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‘Groupers’ Plan for Sun and Sociability

March 26, 1976 by www.nytimes.com Leave a Comment

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OCEAN BEACH, Fire Island —It was a wretched day here last Sunday, with gusty winds and piercing rains and everything else that can go wrong on a March day, but nothing could deter the three young women from the city from seeing “Snug Cozy.”

The three—Karen Shevell, Deborah Joseph and Cher Goldman—were, performing the Manhattan singles’ rite of spring. They had driven out from the city on a miserable day, caught a crowded 1:15 P.M. ferry from Bay Shore on the mainland, and joined the hordes of other singles who were doing the same thing here—searching for a summer house they felt they could love.

And when the three saw “Snug Cozy,” it was love at first sight.

“It’s so cute,” said Miss Joseph, a 25‐year‐old secretary at a Manhattan advertising agency, as she looked around the weatherbeaten, gray‐shingled, casually furnished, four‐bedroom house, which was about a fiveminute walk from the beach. “The only thing that bothers me is that the shower is outside on the sundeck.”

Well, rarely does one find perfection in a rented singles’ summer house; roughing it is half the fun. And so the three young women decided to become “groupers” and take part shares in “Snug Cozy,” which means that for $375 each they will be allowed to spend every other summer weekend there, with a group of 13 other hopefully amiable “groupers,” no more than 8 of whom will be allowed per weekend.

It seems to happen about every March 1, a sort of panicky feeling among singles about how hot and stifling and unbearable it will be to spend the summer in the city. For many of them, the only affordable answer is to become a “grouper” and rent a share in a summer house.

Thus, for the last few weeks, thousands of them have been streaming out to the two most popular summer singles’ paradises—Fire Island and the Hamptons—to look over the available crop of summer houses. These houses rent for anywhere from $2,500 on up through $20,000, depending on size, proximity to the beach, and whether they include such amenities as a tennis court and/or swimming pool. Most, however, tend to hover in the $3,500 to $8,000 range.

What makes the singles run to these places?

“If I didn’t have a place to relax on the weekends, the pressures and the constant ‘on’ of the city would get to me after a while,” said Dr. Arthur Ashman, a divorced Manhattan dentist who was searching for a summer house to share in East Hampton last weekend.

The three young women visiting Fire Island said they had heard about “Snug Cozy” through two male friends who had signed the lease with their fingers crossed that they could get 14 other groupers to share the $6,000 rent.

“What appealed to me is that they said it would not be a crashing house, meaning no sleeping bags all over the floor or that whole scene,” Miss Joseph said. “And there won’t be any big deal about cooking in the house. Everybody’s on their own.”

Miss Goldman, 25, an administrative assistant in a Manhattan engineering firm, said she was looking forward to a good summer in “Snug. Cozy” too, despite the fact that she had recently met two young men bicycling in Central Park who told her, “All you get on Fire Island is drugs and sex.”

“All the Upper East Siders put you down if you go to Fire Island,” she said, somewhat defensively.

While the Hamptons may have more snob appeal in certain singles’ sets, being there is going to be a little harder this summer. The Town of East Hampton, for example, enacted an antigrouper ordinance last Oct. 1 that stipulates that no more than four unrelated people can share a summer house. Before, up to seven unrelated people could share a summer house, a rule that still applies in the Village of East Hampton.

The new ordinance is presently being challenged in Federal Court in Brooklyn.

Meanwhile, four young groupers huddled in the Red Lantern real estate agency in East Hampton the other day, trying to decide which of the houses they had seen that day would be their retreat for the summer. They finally rented a $7,000 house with five bedrooms and a swimming pool in the Village of East Hampton, which has the seven‐person limit.

“We plan to have 10 people on a weekend, oops, I mean seven,” said a smiling Lee Munzer, 32, of Westbury, L. I., a data consultant for the New York Telephone Company. Like many other groupers, he knows that the antigrouper ordinances are seldom enforced.

Mr. Munzer and his friends said they had decided to rent a summer house together again this year because they had been in a “fun and successful one” last year in nearby Amagansett.

“We really got along well last year,” Mr. Munzer said, “except for one girl who was on a diet. She had to eat oranges, grapefriuts, tangerines and salad, and she felt she wasn’t responsible for paying her share of the food bill. We felt she should because she used toilet paper, toothpaste and paper towels.

“We finally worked it out,” he said. “She kept her food in a paper bag with her name on it, and no one else touched it, and she paid half of a regular food share, and the other members absorbed the remaining half.”

Although finicky eaters have been known to cause havoc in a grouper house, the thing that can really ruin one, according to Marsha Kaplowitz, is two house members dating each other.

“It can be very sticky if the couple breaks up and then each one starts bringing other people out to the house,” said Miss Kaplowitz, a 28‐year‐old school teacher from Floral Park, Queens, who is a member of Mr. Munzer’s house and plans to spend her entire summer there. “It’s best to keep your dating in the city, and not go out with people you meet in the Hamptons until after Labor Day.”

According to veteran groupers, the most popular singles communities are Hampton Bays and Amagansett in the Hamptons, where a car is a must to get around, and Ocean Beach, Ocean Bay Park, Kismet and Davis Park on Fire Island, where cars are banned and islanders like it that way.

Many summer houses in these areas are filled through classified ads that run in The Village Voice under a heading called “summer shares,” and read something like this:

HAMPTON BAYS. Co‐ed summer house, ovt tennis ct., beach & dock. May 7.0ct. 1, S475 full. S275 half. Call Jim nites, 879–9732.

A call to Jim elicited the information that that very evening, 40 people who had answered the ad were getting together for “a five‐ or sixhour drink” with the eight returning members of the house. Afterwards the eight, whom Jim described as “very congenial professional people,” would decide which of the 40 they liked best, much in the manner of a fraternity blackball system.

“We have room for 12 new members,” said Jim, who in reality is James Rosasco, 33, a Manhattan engineer. “The hardest part is the weedingout process. You try to make as many apologies as you can.”

An economic analysis of that peculiarly economic institution

April 28, 1974 by www.nytimes.com Leave a Comment

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April 28, 1974 Buy Reprints

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Occasionally the digitization process introduces transcription errors or other problems; we are continuing to work to improve these archived versions.

If a more important book about American history has been published in the last decade, I don’t know about it. “Time on the Cross” is at once a jarring attack on the methods and conclusions of traditional scholarship and a lucid, highly readable analysis of the special American problem—black slavery. It isn’t going to make anyone with an established interest in the subject very happy, but then, that’s the point.

Vol. I: The Economics of American Negro Slavery. By Robert William Fogel and Stanley L. Engerman. 286 pp. Boston: Little, Brown and Company. $8.95.

Vol. II: Evidence and Methods—A Supplement. By Robert William Fogel and Stanley L. Engerman. 267 pp. Boston: Little, Brown and Company. $12.50.

Skim a few up‐to‐date American civic affairs textbooks and you’ll find a remarkable concurrence of opinion about the Peculiar Institution. Where liberal historians once felt obliged to accept Abolitionist propaganda at face value — Eliza on the ice floe—the current view paints a subtler picture of the horrors of slavery.

Bondage rarely meant a life of terror or malnutrition; the paternalistic self‐image of the Southern planter did not admit to sadism. Besides, slaves were too valuable as property to abuse capriciously. Instead the true crime of the system was its destruction of black culture and personal identity. Slaves were denied education, the chance for responsibility or advancement, the emotional protection of stable family life. Real resistance meant the rare, suicidal spasm of violence akin to peasant rebellions of the middle ages—a few days of looting and burning followed by inevitable repression. The only alternative was retreat to the Sambo role: act dumb and accidentally smash massa’s new plow on a rock, or leave the henhouse door for the foxes.

What makes this interpretation of the impact of slavery on black culture so seductive is that there’s something in it for everyone, radical to redneck. Marxists are happy with the image of an inefficient, feudal, Southern economy inevitably in conflict with the capitalist North. Others can select the part they like best. (Blacks are incompetent … but it’s not their fault.) The century from involuntary servitude to welfare dependence needs no messy intervening explanation.

Robert William Fogel and Stanley L. Engerman, economists by profession and iconoclasts by inclination, take a fresh look. They confirm the view that slaves were usually well provided with the necessities of life. The average slave diet lacked luxury foods—wheat, milk, beef—but was more than sufficient for health, even exceeding modern recommended nutrient levels. Clothing and housing appear poor by 1970’s standards; however there is no evidence that free white laborers did better. Medical care, beyond rudimentary sanitation and bedrest, did precious little good for anyone at the time. Slaves seem to have fared roughly as well as the rest of the population. Fewer slave women died in childbirth, though infant mortality was higher. Black life expectancy was shorter than that of white Americans in 1850 (explained by infant deaths), yet it was still much longer than United States city dwellers and equal to the average Northern European. All not very surprising for a society that treated slaves as capital; good businessmen oil their machines.

What is surprising is the general level of dignity accorded slaves in, other aspects of life. On the premise that property was sacrosanct, the law granted virtually no rights to slaves. They could be raped or abused at will, the only penalty for an owner being an occasional social snub from more enlightened neighbors. Yet Fogel and Engerman find no such pattern of abuse. Their remarkable calculation of the increase in mulattoes born during the 1850’s proves that not more than 8 per cent (and probably far fewer) could have been fathered by whites. Surveys of ex‐slaves early in the 20th century put the figure at 4½ per cent or less. Nor is there reason to believe that sexual promiscuity was encouraged among slaves—the averwoman had her first baby at 22.

Perhaps no image of slavery suggests the brutality of the institution as well as the slave auction—the sale of human beings like cattle, the arbitrary separation of families. Slave auctions are not an Abolitionist myth, but their incidence has been exaggerated. Only a small fraction of slaves were ever sold at all, and of the sales, less than 10 per cent involved children alone, less than one in eight separated couples. The great westward march of the cotton economy was largely accomplished, it appears, by the migration of entire households rather than through the slave trade.

The Sambo syndrome or passive resistance construct seems equally unbuttressed by evidence. Although obviously limited by their bondage, slaves had a reasonable chance for economic mobility—one male in four rose above the status of common laborer; many earned cash bonuses for extra work or were permitted to grow their own crops after hours. Slaves, of course, never became doctors or lawyers or professors. But research on 19th‐century New England towns suggests that free men born without property could expect no more in the land of opportunity. Most damning of all to the decadent‐master‐served‐by‐brooding‐chattel stereotype are the authors’ estimates of the relative efficiency of Southern and Northern agriculture. Southern farms west of the Appalachians squeezed 50 per cent more output from the same inputs of land and labor than the average Northern farm. And Southern farms with slaves did better than those without.

Historians are not likely to succumb to this new, new interpretation without a fight, though just what they will find to attack is unclear. “Time on the Cross” is a different kind of history; its conclusions are based on reams of fresh data and sophisticated mathematical techniques borrowed from economics. The authors spare the reader the pain of wading through their evidence and methods—they are contained in a separate volume. But those interested in criticizing the work are going to have to face the stuff graduate students in economics flunk orals on. It just won’t wash to feign moral outrage about quantitive whippings or about the number of slave women in brothels. Sometimes you do need a meteorologist to tell which way the wind blows.

Economists will generally be pleased with the book—most of us have always believed there was nothing wrong with history (or Sociology or political science) that a little economics couldn’t cure. The major findings, however—particularly the devastating conclusions on Southern agricultural efficiency —may be vulnerable to technical criticism. It’s not that Fogel and Engerman make errors; they are rather like prosecuting attorneys with a fine case who are nonetheless unwilling to cloud the jurors’ minds with ambiguity. That’s the way good history has always been written, though it surely leaves plenty of room for debate on the particulars.

No debate, however, is likely to obscure the basic achievement of “Time on the Cross.” Fogel and Engerman have with one stroke turned around a whole field of interpretation and exposed the frailty of history done without science. They force us to confront contemporary social failings instead of pushing them into the past. It’s comforting to believe that the mess we’ve made was inevitable, that a bunch of greedy 19th‐century cotton planters are really responsible. A pity history is so uncooperative. ■

UPSC Girl Toppers: Women bag top 4 ranks in civil services, 3 are from DU | India News – Times of India

May 24, 2023 by timesofindia.indiatimes.com Leave a Comment

UPSC CSE Final Results 2023:Ishita Kishore topped one of the toughest exams

NEW DELHI: Women secured the top four slots in Civil Services Exam 2022, with Delhi University graduates

Ishita aced the elite recruitment examination in her third attempt. Incidentally, she had failed to even clear the prelims stage in her first two attempts. “It’s definitely third time lucky for me,” she told TOI while adding that her persistence and willingness to review and correct the faults and gaps that caused her to fail earlier, finally being the reasons for her success. “I have been a national-level football player and was part of the Subroto Cup tournament. Being a sportsperson prepared me to deal with failures right from a young age.”

02:48

UPSC Civil Services Result: Ishita Kishore Secures All India Rank 1

This is the second year in a row that the top three slots have gone to women. It’s also a repeat of the performance of
Even in overall performance, women have shown remarkable improvement in the CSE 2022, the results of which were declared on Tuesday. Of the total 933 candidates recommended for appointment to various elite services like IAS and IPS, 320 or 34.2% are women. This is way better than 25.8% share of women among the recommended candidates based on CSE 2021, 28.5% in 2020, 23.8% in 2019 and 23.9% in 2018 and even the exams held earlier.
Among the top 25 candidates recommended this year, 14 are women and 11 men. In fact, women have taken up 12 of the top 20 slots.
PM Narendra Modi
Ishita, who did her BA (Hons) from Shri Ram College of Commerce here, had chosen political science and international relations as her optional subject. She spent two years working with Ernst & Young. “There was always this sense of duty in me, being the daughter of an IAF officer. The corporate job helped me evaluate my long-term plans and realise my passion for serving the nation by joining the civil services,” the 26-year-old told TOI , excited to be living her dream.
Calling herself a votary of women’s empowerment, Ishita said she was glad to be leading the four women who have topped the Civil Services Exam this year. Asked how she prepared for the exam, Ishita said her journey was tricky but defined by “consistency”. “I studied for 8-9 hours but also did not lose out on my social life. I prepared while taking time out for trips with friends and attending family weddings. I learnt how to make Madhubani paintings. All these hobbies helped me with mental resilience and balance in life,” she said.
No. 2 rank-holder Garima Lohia, who has graduated from Kirorimal College in DU, cleared the examination in her second attempt. While it was the fifth attempt for Uma Harathi N,
Mayur Hazarika
The top 25 successful candidates in CSE 2022 include graduates in disciplines like engineering, humanities, science, commerce and medicine from premier institutions like IIT, NIT, Gauhati Medical College and University of Delhi.
There are 41 persons with benchmark disability among the recommended candidates.
Over 11.3 lakh candidates applied for the CSE 2022, and only 5.7 lakh appeared in the examination. While 13,090 qualified for the Main Examination, 2,529 made it to the personality test stage. Of these, 933 were recommended for a total 1,022 vacancies, including 180 in IAS, 200 in IPS, 38 in IFS, 473 in Central Services Group ‘A’ and 131 in Group ‘B’ Services. A reserve list of 178 candidates was also declared as part of the final results on Tuesday.

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As India gets a new Parliament, a look at the history of the first legislative office, from a room to an institution

May 28, 2023 by indianexpress.com Leave a Comment

Roughly a century ago, when the foundation stone of the original Parliament House was laid, the building was an afterthought. In the new capital city of Delhi, the focus of finance and attention was the Governor-General’s (President’s) House.

The Council House was built to accommodate a newly created legislature. Legislative institutions have a long history in India. Under the charter given by the British government in 1601, the officers of the East India Company had the power to make laws. A council of the company’s senior officers carried out the corporation’s administration in Bombay, Madras and Calcutta. These settlements were independent, each with its committee, and their meeting venue was a room called the Council Chamber in the respective cities.

The company’s fortunes would wane, and in 1833, the British, through law, would strip the company of its trading rights. This law would also separate the executive and law-making functions of the Council and set up one Legislative Council for all British territories in India. Another legal change in 1861 would form a “central though rudimentary” legislative body.

The venue for this legislative body’s meetings was the Council Chamber on the first floor of the Government House in Calcutta. The Indian Penal Code of 1860, which defines crime and punishment in the country, was discussed and passed in this Council Chamber. The British constructed another Council Chamber in the viceregal residence in Shimla for the legislative council meetings when the government moved to the hill city in the summers. In 1911, King George V announced that the capital of British India would move to Delhi and laid the foundation stone for a new capital city. The move led to adding a Legislative Council chamber in the government secretariat building in old Delhi.

It also raised a question of whether there would be a separate building for the meetings of the Legislative Council in the new capital city. Till then, the Legislative Council was a unicameral body, and the strength of its membership had risen to 60 in 1909. Its meetings were held in the large council chambers in Calcutta, Shimla and Delhi.

Ideas for New Delhi’s Legislative Council Chamber

During the planning phase of the construction of the new capital city of Delhi, the British had no intention of having a separate building for the Legislative Council. In 1912, a House of Commons MP questioned this move. In his reply, the under-secretary for India, Edwin Montagu, stated that the Legislative Council would meet in a hall in a separate wing of the Governor-General’s official residence. However, Montagu favoured a separate building. Jane Ridley, the great granddaughter of British architect Edwin Lutyens, writes in his biography that both Lutyens and Montagu had urged Lord Hardinge, the first Governor-General of India, for a separate building for the Legislative Council. Hardinge had refused, stating, “No – I, as Governor General with my council, govern India, so it must be in my house!”

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As a result, in 1913, when Lutyens and Herbert Baker signed on to be the architects for the new capital city of Delhi, their brief only included the design of the ‘Government House (the present President’s House)’ and ‘Two principal blocks of Government of India Secretariats and attached buildings (North and South Block)’. As part of the Government House, they were to design a Legislative Council Chamber, a library and writing room, a public gallery and committee rooms.

A drawing of the proposed imperial legislative building in Delhi.

Six years later, constitutional reforms recommended by Montagu (and Lord Chelmsford, the Governor-General who succeeded Hardinge) led to the passing of the Government of India Act 1919. This law envisaged a bicameral legislature with a 60-member council of state and an elected legislative assembly with a strength of 140 members. It presented the planners of Delhi with the problem of finding a suitable building where the bicameral legislature could hold its deliberations.

The administration in Delhi made two proposals for temporary accommodation for the newly created institution. The first was outlandish, which was to house the legislative assembly in a shamiana (tent). The officers deciding the matter, however, rejected the proposal.

The other suggestion was to refurbish an existing building to house the legislature. The administration accepted this proposal and constructed a larger assembly chamber in the secretariat building in Delhi, and the Legislative Council held its meetings in the nearby Metcalf House. These were temporary arrangements, and Baker was tasked with designing the new Council House. The new building had to accommodate three legislative chambers, the assembly, the council and a council of princes (Narendra Mandal), which a royal proclamation established after the 1919 Act.

Coomi Kapoor writes | Coffee & Politics in Parliament’s Central Hall

The Original Plan

The committee responsible for the construction of the capital city of Delhi decided that the new building would be located at the base of Raisina Hill, below North Block. The plot of land for the new Council House was a triangle in shape. The need to accommodate three chambers and the form of the plot led Baker to design a triangular building. His design showed the three legislative chambers as the three wings of the building connected by a central dome.

In a letter to his wife, he described the proceedings as: “I gave Baker no trust and the design he put forward did not fit the site… One façade was a dreadful untidy arrangement and his excuse was that he had not worked on it but that it would be all right. I went for him and told the committee that Michelangelo could not make anything of it nor could God himself unless he worked by miracle and against the laws that govern the world.”

Baker original parliament plan Baker’s original floor plan of Parliament House. Had it gone through, India would have had a differently shaped Parliament building.

Baker submitted a lengthy memorandum to the committee, defending the triangular design. He also suggested an alternative site away from Raisina Hill for the Legislative Council building. He wrote, “The criticism of the previous triangular plan was that its form had been dictated less by the nature of the buildings than by the geometrical limitations of the site. The criticism applies with equal, if not greater, force to the present circular plan… and it is a matter for consideration whether this circular form of building, however beautiful it may be made in itself, will give distinct impression to the sentiment of the national Parliament which India will look for in this building.”

In the end, Lutyens convinced the committee for a complete redesign from a triangular to a circular building. A jubilant Lutyens wrote, “I have got the building where I want it & the shape I want it.” A dejected Baker using a cricketing metaphor told Lutyens that the committee had given him “out” and recast his winged triangular design to fit a circle. The final design had three semi-circular chambers and a big central hall for the library.

The Duke of Connaught, Prince Arthur, laid the foundation stone of the Council House building in 1921, and excavation of its foundation started a year later. The completed building has a diameter of 570 feet. It has a base of red sandstone, which is 22 feet high. On this base stands a colonnade of 144 columns, each 27 feet tall.

The construction required 3,75,000 cubic feet of stone quarried from Dholpur in Rajasthan and brought to Delhi by train. A circular track around the building brought the stone closer to the site. Inside the building, the marble used came from Gaya (Bihar) and Makrana (Rajasthan). The timber is from Assam, Burma and the southern part of the country.

Baker also gave special attention to the acoustics in the legislative chambers. A collaboration between architects, academics, a Nobel Prize-winning physicist and an engineer of Spanish origin brought acoustic clarity to the building. Forty thousand acoustic tiles were imported from the US and attached to the roof of the legislative chambers.

While the Council House was coming up in Delhi, a smaller building was also being constructed in the summer capital, Shimla. It was meant for the Legislative Assembly sessions held in the city in the summer months. The building was inaugurated in 1925 and is now the home of the Himachal Pradesh Legislative Assembly.

The New Circular Building

The much larger circular building in Delhi was inaugurated in 1927 by Governor-General Lord Irwin, who read a message from King George V. It stated, “The new capital which has arisen enshrines new institutions and a new life. May it endure to be worthy of a great nation and may in this Council House wisdom and justice find their dwelling place.” Baker presented Irwin with a golden key to open the building door at the inauguration. And the day after the inauguration, the Legislative Assembly started functioning from this building.

construction of parliament building Construction underway at the site of the old Parliament building. Credit: Royal Institute of of British Architects/Archives

The newly constructed Council House would run out of space in less than two years. An attic storey made from plaster (to save money) would be added to the circular building for offices for the growing assembly staff. The animosity that Lutyens had for Baker would raise its head again after the inauguration of New Delhi. Lutyens’ biography mentions that he would take revenge on Baker by manipulating publicity back home.

A young travel writer Robert Byron was hired by two influential British magazines to review the Delhi buildings. Byron, who was neither an architect nor an architectural historian, would severely criticise Baker’s design of the Council House. He described the building as “a Spanish bull-ring, lying like a mill-wheel dropped accidentally on its side”.

New Names for the Old

When India started on the path of Independence, the Council House became a hub of activity. The library in the centre of the building was renamed Constitution Hall. Benches were added to it to accommodate the 300-plus members of the Constituent Assembly, who would draft the country’s Constitution in this domed hall. In the legislative assembly chamber, the members of the Constituent Assembly legislative met to enact laws for a newly independent India.

Entrance of central hall parliament Entrance of the Central Hall of Parliament House. Express archive photo by RK Sharma, September 1991

The birth of a new nation requires space for its institutions. The chamber of princes was converted into a courtroom, and the Federal Court, and afterwards, the Supreme Court, would sit there till 1958. The Federal Public Service Commission, the predecessor to the Union Public Service Commission, also functioned from the circular building for a few years before moving out in 1952.

Independence also meant a change in terminology, and the Council House became Parliament House. There were other changes. After the Constituent Assembly completed its work, the Constitution Hall became Central Hall, a venue for MPs to interact and hammer out differences over tea and coffee. And, in 1954, the presiding officers of the two Houses changed the name of the House of People to Lok Sabha and the Council of State to Rajya Sabha .

Portraits on the Wall

When the Council House was built, its walls were bare as there was hardly any budget for its decoration. The first Speaker of Lok Sabha, Shri GV Mavalankar, appointed a committee to recommend a scheme for the decoration of the building. The committee recommended that the ground floor walls of the building be painted with murals depicting events from the country’s rich cultural heritage.

As part of its discussions, the committee also considered placing the statues of national leaders in the 50 or more niches on the ground and first floors of the Parliament. Following the committee’s report in 1953, work started on the murals. Artists from across the country painted 58 murals showcasing the idea of India from its inception to independence.

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The I.N.A. netaji Subhas Chandra Bose (1897 – 1945 A.D.)

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Depicting Gurudev Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941 AD)

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Rani Laxmi Bai of Jhansi and Tantya Tope, both riding side by side (19th century A.D.)

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Akbar, Todarmal, Tansen and Abul Fazal, Faizi and Abdur Rahim Khan -i-Khana in a court scene (16th century A.D.)

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Depicting Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj (1627 – 1680 A.D.) and Swami Samarth Ramdas (17th Century A.D.)

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Depicting Guru Nanak Dev Ji (1469–1539 A.D.) and Guru Gobind Singh Ji (1666–1708 A.D.)

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Gopala elected King by the People (9th Century A.D.)

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The dandi march, led by Mahatma Gandhi (1930 A.D.)

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Hoisting of the Tricolour at Red Fort, Delhi

Parliament House is also full of portraits and statues of personalities who have shaped the country’s history. In the Lok Sabha chamber, facing the Speaker’s Chair, is the portrait of Vithalbhai Patel, the first Indian presiding officer of the Central Legislative Assembly. Similarly, the Rajya Sabha chamber has one of Dr Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, the first chairman of the House. The lobbies of both Houses display the pictures/portraits of the presiding officer of the respective House.

The Central Hall of Parliament also doubles up as a portrait gallery. The first portrait to adorn it was that of Mahatma Gandhi in 1947, and the last in 2019 was that of Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee. All the paintings are gifts from individuals or associations who collected money for this purpose. For example, MPs contributed money for the portrait of Prime Minister Jawahar Lal Nehru, painted by the Russian artist Svetoslav Roerich.

There are 50 statutes in the Parliament complex, possibly the maximum outside of a museum in the country. Before 1993, only five statues (Motilal Nehru, Gopal Krishna Gokhale, B R Ambedkar, Lala Lajpat Rai and Sri Aurobindo) were in its precincts. In 1993, during the term of the minority government of Prime Minister Narasimha Rao, Lok Sabha Speaker Shivraj Patil revived the earlier plan of placing statues in Parliament.

rajendra prasad portrait parliament nehru indian express President S Radhakrishnan pressing the button to unveil a portrait of the late Dr. Rajendra Prasad in the Central Hall of Parliament House in New Delhi on May 5, 1964. Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru and Vice President Dr. Zakir Hussain are also seen. Express Archive Photo

He announced that a committee of senior parliamentarians had recommended the installation of figures of “the great sons and daughters of India.” The first one to be unveiled in 1993 was that of Mahatma Gandhi. This 16 feet statue of the Mahatma in a meditative pose is the preferred venue of protests by MPs during a parliamentary session. Since then, the statues of leaders from across the political spectrum have been installed in Parliament.

Christopher Benninger writes | A new address for India’s Parliament House

Update, Upgrade

In addition to the artwork and statutes, after Independence, the Parliament building also got a technological upgrade. A new sound system and brighter lighting were the first things to be installed. And, in 1957, the two Houses were equipped with an automatic vote counting machine. Because of the proximity in the seating of MPs in Parliament, the system was designed in such a way that MPs had to use both their hands while voting, the idea being that MPs should not be able to press the voting buttons of their colleagues who might not be present.

Before the new voting machine could be put to use, a problem was highlighted to the Speaker. One of the MPs was differently abled and had only one hand, and the machine required the use of both hands. The solution provided by the Speaker was that an officer of the House would help the MP vote. In this instance, much to the Speaker’s displeasure, rather than wait for the officer’s assistance, fellow legislators helped the MP cast his vote.

The iconic circular building gets the most attention. But it is not the only building in the Parliament complex. After Independence, there was an increase in legislative activity, and the Parliament needed more office space and committee rooms. In response, the Parliament Secretariat started the construction of a new building called the Sansadiya Soudha (Parliament Annexe).

The new building was positioned north of the Parliament House across Talkatora Road. President VV Giri laid the foundation of this building in August 1970. Speaking on the occasion, the Minister for Housing and Urban Development, KK Shah, recalled that Speaker Ganesh Vasudev Mavalankar had first mooted the idea of a new office building in 1952.

Shri Shah said, “His [Shri Mavalankar] was an imaginative plan for three separate buildings on three plots adjoining the Parliament House — one for the Parliamentary Parties/Groups and individual Members, second for the Parliamentary Library and Auditorium, and a third for housing the Committee rooms and their offices and the Secretariat for the two Houses — all of them forming part of the Parliament Estate.”

In his vote of thanks, Speaker GS Dhillon revealed that during the design stage of the Annexe building, there was a plan to build a subway underneath Talkatora Road and connect it to Parliament House. Prime Minister Indira Gandhi approved the proposal. The planners also investigated the feasibility of having a monorail or a mobile walk within the subway. Prime Minister Indira Gandhi inaugurated the Annexe building in 1975.

The subway plan never materialised, and MPs had to cross the busy road to access either building. After the 2001 Parliament attack, the section of Talkatora Road that separated the two buildings was included in the grounds of Parliament.

In 1987, Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi laid the foundation stone of the next building in the Parliament complex called the Sansadiya Gyanpeeth (Parliament Library). President KR Narayanan inaugurated it in 2002. The Parliament Library, located in the circular building, shifted to a modern purpose-built space in this new building. The original calligraphed copies of the Constitution, kept in airtight nitrogen-filled cases in the circular building, were also moved to a special room inside the library building. When office space in the Annexe ran out, an extension was built, and Prime Minister Narendra Modi inaugurated it in 2017.

Signs of Age

The Parliament building is now in its 97th year and has started showing visible signs of age and neglect. For many years, there were unplanned changes to the structure. Empty spaces were converted into offices, claimed for storage or became dumping grounds for unrequired material. The condition was much worse on the upper floor of the building, away from the public eye. Former Secretary General of Rajya Sabha, Vivek Agnihotri, said he was “dumb-struck by the conditions in which several lower-level officers and staff members were accommodated on the second floor of the main building.” He stated, “The total ambience looked somewhat vandalised on account of various ad hoc additions and so-called improvements made to the structure within.”

Lack of proper maintenance has also contributed to the distress in the building. In its 1986 report, a Parliamentary committee was scathing in its criticism of the Central Public Works Department, which is responsible for the maintenance and upkeep of the heritage structure. The committee observed, “In a period of less than 60 years, which is a short span in the life of a historical and prestigious building of the stature of Parliament House, the edifice has developed ugly scars when viewed minutely. Though the imposing massive structure still looks very sturdy from outside, it has been shaken to its very foundation by the inexplicable and inexcusable neglect, apathy and carelessness shown by the CPWD in its proper and much needed maintenance.” The committee then went out to detail serious issues related to the building.

Parliament house repair work Repair and refurbishing work underway at Parliament House in New Delhi ahead of a new Lok Sabha term. Express Photo by Tashi Tobgyal, May 2019.

But what was known only to insiders started coming out in the open after a series of mishaps. In June of 2009, a part of the ceiling of the ground floor office of Petroleum Minister Murli Deora collapsed. Storing LPG cylinders for the canteen on the floor above the office caused the incident. This newspaper reported that the Deputy Chairman of Rajya Sabha observed, “It is a matter of grave concern and carelessness that in the Parliament House, a heritage building, this kind of incident was allowed to happen.” He went on to state, “Similarly, the damage of the structure due to water seepage is also a serious issue, and if immediate action to shift the canteen and wash area is not taken, it may have serious implications, including the safety of the occupants in the offices on the ground floor.”

Over the years, there have also been minor incidents of fire and multiple incidents of foul smell due to blocked sewer lines and air conditioning ducts. More recently, in 2012, the proceedings of the Rajya Sabha were interrupted for half an hour due to a stench in the House. These incidents led to Meira Kumar, the then Lok Sabha speaker, stating that the parliament building was “weeping”. The next Speaker, Sumitra Mahajan, echoed similar views when she wrote to the Urban Development Ministry that the iconic circular building showed “signs of distress”.

The roughly 100-year-old Parliament House is now ready to pass the baton to its newer counterpart next door. This time, things are a little different. The new Parliament is the cynosure of all eyes and the focus of the Central Vista redevelopment. Hopefully, it will continue to be a forum for passionate debate for the next hundred years.

BARRY LOPEZ, A WRITER STEEPED IN ARCTIC VALUES

March 29, 1986 by www.nytimes.com Leave a Comment

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One winter afternoon, in a village in the Northwest Territories, Barry Lopez was speaking to a 70-year-old Eskimo who was trilingual – in addition to his native Inuktitut, he also knew French and English. Aware that Mr. Lopez had come there as a writer, the Eskimo asked him in English how long he planned to stay. Then he smiled, and, illustrating his point by counting on his fingers, the Eskimo politely answered for him:

”One day – newspaper story. Two days – magazine story. Five days -book.”

”The point he made was not lost on either of us,” Mr. Lopez said one recent morning in his native Manhattan as he carefully constructed his well-seasoned stories. ”Over the years, the Eskimo had seen journalists and photographers drop into his village for a few days, pick up a little local color, and then leave with what they thought was an understanding of the way of life up there. It took me more than one visit – I’ve been to the Arctic about 12 times – to begin to understand the rhythm of their lives and the nature of the hunt, to respect and be respected as an individual by the Eskimos.”

In the last seven years, Mr. Lopez, who is 41 years old, has spent long stretches of time among the Eskimos, traveling with wildlife biologists, archeologists, petroleum geologists, landscape painters and the Eskimo hunters themselves. His highly regarded book, ”Arctic Dreams: Imagination and Desire in a Northern Landscape,” recently published by Scribner’s, is the work of a seeking observer, who in the previously acclaimed ”Of Wolves and Men” proved the originality of his thinking about man, nature and the animal world. Some Fundamental Questions

Mr. Lopez said that in ”Arctic Dreams” he wanted to seek the answers to several fundamental questions: ”The influence of the Arctic landscape on the human imagination. How a desire to put a landscape to use shapes our evaluation of it. Confronted by an unknown landscape, what happens to our sense of wealth? Is the Arctic a place to have red-blooded adventures and to make a fortune? Or is it a place where there is a good family life, where people become imbued with an intimate knowledge of their homeland, and live at moral peace with the universe?”

He discovered that few outsiders had much knowledge of the Eskimo language beyond the conversational – and that it was ”nonsense” to consider our culture sophisticated and theirs naive.

”Once,” he recalled, ”after a walrus hunt on St. Lawrence Island, I was sitting in the house of a young Eskimo and we were talking ordinary Field and Stream stuff – about bullets, machine parts, animals, food. Then our conversation drifted off into more abstract ideas. Suddenly, he asked me if I was familiar with Abraham Maslow – and he began to explain his theories of self-actualization. I realized that here was a man who had read the intellectuals of my culture in English. In order to help me to understand his culture, he was applying someone from my culture to talk about how people found themselves in hunting and community.”

This notion of community emerged again and again, he said, in his sojourns with Eskimos across the Arctic expanse. Where Wisdom Reveals Itself

”Isumataq – that’s the Eskimo word signifying a sense of community,” Mr. Lopez said. ”It means a person who creates an atmosphere in which wisdom reveals itself. What we would call graciousness and individual regard. The Eskimos do not think that one person has all the wisdom. There is not an apex with one guy sitting at the top and telling the others what to do.

”I remember being out on a hunt in bad weather when the ice opened up and it became dangerous. The Eskimos came together from different places and shared each other’s information about how to handle the crisis. One remembered what his father had told him when caught in a similar situation, another what had happened in a different location under similar conditions. Only after they’d pooled their knowledge did they proceed. If your life is at stake, then you act together. You have an intense feeling of regard for other people, the land and family.”

Mr. Lopez does not carry a rifle and does not himself hunt when he accompanies the Eskimos. He does pitch in with the physical chores of the hunting group. ”I do not do the killing,” he said. ”It would be presumptuous of me because I have no long-term relationship with the walrus, seals and caribou.”

Wasn’t this a rather metaphysical explanation?

”Not to the Eskimos,” he said. ”The act of hunting, of taking an animal’s life, is the center of a religious experience. When the animal comes toward the man, they believe, and you come to understand, the man must behave in a certain way. The animal decides to feed you and your family and you owe that animal respect. It’s an extremely powerful feeling.” ‘A Pinup Approach to Nature’

While ”Arctic Dreams” includes maps and a striking jacket painting of a snow-covered landscape, there are no photographs. Mr. Lopez said, ”I used to take pictures, but I haven’t since September of ’81, when I had an encounter with a young male polar bear which changed my mind. This was in the seas north of the Bering Straits. My natural reaction was to put on a telephoto lens and shoot. After I did, I had misgivings. I had the advantage over the bear. Pushing against his space was an act of harassment.

”I got back to the ship and lay down on my bunk and realized that I had entirely missed the bear. Then I forced myself to remember every move the bear had made, whether his head turned left or right, how far he swam, how long he hesitated before he got up on a piece of ice. I decided that photographing that polar bear was a sort of pinup approach to nature. I decided never again to let the camera come between me, the animal and the landscape.”

Mr. Lopez said that natural history was a way for him to illuminate human dilemma. On a small scale, that even applied to his own problem of note-taking while with the Eskimos. He did so only at the end of the hunting day, alone.

”The Eskimos want what you say about them to be accurate,” he said. ”Even more, they want to have a discussion with mutual regard. They really don’t like it when they are out hunting and a white man is writing things down on paper. Some of the Eskimos don’t expect you to know anything about their ways. If they understand that you have a genuine interest about what they’re doing, what they’re trying to say, it doesn’t matter whether you, or they, are educated. Sometimes I have left my notebook open in their houses and walked away to show that I had nothing to hide. The main thing is that, when you’re traveling with Eskimos, especially on a food hunt, you’ve got to pay attention, you must allow the landscape to tutor you.” A Writer, Not a Naturalist

Mr. Lopez, who considers himself a writer, not a naturalist, was born in New York City. He grew up in Mamaroneck, in Westchester County, lived with his parents on East 35th Street in Manhattan while going to Loyola, a Jesuit prep school, then continued his studies at Notre Dame.

”At the university I learned two things – anthropology and natural history – that served as the underpinning for my writing,” he said. Today, he lives with his wife, Sandra, in a rural logger’s house in the woods on the edge of a river in Oregon.

He finds that coming to New York when a new book is published – especially after spending time in the great expanse of the Arctic – can be a strange experience. But it also causes him to think about the similarities and contrasts between people and places on earth.

Surprisingly, Mr. Lopez said: ”The Eskimo has compassion for the white person in his environment. They think of us as people in great pain because of the way we have managed to become lonely. They are very sophisticated in their subtle perceptions of other human beings. They reinforced my own perceptions: We cannot mistake cleverness for eloquence, encyclopedic knowledge for intelligence, divisions between the primitive and the wise in human behavior.”

The final line in Mr. Lopez’s book, when he is standing alone on an island in the dark, silent Arctic, goes: ”I was full of appreciation for all that I had seen.”