor and unhygienic working conditions, an inadequate public transport system, and self-importance due to working under the same regime for years. Setting up of effective fast-track single-window systems to eliminate red-tape, and efficient delivery of essential services such as PDS, electricity, civic amenities, healthcare and so on would be appreciated.

Restoration of law and order needs to happen swiftly. Law and order is a state subject under the Constitution, and the state government cannot abdicate its responsibility. Mamta’s public pronouncement that her party will not resort to bandhs nor disrupt public life is a widely welcomed statement of intent. The government should not hesitate to take firm action to prevent escalation of violence and establish the rule of law, especially in Dooars, Darjeeling and North Bengal.

Is Democracy dying in Darjeeling?

Bimal Gurung, chief of the Gorkha Janmukti Morcha,has ‘exiled’ Mr Subash Ghishing. As a senior journalist puts it, Subash Ghisingh’s departure from Darjeeling captures all that is wrong with politics in the hills.

For more than two decades, the ruling party or group in Darjeeling has, mostly through violence and coercion, left no space for any opponent. For one, I cannot forget the brutal murder of Madan Tamang, an astute politician, and a gentleman, by  Gurung's 'supporters'.

Ironically, it was Ghisingh himself, who started this trend. Ghishing, a popular leader in the 80's, slowlyfashioned himself into the dictator of Darjeeling, silencing opponents with violence and coercion. 

Nevertheless, Bimal Gurung’s ‘diktat’ is unfair and undemocratic. Two wrongs don't make a right.

The elections in North Bengal have shown that the candidates of Gurung’s party, the GJM is popular. The election results also show that Ghisingh’s party, the Gorkha National Liberation Front, does not enjoy the kind of popular support that the GJM does. o isn’t it unethical and unnecessary for Gurung to serve a ‘ quit notice’ on Ghisingh?

This demonstrates, the collapse of the rule of law in Darjeeling during the Left regime in West Bengal. The argument that Mr Ghisingh’s presence in Darjeeling is a threat to its peace holds no water. In fact, it’s anti-democratic.

Madan Tamang fatally wounded

There’s a vacuum in democratic politics in Darjeeling, that has to be addressed by the new West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee. There has been no local administration of any kind in the hills since the expiry of the Darjeeling Gorkha Hill Council’s term three years ago. Mamta-di will have to find a solution to the GJM’s demand for a special political status for the hills. She has always opposed the creation of a separate state of Gorkhaland, and we’ll be watching how she uses the GJM’s friendly equations with her to find a political resolution to this issue that’s been hanging fire for over thirty years.

The talks over a new political or administrative status for Darjeeling will take time, but civic and economic issues in the hills need the new government’s urgent attention.

Invitation for 15th May 2011

Have you a minute?

On the occasion of IACM 2011, an article by Dr Sundaraman that needs wide circulation:
THE Late 1980s were the dark ages of HIV in India. Dominic DeSousa was jailed in Goa for testing positive to HIV. The Courts in Chennai had incarcerated 8 HIV positive women from a remand home. Human rights were being violated. A young Lawyer from Mumbai and an Intelligent Journalist from Chennai who had no connections to HIV mounted a fight.

The courts were sane. Justice prevailed. Both cases stated that a person with infection or disease cannot be sent to Jail. Victory was celebrated as it created a new beginning. Those were the days when we had to explain even the acronyms HIV and AIDS. It was believed to be a disease of the west and probably imported by people with bad conduct.

The Director General of ICMR declared all foreigners should be tested. Somebody reminded him that the prime minister [ then Rajiv Gandhi] was married to a foreigner. Quickly the order was reversed.

People talked about HIV as a death warrant. HIV positive people lived a life in hiding while a few brave ones started speaking up. The discourse and dialogue on HIV had arrived.

From 1986 when HIV was first described in Chennai and later in Mumbai, for a few years there was only a surveillance program. That too in Tamil Nadu and Maharashtra since there was a general thinking that these are promiscuous states!!.

The 1990s saw a Government response, though lukewarm. It was not their fault. There was not much of knowledge and people who got HIV were anyway those from the gutters. Prejudice abounded.

Gradually, the acceptance that we need to do something came by on many people from the civil societies who were seeing the reality of this enigmatic disease that did not show up visibly and did not have a cure but manifested itself by people getting despondent and dying fast.

The response galvanized. The government constituted committees that included civil society to find a solution and the golden era of "India responding to HIV/AIDS" was born. By that time it was late 90s.

The level of mutual respect that civil society, people living with HIV and those communities at risk had and mandated to work together, was at its peak. Government office in Delhi saw the unique sight of Senior IAS officers at the level of Additional Secretary working shoulder to shoulder with Men Who have Sex With Men, Injection Drug Users, Female Sex Workers, social workers at Nirman Bhavan, the heart of the health ministry.

Strategies were drafted, plans were made, money was pledged and all the development partners walked the talk. Breaking the silence of HIV and torch bearing of the response were people at the helm of the National Program. There was a penance in progress. The country rallied around it. Every state showed their response, lives were being saved when dead were being buried.

The era of treatment arrived. The HIV positive people pushed. A political mandate proved that treatment can be offered and government can absorb the cost.


The National program was owned by everyone. The Third National Plan for HIV/AIDS called NACP III was born. Egalitarian and all inclusive value system pervaded. HIV is everybody's business was the mantra. We were all poised to see the impact. Soon we called the bluff of the experts saying India will go the Africa way.


People of India absorbed the impact of HIV. Families had sons, daughters, brothers, sisters, mothers, fathers, uncles, aunts and others die of AIDS. These were wasted lives.
Many lived on to fight the battle and by 2010 weknow that we have brought the epidemic under control. A job well done - celebration of true partnership of the Civil Society and the Government began. A partnership of trust, mutual respect, admiration for walking the last mile.

The epidemic is not over yet. Each day someone is getting infected. Each day someone is dying. 25 years has gone by and slowly the Government is getting into business as usual. You hear people say, "this is a health department, we can only do so much". There is no more a strategy contemplated for the new challenge of sustaining the gains of the last 25 years. The spirit of  partnership is vanishing and contractual obligations are asked to be met.


HIV is devious. It has suddenly found a way to divide and rule. The resurgence of the epidemic is a reality if we don't do it together and do it well. The lives lost are not for us to lose the battle in the long haul.

Dr.S.Sundararaman, Chennai
The Author has seen the epidemic and its response from 1986 till date.

Breaking Gender Walls

All over India, sex change surgery remains a traumatic experience because it is done secretly and unprofessionally.

Castration is illegal in India, and Sex Reassignment Surgery (SRS) is legally ambiguous. Therefore, those who wish to undergo a sex change operation have to go to private clinics, and suffer physical and mental trauma. The cost of the operation is very high there (around 45 lakhs).

Christy Raj is intimately acquainted with the sufferings and difficulties attached to SRS. Numerous friends of his have been through it, and he himself hopes to be able to undergo the operation one day, however hazardous it is.

Christy Raj

The transgender community is still discriminated against massively in India, and there is total ignorance amongst the public of their needs.

A female to male transgender, Christy was forced out of his home, beaten, bruised and left on the highway, to be crushed to death by speeding vehicles, by her own family six years back, when he was 17.The reason: Christy has just confessed to her people that he was a man trapped in a woman’s body and that he wanted to be complete by undergoing a sex change.


‘I confessed because I thought if anyone could be taken into confidence and could be counted on to help me, it would be my family, the one I was born into’, he says with a wry smile. ‘Instead, I was beaten like an animal.’

Christy, however, didn’t get run over. Instead he was found, of course unconscious and bleeding, by a Hijra who was human enough to take into her house this strange who, for her, was just another human being.


A proper SRS not only consists of a surgical operation. It also includes counselling, before and after the operation, hormonal treatment to enhance the physical changes, and a medical follow-up, to prevent the risks attached to the surgical intervention. But when the intervention is carried out in private clinics, transgender patients hardly receive any of these, and are left vulnerable to various infections, medical complications, and post-intervention psychological distress.

To improve his community’s situation, Christy Raj is engaged in Sangama, an NGO that provides support for the counselling process. He also belongs to an activist network that lobbies the government to susbsidise the surgery, as is the case in Tamil Nadu. He has numerous friends who have undergone SRS and now lead happy lives, utlimately at peace with their gender identity.