The Tribune, Chandigarh, India

Missing daughters
Can be saved by concerted efforts

In a country where three million fewer girls have been born in the past decade, every measure, small or big, is welcome if it can in some way check the abominable practice of female foeticide. It is in this light that the decision of the Jammu and Kashmir government to curb the sale of drugs for abortion that needs to be seen. Indeed, over-the-counter availability of the drugs that induce abortion can be used to abort female foetuses. Besides, its rampant use without proper medical prescription also adversely affects the health of women. In a state that continues to discriminate against its women, the step could have far reaching effects provided the new regulations are implemented in earnest.

It’s not as if the authorities are not doing anything to arrest the skewed sex ratio in the state. Not too long ago, in a bid to keep track of sex determination tests, it had taken the initiative of putting active trackers on ultrasound machines. While the state also has a cash transfer scheme for whistle-blowers who would tip the government about sex determination tests in place, it has also sealed several ultrasound clinics for violations under the PNDT Act. Yet gender ratio remains abysmally poor. Not only has the number of women per 1,000 men declined in the last decade, the provisional data also indicates a noticeable fall in the child sex ratio (0 to six years of age).

Indeed, the phenomenon of missing daughters that finds its roots in bigoted mindsets and deeply ingrained patriarchal values is not restricted to J&K alone. But the fact that the state that till 2001 census had a healthy child sex ratio today finds itself in the company of the worst offenders like Punjab and Haryana on the same parameter is indeed a matter of grave concern. Whether it’s the long drawn conflict in the state or societal attitudes that have adversely affected the plight of the girl child, the government has to do all it can to ensure her basic right — the right to be born. Concerted efforts must combine positive incentives’ schemes with checks and curbs on practices that could work against the girl child.

Drug menace
Spreading like a spider’s web

The issue might have taken political overtones when Rahul Gandhi reportedly declared that 70 per cent of Punjab youth were drug addicts. The figure mentioned by the General Secretary of the Congress party may have sounded unrealistic and angered the Chief Minister of Punjab, the fact remains that drug abuse is the biggest challenge Punjab has to deal with. The 550-km stretch of the border India shares with Pakistan, though sealed now, remains a major point of heroine smuggling. Politicians say Punjab is caught in the drug-route of Pak-Afghanistan, whereas enforcement agencies say drug business has political protection and the common man finds himself at the receiving end of suffering, as drugs enter people’s lives and destroy homes and sources of their livelihood.

Unfortunately, with years of passing-the-buck approach towards this serious threat to society, which involves a spider-like complex network of powerful international cartels, drugs have now made inroads in the law and order enforcement agencies too. However, as the Chief Minister would like us to believe, only the lack of alertness of the security forces is the cause behind 2,000 cases of drug smuggling in the border districts of the state. As more and more cases are reported by workers who allege that factory owners and contractors make them take drugs to enhance their work output, the menace acquires new dimensions.

This year reports also came in that drug-pedlars locked inside various jails of Punjab were still supplying contraband with the help of visitors. This year alone 390 cases were registered under NDPS Act (Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substance), 478 drug-pedlars were nabbed and 46.28 kg of heroin, 56.2 kg of opium, 7,034 kg of poppy husk, 690 gm of smack, and over 6 lakh intoxicating tablets and injections were seized. These numbers reflect the enormity of the problem which can be resolved only with the concerted efforts of law-enforcing agencies, a sound education system, vocational opportunities and many more rehabilitation centres for drug addicts.

Thought for the Day

I think in terms of the day's resolutions, not the years'. —Henry Moore

ARTICLE

Response to rape and rage
Shame on entire political class
by Inder Malhotra

WRITING on the morrow of the Braveheart’s funeral in rushed and cowardly secrecy, one is weighed down by an overload of sorrow. For, the nationwide rage — with girls and boys without any political affiliation demonstrating peacefully for justice to the victim of the horrific gang-rape in a Delhi bus, and for women’s right to live in safety and dignity — has meant little to the insensitive, arrogant and incompetent government functionaries, indeed to the political class as a whole and even to the populace in general.

There can be no other explanation for the continuance of deeply depressing events even after the Bourbons ruling the country had belatedly bestirred themselves into action of sorts. Rapes and gang-rapes, often accompanied by the murder of the victim, are going on — from Delhi to Patiala and Hoshiarpur in Punjab, to Kurukshetra in Haryana to Kolkata (where a 45-year-old woman was done to death after being raped), to Ahmedabad (where Narendra Modi boasts daily of Gujarat’s asimta) while millions mourn the Braveheart.

No one can say what might have happened to a minor girl in a Delhi bus who was being sexually harassed by an off-duty conductor, with full complicity of the driver and the conductor, had the vehicle not reached a police picket intended to shut down the heart of the Capital.

The khap leaders of the Congress-ruled Haryana have felt encouraged to rubbish the proposal to provide for death penalty in the “rarest of rare cases” of rape. A BJP MLA in Rajasthan has pontificated that the problem would be solved if the government banned the wearing of skirts by women, and the Superintendent of Police of Jind has ordained that women should stay at home and not go out to celebrate New Year’s Eve. (Incidentally, Jind is the place in Haryana where in October Congress president Sonia Gandhi had gone to meet the parents of a 16-year-old girl who had burnt herself after being gang-raped by three goons of her village. According to a prominent daily, the traumatised parents are now being threatened with eviction from the village!)

Even the foregoing pales compared with what the more important leaders of the political class, ranging from the extreme right to the extreme left, have had the temerity to spout. The culprit number one is the Congress party’s newly elected MP, Abhijit Mukherjee, who is also the son of the republic’s President. For him the young women protestors against the outrage are “dented and painted”. Even his sister objected to his sexist remarks. However, the demand for disciplinary action against him fell on deaf ears because the Congress high command had kept mum when a Haryana Congress MLA had asserted that 90 per cent of the rapes in his state were “consensual”.

Shortly after Marxist leader Brinda Karat had justifiably denounced Mr Mukherjee Jr. and added that in West Bengal such a remark would never be “tolerated for a minute”, her own party colleague and a former minister, Anisur Rahman, disgraced himself by asking how much money would Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee demand “for getting raped”? Like Mr Mukherjee, he later withdrew his remarks and apologised. This was enough for their two parties to treat the matter as closed. Then a woman MP belonging to Mamata-di’s party declared magisterially that an alleged rape in Kolkata’s Park Avenue was not a rape at all but “a deal between a ‘sex worker’ and her client gone wrong”. Tragically, more than a score of men charged with serious sexual offences are ensconced in our legislatures — three in Parliament and the rest in state assemblies. They cut across party lines.

Next only to the political class the Delhi police need to hang their heads in shame. No one has yet resolved the serious charges against each other exchanged by Delhi’s Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit and Police Commissioner Neeraj Kumar. But the police chief must be held accountable on three counts. First, his pompous declaration that every police action is bound to have “collateral damage” is reminiscent of the arrogant American generals preening themselves after every heavy bombing of Iraq. Secondly, even a head constable knows that during a lathi charge those fallen on the ground or fleeing the spot must not be beaten. But any number of TV images show the brutes of the Delhi police mercilessly thrashing young girls fallen on Rajpath. Thirdly, Mr Kumar’s police stooped so low as to pressurise the bereaved family not to cremate their child in Delhi but near distant Ballia.

This brings me to the worst crime of the Delhi police and its equally degenerate collaborators. The ban on vehicles with darkened windowpanes and curtains was imposed over two decades ago. How then do private buses merrily ply on the national Capital’s roads throwing all rules and regulations to the winds? The bus that has earned everlasting infamy was impounded half a dozen times for operating without licence but never stopped from making money. The magic that works in such cases is a phenomenally lucrative nexus between the transport mafia, the police and the politicians. Nayaybhoomi, an NGO, has compiled a report on this colossal loot but it is doubtful if the government would ever look at it.

Ms Dikshit was booed out of Jantar Mantar because she was two weeks too late. But why blame her alone? No one among the leaders of either the Delhi government or the Central government deemed it necessary to engage with the young people deeply hurt and angry. Some have drawn a comparison between their indifference and the prompt and personal attention of President Barack Obama and British Prime Minister Cameron on similar occasions. This was perhaps unnecessary. There are shining examples of Jawaharlal Nehru and Indira Gandhi of which their descendants and inheritors apparently have no use. Throughout his 17-year reign there wasn’t a single site of a natural or man-made disaster where Nehru didn’t arrive almost instantly. Indira Gandhi wasn’t yet Prime Minister but only Information Minister in Lal Bahadur Shastri’s Cabinet when she rushed to Madras (now Chennai) to help bring the virulent anti-Hindi agitation under control — a practice she never deviated from.

No wonder, the UN Secretary-General, Ban Ki-Moon, has found it necessary to issue a strongly worded statement on this country’s treatment of its women. The last word belongs, however, to Malala, the brave Pakistani schoolgirl shot by an activist of the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan. Says she: “The rapists dumped her on the road. The government dumped her in Singapore. What is the difference”?

MIDDLE

The great common man!
by B.K. Karkra

I am ‘aam adami’ (common man) --- negligible, if not totally ignorable and ever open to use and abuse by the high-ups in society. I am meant to die unwept and unsung. Politicians, no doubt, deem it prudent to keep me on their tongue all the while and pose as if their heart really bleeds for my worries. I may not say it in so my words, but I know them by the marrow of their bones --- they are least bothered about my welfare. They just use me as a ladder to get to the top. Once there, they just forget about me.

All this notwithstanding, in a way, I am a highly important entity also. My power lies in my numbers. Numbers, when they collect and coalesce together, bring to life a magic of their own. After all, nobody can ignore the people in this world. The richest man on earth cannot have the money and means that I collectively have. Besides, I hide a revolution within on the quiet. When I sleep, I am weak. When I rise, the high and mighty run for cover — Charles`s get beheaded, Louis`s get guillotined, Shaw`s get kicked out of their countries and Prime Ministers are made to eat a humble pie.

I agree that I am a bit of an idiot myself. I get easily taken in when the opposition parties perennially raise the bogey of inflation, without relating the rising prices to the extra money pouring in my pocket because of the rapid expansion of the currency in circulation. Similarly, I readily fall for the ‘Reserve and Rule’ policy of the political outfits without understanding its implications for national growth. They are thus able to deceive me by coining ever new slogans election after election.

However, I may appear to care very little about what goes on around me. Yet I do not fail to take notice what concerns my life, livelihood and honour. All this just keeps collecting inside me and simmering there silently. I do not mind paying taxes so long as the money comes back to me as schools, hospitals, roads, delivery of security, justice and so on. I certainly feel indignant when the billions are wasted on leaky plans like the Twenty-Point Programme, loan-waivers, rural employment, food security schemes and distribution of free electricity and other goodies, designed primarily to garner my vote. I know for sure that a large chunk of this money is going to disappear in greedy pockets and foreign banks.

Anyway, when I get unbearably distressed over injustice, crime, corruption and enslavement of my spirit, there arise out of me the likes of Oliver Cromwell, George Washington, Mahatma Gandhi, Jayaprakash Narayan, Anna Hazare, Kejriwal, et al, to dust the societies clean of sin and inappropriateness. This phenomenon finds an echo in the Bhagawat Geeta when Lord Krishna declares: “Whenever righteousness gets trampled and inappropriateness comes to the fore, I incarnate myself in the world from age to age to bring succour to the pious, to destroy sinful propensities and to restore faith of the people in righteousness”.

The politicians and others ever ready to exploit me should understand that Krishana here is speaking for me or I am the Krishna Himself speaking here.

I, as ‘aam adami’, am not important just for my vote in a democratic set-up. Even the dictators fear me, though they otherwise care little for me.

OPED SOCIETY

Sexual violence is endemic everywhere
There is nothing inevitable about violence against women. It's really important that we educate each other and challenge prejudice
Owen Jones

We don’t know the name of the 23-year-old student who was raped on a city bus in Delhi.

The brutal rape on a city bus in Delhi that resulted in the death of a 23-year-old student shook up the nation as widespread protests were seen in the Capital

We do know that, after getting on a bus home after watching a film with a friend, she was tortured so badly that she lost her intestines. Six people — including the bus driver — have been arrested; they have been widely denounced as “animals” on social media. It’s always comforting to think — despite everything that the 20th century should have taught us — that those who commit vile acts are sub-human, are not quite like us, so we can create emotional distance from them. But it was thinking, feeling, living human men who committed this rape, however nauseating it is to accept.

The death of a woman popularly named Damini — “lightning” in Hindi — has provoked thousands to take to India’s streets, furious at endemic and unchecked violence against women. Some have been met with police batons, tear gas and water cannon. But, in the West, Damini’s death has triggered a different response: a sense that this is an Indian-specific problem. “The crime has highlighted the prevalence of sex attacks in India,” says the Daily Telegraph; “India tries to move beyond its rape culture,” says Reuters. Again, it’s comforting to think that this is someone else’s problem, a particular scandal that afflicts a supposedly backward nation. It is an assumption that is as wrong as it is dangerous.

Rape and sexual violence against women are endemic everywhere. Shocked by what happened in India? Take a look at France, that prosperous bastion of European civilisation. In 1999, two then-teenagers — named only as Nina and Stephanie — were raped almost every day for six months. Young men would queue up to rape them, patiently waiting for their friends to finish in secluded basements. After a three-week trial this year, 10 of the 14 accused left the courtroom as free men; the other four were granted lenient sentences of one year at most.

Shocked? Again, let us Brits not get all high and mighty, either. Amnesty International conducted a poll in the United Kingdom a few years ago. Only four per cent of respondents thought that the number of women raped each year exceeded 10,000. But according to the (UK’s) Government’s Action Plan on Violence Against Women and Girls, 80,000 women are raped a year, and 400,000 women are sexually assaulted. It is a pandemic of violence against women that — given its scale — is not discussed nearly enough.

All rape is violence by definition, but particularly horrifying incidents take place here, too. Exactly a year ago, one woman was raped by 21-year-old Mustafa Yussuf in central Manchester; shortly afterwards a passer-by — who the rape survivor thought was coming to help — raped her again as she lay on the floor. Or take 63-year-old Marie Reid, raped and savagely murdered earlier this year by an 18-year-old boy she had treated like a “grandson”.

It’s important to clarify that most rapes — in India or elsewhere — are not carried out by strangers waiting in alleys to pounce on women. It is mostly by people known to the rape survivor or victim; often someone they trust. It is a concept that the law itself took a long time to recognise, which is why — until 1991 — it was legal to rape your wife.

Other myths are even more disturbing. The Amnesty poll found that a third of Britons believed a woman acting flirtatiously was partly or completely to blame for being raped, while over a quarter found women who were wearing revealing clothes or were drunk shared responsibility. This victim-blaming was echoed by a judge at Caernarfon Crown Court a few weeks ago, who told the rapist: “She let herself down badly. She consumed far too much alcohol and took drugs, but she also had the misfortune of meeting you.” A Thames Valley Police poster combating underage drinking featured a young woman being attacked underneath the headline “Her mum bought her the cider”.

If we are to defeat rape, we have to understand where it comes from — and that means linking it to a broader continuum of violence against women. According to the Government’s own estimates, one million women in England and Wales are victims of domestic violence every year.

Those punches, slaps, kicks and bile-filled screams are happening all around us — yes, undoubtedly on our own streets. A quarter of women will face this abuse at some point in their life and — horrifyingly — two women will be murdered by their current or former male partner each week.

It’s not just the overt aggression. It’s the sexual harassment and objectification of women by men that provide fertile ground for this violence. In a poll by End Violence Against Women this year, 41 per cent of women aged between 18 and 34 had experienced unwanted sexual attention in London. Some men may regard a few “jokes” about rape as a bit of harmless banter, but it all helps normalise violence against women.

As a country, we still don’t take rape survivors seriously. A 2009 study revealed that Britain has the lowest conviction rate of 33 European countries: it’s a shockingly pathetic 6.5 per cent. Survivors often struggle with a misplaced sense of shame, of somehow bringing it on themselves, of fear; an all-too pervasive sense of victim-blaming discourages them from coming forward and having to facing down their attacker. If any good is to come from the horrors of the Jimmy Savile scandal, it must be that these voices are taken far more seriously.

But although the voices of women must be heard above all else, men must speak out too. It’s really important that we show solidarity with women, educate each other and challenge prejudice in our ranks. In the US and Australia there are more flourishing movements of men against sexual violence, such as Men Can Stop Rape. But there are similar campaigning groups in Britain such as the White Ribbon Campaign and Respect: they have a crucial role to play, too.

There is nothing inevitable about violence against women, here or anywhere. Struggle by courageous women and their allies has already had an impact. But the worst thing we can do is allow our horror at what happened on that Delhi bus to make us complacent. Let the death of Damini inspire everyone — everywhere — to defeat this horror once and for all.

— The Independent

All for a cause
New Delhi/ Bangalore/Kolkata/Guwahati

A muted New Year celebration was witnessed throughout the country as thousands of people across India took out silent candle-light vigils with a clear message that the death of the Delhi gang-rape victim will not go in vain and the concerned authorities should come up with stringent laws to ensure that women are able to move around freely. Protesters gathered at the Jantar Mantar in New Delhi demanding that those accused of the heinous crime must be given the harshest punishment. They also asked the Manmohan Singh-led UPA II Government to get tougher on crime against women.

Many of the participants also endorsed their views in a signature campaign on a petition to demand capital punishment for the rapists. “In this petition, we have demands addressed to the government and the Chairperson of National Women’s Commission that the penalty for rape should only be death sentence and nothing else. This is our campaign,” said Bhavik Aggarwal, convenor of Indraprastha Sanjivini Trust.

“And we have gathered 1,00,000 signatures and we shall present this petition on behalf of our Indraprastha Sanjivini Trust to the Chairperson of Women’s Commission Mamta Sharma and state that about 1,00,000 people have demanded death sentence for rape,” added Aggarwal.

The flames of public ire and sympathy for the Delhi gang rape victim were also witnessed at Bangalore where people from all walks of life and of all age groups gathered for a candle-light vigil.

They viewed their efforts as one of the means to eradicate the prevailing social evils. “Being a woman, I feel it is not just about these six people who have been arrested (for the gang rape crime in New Delhi). It is about everything that goes wrong against women. It is about child abuse, it is about domestic violence, it is about rape, it is about molestation, eve teasing. And a very simple thing that we can do, both men and women, is that we need to raise our voices,” said Anjali, a participant in candle light vigil in Bangalore.

“We see anything wrong happening, we need to raise our voice. If it is happening with us, we need to raise our voice. If it is in our surroundings that something wrong is happening, we need to raise our voice,” she added.

Candle-light vigils were also taken out in Kolkata where the women participants gathered outside the West Bengal State Women Commission’s office.

Protima Poddar, one of the participants, said that they were not against men in general, but against the notions of male chauvinism prevalent in Indian society.

“We urge before the male community as well of the society that they also be part of our struggle. And we are not against the males of the society. Because we are the persons who give birth to male persons; so we are not against them. But we are against this patriarchal society and this chauvinism,” she said.

The protesters in Guwahati sought revamping of the existing judicial system.

“Actually, we are not just protesting for the rape case that took place in Delhi. Many more rape cases are coming out daily from all over the country. We have to stop this. So some changes must be brought forth in the judiciary system and the administrative set up must be changed or strengthened,” said Atul Pathak, a participant in the candle-light vigil at Guwahati. — ANI