Punjabi antenna
Women’s dilemma
Randeep Wadehra

Punjab’s women are facing untold hardships. The state’s record in fighting female foeticide has been rather shameful. However, every episode of the ongoing Miss PTC Punjabi dedicates itself to fighting bhroon hatya. Again, on Face to Face Harsimrat Kaur Badal underscored the need for protecting Punjab’s girl child. Realising the state’s dismal record vis-`E0-vis environmental degradation, gender ratio and female foeticide, the Punjab Government and the SGPC have intertwined the issues by launching a campaign throughout the state whereby gurdwaras distribute saplings as symbols of protection for trees as well as girls.

Harsimrat appeared upbeat about the campaign’s success. But what about those females who are born and living in the state?

Government teachers in Punjab’s villages have to take their salaries from the local panchayats. This puts women teachers in a near-the-knuckle situation as they are often asked by the panchs concerned to meet them at the tubewell to collect their salaries (Adhyapak Diwas`85adhyapak bebas – PTC News).

Often the panchs are drunk. The situation in private institutions is no better. Teachers—a majority of them women — are forced to sign on salary registers showing government prescribed amounts, but are paid a pittance ranging from Rs 1,400 to 1,800 — a trifling, even by a peon’s standards.

The attitude of the Punjab School Education Board chairman as well as of the state’s education minister was callous, to say the least. Both wanted written complaints and ‘proof’ to initiate investigations.

Can legislated rules, procedures and laws be flouted? Punjab’s cops do it with impunity. You learn this while watching Police tuhaddi sewa ch hamesha hazir, a bloodcurdling expose on atrocities perpetrated by Punjab Police personnel. Innocent people are picked up from their homes and tortured, only to be released in a crippled and half-dead condition later on. The cops then casually remark that it was all a mistake. An SHO mercilessly whips a lad with a pata in public on mere suspicion of having stolen ashes from burning pyres. A five-month pregnant woman is punched and kicked in the stomach, till her baby is aborted, by cops right inside a thana.

It takes great effort to keep watching as the camera pans on her traumatised face. Even as TV cameras are rolling, policemen mercilessly beat up three women, suspected of theft, in public. Cops enter a shopkeeper’s house in his absence and thrash the household’s women, killing one of them on the spot. As per law and Supreme Court directives, only women police personnel are to arrest/interrogate female suspects.

But Punjab’s cops clearly hold a different view. Official response? Mealy-mouthed justifications by the minister and DGP Aulakh’s very ‘understanding’ attitude (of police actions, not of the wronged citizens’ plight). The fact that poor men, women and children are being increasingly exploited and brutalised brings the entire system of governance under scanner. The expose reveals that the force has 1,388 policemen—right from constables to DGPs—on its rolls, doing active duty, who are facing criminal charges ranging from smuggling to rape and murder (perhaps extortion and bribery are too mundane to be mentioned).

Such a situation needs much more than perfunctory inquiries and eyewash investigations. It needs systemic overhaul, pronto.

Will such TV shows usher in the required transformation? Your guess is as good as mine.