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Dated : Friday, August 10, 2012 |
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Women 'gun survivors' remake their lives
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Manipur Women Gun Survivors Network is transforming the lives of women victims of violence and assisting them to earn sustainable incomes in Manipur where five decades long armed conflict has claimed thousands of lives
Azera Parveen Rahman
Sometimes all it takes is one incident to transform one from being a mere spectator to a participant in change. For Binalakshmi Nepram, that moment came on a gloomy Christmas eve of 2004 in a village near Imphal, the capital of Manipur. As an academic researcher she was talking to a group of women activists, when gun shots shattered the peace. In the flash of a second, one of the women in that meeting – Rebika Akham (24) – had become a widow.
Nepram recounts what happened, “We were at Wabgai. The gun shots sounded less than a kilometre away, leading to the death of a 27-year-old man.” The victim, Buddhi Moiranthem, had been dragged out of his car battery workshop by three assailants and shot at point blank range. To date, his wife and family have no clue about who his killers were, or what their motive was.
“Rebika, all of 24, stood with us, shell-shocked. Amid the crying, I remember her mother’s helpless words, ‘Now how will I feed you?’ That was the turning point of my life,” says Nepram. It was then that she decided to set up a support system for women left isolated because of the violence around them.
Growing up in Manipur – a State that shares borders with Myanmar, as well as with the other north eastern states of Nagaland, Assam and Mizoram – which is possibly one of India’s most conflict-ridden regions, Nepram understood even as a child that life was uncertain given that armed violence was a regular occurrence. “My parents tell me that even on the day I was born, there was a conflict raging and my father had to scramble for the medicines that my mother had needed. Violence cast its shadows on our very minds,” she says.
When she joined the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) in Delhi in 1997, she shared some of the realities of the region with friends and classmates, who often could not comprehend the extent of violence that marked everyday life in Manipur. “They could not believe it when I told them that people could actually disappear and not be seen alive again,” remarks Nepram. In JNU, Nepram began systematically researching into the situation, often travelling in the state to collect primary data. But despite her research, she was unprepared for those gun shots that rang out in 1994, changing a young wife into a widow in an instant.
Soon after that killing, Nepram collected Rs 4,500 to buy a sewing machine for Rebika Akham, so that she could earn an independent income and stitch together the pieces of her life again. With that the Manipur Women Gun Survivors Network also came into being. “I realised there is no point in doing endless research if there was to be no intervention. There are so many young women, just in their twenties, who have been widowed overnight. Children have lost their fathers; mothers, their sons. These women needed help to start their life afresh,” Nepram points out.
She also realized that monetary relief was, at best, temporary relief and that soft loans were perhaps more appropriate. The Network then took on the role of providing small loans to women victims and helped them open their own bank accounts.
The lives of many women were turned around in the process. Take the case of Huidrom Tanya Devi (18). Her father’s untimely death 10 years ago shattered her young life. A karate instructor, he was gunned down by the armed forces in 2001. The young girl still asks in a haunted voice, “Even today I don’t know the reason for my father’s death. I ask everyone, what crime did he commit to meet such an end?”
The Network gave her mother, Huidrom Geeta Devi a loan of Rs 3,000 in 2007 with which Tanya was able to start a small business. As the months rolled by, her confidence as an entrepreneur grew. This April, she became the proud owner of a shop that sells embroidered dress materials, incense sticks and household goods. Two other women have similarly set up their own shops with the Network’s help.
Mumtaz, another victim, whose husband, a lecturer by profession, was killed in gun violence in 2009, was in a similar distress. With five children to look after, she couldn’t be more grateful when the Network extended her a loan of Rs 8,000 to run her business.
Her success as an entrepreneur has whetted Mumtaz’s interest in public life. She now wants to contest the local panchayat elections in order to help bring change in her village in the Thoubal district of Manipur. She also links up affected women like her to the Network and is, in the process, contributing to the expansion of an initiative that had started small with 25 women survivors of gun violence and today reaches out to over a thousand.
The first of its kind in South Asia, the Network has 150 are active members, most of whom had been victims themselves. The assistance they render is multi-pronged. The immediate need of women who have been bereaved is a support system – some regular source of food, the continuation of their children’s education, and the like. Then comes the need for a sustainable income. Loans are provided to address this requirement, with the money put to use in setting up a small vegetable vending enterprise or acquiring a loom to weave cloth.
The Network also provides legal assistance to the women to fight their cases for justice and compensation since they themselves are most often too poor to afford lawyers. Medical assistance is provided to take care of the health needs of the affected women. The Network does this by entering into arrangements with doctors who are willing to provide free check-ups or dental care.
In order to function smoothly, meetings are held every two months in an informal setting – like the courtyard of a member’s house – to discuss individual problems as well as general issues, like the treatment accorded to widows in society. “In many parts of India, when a woman who has lost her husband wears bright clothes or takes up employment outside the home, eyebrows are raised, questions asked, and motives ascribed. This is simply unfair – it is only right that women in such circumstances try and reclaim their lives. Girls, as young as 21, are widowed in an instant. Surely they have the right to live a normal life?” comments Nepram.
The Network meetings are not just to discuss problems, but are also meant as a time of togetherness over tea and snacks. The idea is to reach out and explore ways to address common problems. “We can only reach a limited number of women. If the government wants, it can connect with lakhs of them, but that would need political will,” observes Nepram. She emphasises that the Network is apolitical. In any case, politicians generally stay away from such interventions. Not only has no Member of Parliament come forward to be associated with the work the Network is doing, ministers in Manipur have actually mocked its efforts. But for Nepram this only points to the great lack of sensitisation among politicians to the gender dimensions of violence.
The lack of political response has not, however, discouraged the women members of this unusual Network. Right now, they are busy studying government schemes for women and children and searching for ways in which they can benefit from them.
(Women’s Feature Service) |
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Hope floats for childless in city of lakes
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As thousands of tourists arrive here this September, the start of the tourist season, so will Rajan and Parul. But this couple from Delhi will have on their minds things other than just exploring this city of lakes, often called Venice of the East.
While on their weeklong vacation, the childless couple, in their 30s, will be undergoing a session for a test-tube baby at a medical centre in Udaipur, about 400 km from the State capital Jaipur.
Mixing vacation with a purpose didn’t occur to them on their own. “This was suggested to me by a cousin,” said Rajan Wadhwa, a resident of Paschim Vihar in west Delhi.
“My cousin was blessed with a child after undergoing treatment in Udaipur and he suggested the same to me as going to another city helps stay away from the probing eyes of relatives,” the computer science graduate said.
Rajan and Parul, who work in MNCs, are not the only ones opting for a vacation-cum-fertility work-up at Udaipur. In an emerging trend, more and more couples are opting for holiday destinations such as this to explore the idea away from prying eyes back home and to reduce costs.
An IVF procedure in Rajasthan costs about Rs 40,000-50,000 as compared to Rs 80,000-100,000 in a metro like Delhi or Mumbai. In the west, costs could go up to about $12,000 (over Rs 650,000).
“We have people coming from as far as Tamil Nadu, Goa, Jharkhand and Mumbai for test tube babies,” said Ajay Murdia, their doctor and chief of the Indira Infertility Clinic & Test Tube Baby Centre.
The fertility expert of over three decades’ experience called it the domestic version of the medical tourism that attracts foreigners to India.
“We help some of our patients undergo initial counselling and tests while holidaying in the city.”
According to Murdia, whose paper on male infertility was published in medical journal Lancet, Delhi had around 50 infertility clinics but people from the national capital region (NCR), which includes Gurgaon and Noida, preferred coming to him for treatment.
“Apart from the low cost, we have achieved a high success rate of 95 per cent in the first attempt of IVF and other procedures,” said Murdia, who treats about 600 infertility patients every year. Most of these are outsiders.
Hoping to attract more clients, Kshitij Kumar, another IVF specialist from Udaipur, held a workshop for childless couples in Delhi last month. “Some busy couples specifically wanted to know the duration of the procedure. They said a two-week process would fit into their vacation calender,” he said.
This Rajasthan city of 450,000 people has four centres offering infertility solutions.
This trend has spread to other tourist destinations like Jaipur and Jodhpur.
Upwan Pandia, an anaesthetist, shuttles between all three cities. “However, the Udaipur centres score over others in the State in terms of modern technology and high success rate,” he said.
Perhaps because Udaipur is also more organized. The trend of doctors or clinics in Udaipur offering travel desk facilities to patients is fast catching on.
“We give brochures on tourist destinations in and around Udaipur to patients. Once they decide on their itinerary, we get down to chalking out the schedule for the fertility procedure,” said Murdia. Till about three-four years ago, the demand for travel desk services was not as much, he added.
Patients from abroad also inquire about travel facilities when they make the initial inquiries, he said. “We keep getting queries from African countries, Russia, France and the US,” said Murdia.
According to travel industry estimates, medical tourism involving foreigners in India would be worth $2 billion by 2015. On an average, 150,000 medical tourists travel to the country annually.
IVF is a procedure where a woman’s eggs are fertilized outside her body. The eggs are removed from her ovaries and then placed in a petri dish with sperm for fertilisation to occur. Once the fertilised egg starts dividing, it’s considered an embryo. After a few days of dividing in the lab (usually three-five), the fertilised egg can either be transferred to a woman’s uterus or frozen and transplanted at a later date.
Rahul Chhabra |
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Mary Kom: India's golden sports icon
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This year’s Olympic Games will not only see the debut of the power-packed game of boxing, but also of one of its most talented female champions, MC Mary Kom. Such is the expectation from the five-time champion’s maiden outing that enthusiasts are already imagining her on the winner’s podium in London.
Incidentally, though this five-feet-two-and-half inch gutsy sportswoman has inspired a whole new generation of women boxers across India, on the eve of her first Olympics she stands as the lone Indian woman in the team. Training hard with her British coach Charles Atkinson, according to media reports, the 29-year-old will camp at Liverpool for two weeks before heading to the Games Village in Stratford by end-July.
From the small village of Kangathei Kom to the centrestage of world sports at London today, it’s been a long and well-fought journey for Mary. Her story is particularly compelling considering that she started her sports career with just a dream. Recalls the star, “I really liked the sports activities in school, and often won prizes, especially in the athletics events. I was 13 when I confided my dream to my mother.”
But such an ambition meant that she would have to move from her home in Churachandpur district, to Imphal, the capital of Manipur, where the coaching facilities were located. Her parents were initially reluctant to allow this. “But I persisted and persuaded them that sports is also a field where I can do well. Finally, they gave in,” she says.
At that point Mary was training in athletics – the 400 metres race being her forte. She also did pole vault and javelin throw. But the victory of boxer Dingko Singh at the 1998 Asian Games in Bangkok, and then at the Fifth National Games held in Imphal in 1999, proved to be turning points. “There were demonstration matches in women’s boxing during the National Games. I was inspired to take up boxing,” she recalls.
Seeing Mary’s potential and determination, Manipur state coaches Narjit Singh and Laishram Kishan Singh took her under their wing. “Mary was quick to pick up. She was also innovative and would put in certain moves of her own, going beyond what we taught. She had no fear and had great will power,” Laishram Kishan recalls. Later, she joined the Sports Authority of India (SAI) at Khuman Lampak and underwent an intensive training under her coach and mentor, Leishangthem Ibomcha Singh. Despite her hard work in the ring, there was trouble at home. Mary had to handle differences with her father Mangte Tonpa Kom. “My father was okay with athletics. When he came to know that I box, he wasn’t too happy. He thought that I would end up with a broken face and that would end my marriage prospects,” she smiles.
The first tournament Mary took part in was the 1st State Level Boxing Championship organized by the Imphal District Amateur Boxing Association and Manipur Amateur Boxing Association in May 2000. She won a gold medal there in the Light Flyweight Category, as well as the Best Boxer title. Mary describes what happened next, “Father saw my picture in the papers and asked me if it was true that I was a boxer. When I said yes, he told me to give it up and take up some other sport. It took me some time to get him to relent. Later, he told me that he came to believe that it was God who was urging me to take up this sport.”
For Mary, there was no looking back after that first victory. She went on a gold-chase, punching her way to the top at both national and international events. So far she has won seven Indian National Championships, four golds and one silver at Asian Women Boxing Championship; and five golds and a silver at World Women Boxing Championships, all between 2000 and 2012.
Says Mary’s husband, Onkholer Kom, himself a retired footballer, “It was her perseverance, sympathy for all and her innocence that struck me.” They got married on March 12, 2005, at Imphal’s MBC church, and ever since Onkholer has been both her guide and support.
Pregnancy and motherhood meant a two-year break. But around a year after their twin sons – Rechunguar Kom and Khupneivar Kom - were born, she was back on her feet. Her comeback at the ring was in the Fourth Asian Women Boxing Championship held in Guwahati, where she won a silver medal. She followed this up with a fourth successive world title in 2008 in Ningbo City, China. Then she won the world championship gold for a record fifth time at Bridgetown, Barbados, in 2010. She defeated Steluta Duta of Romania 16-6 in the 48kg weight category final. This year, she has already bagged the gold at the Asian Women’s Championships in Mongolia.
While her golden run may appear a breeze, Mary did have her share of struggles. It took applications made over three years for New Delhi to recognise her contributions and give her the Rajiv Gandhi Khel Ratna award. “It was getting a little frustrating. Even after winning four world championship Golds, I was being ignored. I was not even nominated. Then I decided the best way to deal with this was to go on playing well,” she explains.
In the 12 years since she won the first medal, albeit a silver, for India at the Women’s World Boxing Championship, Mary has, time and again, proved that she is the undisputed Mistress of the Ring. Marriage, motherhood, and many gold medals later, she now has her eyes set on an Olympic medal. In her bid to secure her chances for a podium finish at London, Mary has been helped by the Olympic Gold Quest (OGQ) programme of the Foundation for Promotion of Sports and Games, an Ahmedabad-based not-for-profit company. The programme, the brainchild of Indian sporting legends Geet Sethi and Prakash Padukone, seeks to identify and assist Indian athletes with a proven track record and who have the potential to win Olympic gold medals in the six disciplines of shooting, athletics, boxing, wrestling, archery and badminton. Mary says she is greatly encouraged by the support she has been receiving from the OGQ.
Her first bout is slated to be on August 5, which incidentally, is her twin sons’ birthday. Media reports have quoted her as saying, “It is a special day, but I won’t be with my kids. Their birthday will give me many more reasons to win the bout.” She will be competing in the 51kg category, not her regular division though she is not worried. She feels that “height or weight doesn’t matter at all. If you have the willpower, you can conquer any opponent. I have that willpower”.
Despite her many achievements, the star boxer remains grounded. She is the inspiration of countless aspiring newcomers, many of whom have received training the MC Mary Kom Boxing Academy in the picturesque Langol foothills in Imphal West district. Girls like Chabungbam Pushpa, a farmer’s daughter just like her mentor, are eager to “follow in Madam’s footsteps and become a world class champion.” Mary herself puts it this way, “Most of the students in my academy come from poor families and from remote parts of Manipur. They are keen, but without proper guidance their talents will be wasted. God has helped me. In return, I want to groom as many aspiring boxers as I can.”
( Women’s Feature Service)
Anjulika Thingnam |
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Forgiveness in marriage can sometimes cost relationships
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It is not always best to forgive and forget in marriage, say researchers of a study on forgiveness.
Sometimes expressing anger might be necessary to resolve a relationship problem - with the short-term discomfort of an angry but honest conversation benefiting the health of the relationship in the long-term. The research is part of a larger effort to better understand the contexts in which some relationships succeed and others fail, and also to understand how close relationships affect our health.
A popular research trend in recent years, positive psychology has offered the promise that with forgiveness, optimism, kindness, and positive thinking, people can turn around their relationships even after a serious transgression. But as James McNulty of Florida State University investigated positive psychology and well-being, he began to see a different trend: “I continued to find evidence that thoughts and behaviours presumed to be associated with better well-being lead to worse well-being among some people - usually the people who need the most help achieving well-being.”
McNulty therefore set out to examine the potential costs of positive psychology. In a set of recent studies, he found that forgiveness in marriage could have some unintended negative effects. “We all experience a time in a relationship in which a partner transgresses against us in some way. For example, a partner may be financially irresponsible, unfaithful, or unsupportive. When these events occur, we must decide whether we should be angry and hold onto that anger, or forgive,” said McNulty.
His research showed that a variety of factors could complicate the effectiveness of forgiveness, including a partner’s level of agreeableness and the severity and frequency of the transgression. “Believing a partner is forgiving leads agreeable people to be less likely to offend that partner and disagreeable people to be more likely to offend that partner,” he said.
Additionally, he noted, anger can serve an important role in signaling to a transgressing partner that the offensive behaviour is not acceptable.
“If the partner can do something to resolve a problem that is likely to otherwise continue and negatively affect the relationship, people may experience long-term benefits by temporarily withholding forgiveness and expressing anger,” McNulty explained. “This work suggests people need to be flexible in how they address the problems that will inevitably arise over the course of their relationships. There is no ‘magic bullet,’ no single way to think or behave in a relationship. The consequences of each decision we make in our relationships depends on the circumstances that surround that decision,” he added. (Agencies) |
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