Friday, February 10, 2012

Indian Children in Norway- Cultural Differences and the Welfare System


Last month, a bizarre news article reported across various print and electronic media managed to create a significant amount of excitement in India. The incident happened in Norway and involved an Indian family and the Norwegian childcare system.

The family consists of a young couple who are on a temporary visa in Norway, and their two children: a three-year-old son and a one-year-old daughter. As per the reports, the couple lost custody of both their children several months back because the childcare authorities concluded that the care given by the parents were inadequate and did not meet the children’s needs. When the authorities visited the family on a few routine inspections, they were appalled by the various ways in which they perceived the children were being mistreated. They pointed out many anomalies; including:

1. The mother was feeding the children with her hand.

2. The boy was sleeping in the same bed with his father.

3. The boy didn’t have a bed of his own.

4. The mother breastfed the baby whenever she cried instead of following a fixed schedule.

5. The toys that the boy had were deemed inappropriate.

6. The boy didn’t have sufficient space to play.

7. The boy didn’t have suitable clothes.

8. The mother seemed depressed and irritable.

Apparently, representatives of the childcare system started visiting the household after the boy was seen to exhibit phases of irritability in school. Upon a “thorough investigation” that spanned several visits, the representatives deemed the parents unfit for rearing children. The verdict was that the children were to be cared for in foster homes until they were eighteen years old; and that during this period the parents would only be allowed to see them twice every year, for an hour during each visit.

The incident took place in May 2011 but it only began getting media coverage this January; when the parents, after a long legal tussle with the childcare authorities; took the matter to diplomatic levels and got the Indian High Commission involved.

As the news spread, it caused a great deal of furor in India. To the average Indian, most of the anomalies listed by the Norwegian authorities seemed commonplace; indeed in India these are the norms and not deviations. A mother feeding her child with her hand is common in India; as is common for one to eat with his own hands. In a society that values touch and familial affection highly and has little regard for individual space, it is also usual for children to share beds with their parents until they reach teenage. Breast-feeding babies when they cry, again, is the standard practice in India. Finally, it is also not unusual for children in India to have an inappropriate or an inadequate collection of toys and clothes; the Indian family ascribes little importance to these materials in the context of child-rearing.

At any rate, as per Indian cultural norms; the reported “discrepancies” were either normal and perfectly acceptable; or too insignificant for anyone to bother. Under all circumstances (barring the rare and unfortunate event where the parents suffered from some severe psychological disorder), separating children of ages one and three permanently from their parents would be considered outrageous by the average Indian. He would opine that the combined negative impact of all the points mentioned above would be far surpassed by the effects of forcefully denying a young child the love and affection of its parents.

The Norwegian authorities, on their part, insisted that this was not merely a case of cultural misunderstanding; that the parents were twisting facts to garner public sympathy; that the decision was made on the basis of a lot of compelling evidence of negligence and mal-treatment and after a considerable deliberation; and that the Child Protection System do not snatch children from their parents unless they have no other option. On the other hand, the fact that an astounding 12,500 children were being taken care of by the system in 2005 in sparsely populated Norway, gives an idea of how proactive the system is.

After a considerable interference from the Indian High Commission, the matter was finally resolved in the first week of February; when the Norwegian authority agreed to hand over the children to their uncle. It appears that the children may finally be re-united with their family; although the scars of an eight month long forceful separation from parents in an unknown land would perhaps only heal with time.

As one hopes that the children get to live a normal, fulfilling life, replete with the affectionate warmth of family; one cannot but help ponder over the cultural differences that seem so prominent in cases like these. We often talk about the underlying traits that are common in various societies and that can function as bases of our unity; but at the same time, one cannot deny these remarkable deviations among cultures that can potentially lead to misunderstanding and pain.

As an institution, the family has withered and weakened in the Developed World over the last century. Familial bonds, love between children and their parents have faded with the growth of individualism; personal freedom has come at the cost of a severance of chains that bonded people together. That effect has not been as pronounced in developing countries; and personal relations within a family still run deep. As Aishwariya Rai had once famously said to David Letterman, we don't have to make appointments to dine with our parents.

Another issue of concern in this regard is the role of the welfare system. While social welfare in many cases leads to a general improvement of the lives of people; there are ways in which it can negatively affect the peace and well-being of individuals; as clearly exhibited in this incident. If not implemented with foresight and deep understanding of cultures; the welfare system can lead to menacing results; even when applied with the best intentions. This incident therefore cautions the system to be careful and prudent when it attempts to interfere with someone else’s lives; it is of course foolish to spend tax-payers’ money in an endeavour as futile and useless as this one.

References:

  1. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/india/9035776/India-and-Norway-in-diplomatic-spat-over-children-taken-into-care.html
  2. http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/article2829408.ece
  3. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2088337/Norwegian-authorities-away-children-Indian-couple-eating-hands.html
  4. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-india-16676508

Shifting Patterns in Bollywood

Those who know me well would never accuse me of being a fan of Bollywood. In fact, the accusation has often been the other way round. I've been deemed an aantel (Bengali adjective that ridicules intellectuals) because of my conspicuous disinterest regrading the popular entertainment presented by the likes of Karan Johar and Shahrukh Khan. Nonetheless, there have been occasional moments in my life, too, when I have watched a Sholay or a Kuch Kuch Hota Hai with considerable attentiveness; or when I have glanced, albeit casually, to whatever was shown on the television. I continue at present too, to keep myself abreast of the headlines in the world's largest film industry; and the musings reflected in this particular piece are conclusions drawn from such observations; from the past and from the present.

Whoever has seen Bollywood movies of the eighties and early nineties would probably agree that a majority of the movies tended to relate to a certain socio-economic stratum. The good guys overwhelmingly came from a poor or lower middle class background; their economic condition varying from a state of absolute destitution to that of moderate scarcity; but never of abundance. The bad guy almost inevitably was the obscenely rich and devilishly crooked businessman; who would device the dirtiest of means to harass the poor.

The hero would often take the role of a Messiah of the poor; someone who stands up against smuggling trades of the villain; someone who resists bulldozers that the promoter sends to destroy slums; someone who grows up through hardship and deprivation and one day goes on to avenge the misdeeds perpetrated against his family and his people. We have seen Amitabh doing that role a million times. We have seen Mithun there. We have even seen how wealth corrupts character; through the experiences of one Raju in Raju Ban Gaya Gentleman, portrayed by a young Shahrukh Khan.

Since the economic liberalization of India in the nineties; there seems to have been a paradigm shift in that regard. The hero and his friends are no longer poor; seldom are they from the middle class. In contemporary Bollywood movies, the main characters are filthy rich! They are either sons and daughters of industrialists preparing to take over family businesses; or MBAs living in the US; or Engineers working in London. They are dressed in designer clothes; they have well-groomed bodies and perfectly gelled hair and they drink champagne. They visit Switzerland and Australia during vacations and they go to Spain for Bachelor Parties. The modern day hero, too, has his own problems; but unlike his counterpart from the past, unemployment or feeding a family is not one of them.

There certainly is a correlation between the shifting pattern in Bollywood movies and the pro-market economic policies; but there is more to it. It would simply be wrong, for instance, to assert that Indians have gotten significantly richer in the last twenty years; for they clearly haven't. The rich and poor divide, on the contrary has widened; inflation rates have soared; and it is a matter of controversy whether there has been any significant reduction in the percentage of people living below the poverty line.

There is data, that shows that the middle class has become somewhat wealthier. This has been accompanied by a high degree of increase in their aspirations and more importantly, in the attitude towards the rich. The rich are no longer a class of oppressive minority that amassed wealth through deception; rather, they are what the middle-class wants to be. The values that traditionally defined the Indian urban middle-class for a large part of the last century are vanishing; giving way to those that are more suited to a consumer-based economy. Outlooks are changing fast, and socialistic ideals of the past are withering away rapidly from the minds of people; to be replaced by a strong desire for materialistic pursuits: a desire to make more money, a desire to buy more things.

My contention is that it is this aspiration among the middle and upper middle class; this ambition to be rich; this desire of emulating the lives of the rich; that more than anything else, has brought about the shift in the socio-economic ambience of the Bollywood movie. For after all, Bollywood caters by and large to the taste of the middle class.

There could certainly be a host of other reasons and factors that are directly or indirectly responsible for this change. It would indeed be an interesting topic in sociological studies to investigate these effects.