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Spectacular success Killing for promotion |
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Liberalise border
trade practices
In search of a bride
The love for hate
stories in virtual space
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Killing for promotion The
Supreme Court guidelines issued on Tuesday may
minimise, if not eliminate, fake police encounters. Before proceeding to nab a terrorist, the police will have to put in writing intelligence inputs available. If there is an encounter death, the registration of an FIR and an inquiry by the CID or the police team of another police station becomes mandatory. In such cases the police often register a case of attempt to murder (Section 307,
IPC) against the victim rather than a case of murder or culpable homicide against the policemen involved. Six monthly statements of all cases where deaths have occured in police firing must be sent to the National Human Rights Commission by state
DGPs. No out-of-turn promotion or a gallantry award will be given to the policemen concerned until and unless the inquiry has established that the encounter or gallantry shown was genuine. It is true there are policemen who risk their life fighting terrorists, and deserve to be rewarded. Any delay in the reward may discourage or demoralise them. But in recent years the police/security forces' tendency has been to eliminate a wanted man, and sometimes an innocent, by staging an encounter instead of going through the difficult and dilatory legal process. Punjab, Jammu and Kashmir, Gujarat and the Maoist-hit states are familiar with genuine and fake encounters. In some cases erring policemen have been punished. But the award of out-of-turn promotions and other incentives as well as lack of an institutional supervision/ follow-up action has encouraged the nasty practice of staged encounters. An inquiry into an encounter by an officer or agency of the state police may not help as its independence would be suspect. A CBI inquiry may be preferable, especially in high-profile and serious cases, since the Central agency still has considerable credibility. Finally, it is important for the Supreme Court to ensure that its guidelines are implemented. These should not be treated with the contempt that states did in the case of police reforms the court had recommended.
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We've had bad luck with our kids — they've all grown up.
— Christopher Morley
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Emden's mischief at Madras LENGTHY accounts of the mischief done by a hostile cruiser, "Emden" at Madras on Tuesday night have been published elsewhere. The fire has since been extinguished, little damage having been done. The details show that "Emden" was in the offing south-east of the harbour. One of the first shots fired by it set the Burma Oil Company's tanks on fire, which illuminated the whole seafront of the town. Subsequent accounts are to the effect that "Emden" appeared close to the shore at Pondicherry early on Tuesday morning but steamed south without firing. The façade of the Central Telegraph Office in Madras shows signs of the being struck as also the new premises of the National Bank of India. Fragments of a shell entered the upper flat of the old Bank of Burma and fragments were also found on second line beach. The new Port Trust bungalow near the Lighthouse Battery was hit by two shells aimed apparently at the Lighthouse. The body of an Indian police constable hit by a shell was picked up in the harbour bespattered with tar. The Madras Sailing Clubhouse was wrecked. Emden was silenced by three shells, the first of which was short, the second high and the third caused her to extinguish search-lights. Training of teachers THE people all over the country desire that there should be a rapid expansion of primary and secondary education. So are the Government, and they have given a practical proof of their interest by making available large and substantial grants for the purposes. They regret that the progress cannot be more rapid owing, among other things, to the dearth of qualified teachers. The numerous aided and un-aided schools in the province suffer from lack of trained teachers.
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Liberalise border trade practices
Our media and academics often overlook the fact that four of our north-eastern states — Arunachal Pradesh, Nagaland, Manipur and Mizoram — share a 1,640-km land border with Myanmar. Myanmar is not only a member of BIMSTEC, the Bay of Bengal Grouping linking SAARC and ASEAN, but is also our gateway to the fast-growing economies of east and south-east Asia. While successive leaders of Myanmar — all devout Buddhists — have looked on India predominantly in spiritual terms as the home of Lord Buddha, they recognise that an economically vibrant India provides an ideal balance to a growingly assertive China. Sadly, we have not been able to take full advantage of either our shared Buddhist heritage with Myanmar by facilitating increased pilgrimages, or use our economic potential to our full advantage. The blossoming of the India-Myanmar relationship over the past two decades has nevertheless been a success story. Mechanisms are in place between the military and security agencies of the two countries, which have effectively fostered cooperation across the border. This has led to effective cooperation in dealing with cross-border insurgencies. Myanmar's Information Minister recently reiterated to India's new government, his government's readiness to crack down on Indian insurgent groups like ULFA (Assam), PLA (Manipur) and NSCN K (Nagaland). India, in turn, has acted firmly against Myanmar insurgents entering its territory. Myanmar has steadily eased the rigours of military rule after the elections that swept President Thein Sein to power in 2011. The military, however, still has a crucial role in national life as negotiations are in progress to achieve a comprehensive ceasefire with 16 armed insurgent groups drawn from ethnic non-Burmese minorities. This is no easy task, but is a prelude to negotiations on the highly sensitive issue of federalism and provincial autonomy for ethnic minority areas. After years of extreme bonhomie during military rule, which was accompanied by international isolation, Myanmar’s relationship with China is facing strains. China has helped in building Myanmar's infrastructure and equipping its military. India's fears of Chinese military bases in Myanmar were, however, not borne out. But differences between China and Myanmar have grown lately, especially on large projects like the Myistone Dam and a proposed railway line to connect Yunnan to the Bay of Bengal. There is also growing opposition to Chinese projects in copper and nickel mining and concern that Myanmar has not benefited from an oil pipeline linking China's Yunnan Province to the Bay of Bengal Port of Kyaukphu. There are also concerns about the Chinese involvement with Myanmar insurgent groups like the Kachin Independence Army and the United Ws Army in Shan state. Despite this, border trade across the Yunnan Province-Myanmar border reached $4.17 billion in 2013, against a mere $35 million of trade across the India-Myanmar border. The “unofficial trade” (smuggling) across this border is, however, estimated at around $300 million annually. India's former Ambassador to Myanmar, Dr V.S. Seshadri, has authored a recent report spelling out how India has proceeded tardily in building connectivity through Myanmar to Thailand and Vietnam and in getting access for our land-locked north-eastern states to the Bay of Bengal. Or border trade regulations are crafted by mandarins in North Block and Udyog Bhavan, New Delhi, who have no idea either of the ground situation along the India-Myanmar border or the pragmatism that China shows in treating the markets across its land borders with its neighbours, not as foreign markets, but as extensions of China's own markets. Opening up such trade will also enable our north-eastern states to meet their growing requirements of rice at very competitive rates. Unless we learn to look at our neighbours like China bearing in mind the inherent strengths of our economy, we can never match the economic influence of China across our borders in the Northeast. The new Minister for North Eastern Affairs, Gen V.K. Singh, has long experience of the Northeast. One hopes that as a pragmatist he would arrange to liberalise current trade practices and permit trade across our borders with Myanmar in currencies traders mutually agree to. Vehicles should be permitted to move freely across the borders on road networks now envisaged, through Myanmar, to Thailand and Vietnam. Moreover, the “Kaladan Multimodal Corridor” linking our north-eastern states to the Bay of Bengal through the Port of Sittwe in Myanmar will be useful only if Sittwe becomes the key port for India-Myanmar trade. India has done remarkably well in projects in Myanmar intended for the development of human resources. It has participated in the establishment of the Myanmar Institute of Information Technology, an Advanced Centre for Agricultural Research and Education, an agricultural university and welcomed many Myanmar professionals for training in our medical and engineering institutions. But it has to be acknowledged that in project and investment cooperation, our record has not exactly enhanced our image as a dynamic, emerging economy. After having secured exploration rights for gas in the Bay of Bengal, we conducted our project planning and diplomacy so clumsily that we did not have a pipeline strategy in place for transporting gas to India across Myanmar, or by sea as LNG. China deftly stepped in and took away all the gas intended for us by expeditiously building a pipeline to its Yunnan Province. In the mid-1990s Myanmar offered us hydro-electric projects across rivers near our borders. We took over a decade to scrutinise these projects, which companies in South Korea had earlier offered to construct. After nearly two decades, we backed off. Our private companies similarly have not been able to avail offers of land for agriculture across Myanmar. India was offered hundreds of acres of land with bamboo plantations for making paper pulp. Two private sector companies signed memoranda of understanding with their Myanmar counterparts. But Myanmar officials found our private sector was even more bureaucratic than our government organisations. India lost out on access to huge bamboo resources to a Thai company, which clinched a deal in weeks —something which our companies could not do in nearly two decades.
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In search of a bride This was a high time for finding a suitable match for each one of them. During those days arranged marriages were common and emphasis was given on the many social and financial parameters while selecting suitable matches. For the prospective brides, boys generally held two views -- either the girl should be educated and non-working so that she could devote more time to the family or working so as to have a regular source of income. The trio — Parminder, Harpreet and Balwinder — were from Jat Sikh families. Parminder was very smart whereas Harpreet was of a dark complexion. In the class there was a joke that once Harpreet went to a shop and asked for skin-colour socks and the shopkeeper gave him black socks. In their houses visitors, queries and marriage discussions were a routine feature. One day there was a proposal for Harpreet stating that the girl was beautiful and her father was a gentleman. After the visitors left, Harpreet commented jokingly that nobody talked anything about the gentleness of the girl in question. Harpreet was of the opinion one should marry a smart girl of a fair complexion to have smart and fair complexioned children. Balwinder pinched him, saying that it was true but in your case, kids would have traits like the Dalmatian breed of dogs (black spots on the white coat). When nothing materialised on the marriage front after some months of search, everybody felt restless. Parminder said that we were struggling to get a suitable girl whereas all his schoolmates from the village were not only married but also had children and one of his schoolmates in a government job had even received an incentive for undergoing a vasectomy operation (common during those days). But the height of the situation was when their Bahadur dropped a bombshell that he was leaving soon as his marriage had been fixed for the next month. Balwinder, who was the only son of his parents, was very clear about his requirements for the prospective bride. He had a list of all the Jat Sikh girls working as college lecturers in the nearby colleges. In the back of the mind, he also hoped of marrying the only daughter of a landlord or an industrialist for a comfortable living. His friends told him that if such an alliance took place, his kids would not have any close relative like Chacha, Taya, Bhua or Massi and moreover, he would have to take care of his in-laws in addition to his parents in their old age. Finally, Parminder got engaged to a girl who was working as a senior nurse at a reputed hospital in Chandigarh. One day his friend, Kulwinder, who was in the field job after the completion of his graduation, visited him. Kulwinder said that it was difficult to find an educated Jat Sikh boy. “You are a postgraduate and a smart Jat Sikh boy and if you are going to marry a nurse, then correspondingly a graduate like me will be getting utmost a midwife as a life partner”. A genuine worrisome concern, really!
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The love for hate stories in virtual space The social media websites are being hailed for their immense potential to connect people and build bridges. But as more and more users are spewing vitriol online, targeting celebs and ordinary mortals alike, the need to control hate comments becomes paramount.
Mind
your language... are you kidding? In a free-for-all virtual space
where free speech reigns almost like the Lord of Deliverance, it’s
not just ps and qs you don’t need to mind but even the choice of
words. Choicest of abuses, slander, derogatory words.... take your
pick, in the newly emerging cyber culture it seems there is no
culture. So aspersions are cast, reputations are destroyed and abuse
is hurled in all directions and at all and sundry. To put it simply,
cyber bullying is an agonising reality. According to a Global Youth
Online Behaviour Survey by Microsoft, 53 per cent of children have
been bullied online in India, which puts it at the third place, after
only China and Singapore. Trolling and trailing
However, it’s
not children alone who are at the receiving end. Trolling, which the
Urban Dictionary defines as: "The art of deliberately, cleverly
and secretly annoying people, usually via the internet", trails
women endlessly. A study by the Internet Democracy Project
points out that responses to women’s opinions on the Internet are a
mix of sexist and sexually explicit content aimed at making them
uncomfortable. An unwarranted degree of familiarity pervades social
networking sites. Absolute strangers greet women with remarks such as,
"hey sexy and beautiful," otherwise reserved for close
partners. Internet was meant to be the most democratic world. Yet
the only democracy that perhaps prevails here is, be it celebs or
ordinary mortals, that the diatribe spares none. So pretty and petite
film star Alia Bhatt is not only the butt of unflattering jokes but is
called by a litany of unprintable names by some unknown man somewhere.
A young girl is haunted mercilessly for daring to differ with vox
populi. A well-known film critic is accused of taking money and
writing favourable reviews. And the monster of hate knows no
borders. It’s not only in India alone that unsuspecting men and
women are under attack. Cyber bullying is a universal phenomenon. In
the US even children with special abilities are targeted, forcing a
mother of a child suffering from seizures to accompany her to school.
Normal people are no less vulnerable. A girl was bullied with such
ruthless relentlessness that she committed suicide. Hub of
vile
Meant to be a utopia for freedom of expression, the Internet has
become a hub of vile where people vent out their spleen as if the
world was coming to an end and hate bites were the only recourse to
make their life worthwhile. Certainly, hate speech was not created
online. After all, hate is as universal an emotion as love and as
perennial too. And doesn’t one encounter bullies in real life too.
But in the virtual space bullying is raised to the power of infinity.
And the Internet’s biggest strength, that is its reach, becomes a
Damocles sword. Besides, the anonymity of this world lends it a
virulence rarely seen in face-to-face interaction. The American
computer scientist who coined the term ‘virtual reality’, Jaron
Lanier, author of You Are Not A Gadget, might say, "Don’t
post anonymously unless you really might be in danger", a tribe
of anonymous bloggers are posing threats to others all the time. These
are not just virtual but fraught with the possibility of turning real
any time. No wonder the tagline of MTV’s mini-series Webbed, that
deals with cyber abuse reads — The Internet is a great place to make
friends; a better place for faceless predators. Online projections
Actually, there is a significant shift in the way people lead their
lives and the way they project themselves online. Besides, many
emotions like anger and frustration that can’t be verbalised
otherwise find a vent online. Psychologists even have a word to
explain this rancid behaviour and call it
"de-individuation". In simple words, it refers to the
diminishing of one’s sense of individuality that occurs with
behaviour disjointed from personal or social standards of conduct. For
example, someone who is an anonymous member of a mob is more likely to
act violently towards a police officer than a known individual.
According to a US study, 81 per cent of youth agree that bullying
online is easier to get away with than bullying in person and 80 per
cent believe it is easier to hide online bullying from parents than
face-to-face bullying. In short, de-individuation makes us obligation
free. Those who think what’s there in words, well hate comments
are not just isolated stand-alone random thoughts. Rooted in inherent
prejudices, stereotypes, misogyny, false perceptions — these could
well be a precursor to action. According to one episode of Webbed,
a girl had to physically face sexual abuse just because she sided with
a different football team and had the misfortune of expressing her
opinion online. A young man on the other side of the debate located
her, befriended her only to leave her abused and scared.
Law-enforcement agencies in the US estimate that electronic
communications are a factor in 20 per cent to 40 per cent of all
stalking cases. Forty-seven states in America now have laws that
include electronic forms of communication within stalking or
harassment laws. In India, Section 66 of the Information Technology
Act prescribes: "Punishment for sending offensive messages
through communication service." Kunwar Vijay Pratap Singh, DIG
Jalandhar Range, and author of several books on cyber crime, informs
that legally action can be taken against the offenders since Section
66 A deals with offensive messaging and Section 67 with obscenity. But
the problem, according to him, is that most of the Internet Service
Providers (ISPs) are based in the US and not answerable to Indian
laws. While in some cases the ISPs do cooperate with India’s cyber
cell, many a time they respond with a stock reply — Come through
MLAT (Mutual Legal-Assistance Treaty). Thus legal remedies are
delayed. Mokshda Bhushan, Assistant Professor cyber crime, Amity Law
School Noida, feels Section 66 is too ambiguous and is without
sufficient guidelines or parameters. While on the one hand it fails to
fully redress genuine grievances, on the other it can and has been
misused by the police and government officials to clamp down on
individuals in the name of "threat" to national sovereignty
and communal harmony. In fact, it’s not her alone but many others in
India who are already objecting to Section 66 A as well as Section 66
B and asking: Can causing inconvenience and annoyance be clubbed with
criminal intimidation? While some European countries have made
certain forms of hate speech, like Nazi propaganda and Holocaust
denial, a crime, in India however people could get into trouble for
innocuous statements as well. Like Shaheen Dadha and her friend Renu
Srinivasan’s harmless reaction to Mumbai shutting down in the wake
of Shiv Sena supremo Bal Thackeray’s death was construed as
hate-mongering. There are several examples of people being booked
under this section which can be seen as an affront to liberty. Line
between free speech & hate
Indeed, in the brave new world of
Internet, the line between free speech and hate speech gets erased
often enough and there are votaries on either side. Of course, efforts
to purge Internet of hate- filled and bigoted comments have begun too.
Facebook has taken steps to help protect user safety. Bullies can be
blocked and threatening messages can be reported. The user’s account
can be disabled by Facebook. YouTube, partnered with the
Anti-Defamation League to launch an Abuse and Safety Centre, which
allows users to report content that violates YouTube’s community
guidelines on hate speech. Twitter added a button to report abuse.
Facebook, Google and Twitter have given the Indian government a
virtual hotline to flag objectionable content for removal. Right to
forget online
Experts, however, feel that by and large service
providers act only if the content is abusive in nature. Otherwise, if
it tarnishes a person’s reputation or indulges in character
assassination in seemingly polite language the websites don’t take
it off. In fact, more often than not false stories remain on Google or
other sites long after these have been refuted. But more recently this
is also being taken care of. The "Right to forget online"
has not only been approved in the European Court of Justice but is
also part of Indians laws. Nations of the European Union already have
an agency where citizens can appeal for help in erasing their online
histories. However, implementing the same is easier said than done.
Google which was flooded with thousands of such requests found it a
big challenge to actually erase the data. But, the real moderator,
feels Anuja Lath, director and co-founder Red Alchemy, an IT company,
will be the people themselves, particularly the youth who are neither
prejudiced nor judgemental. She is positive that the saner majority
can certainly steamroll and "outtalk" the bile-ridden
minority. Banning anonymous bloggers too can help the virtual world
get rid of what Lanier calls "digital Maoists". Of course,
complete extermination of obnoxious remarks may never really happen,
except by resorting to extreme recourse. Stop tweeting and facebooking,
in short move out of social networking sites or have their servers in
India. That alone can ensure complete immunity from the hate spewing
tribe. So recommends Kunwar Vijay Pratap. Since in a net-addicted
country that is next to impossible, learn to live with it. Or better
still take them on. Just as Alia Bhatt in her video, "The
Genius of the Year," has. In a remarkably hilarious spoof, she
has dared to laugh at herself. Whether it will silence her detractors
who have been all along mocking at her low levels of general awareness
or not her video has garnered over five million hits. Can the power of
the Internet be used to launch a counter offensive? May be not. But by
having your say it sure can help you to decelerate the juggernaut of
hate. Bullying in cyberspace The victims of hate abuse, especially adolescents can develop several negative characteristics like low self-esteem, lack of confidence and it can also affect their academic performance. Their social functions and relationships take a beating as they begin to speculate the source of anonymous comments and doubt friends and peers. It’s not only the victims but also the perpetrators who need
counselling. Global watch
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Dr Rajesh Sagar, Professor of psychiatry AIIMS, New Delhi, member of a panel that came up with guidelines on tackling cyber bullying as part of Delhi Commission for Protection of Child Rights rule book on child abuse agrees that cyber-bullying is likely to be more vicious and the consequences debilitating.