The Examined Life of Masculinities

 (First published https://www.tarshi.net/inplainspeak/the-examined-life-of-masculinities/)

 The Man-Woman binary is now, thankfully, nearly dead. The 2019 guidance^[1] from the American Psychological Association gives us the good news that minus stereotypes and expectations, there isn’t much difference in the basic behaviours of men and women. Some studies^[2], have established that, for example, men enjoy caring for their children as much as women do. And a 2013 meta-analysis^[3] has found that adolescent boys, for example, contrary to expectation, displayed fewer externalizing emotions such as anger than did adolescent girls.

 

Almost unwittingly, the man-woman binary has left behind a progeny that we are still getting to know – the dualism of the masculine and the feminine, characteristics of which, we now know, reside in each of us.  The masculine and the feminine have been in bed with each other’s powers, and weaknesses, more than with each other’s meaning. These categories left unto themselves have a propensity to overlap, mingle, intertwine and interwreathe within a person. These categories live in a trap of behaviours determined by stereotypes and expectations, which among other things, shape and influence our sexuality.

 

In unpeeling the many intersections between masculinities and sexuality, we need to place upfront the ‘traditional masculinity ideology’[4] which has been understood as a collective of characteristics such as anti-femininity, achievement, eschewal of the appearance of weakness, and adventure, risk, and violence. Stewed in the cauldron of culture, religion, ethnicity, popular cinema and literature – this traditional understanding of masculinity, and therefore of femininity have become pervasive and sometimes toxic, placing men and women and their diversities in cages, each neatly labelled, as though, for easy identification. 

 

Let us briefly examine how two of these characteristics have played out in modern societies. First, the idea of achievement within the traditional masculine ideology has, in capitalist societies, been further contaminated with the narrow and unhelpful definition of success – i.e. success is the result of individual effort alone and little else. Previously it may have been routine to address the not-so-successful as ‘unfortunate’, keeping in mind the many influences in an individual’s life that contribute to their achievements, including plain good fortune. But with the rise of modern societies, it is common for the unsuccessful to be labelled the pejorative ‘loser’. In this context, any display of weakness, self-doubt or vulnerability is seen as adding flesh and substance to the label of loser. While modern societies were meant to shear masculinities of its stereotypes, they force the exact opposite process of solidifying them.

 

Second, it is worth noting a prevalent dualism parallel to that of masculinity and femininity – that of rationality and emotionality. Traditional masculine ideology has ascribed rationality to itself, steering rather clear of emotionality. Rationality, the reliance on logic and reason, is seen as increasing the likelihood of truth, and therefore useful for decision-making. Emotionality, i.e. the degree to which an individual may feel and express emotions, on the other hand, is seen, in the traditional male ideology as a display of weakness. Instead of an engagement with the rational truth, it is denigrated as merely being an expression of the ‘personal significance of a thing, an event, or a state of affairs’. Having internalised these two parallel dualisms men and women have further fortified the traditional masculine ideologies mentioned above.

 

Despite this, the good news is that men and boys have now started recognising (with some help, maybe, from the feminine influences in their lives) and indeed addressing these traditionally accepted characteristics of masculinity. They continue to resist the pressures to reproduce traditional norms. Unfortunately, people of different genders experience what is called the ‘gender role strain’[5] when they pushback – when they deviate from gender role norms of masculinity (and femininity) and replace them with their lived experiences rather than borrowed ones.

 

The bad news is that while modern men and masculinities have had some success in recalibrating their relationship with stereotypes and expectations of the traditional masculine ideology, one major gap persists. There are neither templates nor signposts to help steer masculinities closer to expression of human vulnerabilities. (Vulnerability can be loosely defined as the predisposition to be negatively affected either physically or emotionally – the word is derived from the Latin noun vulnus, meaning ‘wound’.) The reason this is bad news is because while masculinities have traditionally, and in modern times, done everything within their means to avoid the discussion on vulnerabilities, inner turmoil and anxieties, these are often the main initiators of the process of understanding and expressing sexuality.

 

Whichever gender the masculine may reside in –– it seems to be losing in a poignant internal struggle.  This is the struggle between the inner world of the masculine which contains, and is capable of, wounds, and its outer world which seems bereft of the language of the fragile, the tentative and the hurt.    

 

We may need to ask whether masculinities that cannot lean right into vulnerabilities (with the same bravado that they have perfected in other spheres of life) are at all capable of expressions of their sexuality in all its potentialities. We may need to ask if above all, the ‘examined life’ that Socrates exhorted us to live doesn’t include our capacities to wrest vulnerabilities out of the clutches of the masculine and free them for expression and breakthrough.

 

The inability to correctly identify, express and sooth (all three without exception, and in no particular order) inner vulnerabilities and imperfections is the weakest link between asserting masculinities and being able to properly live their full potential.

 

 

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^[1] https://www.apa.org/monitor/2019/01/ce-corner

^[2] Chaplin, Tara M, and Amelia Aldao. Gender differences in emotion expression in children: a meta-analytic review. Psychological Bulletin. Vol. 139,4 (2013): 735-65. DOI:10.1037/a0030737

^[3] Rachel Connelly & Jean Kimmel (2015) If you're happy and you know it: How do mothers and fathers in the US really feel about caring for their children?, Feminist Economics, 21:1, 1-34, DOI: 10.1080/13545701.2014.970210

[4] Levant, R. F., & Richmond, K. (2007). A review of research on masculinity ideologies using the Male Role Norms Inventory. The Journal of Men's Studies, 15(2), 130-146.

[5] Pleck, J. H. (1995). The gender role strain paradigm: An update. In R. F. Levant & W. S. Pollack (Eds.), A new psychology of men (pp. 11-32). New York, NY, US: Basic Books.

 

A Critique of Randomised Control Trials in Poverty Alleviation

Last week, Michael Kremer, Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo received the Nobel for Economics for "their experimental approach to alleviating global poverty” and for addressing “smaller, more manageable questions,” rather than big ideas.

This experimental approach is based on so called Radomised Control Trials. Simply put, in such experiments, a randomly selected group of individuals (randomization is a method of removing bias) receive an intervention whose efficacy is being tested. Changes that result in the conditions of this random experiment group is compared with those in another ‘similar’ group of individuals (referred to as a ‘control group’) that was not provided the intervention. The difference in outcomes is directly attributed to the intervention.

The RCT as a scientific research method is primarily widely practiced in clinical research to test the efficacy and safety of new pharmaceutical products/treatments. RCT is a pre-requisite for the regulatory approval of a new drug or vaccine. Evidence from such experiments have to confirm both internal validity (are the results of the study reliable?) as well as external validity (are the conclusions universally applicable to other population groups/locations?). Once a treatment/product is so approved, it is made available for general use.  

However, even in clinical research, which have an established level of design rigour and oversight, RCTs are not beyond question. The extent to which their results can be generalized to a wider patient population (external validity) is often interrogated, because carefully controlled study conditions may be far from reality and patients selected for a study may not necessarily be representative.

Given this background of RCTs in clinical research, the application of RCT for testing solutions for social change has been critiqued on two major grounds part from the fact that fully random sampling with blinded subjects is almost impossible in among human participants.

One, that RCTs of this kind rarely establish external validity of their conclusions. For example - if a solution, say to teacher absenteeism, succeeds in Udaipur, will the same solution, in toto, work elsewhere? Will it work in schools in Uttarakhand where teachers often don’t attend school because of the harsh terrains of the northern reaches. Or in the conflict prone West African country of Liberia? So instead of universally applicable causality between intervention and effect, as is expected from an RCT, we only get what has been called ‘circumstantial causality’. What makes it worse, is that while the results of an RCT are true at the time the experiment was undertaken, there is no guarantee that the results hold true ever after. So while RCTs can provide useful insights into what the Nobel press release called ‘manageable questions’, extrapolating such RCT results as having any impact on national or global poverty seems exaggerated.

Two, that RCTs answer technical, intervention-based research questions rather than structural issues that lead to unequal development, deprivation and unequal access to basic goods. People with less access include men, women and children who are poor, but more broadly citizens who find themselves unable - for a variety of class, caste, gender and geographical barriers - to exercise their basic rights to development. Say in the example of teacher absenteeism, should not issues of political economy be considered in addition to technical fixes such as incentives to teachers?

That said, the development sector which has been facing questions about ‘measuring change’, has been taken in by the forceful lure of quantitative data as the best kind of evidence. Donor agendas have pushed for measuring change and showcasing success, even though projects have been funded for a measly twelve or eighteen months. This combination of brushing aside the macro dimensions of poverty in favour of micro interventions and short termism and worse, a fear of system-wide change can have lethal impact on how we tackle development and global poverty. More broadly, the question of what constitutes ‘hard’ evidence is worth pondering upon.

Let us not forget that some of the most effective programmes, such as the school mid-day meal and the rural guarantee programme germinated as ideas which were tested at a smaller scale before they became national programmes. Instead of the RCT, these processes involved the participation of people,  an application of reason, observation and intuition, and a process of iterative improvements based on a monitoring and feedback.

If RCTs are being widely considered the new “gold standard” in development economics, then it must be said that the test by fire has only just begun. The grounds for critique of RCTs for social policy interventions go beyond the simple binary of whether it is an effective approach or not – to include methodological, philosophical, ethical and political questions. But having won the Nobel, there will be a lazy tendency among development practitioners to bestow RCTs their uncritical devotion, deification, and universal applicability.  RCT may thus become the nail, dangerously so even, in the law of the hammer.

 

 

Rahul Gandhi has found his voice—Can Congress match it?

In problem solving, first ideas are usually worthy of being discarded. They tend to be jaded and borrowed, reflecting established patterns of thinking and stereotypes, without bringing the future into the process.

One such first idea appeared in the aftermath of the just concluded general elections in which the Congress party was left gasping for air. It should find a substitute for Rahul Gandhi as its president. Some said, the Congress needs an Amit Shah.

Truth be told, even an Amit Shah would fail at leading the Congress, because unlike the BJP, it has an array of people with some intellectual heft, significant domain expertise and an argumentative culture. Lets not forget - Amit Shah is leading a BJP of ‘disciplined soldiers’ sans people like Advani, Murli Manohar Joshi, Yashwant Sinha, Arun Shourie and others.

The Congress and the political landscape of India needs Rahul Gandhi for only one vital, and counter-intuitive, reason.  Because he embodies a unique contradiction – that of being fully aware of his extraordinary privilege and yet retain a detached relationship with a position of power. This contradiction is of a significant nature because to bear the Nehru-Gandhi legacy isn’t anywhere like being the offspring of a Chief Minister of a state or a cabinet minister.

And contradictions such as these are not accidental – they come from a fiercely held value system.

Having been relentlessly disparaged on the dynasty issue,  Rahul Gandhi’s defeat in the family borough of Amethi, at the hands of BJP’s Smriti Irani, should be a reprieve, if only in an ironical way. Voters of Amethi have helped him shrug off accusations of automatic coronations and elite capture.

His detached relationship with power is evident to anyone who has been watching his public and media interactions. He seems aware that he is a square peg in a round hole. What he may not be aware of though, is that this mal-adjustment has the potential to make his presence in Indian politics of lasting value.  

Assertive in a diminutive way, uneasy with grand rhetoric yet capable of it, a person of pause and self-awareness, more comfortable sitting with people on a charpai than making manipulative exhortations from behind the pulpit. When he tries to be any other way , the act degenerates into a sputter. But when he sheds the need to fit in and doesn’t seem to care for the stereotype, he shines. After some vacillation between his authentic self and the manufactured image of a leader, Rahul Gandhi has found his political ‘voice’. Question is whether his party can match his pitch and note.

In this attempt to refashion politics by being who he is, he finds himself in a minority within his party. Other congress party leaders who still retain some consequence appear like power-scroungers  of frail intent. Even their boldest public statements cannot hide their personal greed, in sharp contrast to the history of the Congress which was built on sacrifice.

Rahul Gandhi seems in readiness to be able to define what a modern leader of India may look like – especially at a time when India is undergoing a unique transition to modernity. It is his flock that needs to fall in line or leave.

The norm of the ultra-muscular, declamatory politician may soon be unfit to deal with the complex issues India faces such as inequality, public funding for schools and hospitals, climate change and rapid technological transitions. A solid square peg is what India may well need to buttress a truly modern nation in a globalised world.

 First published here: 

https://kochipost.com/2019/05/27/rahul-gandhi-has-found-his-voice-can-congress-match-it/

 

Ever Noticed That Modi Just Can’t Bring Himself To Say, ‘Mitron, Muslims Are Equal Citizens?’

It is now palpable – the Modi government’s moral paralysis is shaping the destiny of the people of India. It is a time therefore, for contemplative pause; and in equal measure for constructive outrage against how diversity as an organising principle of contemporary Indian society is being challenged, thereby influencing our capacities and intentions to co-exist as one people.

(And remember, there is not a shred of evidence from any part of the world, that tax reforms unite people, relentless advertising notwithstanding.)

Even before nightfall on the very day that Modi condemned the killing of 15 year old Junaid, Alimuddin Ansari was lynched to death in another part of India, every gruesome detail of which was recorded by the perpetrators, and widely circulated, short of being live telecast. The return of the primitive pleasure in violence and cruelty, all in the name of the greater good, the nation and the cow.

Prime Minister Modi has almost perforce had to respond twice (or thrice?) to the nearly 60 incidents of cow related attacks under his watch. His advice and guidance have so far failed to influence the intended audience. The question that then begs asking, is whether this is merely per chance? Or is it by design?

Four key performative characteristics of these rare responses which indicate a design, deserve a close reading. Like in music, a melody is understood and attributed meaning to, by studying the intervals between notes and the half notes; so too in political speak.

First, the response time. The prime minister takes his time to craft a calibrated response, like one would if one heard of a tragedy of an acquaintance many times removed. He shows no urgency to respond, as one would if a dear friend or relative was brutally murdered.  After the 2015 lynching and murder of Akhlaq in Dadri, while the whole country was shocked at the brutality, Modi deliberated over it for 30 days before he exhorted Hindus and Muslims to fight poverty together, rather than fighting one another. Never mind, that in this case, Hindu’s were the aggressors and Muslim’s didn’t need to be lectured. After Junaid’s murder last month, he took almost a week to respond, spurred on by street protests across many cities.

Second, these responses, and condemnations were never stand-alone statements. They have been made almost in the passing, a few ceremonial minutes embedded in a half hour speech about an entirely different subject. He has never dwelled at any length on the issue of religious violence and why it has no place in modern India. He has never said anything weighty or memorable enough to make sure his Muslim audience feels safe under his watch.

Third, he never honours the dead person by naming him. His statements condemning violence against muslims are made euphemistically, in vague generalities, with only just that much of an indication to locate the peg of his statement, never saying that he is saddened and sorry that x or y lost his life in such a meaningless and brutal way.

Fourth, he never uses the M word to locate the vector of the conflict. He and his government hide behind toothless officialese of ‘no one can take law into their own hands’. However, it is worth noting that he breaks this pattern when he responds to the lynching of dalit boys in Una, saying "If you want to attack, attack me, not Dalits. If you want to shoot, shoot me". But there has been no similar rousing utterance in support of Muslims. The Prime Minister and his government seem to carefully avoid participating in the mourning of a muslim death.

These characteristics indicate a deliberate departure from Modi’s usual method of tutoring his audiences.

He is a master communicator with the capacity to conjure up new and even far-fetched imagination. He displays great acumen in ensuring recall. He has displayed his facility for creating mnemonics, memorable acronyms, and catchy phrases to ensure he can simplify his message for the lowest common denominator among his voters. He uses the art of delirious repetition effectively, employs the repeat-after-me technique and the suitably authoritative question-answer method in large crowds – all to ensure that his words, his presence and his manner leave an imprint, create a memory.

But he seems to not be able to command this range of well honed capacities into action when he sends his message of ‘stop the lynchings, now’ while condemning the murder of muslims.

Modi knows very well that there is zero recall value to his phrase, ‘no one can take law in their hands’, but he still uses it when he does finally respond to murders and lynchings. He knows he leaves little impact when he says Gandhi would not approve of lynching Junaid.

That Modi chooses not to respond by creating a powerful counter-image in our memory of him squarely chastising the killers seems, by no means, an innocent omission. Modi’s moral paralysis is that he cannot bring himself to tell his followers and the RSS cadres that, listen up Mitron, Muslims are equal citizens and not the second class citizens that you were told by the pracharaks for the last 50 years.

Is it because he very likely prefers that the image of the young body of unarmed Junaid being mercilessly and repeatedly knived into on a running train in front of hundreds of passengers mortified into silence remains etched in our memory? So that the image suffices as a warning?

Given his political lineage and past record in Gujarat, does Modi have little moral muscle left to flex on this issue?

Modi’s moral paralysis is best captured in the words of a mourner present at Alimuddin Ansari’s funeral in Jharkhand. “They should declare a Hindutva state and kick us out,” he said heatedly. “It would be better than killing us off like this one by one”.

The past is never dead, it just re-enters the present in new ways, especially when the door is left ajar in invitation. Modi still has two years to shut that door. Will he?

First published on Huffington Post 

The ‘A’ Certificate For ‘Phullu’ Is Yet Another ‘F’ For The Government’s Judgment

In its wisdom, the Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC), Government of India, has deemed the Hindi film Phullu, fit only for ‘adult’ viewing because its story revolves around menstruation. The CBFC Chief, Pahlaj Nihalani, has defended this decision saying that young people in India aren’t ready yet to talk openly about ‘that time of the month’ leave alone watch a film about it. 

Funny, tragic, outrageous, anachronistic. Add worse descriptors if you like, and they will fit. Even a couple of years ago, these responses would have sufficed, because underlying the outrage would be the hope that those in charge will learn the ropes and stop fooling around.

However, after three years in government, high officials should not expect any longer to be spoon-fed the basics of well-established feminist and freedom of expression arguments. 

We must recognise a pattern when it is staring us in the face. Please read the CBFC’s ruling against Phullu in tandem with the outrageous (what else) recommendations listed in the recently released booklet ‘Mother and Child Care’ by the Ayush Ministry which tells pregnant women to avoid eating meat and not have sex.

Repeated instances of poor decisions by all manner of institutions reveal a much deeper problem, which are way less joke worthy, and need serious enquiry.

So what goes wrong with a Pahlaj Nihalani? Why does he repeatedly need to be educated, why do his attitudes need regular reconstruction?

Or what goes wrong with a Yogi Adityanath when he does his flop show with the anti-romeo squad? Or the Ayush Ministry with its rank outlandlish prescription for pregnant women?

Or for that matter, what on earth went wrong with Narendra Modi himself, with the demonetisation debacle, that is now deemed as a fruitless exercise even by BJP supporters? Or the beef ban?

The influence of regressive ideology, of which there is remarkable evidence - could partly explain poor decisions. In May 2003, the then Information and Broadcasting Minister Sushma Swaraj made the politically pragmatic decision to impose a ban on condom advertising on Doordarshan (India’s government founded public service broadcaster). In 2009, a parliamentary committee led by BJP veteran Venkaiah Naidu decided that sex education was “against the ethos of our society and would uproot the cultural values we’ve cherished since the Vedic Age.”

However, if we give the government the benefit of doubt – discounting the possibility of any unfortunate influence of ideology in all cases– we are left with two possible reasons:

First - poor decisions and bad judgement can be put down to sheer lack of capacity to rationally process evidence, which it may well be.

But let us not forget, that the Indian governance system, circuitous though it may be, is designed to factor in individual variations in capacity, by encumbering due process with multiple layers of consultation and approvals. This minimises the influence of any single individual’s poor capacity on critical decisions that have the potential to influence large numbers of people’s lives.

Second - if despite these checks and balances, there is a deluge of poor decisions, the malaise points to a worse diagnosis than the innocent one of lack of capacity.

We may be witnessing a new norm -the rise of the powerful, autocratic, whimsical lone decision maker with an infantile delusion of greatness and an incurable degree of deafness for good advice. Much like the lone wolf attackers.

Visualize for a moment that such a person was the pilot of your aircraft. No don’t, it seems catastrophic even in imagination.

Coming back to the flavour of the day, Pahlaj Nihalani – would he have made a more respectable decision and not given an ‘adult’ certificate to Phullu had he been aware of, or provided with, the following three data points?

National Family Heath Survey reports, for example, that 39% women and 40% men in Bihar reported underage marriage, and in Andhra Pradesh, a state with better development indices, nearly 33% women and 24% men reported underage marriage. In all, nearly 12 million Indian children were married before the age of 10 years (Census of India 2011).

Marriage aside, leading newspapers reported in 2015 that according to a survey, urban youth have their ‘first brush’ with sex at 14.

In a 2014 survey in Delhi by the government run Safdarjung Hospital, more than 80% of the parents interviewed insisted that sexuality education be provided in schools and in fact be made compulsory.

Therefore, CBFC may try as it will, viewers below the age of 18, who will not be allowed to watch this film, are accessing information on sex and sexuality from cousins, friends, aunts and of course, on the internet. 

And they usually get the wrong information, leading to an array of problems including unwanted pregnancies, and even suicides.

Poor decisions by some people in power can play out with blood in the backyards of many. Remember the pilot who flew a plane full of children into the Alps, killing everyone?

Youth-friendly health services and service providers, and measures such as comprehensive sexuality education are almost missing in India. According to a recent UNFPA report, this has a direct negative impact on the prospects of reaping demographic dividend that India so desperately seeks. 

Every young girl and boy, anywhere in the world, and in India, happens to have a right to know about important matters like menstruation and allied matters such as sex and sexuality, despite our collective squeamishness in this regard. 

Can the CBFC please do some homework, nominate a few young people, maybe some experts on adolescent health, and make their decision making process more fool-proof, please? 

https://www.huffpost.com/archive/in/entry/the-a-certificate-for-phullu-is-yet-another-f-for-the-gove_in_5c11fa26e4b0295df1fa99da 

 

Has UNAIDS Been Caught Napping?

Look who is Paying the Price for the UN’s Political Fence Sitting

 

I was hoping I would never have to write this. That no one would have to write this, ever. UNAIDS and civil society campaigners have had a special relationship of trust and collaboration. But now that relationship seems to have chipped. Irreparably, even.

 

Two shockingly opposite statements have emerged after the adoption of the2016 Political Declaration on HIV and AIDS by Member States of the UN at the recently concluded UN General Assembly Special Session last week.

 

Michel Sidibe, Executive Director of UNAIDS, was quoted in the New York Times saying that he felt ‘the declaration was something to be proud of’.

 

In sharp contrast, campaigners from across the world have called the Political Declaration a ‘high level failure’. In a scathing statement issued by the global coalitions of civil society organisations, reflecting their disbelief and anger at the fatal omissions, they further called it ‘a significant set-back’ and a ‘very weak’ Declaration.

 

The point of departure between these extreme viewpoints has been reported by The Guardian. It says, ‘UN member states have pledged to end the Aids epidemic by 2030, but campaigners say the strategy adopted by the 193-nation general assembly on Wednesday barely mentions those most at risk of contracting HIV/Aids: men who have sex with men, sex workers, transgender people and intravenous drug users.’

 

Egypt, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Indonesia, and the Holy See, among others, made sure that the final draft of the declaration was left with the very minimum explicit mention of gay and other men who have sex with men, people who use drugs, sex workers, transgender people in the 2016 Declaration. The heart of the HIV response was reduced to just one paragraph in a 26 page document. Member states who were disappointed with this were unable or unwilling to weigh in strongly enough to make the emphasis swing the other way.

 

Michel Sidibe, Executive Director of UNAIDS, explains this away as cultural sensitivities. ‘I think anything linked to sexuality is very complex. Is it about taboo? Is it about norms? Is it about the position of people in the society? It’s about so many factors, cultural factors, economic factors. That’s why AIDS is so complex. It’s not easy to deal with a political declaration when you’re talking about HIV/AIDS. You’re confronting different societies, different opinions.’

 

Even if mild, this is officialese for an admission of defeat.

 

It was precisely because AIDS is so complex that UNAIDS, a whole new UN entity, was set up 20 years ago with the mandate to work with all other UN agencies and national governments, with a large budget and staff in every country. The mandate of UNAIDS was specifically this — to set the normative benchmarks, to better understand and convey the complexities of the AIDS epidemic, to navigate the varying opinions and taboos, to champion the rights of marginalised/criminalised groups, and to negotiate with national governments on the basis of evidence with full knowledge of prevailing cultural sensitivities.

 

Didn’t UNAIDS know that the countries mentioned above remain hostile to the mention of gay and other men who have sex with men, people who use drugs, sex workers, transgender people? During the whole protracted process leading up to the adoption of the political declaration, did UNAIDS take civil society into confidence about the possible fall out of these hostilities? What actions did UNAIDS take to prevent the shocking and fatal omissions that transpired finally when the document was adopted by the UN General Assembly?

 

Has UNAIDS been caught napping? It is hard to believe that UNAIDS wasn’t in the full know of this disaster before it unfolded. Has UNAIDS failed in delivering its core mandate?

 

The International Council of AIDS Service Organizations (ICASO) emphasises that the civil society organisations who were engaged in the long process leading upto the UNGASS in ‘good faith’ now felt so let down by the ‘deliberate way’ in which the Political Declaration ignored its recommendations that they have since issued a ‘Civil Society and Communities Declaration to End HIV’ as if in defiance.

 

Activists and campaigners across the world take the Political Declaration on HIV and AIDS very seriously, as they should, because it reflects the intent of the entire global community, all national governments and civil society partners. This document, therefore, assumes the status of a road map for the next 5 years, its imperfections notwithstanding.

 

Campaigners who have walked shoulder to shoulder with UNAIDS through all these years, giving validity and voice to UNAIDS’ pronouncements, showing up to buttress every policy process initiated by UNAIDS, feel let down — and have rejected the Political Declaration, calling it ‘stained by the absence of attention on gay and other men who have sex with men, people who inject drugs, sex workers and transgender people’.

 

Let this setback be a lesson for those who announce premature victory over the AIDS epidemic and roll out headline grabbing, self-congratulatory media campaigns. UNAIDS needs to redeem itself and become accountable to the people in whose name it exists.

 

 

SDGs are our dreams gone official
It is because we dream of a perfect future is why the present becomes worth the fight.

Exactly one year ago in September 2015, all nations of the world adopted the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) at the UN general Assembly. At this gathering of world leaders, Prime Minister Narendra Modi endorsed the #globalgoals, committing himself and all of us to their achievement by 2030.

And this is what is dazzling about these 17 new goals and their 169 targets. Three generations, including ours, have lived through the struggles and victories of the last hundred years, but it is only now for the first time that we have collectively started dreaming about the world through the eyes of a future generation, our children.

What kind of world will your little daughter find herself in when she is a young adult? Will she be surrounded by prosperity, beauty, peace, dignity and equality for them, or will she find herself struggling in a broken planet among scorched people? These are the foundational questions that spur the ambition and scale of the SDGs.

Why do we need the SDGs, you may ask. Because map squiggles aside, we will all sink or swim together. Because right now production and consumption levels in the world are overshooting our planet’s capacity by about 50 percent each year. But we need all the production and consumption possible, because that is how economies grow (and remember, we all want our economies to grow, not just a little bit, but way above 7%). We say that only when economies grow will we be able to spend on education, sexual and reproductive health, sanitation and eventually fewer people will remain poor. But hang on – there is research to show that if we waited for economic growth to pull people out of poverty, it would take at least 100 years if not more.  

This interconnectedness can be terrifying to wrap one’s head around. And we need to face up to these complexities we have brought upon us through the development pathway we have adopted so far. With all the interconnections between the social, economic and environmental changes we aspire for, the SDGs is what we need as a web of causality that will impact our childrens lives in the coming decades. If you think you are immune to these complexities and their effects, you are living in a bubble even fiction wouldn’t dare create.

What does interconnectedness mean and why is it important? Here is an example. The public health world was left aghast to hear of two malaria deaths in Delhi last week which ended a so called death free spell since 2012. Earlier this year there was a shocking media report on the Malaria epidemic that India had tucked away behind manipulation of data. Seemed like an example from hell where the ideal combination of funding investment, good intentions, laborious plans and labyrinthine monitoring systems seemed to have failed. Where does accountability rest? Which link in the chain was weak and in disrepair? Which economic, social and environmental factors were at play? Who suffered more, women, men or children? Does poverty, access to services, nutrition, sanitation play a role? Or was it just a case of low capacities of implementing departments? The web of causality is complex and solutions that ignore this web may fail.

 

We need the SDGs to visualise the intricate warp and weft between people, planet, prosperity, peace and partnerships, all of which are interlinked to sustainable development.

 

I have written earlier that despite the SDG Resolution making explicit in Para 45 that the Parliament needs to play the oversight function in the implementation pathways to achieve the Goals, the Indian parliament seems to be playing truant.  But wait, why has the Resolution put the Parliament at the center of it all? Because elected leaders represent the people’s will and the SDGs are just that – a distillation of what millions of people worldwide consider urgent needs for a life of dignity and a peaceful future for their children.  

And lets not forget, Governments don’t bring about change because they want to, but because they are forced to. And the SDGs are a giving us, the people of sovereign nations, an instrument to create that change.

Two targets make an efficient illustration of the enormous potential invested in the SDGs.

This target which gives voice to half the world’s population, gives me goose bumps - ‘by 2030, progressively achieve and sustain income growth of the bottom 40 per cent of the population at a rate higher than the national average’. Even a few years ago, it was unthinkable that all nations of this world would sign up to such a target and set themselves the goal of ‘reducing inequality within and among countries’. Note the turn of phrase and its power.

Hidden within the SDG Resolution is another gem - under Goal 5 which commits to achieving gender equality and empowering all women and girls, there is a remarkable target - ‘Recognize and value unpaid care and domestic work through the provision of public services, infrastructure and social protection policies and the promotion of shared responsibility within the household and the family as nationally appropriate’. India has signed up to achieve this target, but are we ready to put our collective might behind this imagination?

Those are as loud a call to action as there can ever be. Don’t forget that these were your dreams – of a better preserved planet for your children and a more peaceful and equal society. Make sure they aren’t forgotten.