International Arbitration Dissertation Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words

International Arbitration - Dissertation Example The Second Chapter deals with the research methodology adopted in this work. A doctrinal approach was followed in this research work. The Third chapter provides a Literature Review. In this chapter, many case studies were included to examine the effectiveness of investment arbitration. Moreover, scholarly reports and extant literature on the topic were scrutinised. The Fourth Chapter deals with a discussion of the findings and the fifth chapter deals with conclusions. Ambiguity in the interpretation of the treaty provisions, lack of expertise in ministries in case of developing countries, bias on the part of the arbitrator are some of the reasons identified for the lack of success of investment arbitration. Shortcomings with International Investment Arbitration Chapter 1 – Introduction Investment treaty arbitration is significantly different from other types of arbitration. In investment arbitration, the arbitrator is empowered to make decisions that are final. This type of ar bitration brings to the fore a number of issues relating to impartiality and independence. In the other types of arbitration, the final decision is taken by the court.1 As is well known, the courts enjoy independence from private and state power. Such independence is promoted by providing judges with a secure tenure, precluding outside remuneration and the adoption of an objective procedure of assigning cases. These factors are conspicuous by their absence in investment arbitration. As a consequence, it is not uncommon for these arbitral awards to be influenced by inappropriate factors. 2 These safeguards do not find a place in investment treaty arbitration. A class of inappropriate influences is that related to the career and financial interests of arbitrators. These arbitrators do not have secure tenure and engage in remunerative activities that are external to their role as adjudicators. 3 The independence and impartiality of the investment arbitral process is crucially dependent on the existence of openness. In the absence of transparency, it become difficult if not impossible to confirm the integrity and fairness of the decision making process. 4 Arbitrations related to investment treaties emerge from bilateral and multilateral treaties formed between countries to promote foreign investment. In general, such treaties incorporate provisions for settling disputes between a private foreign investor and the host nation by arbitration, under public international law. 5 Contemporary international arbitration is widely believed to have commenced with the Jay Treaty of 1974. This treaty was entered into by the US and Great Britain. Private international arbitration had not developed during that epoch and there was a predominance of international arbitral commissions.6 Subsequently there was an increase in instances of private international commercial arbitration. However, this system of arbitration has not yet developed to any significant extent. Wider acceptance of this method of dispute resolution could render it more transparent. Such arbitration views confidentiality as a significant feature of the dispute resolution. Accordingly, if the parties are in favour of keeping their dispute resolution confidential, then they have to incorporate relevant clauses in their arbitration contract. 7 Another method of ensuring confidentiality is to make a reference in

Reflective Cycle by Gibbs Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 3250 words

Reflective Cycle by Gibbs - Essay Example Scott and Ely (2008) suggest that the purpose of reflection in nursing practice is to develop awareness of how and what can be learned from new experiences. One of the models of reflection will provide the framework for this essay. There are several models of reflection but the reflective model I have chosen is Gibbs Reflective Cycle (Gibbs 1988), with which I am familiar and I find it to be the most clear and concise than the other choices. The Gibbs Reflective Cycle (Gibbs 1988) will be applied throughout the essay to facilitate analytic thought and to assist in evaluating and relating theory to practice where possible. I have chosen to reflect on violence and aggression towards nurses in relation to patients with mental health and alcohol dependence issues. I will attempt to explore the elements that trigger violence and aggression. Besides, I will also dwell on the strategies that nurses may adopt in response to violence and aggression. This reflection will also include literature search and its detailed discussion. According to Jasper (2003), the Gibbs Reflective Cycle consists of the following stages: description, feelings, evaluat ion, analysis, conclusion and an action plan (Gibbs 1988). Therefore, I will begin with the first stage of Gibbs (1988) Reflective Cycle which necessitates a description of events. A pseudonym will be used to maintain anonymity and confidentiality as laid out by the Nursing and Midwifery Council (2010) in their standards of conduct for nursing students. The event occurred whilst I was undertaking a practice placement in the Accident and Emergency Department, where there was a high turnover of emergency patients. Miss March was a 42 years old patient, and suffering from depression and alcohol dependence and was prescribed medication for her depression. She was admitted to the department following an incident at home in which she had taken too many of her prescription drugs whilst under the influence of alcohol. I had not met or had any interaction with Miss March as I had been assigned to another area of the department for the morning. Miss March had already been stabilised in the resuscitation room and was just arriving in the area I was wo rking in. I noted that she was confused and she appeared to be drowsy. My mentor told me that Miss March, while being moved, had an episode of urinary incontinence and asked if I would wash and change the patient. My mentor also asked to me to deal with this without delay as during assessment there were small areas of red, chafed skin found around Miss March’s vaginal area. Therefore, her skin integrity was already compromised. Before going ahead, I took a few minutes to read Miss March’s nursing notes and found a history of verbal challenging behaviour but no indication of any physical violence. Having collected the necessary equipment I made my way to Miss March’s cubicle to assist her in washing and changing. Miss March was sitting on the edge of the bed and I explained the reason for my visit. I continued to talk to her as I positioned everything to assist her but she did not respond in any way. Just as I lifted the wet sheet from the top of the bed to put i t in the clear bag I had brought with me, Miss March yelled abuses at me then raised her arm to hit me. I attempted to reassure her

BT Company: Business Analysis Report and SWOT

BT Company: Business Analysis Report and SWOT Part 1: Understanding the business 1. Suggest the income streams and costs that may be appropriate to an organisation in your sector. The main income streams for the telecommunication industry is the revenue achieved through the usage of their services. Originally those services were limited to the provision of telephone communication using landlines. Today, the communication industry has expanded the number of services that it provides into mobile, VoIP, internet and other communication. The majority of the revenue can come from any one of those different services. For example, in 2005 BT had 75% of its revenue coming from their traditional services, but in 2006 this number decreased to 68%. Instead the company received an increased amount of revenue from it’s â€Å"New Wave† services, such as networked IT services, broadband, mobility etc. The mobile telecommunications provider such as Vodafone gets the most of its revenue from the tariffs that it charges its customers for using their mobile phones. However, the mobile telecommunication has also expanded into the provision of other services such as messaging and data and information provision. The largest cost for any communication company is the maintenance of the business. This cost can consist of staff costs, contractor wages, operational costs etc. Main contributor will depend on the company. For example, BT identifies ‘other operational costs’ as its main contributor to the overall cost of maintaining the business, representing 35%. The ‘other operating costs’ include the cost of supporting the network IT services, maintenance and support of the networks, costs of accommodation and marketing and general overheads (BT, 2007, p. 34). 2. What measures of performance are applicable to the industry? The majority of the industry has a few fundamental performance measures. The prime measure is the satisfaction of their customers. This is not surprising considering the competitiveness of the industry, the ease with which customers can change providers and the fact that the companies’ profits are based on the volume of customers. The other measures can include the satisfaction of the company’s employees. The industry that is so customer focused tries to provide them with as much human contact as possible (as long as it is profitable). Therefore the industry employs a large volume of employees. Satisfied employs are more likely to make sure that the customers are happy with the service that they are getting, allowing the companies to stay competitive. For example, BT has four performance measures regarding the satisfaction of their employees: employee engagement index, diversity, HS: loss time injury rate and HS: sickness and absence rate. Other performance measures can include: the satisfaction of the suppliers; investment in the community; protection of the environment; digital inclusion and sustaining integrity. In order to measure those performance measures, the company engages a number of internal indices. Some of those indices are much easier to measure, for examples the number of complaints that the company receives, the others are more difficult, such as measuring the integrity of the employees. The majority of the companies employ surveys in order to measure the more difficult quantifiable factors. 3. Construct a Value Chain for a company within the industry. The value chain has been developed by Michael Porter in 1985. The method divides the organization into the activities that is performs and them links them to the company’s competitive position. Porter (1985) argued that only by separating the organization into its activities and findings the right links will the managers be able to achieve a competitive advantage. The value chain method distinguishes between primary and support activities. Combined, they should lead to a margin, which is equal to the cost of the product subtracted from the price that it is sold to the customer. Model 1 depicts the value chain. Primary activities in the business are concerned directly with the creation, production and delivery of service and are grouped into inbound logistics, operations, outbound logistics, marketing and sales, and service. The Support activities are there to help the primary activities and they are divided into main areas of support activities: procurement, technology development (including RD), human resource management, and infrastructure (systems for planning, finance, quality, information management etc.). The support activities are directly linked to the primary activities, and if those links are produced well, then the company will become more efficient and competitive in the market. The value chain model can be applied to the telecommunication industry. The inbound logistics are the goods and services that the company receives from its suppliers. In the world of telecommunication, this can be the phones (that might be manufactures in China), the cables, the sim cards etc. The ‘operations’ in the original method meant manufacturing of the product. Since telecommunication is already dealing with a finished product, it is the provision of this product that can be named their ‘operation’. For example, provision of the reception, the IT platform that connects people etc. The outbound logistics is the finished product being delivered to the customer. In this case this can be the phone set, the website of the company where the customer can buy their own product etc. Every telecommunication company has their marketing and sales team, that offer services and make customers aware (through advertising) of their services. In the competitive industr y such as telecommunication, the firms pay a lot of attention to the right kind of marketing and promotion. If a company releases a new product, the other companies are likely to follow. Therefore the first ‘inventor’ has to capture as much market as possible. Furthermore, due to the competitiveness of the industry, the companies are under pressure to provide the customers with as much as possible, in order to keep them, as finding a new customer is always much more expensive then keeping the old one. The last section of the primary activities is the ‘service’. Service is something that the company provides after the customer has the product. In the telecommunications this means installation of the product into the customers home, helping the customer with every day questions, replacing the product if is gets broken etc. Under the support activities the first factor is ‘procurement’. The procurement department in the telecommunications industry are people who buy all of the inbound logistics into the company. This department will be in charge of agreeing the best deal with the suppliers of the product and making sure that the product is of high quality. Technology development is an extremely important element in the telecommunications industry, which allows them to gain a competitive advantage. The technology development in this method can also include customer relationship management activities, and not be limited purely to the innovation. Human resource management is a vital part in this method as those people are responsible to the satisfaction of the employees, which can be achieved through remuneration, training and development, bonuses and other HR strategies. The above mentioned would be the base for the value chain. However, it should be noted that the majority of the companies in the telecommunications industry are multi-national corporations. They provide a large number of products to their customers world wide. Furthermore, the components of their services may come from a wide range of suppliers, for example the plastic for the phone will come from Russia, the phone will be constructed in China and painted in India. Due to their size, the majority of the companies have already established the most productive and available route of producing, maintaining and providing the service. Therefore, the value chain would be a lot more complicated with both the primary and support activities. Furthermore, the margin may also come from a wide range of sources, such as mergers and acquisition, investment in stock markets etc. 4. Construct a Value System for the industry. The value system was also introduced by M. Porter (1985). It represents the link between the value chains of different ‘market customers’. For example, it will link the value chain of the suppliers to the value chain of the company to the value chain of the channel and then to the value chain of the customer. The supplier value chain for the telecommunications industry can include the suppliers of the physical products, such as phones and sim cards from the supplier value chain; provision of the telephone connection and services in the company value chain; services provided by the third party distributors (such as Yahoo!) in the channel chain and a wide range of customers buying the products (for example businesses, individuals and other telecommunication companies). 5. What are the environmental factors that may influence the industry? Most of the large organizations today are environmentally friendly, and have special strategies to maintain this position. For example, BT is one of the largest consumers of electricity in the UK (BT, 2007, p. 3). In order to reduce the damage to the environment, the company has adopted the majority of the environmentally-friendly electricity sources, such as wind generation, solar and hydroelectric energy generation. The telecommunications industry face a number of environmental risks that can damage their profitability. For example, global warming increases the number of storms and floods that are occurring around the world. In turn, this damages the telecommunications’ infrastructure and can cost the industry billions of pounds. Moreover, by damaging the environment, the costs of the primary products can increase (e.g. electricity). Since the telecommunications industry relies on a wide range of products outside of their own services, an increase in the cost of primary prod ucts, such as electricity, is likely to have a negative effect on their profits. Part 2: Evaluating Company Resources 1. How well is the present strategy working? â€Å"Group Strategys principal role is to help the BT Group maximize long term value for shareholders. This involves ensuring that the BT Group can sustain competitiveness in all its markets† (BT, 2007, Group Strategy). The financial results for the 2006 showed that the company has strengthened its position in the market. It had increased its revenue by 6% to  £19,514m, provided its customers with both the income and investment growth, by increasing the share price by 8% and dividend pay out by 14% in one year (BT Annual report, 2007, p. 2). Since their share price has gone up over the year, it can be argued that the company’s strategy has worked. Furthermore, BT has also subdivided their strategy aim into a number of objectives, namely: â€Å"to pursue profitable growth in new wave markets to maximise the return from our traditional business to transform our networks, systems and services for the twenty-first century to create long-term partnerships with our customers† (BT, 2007, Annual Report, p. 4). The â€Å"new wave† activities (networked IT services, broadband and mobility) growth has been overachieved by 50% by the company in 2006 (BT, 2007, Annual Report, p. 4). The company has also asked all of their existing customer to swap to the subscription-based packages. They have achieved 67% customer base being swapped to the subscription, which has also overachieved their target. The transfer of all of the services onto the 21C (twenty-first century IP technology) has not been completed yet. Finally, BT has achieved an increase of 3% in their customer satisfaction table, which also brought them closer to their long term goal. Therefore it can be argued that BT’s strategy has been successful. 2. What are their resource strengths and weaknesses? BT’s resource strength is their brand and strong reputation, that is recognized world wide. Their strong brand allows them to form stronger relationships with their customers (stakeholders, customers, suppliers, employees). BT’s reputation of reliability, consistency and effectiveness allows them to keep their customers and increase their customer base. Furthermore, BT provides a wide range of services that are in line with the latest technology, such as IP phone calls and are often a market leader in the industry. BT had a large number of weaknesses a few years ago: it was loosing the DSL market share to every competitor in the market, it had a shrinking market share in the fixed line services and sometimes it was not up to speed with the innovative technology. However, the new market strategy has proved very beneficial to the company. The company was the first in the IDSL provision in the UK market in 2006; its market share is growing and it is transferring most of its services onto the 21C technology (BT, 2007, Annual Report). Although introduction of 21C will be beneficial to BT in the future, it can have a negative impact on the profits in the short run. Furthermore, does BT think far enough? There are a wide range of external risks that BT group faces. From the social aspect, they can be divided into: supply chain working conditions and outsourcing. The ‘supply chain working conditions’ risks arises from the wide range of services that BT buys from across the world. The company is committed to following the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and International Labour Organisation rules. The main risk of breaching those rules is that the company may be faced with a large number of law suits and loose its reputation. In turn, reputation is one of the most valuable assets of the company, as it has a positive correlation with the number of customers that sign up and stay with BT. The group deals with this risk by asking all of the suppliers to fill in the ‘Risk assessment questionnaire’, which it then examines and decides if it should deal with the named supplier (BT, 2007, Human Rights and Suppliers). BT has outsourced a number of operations such as human resource contracts, pensions, recruitment and training, as well as finance, accounting and payroll (BT, 2007, Outsourcing). The risk arises when the company tries to get the cheapest service and ends up making a very expensive mistake. For example, the BT can loose control of the quality of the service that the outsourced functions provide; or the outsourced departments may make a financial mistake, that will lead to wrong internal decisions within a company. 3. What are the external opportunities and threats facing them? There are also a number of factors that can be quite threatening to BT. The change in the environment, where natural catastrophes can destroy BT’s infrastructure, have already been discussed. The collapse of the stock market can also have a negative effect on the company, as BT invests some of its money in the stock market. Furthermore, an innovative product, such as WoIP being introduced by another major competitor, will strongly harm BT’s profits (since all of the phone calls can be free, without relying on the internet). The economic and political decisions can also affect the profitability of the company. For example, if the interest rates rise sharply in the UK, the disposable income of the customers will decrease. In turn, the customers may reduce their usage of the BT’s services or swap to cheaper providers. Moreover, since BT has global presence, large looses in one of the countries may put a lot of pressure on the rest of the Group to ‘bail outâ₠¬â„¢ the damaged company, which can negatively affect the profits. As has been mentioned above, there is also an issue of reputation. Loss of reputation due to the external factors can strongly affect company’s profitability. Furthermore, mobile phone providers also represent a threat, since they undercut the prices and the majority of the customers find mobiles an effective way to communicate. However, there are also a wide range of opportunities available to BT externally. For example, the technology progress has been very rapid over the last few years, which means that BT can take advantage of this to gain extra customers. The IP voice communication will also allow BT to gain more customers worldwide, as there will not be legal barriers of the contract. More and more people are getting to know how to use the internet. Since BT is moving towards making their phone calls through the internet rather then fixed lines, this means that BT will have an opportunity to deal with a larger customer base. Finally, BT has a good reputation, capitalization and brand that it can use to expand into a wide range of those products. 4. How strong is their competitive position? BT’s competitive position can be seen from two perspectives: in the UK and worldwide. In the UK, BT has a very strong competitive position, since it is the largest communication provider in the country (BT, 2007, Annual Report, p. 7). Worldwide the situation is a bit different (see Table 2). Table 2: BT’s competitive position worldwide BT T Pvt1 VZ Industry Market Cap: 47.23B 232.84B N/A 105.08B 6.51B Employ ­ees: 104,400 302,000 143,251 N/A 12.52K Qtrly Rev Growth (yoy): 5.00% 23.10% N/A 31.80% 3.80% Revenue (ttm): 38.76B 63.06B 5.62B1 88.14B 4.02B Gross Margin (ttm): 84.08% 56.99% N/A 60.33% 65.54% EBITDA (ttm): 11.00B 22.88B N/A 29.53B 1.67B Oper Margins (ttm): 13.31% 16.87% N/A 16.13% 15.46% Net Income (ttm): 5.38B 7.36B 304.40M1 5.48B 402.77M EPS (ttm): 6.35 1.887 N/A 2.12 1.55 P/E (ttm): 8.98 19.76 N/A 17.03 15.1 PEG (5 yr expected): 2.17 1.51 N/A 3.08 1.64 P/S (ttm): 1.24 3.67 N/A 1.21 1.61 Source: Yahoo! Finance Where: T= AT&T Inc Pvt1 = Cable and Wireless plc VZ = Verizon Communication Inc Industry = Telecom Services – Foreign As can be seen, BT has a small capitalization value compared to its closest direct competitors in the telecommunication market. However, its value is still nearly 7 times the size of the average market capitalization of the industry. The revenue growth has also been poor compared to the largest competitors, and hardy exceeds the industry average. However, despite the low capitalization, the net income of BT is very close to that of the other companies, which indicates that the company is efficient. 5. What is your assessment of the culture within the company? Will it be supportive to change or not? BT has a strong set of values within the company. Those values build the culture of the company. Furthermore, judging from the amount of information that is available of their website, it can be assumed that BT is very good at informing all of its employees of any changes that are taking place in the organization. The employees rarely welcome change or restructuring, however over the years it has been shown that good and frequent communication with the employees will allow the company to implement the changes much more easily. Therefore, the BT’s employees are likely to be supportive of the changes that BT makes. Part 3: Strategy and Competitive Advantage 1. Review the generic strategies. Which would be suitable cost advantage, differentiation or focusing on a niche market? Given the 3 generic strategies: cost advantage, differentiation or focusing on a niche market, BT is more likely to go for differentiation. This opinion is based on the existing strategy that the BT is adopting. BT provides a wide range of services. It could go for a niche market if it will have an opportunity to keep the rest of the products. For example, at the moment it’s transferring most of its services onto 21C platform. This will allow BT customers to use internet for communication. Although most of the large telecommunications companies have not done that, there are a number of companies that have already dominated this market e.g. Skype. BT could also go the cost advantage, as the telecommunication industry is becoming more and more price competitive. However, as with any industry, price wars can not last forever. Considering that BT used to be a state monopoly and therefore has an advantage of the largest customer base, it has decided to provide quality to the customers rather then quantity. Furthermore, since BT is launching the large transferal of its technology onto the 21C base, it is unlikely to go for a cost advantage this year. Instead, it will provide its customers with high quality innovative products, that will be cheap once they launch (internet communication is free). This leaves differentiation. As has been discussed above, BT has chosen a number of strategies that will differentiate it from its competitors, such as the 21C platform, direct and clear communication with the customers, emphasis on the good treatment of its employees and innovative products. 2. Looking into the future, how may the company seek to achieve cost competitiveness? Achieving cost competitiveness is the aim of every company in the world. Cost competitiveness can be achieved through economies of scale and scope, as well as synergies. BT is a very large company and therefore has a stronger negotiation power with its suppliers. The suppliers might be willing to provide BT with lower prices for their products, since BT is likely to order large volumes of products. Economically, as the company gets bigger, the cost of production of one more unit of a good or service decreases (marginal cost). Therefore, as BT expands it will be able to decrease the cost of the production. However, the economic theory also states that this decrease in marginal cost will eventually reach a point where the company will enter the diseconomies of scale (the marginal cost will start to increase). In order to avoid that, BT has expanded globally, rather then just within the UK. BT can also reduce costs through the economies of scope – the production of a wider range of goods. The marginal costs will decrease because certain fixed costs will be shared between the products. For example, the IP platform that BT is using will not only be used to generate revenue from the phone calls, but will also be used for the provision of video messaging services. Later on, if BT decides to bring out another product, it will be able to use this IT platform without the need of building a new one. BT can achieve synergies between its businesses. BT operates 4 separate businesses: BT retail, BT wholesale, BT Global services and Openreach. There are a large number of synergies between all of those companies, for example HR, finance and accounting services. Furthermore, if BT decides to acquire another company in the future, it is likely to use the existing synergies to create even more synergies with the new company in the future. Furthermore, there are a large number of other cost cutting exercises that the company can do in the future to achieve cost competitiveness, such as restructuring, selling some parts of its business that are no longer useful to it and increasing efficiency internally. 3. Suggest ways that information technology and information systems can be used to exploit external opportunities and defend against threats facing the company? Information technology (IT) is strongly linked to the information systems (IS) in telecommunication industry. BT is successfully using both to capture new opportunities in the market, as has been discussed previously. However, as the whole industry is moving towards VoIP, BT could use its existing information systems to move a step further – provide WoIP services. VoIP requires internet in order to use free voice calls, while WoIP allows a customer to use free voice calls without internet. In turn, by using the IT and IS BT can capture a larger share of the market not only in the UK but also worldwide. Furthermore, BT has enough capitalization and IT in order to compete with the mobile phone providers. It can expand to provide those services. Efficient IT and IS will allow BT to connect people cheaply around the world, where the customers will not need to worry where they are resident. BT is very much aware of the external threats that it faces. IT and IS will not be able to defend BT from the environmental risks. However, some of the social risks can be eliminated. For example, the outsourced functions of finance and accounting can be checked electronically first, by setting up an appropriate IT system. The work can then be send to Britain for checking. Furthermore, although BT can not control the stock markets, it can certainly install a number of IT systems that will allow it to prevent a large loss of money, for example by using Technical Analysis systems. By making sure that all of BT’s IT and IS systems work efficiently, the company will reduce the risk of losing its reputation. 4. Analyse the current core competencies of the company. The current core competencies of the company is professionalism, integrity, straightforwardness and team work. All of those competencies are built into their core values. Furthermore, by achieving those competencies as a business the company will be able to achieve its overall aim – bring value to the shareholders. Competencies are often measures on the internal scale of the company, which makes it difficult to analyze for the outsider. However, the companies achievements and the strategy for the future work reflect those competencies. It is in the interest of the company to retain professionalism and integrity towards the customers and employees, if it want to keep both groups. Straightforwardness is a good differentiator of the company, as this allows better communication with the customer, and therefore contribute towards building a loyal customer base. The team work, in turn, will allow the company to achieve its performance targets. 5. Apply a SWOT matrix to the analysis carried out in Activity 2 to gain an understanding of how the strengths and weaknesses of the company may be considered, together with the opportunities and threats that exist, to determine a set of strategic options for the company. SWOT Analysis (S)trengths (O)pportunities Stable and increasing share price Strong financial results Strong brand Good reputation Worldwide Reach Market leader in the UK Large customer base Increasing number of customers that will use the IP platform Further expansion into the world market Use of capital to expand into ‘products of the future’ (W)eaknesses (T)hreats Lack of innovative products Sometimes overprices products which leads to loss of the market share (DSL) Weak global market presence Supply chain working conditions Outsourcing Loss of reputation Environment Stock market crash Recession Mobile phone users BT is the largest fixed-line provider of communication in the UK. Since BT used to be a state monopoly it has a very large number of customers. However, since its privatization, despite a strong competition not only from the new fixed-line providers by also from the mobile phone providers, BT still has a very strong market presence in the UK. This indicates that BT has built a certain customer loyalty, which can be added to its strengths. As the communication market matures, new technology and opportunities are entering the industry. The most recent innovation, that remains a threat to the most fixed-line providers is the building of the IP platforms. The IP platforms allows the customers to speak to each other for free by using their internet. BT has been extremely proactive and has built the platform. Since the majority of its customers are still using fixed lines for communication, in order to the customers to start using the new products, BT should communicate the instruction on how to use the products very clearly. Furthermore, it should also inform the customers of the new products available. Strategically, BT should be able to connect the majority of its customers, since it will be cheaper to them to use the platform. The next move would be to make sure that all of the ‘voices of the customer’ are heard, as with any new systems there will be a number a faults. BT should then implement all of the changes that it has decided on. Since the price of the communication will decrease, the BT will be able to make higher revenue through an increasing number of customers that will start using the service and through the sale of other goods and services that it provides through the new platform. Therefore, BT should start making a good marketing plan of how to sell their new products. The number of customers available to BT is likely to increase over time, as more people are connecting to the internet. This is a great opportunity for BT to increase its world market share. Considering that BT is not the first company to implement this, a large number of customers have already been captured. The BT can use

Capital Punishment :: essays research papers

Capital Punishment What type of society kills its own people? The American culture’s morals have accepted the death penalty as a reasonable punishment. However, who gives us the power to determine when someone’s life should end. People who murder others should be punished and pay the price of their crime, but not killed. Our society feels so strongly that murder is wrong and criminals should be killed. In actuality, we are committing the same horrid deed. Capital punishment is wrong for many reasons. Several states in our country have adopted the death penalty as a reasonable act. However, there has been no dramatic decline in violence among these states and others. Proving capital punishment does not deter crime. People are still killing and committing other horrible acts of crime. Another reasons the he death penalty is wrong is that it does not prove to be an effective punishment. Some criminals may look as dying as a way out. They would rather die than spend the res t of their lives in prison. Also it does not provide peace, justice, or happiness for a victim or their family. Robert Willies raped Debbie Morris and was later killed by lethal injection. Debbie Morris found no peace in Willies death. â€Å"Justice didn’t do anything to heal me. Forgiveness did.† (â€Å"Dad Man Walking: The Victim Who Survived† Debbie Morris and Gregg Lewis) A death of a criminal will not erase the past or make a victim’s life complete. Another negative of capital punishment is the high cost. Many dollars are spent during the legal cases and for things such as providing witnesses. Many people who are for the death penalty believe it costs more money to house a criminal in jail. That is wrong, if we can abolish the luxuries many inmates have, the cost is not as high. That way, a prisoner will the way he should live. Above all, capital punishment is morally wrong. A society that is so rich and powerful should not kill each other. We have n ot been given the power to kill someone.

What Are the Sources of External and Internal Motivation for People?

What are the sources of internal and external motivations for people’s action? Xu Zhijun 24087 Warsaw School of Social Sciences and Humanities Motivation is the reason of people starting, directing and maintaining activities, not the result (Zimbardo, Johnson & Weber, 2000). The reason why people take action can be different; basically there are two big aspects: internal and external motivation. Internal motivation is to do something for your own sake. It can be your personality interest or the value which you pursue; it’s very similar with intrinsic motivation.The external motivation is to do something for other’s sake. It sounds similar with extrinsic motivation, but it is a different concept which I will present precisely. I suggest if people want to change or maintain some particular behaviors, the best way is to transfer the external motivation into internal motivation. According to Maslow’s humanistic theory (1943), there is a pyramid of needs wait p eople to fulfill. The first level: biological aspect, needs for food, water, oxygen, rest, sexual expression, release from tension.People look for food to eat when they are hungry or they are under big pressure, food can help them release the tension at the moment. And people choose dance, sing or talk to their close people to release their tension as well. People sleep when they are tired. People have sexual life because they have sexual drive. Each organism seek a state of balance – homeostasis. (Hull, 1943, 1952). The second level is safety. It means needs for security, comfort, tranquility, freedom from fear.When facing threaten, may hurt, people will automatically try to avoid. Seeing a sharp blade falling down, people will evade. Anthony Robin said, â€Å"I’m scared, so I have to take action right now – run to the direction which I want. † The third level is attachment. It means needs for belong, to affiliate, to love and be loved. Human are social animals, that’s the reason people don’t want loneliness. When people feel lonely, they meet friends, talk to others or even will make more effort to keep in contact with others.People need love others and in turn they need to be loved. The forth level is esteem. It means needs for confidence, sense of worth and competence, self-esteem and respect of others. People need others’ acceptance. People need confidence. Without confidence, people couldn’t accomplish any goals. So people are seeking ways to be confidence. People positively take action to prove they are not worthless in this world. The fifth level is self-actualization, it means needs to fulfill potential, have meaningful goals.When people meet all four levels described above, they pursue the value of life by self-actualization. These are the nature of human being. These points we can call internal motivation; people are born with this priority oriented character. People take action for pursuing th e pleasure and avoiding the pain(Epicurus 341BC), and avoiding the pain can be more influential on people’s action. The reason of people cannot be motivated to act is just his need for happiness is not big enough; he can still hold the pain of threatens. (Mood Story, August 30th, 2007).Consider how the self influences our memory, a phenomenon known as the self-reference effect: when information is relevant to our self-concepts, we process it quickly and remember it well (Higgins & Bargh, 1987; Kuiper & Rogers, 1979; Symons &Johnson, 1997). The more self-relevant, we connect outside with ourselves, the more effectively on our behaviors. Whatever the reinforcement is, if we take it to our mind, analyze it, and then digest it, it would work efficiently next time, and we may be more motivated. Based on locus’ control (Rotter 1973), people are divided into two aspects, one is internal and the other one is external.The internal people believe they control their own destiny. They contribute the fault to themselves and more self centered. The external people feel chance or outside forces determine their fate . The external people attribute the error to the environment. Those who see themselves as internally controlled are more likely to do well in school, successfully stop smoking, wear seat belts, deal with marital problems directly, earn a substantial income, and delay instant gratification to achieve long-term goals (Findley & Cooper, 1983; Lefcourt, 1982; Miller & others, 1986).Previous research has shown that internals to have better mental health than externals (in terms of being less likely to be suffering from neuroses or psychoses), to have more self control, and to be more achievement oriented (Lefcourt, 1966; Joe, 1971). And employees who are internal locus of control are more motivated to work than externals , performance better, and see working hard as being instrumental in obtaining what they want(Lauri, 1975). In other words these internal s, who see themselves as controller, or we can say they connect outside more with themselves than externals.External motivation here I regard it as doing something for outside world. Any rewards, punishments, pressure, responsibility and obligation from others can motivate people, cause people’s action as well. Through the rewards and punishments, what we get is more about the subjects’ emotion, is about their expectation for us. A reward can be a compliment, praise, an ice-crime, or bonus for hard-working employee. This is the way they give and try to influence us. But how we understand it and whether we get the essence are not certain, and couldn’t be easily predict.In October, 2008, there was a thirteen-year boy, couldn’t bear the pressure from both school and family, went to suicide just because of being frightened to get physical punishment. He left a letter and poisoned himself. ( â€Å"Anhui Court Net, † 2008). It was a very sad news, but on the other hand, we realized that if we only give stimulation without central route persuasion, and no object relevant explanation, the result may go to another direction which we don’t want to see. When people don’t know about new things, they learn from the others.It is one aspect of learning theory called classical conditioning. When people were young, all of us may experienced that if we did a good job, parents would give us some benefits as reward, this method may encourage us to do the same thing again in order to get the reward which we want from parents; or we didn’t do well on which parents requested, we would get punishment soon. The general thesis here is that internal motivation activates that subject sufficiently to produce a wide range of responses. If one of these responses leads to a reward, i. e. a reduction of drive, the tendency to repeat that response will be increased. The wide range of irrelevant activities is gradually narrowed as the tend ency to make the rewarded response is increased, until the subject is directly and efficiently performing the response that leads to the reward (Kendler, 1952). In Chinese society, small children’s parents are discussing intensely about whether reward is more effective or punishment on teaching their child. There is a very famous saying which many parents take it as a motto—spare the rod and spoil the child.It emphasizes the negative reinforcement’s importance. We can understand it in the sense that punishment can bring the good result. It happens. In 2005, there was an Asian Youth Piano Competition; a thirteen- year girl won four champions, two silver medals. Her father said he slapped his daughter over 400 times during her training. It was so terrible to hear that. Maybe in the US, this father would definitely be arrested. However, this father then regretted, and this small girl became love piano by her real heart. I think here is a very important element duri ng the transformation, which is time.Non-stop stimulation can change people’s inner interests to keep some particular behaviors. This tortured girl gradually fell in love with piano. Time allows her to think about the piano playing and within her grown up, she may got confidence, high self-esteem, respect from playing or even self actualization, she has love for piano now. That’s why she still holds onto it. If not, she would either quit or just work less productively. If the reinforcement has nothing to do with people’s embedded life interests or innate outlook, it will lose its effectiveness soon.A highly salient, task contingent reward is more detrimental to intrinsic interest than a relatively non-salient was investigated (Ross, 1975). Such stimulation would make the subject confused his real interest, his inner motivation – love for doing something. We may experience that when we do something in which we are interested, we just do it for fun, for our own sake. Like leisure activities, such as cycling, playing the guitar, play the music. This point has similarity with intrinsic motivation. We can hold these activities for long time.We don’t play for others; it’s like our own free choice. We do it because we like it, we are good. I help you because I do it for my own pleasure, I didn’t expect anything from you, and you don’t have to give any substantial reward to me. I am on diet, just because I want to be more healthy, more energetic, I am not losing weight for pleasing others. I study because I want to get the knowledge from the book rather than follow the tendency to go to college. If anyone gives a feedback like a gift, some bonus which doesn’t match our inner embedded life interests, it will change the way we used to be.It may confuse the real motivation of our behaviors. Once the stimulation stops, the source of motivation will disappear too. Motivation is not a donation from the public, i t’s a game, and the only player is you. Behaviors’ source is internal, all the stimulation from outside works by inside transformation. Social psychologists agree that our actions influence our attitudes. (David G. Myers2009 P98), thoughts decide actions (Diao, 2004). Behavior and thoughts interact in mutual ways. Behavior can change the thoughts, and the thoughts will lead the behavior.Baker and Brownell (2000) suggested that exercise may play a key role in long term weight management by influencing psychological aspects like self-efficacy, body image, or mood. And increased general self-determination and exercise motivation seem to facilitate improvements in eating self-regulation during weight control in women. (Mata, Silva &Vieira2009) Persuasion researchers Richard Petty and John Cacioppo(2005) and Alice Eagly and Shelly Chaiken (1993) report that persuasion is likely occur via either a central or peripheral route. (Zimbardo et al. ) Focusing on the arguments, exp lain clearly about the issue, this is central route to persuasion; focusing on the cues that trigger acceptance without much thinking is the peripheral route to persuasion. As for central route, the audience is analytical and motivated; the processing is elaborate, with high effort, the result is agree or counter argue; persuasion is cogent arguments evoke enduring agreement. The other way goes peripheral route, the audience is not analytical or involved; the processing, with low effort by using peripheral cues; cues trigger liking and acceptance but often only temporarily.So I can assume that in order to maintain some sort of particular behaviors in a long term, we need a transformation in our mind. Transform those information which conveyed by others. Change the way we think that we want not you want. I do it for myself not for others. Whatever the value which you pursue, intellectual challenge, a comfortable lifestyle, prestige or even money, try to make that as your own desire. Stimulation can change people’s behavior, but may not help keeping the behavior.Only if people realize by his heart he need to do for his own good, the stimulation matches with his inner pleasure, the action will maintain for long term. Perseverance derives from love, the very inner true feeling. This internal feeling will create passion, and willpower to support you taking action and keeping it. References 1, Guthrie,E. R(1934). Reward and Punishment. Psychological Review, Vol. 41, No. 5, pp. 450-460. 2, Mildred A. Hoge& Ruth J. Stocking(1912). A Note on the Relative Value of Punishment and Reward as Motives. Journal of Animal Behavior, Vol. 2,No. 1, pp. 43-50. 3, Michael Ross(1975).Salience Reward and Intrinsic Motivation. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 1975, Vol. 32, No. 2, 245-254 4, Eisenberger, R. , Pierce, W. D. , & Cameron, J(1999). Effects of Rewards on Intrinsic Motivation-Negative, Neutral, Positive: Comment on Deci, Coestner, and Ryan(1999). Psycholo gical Bulletin 1999, Vol. 125, No. 6, 677-691 5, Zimbardo, P. G. , Johnson, R. L. , & Weber, A. L. (2008). Psychology: Core Concepts (Fifth Edition, 2008), Allyn and Bacon: the United States of America Press 6, Myers, D. G(2000). Exploring Social Psychology(Second Edition, 2000). US: McGraw-Hiller Press 7, Cameron, J. Pierce, D. W. , Banko, K. M. , & Gear, A. (2005). Achievement-Based Rewards and Intrinsic Motivation: A Test of Cognitive Mediators. Journal of Educational Psychology 2005, Vol. 97, No. 4, 641-655 8, Gong, T. & Gu, T (2003). Being Afraid of Not Finishing Homework, A Teenager Went to Suicide. Retrieved from: Anhui Court Net (2003). http://www. ahcourt. gov. cn/gb/ahgy_2004/fczs/sy/userobject1ai15932. html 9, Diao, Jianwei(2004). Directing Thoughts and Executing Thoughts-another interpretation of the relationship between thoughts and behavior. The Science of Social Psychology 2004, Vol. 19, No. 5, 74-76, 117

Draupadi by mahashweta devi Essay

â€Å"Draupadi† by Mahasveta Devi Translated with a Foreword by Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak Translator’s Foreword I translated this Bengali short story into English as much for the sake of its villain, Senanayak, as for its title character, Draupadi (or Dopdi). Because in Senanayak I find the closest approximation to the First- World scholar in search of the Third World, I shall speak of him first. On the level of the plot, Senanayak is the army officer who captures and degrades Draupadi. I will not go so far as to suggest that, in practice, the instruments of First-World life and investigation are complicit with such captures and such a degradation.’ The approximation I notice relates to the author’s careful presentation of Senanayak as a pluralist aesthete. In theory, Senanayak can identify with the enemy. But pluralist aesthetes of the First World are, willy-nilly, participants in the production of an exploitative society. Hence in practice, Senanayak must destroy the enemy, the menacing other. He follows the necessities and contingencies of what he sees as his historical moment. There is a convenient colloquial name for that as well: pragmatism. Thus his emotions at Dopdi’s capture are mixed: sorrow (theory) and joy (practice). Correspondingly, we grieve for our Third-World sisters; we grieve and rejoice that they must lose themselves and become as much like us as possible in order to be â€Å"free†; we congratulate ourselves on our specialists’ knowledge of them. Indeed, like ours, Senanayak’s project is interpretive: he 1. For elaborations upon such a suggestion, see Jean-Fran~oisL yotard, La Condition post-moderne: Rappod sur b sauoir (Paris, 1979). O 1981 by The Univenity of Chicago. 0093-189618110802-0009$01.00. All rights reserved. 382 Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak â€Å"Draupadi† looks to decipher Draupadi’s song. For both sides of the rift within himself, he finds analogies in Western literature: Hochhuth’s The Deputy, David Morrell’s First Blood. He will shed his guilt when the time comes. His self-image for that uncertain future is Prospero. I have suggested elsewhere that, when we wander out of our own academic and First-World enclosure, we share something like a relationship with Senanayak’s do~blethinkW.~h en we speak for ourselves, we urge with conviction: the personal is also political. For the rest of the world’s women, the sense of whose personal micrology is difficult (though not impossible) for us to acquire, we fall back on a colonialist theory of most efficient information retrieval. We will not be able to speak to the women out there if we depend completely on conferences and anthologies by Western-trained informants. As I see their photographs in women’s-studies journals or on book jackets-indeed, as I look in the glass-it is Senanayak with his anti-Fascist paperback that I behold. In inextricably mingling historico-political specificity with the sexual differential in a literary discourse, Mahasveta Devi invites us to begin effacing that image. My approach to the story has been influenced by â€Å"deconstructive practice.† I clearly share an unease that would declare avant-garde theories of interpretation too elitist to cope with revolutionary feminist material. How, then, has the practice of deconstruction been helpful in this context? The aspect of deconstructive practice that is best known in the United States is its tendency toward infinite regre~sionT.~h e aspect that interests me most is, however, the recognition, within deconstructive practice, of provisional and intractable starting points in any investigative effort; its disclosure of complicities where a will to knowledge would 2. See my â€Å"Three Feminist Readings: McCullers, Drabble, Habermas,† Union Seminu9 Quarterly Review 1-2 (Fall-Winter 197%80), and â€Å"French Feminism in an International Frame† (forthcoming in Yak French Studies). 3. I develop this argument in my review of Paul de Man’s Allegories ofReading: Figural Language in Rowseau, Nietzsche, Rilke, and Prowt (forthcoming in Studks in the Novel). Mahasveta Devi teaches English at Bijaygarh College in Jadavpur, India, an institution for working-class women. She has published over a dozen novels, most recently Chotti Munda ebang Tar Tir (â€Å"Chotti Munda and His Arrow†), and is a prolific journalist, writing on the struggle of the tribal peasant in West Bengal and Bihar. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak is professor of English at the University of Texas at Austin. The translator of Derrida’s De la grammtologte, she has published essays on Marxist feminism, deconstructive practice, and contemporary literature and is currently completing a book on theory and practice in the humanities. Critical Inquiry Winter 1981 383 create oppositions; its insistence that in disclosing complicities the criticas- subject is herself complicit with the object of her critique; its emphasis upon â€Å"history† and upon the ethico-political as the â€Å"trace† of that complicity-the proof that we do not inhabit a clearly defined critical space free of such traces; and, finally, the acknowledgment that its own discourse can never be adequate to its e ~ amp l eT. ~hi s is clearly not the place to elaborate each item upon this list. I should, however, point out that in my introductory paragraphs I have already situated the figure of Senanayak in terms of our own patterns of complicity. In what follows, the relationship between the tribal and classical characters of Draupadi, the status of Draupadi at the end of the story, and the reading of Senanayak’s proper name might be seen as produced by the reading practice I have described. The complicity of law and transgression and the class deconstruction of the â€Å"gentlemen revolutionaries,† although seemingly minor points in the interpretation of the story as such, take on greater importance in a political context. I cannot take this discussion of deconstruction far enough to show how Dopdi’s song, incomprehensible yet trivial (it is in fact about beans of different colors), and ex-orbitant to the story, marks the place of that other that can be neither excluded nor re~uperated.~ â€Å"Draupadi† first appeared in Agnigarbha (â€Å"Womb of Fire†), a collection of loosely connected, short political narratives. As Mahasveta points out in her introduction to the collection, â€Å"Life is not mathematics and the human being is not made for the sake of politics. I want a change in the present social system and do not believe in mere party politic^.†^ Mahasveta is a middle-class Bengali leftist intellectual in her fifties. She has a master’s degree in English from Shantiniketan, the famous experimental university established by the bourgeois poet Rabindranath Tagore. Her reputation as a novelist was already well established when, in the late ’70s, she published Hajar Churashir Ma (â€Å"No. 1084’s Mother†). This novel, the only one to be imminently published in English translation, remains within the excessively sentimental idiom of the Bengali 4. This list represents a distillation of suggestions to be found in the work of Jacques Derrida: see, e.g., â€Å"The Exorbitant. Question of Method,† Of Grammatology, trans. Spivak (Baltimore, 1976); â€Å"Limited Inc abc,† trans. Samuel Weber, Glyph 2 (1977); â€Å"Ou commence et comment finit un corps enseignant,† in Politiques de laphilosophie, ed. Dominique Grisoni (Paris, 1976); and my â€Å"Revolutions That as Yet Have No Model: Derrida’s ‘Limited Inc,’ † Diacritics 10 (Dec. 1980), and â€Å"Sex and History in Wordsworth’s The Prelude (1805) IXXIII† (forthcoming in Tern Studies in Literature and Language). 5. It is a sign of E. M. Forster’s acute perception of India that A Pussage to India contains a glimpse of such an ex-orbitant tribal in the figure of the punkha puller in the courtroom. 6. Mahasveta, Agnigarbha (Calcutta, 1978), p. 8. 384 Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak â€Å"Draupadi† novel of the last twenty-odd years.7 Yet in Aranyer Adhikar (â€Å"The Rights [or, Occupation] of the Forest†), a serially published novel she was writing almost at the same time, a significant change is noticeable. It is a meticulously researched historical novel about the Munda Insurrection of 1899-1900. Here Mahasveta begins putting together a prose that is a collage of literary Bengali, street Bengali, bureaucratic Bengali, tribal Bengali, and the languages of the tribals. Since the Bengali script is illegible except to the approximately 25 literate percent of the about 90 million speakers of Bengali, a large number of whom live in Bangladesh rather than in West Bengal, one cannot speak of the â€Å"Indian† reception of Mahasveta’s work but only of its Bengali receptiom8 Briefly, that reception can be described as a general recognition of excellence; skepticism regarding the content on the part of the bourgeois readership; some accusations of extremism from the electoral Left; and admiration and a sense of solidarity on the part of the nonelectoral Left. Any extended reception study would consider that West Bengal has had a Left-Front government of the united electoral Communist parties since 1967. Here suffice it to say that Mahasveta is certainly one of the most important writers writing in India today. Any sense of Bengal as a â€Å"nation† is governed by the putative identity of the Bengali l a n g ~ a g e(.M~ eanwhile, Bengalis dispute if the purest Bengali is that of Nabadwip or South Calcutta, and many of the twenty-odd developed dialects are incomprehensible to the â€Å"general speaker.†) In 1947, on the eve of its departure from India, the British government divided Bengal into West Bengal, which remained a part of India, and East Pakistan. Punjab was similarly divided into East Punjab (India) and West Pakistan. The two parts of Pakistan did not share ethnic or linguistic ties and were separated by nearly eleven hundred miles. The division was made on the grounds of the concentration of Muslims in these two parts of the subcontinent. Yet the Punjabi Muslims felt themselves to be more â€Å"Arab† because they lived in the area where the first Muslim emperors of India had settled nearly seven hundred years ago and also because of their proximity to West Asia (the Middle 7.For a discussion of the relationship between academic degrees in English and the production of revolutionary literature, see my â€Å"A Vulgar Inquiry into the Relationship between Academic Criticism and Literary Production in West Bengal† (paper delivered at the Annual Convention of the Modern Language Association, Houston, 1980). 8. These figures are an average of the 1971 census in West Bengal and the projected figure for the 1974 census in Bangladesh. 9. See Dinesh Chandra Sen, History ofBengali Language and Literature (Calcutta, 191 1 ) . A sense of Bengali literary nationalism can be gained from the (doubtless apocryphal) report that, upon returning from his first investigative tour of India, Macaulay remarked: â€Å"The British Crown presides over two great literatures: the English and the Bengali.† Critical Inquiry Winter 1981 385 East). The Bengali Muslims-no doubt in a class-differentiated way-felt themselves constituted by the culture of Bengal. Bengal has had a strong presence of leftist intellectualism and struggle since the middle of the last century, before, in fact, the word â€Å"Left† entered our political shorthand.1 ° West Bengal is one of three Communist states in the Indian Union. As such, it is a source of considerable political irritation to the central government of India. (The individual state governments have a good deal more autonomy under the Indian Constitution than is the case in the U.S.) Although officially India is a Socialist state with a mixed economy, historically it has reflected a spectrum of the Right, from military dictatorship to nationalist class benevolence. The word â€Å"democracy† becomes highly interpretable in the context of a largely illiterate, multilingual, heterogeneous, and unpoliticized electorate. In the spring of 1967, there was a successful peasant rebellion in the Naxalbari area of the northern part of West Bengal. According to Marcus Franda, â€Å"unlike most other areas of West Bengal, where peasant movements are led almost solely by middle-class leadership from Calcutta, Naxalbari has spawned an indigenous agrarian reform leadership led by the lower classes† including tribal cultivator^.^^ This peculiar coalition of peasant and intellectual sparked off a number of Naxalbaris all over India.12 The target of these movements was the long-established oppression of the landless peasantry and itinerant farm worker, sustained through an unofficial government-landlord collusion that too easily circumvented the law. Indeed, one might say that legislation seemed to have an eye to its own future circumvention. It is worth remarking that this coalition of peasant and intellectual-with long histories of apprenticeship precisely on the side of the intellectual-has been recuperated in the West by both ends of the polarity that constitutes a â€Å"political spectrum.† Bernard-Henri Levy, the ex-Maoist French â€Å"New Philosopher,† has implicitly compared it to the May 1968 â€Å"revolution† in France, where the students joined the workers. 13 In France, however, the student identity of the movement had remained clear, and the student leadership had not brought with it sustained efforts to undo the privilege of the intellectual. On the other hand, â€Å"in much the same manner as many American college presidents 10. See Gautam Chattopadhyay, Communism and the Freedom Movement in Bengal (New Delhi, 1970). 11. Marcus F. Franda, RadicalPolitics in West Bengal (Cambridge, Mass., 1971), p. 153. Iam grateful to Michael Ryan for having located this accessible account of the Naxalbari movement. 12. See Samar Sen et al., eds., Naxalbari and After: A Frontier Anthology, 2 vols. (Calcutta, 1978). 13. See Bernard-Henri Levy, Bangla Desh: Nationalisme duns la rivolution (Paris, 1973). 386 Gayatm’ Chakravorty Spivak â€Å"Draupadi† have described the protest of American students, Indian political and social leaders have explained the Naxalites (supporters of Naxalbari) by referring to their sense of alienation and to the influence of writers like Marcuse and Sartre which has seemingly dominated the minds of young people throughout the world in the 1960s.†14 It is against such recuperations that I would submit what I have called the theme of class deconstruction with reference to the young gentlemen revolutionaries in â€Å"Draupadi.† Senanayak remains fixed within his class origins, which are similar to those of the gentlemen revolutionaries. Correspondingly, he is contained and judged fully within Mahasveta’s story; by contrast, the gentlemen revolutionaries remain latent, underground. Even their leader’s voice is only heard formulaically within Draupadi’s solitude. I should like to think that it is because they are so persistently engaged in undoing class containment and the opposition between reading (book learning) and doing-rather than keeping the two aesthetically forever separate-that they inhabit a world whose authority and outline no text-including Mahasveta’s-can encompass. In 1970, the implicit hostility between East and West Pakistan flamed into armed struggle. In 1971, at a crucial moment in the struggle, the armed forces of the government of India were deployed, seemingly because there were alliances between the Naxalites of West Bengal and the freedom fighters of East Bengal (now Bangladesh). â€Å"If a guerrillastyle insurgency had persisted, these forces would undoubtedly have come to dominate the politics of the movement. It was this trend that the Indian authorities were determined to pre-empt by intervention.† Taking advantage of the general atmosphere of jubilation at the defeat of West Pakistan, India’s â€Å"principal national rival in South Asia†15 (this was also the first time India had â€Å"won a war† in its millennia1 history), the Indian prime minister was able to crack down with exceptional severity on the Naxalites, destroying the rebellious sections of the rural population, most significantly the tribals , as well. The year 1971 is thus a point of reference in Senanayak’s career. This is the setting of â€Å"Draupadi.† The story is a moment caught between two deconstructive formulas: on the one hand, a law that is fabricated with a view to its own transgression, on the other, the undoing of the binary opposition between the intellectual and the rural struggles. In order to grasp the minutiae of their relationship and involvement, one must enter a historical micrology that no foreword can provide. 14. Franda, Radical Politics, pp. 163-64. See also p. 164 n.22. 15. Lawrence Lifschultz, ~a@ladesh: The unfinished Revolution (London, 1979),pp. 25, 26. Critical Inquiry Winter 1981 387 Draupadi is the name of the central character. She is introduced to the reader between two uniforms and between two versions of her name: Dopdi and Draupadi. It is either that as a tribal she cannot pronounce her own Sanskrit name (Draupadi), or the tribalized form, Dopdi, is the proper name of the ancient Draupadi. She is on a list of wanted persons, yet her name is not on the list of appropriate names for the tribal women. The ancient Draupadi is perhaps the most celebrated heroine of the Indian epic Mahabharata. The Mahabharata and the Ramayana are the cultural credentials of the so-called Aryan civilization of India. The tribes predate the Aryan invasion. They have no right to heroic Sanskrit names. Neither the interdiction nor the significance of the name, however, must be taken too seriously. For this pious, domesticated Hindu name was given Dopdi at birth by her mistress, in the usual mood of benevolence felt by the oppressor’s wife toward the tribal bond servant. It is the killing of this mistress’ husband that sets going the events of the story. And yet on the level of the text, this elusive and fortuitous name does play a role. To speculate upon this role, we might consider the Mahabharata itself in its colonialist function in the interest of the so-called Aryan invaders of India. It is an accretive epic, where the â€Å"sacred† geography of an ancient battle is slowly expanded by succeeding generations of poets so that the secular geography of the expanding Aryan colony can present itself as identical with it and thus justify itself.16 The complexity of this vast and anonymous project makes it an incomparably more heterogeneous text than the Ramayana. Unlike the Ramayana, for example, the Mahabharata contains cases of various kinds of kinship structure and various styles of marriage. And in fact it is Draupadi who provides the only example of polyandry, not a common system of marriage in India. She is married to the five sons of the impotent Pandu. Within a patriarchal and patronymic context, she is exceptional, indeed â€Å"singular† in the sense of odd, unpaired, uncoupled.17 Her husbands, since they are husbands rather than lovers, are legitimately pluralized. No acknowledgment of paternity can secure the Name of the Father for the child of such a mother. Mahasveta’s story questions this â€Å"singularity† by placing Dopdi first in a comradely, activist, monogamous marriage and then in a situation of multiple rape. In the epic, Draupadi’s legitimized pluralization (as a wife among husbands) in singularity (as a possible mother or harlot) is used to demonstrate male glory. She provides the occasion for a violent transaction between men, the efficient cause of the crucial battle. Her eldest hus- 16. For my understanding of this aspect of the Mahabharata, I am indebted to Romila Thapar of Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. 17. I borrow this sense of singularity from Jacques Lacan, â€Å"Seminar on ‘The Purloined Letter,’ † trans. Jeffrey Mehlman, Yak French Studies 48 (1972): 53, 59. 388 Gayatm’ Chakravorty Spivak â€Å"Draupadi† band is about to lose her by default in a game of dice. He had staked all he owned, and â€Å"Draupadi belongs within that all† (Mahabharata 65:32). Her strange civil status seems to offer grounds for her predicament as well: â€Å"The Scriptures prescribed one husband for a woman; Draupadi is dependent on many husbands; therefore she can be designated a prostitute. There is nothing improper in bringing her, clothed or unclothed, into the assembly† (65:35-36). The enemy chief begins to pull at Draupadi’s sum’. Draupadi silently prays to the incarnate Krishna. The Idea of Sustaining Law (Dharma) materializes itself as clothing, and as the king pulls and pulls at her sum’, there seems to be more and more of it. Draupadi is infinitely clothed and cannot be publicly stripped. It is one of Krishna’s miracles. Mahasveta’s story rewrites this episode. The men easily succeed in stripping Dopdi-in the narrative it is the culmination of her political punishment by the representatives of the law. She remains publicly naked at her own insistence. Rather than save her modesty through the implicit intervention of a benign and divine (in this case it would have been godlike) comrade, the story insists that this is the place where male leadership stops. It would be a mistake, I think, to read the modern story as a refutation of the ancient. Dopdi is (as heroic as) Draupadi. She is also what Draupadi-written into the patriarchal and authoritative sacred text as proof of male power-ould not be. Dopdi is at once a palimpsest and a contradiction. There is nothing â€Å"historically implausible† about Dopdi’s attitudes. When we first see her, she is thinking about washing her hair. She loves her husband and keeps political faith as an act of faith toward him. She adores her forefathers because they protected their women’s honor. (It should be recalled that this is thought in the context of American soldiers breeding bastards.) It is when she crosses the sexual differential into the field of what could only happen to a woman that she emerges as the most powerful â€Å"subject,† who, still using the language of sexual â€Å"honor,† can derisively call herself â€Å"the object of your search,† whom the author can describe as a terrifying superobject-â€Å"an unarmed target.† As a tribal, Dopdi is not romanticized by Mahasveta. The decision makers among the revolutionaries are, again, â€Å"realistically,† bourgeois young men and women who have oriented their book learning to the land and thus begun the long process of undoing the opposition between book (theory or â€Å"outside†) and spontaneity (practice or â€Å"inside†). Such fighters are the hardest to beat, for they are neither tribal nor gentlemen. A Bengali reader would pick them out by name among the characters: the one with the aliases who bit off his tongue; the ones who helped the couple escape the army cordon; the ones who neither smoke nor drink tea; and, above all, Arijit. His is a fashionable first name, tinsel Sanskrit, with no allusive paleonymy and a meaning that fits the story a bit too well: victorious over enemies. Yet it is his voice that gives Dopdi the courage to save not herself but her comrades. Of course, this voice of male authority also fades. Once Dopdi enters, in the final section of the story, the postscript area of lunar flux and sexual difference, she is in a place where she will finally actfor herself in not â€Å"acting,† in challenging the man to (en)counter her as unrecorded or misrecorded objective historical monument. The army officer is shown as unable to ask the authoritative ontological question, What is this? In fact, in the sentence describing Dopdi’s final summons to the sahib’s tent, the agent is missing. I can be forgiven if I find in this an allegory of the woman’s struggle within the revolution in a shifting historical moment. As Mahasveta points out in an aside, the tribe in question is the Santal, not to be confused with the at least nine other Munda tribes that inhabit India. They are also not to be confused with the so-called untouchables, who, unlike the tribals, are Hindu, though probably of remote â€Å"non-Aryan† origin. In giving the name Harijan (â€Å"God’s people†) to the untouchables, Mahatma Gandhi had tried to concoct the sort of pride and sense of unity that the tribes seem to possess. Mahasveta has followed the Bengali practice of calling each so-called untouchable caste by the name of its menial and unclean task within the rigid structural functionalism of institutionalized Hinduism.18 I have been unable to reproduce this in my translation. Mahasveta uses another differentiation, almost on the level of caricature: the Sikh and the Bengali. (Sikhism was founded as a reformed religion by Guru Nanak in the late fifteenth century. Today the roughly 9 million Sikhs of India live chiefly in East Punjab, at the other end of the vast Indo-Gangetic Plain from Bengal. The tall, muscular, turbanned, and bearded Sikh, so unlike the slight and supposedly intellectual Bengali, is the stereotyped butt of jokes in the same way as the Polish community in North America or the Belgian in France.) Arjan Singh, the diabetic Sikh captain who falls back on the Granth-sahib (the Sikh sacred book-I have translated it â€Å"Scripture†) and the â€Å"five Ks† of the Sikh religion, is presented as all brawn and no brains; and the wily, imaginative, corrupt Bengali Senanayak is of course the army officer full of a Keatsian negative capability.lg The entire energy of the story seems, in one reading, directed toward breaking the apparently clean gap between theory and practice in 18. As a result of the imposition of the capitalist mode of production and the Imperial Civil Service, and massive conversions of the lowest castes to Christianity, the invariable identity of caste and trade no longer holds. Here, too, there is the possibility of a taxonomy micrologically deconstructive of the caste-class opposition, functioning heterogeneously in terms of the social hierarchy. 19. If indeed the model for this character is Ranjit Gupta, the notorious inspector general of police of West Bengal, the delicate textuality, in the interest of a political position, of Senanayak’s delineation in the story takes us far beyond the limits of a referencea clef: I am grateful to Michael Ryan for suggesting the possibility of such a reference. 390 Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak â€Å"Draupadi† Senanayak. Such a clean break is not possible, of course. The theoretical production of negative capability is a practice; the practice of mowing down Naxalites brings with it a theory of the historical moment. The assumption of such a clean break in fact depends upon the assumption that the individual subject who theorizes and practices is in full control. At least in the history of the Indo-European tradition in general, such a sovereign subject is also the legal or legitimate subject, who is identical with his stable p a t r o n ymi ~ .I~t ~m ight therefore be interesting that Senanayak is not given the differentiation of a first name and surname. His patronymic is identical with his function (not of course by the law of caste): the common noun means â€Å"army chief.† In fact, there is the least hint of a doubt if it is a proper name or a common appellation. This may be a critique of the man’s apparently self-adequate identity, which sustains his theory-practice juggling act. If so, it goes with what I see as the project of the story: to break this bonded identity with the wedge of an unreasonable fear. If our certitude of the efficient-information-retrieval and talk-to-the-accessible approach toward Third-World women can be broken by the wedge of an unreasonable uncertainty, a feeling that what we deem gain might spell loss and that our practice should be forged accordingly, then we would share the textual effect of â€Å"Draupadi† with Senanayak. The italicized words in the translation are in English in the original. It is to be noticed that the fighting words on both sides are in English. Nation-state politics combined with multinational economies produce war. The language of war–offense and defense-is international. English is standing in here for that nameless and heterogeneous world language. The peculiarities of usage belong to being obliged to cope with English under political and social pressure for a few centuries. Where, indeed, is there a â€Å"pure† language? Given the nature of the struggle, there is nothing bizarre in â€Å"Comrade D~ p d i . † ~Itl i s part of the undoing of opposites-intellectual-rural, tribalist-internationalist-that is the wavering constitution of â€Å"the underground,† â€Å"the wrong side† of the law. On the right side of the law, such deconstructions, breaking down national distinctions, are operated through the encroachment of kingemperor or capital. 20. The relationship between phallocentrism, the patriarchy, and clean binary oppositions is a pervasive theme in Derrida’s critique of the metaphysics of presence. See my â€Å"Unmaking and Making in To the Lighthouse,† in Women and Language in Literature and Society, ed. Sally McConnell-Ginet, Ruth Borker, and Nelly Furman (New York, 1980). 21. â€Å"My dearest Sati, Through the walls and the miles that separate us I can hear you saying, ‘In Sawan it will be two years since Comrade left us.’ The other women will nod. It is you who have taught them the meaning of Comrade† (Mary Tyler, â€Å"Letter to a Former Cell-Mate,† in Naxalban and After, 1 :307; see also Tyler, My Years in an Indian Prison [Harmondsworth, 19771). Critical Inquiry Winter 1981 391 The only exception is the word â€Å"sahib.† An Urdu word meaning â€Å"friend,† it came to mean, almost exclusively in Bengali, â€Å"white man.† It is a colonial word and is used today to mean â€Å"boss.† I thought of Kipling as I wrote â€Å"Burra Sahib† for Senanayak. In the matter of â€Å"translation† between Bengali and English, it is again Dopdi who occupies a curious middle space. She is the only one who uses the word â€Å"counter† (the â€Å"n† is no more than a nasalization of the diphthong â€Å"ou†). As Mahasveta explains, it is an abbreviation for â€Å"killed by police in an encounter,† the code description for death by police torture. Dopdi does not understand English, but she understands this formula and the word. In her use of it at the end, it comes mysteriously close to the â€Å"proper† English usage. It is the menacing appeal of the objectified subject to its politico-sexual enemy-the provisionally silenced master of the subject-object dialectic-to encounter- â€Å"counter†-her. What is it to â€Å"use† a language â€Å"correctly† without â€Å"knowing† it? We cannot answer because we, with Senanayak, are in the opposite situation. Although we are told of specialists, the meaning of Dopdi’s song remains undisclosed in the text. The educated Bengali does not know the languages of the tribes, and no political coercion obliges him to â€Å"know† it. What one might falsely think of as a political â€Å"privilege†- knowing English properly-stands in the way of a deconstructive practice of language-using it â€Å"correctly† through a political displacement, or operating the language of the other side. It follows that I have had the usual â€Å"translator’s problems† only with the peculiar Bengali spoken by the tribals. In general we educated Bengalis have the same racist attitude toward it as the late Peter Sellers had toward our English. It would have been embarrassing to have used some version of the language of D. H. Lawrence’s â€Å"common people† or Faulkner’s blacks. Again, the specificity is micrological. I have used â€Å"straight English,† whatever that may be. Rather than encumber the story with footnotes, in conclusion I shall list a few items of information: Page 393: The â€Å"five Ks† are Kes (â€Å"unshorn hair†); kachh (â€Å"drawers down to the knee†); karha (â€Å"iron bangle†); kirpan (â€Å"dagger†); kanga (â€Å"comb†; to be worn by every Sikh, hence a mark of identity). Page 396: â€Å"Bibidha Bharati† is a popular radio program, on which listeners can hear music of their choice. The Hindi film industry is prolific in producing pulp movies for consumption in India and in all parts of the world where there is an Indian, Pakistani, and West Indian labor force. Many of the films are adaptations from the epics. Sanjeev Kumar is an idolized actor. Since it was Krishna who rescued Draupadi from her predicament in the epic, and, in the film the soldiers watch, Sanjeev Kumar encounters Krishna, there might be a touch of textual irony here. 392 Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak â€Å"Draupadi† Page 397: â€Å"Panchayat† is a supposedly elected body of village selfgovernment. Page 399: â€Å"Champabhumi† and â€Å"Radhabhumi† are archaic names for certain areas of Bengal. â€Å"Bhumi† is simply â€Å"land.† All of Bengal is thus â€Å"Bangabhumi.† Page 399: The jackal following the tiger is a common image. Page 400: Modern Bengali does not distinguish between â€Å"her† and â€Å"his.† The â€Å"her† in the sentence beginning â€Å"No comrade will . . .† can therefore be considered an interpretati~n.~~ Page 401: A sari conjures up the long, many-pleated piece of cloth, complete with blouse and underclothes, that â€Å"proper† Indian women wear. Dopdi wears a much-abbreviated version, without blouse or underclothes. It is referred to simply as â€Å"the cloth.† Draupadi Name Dopdi Mejhen, age twenty-seven, husband Dulna Majhi (deceased), domicile Cherakhan, Bankrajharh, information whether dead or alive and/or assistance in arrest, one hundred rupees. . . An exchange between two liveried uniforms. FIRSTL IVERYW: hat’s this, a tribal called Dopdi? The list of names I brought has nothing like it! How can anyone have an unlisted name? SECONDD:raupadi Mejhen. Born the year her mother threshed rice at Surja Sahu (killed)’~a t Bakuli. Surja Sahu’s wife gave her the name. FIRST: These officers like nothing better than to write as much as they can in English. What’s all this stuff about her? SECONDM:ost notorious female. Long wanted in many. . . Dossier: Dulna and Dopdi worked at harvests, rotating between Birbhum, Burdwan, Murshidabad, and Bankura. In 1971, in the famous Operation Bakuli, when three villages were cordonned off and machine gunned, they too lay on the ground, faking dead. In fact, they were the main culprits. Murdering Surja Sahu and his son, occupying upper-caste wells and tubewells during the drought, not surrendering those three young men to the police. In all this they were the chief instigators. In the morning, at the time of the body count, the couple could not be found. The blood-sugar level of Captain Arjan Singh, the architect of Bakuli, rose at once and proved yet again that diabetes can be a result of anxiety and depression. Diabetes has twelve husbands-among them anxiety. Dulna and Dopdi went underground for a long time in a Neanderthal darkness. The Special Forces, attempting to pierce that dark by an armed search, compelled quite a few Santals in the various districts of West Bengal to meet their Maker against their will. By the Indian Con- 22. I am grateful to Soumya Chakravarti for his help in solving occasional problems of English synonyms and archival research. stitution, all human beings, regardless of caste or creed, are sacred. Still, accidents like this do happen. Two sorts of reasons: (I), the underground couple’s skill in self-concealment; ( 2 ) ,not merely the Santals but all tribals of the Austro-Asiatic Munda tribes appear the same to the Special Forces. In fact, all around the ill-famed forest of Jharkhani, which is under the jurisdiction of the police station at Bankrajharh (in this India of ours, even a worm is under a certain police station), even in the southeast and southwest corners, one comes across hair-raising details in the eyewitness records put together on the people who are suspected of attacking police stations, stealing guns (since the snatchers are not invariably well educated, they sometimes say â€Å"give up your chambers† rather than give up your gun), killing grain brokers, landlords, moneylenders, law officers, and bureaucrats. A black-skinned couple ululated like police sirens before the episode. They sang jubilantly in a savage tongue, incomprehensible even to the Santals. Such as: Samaray hijulenako mar goekope and. Hende rambra keche keche Pundi rambra keche keche This proves conclusively that they are the cause of Captain Arjan Singh’s diabetes. Government procedure being as incomprehensible as the Male Principle in Sankhya philosophy or Antonioni’s early films, it was Arjan Singh who was sent once again on Operation Forest Jharkhani. Learning from Intelligence that the above-mentioned ululating and dancing couple was the escaped corpses, Arjan Singh fell for a bit into a zombielike state and finally acquired so irrational a dread of black-skinned people that whenever he saw a black person in a ballbag, he swooned, saying â€Å"they’re killing me,† and drank and passed a lot of water. Neither uniform nor Scriptures could relieve that depression. At long last, under the shadow of apremuture and forced retirement, it was possible to present him at the desk of Mr. Senanayak, the elderly Bengali specialist in combat and extreme-left politics. Senanayak knows the activities and capacities of the opposition better than they themselves do. First, therefore, he presents an encomium on the military genius of the Sikhs. Then he explains further: Is it only the opposition that should find power at the end of the barrel of a gun? Arjan Singh’s power also explodes out of the male organ of a gun. Without a gun even the â€Å"five Ks† come to nothing in this day and age. These speeches he delivers to all and sundry. As a result, the fighting forces regain their confidence in the Army Handbook. It is not a book for everyone. It says that the most despicable and repulsive style of fighting is 394 Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak â€Å"Draupadi† guerrilla warfare with primitive weapons. Annihilation at sight of any and all practitioners of such warfare is the sacred duty of every soldier. Dopdi and Dulna belong to the category of such fighters, for they too kill by means of hatchet and scythe, bow and arrow, etc. In fact, their fighting power is greater than the gentlemen’s. Not all gentlemen become experts in the explosion of â€Å"chambers†; they think the power will come out on its own if the gun is held. But since Dulna and Dopdi are illiterate, their kind have practiced the use of weapons generation after generation. I should mention here that, although the other side make little of him, Senanayak is not to be trifled with. Whatever hispractice, in theory he respects the opposition. Respects them because they could be neither understood nor demolished if they were treated with the attitude, â€Å"It’s nothing but a bit of impertinent game-playing with guns.† In order to destroy the enemy, become one. Thus he understood them by (theoretically) becoming one of them. He hopes to write on all this in the future. He has also decided that in his written work he will demolish the gentlemen and highlight the message of the harvest workers. These mental processes might seem complicated, but actually he is a simple man and is as pleased as his third great-uncle after a meal of turtle meat. In fact, he knows that, as in the old popular song, turn by turn the world will change. And in every world he must have the credentials to survive with honor. If necessary he will show the future to what extent he alone understands the matter in its proper perspective. He knows very well that what he is doing today the future will forget, but he also knows that if he can change color from world to world, he can represent the particular world in question. Today he is getting rid of the young by means of â€Å"apprehension and elimination,† but he knows people will soon forget the memory and lesson of blood. And at the same time, he, like Shakespeare, believes in delivering the world’s legacy into youth’s hands. He is Prospero as well. At any rate, information is received that many young men and women, batch by batch and on jeeps, have attacked police station after police station, terrified and elated the region, and disappeared into the forest of Jharkhani. Since after escaping from Bakuli, Dopdi and Dulna have worked at the house of virtually every landowner, they can efficiently inform the killers about their targets and announce proudly that they too are soldiers, rank and$le.Finally the impenetrable forest of Jharkhani is surrounded by real soldiers, the army enters and splits the battlefield. Soldiers in hiding guard the falls and springs that are the only source of drinking water; they are still guarding, still looking. On one such search, army informant Dukhiram Gharari saw a young Santal man lying on his stomach on a flat stone, dipping his face to drink water. The soldiers shot him as he lay. As the .303 threw him off spread-eagled and brought a bloody foam to his mouth, he roared â€Å"Ma-ho† and then went limp. They realized later that it was the redoubtable Dulna Majhi. What does â€Å"Ma-ho† mean? Is this a violent slogan in the tribal language? Even after much thought, the Department of Defense could not be sure. Two tribal-specialist types are flown in from Calcutta, and they sweat over the dictionaries put together by worthies such as Hoffmann-Jeffer and Golden-Palmer. Finally the omniscent Senanayak summons Chamru, the water carrier of the camp. He giggles when he sees the two specialists, scratches his ear with his â€Å"bidi,† and says, The Santals of Maldah did say that when they began fighting at the time of King Gandhi! It’s a battle cry. Who said â€Å"Ma-ho† here? Did someone come from Maldah? The problem is thus solved. Then, leaving Dulna’s body on the stone, the soldiers climb the trees in green camouflage. They embrace the leafy boughs like so many great god Pans and wait as the large red ants bite their private parts. To see if anyone comes to take away the body. This is the hunter’s way, not the soldier’s. But Senanayak knows that these brutes cannot be dispatched by the approved method. So he asks his men to draw the prey with a corpse as bait. All will come clear, he says. I have almost deciphered Dopdi’s song. The soldiers get going at his command. But no one comes to claim Dulna’s corpse. At night the soldiers shoot at a scuffle and, descending, discover that they have killed two hedgehogs copulating on dry leaves. Improvidently enough, the soldiers’ jungle scout Dukhiram gets a knife in the neck before he can claim the reward for Dulna’s capture. Bearing Dulna’s corpse, the soldiers suffer shooting pains as the ants, interrupted in their feast, begin to bite them. When Senanayak hears that no one has come to take the corpse, he slaps his anti-Fascist paperback copy of The Deputy and shouts, â€Å"What?† Immediately one of the tribal specialists runs in with a joy as naked and transparent as Archimedes’ and says, â€Å"Get up, sir! I have discovered the meaning of that ‘hende rambra’ stuff. It’s Mundari language.† Thus the search for Dopdi continues. In the forest belt of Jharkhani, the Operation continues-will continue. It is a carbuncle on the government’s backside. Not to be cured by the tested ointment, not to burst with the appropriate herb. In the first phase, the fugitives, ignorant of the forest’s topography, are caught easily, and by the law of confrontation they are shot at the taxpayer’s expense. By the law of confrontation, their eyeballs, intestines, stomachs, hearts, genitals, and so on become the food of fox, vulture, hyena, wildcat, ant, and worm, and the untouchables go off happily to sell their bare skeletons. They do not allow themselves to be captured in open combat in the next phase. Now it seems that they have found a trustworthy courier. Ten to one it’s Dopdi. Dopdi loved Dulna more than her blood. No doubt it is she who is saving the fugitives now. â€Å"They† is also a hypothesis. Why? 396 Gayatri Chakravorty Spiuak â€Å"Draupadi† How many went origznally? The answer is silence. About that there are many tales, many books in press. Best not to believe everything. How many killed in six years’ confrontation? The answer is silence. Why after confrontations are the skeletons discovered with arms broken or severed? Could armless men have fought? Why do the collarbones shake, why are legs and ribs crushed? Two kinds of answer. Silence. Hurt rebuke in the eyes. Shame on you! Why bring this up? What will be will be. . . . How many left in the forest? The answer is silence. A legzon? Is itjustzjiable to maintain a large battalion in that wild area at the taxpayer’s expense? Answer: Objection. â€Å"Wild area† is incorrect. The battalion is provided with supervised nutrition, arrangements to worship according to religion, opportunity to listen to â€Å"Bibidha Bharati† and to see Sanjeev Kumar and the Lord Krishna face-to-face in the movie This Is Life. No. The area is not wild. How many are left? The answer is silence. How many are left? Is there anyone at all? The answer is long. Item: Well, action still goes on. Moneylenders, landlords, grain brokers, anonymous brothel keepers, ex-informants are still terrified. The hungry and naked are still defiant and irrepressible. In some pockets the harvest workers are getting a better wage. Villages sympathetic to the fugitives are still silent and hostile. These events cause one to think. . . . Where in this picture does Dopdi Mejhen fit? She must have connections with the fugitives. The cause for fear is elsewhere. The ones who remain have lived a long time in the primitive world of the forest. They keep company with the poor harvest workers and the tribals. They must have forgotten book learning. Perhaps they are orienting their book learning to the soil they live on and learning new combat and survival techniques. One can shoot and get rid of the ones whose only recourse is extrinsic book learning and sincere intrinsic enthusiasm. Those who are working practically will not be exterminated so easily. Therefore Operation Jharkhani Forest cannot stop. Reason: the words of warning in the Army Handbook. Catch Dopdi Mejhen. She will lead us to the others. Dopdi was proceeding slowly, with some rice knotted into her belt. Critical Inquiry Winter 1981 397 Mushai Tudu’s wife had cooked her some. She does so occasionally. When the rice is cold, Dopdi knots it into her waistcloth and walks slowly. As she walked, she picked out and killed the lice in her hair. If she had some Kerosene, she’d rub it into her scalp and get rid of the lice. Then she could wash her hair with bakingsoda. But the bastards put traps at every bend of the falls. If they smell kerosene in the water, they will follow the scent. Dopdi! She doesn’t respond. She never responds when she hears her own name. She has seen in the Panchayat office just today the notice for the reward in her name. Mushai Tudu’s wife had said, â€Å"What are you looking at? Who is Dopdi Mejhen! Money if you give her up!† â€Å"How much?† â€Å"Two-hundred!† Oh God! Mushai’s wife said outside the office: â€Å"A lot of preparation this time. A-1 1 new policemen.† Hm. Don’t come again. Why? Mushai’s wife looked down. Tudu says that Sahib has come again. If they catch you, the village, our huts . . . They’ll burn again. Yes. And about Dukhiram . . . The Sahib knows? Shomai and Budhna betrayed us. Where are they? Ran away by train. Dopdi thought of something. Then said, Go home. I don’t know what will happen, if they catch me don’t know me. Can’t you run away? No. Tell me, how many times can I run away? What will they do if they catch me? They will counter me. Let them. Mushai’s wife said, We have nowhere else to go. Dopdi said softly, I won’t tell anyone’s name. Dopdi knows, has learned by hearing so often and so long, how one can come to terms with torture. If mind and body give way under torture, Dopdi will bite off her tongue. That boy did it. They countered him. When they counter you, your hands are tied behind you. All your bones are crushed, your sex is a terrible wound. Killed by police in an encounter. . .unknown male . . . age twenty-two . . . As she walked thinking these thoughts, Dopdi heard someone calling, Dopdi! She didn’t respond. She doesn’t respond if called by her own name. Here her name is Upi Mejhen. But who calls? 398 Gayatri Chakravo~S pivak â€Å"Draupadi† Spines of suspicion are always furled in her mind. Hearing â€Å"Dopdi† they stiffen like a hedgehog’s. Walking, she unrolls the$lm of known faces in her mind. Who? Not Shomra, Shomra is on the run. Shomai and Budhna are also on the run, for other reasons. Not Golok, he is in Bakuli. Is it someone from Bakuli? After Bakuli, her and Dulna’s names were Upi Mejhen, Matang Majhi. Here no one but Mushai and his wife knows their real names. Among the young gentlemen, not all of the previous batches knew. That was a troubled time. Dopdi is confused when she thinks about it. Operation Bakuli in Bakuli. Surja Sahu arranged with Biddibabu to dig two tubewells and three wells within the compound of his two houses. No water anywhere, drought in Birbhum. Unlimited water at Surja Sahu’s house, as clear as a crow’s eye. Get your water with canal tax, everything is burning. What’s my profit in increasing cultivation with tax money? Everything’s on fire. Get out of here. I don’t accept your Panchayat nonsense. Increase cultivation with water. You want half the paddy for sharecropping. Everyone is happy with free paddy. Then give me paddy at home, give me money, I’ve learned my lesson trying to do you good. What good did you do? Have I not given water to the village? You’ve given it to your kin Bhagunal. Don’t you get water? No. The untouchables don’t get water. The quarrel began there. In the drought, human patience catches easily. Satish and Jugal from the village and that young gentleman, was Rana his name?, said a landowning moneylender won’t give a thing, put him down. Surja Sahu’s house was surrounded at night. Surja Sahu had brought out his gun. Surja was tied up with cow rope. His whitish eyeballs turned and turned, he was incontinent again and again. Dulna had said, I’ll have the first blow, brothers. My greatgrandfather took a bit of paddy from him, and I still give him free labor to repay that debt. Dopdi had said, His mouth watered when he looked at me. I’ll pull out his eyes. Surja Sahu. Then a telegraphic message from Shiuri. Special train. Army. The jeep didn’t come up to Bakuli. March-march-march. The crunch-crunch-crunch of gravel under hobnailed boots. Cordon up. Commands on the mike. Jugal Mandal; Satish Mandal, Rana alias Prabir alias Dipak, Dulna Majhi-Dopdi Mejhen surrender surrender surrender. No surrender surrender. Mow-mowmow down the village. Putt-putt putt-puttcordite in the air-putt-putt-round the clock-putt-putt. Flame thrower. Bakuli is burning. More men and women, children . . .jre-jire. Close canal Critical Inquiry Winter 1981 399 approach. Over-over-over by nightfall. Dopdi and Dulna had crawled on their stomachs to safety. They could not have reached Paltakuri after Bakuli. Bhupati and Tapa took them. Then it was decided that Dopdi and Dulna would work around the Jharkhani belt. Dulna had explained to Dopdi, Dear, this is best! We won’t get family and children this way. But who knows? Landowner and moneylender and policemen might one day be wiped out! Who called her from the back today? Dopdi kept walking. Villages and fields, bush and rock-Public Works Department markers-sound of running steps in back. Only one person running. Jharkhani Forest still about two miles away. Now she thinks of nothing but entering the forest. She must let them know that the police have set up notices for her again. Must tell them that that bastard Sahib has appeared again. Must change hideouts. Also, the plan to do to Lakkhi Bera and Naran Bera what they did to Surja Sahu on account of the trouble over paying the field hands in Sandara must be cancelled. Shomai and Budhna knew everything. There was the urgency of great danger under Dopdi’s ribs. Now she thought there was no shame as a Santal in Shomai and Budhna’s treachery. Dopdi’s blood was the pure unadulterated black blood of Champabhumi. From Champa to Bakuli the rise and set of a million moons. Their blood could have been contaminated; Dopdi felt proud of her forefathers. They stood guard over their women’s blood in black armor. Shomai and Budhna are halfbreeds. The fruits of the war. Contributions to Radhabhumi by the American soldiers stationed at Shiandanga. Otherwise, crow would eat crow’s flesh before Santal would betray Santal.Footsteps at her back. The steps keep a distance. Rice in her belt, tobacco leaves tucked at her waist. Arijit, Malini, Shamu, Mantu-none of them smokes or even drinks tea. Tobacco leaves and limestone powder. Best medicine for scorpion bite. Nothing must be given away. Dopdi turned left. This way is the camp. Two miles. This is not the way to the forest. But Dopdi will not enter the forest with a cop at her back. I swear by my life. By my life Dulna, by my life. Nothing must be told. The footsteps turn left. Dopdi touches her waist. In her palm the comfort of a half-moon. A baby scythe. The smiths at Jharkhani are fine artisans. Such an edge we’ll put on it Upi, a hundred Dukhiram* Thank God Dopdi is not a gentleman. Actually, perhaps they have understood scythe, hatchet, and knife best. They do their work in silence. The lights of the camp at a distance. Why is Dopdi going this way? Stop a bit, it turns again. Huh! I can tell where I am if I wander all night with my eyes shut. I won’t go in the forest, I won’t lose him that way. I won’t outrun him. You fucking jackal of a cop, deadly afraid of death, 400 Gayatri Ch a k r a u o ~Sp iuak â€Å"Draupadi† you can’t run around in the forest. I’d run you out of breath, throw you in a ditch, and finish you off. Not a word must be said. Dopdi has seen the new camp, she has sat in the bus station, passed the time of day, smoked a â€Å"bidi† and found out how many police convoys had arrived, how many radio vans. Squash four, onions seven, peppers fifty, a straightforward account. This information cannot now be passed on. They will understand Dopdi Mejhen has been countered. Then they’ll run. Arijit’s voice. If anyone is caught, the others must catch the timing and change their hideout. If Comrade Dopdi arrives late, we will not remain. There will be a sign of where we’ve gone. No comrade will let the others be destroyed for her own sake. Arijit’s voice. The gurgle of water. The direction of the next hideout will be indicated by the tip of the wooden arrowhead under the stone. Dopdi likes and understands this. Dulna died, but, let me tell you, he didn’t lose anyone else’s life. Because this was not in our heads to begin with, one was countered for the other’s trouble. Now a much harsher rule, easy and clear. Dopdi returns-good; doesn’t return–bad. Change hideout. The clue will be such that the opposition won’t see it, won’t understand even if they do. Footsteps at her back. Dopdi turns again. These 3% miles of land and rocky ground are the best way to enter the forest. Dopdi has left that way behind. A little level ground ahead. Then rocks again. The anny could not have struck camp on such rocky terrain. This area is quiet enough. It’s like a maze, every hump looks like every other. That’s fine. Dopdi will lead the cop to the burning â€Å"ghat.† Patitpaban of Saranda had been sacrificed in the name of Kali of the Burning Ghats. APehend! A lump of rock stands up. Another. Yet another. The elderly Senanayak was at once triumphant and despondent. Ifyou want to destroy the enemy, become one. He had done so. As long as six years ago he could anticipate their every move. He still can. Therefore he is elated. Since he has kept up with the literature, he has read First Blood and seen approval of his thought and work. Dopdi couldn’t trick him, he is unhappy about that. Two sorts of reasons. Six years ago he published an article about information storage in brain cells. He demonstrated in that piece that he supported this struggle from the point of view of the field hands. Dopdi is a field hand. Veteran3ghter. Search and destroy. Dopdi Mejhefi is about to be apprehended. Will be destroyed. Regret. Halt! Dopdi stops short. The steps behind come around to the front. Under Dopdi’s ribs the canal dam breaks. No hope. Surja Sahu’s brother Rotoni Sahu. The two lumps of rock come forward. Shomai and Budhna. They had not escaped by train. Arijit’s voice. Just as you must know when you’ve won, you must also acknowledge defeat and start the activities of the next stage. Now Dopdi spreads her arms, raises her face to the sky, turns toward the forest, and ululates with the force of her entire being. Once, twice, three times. At the third burst the birds in the trees at the outskirts of the forest awake and flap their wings. The echo of the call travels far. Draupadi Mejhen was apprehended at 6:53P.M. It took an hour to get her to camp. Questioning took another hour exactly. No one touched her, and she was allowed to sit on a canvas camp stool. At 8:57 Senanayak’s dinner hour approached, and saying, â€Å"Make her. Do the needful,† he disappeared. Then a billion moons pass. A billion lunar years. Opening her eyes after a million light years, Draupadi, strangely enough, sees sky and moon. Slowly the bloodied nailheads shift from her brain. Trying to move, she feels her arms and legs still tied to four posts. Something sticky under her ass and waist. Her own blood. Only the gag has been removed. Incredible thirst. In case she says â€Å"water† she catches her lower lip in her teeth. She senses that her vagina is bleeding. How many came to make her? Shaming her, a tear trickles out of the corner of her eye. In the muddy moonlight she lowers her lightless eye, sees her breasts, and understands that, indeed, she’s been made up right. Her breasts are bitten raw, the nipples torn. How many? Four-five-six-seven-then Draupadi had passed out. She turns her eyes and sees something white. Her own cloth. Nothing else. Suddenly she hopes against hope. Perhaps they have abandoned her. For the foxes to devour. But she hears the scrape of feet. She turns her head, the guard leans on his bayonet and leers at her. Draupadi closes her eyes. She doesn’t have to wait long. Again the process of making her begins. Goes on. The moon vomits a bit of light and goes to sleep. Only the dark remains. A compelled spread-eagled still body. Active pistons of flesh rise and fall, rise and fall over it. Then morning comes. Then Draupadi Mejhen is brought to the tent and thrown on the straw. Her piece of cloth is thrown over her body. Then, after breakfast, after reading the newspaper and sending the radio message â€Å"Draupadi Mejhen apprehended,† etc., Draupadi Mejhen is ordered brought in. Suddenly there is trouble. Draupadi sits up as soon as she hears â€Å"Move!† and asks, Where do you want me to go? To the Burra Sahib’s tent. 402 Gayatm’ Chakravorty Spivak â€Å"Draupadi† Where is the tent? Over there. Draupadi fixes her red eyes on the tent. Says, Come, I’ll go. The guard pushes the water pot forward. Draupadi stands up. She pours the water down on the ground. Tears her piece of cloth with her teeth. Seeing such strange behavior, the guard says, She’s gone crazy, and runs for orders. He can lead the prisoner out but doesn’t know what to do if the prisoner behaves incomprehensibly. So he goes to ask his superior. The commotion is as if the alarm had sounded in a prison. Senanayak walks out surprised and sees Draupadi, naked, walking toward him in the bright sunlight with her head high. The nervous guards trail behind. What is this? He is about to cry, but stops. Draupadi stands before him, naked. Thigh and pubic hair matted with dry blood. Two breasts, two wounds. What is this? He is about to bark. Draupadi comes closer. Stands with her hand on her hip, laughs and says, The object of your search, Dopdi Mejhen. You asked them to make me up, don’t you want to see how they made me? Where are her clothes? Won’t put them on, sir. Tearing them. Draupadi’s black body comes even closer. Draupadi shakes with an indomitable laughter that Senanayak simply cannot understand. Her ravaged lips bleed as she begins laughing. Draupadi wipes the blood on her palm and says in a voice that is as terrifying, sky splitting, and sharp as her ululation, What’s the use of clothes? You can strip me, but how can you clothe me again? Are you a man? She looks around and chooses the front of Senanayak’s white bush shirt to spit a bloody gob at and says, There isn’t a man here that I should be ashamed. I will not let you put my cloth on me. What more can you do? Come on, counter me-come on, counter me-? Draupadi pushes Senanayak with her two mangled breasts, and for the first time Senanayak is afraid to stand before an unarmed target, terribly afraid.