The high cost of some cheap weddings

The high cost of some cheap weddings

P. Sainath

In village after village of crisis-hit Vidarbha region you can find many girls aged 25 or more unmarried because their parents can't afford it. This is a major source of tension in the community.

The irony was hard to miss. Political leaders — MPs and MLAs amongst them — lecturing people on the virtues of low-cost marriages. Divthana didn't need the sermon. This village in Buldhana district began its cheap, mass weddings way back in 1983. It has seen hundreds of brides married at very low cost to their families since then. That is, 23 years before the Maharashtra government launched its own mass-wedding programme as part of the Chief Minister's relief package for the Vidarbha region.

“The netas spend crores on the weddings of their own daughters but celebrate our austerity,” scoffs one young villager. Divthana took no funds from government for its mass weddings. It has also convinced its people to have all the marriages in a given year jointly and on the same day. In a region where even the very poor might be forced to spend upwards of a lakh on getting a daughter married, this means a great deal. The cheap wedding practice has come from the dominant Rajput community that makes up most of the village. Which seems to give it a stamp of legitimacy, making it easier for more deprived groups around here to accept simple weddings.

“The normal wedding involves too many costs, too many feasts, too many guests,” says Vishnu Ingle of Divthana. A stringer for major Marathi dailies like Lokmat and Sakal, Mr. Ingle's reports on the subject have helped make this village famous in the region “Today 15 of our girls will get married and none of their families will pay more than Rs.7,000 for it,” he says, proudly. He hands us the cheaply-printed joint invitation Divthana has put out for the event.

Weddings have been an explosive issue in the region for some years now. Rising costs and dowry pressures have added to the ruin of many in six Vidarbha districts already battered by a decade-long agrarian crisis. Failure to get their daughters married has been cited as a factor in the suicides of some farmers and it is a major source of debt and stress for most. As early as 2006, this journal had reported the Maharashtra government's finding on the subject. “Well over three lakh families had daughters whose marriages they could not arrange due to the financial crisis they faced. One in every nine showed interest in the mass marriage scheme of the Government.” ( The Hindu, November 22, 2006). That crisis has worsened a lot since then. In villages across the region, you can find many girls 25 years or older, unmarried because their parents can't afford it.

So Divthana becomes important. “We prefer it this way,” says Kalpana, one of the village's young brides in the most recent mass wedding. Her father, Rathor Singh Ingle agrees. “This is sensible and not wasteful.” Other brides, their parents and even the bridegrooms we spoke to were for it. But what if better-off elements want to have their own, more upscale weddings? “I was one of those,” says Prabhakar Ingle who holds a steady job at a private hospital. “But friends in the village talked me out of the idea. I'm quite happy I did it this way.” People around him are quick to point out that bridegrooms from other villages are also accepting it. “Or how would we get our daughters married?” they ask.

An apolitical event

The organiser of the wedding we are attending is the Hanuman Sansthan. This organisation has at least ten committees with over a hundred members to run the annual wedding day of the village. These include a ‘dal committee' and a ‘water committee'. The event after all, is a public one and draws many guests. “What the girls' families contribute works out to no more than Rs.7,000,” say Sansthan officials. “The rest is voluntary labour and help from villagers.” The village has different political trends within, say Sansthan president Mansinh More and Divthana sarpanch Bhagwanji More. “But the Sansthan and the whole village act as one on social issues like the mass weddings. We see these as above politics.” At least a dozen neighbouring villages now follow Divthana's example.

And to this point, it's quite admirable. Success has many fathers, though. They're showing up in the form of more and more political bigwigs attending the mass weddings to harangue the gathering on simplicity. Local leaders can't afford not to be seen at them. As one activist put it: “Political leaders engaging with the process is not a bad thing. This way the example reaches more people and gains legitimacy.” The problem is when the process itself gets politicised — and hijacked. A fate that threatens Divthana's great effort.

The math, for instance, no longer adds up. It is quite true that the families of the brides pay only a fraction of what they would if they held separate weddings. They avoid debt and possible bankruptcy as a result. However, as the annual wedding day event gains greater success, it is costing a lot more than it should. Some 15,000 people are at this wedding — many here because the political leaders are — and all of them were to be fed as guests. Divthana is spending a lot of money on its cheap weddings. To the point where it threatens to gut a fine example of simple living and joint effort. The poor families did not pay for the huge public event, but somebody did. Maybe rich political leaders. The idea of a village community taking charge of itself suffers. It also opens up a new chain of patronage. And converts somebody's wedding into a political event.

The importance of Divthana's example can be seen in the suffering of many in other villages in this wedding season. Like struggling farmer Shekar Badre in Amravati who took his own life soon after learning his family had to raise Rs.1 lakh for his sister's wedding. Or of Bhagwan Hanate in Akola, who spent a fortune marrying off his first three daughters. “The wedding of my fourth daughter — I have five — broke down just days before the event. I simply could raise no more money to meet the demands of the other side.” Sometimes, unmarried daughters of farmers who have committed suicide have taken their own lives — blaming themselves for their fathers' deaths.

In a region ravaged by an ongoing agrarian crisis, costly weddings are sometimes the last straw. Divthana shows a way out of this. That is, if it does not become a victim of its own success.

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The high cost of some cheap weddings

The high cost of some cheap weddings

P. Sainath

In village after village of crisis-hit Vidarbha region you can find many girls aged 25 or more unmarried because their parents can't afford it. This is a major source of tension in the community.

The irony was hard to miss. Political leaders — MPs and MLAs amongst them — lecturing people on the virtues of low-cost marriages. Divthana didn't need the sermon. This village in Buldhana district began its cheap, mass weddings way back in 1983. It has seen hundreds of brides married at very low cost to their families since then. That is, 23 years before the Maharashtra government launched its own mass-wedding programme as part of the Chief Minister's relief package for the Vidarbha region.

“The netas spend crores on the weddings of their own daughters but celebrate our austerity,” scoffs one young villager. Divthana took no funds from government for its mass weddings. It has also convinced its people to have all the marriages in a given year jointly and on the same day. In a region where even the very poor might be forced to spend upwards of a lakh on getting a daughter married, this means a great deal. The cheap wedding practice has come from the dominant Rajput community that makes up most of the village. Which seems to give it a stamp of legitimacy, making it easier for more deprived groups around here to accept simple weddings.

“The normal wedding involves too many costs, too many feasts, too many guests,” says Vishnu Ingle of Divthana. A stringer for major Marathi dailies like Lokmat and Sakal, Mr. Ingle's reports on the subject have helped make this village famous in the region “Today 15 of our girls will get married and none of their families will pay more than Rs.7,000 for it,” he says, proudly. He hands us the cheaply-printed joint invitation Divthana has put out for the event.

Weddings have been an explosive issue in the region for some years now. Rising costs and dowry pressures have added to the ruin of many in six Vidarbha districts already battered by a decade-long agrarian crisis. Failure to get their daughters married has been cited as a factor in the suicides of some farmers and it is a major source of debt and stress for most. As early as 2006, this journal had reported the Maharashtra government's finding on the subject. “Well over three lakh families had daughters whose marriages they could not arrange due to the financial crisis they faced. One in every nine showed interest in the mass marriage scheme of the Government.” ( The Hindu, November 22, 2006). That crisis has worsened a lot since then. In villages across the region, you can find many girls 25 years or older, unmarried because their parents can't afford it.

So Divthana becomes important. “We prefer it this way,” says Kalpana, one of the village's young brides in the most recent mass wedding. Her father, Rathor Singh Ingle agrees. “This is sensible and not wasteful.” Other brides, their parents and even the bridegrooms we spoke to were for it. But what if better-off elements want to have their own, more upscale weddings? “I was one of those,” says Prabhakar Ingle who holds a steady job at a private hospital. “But friends in the village talked me out of the idea. I'm quite happy I did it this way.” People around him are quick to point out that bridegrooms from other villages are also accepting it. “Or how would we get our daughters married?” they ask.

An apolitical event

The organiser of the wedding we are attending is the Hanuman Sansthan. This organisation has at least ten committees with over a hundred members to run the annual wedding day of the village. These include a ‘dal committee' and a ‘water committee'. The event after all, is a public one and draws many guests. “What the girls' families contribute works out to no more than Rs.7,000,” say Sansthan officials. “The rest is voluntary labour and help from villagers.” The village has different political trends within, say Sansthan president Mansinh More and Divthana sarpanch Bhagwanji More. “But the Sansthan and the whole village act as one on social issues like the mass weddings. We see these as above politics.” At least a dozen neighbouring villages now follow Divthana's example.

And to this point, it's quite admirable. Success has many fathers, though. They're showing up in the form of more and more political bigwigs attending the mass weddings to harangue the gathering on simplicity. Local leaders can't afford not to be seen at them. As one activist put it: “Political leaders engaging with the process is not a bad thing. This way the example reaches more people and gains legitimacy.” The problem is when the process itself gets politicised — and hijacked. A fate that threatens Divthana's great effort.

The math, for instance, no longer adds up. It is quite true that the families of the brides pay only a fraction of what they would if they held separate weddings. They avoid debt and possible bankruptcy as a result. However, as the annual wedding day event gains greater success, it is costing a lot more than it should. Some 15,000 people are at this wedding — many here because the political leaders are — and all of them were to be fed as guests. Divthana is spending a lot of money on its cheap weddings. To the point where it threatens to gut a fine example of simple living and joint effort. The poor families did not pay for the huge public event, but somebody did. Maybe rich political leaders. The idea of a village community taking charge of itself suffers. It also opens up a new chain of patronage. And converts somebody's wedding into a political event.

The importance of Divthana's example can be seen in the suffering of many in other villages in this wedding season. Like struggling farmer Shekar Badre in Amravati who took his own life soon after learning his family had to raise Rs.1 lakh for his sister's wedding. Or of Bhagwan Hanate in Akola, who spent a fortune marrying off his first three daughters. “The wedding of my fourth daughter — I have five — broke down just days before the event. I simply could raise no more money to meet the demands of the other side.” Sometimes, unmarried daughters of farmers who have committed suicide have taken their own lives — blaming themselves for their fathers' deaths.

In a region ravaged by an ongoing agrarian crisis, costly weddings are sometimes the last straw. Divthana shows a way out of this. That is, if it does not become a victim of its own success.

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“Seeing us, others will follow”

“Seeing us, others will follow”

P. Sainath

The Nandura mass weddings are marked by simplicity and enable very poor landless workers to get married with no major costs to themselves. Photo: P. Sainath

Mass weddings at low cost are one state-sponsored programme that has begun to work. The trend has begun to catch on.

Getting 55 weddings done in 90 minutes flat won't rank as a record. Getting them done at no cost to the very poor families involved might qualify as one. That these are actually part of a successful Maharashtra government programme surely sets this up for a Guinness Book entry. The 55 couples in Nandura tehsil of Buldhana district are all Muslims. And there's a dual minority angle to it — 18 of them are ‘Adivasi Bhil Muslims' as the event's organisers call them. The ceremony is much like a civil wedding — except that the brides and bridegrooms take their vows at different venues. Ritual is at a minimum.

“That's it then,” says Haji Muzameel Ali Khan of the Ashrafi Educational and Welfare Society, Nandura. “None of these families paid for the mass weddings as you can see and verify.” We did. Mr. Khan, one of the event's main organisers, and his colleagues have overseen nearly 500 mass marriages in the past few years. The trend of having weddings that cut costs but retain dignity for a heavily indebted people is catching on in Vidarbha. The State government has spent Rs.33 crore on such weddings since 2006 — a fraction of what has been spent on utterly futile projects in the same six districts of this region since that year. It has covered 31,000 couples in a region of over one crore people. That works out to just around Rs.10,000 per couple. Which is very cheap in a time of distress, soaring prices, and a crippling farm crisis.

It's the wedding season, and the number of mass marriages is growing. This is a very different picture from, say, 2006. The ones Mr. Muzameel Khan has helped organise stand out for their simplicity. There is no band, no blaring loudspeakers. “Each family is limited to ten guests” he says. “Beyond that, they have to feed the guests at their own homes.” The couples here are mostly from extremely poor backgrounds. Several are landless agricultural labourers doing any work they can find for a pittance. Or down-and-out weavers. “Most of them,” he says, “could not have afforded getting married. Poverty runs deep amongst Muslims here.”

“I have had two of my three daughters married this way,” says Durrani Habib Khan. He is a landless worker who shelled out Rs.30,000 for the marriage of his first daughter 20 years ago. “That could be at least Rs.1 lakh [or more] in today's money,” says his neighbour Syed Shamsuddin.

“People have sold homes to get their daughters married,” says Waheeda Begum, mother of Bilkees Anjum — one of the brides at the mass wedding. Her words capture some of the damage done by mounting wedding and dowry costs in Vidarbha. More so in six of its districts where lakhs have been ruined by the agrarian crisis. Where even the State government says three lakh families were unable to get their daughters married “due to the financial crisis they faced”. This has been cited as a factor in the suicides of some farmers. And in a few cases, of their unmarried daughters as well. Weddings are a major source of debt and stress for most.

Also remarkable at Nandura is the absence of political leaders exhorting the masses to lead a simple life. As the mass wedding trend has gained ground, there's a scramble amongst politicians to be seen as inspiring and leading the process. So the events get bigger, more unwieldy and lose focus. A recent event in Gondia saw tens of thousands of guests gather to see 300 couples wed. It also saw one of the brides die the following day, according to local newspaper reports, of sunstroke. But political leaders, minor and major, are eager to promote simple and austere weddings for the masses. Even Ministers who have conducted some of the costliest weddings ever seen in central India for their own daughters.

At Nandura, though, there are no speeches, no sermons. Just a brief statement on the correctness of doing it this way. And then the rapid weddings of the 55 couples. Muzameel Khan himself is a district secretary of the Congress Minority Cell. But he does not cash in on this from the podium in ways so visible at similar functions. “This is serious,” he says. “Even now there are many marriages on hold or completely stopped in this tehsil. There are many unmarried young people past 25.” It is also, “an interlinked problem. The farm crisis has seen weavers' incomes collapse as they lose their first market”. His friend Syed Fahimuddin is hopeful: “With even the better off approving this mass wedding idea, it could spread quickly.”

How does the economics of this work? At some levels, it doesn't. “We do not draw a paisa from the Rs.10,000 the government gives each couple. That belongs to them,” says Muzameel Khan. “The government provides Rs.2,000 per couple to the NGO that organises the event.” But that's Rs.1.1 lakh, hardly enough for 55 couples. Muzameel Khan's extended family is very large and includes relatively well-off landowners. They and their close circle — “with no outside collections” — raise another Rs.5,000 per family. So the average cost of each of the weddings is around Rs.7,000. There is, of course, a lot of voluntary labour.

Meanwhile, the costs, pressures and delays mean that the age of marriage is itself moving upwards. “I got married around age 13,” says Gunvanti Raut in Dhotragaon, Amravati. “My daughter wed at 18. Now, the girls are 23 or even older here. People struggle to get them married.” While the changing age of marriage may not be a wholly negative thing, the accompanying distress surely is. Stories of people selling land, gold, cattle and other assets to meet wedding costs are endless. “Even the very poor spend up to or over Rs.1 lakh, mostly by borrowing it,” says Ajees Khan, father of bride Bilkees Anjum at Nandura.

So the government's mass wedding programme and the initiative of groups like Muzameel Khan's hold promise. The brides, grooms and parents we spoke to at Nandura agree. “Seeing us,” says Waheeda Begum, “others will follow.”

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World Cup Football

Pixelperfect for Rs50,000 or less

Pixelperfect for Rs50,000 or less

BY ZAHID H . JAVALI

Buying a digital camera for the holiday season? Don't be overwhelmed by the choice. Our nifty shortlist will tell you if you should get a Canon or a Nikon, a Sony or a Panasonic, a compact or an SLR.

Along the way, we'll answer some of the questions that you will have asked yourself: How many meg- apixels do I need? What sort of lens should I get?
Does it record movies? Does it have manual settings?
What if I want to shoot RAW files? Will it work in low light? Does it have panorama mode? Is the preview screen big and bright?

To begin with, if you want something small to take with you to parties and on vacation, you basically want a compact at a great price. There are also plenty of mid-range prosumer cameras for those who want to learn a bit more and experiment with their photos. Once you're confident, you can move on to a Canon or Nikon DSLR. But start with our suggestions in five budget ranges.

Under Rs10,000

Sony Cybershot DSC-S930

Rs5,870

PROS

• Excellent-value, entry-level camera with 10.1 megapixels and 3x optical zoom
• Includes face detection and shake reduction

CONS

• Cheap price means a cheap lens and basic processor. Don' expect very high-quality image
• Settings are basic--for poin and shoot only

Canon IXUS 95 IS

Rs9,295

PROS

• A 10-megapixel, entry-level camera with lots of features, including an image stabilizer
• Slim and looks good. Will fit easily into your pocket

CONS

• Image quality breaks up when using high ISO
• Poor dynamic range; tends to overexpose

Under Rs20,000

Panasonic Lumix DMC FS7 (silver)

Rs12,090

PROS

• Relatively inexpensive in its category
• Fast performance and sturdy body

CONS

• Pixel noise at low settings
• Suffers from a bit of flat colou reproduction

Nikon Coolpix S8000 Rs18,950

PROS

• Impressive 14 megapixels and 10x optical zoom in an ultra slim body
• Image stabilizer and HD Vide recording

CONS

• Video resolution is only 720 pixels
• Lacks some features such as HDR and Panorama mode.

Under Rs30,000

Pentax K-x

Rs20,700

PROS

• Ergonomics allows great han holding and excellent HD video quality
• Solid build and extended ISO range at minimal noise

CONS

• Camera shakes during video t mode s
• The AA batteries give twice th t battery life of most mid-range DSLRs

Fujifilm Finepix S200 EXR

Rs28,800

PROS

• 12 megapixels with a great 14x optical lens for telephoto shooting. Snap it up: The Canon EOS 550D.
• Has RAW capability; works a lot like a small SLR, with all the easy-to-use features of a compact

CONS

• The big lens makes the camera less convenient to carry and stow away
• Functionality doesn't compare o with a full DSLR system

Under Rs40,000

Nikon D5000

Rs31,950

PROS

• It's fast and captures great photos with vivid colours
• Bonus option to shoot videos

CONS

• Small LCD display is problematic in sunlight
• Slow and noisy video reproduction

Panasonic Lumix DMC-GF1

Rs38,000

PROS

• Accurate colour rendering and seamless Live View experience
• Faster auto focus and pop-up flash

CONS

• Slow in shutting down
• Records too much ambient noise because of a sensitive microphone

Under Rs50,000

Pentax K7

Rs45,000

PROS

• Built-in dust removal, in-cam- era HDR and 77 weather/dust- proof seals (can operate at -10 degrees Celsius)
• Records 30fps HD quality video at an excellent 1536x1024 pixels

CONS

• Less intuitive focusing can lead to out-of-focus photos
• Lacks one-button system to record video

Canon EOS 550D

Rs49,999

PROS

• Impressive 18 megapixels resolution and a faster camera (Digic 4 processor)
• Compresses multiple RAW images and offers excellent dynamic range photos
• You can make movies with this camera

CONS

• Slow video autofocus speed There is no quick way to begin the video recording

Prices vary in different cities.

Write to us at businessoflife@livemint.com

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BUCK UP ON YOUR BACKUP

BUCK UP ON YOUR BACKUP

BY ZAHEER MERCHANT

························ I same t was as if I had told them about a death in the family. My friends sent me the half-consoling, `buck-up' messages of support half when I told them that I'd lost my laptop containing the sole working draft of my novel,“ says Hyderabad-based journalist Jaideep Undurti.

“Inevitably, the next ques- tion would be, `But didn't you have backups?' I'd reply sheepishly, `I did. It was on my friend's laptop... that was stolen too. There was a break-in at the flat.' Apart from notes, bookmarks and e-books meant for reference, I think I lost about 50,000 words.“

If, unlike Undurti, you're fortunate enough to never have lost your most precious bytes to the great hard drive, know this: It will happen to you one day. Your data may never encounter theft, or fire, or floods, or viruses. But there are only two types of hard disks in this world--those that have failed, and those that will.

This fact, however, seems lost on us, citizens of the Infor- mation Age, as a survey of 4,257 computer users in 129 countries by Kabooza, an on- line backup service, showed in December 2008.

Asked “How often do you back up your home PC?“, 54% of respondents said they had no backup whatsoever. Only 18% (about one in five) did perform a backup every day, while 15% said they did irregu- lar backups. A frightening 13% responded with the question, “What is backup?“ A whopping 66% of respondents said they had suffered critical data loss.

Admittedly, backing up is boring. On a scale of dullness, it belongs somewhere between flossing and Farmville. But now that your virtual farm is about the size of Madagas- car and you've harvested the moon's weight in strawberries, why not devote some time to safeguarding your most impor- tant documents, your life- time's worth of photos and your--ahem--entirely legal MP3 collection?

Online backup

If you have a fast broadband connection, online backup is the safest bet. However, if your broadband plan has down- load/upload limits, you may end up spending a lot if you ex- ceed them. But if you are on an unlimited plan, here are two services worth checking out.

Mozy

For: Windows/Mac

Basic: 2GB storage for free

Premium: Unlimited storage for $4.95 (Rs235) a month

Mozy is an automated backup solution. Once you install it on your computer, it will back up any files you specify at a fre- quency of your choice. Mozy can even back up files while they are open. Most impor- tantly, after the initial full backup, it will only upload the portion of a file that has changed and not the entire file all over again. This means sub- sequent backups will be quick- er and use minimal band- width. Mozy stores previous versions of your files for easy restoration. You can restore files by downloading them or order a backup on physical media for a fee.

Dropbox

For: Windows/Mac/Linux

Basic: 2GB storage for free

Pro: 50GB storage for $9.99 a month

Once you install Dropbox, it creates a “My Dropbox“ folder in your Documents folder.

Anything you place in this folder will be synced with your Dropbox account. You can sync files and share them by making the folder public.

You can also restore a previous version of your file--Drop- box keeps a change log going back 30 days. All your files are also accessible via the Drop- box website, which is great if you're at a computer that doesn't have Dropbox in- stalled. Dropbox, unlike Mozy, doesn't have an unlimited storage option, but unless you're backing up movies and other huge files, you're unlikely to breach its 50GB limit.

Online office suites

Whether or not you use any oth- er online backup, switch to on- line suites and you'll never lose an important document again.

Google Docs & Spreadsheets

docs.google.com

This set has a word processor, a spreadsheet program and a pre- sentation program. However, Google Docs isn't 100% Word- compatible. Spreadsheets too has a few compatibility issues with Excel.

Microsoft Live Office

workspace.officelive.com

This is perfect if you need 100% compatibility with Microsoft Of- fice. Live Office is actually a storage and sharing solution rather than an online suite--you can view your files online from anywhere, but not edit them on- line. To do so, you need to download a small plug-in that integrates your desktop Office suite with Live Office.

ThinkFree

www.thinkfree.com

ThinkFree offers the best bal- ance. It is far more compatible with MS Office than Google Docs and, unlike Live Office, lets you edit documents online. It has three main components--Write (word processor), Calc (spread- sheet), and Show (presentation software). The word processor has two modes: Quick Edit offers a minimal interface with a few toolbar buttons for simple tasks, while Power Edit looks more like a full-featured application.

Offline backup/sync

These programs are ideal if you have a lot of data (several GB) and limited or no Internet access.
Most sync programs allow you to perform traditional one-way backups as well as two-way syncs. Here are two of the best.

Allway Sync `n' Go

www.allwaysync.com

Free for personal use; pro version for businesses costs $29.99

Simplicity itself: Add a source directory to the left of the application window, a target directo- ry to the right, hit a button to `analyse' them and then sync.
The target directory can be on another partition of your hard drive, a network drive, a USB stick, an external hard disk or a blank DVD. The first time you run the program, it will ask you to do a complete back- up of the source directory. For subsequent syncs, the program will only update the ones that have changed. You can set it to one-way sync (keep a copy of your files in the target directory even when the original files have been removed from the source directory), or two-way sync (which will delete files from the target directory if they are removed from the source). It also comes in a handy portable version that requires no instal- lation (it is a .exe file, which means you simply run it direct- ly without going through lengthy install wizard dialog boxes and you can bring it along even on a USB stick).

CleanSync

http://code.google.com/p/cleansync

Open source freeware

Say you have two computers and want to keep a pair of synced folders on them. With the help of a modest USB stick, Clean- Sync offers a nifty solution. Let's say you have a folder called Work 1 on one computer and Work 2 on another. With a tradi- tional sync program such as Allway Sync `n' Go, you'd have to sync Work 1 with the USB stick, then attach it to your second computer and sync it with Work 2, effectively creat- ing three copies of the entire folder to achieve synchroniza- tion. However, CleanSync only picks up the changed files, which saves space and time.
Diskimage programs Also known as disk-cloning programs, these are the big daddies of backup, for backing up the entire drive or partition that contains your operating system. They not only backup data files but your entire OS, programs and all, so they are useful for system recovery in case of a hard disk disaster.
They are also useful if you want to upgrade your hard disk without losing your OS, appli- cations and data. Windows “System Restore“ is nothing but an inbuilt disk image pro- gram. However, it has very few features, isn't 100% reliable and won't let you export an im- age to an external drive. But there's a better option.

Acronis True Image

www.acronis.com

Price: $50;

15day trial version available

While it isn't free, Acronis True Image may be worth paying for.
It has a number of features that most other disk-cloning pro- grams lack, including the ability to exclude specific folders. It also lets you create an image or re- store data without rebooting the system. If your operating system becomes corrupt or your hard disk fails, you can boot up your PC to the Acronis Startup Re- covery Manager using the F11 key, which returns the system to a previous, usable state.

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THE SMART LIFE

THE SMART LIFE – YOUTUBE

EXCELS AT SHOW-AND-TELL

SHEKHAR BHATIA

I like music--especially classic rock and jazz. About 10 years ago, in one of those life-is-too-short moods, I decided to learn to play the guitar. I wanted to play bass guitar but I was advised to go one step at a time. So I bought an acoustic guitar and hired a tutor who would come home once or twice a week. He was about my age, liked my kind of music, used to play in a band, and was an excellent teacher. Alas, I did not have the patience and gave up a few months later. But to the credit of my tutor, I can still play the opening notes of Day Tripper.

These days, if you have a guitar and want to learn the basic stuff, you just do a Google search for tabs. Chances are your search will also take you to video lessons on YouTube. When you think of five websites that changed the way you live, work and play, YouTube will probably be on that list. Depending on your age, work and lifestyle, your list (excluding Google, of course) could include Facebook, Twitter, Yahoo, Hotmail, eBay, Blogger, Flickr, and so on. My five (I am not on Facebook or Twitter) would be Wikipedia, iTunes, Skype, Amazon and YouTube. There's also a sixth--Grooveshark, a music streaming service where I can listen to any song I like at any time of day or night.

YouTube is 5 this month. Like most successful Silicon Valley garage start-ups, this video-sharing site, too, has a legend about its birth. In 2005, two 20-something men went to a party and when they told a friend about it, he didn't believe them. So they decided to send him a video of the party. The problem was videos were heavy to email as attachments. And so they created YouTube. A year and nine months later, Google bought the fledgling company for $1.65 billion (that's over Rs7,821 crore at today's prices).

According to Google, the five-year-old site now gets more than two billion hits daily--or double the number of people who tune into America's three prime time TV stations combined.
It's the world's third most visited website after Google and Facebook.

Ever since it appeared on our computer screens it has added a new dimension to our search for information. It's become a powerful communication tool. Earlier this year, when the Indian Premier League season was on, I watched a few matches live on YouTube in between working on my blog and browsing the Net. When I missed watching Obama's speech at Cairo University on TV, I found it later on YouTube, where I also watched the video of a young girl being flogged brutally by the Taliban somewhere in Afghanistan, and a woman protester dying on the streets of Iran. The unnamed people who shot this video won a prestigious journalism prize. At the time of writing this column, Pakistani authorities had blocked YouTube for “sacrilegious“ content.

Thanks to the site, ordinary people have become household names across the globe. Nearly 100 million viewers have watched the footage of Susan Boyle's performance of I Dreamed a Dream on Britain's Got Talent.

I visit YouTube for just about any topic that has a visual angle.
We have watched videos of cookery shows, seen documentaries that we would never have been able to lay our hands on, heard some brilliant talks (“A universe from nothing“ by physicist Lawrence Krauss, for example), seen clips from music concerts (including an outstanding performance of Mortal Coil Shuffle by Ian Siegel) and full-length political debates. We also heard the Lyrebird sing.

We have also learnt how to make a catapult, spin the yo-yo, remove grease off the cooking range, and found out the difference between a Windsor knot and a four-in-hand knot.

Some years ago when our son was packing his bags for college, I thought it was a good time to teach him how to fold shirts. If you have lived alone for a long time you learn many useful tricks. He told me not to bother because YouTube has a demonstration of “how to fold your T-shirt in three seconds.“ It's been viewed by three million people. I tried it and trust me, it works. Brilliantly.

And we are only five years into this technology. Imagine what can happen in the next five.

Shekhar Bhatia is a former editor, Hindustan Times, a science buff and a geek at heart.
Write to Shekhar at thesmartlife@livemint.com

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The complex origins of our favourite `gaalis'

If ndians share their forms of abuse. Many languages, same gaalis: unity in diversity. But why is this so? Writer Sudhir Kakar observed that Indian abuse was different rom European. He says they use scatological words (which means related to faeces), while we like to allege incest. Is that true? Let us examine the matter.

Copulation with the other's sister is the most common abuse in India though it doesn't have a parallel in the West. The word shares its structure with our other popular abuse where sister is replaced with mother.

What are the origins of these words?
A clue is available to us, and that is the word madar. It is “mother“ only in Farsi.
So speakers of Farsi brought it: Mughals. However, the word for copulation attached to it is not Farsi. It is Hindustani and possibly originates from the word for crevice or aperture, chhed. The word used for sister is behen, which is Hindustani.

Our little investigation has revealed three things: First, both words are recent (perhaps 1650-1700). Second, the abusive word for mother came before the one for sister (we shall see why).
And third, since Farsi was the language of a small Mughal aristocracy and bureaucracy, that the word's origins are not popular.

But this does not make sense. Why was a Persian word of abuse used from the Frontier to Bengal? Abuse is always in the popular language. Unless, that is, we are uncomfortable expressing the sentiment of that abuse in our own tongue. And that is true. Mother is a revered figure in our culture, and the Persian word distances us from the nastiness of what we are saying. The use of the local behen tells us that it is an indigenized form of the existing abuse for mother, and, though more popular now, came later.

The words also carry different weights, and madar is an escalation.

The Indian word for bastard, harami, is actually Arabic. We have no word for it in Indian languages because of the same troublesome allusion to mother's sexual habits. All this indicates, contrary to Kakar's view, that Indians are not comfortable expressing abuse that has to do with maternal incest.

If these words are recent, what are the classical Indian phrases of abuse? It is difficult to say because Smritic literature does not appear to have any sexually abusive words delivered in first person.
Our ancestors also viewed abuse itself differently. We know this because while the modern gaali is feminine in gender, classical upshabd is not.

Perhaps men did not abuse one another during the Heroic age. There is not a word of sexual abuse in Iliad (though Achilles does call Agamemnon kunopa: dog-face). Presumably this is because they could settle it with swords.

Even when there was provocation, they were quite restrained. Bhim breaks the rules of combat and attacks Duryodhan's thighs, crippling him.
But Duryodhan does not abuse him.
His angry words are about injustice and fate, though we might have reacted differently.

The first Indian autobiography was Ardhakathanak (Half a Story), written by Agra's Jain trader Banarasidas in 1641.
Unfortunately, the book's language is quite chaste and the only term of disapproval (which Banarasidas uses on himself) is the beautiful word aasikbaaj (wanton lover), which is again imported, through the Arabic root ishq.

What is the place of abuse in culture? All abuse attempts to dishonour.

Abuse is a male weapon, because honour is a male virtue. Most words of abuse are coined to hurt men. A woman is attacked through allegations of promiscuity, not incest. A woman using sexual abuse is not convincing and her words do not sting, because she cannot penetrate.

The Indian man expresses his intention to penetrate another male to show dominance. This is not found in European abuse, because homosexuality is abhorrent in the popular view.

It is expressed by urban Indians in the pidgin English we all speak as “I'll take your ass“. This is translated from the Hindi/Gujarati original that communicates buggery more violently, through the use of “maar“.

This expression of penetration is found in animals, and male elephants mount the dead bull's carcass to project dominance over him and the cows.

The penetrated man loses honour, though ancient Greeks appear to have been rampant homosexuals. In Xenophon's book The Dinner Party, Socrates advises Autolycus to choose his lover wisely, because every man around will want to bed him. Scholar Kenneth Dover conjectured that Greek homosexuality wasn't penetrative but intercrural, which means between the thighs.

He concluded this after examining Greek pottery and noticing that male s lovers always faced each other. Even so, the presence of a dominant male reduces the other man.

Now let us look at the strange Indian words of abuse that are actually biological statements of fact. For instance, the word that director Dada y Kondke alluded to with the pun Boss DK. It means of-a-vagina. But vaginal birth is common to all humans. Why should it be pointed out and why should someone be dishonoured by it?

Because of shame. Writer Upamanyu Chatterjee referred to this in English, August, observing that Indian men are hesitant to introduce a woman as “my wife“ because it revealed their copulation.

Kondke's word has an alternative meaning: he-who-has-a-vagina. But I do not think that is the true meaning.
The other word of the same meaning is prefixed with the “ch“ root we have seen earlier.

Something found in European abuse and not in ours is swearing. We have no hell, and damnation is expressed through the borrowed Arabic word jahannum. Indians are inherently respectful of religion, and we notice the absence of common abuse by faith.
This is even though there are aspects open to attack, for instance the circumcised Muslim. Bal Thackeray's Saamna is fond of using the word “landya“, which refers to this, but it isn't commonly used by Marathis.

Like many trading societies, Surtis use abuse almost as punctuation. For years after other cities got one, Surat had no local All India Radio station. Surtis were convinced this was because the government was terrified one of them would go on air and unwittingly let rip.
They agreed with the government's wisdom, and when two men of Surat have a conversation, every fourth word refers to the other's deviant sexual habits and makes inquiries about his parentage. Traders do not put a premium on honour, and abuse is less effective on them than, for instance, on peasants or warriors.

Those who think Parsis sophisticated will be appalled to hear them speak in Gujarati, because of their gutter tongue, which is Surti and peppered with BC and MC.

All humans are repelled by incest.
Oedipus has got a bad name because of psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud.
Sophocles' great set of plays on Oedipus is one of the most moving pieces of Greek literature. Oedipus does not know that the woman he is bedding is his mother (or that the arrogant stranger he killed was his father). His anguish when he does find out is such that he tears his eyes out, and his mother/wife hangs herself. So it is quite unfair to call subliminal attraction towards one's mother an Oedipus Complex.
Aakar Patel is a director with Hill Road Media.
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This war can't be won by mines and bullets

This war can't be won by mines and bullets

Siddharth Varadarajan

It is not litigants who've gone to court seeking the rehabilitation of civilians or ‘civil society activists' but the Maoists and the state who must answer for the deaths of innocents in Chhattisgarh.

Whether Operation Green Hunt actually exists or is, as P. Chidambaram insists, a figment of the media's imagination, Monday's deadly Maoist attack on a bus in Dantewada suggests it is the hunted that are doing most of the hunting.

Over the past six weeks, the Maoists in Chhattisgarh have killed more than 90 policemen or jawans from the CRPF or local constabulary. The 76 men killed in Chintalnar in April represent, perhaps, the highest casualty figure sustained by state forces in a single incident in a war anywhere in the world in years. Apart from the six villagers executed on Sunday after a kangaroo ‘peoples court' found them guilty of being “informers”, the Communist Party of India (Maoist) killed 15 civilians in their attack on the bus, injuring scores more.

In the latest incident, the primary target was probably the group of Special Police Officers (SPOs) who were travelling on the roof of the bus. But even so, the fact that the bus was full of civilian passengers would have been obvious to the Maoist commanders whose spotters were apparently tracking the SPOs. That they chose to go ahead and detonate the land mine or IED by remote control knowing a large number of non-combatants would die should be a lesson for anyone who harbours illusions about the Maoists and their project.

When I had the opportunity to put some questions in writing to Azad, spokesman of the Maoists, in March, I was keen to push him on whether or not his party believed it had an obligation to conform to international humanitarian law. This is the body of rules which regulates armed conflict. The targeting of civilians and the killing of captives, for example, is expressly forbidden. As a format, written questions and answers do not allow the interviewer to pose counter-questions. Given this limitation, I anticipated the answer Azad would give on the question of the laws of war — that his fighters were not obliged to follow them because the government itself was not doing so — and suggested this was tantamount to admitting the Maoist party subscribes to the same political culture and moral universe as the state it condemns. This suggestion of mine was met with silence but the attack on the bus is answer enough. The Maoists are not Gandhians with guns.

Consolation and excuses

The authorities can console themselves by saying the latest attack shows the “growing desperation” of the Maoists, or that the targeting of civilians by them will be their undoing. But the fact is that by any metric of warfare, they are the ones who seem to have the upper hand. And they have it not because Indian democracy is robust enough to allow for a debate on the rights and wrongs of official policy or for PILs to be filed in the Supreme Court but because the CRPF, local police and SPOs on whom the Chhattisgarh government and the Centre rely lack training, discipline, equipment, mobility and motivation. Instead of squarely facing this problem, Mr. Chidambaram and his colleagues in the Home Ministry are busy pointing fingers at others or bemoaning the lack of a “mandate” to fight the Maoists.

More than “social activists”, it is the government that ought to be concerned about the fact that many of the “successes” notched up by the security forces in Chhattisgarh have turned out to be bogus. For example, most of the dozen odd naxals supposedly killed in a fierce encounter last fall near Gompad were innocent villagers, some of them elderly.

There is both a moral and a military issue at stake here. Killing innocent people is wrong but it is also militarily foolish. Passing off ordinary villagers as Maoist combatants and faking entries in official log books may help the security forces present an inflated account of their success but will make actual victory on the ground even more difficult. On Tuesday, the Home Minister reiterated the importance of the so-called “two-pronged strategy” to deal with naxalism: “One prong is police action, and the other prong is development”. Unfortunately, neither prong is being followed very effectively. Indeed, the fact that there is today in Chhattisgarh an inversion of the supposed hunt is precisely because the state and central governments have made a mess of both policing and development. Thanks to a disastrous counterinsurgency strategy, several hundred innocent villagers have been killed, thousands of dwellings destroyed and tens of thousands of Adivasis displaced. In Gompad last year, the SPOs cut off the fingers of a two-year old boy, Suresh. The Hindu published his photograph on October 20, 2009. Not one word of condemnation or remorse was heard from Mr. Chidambaram or his Ministry.

Far from weakening the Maoists as its supporters claimed it would, the Salwa Judum vigilante movement which both New Delhi and Raipur patronised for years has strengthened the insurgents. This is precisely what the petitioners who filed a PIL in the Supreme Court in 2007 against the vigilantes had warned would happen.

In a recent RAND Corporation report, How Insurgencies End: Key Indicators, Tipping Points, and Strategy, Ben Connable and Martin Libicki conclude their survey of 89 past and present insurgencies by noting that ‘anocracies' are the one form of government least likely to prevail over an insurgent force. Democracies do best and dictatorships sometimes prevail through sheer repression but the anocracies do worst. An anocracy is a phony democracy, which is good at neither proper democratic methods nor full-fledged autocracy. Its institutions are weak, offering little possibility for the government to isolate an insurgency from the people in whose name the fight is being waged. But the need to preserve the façade of democracy also means the full panoply of repressive measures — air strikes, mass arrests, censorship — is not available either.

India may be an imperfect democracy but I do not believe it is an anocracy. And yet, one could argue that state practice in Dantewada and other parts of India is anocratic. Based on the RAND data, then, it is safe to assume the Maoists are not going to be defeated any time soon. The choice we face is to democratise or autocratise the state's response and the wider machinery of governance. Those who want to autocratise favour a dramatic escalation of the war, the rapid deployment of large numbers of security personnel, the use of air strikes. They are also intolerant of dissent and are quick to label any criticism of official policy as ‘support for Maoism'.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Congress president Sonia Gandhi are coming under intense pressure from this faction but they know the problem will grow exponentially if the government goes autocratic. And yet, they lack the confidence to democratise. What would democratisation as a counter-insurgency strategy look like? First, this requires strict adherence to the laws of war. No one can question the state's right to fight those who take up arms against it. But non-combatants must never be targeted, let alone allowed to get in harm's way. This would also mean ending the practice of billeting jawans in school buildings and other civilian infrastructure or hitching rides on civilian transport. India may not have signed the Geneva Convention additional protocol on internal armed conflict but Common Article 3 of the four conventions to which India is a party — not to speak of the Indian Constitution — prohibits violence against those not taking active part in hostilities or against combatants who are in custody. The reason the laws of war are important is that they provide a measure of protection to both sides, not to speak of civilians.

Second, the Centre should support the plan, currently before the Supreme Court, for the comprehensive rehabilitation of all those displaced by the violence in Dantewada. Third, the government should seriously consider a mutual ceasefire so as to push the Maoists towards dialogue. The cessation of hostilities, if extended, would allow the Dantewada rehabilitation plan to be implemented under the overall supervision of the Supreme Court. Fourth, every manifestation of autocratic behaviour — the farcical public hearings on land acquisition for mining and power projects, the filing of criminal cases against poor Adivasis for minor violations of the Forest Act, has to stop.

Not a war they can win

As for the Maoists, they need to realise this is not a war they can win. The Indian state's capacity to absorb punishment is far greater than the Maoists' ability to inflict violence. Whatever else its lacks, India certainly does not need more soldiers, guns and IEDs. What it could use is a strong political movement to give voice to the aspirations of ordinary workers, peasants, tribals, women and other marginalised sections. Mao may have said power flows out of the barrel of the gun. But he also said to put politics in command. Alas, in Chhatisgarh today, there is no politics.

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