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A push for peace ‘Param Droh’ |
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Mines of misery Give workers dignity, not bondage is a shame that as many as 114 persons, including women and children, were working as “bonded labourers” in Charkhi Dadri subdivision of Bhiwani district, Haryana. They have recently been rescued from the stone quarries there.
Tampering with
texts
Dal romances
Children dying of
hunger haunt Maharashtra In Shanghai just go
with the flow From
Pakistan
From the pages of
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‘Param Droh’ THE gallantry awards are instituted to recognise and reward brave and selfless acts in the face of extreme danger, against enemy action or in hostile circumstances. The fact that a few black sheep are tempted to fake encounters and even kill non-combatants in order to obtain a coveted award and the benefits that accrue from it bespeaks of extreme heinousness and total lack of respect for any values, let alone valour or patriotism. They are a blot on the glorious traditions of the Indian armed forces. The case of Major Surinder Singh, who was cashiered and sentenced to three years’ rigorous imprisonment for faking an encounter in the Siachen theatre last year, is still fresh in memory. Another case has now come to light with an anonymous letter, claimed to have been written by a soldier, sent to the family of a killed porter — Ram Lal of Lalyal village in Jammu. The letter has charged a colonel, a major and other personnel of the 18 Rashtriya Rifles with faking an encounter near Dewar village of the Lolab area in the Kashmir Valley. In this blood-curdling incident on April 20, 2004, four people were killed. They were deemed to be terrorists. While two of them were buried by the soldiers, the other two were handed over to the police, who later buried them. The Army has already initiated an enquiry. In due course, it may also initiate court martial proceedings against the accused personnel. But the denouement in the Siachen case was less than satisfactory, with several unanswered questions about whether other higher-ranking officers, also involved, were let off the hook. Such instances are rarely the handiwork of just one man. The nation and the Army cannot afford to have such cases diminish the value of the gallantry awards. It would be a great dishonour to the recipients of every award and citation. Indeed, to every soldier who wears his uniform with pride. The Army owes it to itself to ruthlessly weed out all those guilty.
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Mines of misery IT is a shame that as many as 114 persons, including women and children, were working as “bonded labourers” in Charkhi Dadri subdivision of Bhiwani district, Haryana. They have recently been rescued from the stone quarries there. Besides being inhuman, bonded labour is illegal. It is also, unfortunately, widely prevalent, especially in rural areas, in spite of the government's protestations. The Bonded Labour System (Abolition) Act, 1976, lays down the quantum of punishment for its infringement. It is obvious that there is a political and administrative nexus that enables the contractors and human traffickers to operate with impunity. This nexus should be broken. The fundamental rights of the workers have been violated and the guilty should be brought to book. The plight of the children of these workers is the worst since their fundamental right to education and a secure childhood has been violated. Every too often, news appears about "bonded labourers" being rescued and many a time those set free are children who should have been in school and not working illegally in the mines, toiling at brick kilns, embroidering expensive dresses or carpets etc, or cleaning dishes as domestic workers. It is estimated that there are over a million child workers labouring in various mines in India. Extreme poverty often forces people into such untenable situations where even the children are made to work for a pittance. The government has to forcefully intervene and ensure dignity of labour for all. The law says that mine workers must be paid Rs 240 a day. They are seldom paid the minimum wages, and have to suffer indignities, including the lack of freedom, bad food and sexual harassment. It is the duty of the state to create a secure environment for its citizens and force the employers to provide their workers with basic amenities, including shelter and healthcare. As for the children, they should go to school. Their parents should be given enough to enable them to do so. |
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He that lives upon hope will die
fasting. — Benjamin Franklin |
Tampering with texts
The
strange ideas of the Chairman of the
National Commission for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes, Mr
Suraj Bhan, tend to confirm the view that Indians do not care much
about history. Suggesting that all derogatory references to the Dalits
be removed from all books, he has said that a beginning can be made by
erasing Sant Tulsidas’s celebrated line in Ramcharitmanas: dhol,
ganwar, shudra, pashu, nari; yeh sab taran ke adhikari. Though
the line is obviously less than complimentary to rustics, the lower
castes, animals and women, who have been identified as fit for being
beaten as one beats a drum, the idea was not unusual in the 16th
century. However, the line can have more than one interpretation. For
instance, a drum is beaten not to create a discordant noise but to tap
out a rhythm. Only a skilful player has the art to elicit musical
notes from a drum. So, it can be argued that the purpose of taran
is not just thrashing someone, but to impart training, as an animal is
trained or a person is educated. Curiously, Tulsidas’s line is
echoed by an old English proverb, which says: A spaniel, a wife and a
walnut tree; the more you beat them, the better they be. Here again,
the implicit meaning may well be of training or "educating"
the animal or the person or the object to make it "better".
Mr Suraj Bhan is not interested, of course, in placing the saying in a
context and analysing it. He simply wants to rub it out. His
intention is not unlike that of Thomas Bowdler, a 19th century
"scholar", who sanitised Shakespeare by taking out what he
considered were immoral or irreligious passages. Although he failed in
his endeavour to make the public accept his abridged version of the
Bard’s works, he contributed the two nouns, bowdlerism and
bowdlerisation, and the verb, bowdlerise, to the English language. If
the chairman of the SC and ST Commission succeeds in
"purifying" Indian history, succeeding generations may also
speak of Surajbhaning textbooks. But there may be a problem. Suppose
Mr Suraj Bhan does succeed in deleting Tulsidas’s line and other
unsavoury references to the Dalits from the books of history,
literature and the social sciences, how would the succeeding
generations of Dalits understand why a commission had to be set up
specifically for them and why guarantees were incorporated in the
Constitution for reserving jobs for them? If they find nothing in the
textbooks which speak ill of them, how will they know why they fell
behind the other castes and communities? If the reference to the act
of forbidding the Dalits from listening to the Vedas is removed, as
demanded by Mr Suraj Bhan, how will they understand the reason why
large numbers in their earlier generations lacked formal education and
why the upper castes, especially the Brahmins, surged ahead in this
field ? The crucial point of education is not facts and figures,
though these are important, but to provide a person with an overall
perspective. Without it, he would be like one of the seven blind men
in the fable who were trying to find out what an elephant looked like
by touching various parts of the animal’s body. He will miss the
whole picture. Shocking as some of the references to the Dalits are in
the ancient texts, they are a part of history and tell Indians how
their society has functioned, or malfunctioned, through the ages. In
this respect, the history of a country is a book which is being
written all the time. Not only is the past being constantly
interpreted, it also tells the nation about the wrong turnings that it
took. The reason why such regressions occurred is also important if
only to guard against similar missteps in the future. The maltreatment
of Dalits, for instance, exposes the distortions to which the caste
system is prone. But if the references to them are eliminated, then
the danger of reversion can remain, for the caste system still has its
supporters. For instance, in his book, The Hindu View of Life, Dr
Radhakrishnan says that the "institution of caste illustrates the
spirit of comprehensive synthesis characteristic of the Hindu mind
with its faith in the collaboration of races and the cooperation of
cultures. Paradoxical as it may seem, the system of caste is the
outcome of tolerance and trust". Although the former President
went on to say that the system "degenerated into an instrument of
oppression and intolerance", he still endorsed its
"underlying principle", which was to let "each racial
group … develop the best in it without impeding the progress of
others". Not to put too fine a point on it, this justification
would have won the approval of the now defunct white supremacist
apartheid regime of South Africa, which also believed in the separate
"development" of racial groups. But that doesn’t mean
that views such as these should be erased. On the contrary, what is
necessary is for scholars to consider the historical conditions which
led to the appearance of the caste system — or any other social
behavioural pattern such as the lynching of witches or human sacrifice
which are still reported occasionally, or abhorrent practices
sanctioned by religion such as sati. Only when a nation is
able to look at its past with an unclouded vision is it able to shed
its prejudices and superstition. To erase history, as Mr Suraj Bhan
suggests, is to court the danger of repeating it. Yet, he is not the
only person to believe in closing one’s eyes to the past. The energy
with which Dr Murli Manohar Joshi undertook the task of rewriting
history when he was the Human Resource Development Minister also
showed that the malady is widespread. The BJP leader’s motive, of
course, was political. He wanted to present history in a light which
suited his party’s communal agenda. Hence the omission of a
reference to Gandhiji’s assassination in school textbooks because of
"time and space constraint", as their author Hari Om
admitted, although he did add that it was "a very serious
mistake". But "mistakes" of this nature are rarely
inadvertent. There is a psychological reason for it. In the case of
the saffronisation of textbooks, the explanation for the silence on
Gandhiji’s murder was to avoid referring to a period when Hindu
communalism claimed the life of a saint-like figure. No wonder, the
BJP wanted to look the other way. If Mr Suraj Bhan wants to look the
other way where unkind references to the Dalits are concerned, the
reason is perhaps both anger and shame. But history calls for a
clear-sighted appraisal, unhindered by sentiment. So does every other
academic discipline. Emotion has no place in these subjects. Yet, it
is possible that Indians are far too sensitive and thin-skinned to
study them dispassionately. Their other-worldly doctrines may have
also made them uninterested in the material world, a character trait
which made them forget their entire glorious past. It was the British
who discovered it for them. The same attitude may be the reason why
there are few biographies and autobiographies by Indians which tell
the whole truth, except Sarvepalli Gopal’s book on his father
Radhakrishnan and Gandhiji’s My Experiments with Truth. Mr
Suraj Bhan must understand that truth, and not camouflage, must be the
guiding light in all aspects of life.
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Dal romances
Unlike
the quiet walls of his houseboat on the Dal lake, Javed has nothing staid in his life. He has spent years wooing women from distant lands who have been his guests on the houseboat. For all his success in forging friendships, Javed appears convinced there is no companion better than his wife. Javed fell in love early in life with a girl who resided in his neighbourhood. His father, who owned a houseboat, did not take long to get him married. The couple soon had kids but Javed couldn’t help setting his eyes on adventurous single women from foreign soils who came to seek succour in the ravishing beauty of Kashmir. As he helped his father in managing the houseboat, Javed impressed women with his boyish looks and effusive talk. His deep blue eyes and confident demeanour did the initial trick after which he stayed in touch through the telephone in the houseboat. Javed spent more time in the houseboat than at his home. He had tastefully done it up to give his guests a feel of Kashmiri flavour. The common room, dining hall and suites had rich woodwork and exquisite Kashmiri carpets. A helper was always at hand to serve choicest dishes to the guests. Javed did that extra bit to make his guests’ stay memorable. Among his girlfriends, the one from Australia seemed particularly keen in getting married to him despite stiff resistance from her own parents. Javed went to Australia on a ticket sent by the woman, stayed with her but refused to formalise the relationship. Perhaps a lurking fear about things going wrong forced him not to adopt a path which could have put at risk his marriage back home. As flow of tourists ebbed in Kashmir due to rising militancy, Javed made regular sojourns to Australia. His houseboat, which used to get nearly 200 guests every month in summers till the mid-eighties, would not get a visitor for months together in the early nineties. It was not before 1995 that tourists started trickling in again. Javed stuck to his interests and his business in the years of large-scale violence in the Valley but he could not escape the consequences of violent situation. He had to put up with long frisking at domestic airports. At times, he was asked to come out of queue to answer extra questions. He detested being treated differently. Javed stayed in Australia long enough to get its citizenship but he did not set up a home. The magnanimity of his wife, who suffered his indiscretions without letting the children face hardship, apparently restrained him from charting an independent course. Foreign citizenship had its own benefits for Javed. He found a pleasant change in his interface at the airports in India. Javed was treated with that much more courtesy and politeness at the airports which he found missing as a “Kashmiri”.
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Children dying of
hunger haunt Maharashtra With
the monsoon coming to a close, the Maharashtra government has begun its annual charade of downplaying the deaths of children from malnutrition in different parts of the state. A sheepish state government admitted before the Bombay High Court last week that 1,590 children died across Maharashtra’s 15 districts between April and July this year. The state government’s admission came months after it announced a “Malnutrition Eradication Mission” to prevent deaths of children during the lean months of June to September this year. Under this scheme, food and nutritional supplements were to be provided on a priority basis to vulnerable children in the state’s poorest districts. Nearly eight months after the mission was announced, it has made very little headway. A pilot project has been announced in just one district, Aurangabad, and the response emanating from there is mixed. The government, however, claimed improvement in the situation since 1837 children had died of malnutrition between April and July last year. Activists and non-government organisations that petitioned the Bombay High Court say the death toll is far higher than the government’s figures. Statistics emerging from the interiors of the state indicate the death toll from just five districts in the Vidarbha region alone may cross the 2,000-mark. The figures may be several times of this when numbers from the entire state are computed. Expectedly, the Vilasrao Deshmukh government has sought to buy time by “seeking information from officials” when reports prepared by his own bureaucrats in the past gather dust at the state secretariat. Just last December, a committee set up under the chairmanship of noted social worker Abhay Bang criticised the state government for under-reporting children’s deaths caused from malnutrition by as much as 60 to 80 per cent. Dr Bang, who along with his wife, Rani, run the NGO Search in the Naxalite-hit district of Gadchiroli, went on to state that 1,80,000 children die of malnutrition every year in Maharashtra alone. Worse still, the report indicted the government for doing nothing to help alleviate the condition of more than eight lakh children who were on the brink, suffering from 4th grade or acute malnutrition. It would take just one lean agricultural season to send the death toll spiralling in several districts of the state. Another 32 lakh children usually suffer from early stages of malnutrition in the country’s richest state. The footprints of the grim reaper stretch from the Vidarbha region in Central India through the greener areas of Western Maharashtra to the tribal hamlets of Thane district, less than three hours from the country’s financial capital. In addition to 80,000 children dying in rural Maharashtra annually, another 24,000 malnutrition casualties happen in the state’s tribal belt. And shockingly more than 55,000 children from urban slums across the state die every year for want of food, according to the Bang Committee report. On the other hand, the Maharashtra government claims to have brought down the state’s infant mortality rate from 58 per 1000 births in 1990 to 45 in 2003. Only studies from the affected districts tell a different story. A study conducted by the Indira Gandhi Institute of Development Research last year showed that tribal people who migrate to neighbouring Gujarat every year do not report deaths of children during migration. “If deaths during migration are counted, the under-five mortality may shoot up…..in the tribal blocks at least a correction factor of 50 per cent upwards may be necessary to get true estimates,” the study said. The study further warned that data on births and deaths collected by gram panchayats are not made available to the respective district headquarters for years on end. It went on to recommend an upward correction in the death rate of children by 25 per cent in non-tribal areas. Often the social structure in the affected areas also encourages suppression of information on child deaths. In some parts of Maharashtra, neither births nor deaths from a new mother are noted till the child survives to school-going age. The infant mortality rate of children born from pre-teen mothers is thus left uncalculated. Maharashtra’s bureaucrats are also known to venally downplay malnutrition deaths to protect their own interests. Activists allege that doctors and paramedical staff employed at primary health centres are often under pressure to fudge statistics. Children suffering from acute malnutrition are classified as suffering from mild malnutrition to enable ruling politicians to present a rosy picture. As Commissioner, Tribal Research and Training Institute (TRTI), crusading bureaucrat Arun Bhatia revealed that 70 per cent of the malnutrition deaths in Maharashtra are mislabelled. By surveying the nutrition status of the siblings of dead children, Bhatia concluded that 92 per cent of the deaths in Thane in 2001 were caused by malnutrition. Instead of acting on Bhatia’s findings, the government of then Chief Minister Vilasrao Deshmukh issued a show-cause notice to the bureaucrat and threw him out of the institute. The state government has since then reverted to hiding deaths of children by malnutrition under different heads like teenage motherhood, delivery of babies at home, etc. Often the deaths of children across vast swathes of land are shown to have been caused by “cardio-respiratory failure”. |
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In Shanghai just go with the flow For
noise, for energy, for crowds, for bustle, for a 24-karat explosion of commerce and construction, Shanghai seems to be taking itself to a whole, unearthly new level of boomtown extravagance. The sense here — for native or visitor, packed together — is “get in step or get out of the way of the stampede.'' Thousands of skyscrapers have been built in the past few years, and hundreds more are on the rise; the risk is that if you set out a picnic blanket, someone will build an office tower on it. Bursting with a bold new economic license as China's authoritarian leadership makes a grab for the capitalism gold, Shanghai is proving the perfect vehicle to harness the legendary Chinese intelligence, entrepreneurship and amazing capacity for hard work. It is an astonishing scene, if you like big buildings and the sardine sensation of being caught up in the wave of the future. Yet Shanghai is so much more than skyscrapers and construction run amok. New as it is, it is an old city, richer in its history than it is rich in its new prosperity. While millions of people are dedicated to building things, tens of millions more seek to enjoy the lovely, quiet corners of the Yu Garden, to reflect in a moment's peace at the Chen Xiang Ge Temple, or simply to watch the Huangpu River chug by from the Bingjiang Da Dao, or promenade across from the Bund, the city's principal waterfront prospect. Across the brisk river, the Pudong district rises up in some mad mixture of Las Vegas hues, Hong Kong hustle and riverboat gambler competition to be the tallest, the biggest, the most sensational building in town, in the country, in the world. Yet, too, you can watch beautiful children play among the flowers of small parks; see lovely, ancient citizens glide along with the same soft elegance as they have for tens of centuries; and smell the rich flavors of spices and incense and flowers. It being China, crowds are measured in numbers that constitute small nations elsewhere. An evening's stroll down the glittery, trendy Nanjing Lu Road can take several hours because it is so totally packed with people that it is simply not possible to hurry. Shanghai sprawls out according to a plan that must be known to someone. Exactly who that might be is something of a mystery. Instead, it seems that construction spurts in the fashion of mushrooms -- here, then there, always someplace. At the same time, the new wealth delivers amazing contrasts: rickety rickshaws and vegetable carts outside Ferrari and Mercedes dealerships; brisk young people in shoes that cost more than most others here will earn in a year; great modernism and ancient traditions side by side, hard-handed communism for the poor people, cowboy capitalism for the rich. Buildings stretch up to the heavens, yet in the Shanghai Museum, art and beauty from across the ages comfort the more reverent visitors in numbers few office towers and the work within can dream of satisfying. There are temples to money and temples to a gentle philosophy of forbearance and patience. There is the acrid sense of diesel mixing with the gentle waft of jasmine. Electricity and engineering dazzle the mind, while soft reflection of lanterns and ribbons on garden pools calm the spirit, ease the soul. Threading your way through these essential elements is part of the challenge of Shanghai. A key to the effort? Get lost. — LA Times-Washington Post |
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From Pakistan QUETTA:
A woman has threatened to organise a long march of women to the Governor’s and Chief Minister’s Houses on September 6 in protest against alleged illegal confinement of her husband, who, she said, had been in the custody of a federal intelligence agency since October 2001. Noor Bibi, wife of Ali Asghar Bungulzai, speaking at a press conference at the Press Club on Tuesday, appealed to President Pervez Musharraf to take notice of the intelligence agency’s excesses. She said her children had observed token hunger strike in front of the club for the past 56 days but the government had not taken notice of the protest. She said the agency should release her husband as it had failed to prove any charge against him or present him in a court in four years. She said that after the long march, women and children would set up hunger strike camps at different places in the city from September 10.
— The Dawn Five-day
week ISLAMABAD: In view of the soaring international oil prices, the government is devising a strategy to ensure the commodity’s minimum conservation, substitution with gas and curtailing working operations to five days a week to meet the challenge of sky-rocketing oil prices. A decision to this effect is expected to come in the near future as the era of cheap energy is now over and there is no chance of oil prices coming down, sources told The Nation on Tuesday. Three main pillars of the strategy will be the conservation, substitution and savings to face the difficult situation following the unprecedented increase in oil prices in the international market, the sources added. The sources said the government is considering introducing a five-day working week in a bid to save consumption of oil, and giant public sector entities will implement it in the first phase. “We are contemplating devising a broad-based strategy to combat the hike in international oil prices. We will evolve a strategy in order to tackle the upward graph of oil prices,” Adviser to the Prime Minister on Finance Dr Salman Shah said.
— The Nation Human rights violations LAHORE:
Human Rights Commission of Pakistan Chairperson Asma Jehangir has criticized President Pervez Musharraf’s idea of enlightened moderation, saying the Musharraf government has done nothing substantial to improve the human rights situation and strengthen the legal status of women in Pakistan. Talking to BBC Hardtalk, Ms Jehangir wanted to see growth in enlightenment with regard to human rights in Pakistan. She said enlightened moderation was a mere slogan and asked what it meant. She said: “I don’t know what the government means by enlightened moderation. It’s a military government and people have no freedom.” She said there were more human rights violations in Pakistan than ever before, and that the human rights situation was as bad as ever, if not worse. Asma Jehangir said even people sitting in parliament complain about being mere rubber stamp. She said controlled democracy prevailed in Pakistan, and even the existing Cabinet did not know about the decisions the military would take.
— Daily Times |
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From the pages of A MODERN UTOPIA "How to live without money." This is an experiment in socialism being tried in America, which must be of exceeding interest to the large portion of human beings who are always in want of sufficient cash to make the two ends meet. At Burley Woods, in the State of Washington, 220 men, women and children are residing, who claim to have solved the problem of how to live without money; while 800 non-resident members of the community are paying a dollar per month for 10 years, with the intention of becoming residents at the end of that time, and paying no more money as long as they live. Every workman receives credit for his day's labour, each woman being also credited to the same extent, while those from 12 to 18 years of age who work for two hours a day, receive one-third of the credit granted to an adult. Judging from the fact that the colony has purchased 350 acres of land and has 680 acres more under contract for five years, it is apparent that this modern Utopia is in a very flourishing condition.
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O Lord, if there is a Lord, save my soul, if I have a soul. — Book of quotations on Religion Woe and misery are relative emotions. A man may be sorrowing greatly but if he is told of greater sorrow of another, he feels more fortunate and less miserable by contrast. — The Mahabharata Serve God, and do not associate anything with God. And be good to your parents and relatives, and to orphans and paupers, and to neighbours close by and neighbours remote, and to the companion at your side, and to the traveller, and to your wards. For God does not love the arrogant, the
boastful.
— Book of quotations on
Islam |
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