THE FALL AND RISE OF DEVON

Ann Kalayil, Director of SAAPRI

Padma Rangaswamy, Director of SAAPRI

A view of the main Devon Avenue with all the South Asian restaurants and shops.



The meeting in progress at the Indo-American Centre after the release of the SAAPRI report.

On Devon Avenue in Chicago you can find anything for a South Asian wardrobe or kitchen - from a sequined saree to sweet paan, it’s all available here. What you can’t find though is parking. And that is having a huge negative impact on this once prosperous neighbourhood.

Susan Patel, who runs Patel Brothers Handicrafts and Utensils on Devon Avenue said, “Businesses have grown but infrastructure on Devon has not.” That in turn is now impacting the growth of business. The parking problem is just the most obvious in a whole range of issues facing the community.

For years all sides have complained - residents about the shop owners and shop owners about each other and the police. Resentment was building up but no serious dialogue took place. However, the ice is starting to thaw a little as all sides realize they could use each others help.

That participatory approach was on display at the Indo-American Centre on 19th June at the meeting of the West Rogers Park community of which Devon Avenue is a part. Perhaps for the first time nearly 60 residents from ethnically diverse backgrounds and a few South Asian business owners got together. The occasion was the release of the South Asian American Policy and Research Institute’s (SAAPRI) report titled ‘Developing Devon: Creating a Strategic Plan for Economic Growth through Community Consensus’ It forced all stake holders to sit down together and discuss the neighbourhood’s problems.

Ann Kalayil, Director of SAAPRI has lived in Devon since 1972. She said, “You cannot look at resolving the problems on Devon Avenue without residents.” Deb Rigoni, who has lived there for 28 years said, “We’ve felt that they (South Asian business owners) don’t care about what we care about but that’s not the case.”

Having brought people together, K.Sujata, Director of SAAPRI announced, “Now that you’re here, we’re going to make you work.” The audience was broken up into four groups which the report identified as areas for improvement - building leadership, improving infrastructure, promoting business development and creating a better place to live and work. It was the beginning of a dialogue.

But besides the talk, real action has already been taken. The local chamber of commerce had started addressing many of the problems identified in the report. One of its priorities is to educate business owners about the various funding opportunities available to improve their stores. Amie Zander, Executive Director at the West Ridge Chamber of Commerce said, “When I first used to go to the South Asian stores to tell them about the Chamber and that we were there to help, people would immediately have their guard up. I guess they didn’t have such government funded bodies to help in India or Pakistan and so it just didn’t occur to them to come take our help.”

For instance, the chamber launched the Small Business Improvement Fund or SBIF which offers up to 50,000 dollars to shop owners to remodel and spruce up their establishments. Less than a block away, Seyedisa Hashimi was cutting fresh meat for an Indian customer who watched Udit Narayan crooning on TV while waiting for his order. Hashimi opened his halal meat store seven months ago. Neither had he heard of the Chamber, nor the opportunities for funding.

That’s precisely the gap SAAPRI hopes to fill. Padma Rangaswamy, Director of SAAPRI said, “Our contribution has been to alert people about what resources they have.”

Even as common infrastructure problems have been addressed, an organized South Asian voice was missing. That changed in March this year when Susan Patel witnessed the harassment of a driver by the police right outside her store. She said, “This man was pulled over and there was a larger police presence in a very negative way. There was no cultural sensitivity.” She took photographs of the incident and called a meeting with the police commander. Since then the group she started called the Concerned South Asian Business Owners of Devon is actively tackling the infrastructure problems and business challenges confronting them. She said, “There was so much that we agreed upon but noone was doing anything about it.”

And they need to because the present gritty feel of a deteriorating neighbourhood is putting people off. Rachna Wadhwani who lives in the heavily South Asian populated suburb of Schaumberg said, “Walking around Devon you don’t get that good feeling. Everything looks shabby and run-down.”

Besides, she doesn’t even need to come to Devon anymore because a plethora of South Asian grocery stores and restaurants have opened up in her neighbourhood.

Devon business owners now realize that they need to get more creative if they have to bring people back. Most people are proud of the ethnic diversity of the area with Hindus, Muslims, Jews and Irish-Catholic from different parts of the world living there. Shop owners realize that one way to improve business is to exploit that feature.

But it has been surprisingly difficult. Deb Regoni stood up at the meeting and said, “I don’t feel well-schooled about this neighbourhood. There are certain stores where I feel I’m in the way. So we need to get back out on to the street and be like old communities used to.” Another senior citizen remarked to her, “Chicago is a community of individual conglomerates.”

That idea got immediate traction and neighbourhood tours are proposed. Rohit Maniar, Vice President of the National Republic Bank of Chicago on Devon said, “If we have a tour of the residents and they are introduced to the merchants both sides will feel easy.”

Alderman Bernard L. Stone said, “I don’t see any pessimism along the street. I see a lot of enthusiasm in spite of generally a pall over the entire country.” Whether that’s true or not Devon’s South Asian business community is certainly starting to organize to improve business because hard times are calling for urgent action.


Published in India Abroad in the July 4th issue.

APNA GHAR WALKATHON

Participants at the walkathon cool off in the grass at Lincoln Park.

Kanta Khipple seated under the shade of a tree as the walkathon started. She is one of the early founders of Apna Ghar. Now in her mid-seventies, she recently started a programme at Apna Ghar for elderly women victims of abuse.

“I have a personal story. When I came to the US 25 years ago, my husband used to abuse me.” But reluctant to discuss anymore, she (name withheld) disappeared into the crowd of blue T-shirts gathered at Lincoln Park.

On a bright and typically windy morning in Chicago, nearly 200 people from different parts of South Asia got together for the “Stride Against Violence.” Most of them wore the event organiser’s blue T-shirts with this message on the back. In its second year, the walkathon and fundraiser was organized by Chicago-based Apna Ghar, a shelter for victims of domestic abuse. As honorary event chair, Illinois State Senator Heather Steans also joined the walk along with her husband.

There was a carnival-like atmosphere with lion dancers spicing things up before the walk. After a quick session of stretches the walkers set out at 9.30 on June 8^th on a 5 kilometre route, to the sound of drum-beats around the Lincoln Park area.

As the crowd took off, sitting on a chair, under the shade of a tree, Kanta Khipple smiled proudly. “In our culture we don’t speak about domestic violence. We tend to tolerate it,” she recalled. “But today we are preventing drastic abuse.”

Kanta Khipple and Prem Sharma, still with the organization, are part of the original founding five members of Apna Ghar. The idea was developed after Prem Sharma set up an Indo-Crisis hotline in 1984 to answer calls from women in distress. “At the time I had no idea how prevalent domestic violence was. But with our answering service we documented each and every call and found that it was very high,” said Prem Sharma.

They also found that women from South Asia would visit existing shelters but because of difference in language, food and culture, they would leave mainstream American shelter homes in just a few days. To serve all these needs, Apna Ghar was started in 1989.

The walkathon has become an important event in the fundraising calendar of the organization. Apna Ghar’s development director, Sharmila Kana said, “I think we have managed to raise approximately 20,000 to 25,000 dollars from the walkathon.”

After the walk, participants sat around in the grass at Lincoln Park cooling off, snacking and enjoying a lovely summer day. In a tent with a stage the entertainment programmes were rolled out for them. It included tap dancing, bhangra, a lottery and even henna amongst other things. Even a few curious residents of Lincoln Park stopped by briefly to watch.

Close-by in the registration tent the impending rain was providing some clues as gusts of wind kept blowing papers and empty water bottles off the table. As the year’s second fund-raiser was drawing to a close, Rehmah Sufi, a development associate said, “The federal government is cutting social service funding and we are trying to figure out how best to respond to this.”

Prem Sharma remarked, “Right now we are 80% dependent on the government and 20% on funding. We need to change that.”

Apna Ghar offers a range of services to its clients who are distressed women victims of physical, mental, emotional and sexual violence at home. It operates a 24 hour helpline, a shelter home, transitional housing along with a range of rehabilitation services and legal services. It has recently even started taking in elderly women who are victims of neglect. The need for these services has not gone down. Munching a sandwich, Neelam Kacker, the Treasurer said, “It is a bottomless pit and we need help all the time.”

One female participant said after the walk, “I support this cause because I was also once a victim.”

As the day drew to a close, dark clouds appeared over Lincoln Park. When the last thank you was said by compere Sharmila Kana, and the crowd began to leave, almost on cue, the rain suddenly started to come down in big, heavy drops, drawing to a close an event that raised money to help the stigmatized but brave women who left their homes after suffering domestic violence.

Published in India Abroad. in the June 20th, 2008 issue.

ROLE OF CASTE IN CONTEMPORARY POLITICS

“A process has begun where caste might be losing its salience in Indian politics.” This was the core argument that Professor Suhas Palshikar made to a small group of research scholars and professors on South Asia at the University of Chicago.

He was invited to speak on the complex subject of ‘Making sense of caste-politics interaction in contemporary India’ and he did it crisply; gently hand-holding his audience for an hour through the different elements he wove into his talk. It was a well-distilled laying out, of all the things we actually don’t know about the great churning going on in Indian politics of 2008.

Professor Palshikar is also the co-director of Lokniti – a comparative democracy programme of the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies in New Delhi. The programme’s greatest contribution to political science has been their study of Indian elections since 1995-96. Believe it or not, between 1971 and 1996 there is hardly any data available to thrown light on social changes.

That’s perhaps why he says that the wrong questions are being asked by Indian political scientists. For instance, he says, “There are changes taking place in the experiential nature of caste due to urbanization.” He also draws attention to the changing Dalit image of the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP). He points out, “The BSP these days talks about being a ‘sarvojan samaj’ party, which means a party for the whole society. They are no longer a party just for Dalits.” Professor Palshikar presented these ideas to underscore the as yet unexplored question, “Is caste influencing politics today in the traditional manner that it did in the 1960s and 70s?”

A rattling door that refused to shut tight didn’t seem to distract his audience. He held their interest throughout; making a point-by-point progression with pre-emptive clarifications to questions that might’ve popped up in the listener’s mind. Explaining why caste alone can’t be the framework within which Indian politics can be examined, he cites a small study conducted in his home base of Pune. He says, “Out study found that barring Dalits, in no other caste group are more than 40% practicing the same occupation as their father or grandfather.” He cites that as an extremely important statistic because it indicates that “the internal material interests of caste groups may be disintegrating” since the majority have experienced some form of upward mobility. The caveat he adds quickly is that this is true of Pune and could be different elsewhere which in turn shows how valuable a worms-eye view can be. “There has been an over-emphasis on creating macro-level data when what we might really need is constituency level information which we don’t have at the moment.”

In his analysis, political parties with national aspirations have had to evolve from appealing only to caste-identities because the politics of reservations and social justice eventually reach a dead-end. He says, “Now we are witnessing that caste-appeal becomes inadequate,” an assertion that is of a piece with BSP leader and Prime Ministerial aspirant Mayawati’s new inclusive “sarvojan samaj” message. He substantiates his claim by saying, “That’s why Mulayam Singh Yadav of the Samajwadi Party who appealed strongly to the Yadav community in Uttar Pradesh could not make much headway in Maharashtra because there are no Yadavs there. That’s why it is complicated for the two national parties, the Congress and Bharatiya Janata Party, to come up with any uniform caste-based strategy.”

But even as the national stage requires the de-emphasis of caste, Professor Palshikar points to a curious trend of the caste identity becoming more accentuated in cultural life with the formation of caste-based associations. He says, “Apart from acting as pressure groups demanding seats and reservations for their communities, they also act as gate-keepers, ensuring that young people marry within the community. Furthermore, they are demanding greater cultural space for their caste by demanding statues and renaming of libraries etc. after their caste heroes.” And interestingly enough they also perform some economic functions like a caste-based barbers association which fixes the amount that they will charge customers!

Overlaying the occupational and social changes taking place within Indian society and inside caste groups with the evolution of political parties themselves Professor Palshikar left his audience with a set of questions to frame their enquiry on Indian politics. “To what extent will caste be an effective unit of mobilization? And to what extent does caste constitute a unit that actually defines the interests of various groups in society?”

He says, “Region, religion, caste, material interests inter-weave in such a complex manner and at such different levels that we need to find out then where the contemporary moment in Indian politics lies?”

Rochana Majumdar, an associate professor at the University of Chicago and a historian says, “Palshikar offered new materials on the everyday operation of caste in contemporary India which opened up a whole new set of questions for researchers of Indian history, politics and anthropology.”

Unfortunately, scientific polling data on elections started only as late as 1996 leaving a bit of a gaping hole for researchers. What is clear though is that the notion that Indian politics begins and ends with caste needs to be discarded immediately.

Published in India Abroad in the May 30th, 2008 issue as well as on Rediff.com