Window Seat | Mrinal Chatterjee 15.8.21
Amrit
Mahotsav
of Independence
We are celebrating 75th year of our independence at a time when the parliament, the seat (temple as some of the parliamentarians are saying)of democracy is hardly functioning. Both the government and the opposition are blaming each other for the log-jam. Nine senior ministers at a conference charged the opposition with pre-planned agenda of disruption. Meanwhile the opposition parties took out a rally against what they called ‘democracy’s murder’ in the parliament.
This is
happening at a time when the economy is still struggling to recover from the
huge impact of the pandemic. In fact the GDP growth rate for the country in
2020 was at its slowest pace since the balance of payment crisis 1991. Though
the unemployment rate is slowly recovering, (In February 2021, India’s
unemployment rate was 6.9 percent, down from 7.8 percent in February 2020,
indicating that the unemployment rate in the country had returned to pre-Covid
levels) the challenge of creating jobs is formidable.
Conflicts among the states over natural resources like river water and over border disputes are increasing. The recent conflict between Assam and Mizoram over border issues that led to the death of 6 police men is indicative of how big the problem could turn out to be.
From human
development index, inequality index, human capital index to hunger index- we
are lagging behind in several indicators.
Yes, we have
made significant progress in the last 75 years, but there are lot more works to
do. Let us all work together to make our country free from hunger, illiteracy,
unemployment, mal nutrition and several such constraints. That will be the best
tribute to our motherland.
Nationalism
History
shows us that religion, language and ethnicity intersect and coalesce
territorialism to form various kinds of nationalisms, at times in conflict with
each other. In a multi-cultural and multi-lingual country of a continental
magnitude India is a witness to this.
Today
the world is firmly in the grip of nationalstic fervour be it
in the matter of trade or
protecting the home land and against others. Sub-nationalism lurks just
under the surface.
Aeric
Hobsbawm (1917-2012), a scholar on nationalism and its various aspects had been
looking at this from various angels. He fore-sighted the situation that we
are presently in. Globalisation has given way to queer form of naked
nationalism. It is manifest in different parts of the world including Great
Britain, USA, China, Russia and in several other countries.
It
presents an irony of epic proportion: uber-nationalism is growing in an uber-networked
world that is ravaged by a pandemic.
Centuries
ago, India gave the clarion call of basudheiva
kutumbakam- the world is a family. It is time to look deep into that
concept in letter and spirit.
Dutee Chand
Sprinter Dutee Chand failed
to live up to the high hopes the country reposed on her at the Tokyo Olympics. She finished seventh in the
100 metre hits and
45th overall out of 54 competitors at Tokyo. Dutee clocked 11.54 seconds, well below her national
record of 11.17 seconds. However, despite her dismal performance at the Tokyo Olympics, Dutee
is a phenomenon.
She overcame poverty and an inadequate training to
become one of India’s premier athletes, and then battled prejudice and systemic
injustice to win significant battles for gender equality.
Born into a weaver family of modest means from a
small village in Jajpur district of Odisha, Dutee started running at an early
age following her elder sister who competed in running at state level. Chand and her elder
sister Saraswati were enrolled in a government sports hostel in 2006. In 2012, Dutee Chand became a
national champion in the under-18 category, when she clocked 11.85 seconds in
the 100 metres event.
Her
meteoric rise had just begun. She went on
to win at national and global events, including the Asian Games, the Asian
Athletics Championships, the Asian Junior Athletics Championships and the
National Senior Athletics Championships.
However, her dream run came to an abrupt halt when
the Athletics Federation of India unceremoniously dropped her from the 2014
Commonwealth Games on the charge that she was ineligible to compete as a female
athlete.
Dutee took the fight all the way to the Court of
Arbitration for Sport in Lausanne, which suspended the ban on her by the Indian
body as well as the International Association of Athletics Federations.
This 2015 decision has had an enormous impact on
international athletics and discriminatory ‘hyperandrogenism’ policies. Since
then, Chand has chalked up a number of medals, including the 2019 gold in the
Summer Universiade, Napoli, in the 100 metres category—the first Indian woman
sprinter to win a gold at the event. In 2018, after the Supreme Court of India
read down Section 377, Chand became the first Indian sportsperson to openly
acknowledge being in a same-sex relationship.
Dutee’s life, her struggle, her meteoric rise and
abrupt fall and again phoenix like rise is fascinating. It was waiting for some
able writer to tell her tale to the world.
It was journalist turned sports writer Sundeep Mishra, who edited
the 'Best of Indian Sports Writing wrote the first book on her. It was released
just before the Tokyo Olympics got underway. Titled ‘Fiercely Female:
The Dutee Chand Story’ chronicles Chand’s journey with a
detailed narrative of the gender-identity controversy that made her an iconic
figure in Indian sport.
Read this book if you
haven’t yet and mark my words: Dutee will be back.
Tail piece: happy Independence Day
Got a
message this morning:
Happy
Independence Day.
(Not for
married men).
++
Journalist turned
media academician Mrinal Chatterjee lives in Dhenkanal, Odisha. He also writes
fiction and plays.
mrinalchatterjeeiimc@gmail.com
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