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Breakthrough at last Avoidable flood |
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Russia-Georgia war ends
Neglect of rural education
Golf guru and his lessons
Child abuse is rising Afghan women jailed and ostracised Delhi Durbar
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Breakthrough at last AT long last, the Ahmedabad blasts case has been cracked. Mastermind Mufti Abu Bashir and others who are now in the police net are a prize catch. There are reasons to believe that they may also be involved in Hyderabad, Jaipur and Bangalore explosions. While the police is justified in complimenting itself on the breakthrough, what must be remembered is that it has been possible to sever only one arm of the hideous monster. Given the sweep and magnitude of the serial blasts in various corners of the country, it is obvious that there are many Bashirs hiding elsewhere comfortably. Till they are all behind the bars, the country’s unity will remain under threat and the public will be under constant fear of a repeat of the ghastly blasts which took so many innocent lives. Ironically, the Samajwadi Party and RJD chiefs, Mr Mulayam Singh Yadav and Mr Lalu Prasad Yadav, recently defended SIMI and claimed that it was not a terrorist organisation. One shudders to think what would have happened if the ban on SIMI had actually been lifted and its members were able to move and plan such attacks with impunity. The arrests of the suspects came through because of a nationwide hunt and cooperation between the police of several states. That coordination would have to become standard practice in the light of the linkages developed by terrorists hiding in various states. In fact, it would be unavoidable to work in tandem with intelligence agencies of other countries because the conspiracy is not confined to India alone. A dangerous aspect is the role played by educated, well-placed persons like a computer engineer who helped in making bombs. It is such people who are the biggest headache to the security agencies. Tackling criminals is difficult enough. Keeping a tab on seemingly innocuous common citizens is well nigh impossible. Just because all those arrested belong to a particular community, it should not be seen as the targeting of that community. A criminal is a criminal, to whichever community he belongs. At the same time, it must be the constant endeavour to make sure that there is a mechanism to redress the grievances of every community so that these do not become an excuse for militancy.
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Avoidable flood ONCE again, the Punjab government has been caught unprepared to meet the monsoon fury. The banks of the rivers, particularly the Satluj, have not been strengthened in advance, resulting in breaches at many places. The rivulets, canals and nullahs have not been repaired and cleared of silt and wild grass in time. It seems insufficient rains in recent years had resulted in a laid-back attitude in the administration. The early arrival of the monsoon this year cannot be blamed for the government unpreparedness. Nor can the lack of funds be a reason for inaction. It is plain and simple negligence on the part of the authorities concerned. By closing the gates of the headworks near Ferozepur, the Pakistani authorities have aggravated the rain havoc in the Fazilka area. The political and bureaucratic apathy has caused a massive but avoidable loss to human life, a heavy damage to crops in several districts as well as dislocation of a large number of families. Many of them have shifted to railway tracks. According to a government survey reported in newspapers, crops on 80,000 acres have been ravaged. The Punjab government has already started knocking at the doors of the Centre for sending a loss assessment team to the state. Instead of waiting for Central relief, the government should use its own resources to meet the immediate needs of the flood-hit and arrange fodder for the cattle. Without waiting for government aid, villagers at many places have already started helping those in need. Punjabis are known for selfless community effort at times of a crisis. The government’s duty is far from over. The water level at the Bhakra reservoir has reached close to the danger mark. Government machinery needs to be immediately geared up to meet any eventuality. The health authorities, perhaps, need not be reminded of the possibility of an outbreak of water-borne diseases in the affected areas.
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Russia-Georgia war ends THE Russian military strike against Georgia, an East European nation born after the break-up of the Soviet Union in 1991, has come to an end. French President Nicolas Sarkozy played the key role in the signing of the peace accord between the two countries. Georgia has got the victor’s justice with its friends in the West, particularly the US, doing little beyond issuing statements. The peace deal has it that Russia will withdraw its troops from Georgia, but Moscow can station a large number of its soldiers as “peacekeepers” to man the borders between Georgia and its breakaway region, South Ossetia. Russia will obviously strengthen its presence in South Ossetia so that it can continue to terrorise Georgia from there. The way Russia has tamed Georgia after the latter attacked South Ossetia last week has created much uneasiness in the entire Caucasus region and the other Eastern European counties. There are reports that Poland may be the next target of Russia because of its pro-West policies. Russia is upset with the growing influence of the US and West European nations in its immediate neighbourhood. The West, including the US, is busy increasing its presence in the Caucasus because the region is rich in natural resources, particularly oil and gas. Russia, too, is not prepared to loosen its control over some of the Caucasus countries because of similar reasons. With its large presence in South Ossetia, Russia can easily influence the developments in Georgia, which has acquired special significance because of some of the major oil and gas pipelines passing through that country. Irrespective of Russia’s compulsions, its open support for South Ossetia and Abkhazia, another separatist region of Georgia, is unjustifiable, particularly when Moscow opposed the recognition of Kosovo as an independent nation. Russia should know that if it stands for the grant of independence to the two rebel regions of Georgia, how can it suppress the similar claims of Chechnya, Dagestan, Ingushetia, Kabardino-Balkaria and North Ossetia, located in the north of the Caucasus range? The Caucasus crisis needs to be handled with caution so that it does not lead to a bigger conflict, threatening peace in Europe and beyond.
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A neurosis is a secret you don’t know you’re keeping. — Kenneth Tynan
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Corrections and clarifications
Despite our earnest endeavour to keep The Tribune error-free, some errors do creep in at times. We are always eager to correct them. We request our readers to write or e-mail to us whenever they find any error. We will carry corrections and clarifications, wherever necessary, every Tuesday. Readers in such cases can write to Mr Amar Chandel, Deputy Editor, The Tribune, Chandigarh, with the words “Corrections” on the envelope. His e-mail ID is:
amarchandel@tribunemail.com. H.K. Dua
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Neglect of rural education ACCESS to education is one of the critical elements in rural development. This is a means to upward mobility of the rural population. It enables the persons from rural origin to acquire new skills and get placed in occupations other than agriculture. At the same time education enables them to acquire knowledge and new technology in agriculture. A large number of studies at national and international levels have brought out that educated persons in the rural area get better access to health infrastructure, poverty alleviation programmes and other social security measures of the state. Thus, to make rural population partners in development or what is termed “inclusive growth”, access to education and educational attainments is important. But Punjab is lagging behind, especially the people in the rural areas. In terms of infrastructure, especially the schools in the rural areas, Punjab is comfortably placed as almost every village has a primary school and many villages have elementary and secondary schools. But there are serious flaws in the delivery mechanism of education. The state is ranked 16th in literacy, and the literacy rate in 2001 was 65.16 per cent in the rural areas compared to the urban literacy rate of 79.13 per cent. According to information available by March 31, 2007, there was not even a single government school serving the science stream at 10+2 level in rural Punjab. The rural areas are deprived not only of science education, the rural schools are also in a position of disadvantage in terms of the number of teachers, buildings, boundary walls, drinking water availability and absence of toilets for males and females. In the computer age many schools lack basic teaching aids like blackboards, chalk pieces and stationary. The lack of supervisory and monitoring mechanism and the assignment of non-teaching jobs to teachers in government schools have made the rural schools non-functional with a very poor delivery of education. The worst affected are the educationally backward districts of Mansa, Bathinda, Muktsar and Tarn Taran. A recent report (The Tribune, July 18, 2008) brings out that in Tarn Taran district, 40 primary and middle schools have been closed for want of teachers. Further, it is brought out that 51 government secondary schools out of 52 are without principals, and 74 government high schools out of 83 are without headmasters. It is obvious that almost all secondary and high schools are headless and it would be difficult for such schools to function normally, what to talk of efficiently. In this district, 772 positions of teachers and 251 positions of lecturers are vacant. It is well known that more than 22,000 positions of teachers are vacant in the state and most of the vacant positions are in the rural schools. The District Education Officers (DEOs), especially of elementary schools who are responsible for supervision and monitoring, have no vehicles at their disposal. If vehicles are there, they do not have financial resources to maintain and ply them for school inspection. In the absence of proper monitoring and inspection mechanism, the working of schools cannot be ensured, absenteeism (25 per cent) cannot be checked and work from indifferent teachers becomes impossible to extract. A recent study of Punjabi University (2006), Patiala, has brought out on the basis of the census data of campuses of the universities in Punjab that only 4.07 per cent students were from the rural areas in these universities (including Panjab University, Chandigarh) against 66 per cent of the rural population. The rest of the students are mostly urban or have passed their matriculation from the urban areas. If students from rural schools are disappearing from university campuses and also from professional colleges now, the collapse of rural education had begun more than a decade back. The situation has deteriorated over a period of time, and now the much-deteriorated situation will be reflected with a much lower share of rural students in higher education a few years later. Earlier no comprehensive survey was available on the quality of education except on some broad indicators in terms of teachers’ scarcity or lack of infrastructure. Now one such study has been prepared by Pratham, an NGO in its ASER (Rural) Report-2006 released in January 2007. It brings out the extent of the poor quality of education being delivered in the rural schools in India. The data on Punjab is very revealing and should give sleepless nights to educationists and policy makers. The data has been collected from 522 villages of 18 districts and from 10726 households. The data shows that 5 per cent children were out of schools (never enrolled included), 60 per cent of the 4th standard and 36.5 per cent of the 5th standard students could not read a second standard textbook in Punjab. The state government and its policy makers are well aware of the grim situation in the rural areas. In the past one decade, several committees were set up by the Punjab government to get expert advice on these issues. The reports are gathering dust in the education department. Ignoring the recommendations of these committees, an idea occurred in the mind of the Chief Minister in 2007 that the corporate sector should be involved in the improvement of rural education. In the initial round, several concessions such as free panchayat land, financial support and no government interference were announced for corporate houses to open Adarsh Schools, one each in the 140 development blocks, to provide quality education to rural students. Industrialists are not ready to set up such schools in the countryside but are keen to do so near the main cities. Now the government has opened up this offer to non-corporate organisations having experience of running Khalsa, DAV and SD schools. The corporate sector will come in this area for business and not for providing education to the rural area students. The earlier experience of philanthropic organisations running Khalsa, DAV and SD schools demanded (in 1967) 95 per cent salaries of the teaching and non-teaching staff for running these schools from which the government is now withdrawing its responsibility. Some of these organisations have started their public (unaided) schools charging high fees and funds leading to exclusion of students from ordinary families. It is evident that the government is not ready to learn from the past experience and behaviour of private players in rural education and is looking at the crisis of education like the five blind persons describing the elephant as an animal. In fact, elementary education is a fundamental right now and its responsibility falls on the state governments to provide quality education on an equitable basis to all students. It has to be tackled by only one agency, the state government. This would require creation of good infrastructure, appointment of teachers and putting in place a supervision and monitoring mechanism. The governments have turned apathetic, and well off sections have shifted their wards out of the rural schools. It is the children from the Scheduled Castes, poor peasant families and Backward Class families who study in the rural schools. They are out of the agenda of the government and these is no agency to focus on their cause. The crisis of rural education has made the rural poor as its victims in the form of exclusion from the development process. In the long run, the state will have to pay a very high price in the form of lack of availability of skilled workers for lower category jobs. It is high time the government recognised in all seriousness the crisis of rural education and gave up its apathetic attitude towards
it. The writer is Professor of Economics, Punjabi University,
Patiala.
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Golf guru and his lessons WHERE the mind is without fear and the head is held high….”, rang Rabindranath Tagore’s immortal words rendered in the baritone of the our idealistic Headmaster at the Sadul School, Bikaner, every morning after prayer at the school assembly. The distilled message that got etched in one’s subconscious was: as budding citizens of free India it was our duty to hold our heads up. One was too young, then, to care for the fine distinction between “up” and “high”. It got reinforced, some years later, when Inspector Khan of the CRPF — the proud Drill Instructor of our squad at the National Police Academy drilled the same message into one’s head on the parade ground. “Head up, look front, Saab!” he would bark the moment he found a trainee officer’s attention wavering while marching. Naturally, keeping one’s head up became a habit. That it could be a handicap too, one realised when one started taking lessons in golf.”All golf is played in the six inches between the ears”, was the first lesson that the old coach at Baroda, fondly called Rusty, gave paraphrasing legendary Bobby Jones. The second was: keep your head down and still while addressing the ball. Unfortunately, that one found easier said than done. Sometimes, when Rusty got too exasperated at one’s tendency to raise the head, he would hold it firmly in his two hands and press it down muttering, “There! Keep it there! Bow to the ball or it would humble you in no time.” Rusty was aromantic and a veteran of over seventy springs. A Parsi and an ex-Air Force officer to boot, he was something of a chip of the old block — proud and propah.His extensive knowledge of the sport competed with his immaculate etiquettes, on and off the course. His tough demeanor melted into an amazing gentleness whenever he came across a lady on the course. The exaggerated yet graceful bow that he made to her was a thing to watch. Old Rusty passed away a few years ago. His memory has been kept alive by the Gaekwad Baroda Golf Club in the form of the annual “Captain’s Trophy” tournament.Scores of Baroda golfers recall him fondly for the basics in golf that he taught them. But I remember him for two invaluable lessons in life. One was: keeping head up is not the same thing as holding it high. The second lesson was even more precious. It was — one might keep one’s head up or down, but must never lose it. Certainly not while playing golf or in the presence of a
lady.
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Child abuse is rising THE acquittal of Duncan Grant and Allan Waters in a paedophilic case has upset many child rights activists who are seeking to bring to the notice of society the severity of the problem of sexual abuse of children in India. These two men accused of paedophilia were acquitted by the Bombay High Court due to lack of evidence. They had been earlier convicted in 2006 by the sessions court. The sessions judge, delivering the judgment, had expressed the hope that it would serve as a warning to the paedophiles to stay away from India. The high court, however, acquitted them and ruled that the evidence of the victims appeared improbable. The court also commented on the poor quality of police investigation. The Supreme Court, on an appeal from an NGO, has now directed the Mumbai police not to hand over the passports of the two Britons till further orders. The acquittal of paedophiles in a number of cases is disconcerting as the sexual abuse of children, both male and female, by tourists has become a serious problem in the country. Unlike Sri Lanka and Thailand, this problem has not been seriously tackled or discussed openly and has remained shrouded in secrecy, making the likelihood of child abusers being caught and punished very low. Sex tourists are often paedophiles who seek out children to satisfy their sexual urges. Some of them are usually members of highly organised networks. They are also very cautious in their operations. Paedophiles shower attention on children in the form of gifts and other presents. Most of the victimised children hail from poor families, children from hutments on the beach, children of migrant labourers left unattended by their families. Paedophiles also gain children’s silence by portraying the abuse as education or as a game or by use of threats or violence thus forcing them not to divulge their “special secrets”. The phenomenon of child sex tourism has grown in size and volume because of a feeling among foreign tourists that the chances of detection are slender in the third world countries. There is also a belief that sex with children is safe because they are less likely to have contracted STDs. Further, the governments of many developing countries with a view to encouraging tourism tend to turn a blind eye to this problem. Running an orphanage is often a typical cover for many paedophiles. Posing as good samaritans, they set up orphanages where young children are given shelter and later on sexually abused. In a well-known case in Tamil Nadu, Will Heum, a Dutch national, set up an orphanage called “Little Home” in Kanchipuram district of Tamil Nadu. A number of children, both boys and girls, were housed in this orphanage. Heum used to drug these children and then subject them to sexual abuse. His vicious operations came to light when one of the children escaped and filed a complaint before the police. During investigations it transpired that Heum also entertained a large number of foreign tourists at the orphanage and allowed them to sexually abuse children. Sometimes paedophiles also pose themselves as producers of films and documentaries. The Mumbai police, on a tip-off from an NGO, arrested a Swiss couple who were picking up boys and girls from streets and sexually abusing them and also filming their various sexual acts. The police found sexually explicit paedophilic materials on the couple’s laptop. The materials indicated that the accused routinely visited other Asian countries as well. The Swiss couple were convicted in 2003 but they left the country while their appeal was still with the Supreme Court. It may be seen that child pornography and sex tourism are closely interlined. Sex tourists are often closely involved in the production of pornographic materials in the form of pictures and films depicting nude children and sex with children. Trafficking of pornographic materials has become easier with the advent of internet. Hardened child sexual exploiters are often found to be producing, collecting and circulating child pornography. Aggressive paedophiles, according to FBI expert Kenneth Lanning, “almost always collect child pornography”. They are also adept in identifying vulnerable children from broken homes. Another study done by an NGO named “Equations” in 2002 regarding sex tourism in eastern India revealed that the victimised children were mainly trafficked from places in and around tourist spots. In the tourist spot of Mamallapuram in Tamil Nadu, children were brought from nearby places and it was found that many of them had to accompany tourists when they visited other states. The study also showed that the majority of children were from broken homes of families affected by poverty and debt bondage. Most of the children had no education and were procured by people who are known or trusted by their families. Qualitative research and anecdotal evidence suggest that child sex tourism is spreading in different regions of the world. During the last few years an increasing number of sex offenders, particularly paedophiles, are shifting their operations from western industrialised countries to less developed countries due to strict law enforcement and increasing vigilance in their home countries. Paedophilia is a worldwide racket which police forces all over the world are trying hard to contain. Known convicted paedophiles are listed, their movements are checked, websites monitored and so on. In India the same rigor is missing. There are no stringent laws against child abusers in India and the beaches of Goa and Kovalam in Kerala are becoming main destinations of sex tourists seeking child prostitutes.
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Afghan women jailed and ostracised Ostracised
from her family and village, 15-year-old Saliha was convicted of escaping from home and illegal sexual relations. The first carries a maximum penalty of 10 years, the second 20. These are two of the most common accusations facing female prisoners in Afghanistan. Two-thirds of the women in Lashkar Gah’s medieval-looking jail have been convicted of illegal sexual relations, but most are simply rape victims – mirroring the situation nationwide. The system does not distinguish between those who have been attacked and those who have chosen to run off with a man. Sitting among the plastic flowers around his desk, where an optimistic United Nations scales of justice poster competed for space with images of Afghanistan’s President, Hamid Karzai, Colonel Ghulam Ali, a high-ranking regional security officer, explained sternly that he supported the authorities’ right to convict victims of rape. “In Afghanistan whether it is forced or not forced it is a crime because the Islamic rules say that it is,” he claimed. “I think it is good. There are many diseases that can be created in today’s world, such as HIV, through illegal sexual relations.” But there are signs of progress. A female shura, or consultative council, was established in Helmand province last week to try to combat the injustice of treating an abused woman as a criminal, and not a victim. British officers and Afghan government officials from the province’s reconstruction team are also overseeing a project to build humane accommodation for the 400 male and female prisoners. Inside the fortified compound of the prison in Lashkar Gah, Helmand’s capital, the 330 male prisoners laze about in the shade of their straw huts. The prison security was was recently upgraded with new razor wire and guard posts following the attack on Kandahar’s prison in which more than a 1,000 inmates escaped, including 400 Taliban. Past the main gate, inmates – whether on remand and awaiting trial or convicts – are incarcerated alongside 50 insurgents. In a separate area are the female “criminals” – the youngest is just 13 years old – along with their small children, who must stay with their mothers if no one else will claim them. Their only luxury is a carpet, two blankets, basic cooking facilities and two daily deliveries of bread. They have neither medical care nor, as Colonel Ali acknowledged, “basic human facilities”, such as washing areas, electricity and drinking water. All this he hopes will be rectified when the new building his finished. Pushing her five-year-old son’s arm forward imploringly, Zirdana, 25, pointed to the festering wound buzzing with flies. The little boy was just two months old when his mother was convicted of murdering her husband, his father. Zirdana had been handed over to him at the age of seven, as part payment in a financial dispute. She gave birth to the first of her children when she was 11 and was pregnant with her fourth when her husband disappeared and she was accused of killing him. Her three older children were taken from her by her brother-in-law. “When I first came to jail I cried so much blood was coming out of my mouth. My husband’s brother told me he would give my children back when I came out of jail but he has become a Talib. Nobody comes to see us in jail. There are a lot of diseases,” she said. Next to her, Dorkhani, 55, sobbed so much that the glint of her tears shone through the mesh of her burqa. Married for four decades to a relatively wealthy man from Nowzad, the couple had fled to Lashkar Gah after a family dispute. When he returned to Nowzad, to try and reclaim his money, he disappeared. “The ones who killed my husband, they have money and they threw me in jail. I am 100 per cent innocent. I have no one, no brother to look after me,” she said, explaining that those with cash could buy their freedom. Last week, in Helmand, the new Women and Children’s Justice Shura met and voted in its constitution with the help of advisers from the Afghan Human Rights Committee and support from the Women’s Affairs Department, as well as a government legal adviser. Earlier this year a report by Womankind, Taking Stock: Afghan Women and Girls Seven Years On, revealed that violent attacks against women, usually in a domestic setting, are at epidemic proportions – 87 per cent of women complain of such abuse, and half of it is sexual. More than 60 per cent of marriages are forced and, despite laws banning the practice, 57 per cent of brides are under 16. Many of these girls are offered as restitution for a crime or as debt settlement. Afghanistan is the only country in the world with a higher suicide rate among women than men.
By arrangement with The Independent
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Delhi Durbar WHEN a sizeable number of BJP legislators from Uttarakhand reached Delhi last week to demand the removal of Chief Minister B.C.Khanduri, they were sent back after being told firmly that the party had no intention to replace the CM. However, the tough talking to them has not quelled the rebellion. On the contrary, the MLAs have stepped up their campaign against Khanduri. The dissidents are citing the Bihar case when the BJP leadership took the unusual step of conducting a poll among the MLAs to decide whether Modi should stay or go. Sushil Modi had won that round but the undeterred Uttarakhand legislators are insisting that a similar poll be held to decide Khanduri’s fate. They maintain that since such an exercise was undertaken in Bihar, the same yardstick should apply to Uttarakhand. The BJP leadership has no answers to this argument.
Nitish’s protege
Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar’s protégé and JD-U MP Rajiv Ranjan Singh Lallan’s growing penchant for publicity is turning out to be a bit of a liability for his mentor. A first time Lok Sabha member, Lallan has gone up the political ladder in the JD-U solely on the strength of persistent Lalu-baiting which won him Nitish Kumar’s confidence. But, of late, Nitish appears to be getting a bit tired of Lallan. In the latest “land scam” concerning Railway Minister Lalu Prasad Yadav, Lallan held a press conference in Patna, which got an exhaustive coverage in the Patna and Delhi press. But then Lallan had not enough. When Nitish arrived in Delhi the next day he insisted that Nitish speak to Arun Jaitley and persuaded him to address the media although it had already held a press conference on the same issue a day before. Lallan, of course, took care to position himself next to Jaitley to add weight to the charges. Notably, Nitish stayed away from the event. When reporters asked Jaitley why their government was not registering cases against Lalu in Patna, Lallan quickly scampered off.
Cool I-Day
The attendance of government officials and ministers as well as the general public on the Independence Day function has always been an issue. It was no different this time. The public enclosure at the formal I-Day celebrations at the Red Fort was almost empty while in the special enclosure meant for senior administrators there was just about 7 per cent attendance even though it was only a day after Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had announced a massive salary hike for government officers. Many of the Cabinet ministers were also conspicuous by their absence so was the judges. The only regulars at the programme were 1,500 schoolchildren, who have no choice but to show up every year for the celebrations. Contributed by Anita Katyal, Faraz Ahmad and Aditi Tandon
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