Month: November 2017

The right to life, guaranteed by our Constitution, is incomplete without the right to die. Individuals must be allowed to choose how to live their lives, or end them, without being judged by religious leaders or hampered by their country’s laws.

HT Image

The woman in the video is talking about joy, life and laughter. She holds her husband’s hand as they walk through the woods. She takes a plate of food outdoors for a picnic lunch.

She packs her bag as if preparing for a trip.

She does not look like a woman who has chosen to die.

But Brittany Maynard is talking about dying. Diagnosed with terminal brain cancer on January 1, she was, in April, given six months to live. “If all my dreams came true, I would somehow survive this,” she laughs. But she is getting ‘sicker and sicker’. If she waits too long, she fears, she might lose her autonomy. How then will she swallow the drugs prescribed by her doctor that will end her life?

The death of Maynard on November 3, five weeks short of her 30th birthday has triggered another debate on euthanasia. The Vatican has termed her death ‘absurd’. For others, she is a symbol of courage; the newest face of the right-to-die movement. She herself says: “Cancer is ending my life. I am choosing to end it a little sooner and in a lot less pain.”

Passive euthanasia — withdrawing life support and withholding food and sustenance for terminally ill people in a vegetative state — has been legal in India since 2011. There is no law yet, but on a petition filed by journalist Pinki Virani, the Supreme Court set out guidelines and this year asked for responses from state governments.

The anti-euthanasia lobby is fearful of misuse. What’s to stop the next-of-kin from hastening the death of a patient with a view to inheritance or wriggling out of mounting medical expenses? Even in cases where someone makes a ‘living will’ — sets out in writing that they don’t wish for life support — there is no answer to former Chief Justice RM Lodha’s query: “How to make this foolproof?”

The issue gets somewhat more complicated when you consider the astonishing advances in medical science — heart-lung machines and ventilators that keep clinically brain dead people ‘alive’ for months. When, as a World Health Organization (WHO) report points out, 87% of total health expenditure comes from private pockets and the public health system is hopelessly over-burdened, does prolonging the life of someone in an irreversible vegetative state make any sense at all — particularly when they themselves do not wish for it?

The thornier issue is active euthanasia, or how Maynard chose to end her life, which is illegal in most countries (just five states in the United States, Switzerland, Belgium, Netherlands and Luxembourg allow it in some form). Indian law criminalises even suicide — a law that really needs to go, but that is another story.

Surely, I have the right to choose whether I wish to endure prolonged suffering (and subject my family and loved ones to it) or not. Surely, the right to refuse treatment — should I be diagnosed with a terminal illness — vests in me. And surely, I don’t have to, like Maynard did until she took the decision to die, be forced to face a slow and tortuous end.

The right to life, guaranteed by our Constitution, is incomplete without the right to die. Individuals must be allowed to choose how to live their lives, or end them, without being judged by religious leaders or hampered by their country’s laws.

One in five suicides in India is the result of ailments like cancer, AIDS and paralysis, shows data compiled by the National Crime Records Bureau. This is not to imply that somebody who is disabled or suffers from AIDS does not have the right to live or the right to treatment. Legalising euthanasia is meaningless unless options for palliative care and hospices abound. Euthanasia cannot be allowed to become a ‘no option’ option.

But equally, we need to recognise that dignity means different things to different people. By choosing to end her life, Brittany Maynard becomes neither heroic nor a martyr. She simply remains a person in control of her life — and death.

namita.bhandare@gmail.com
Twitter:@namitabhandare
The views expressed by the author are personal

Behind an outsourced list of sexual predators is the story of a law that often doesn’t work in favour of the women it is supposed to protect

In January this year, the Indian National Bar Association published one of the largest surveys of some 6,000 people across India, 78% of whom were women. It found that 68% of victims avoided reporting workplace sexual harassment(HT photo/Arijit Sen)

I don’t like anonymous lists, that is lists that purport to name sexual predators compiled by one person on the say-so of other unnamed persons. I don’t like them because I subscribe to old school journalism (attribute, get-the-other-side, verify). I don’t like them because they legitimise all sorts of lists from ‘shameless women’ to ‘dog haters’. But mainly I don’t like them because I believe that women are better and must be better.

Having said that, I get it. I get why such a list exists. I get the rage, frustration, need to let off steam and just need to get even with the s-o-b.

And don’t even get me started on ‘due process’.

Here’s what happens to ‘due process’, and I am saying this after covering workplace sexual harassment even before the law was brought in 2013.

The woman complains that her boss has itchy fingers. If she’s lucky, her place of work is compliant with the law and has an internal committee (IC) that regularly undergoes training and includes one external member. If she’s part of the 90% that works in the unorganised sector that is supposed to be protected by the law, at least on paper, then her tale of woe ends right here.

The IC will summon the woman, as it must. Here’s what some have been asked in the very recent past – these are real questions, I am not making them up – do you drink, do you have a boyfriend, do you go to the Press Club?

In January this year, the Indian National Bar Association published one of the largest surveys of some 6,000 people across India, 78% of whom were women. It found that 68% of victims avoided reporting workplace sexual harassment.

It’s easy to see why. India’s test cases from TERI to Greenpeace India are a broken trail of twisted justice and disillusionment.

In almost every case that I am personally aware of, it is the woman who ends up quitting her job. Since she has stuck her neck out by filing a case, she’s tagged a ‘trouble-maker’ and can be almost certain that she will not get another job within the same profession.

Amongst many companies – though MNCs are better off – there is blithe ignorance about what constitutes sexual harassment at work (sorry boys, you may not pester a woman colleague for drinks after she says no to you even once). A 2015 EY survey jointly with FICCI found that 46% of companies surveyed did not have online training modules for new employees.

On a TV show recently, a male lawyer told me that there was no shortage of laws that protect women. Fine, I said, could he tell me how many convictions there had been with regard to the specific law against workplace sexual harassment? There was no response. Instead, he grumbled about how the law was being ‘misused’ by unscrupulous women employees. If only he had bothered to read it, he might have been aware of the provisions and punishments it contains for precisely this misuse.

When Maneka Gandhi, minister for women and child development, suggested that companies be required to disclose in their annual reports whether they were compliant with the sexual harassment law or not, her own cabinet colleagues told her that it would ‘require too much disclosure’.

And then they wonder why women are angry.

In the West, women are standing up and proclaiming, ‘J’accuse’ against powerful entertainment and media moghuls. In India, women who speak up are instantly labelled and hounded out of jobs. I know of two who tried to kill themselves.

Still wonder what makes us angry?

When powerful men accused of sexual harassment by multiple women file defamation suits to the tune of Rs one crore against one of the accusers and her lawyer, there is a chilling effect (as there is with defamation suits routinely filed by outed politicians).

Still wonder why we are furious?

When multiple surveys point out that women do not report sexual harassment out of fear of victimisation and lack of confidence in redressal mechanisms and companies do nothing to change the toxic masculinity that infects their places of work, do you wonder at all why we are mad?

There’s a list of 58 alleged academic predators out there. I’m sad it’s there. I disapprove of it. But I am not one bit surprised that it exists.

Namita Bhandare writes on social issues and gender. She tweets @namitabhandare

The views expressed are personal