Articles by Amrita Abraham

Despite their growing presence in journalism, women in many Asian countries continue to face restrictions on their professional roles and sexual discrimination in media organisations. Report on a seminar held in Beijing in May.

IMPLICATIONS One crucial thing to understand is that corruption among village officers cannot flourish without the aid and encouragement of the higher officials from Girida- vari to Tehsildar or the Taluq registrar. The Patels don't do anything without taking the Police Sub-inspectors or Excise Officers into confidence. It is a matter of mutual understaning that all the concerned share the bounty in every case. Telugu Desam government's piecemeal measures consider things in isolation from each other. If the part-time village officers are ill-trained, unqualified, corrupt and caste minded the higher officials are much more so. The ill effects of their corrupt practices and casteism are much more consequential and theirs is the lion's share in the bounty of corruption. Maybe, they are less exposed as the actual job is done by the village officials. However, Telugu Desam Party does not have this com prehensive approach to the problem of "corrupt, casteist" part-time village officers and has launched an isolated attack on them leaving the giant administrative apparatus in the countryside untouched. How can we ensure that the new village officers known as the village assistants will be free from these practices as also the officers at the block and tehsil level who are used to these practices? The outgoing village officers arc mostly Congress landlords or those associated with them; but the new officials will also be from either Telugu Desam landlord families or Congress landlord families; at the most a few may be from urban oriented non- landlord families. But in any case all will be under the heavy pressure of the local landlords, be they of Telugu Desam or Congress. Bureaucracy can never work in a social vacuum in a neutral fashion because of its linkages with the society at the individual level and also because of its social values.

Bombay 2001 Amrita Abraham ABOUT the time the report of the Revised Development Plan for Greater Bombay (Draft) 1981-2001 was released in June, the city's newspapers published three stories that are cautionary tales, as it were, for urban planners. They were all about that elusive thing, money. One reported that the Municipal Administrator had met the Chief Minister to discuss the need for additional resources for the city and particularly amendments to the Rent Act and government contributions to the city's finance. There was nothing new or dramatic about the points raised nor has the government departed from its decades- old routine of 'taking note' and then shelving the problem, A second story reiterated that the World Bank which had agreed two years ago to fund an urban renewal scheme and an ambitious site-and-serviee project in Bombay was withholding funds until the city could demonstrate it was able to raise some resources on its own and particularly by amending the Rent Act show it was pursuing more 'rational' policies. The third reported that a BJP legislator intended to take the Union government to court for appropriating funds allocated by the World Bank for Bombay. Present regulations require all foreign funds for state projects to be routed through the Centre and the practice is for New Delhi to retain a percentage. But according to Ramdas Nayak, the Centre had appropriated extortionate amounts from Bombay. This is the political reality against which urban planners have drafted the Development Plan (DP), a statutory exercise and a setting out of the development policies, the data on which the policies Ire based and the instruments for pursuing those policies.

MAHARASHTRA Housing for Bombay's Poor Amrita Abraham THE government of Maharashtra may find itself with no option after the end of August but to threaten to control rigorously the free market sales of flats if builders and landowners do not respond positively to the new urban land ceiling policy announced at the end of June, By mid-August there had been some 15 revised building plans submitted to the Bombay Municipal Corporation out of 1,868 cases pending. Housing officials said they were not unduly concerned by this slow response believing it would take more time to draw up revised architects' plans, etc. However, spokesmen of some of the associations of builders and developers have been sounding quite uncertain about

Foot-Dragging on Minimum Farm Wages Amrita Abraham ORGANISATIONS representing small farmers, agricultural workers and workers on the Employment Guarantee Scheme, from several parts of Maharashtra, held a five-day dharna in Bombay last month to protest against the recommendations of the Third Page Committee on minimum agricultural wages. Two pieces of information, which are relevant to the discussion on agricultural wages, emerged in the same week. The government admitted belatedly that the drought in various parts of the state was as bad as, and perhaps even worse than, the last severe drought in the state in 1972. Thirty per cent of the kharif crop has been affected by late and sporadic rains or long dry spells in some districts. The second piece of relevant information emerged from the investigations of the R S Gavai Committee into charges of corruption in the EGS in Dhule district, first brought to light by the then district collector, A run Bhatia. Gavai's findings confirmed that corrupt officials on the scheme had paid short wages to EGS workers and paid wages in factitious names, that suspect officials in charge of the programme received protection from unnamed but nigh level authorities and that after the disclosures were made local police authorities were more concerned with preventing further disclosures than with investigating the charges.