“सुहागरात को चीखती-तड़पती रही नवविवहिता,
अप्राकृतिक यौन संबंध बनाता रहा पति:”

“आगरा की रहने वाली एक महिला ने अपने पति पर जबरन अप्राकृतिक सेक्स करने का आरोप लगाते हुए एफआईआर दर्ज कराई, महिला ने बताया, ‘इस घटना से मुझे अंदरुनी चोटें आईं और मुझे हॉस्पिटल में भर्ती होना पड़ा।”

“उन्होंने रात भर पॉर्न देखना शुरू कर दिया और उत्तेजना बढ़ाने वाली दवाइयां खाकर ज़बरदस्ती सेक्स के लिए मजबूर करने लगे। अपनी मांगें पूरी न होने पर वो अब मारपीट भी करने लगे थे” – लोकल अखबार की एक खबर।

“एक दिन उन्होंने रत्ना के पांव छत के पंखे से बांधकर एक पॉर्न वीडियो की तरह सेक्स किया। इस घटना ने रत्ना का संयम तोड़ दिया और वो भावनात्मक तौर पर खुद को बहुत कमज़ोर महसूस करने लगीं। जब यह उनकी बर्दाश्त के बाहर हो गया तो उन्होंने अनचाहे मन से तलाक की अर्ज़ी दे दी।” (सोर्स BBC)

इसके अलावा अगर हाल फिलहाल की खबरें देखें तो सात-आठ साल की बच्चियों से दरिंदगी और कहीं-कहीं सात-आठ साल के बच्चों द्वारा दरिंदगी की तमाम खबरें आ रही हैं, लगातार। ये सब हेडलाइन्स रोज़ आने वाले अख़बारों की हैं। आए दिन हम सबकी नज़रों से गुज़रती हैं। आए दिन ही इंटरनेट की दुनिया पर हज़ारों एमएमएस, रेप वीडियोज़, ऑल्ट बालाजी की ‘गन्दी बात’ जैसा कुछ आता रहता है।

इनमें भी दो तरह की चीजें हैं। एक हैं रेप वीडियोज और पॉर्न, जिनके बारे में सबको पता है कि ऐसा करना गलत हो सकता है। पर दूसरी तरह की जो चीजें हैं, वो भयावह हैं। इनमें आती हैं फिल्मों के काटे हुए सीन्स, फिल्म होने से इन सीन्स को सामाजिक स्वीकृति ऑटोमेटिक मिल जाती है। पहली वाली चीज़ों से एक सामान्य इंसान को थोड़ी हिचकिचाहट हो सकती है, पर ये वाली चीज़ें उसे नकल करने को प्रेरित कर सकती हैं। ठीक वैसे ही जैसे फिल्मों के फैशन सेन्स और गाने करते हैं। अगर ऐसे सीन्स में सेक्शुअल वॉयलेंस है तो लोग इसको भी कॉपी करने को प्रेरित हो सकते हैं।

उदाहरण के लिए, अभी हाल फिलहाल जो चीज हिट है, वह है सेक्रेड गेम्स। काँग्रेस से लेकर राम मंदिर, बम्बई ब्लास्ट, बोफोर्स घोटाला, बीफ, जुनैद, नजीफ सब पर एक ही साथ बात करने वाली सीरीज़। सेक्रेड गेम्स एक दमदार सीरीज़ है। हर एक सीन अच्छे से फिल्माया गया है। डायलॉग्स अच्छे से लिखे गए हैं। जिन मुद्दों के लिए सीरीज़ बनाने वाले लोगों को संवेदनशील करना चाहते हैं, उन पर फोकस किया गया है।

पर सेक्शुअल वायलेंस के मामले में इस सीरीज़ से गलत संदेश लिया जा सकता है। कुछ ऐसी ही बात मुझे गैंग्स ऑफ वासेपुर देखते हुए महसूस हुई थी। क्योंकि ऐसी सीरीज़ कल्ट बन जाती हैं और लोग इनके डायलॉग्स, स्टाइल कॉपी करते रहते हैं।

जिस देश में लगभग हर रोज़ बीवियों से अप्राकृतिक यौन संबंध बनाए जाने की घटनाएं आती हैं, वहां ऐसे सीन दिखाकर क्या आप हिंसात्मक यौन संबंधों की पैरवी नहीं कर रहे?

‘सीन की डिमांड थी, गुंडों की बातचीत ही ऐसी होती है, रियल सिनेमा को ऐसे कल्ट डायलॉग्स की ज़रुरत होती है… ये सब कहकर जस्टिफाई तो किया जा सकता है लेकिन इन चीजों का दूसरा पहलू भी है। उदाहरण के लिए सेक्रेड गेम्स में ही गायतोंडे और सुभद्रा का संबंध। एक सीन में दोनों शारीरिक संबंध स्थापित करते हैं, जहां गायतोंडे हिंसक तरीके से सेक्स करने की कोशिश करता है पर कर नहीं पाता।

सुभद्रा कहती है कि पहले अपने दिमाग का स्ट्रेस उतार, फिर कर पाएगा। यहां पर सुभद्रा का कैरेक्टर हिंसक सेक्स की पैरवी करता ही दिखता है। वो इस चीज़ को नकार नहीं पाती। ऐसा लगता है कि वो भी यही चीज़ें चाहती है। ऐसे सीन्स एक आम इंसान को नॉर्मल और ज़रूरी भी लग सकते हैं।

अगर आप भारत के ग्रामीण परिवेश से परिचित हैं तो आप हर दूसरे लड़के से अक्सर ऐसी बातों का ज़िक्र सुन लेंगे। मेरे हस्बैंड ने मुझे राजस्थान के एक लड़के का किस्सा सुनाया जहां एक लड़के ने पॉर्न से सीखी यौन संबंधों की जानकारी से शादी की पहली रात अपनी ही बीवी की योनि को क्षतिग्रस्त कर दिया। नवविवाहिता को अस्पताल में भर्ती कराना पड़ा। शर्मिंदगी की बजाय अगले दिन लड़का दोस्तों में डींगे हांकता मिला कि उसने अपनी बीवी की योनि फाड़ दी। वो ये भी कहता रहा कि इस घटना के बाद उसके आस-पास की लड़कियां उसे बहुत इज्ज़त से देखने लगी थीं।

ऐसे हिंसात्मक माचो मैन बनने की धारणा गढ़ते हैं। ठीक वैसे ही जैसे सेक्रेड गेम्स में गाईतोंडे की बीवी सुभद्रा उसे कहती है कि जब तक इसा को मारेगा नहीं तुझसे होगा नहीं। वैसा सेक्स नहीं होगा जैसा वह कुकू के साथ करता था।

इस बात को इसी सीरीज़ का एक और सीन प्रूव करता है-

एक दूसरे ही सीन में वही बीवी सुभद्रा ज़बरदस्ती टांगे उठा देने पर गायतोंडे को बोल पड़ती है- मैं रंडी नहीं हूं, वैसे नहीं होगा मुझसे। क्योंकि पुरुष जो हिंसात्मक सेक्स अपनी बीवियों के साथ नहीं कर पाते, पैसे देकर वैश्याओं के साथ करते हैं।

ऐसे सीन देखने के बाद वह अब अपनी बीवियों के साथ भी करने की कोशिश करेंगे, क्योंकि अब तो ये नॉर्मल लग रहा है।

लेकिन क्या ऐसी सीरीज़ में वैश्याओं के साथ किए गए हिंसत्मक सेक्स को नॉर्मलाइज किया जाना ज़रूरी है?

आप चाहें तो इसे महिला मुद्दों से जोड़कर बोल सकते हैं कि महिलाओं को भी ऐसा अप्राकृतिक सेक्स अच्छा लगता है, जो ऐसी सीरीज़ में कुछ महिला किरदारों के ज़रिए बताया जाता है। लेकिन ये चीज सोशल नॉर्म तो नहीं बन सकती। अगर ऐसा केस होता तो हमारे अखबार हिंसा की ऐसी खबरों से क्यों भरे रहते?

महिलाऐं अच्छा सेक्स चाहती हैं, सेक्स में हिंसा नहीं। वो हिंसा नहीं जिसमें उन्हें अपनी शादी के अगले दिन ही अस्पतालों में भर्ती होना पड़े। जहां गैंग रेप के बाद महिलाओं और बच्चियों के यौन अंगों को क्षतिग्रस्त करने के लिए रॉड घुसेड़ने जैसी घटिया हरकत की जाए।

फिल्मों और टीवी सीरीज़ में महिलाओं की सेक्शुएलिटी की बजाय सॉफ्ट पॉर्न दिखाया जा रहा है। कमाल की बात ऐसी होती है कि इन किरदारों को लिखने वाले इसमें महिलाओं की इच्छा भी दिखा देते हैं।

जब सिगरेट पीने का सीन आता है तो नीचे चेतावनी लिखी आती है, जब दारु का सीन होता है तो फिर चेतावनी लिखी आती है, तो ऐसे हिंसक दृश्यों में भी चेतावनी लिखी जानी चाहिए।

नेटफ्लिक्स की एक अच्छी बात है कि यहां सेंसर बोर्ड की छुरी नहीं है, लेकिन ऐसे समय में जब अखबारों के पहले पन्ने गैंग रेप और बीवियों के साथ हुई ज़्यादतियों से भरे हों वहां आपको खुद सेंसर बनना पड़ेगा। हम अपनी ज़िम्मेदारी से मुक्त नहीं हो सकते कि फिल्में तो फिल्में हैं। लोगों को बताना ही होगा, क्योंकि लोगों के दिमाग पर फिल्मों का असर सबसे ज़्यादा होता है।

The post “सेक्रेड गेम्स: हिंसात्मक सेक्स सीन में ‘घर पर ना आज़माएं’ बताना भूल गए अनुराग कश्यप” appeared first and originally on Youth Ki Awaaz and is a copyright of the same. Please do not republish.

I recently got a chance to sit down with Mr.Arun Shourie to discuss matters pertaining to India’s foreign policy as well as China-India relations. Arun Shourie is an Indian economist, journalist, author and politician. He has worked as an economist with the World Bank, a consultant to the Planning Commission of India, Editor of the Indian Express and The Times of India and a Minister of Communications and Information Technology in the Vajpayee Ministry (1998–2004). He was awarded the Ramon Magsaysay Award in 1982 and the Padma Bhushan in 1990.

Yash Johri (YJ): In C. Raja Mohan’s recent Indian Express column titled: “Raja Mandala: India and Trump’s world“, he concludes by stating, “Delhi must avoid conflict with the powers with which it has serious disputes. It also needs to lift self-imposed limits on security cooperation with the powers that are ready to boost India’s material power. In these troubled times, transactional diplomacy, and not political posturing, holds the key to achieving India’s national goals.” Do you agree with this statement sir, that we need to become more transactional and not depend on earlier arrangements that we took for given?

Arun Shourie: Of course, everybody’s transactional these days but who is the reliable transactional partner varies by the month. Is Russia a reliable transactional partner for us? Because its one of the biggest suppliers of arms to China and it has now started supplying arms to Pakistan. Similarly, is the United States completely reliable? Trump’s diplomacy is completely unpredictable, there doesn’t seem to be much mind to it. On the other side, analysts like Raja Mohan have been telling us to enter into strategic partnerships with the United States, which really are tying us into the US network, starting with the nuclear deal. I had stated at the time that this is the first of 5-6 treaties that India will have to enter into including the logistics treaty which actually gives them rights in India, to use Indian bases. So, is that very good? And if we ally ourselves so closely, thinking that we are doing transactional diplomacy then will China sleep? And the question to ask is if China does anything to India, let’s say in Arunachal Pradesh, will the US or Japan do anything? No. They will look after their own interests. Therefore, while it’s a truism that we should look for transactional relationships, we have to be extremely alert with whom we will be transactional partners at any time and for how long and on what issue.

Yash Johri: In the first year of PM Modi’s government, he visited numerous countries – putting emphasis on the importance of building and maintaining our relationships around the world. However, while today there is still the normal amount of engagement with external powers – do you feel the government’s actions in the ambit of foreign policy are being conducted with elections in mind at all times? How does an observer differentiate between actual strategy and public rhetoric?

Arun Shourie: I’ll quote a senior foreign ministry official. At one stage, Mr Modi had visited the Indian Ocean Rim states. I thought that was a wonderful idea because we need to establish very close relationships with them given the fact that Chinese naval vessels are now surveying the bed of the Indian Ocean systematically for strategic purposes. About a year after his chakkar, I asked this official what follow up has been done to the wonderful initiative of visiting the Indian Ocean Rim states? He replied, ‘Follow up? You must be living in a different world, our foreign policy is just another selfie, so it’s just a photo opportunity. Just see the little Maldives whose population is less than Karol Bagh have shown the thumb to us so has Seychelles, we aren’t sure what’s going to come of the new airport project in Sri Lanka.’ So actually speaking, foreign policy has been reduced to another event, there’s big projection in the Indian media – but in reality, nothing really happens. This is not a function of being understaffed at all, we have never had as large and as weak a PMO as we have today. It’s not that he lacks staff, but he doesn’t listen to anybody, he doesn’t need any advice – for him, it’s just an event and the success of the event is how much projection I have been able to make of it in the Indian media, that’s all. One of our previous National Security Advisors, a very deep thinker, told me that India is now not being taken seriously in any corner of the world – that’s the net result.

Yash Johri: Following the Doklam incident, at the informal summit in Wuhan earlier this year the Prime Minister and Xi Jinping had long discussions and then met again on the sidelines of the SCO summit in Qingdao, with Xi Jinping agreeing to visit India in the first half of next year. At present, there seems to be a spirit of detente between the two Asian powers – what is your reading sir of the current state of the relationship? Is it following the usual trajectory of ups and downs or can we say there’s a break from the past?

Arun Shourie: Did the jhoola ride in Gujarat signal any détente? No. So, we don’t know what has actually transpired in meetings. An observer like Pravin Sawhney has written, at the Wuhan meeting – Modi just gave away all rights to Doklam, he has recognized the Chinese position. We are celebrating the fact that we prevented them from building the last bit, but up till that point they have structures and barracks for an entire operation – they’ve built two highways coming up to Doklam so what is it that we’re celebrating. One can keep talking to the Chinese and they will say yes, thank you very much, we have listened to you.

Look at the disgraceful treatment by India of the Dalai Lama, he doesn’t have any political events, but there are instructions that nobody can attend his events. Is that because they are very staunch Hindus now and they see Buddhism as different or because they don’t want to offend China in any way? The previous government also had a similar approach, but it is a wholly wrong approach.

My perception of the Chinese is that, as they have stated, they see themselves by 2049 becoming the leading power of the world, and certainly they see themselves as the principal power in this region. And we are just for them a potential nuisance, not an actual nuisance especially if we tie up with other countries like the US. Therefore, much of the India-China engagement should be seen as preventing India from going over the American side completely.

Yash Johri: By opposing the One Belt One Road initiative that Xi Jinping had initiated in Astana in 2013 – India has taken a very defiant stand, increasing distrust Indian distrust in China’s activities in surrounding countries as well as hampering cooperation between the strategic and business communities of the two countries? Given the scale, direction and multilateral approval that this initiative garners, do you think it’s smart for India to be so publicly defiant, or should we be more nimble and accept partnerships with the Chinese along with other countries and aim to keep a check on Chinese activity through active engagement?

Arun Shourie: I don’t think we can keep a check on Chinese activities until one has real strength. And the fact that others are going for partnerships with China, shows the economic strength which China has already attained. Take Central Asia for example; what can India do in Central Asian countries that will prevent them from cooperating with China? Their economies are now linked to the Chinese economy, in mineral exploitation, 60% of Kazakhstan’s area is open to China for oil exploration, so what can we really do to persuade them to cooperate with us?

In Nepal, we should have genuine partnerships, but actually, we have pushed the Nepalese into the Chinese lap. Now you think that by engaging with China you can prevent it from utilizing the opportunity, how can that be the case? I don’t know about the idea of opposing it publicly or privately, I haven’t yet studied the options. There’s one good point that the Indians have been making, which is that much of the expenditure will tie countries like Pakistan into a debt trap with the Chinese as we are seeing in Sri Lanka. Now whether these countries will heed our warnings and thank us for these warnings 30 years later I don’t know, but the fact is, at the moment, we cannot do anything to prevent other countries from cooperating with China so long as China has economic might.

The post ‘India Is Just Potential Nuisance For China’: Arun Shourie On Sino-Indian Relations appeared first and originally on Youth Ki Awaaz and is a copyright of the same. Please do not republish.

One would expect love to be this ephemeral thing which sweeps you off your feet and fills you with a sense of longing and purpose. Most romantic stories that we enjoy reading or films that we like watching make us want to aspire for that transient love which lives and thrives at that moment. They always fall one step short at the dubious juncture of a ‘happily ever after’. What happens after that?

This is where Elizabeth Flock’s book, Love and Marriage In Mumbai, comes in.

Flock introduces the real-life stories of three married couples, whose relationships are challenged by the dramatic cultural shifts in the city of Mumbai. The commercial capital of the country, the book’s only consistent character, is visceral and tangible. It is also a unique dichotomy in itself. Because where else do the poorest rub shoulders with the city’s richest, where else does tradition collide so closely with western culture, and where else is ethnicity, class and religion still deciding the nation’s development alongside pop culture and an increasing influx of technology?

When journalist and documentary filmmaker Elizabeth Flock moved to Mumbai for the first time in 2008, she had endless questions. She writes in her book, “I moved from Chicago to Mumbai in search of adventure and a job, knowing no one in the city. I lived there for nearly two years. During that time—because I was restless and homesick—I stayed with half a dozen couples and families across the city and met many more. This is where my interest in the Indian love story began.”

As India is ‘a tremendously diverse and complicated place’, Flock started understanding it through the people she met and the stories they shared. After she left India in 2010 and went back to the US, she couldn’t get a few people out of her head, they are the three couples in the book.

“I thought their three very specific, sometimes every day and sometimes dramatic love stories, could shed light on the larger picture of love and marriage in India right now… I was also always obsessed with the topic of marriage having grown up a child of divorce. I thought by interviewing married couples I could learn more about what makes a marriage work or fail – anywhere in the world. I’m not sure I got the answer to that, but I got closer,” she says.

And so you have Veer and Maya, a progressive professional couple whose relationship is tested by Maya’s desire for independence; Shahzad and Sabeena, whose desperation for a child becomes entwined with the changing face of Islam; and Ashok and Parvati, whose arranged marriage through an online matchmaker, blossoms into true love.

Flock had met many more couples during this time. She adds, “I met a jewellery seller on the train who fell in love with a Nigerian millionaire. I met two yogis who escaped over the walls of an ashram to be in love. But I chose the three couples in this book in part because they were seemingly normal, everyday, middle-class people. And yet their stories often veered toward the extraordinary.”

Flock feels that working on this project for close to a decade has actually made it better. That there are topics broached in the book – about sexual abuse, loss, and hidden dreams – which the protagonists wouldn’t share if she hadn’t been around for this long. It also helped her understand Mumbai better.

“I gathered details like a hoarder – about what toys are being sold outside Churchgate station, the precise taste of sugarcane juice, how exactly the heat felt on my skin. And then I’d come home to the U.S. to actually write it.”

She asserts that this book couldn’t be set anywhere else, because she was really keen on exploring India’s most permissive city, where people were breaking the most rules – “For example. how women are watching pornography, or refusing to live with their in-laws, or having affairs, or simply not living the lives their mothers would have. I’d also say that Mumbai is a city that can be both incredibly romantic and incredibly cruel. That to me is how love is.”

Was it difficult to keep her judgement aside when she documented decisions of any of the protagonists that she might not have agreed with? How was she able to become a ‘fly on the wall’ so to speak in trying to paint an authentic picture of these lives?

Flock informs, “Of course, there were times when I had opinions or made judgements in my head. But I tried to keep that out of the writing as much as I could because you never know why people are behaving the way they do… That’s why I wrote the book in the third person. It didn’t add much to have me there as a first-person narrator telling the reader how I felt about things. There’s enough judgement in this world as it is.”

Her advice to aspiring non-fiction writers is to write what one is obsessed with, to have a question one is desperate to answer.

“Interview people who fascinate you. Take more notes than you need to. Go to a place you know very well or don’t know at all, so long as it makes you curious. Note down how people speak, how they laugh, what they wear, what they dream about. Don’t think you ever know it all. Let people edit you, but listen to your own voice most.”

If you want to read real-life intimate stories of love, loss, longing and most of all, hope, Love and Marriage In Mumbai will transport you to the lives of people you could have very well known all your lives.

The post This New Book Explores The Romantic And Cruel Side Of Love In Mumbai appeared first and originally on Youth Ki Awaaz and is a copyright of the same. Please do not republish.

The hearings on Section 377 concluded on Tuesday, and the Supreme Court has reserved its judgment until further notice. While we wait for the decision, it’s a great time to take stock of everything that’s happened.

We had 10 top advocates testify against the unjust law that would sentence a person to life imprisonment, simply because of their sexual orientation. To this writer, it was all very sombre . Until I heard the defense arguments.

If the counsel for any of the petitioners in the case of Suresh Kumar Koushal vs Naz Foundation argued brilliantly, then the respondents’ counsel, in comparison, were pretty embarrassing.

I’ve spent a week reading a trashy Sidney Sheldon novel about a criminal lawyer who saved the skins of many awful people, and she does it with some astounding arguments. Maybe that’s why I thought Koushal’s lawyers might present strong reasons to retain Section 377. But all I got was this:

Very Questionable ‘Evidence’

Advocate Manoj George tries submitting, not once, but twice, material to suggest that ‘the gays’ are the scourge of our society. According to Bar and Bench’s live updates on Twitter, he first tried to show the nine-judge bench some stuff from the interwebz that would convince them to jail all of us debauched and immoral freakazoids.

Justice Chandrachud replied: “The second website you have referred to is obviously a hate website. Look at its name.”

Not to be deterred, George tried his next line of attack. Some ‘scientific’ research published by a Washington-based organisation, that claims homosexuality isn’t innate, but a pervert’s choice.

Sorry, man, what did you say? I couldn’t hear you over my boombox that’s blasting Gaga’s “Born This Way”.

But wait, there’s more. Additional Solicitor General Tushar Mehta tried to tear into Ashok Desai (appearing for the petitioners) when he submitted to the court two books (“I Am Divine” by Devdutt Pattanaik, and “Same Sex Love in India” by Ruth Vanita). Get this, he called the books “obscene” and “scandalous”, and then dropped a loaded comment about how people perceive things according to their orientation.

‘Just Pack Up Your AIDS In A Suitcase And Fuck Off To Mardi Gras’

I’m prone to quoting Hannah Gadsby a lot these days. Sue me, lol. But that’s pretty much where the next arguments lead to.

Advocate K. S. Radhakrishnan told the court that Section 377 a much needed bastion against HIV/AIDS in India. He brought to the court a report that claimed homosexuality had spread AIDS all over the USA.

Here’s what international organisation AVERT has to say about that: “Homophobia continues to be a major barrier to ending the global AIDS epidemic.”
In fact, the whole reason the Naz Foundation first petitioned against Section 377 in 2001 was because it interfered with HIV/AIDS prevention and treatment!

Still, Radhakrishnan said that, without the statute, “India will lose nobility, character, virtuousness.”

The judges weren’t very convinced.

Welcome To Lawlessness

When it was advocate Harshvir Pratap Sharma’s turn, he churned out perhaps the most bizarre argument of all time. According to Bar and Bench’s updates, he said rapes have increased after live-in relationships were recognised.

Just a moment of silence, as we mourn the death of logic here.

Speaking of live-ins, the respondents’ lawyers quickly got to how ‘the gays’ are destroying The Great Indian Family. You know, the backbone of heteronormativity? Because God forbid a situation where a child must undergo the ‘trauma’ of being raised by two loving mums!

Words With Friends

In the days prior, advocate Menaka Guruswamy asked the court to consider that the term “sex” should include “sexual orientation” too. Manoj George insisted that a new definition could not be imported into Section 377. But Justice Rohinton Nariman had a totally different take. He spoke about the Yogyakarta principles, and that “sex” had been expanded to include trans people in NALSA judgment.

Mehta also had some feelings about this, saying that trans issue were being brought in unnecessarily. He pointed to the text of Section 377, saying “carnal” does not mean “sexual”. In the same vein, he argued that the petitioners’ arguments were based on too wide reading of Fundamental Rights, and were therefore violating Directive Principles of State Policy.

In comparison, Radhakrishnan’s defense was pretty Switzerlandy. According to him, we’ve been reading Section 377 all wrong this whole time, because ain’t nobody got problems with gay people, they just shouldn’t be having any sexy times, cause like society will burn to the ground or whatever. But advocate Arvind Datar had already argued otherwise, saying it was the basis for blackmail, extortion and all kinds of harassment against LGBTQ people.

Miniscule Minority

Okay, here we go again. Sharma suggested to the court that you can’t justify scrapping a law that affects only a few people. And the analogy he used had me choking on my damn rainbow velvet cake. He asked the court if it would consider abolishing the police, because of corruption inside the institution?

He’s falling back on his previous sentiment that even Fundamental Rights are subject to public health, morality and decency.

In his turn, Mehta suggested that all of us gays and activists are just using ‘consensual same-sex relations between adults’ as a guise for incest, bestiality, or Sapinda (marriage between cousins in the Hindu community).

He also tried to dehumanise us by saying homosexuality was only seen in lower classes of animals, and that since he represented 95% of the population (i.e. The Straights), we simply didn’t matter.

He also concluded with this incredibly impressive sentiment: “No one has a right to commit a crime.”

To that, I have only one response. Which I’m gonna steal from Sahil Rizwan on Twitter:

“it’s 2018 grandpa we eat ass now” https://t.co/amFr5vA5ar

— Sahil Rizwan (@SahilRiz) July 12, 2018

The post The Arguments Favouring Section 377 Are Just A Load Of Ugh appeared first and originally on Youth Ki Awaaz and is a copyright of the same. Please do not republish.

Meeting with Banda’s first female news-maker feels like a study in meta storytelling for us – there is not only déjà vu, but also a sombre sense of how little has changed over the decades. When Madhubala Srivastav, now 86, started out as a journalist in the badlands of Bundelkhand, there were little to none women in her profession locally. As Meera Devi, Khabar Lahariya’s Chief Reporter, with an experience of 12 years in journalism, who went to meet Madhubala ji at her residence close to the Kiran College roundabout says, “So many women dropped out of Khabar Lahariya because of social, family reasons. This field is not considered appropriate for women, everyone cites it as unsafe.”

A petite, elegant lady greets us, draped in a crisp cotton dhoti, and while her voice is very soft, her words are hard, as she narrates anecdotes of her time, “I went to the temple on a lead for a report, and people refused to speak to me. I was told there’s no such thing as a woman reporter. So, I said out loud, ‘Look at me. I am one. I am a Mahila patrakar.’ I then went inside the temple premises gave a speech against my husband.” Sensing our confusion, we prod further and soon fill in the blanks. Her husband, we learn, was a journalist too, and the speech was akin to a diatribe against the male species in general!

Madhubala ji started out as a reporter for Amar Naveen newspaper in 1956 and then went onto work at Kranti Krishna and Swatantra Bharat. She spent the largest chunk of her professional life – 17 years – as the Banda district reporter for The Pioneer. Post that, she was nominated as the head of the local journalists’ committee.

Vimal Krishna Srivastav speaks proudly of his mother, “She’s a double M.A., in English & Social Sciences,” and goes onto share a few more stories that he’s told many a time, we reckon. He tells us about how she moved into social work and also tried politics when she fought the Vidhan Sabha elections as a Congress candidate. How she went to jail during the Emergency under the MISA Act – a story that Madhubala ji likes to narrate herself too, raising her forefinger as she tells it, as if in defiance still.

One story of her activism is part of current feminist folklore you could say – one of those stories that you never read about in history textbooks. It was the time when a woman had been denied treatment at the government hospital, so Madhubala ji pulled off her dhoti and spread it out on the ground, asking for chanda for the woman’s operation. She managed to collect ₹20,000 in a matter of a few hours after which the resident doctor announced that he would contribute the rest of the amount himself and conduct the required procedure.

Perhaps it is the cosy bubble we have managed to create here at Madhubala ji’s home, as peers and survivors, but we decide at the moment to choose the affirmation and focus on it. Like Meera, who found herself in a Madhubala afterglow for a few days, has drawn strength from the aura around Madhubala ji – something she attributed to her “jazba and power”.

Madhubala Srivastav was one of the first female news-makers in a region not conducive to her choice of profession, and that’s putting it mildly.

But perhaps that is enough today.

Watch the entire report here.

This Khabar Lahariya Article first appeared on Firstpost.

The post A Rendezvous With One Of The First Feminist Voices From Bundelkhand appeared first and originally on Youth Ki Awaaz and is a copyright of the same. Please do not republish.

रेनी कुजूर, मशहूर अंतरराष्ट्रीय पॉप सिंगर ‘रिहाना’ की तरह दिखनी वाली भारतीय मूल की मॉडल हैं। इस छत्तीसगढ़ी आदिवासी युवती का मॉडलिंग की दुनिया में अपना करियर चुनना, प्रतिस्पर्धा के बाद दिल्ली से लन्दन पहुंचना और एक मुकाम हासिल करने के पीछे काफी संघर्ष छुपा है।

रेनी कुजूर छतीसगढ़ के जशपुर ज़िले के पिरई गांव की रहने वाली हैं, जो एक आदिवासी समुदाय से सम्बन्ध रखती हैं। उनके पिता फिडेलियस कुजूर दिल्ली में स्वास्थ्य मंत्रालय में कार्यालय अधीक्षक के पद पर कार्यरत थे। लेकिन, रिटायरमेंट से पहले हृदय एवं कैंसर जैसी बीमारी से पीड़ित होने के कारण उन्हें अपना सरकारी जॉब छोड़कर अपने पैतृक गांव छतीसगढ़ वापस आना पड़ा। यहां आकर वे खेती बाड़ी के काम में लग गए।

आज उसकी लाडली बेटी सफलता के मुकाम में अपने दम पर पहुंची हैं। यह देखकर उनके पिता फुले नहीं समाते हैं। हालांकि, मां ने उन्हें कई बार कहा कि तू काली है, मॉडलिंग की दुनिया में सुंदर और गोरी लड़कियां ही सफल होती हैं। तुम मॉडलिंग करने का सपना छोड़ दो और अपने करियर पर ध्यान दो। बावजूद इसके रेनी ने अपना विचार नहीं बदला और मॉडलिंग को अपना करियर बनाने के लिए वो दिल्ली वापस आ गईं।

रेनी भावुक होकर एक इंटरव्यू में कहती हैं,

लोग आगे नहीं बढ़ने देते हैं हम ट्राइबल लड़कियों को। वे सोचते हैं कि हम ट्राइबल लड़कियां कुछ नहीं कर सकती हैं। हम आदिवासी लोग सिर्फ सरकारी नौकरियों से ऊपर सोच ही नहीं सकते। परन्तु मैं इस सोच को बदलना चाहती हूं। हम भारतीय अदिवासी लड़कियां सब कुछ करने में योग्य हैं, जो वो करना चाहती हैं।

रेनी को अपने काले रंग और अंग्रेजी बोलने में कठिनाई की वजह से कई बड़े प्रोजेक्ट में काम नहीं मिला। शुरुआती दौर बड़े ही चैलेंज से भरा हुआ था। कहते हैं कि मॉडलिंग की दुनिया का सच बहुत कड़वा है, एक मॉडल को अपने प्रोजेक्ट हासिल करने के लिए कई तरह के  कॉम्प्रमाइज़ करने पड़ते हैं। लोगों ने भी रेनी को ऐसे प्रपोज़ल दिए लेकिन, उसने हार नहीं मानी और डटी रहीं।

रेनी कुजूर को लोग उनके रंग और छोटी नाक की वजह से रंग सूचक कटाक्ष और ‘चपटी नाक’ वाली लड़की तक कहकर चिढ़ाते थे। रेनी कुजूर का मॉडलिंग तक का सफर युवा वर्ग को एक प्रेरणा देता है और हमें भावनात्मक रूप से सोचने को मजबूर भी करता है। खासकर, भारत जैसे देश में जहां गोरा रंग एक ‘टैबू’ माना जाता है। ऐसे में रेनी की कहानी नए युवा वर्ग को प्रेरित करेगी।

इंटरनेशनल पॉप स्टार रिहाना के दुनियाभर में लाखों करोड़ों फैन्स हैं, तभी तो जब लोगों ने रेनी की तस्वीर और वीडियोज़ सोशल मीडिया यूट्यूब में देखा, तो लोगों को पहचानने में मुश्किल हो गया कि ये रिहाना हैं या रेनी। उनके फोटोशूट और वीडियोज़ सोशल मीडिया में खूब वायरल हो रहे हैं। कई टीवी मीडिया वाले उनके इंटरव्यू के लिए उन्हें आमंत्रित कर रहे हैं।

रेनी एक इंटरव्यू में बताती हैं कि जब पहली बार वह रैम्प में एक गुड़ियां की तरह उतरी तो लोग उन्हें देखते ही चिल्ला उठे, “देखो, देखो एक काली परी उतर कर आ गई है।” यह सुनकर रेनी रोते हुए वहां से चली गईं। आज रेनी कुजूर के वे आंसू उनकी ताकत बन गए हैं।

रेनी को खूबसूरत कहने वालों की कोई कमी नहीं है। आज कुछ लोग कहते हैं, कुछ परियां काली भी होती हैं। पूरा सोशल मीडिया रेनी का दीवाना हो गया है और उसे ‘इंडियन रिहाना’ कहने से कोई दिक्कत नहीं। रिहाना जानी-मानी पॉप सिंगर स्टार हैं। उन्होंने भी अपने शुरुआती दौर में अपने रंग को लेकर बहुत स्ट्रगल किया था। रेनी कुजूर, रिहाना से बहुत प्रभावित हैं और वो एक बार रिहाना से ज़रूर मिलना चाहती हैं।

रेनी अपने अनुभव को शेयर करते हुए बताती हैं,

मॉडलिंग के दौरान उनका ज़्यादा से ज़्यादा मेकअप किया जाता था, ताकि उनका रंग थोड़ा साफ दिखे। फोटोशूट के बाद उनकी तस्वीर एडिट की जाती थी ताकि उनका रंग ज़्यादा से ज़्यादा सुंदर दिखे।

रेनी ऐसी ही एक घटना का जिक्र करती हैं, एक बार एक मेकअप आर्टिस्ट ने उनका मज़ाक उड़ाते हुए कहा कि सुंदर लड़कियों का  मेकअप करना इतना मुश्किल नहीं होता, जितना रेनी जैसे मॉडल का मेकअप करना है। देखो, काली लड़की को मैंने गोरा बना दिया। इस तरह के व्यवहार से रेनी परेशान ज़रूर हुईं लेकिन, कमज़ोर नहीं हुईं। इतनी दिक्कतें झेलने और ताने सुनने के बावजूद वो अपने करियर के लिए शिद्दत से संघर्ष करती रहीं।

एक दिन उनके कुछ मित्रों ने उससे कहा कि वो पॉप सिंगर ‘रिहाना’ की तरह दिखती हैं। रेनी इसे शायद एक मज़ाक ही समझती रहीं। एक दिन उनके दोस्तों ने बिना मेकअप के उनका फोटोशूट कर लिया। शुरुआत में रेनी, रिहाना वाली बात पर खूब हंसती थीं। लेकिन, धीरे-धीरे सब लोग उनसे यही कहने लगे कि तुम्हारा चेहरा पॉप सिंगर ‘रिहाना’ से बहुत मिलता है। फोटोग्राफर भी अपने क्लाइंट से कहने लगे कि यह  ‘इंडियन रिहाना’ की तस्वीर है। इससे कई क्लाइंट्स इम्प्रेस होने लगे, जिसके कारण रेनी को कई प्रोजेक्ट में अब काम मिलना शुरू गया था। रेनी कहती हैं कि आज रिहाना जैसे दिखने की वजह से मेरे जीवन में काफी चीज़ें आसान हो गई हैं। जैसे, उसे अब यह नहीं कहना पड़ता कि वह सुंदर नहीं हैं। क्योंकि लोग रिहाना को सुंदर और हॉट मानते हैं। रेनी इस बात को पूरे तौर से स्वीकारती हैं कि उनका लूक मशहूर पॉप सिंगर रिहाना से मिलने के कारण रिहाना उसकी लक्की फैक्ट्स हैं।

रेनी कुजूर जैसी आदिवासी लड़कियों का मॉडलिंग की दुनिया का सफर भावनात्मक रूप से सभी को प्रेरित करने वाला है। उनके उस संघर्ष से भरे जीवन से हमें यही सीखना चाहिए कि रंग गोरा हो या काला, एक इंसान के अंदर उसकी नियत और चरित्र खूबसूरत होनी चाहिए।

इस 21वीं सदी में हम भारतीयों को ऊंच-नीच, जात-पात, छोटा-बड़ा, काले- गोरे का फर्क करना अब बंद कर देना चाहिए तभी भारत एक महान देश बन सकता है।

The post ‘इंडियन रिहाना’ रेनी कुजूर, जिन्होंने दुनिया को बताया परियां काली भी होती हैं appeared first and originally on Youth Ki Awaaz and is a copyright of the same. Please do not republish.

One often-repeated remark about India is that it is a most unlikely setting for a thriving democracy. How did a poor country with incredible diversity and a population with low levels of education manage to celebrate 70 years of independence last year? While many social scientists have studied this question, Ornit Shani, a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Asian Studies at the University of Haifa, is interested in a more fundamental question: not how democracy has persisted in India, but how it was born. Using extensive archival research, fresh historical insights, and proceeding through a largely convincing narrative, Shani’s pathbreaking book argues that the traditional top-down story of Indian democratization may have it backwards: “ordinary people had a significant role in establishing democracy in India at its inception” (5).

The impetus for this book, described in the Introduction, was a question that Shani had vainly posed several times over the years to Indian officials: how was the voter roll for India’s first election prepared, especially against the tumultuous backdrop of Partition? This electoral roll featured 173 million people – most of whom had no experience with voting or democracy – and was based on the principle of the universal adult franchise. The traditional story is that democracy in India was a “gift from above” – nurtured through British rule, with colonial officials slowly expanding the franchise, and India’s postcolonial leaders completing the task. Shani rejects this argument on the first page of her book: “This [preparing the first voter roll] was no legacy of colonial rule: Indians imagined the universal franchise for themselves, acted on this imaginary, and made it their political reality” (1). The British, after all, had only allowed limited suffrage and were opposed to the idea that the vote should be expanded to the entire adult population.

So how was the first voter roll actually prepared? Like many major historical undertakings, there was a considerable amount of chance involved. The main administrative organization in charge of the preparation of the voter roll was the Constituent Assembly Secretariat (CAS). The CAS began by writing to the premiers of the provinces and the princely states (at this time, India was still integrating over 500 native states into the union) and asked them to “imagine” the voter roll (this term takes on a lot of significance in Shani’s book). The premiers wrote back with various ideas, and the most detailed plan – developed by the princely state of Travancore (another example of how we may have overstated British contributions to Indian democratization) – was chosen and then implemented on a nationwide scale.

The first voter roll was created with certain criteria in mind: voters had to be citizens (although the constitution was not yet adopted, so the citizenship provision was based on the draft constitution), over 21, of sound mind, residents of India, and they must have been living in their place of residence for a specified time. Determining all of this was, of course, an administrative nightmare. The nonpartisan officials at the CAS methodically dealt with thorny issue after thorny issue. In Chapter 2, Shani studies how the government resolved the issue of voting eligibility for Partition refugees, many of whom could not meet the domicile requirements. Chapter 4 describes the question of voters in the princely states, as well as legal debates about whether the costs of preparing the roll (e.g., printing reams and reams of paper) would be shared equally between princely governments and the Indian central government. Chapter 6 details the limits of the CAS’ otherwise inclusive model of the franchise: some groups were excluded, such as certain tribes, and those Indians who “slept on footpaths” and therefore had no clear domicile (210).

Shani produces this narrative by drawing on a rich set of primary source materials from a variety of archives: the record room of the Election Commission of India, National Archives of India, Nehru Memorial and Museum Library, Maharashtra State Archives, India Office Collections at the British Library, and collections from the Centre for South Asian Studies, Cambridge. In taking us through the minutia of the CAS’ construction of the first voter roll, Shani’s goal is to provide a new bottom-up perspective on Indian democratization. In fact, it is remarkable how seldom a name like “Nehru” appears in the book.

Instead, we learn about other figures like B.N. Rau, the leader of the CAS and a largely overlooked character in the study of India’s democratization. We learn that Rau’s CAS created a number of “press notes” that explained the process of the development of the first voter roll to the Indian public, and that the CAS was in turn lobbied by a variety of citizens groups on behalf of voters from specific communities. When the CAS ran into difficulties, they sought multiple opinions, tried to create consensus, and rarely acted in an ad hoc fashion. We learn that the Indian press also reported on the development of the voter roll and that ordinary citizens wrote in to newspapers to comment on the process. All of this, Shani argues, was the very process of democratic state-building – how India became democratic was through the preparation of the first voter roll. This process helped in “forging a sense of national unity and national feeling, turned the notion of people’s belonging to something tangible. They [Indians] became the focus of the new state’s leap of faith, in which they now had a stake” (7).

Shani’s mass-led theory of Indian democratization is a welcome addition to counterbalance existing views that focus on elites, but it is not without weaknesses. The biggest question is whether Shani is correct about the role that the Indian people played in the creation of their own democracy. At times, this theory seems overstated. For example, Shani argues that ordinary Indians were attuned to the process of the creation of the first voter roll based on evidence from press notes, newspaper clippings, and op-eds. But the vast majority of Indians were illiterate. So how did all of this affect them? Shani only makes a brief reference to this by noting that in Indian culture, newspapers are often read aloud in public settings like tea shops (88). Considering the size of the claim she is making here, this scant evidence is not very convincing.

Relatedly, in Chapter 3, Shani discusses how the universal franchise became “personalised” – that is, how the universal franchise came to “attain meaning and enter the political imagination of Indians” (86). In describing this process, Shani uses the term “serialised epic” – drawing an analogy with the Hindu epics that are well known across India and are often recited in public settings. This analogy is tenuous: the Hindu epics are popular narratives, but press notes and op-eds are largely elite narratives. Did ordinary Indians – especially those in rural areas, far from newspaper headquarters and English radio – really help to imagine the birth of Indian democracy? Perhaps requiring an answer to this question is asking too much, as most scholars have not even seriously considered the possibility that Indians were actively involved in setting up their own democracy. Nevertheless, the views and actions of ordinary Indians still seem uncertain despite Shani’s arguments.

On the whole, How India Became Democratic is a major contribution to the study of Indian democracy, modern Indian history, and the study of democratization more broadly. It should be required reading for students of Indian democracy. Future scholars can profitably expand on Shani’s work, which is the first foray into the study of ordinary Indians and their contributions to a democracy that has now withstood the test of seven decades.

Ajay Verghese is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of California, Riverside. His research interests include Indian politics, ethnicity, political violence, historical legacies, and religion. His first book, The Colonial Origins of Ethnic Violence in India, was published by Stanford University Press in 2016, and his articles are published or forthcoming in Modern Asian Studies, Terrorism and Political Violence, and Journal of Development Studies. From 2017-18 he was a Fulbright-Nehru scholar in India doing research for a book on secularization in Hinduism. 

Purchase the book on Amazon here

Visit Ornit Shani’s website here

Visit Ajay Verghese’s website here

The post Were Ordinary Citizens From Rural Areas Behind The Birth Of Indian Democracy? appeared first and originally on Youth Ki Awaaz and is a copyright of the same. Please do not republish.

Kalimpong, a hill station in West Bengal, known for its beautiful nature, climate and flowers. British bungalows that dot the hills offer a majestic view of the Mount Kangchenjunga. After seeing months of unrest during protests by Gorkhas demanding a separate state in early 2017, the small town is once again simmering with anger over the reported presence of Rohingyas. There has been an increase in cases of Rohingya refugees from Myanmar – who are staying in camps in Bangladesh – illegally crossing over into India through the North East.

On April 27, 2018, absconding Gorkha Janmukti Morcha supremo Bimal Gurung wrote a letter to the Prime Minister alleging that suspected Rohingya refugees had settled in the Darjeeling and Kalimpong districts of West Bengal. BJP MP from Darjeeling S. S. Ahluwalia also wrote a letter to the Prime Minister on May 3, 2018, claiming that “more than 320 families have been settled in places such as Deolo, Lava forest, Melli and Rangpo.” Ahluwalia also mentioned, “Darjeeling, Kalimpong and the Dooars region (Alipurduar, Jalpaiguri, Coochbehar district) share international borders with Nepal, Bhutan and Bangladesh, all of which are porous and settlement of Rohingyas in the sensitive region can pose a serious national security threat.”

Incidentally, six suspected Rohingya were arrested on July 12 by the police from a bus stand in the Habra area of North 24 Parganas district adjacent to the Bangladesh border. Rohingya refugees are already said to be living in the South 24 Parganas district of West Bengal since March this year.

A leader of the Gorkha Janmukti Morcha, who does not wish to be named, thinks that certain political parties are pushing Rohingya to settle in hills for vote bank politics without thinking of national interest. Binoy Tamang, currently chairman of Gorkhaland Territorial Administration (GTA) which is backed by the state government, has denied the claims made by Ahluwalia and Gurung.

The reported entry of Rohingya into the hills became an issue when a video clip of Muslim men alighting from a bus in Kalimpong went viral on WhatsApp in April this year. Though the local administration and Muslim community leaders in Kalimpong immediately clarified that the young men were not Rohingya, the issue refused to die down. The people in Kalimpong still believe Rohingya are present in the hills.

Melli is a small village situated around 20km from Kalimpong at the banks of river Teesta near the West Bengal-Sikkim border. Actually, Melli village is divided between the two states, both of which are connected by a bridge. On the Sikkim side, there is a police check post where people have to register vehicle details while entering Sikkim. In West Bengal, you can see a group of people, around 40-50 families, living under the bridge in small tin-shaded houses beside the fast-flowing Teesta. It is populated by mostly new settlers – masons, construction labourer, carpenters, car mechanics, rag-pickers. All the men wear lungis or short pyjamas, long kurtas, skull caps and have long beards.

Most converse in a particular dialect of Bengali, while some also speak Nepali. A small tea stall owner at Melli said, “It started very slowly around three years ago but has picked up pace over the past six months and they learn the Nepali language within 45-60 days.” Recently, more families have come to live here claiming that those already settled here are their relatives. The newcomers are now living roughly one kilometre from the bridge and refer to the place as “Chota Pakistan”. Even locals used this term repeatedly while I was searching for the settlement.

The Muslim influx to the hills, especially in the Kalimpong district, has been happening slowly but steadily over the past few months according to local villagers in the Bhalukhop panchayat. Kalimpong has some very old Muslim residents, mostly concentrated in the Thakurbari area but Muslim populations are growing remarkably on Melli Road.

“You cannot distinguish indigenous Muslim families from us. They speak in Nepali, follow our lifestyle even participate in our religious events. But the new settlers stand out with their clothes and habits,” says Umesh Ghising from Kalimpong market.

Many locals claim that the newcomers are conservative and have been urging the old Muslim families to also become conservative. “A pork shop on Melli Road has been closed because they complained to the authorities. This shop was here for the last 20 years,” said another shop owner near Kalimpong clock tower.

Gorkha Janmukti Morcha leaders allege that this gradual increase of Muslim populations in the Gorkha-dominated Darjeeling and Kalimpong is part of a sinister plan hatched by the Trinamool Congress (TMC) government in the state. These new Muslim settlers will form a solid support base for TMC and a precious vote bank for Mamata Banerjee.

People are saying that Rohingya are also living in Deolo and Graham’s Home in Kalimpong. A government employee of the forest department also confirmed their presence and the establishment of a new settlement near Graham’s home.

The indigenous Gorkha community is feeling insecure about the rising population of Muslims in the hills. The government of India has taken a clear stand against Rohingya refugees and their entry into Indian territory is strictly forbidden. Gorkhas believe that the state government’s motive is to create a cultural imbalance in the hills and weaken the Gorkhaland movement.

Some also believe that this poses a security concern at the border. The Rohingya have been declared a national security threat by the central government in an affidavit before the Supreme Court last year. Kalimpong is the headquarters of an army division that is deployed along the strategic border with Tibet. It is also the gateway to the Jelep-la pass that leads to Tibet’s Chumbi Valley, an important Chinese military base.

According to some reports, a huge number of Rohingya have been entering Bengal illegally by breaching the fences along the Indo-Bangla border. “The Bengal government is providing protection to these illegal migrants and providing them citizenship for its petty political gains. The presence of Rohingya in Bengal will become a huge national security problem soon,” said state BJP chief Dilip Ghosh.

Gorkhas and other indigenous communities of the hills are not welcoming of these Muslim people. People in the hills suspect that both Mamata Banerjee and the Centre are trying to marginalise them and make them a minority on their own land.

None of the new settlers at Melli identified themselves as Rohingya when asked. Most people claim they were born and brought up in West Bengal and moved here 10-15 years ago for employment opportunities. A few people said that they are Nepali Muslims. But their language, attire is much different from Muslims traditionally living in Kalimpong.

According to media reports citing government data, the number of Rohingya refugees in India was 10,500 in 2015 and increased to 40,000 in the next two years. The West Bengal government adopted a contrary position to the Centre’s declaration by supporting Rohingya refugees. This decision is being questioned by many. The state shares a porous border with Bangladesh and for decades, Bangladeshi citizens have illegally migrated to the country. It is high time that government agencies identify the refugees and put them on record instead of making them a vote bank.

The post An Alleged Rohingya Camp In Kalimpong Has Locals Worried About ‘Cultural Imbalance’ appeared first and originally on Youth Ki Awaaz and is a copyright of the same. Please do not republish.

By Anirban Ghose and Anish Kumar:

“How would you like your children to be when they grow up?” he asked.

“Like you,” she said.

The man asking the question was R. Venkataramanan, Managing Trustee of Tata Trusts; the woman, a farmer whose income had increased tenfold to ₹2 lakh annually through her work in self-help groups (SHGs). Although her family’s life had improved due to food availability and more income, the quality of life on several counts had not changed: schools in her village were non-functional and healthcare non-existent. Her increased income, therefore, had not translated into better opportunities for her son.

Her statement–I want him to be like you–stayed with us. We were at PRADAN then and had been working with communities across India for over two decades. At that point, we asked ourselves: what will it take for the next generation of Indians, whoever they are and wherever they are, to have the same set of opportunities as the privileged urban-born?

Could we look beyond just providing jobs, training, and skills to a generation of men and women and instead focus on ensuring equal opportunities for their children at least?

It Won’t Happen On Its Own

Through our work in rural India for over two decades, we know that left to market forces – despite rapid economic growth and expanding government social spends – the inhabitants of the bottom 100,000 villages (of the 600,000 villages in our country), do not and will not have the same opportunities as citizens born in urban India or even other villages. Not at a systemic, mass level at least.

Sure, we have an A.P.J Abdul Kalam, who was able to get himself out of a deprived background and become DRDO chief and the President of India. But what about his friends, his brothers, relatives and neighbours? What are the chances that they got out?  We never talk about those left behind.

Individual ascension can happen–with some education and a great deal of luck. But how do you take development to the entire village? How do you build basic resilience, so that our future generations can aspire to and achieve better lives?

The Stepping Stones To Resilience

Addressing hunger: It starts with food-sufficiency. We remember one of the first conversations we had when we joined PRADAN and one of our colleagues told us bhookhe pait bhajan na hoye – one needs food in one’s stomach before one has the ability to aspire.

When PRADAN started its work in the 1980s, addressing hunger and poverty was a priority. We believed that if you worked with communities to create strong livelihood opportunities in an empowering manner linked to government and private markets, it would have a positive domino effect on the other challenges they faced–health, nutrition, education. One had also hoped that there would be gains around the intra-family and the inter-family relationships, in terms of gender, caste, the ability to influence local decision making and so on.

But in 2005, when we did a strategy-refresh and reflected on our work in the earlier decades, we realised that this whole premise of automatic spillover gains to other areas wasn’t happening.

So while there were enough anecdotes, in terms of scale, the impact was limited to increased incomes – in some cases as high as ₹1.5-2 lakh annually.

Cash flows had increased and there was more food at home. But for most households this did not translate into other important areas: child malnourishment continued to be high as did maternal and infant mortality; women had little control over their increased incomes (even though all our activity was focused on women and increasing their incomes). They had even lesser decision making powers and almost no control over assets.

Building social capital: This made us more acutely aware of the second necessary condition for development: social capital –acquiring a voice and some sense of agency – through mobilisation of groups and communities. The SHG movement, which started in a small way in the 1980s, was taken to scale by nonprofits in the 2000s and later adopted by the government. Today there are large numbers of villagers, even in the bottom 100,000 villages, where some level of social capital has been created.

Meeting aspirations: Once this kind of foundation exists – enough food, money and some social capital – there arises an opportunity to mobilise the aspirational energy of the community. The challenge today is clearly people’s aspirations of having equal opportunities for their next generation.

But There Are Barriers

Traditional norms and practices limit opportunity: Consider the situation of the tribals. They have a huge sense of identity and pride and are unable to work in hotels and clean dishes; it’s not acceptable to them, unlike non-tribals where some castes will do this work in towns and cities. So the only jobs tribals end up doing are building roads and digging trenches. This is a 100 million strong segment of society and the only opportunity open to them (outside of marginalised farming) is road construction!

There is a sense of hopelessness: At the policymakers’ level, the aam janta, and even within the development fraternity, there is this sense of ‘ki bhaiya, yahan toh kuch hone wala nahi (Nothing can happen here).’

There is a feeling of hopelessness and fatigue especially if you’ve been doing it for a long time and you see change happening really slowly. Many of us have worked on economic development issues and take pride in our work but when we seek to answer the question of what will it take for their children to be like our children and the increasing gap between the two, one can only feel overwhelmed.

There is a feeling of entitlement: We’ve reached a stage today where there is a strong sense of rights, but not of responsibilities. There is a sense of entitlement that has been seeping through in the way people think and act, and we’ve seen this increase over the two decades that we’ve been in the field with PRADAN and now TRI Foundation.

To quote one such example: We were in Hazaribagh in central Jharkhand and talking to the women in a SHG. This SHG is among the top five percent of SHGs in India and a poster child of the movement. Every year, the women distribute a dividend among themselves of ₹18-25K per person.

Despite the overall economic prosperity in the village, we saw malnourished children. When asked whether the women had thought about nutrition for their children, they were very articulate. They said that they had created a citizen report on the state of ICDS in their block, had mobilised themselves and then gheraoed the officials demanding rations be delivered to their villages. They were told that the government machinery wouldn’t be in a position to deliver rations for six months.

When we asked them, “You have the money, why won’t you buy the nutrient-rich food and feed the children?” the women answered saying, “We are entitled to the rations!” We understand there might be other factors and this may be an oversimplification, but the reality is that people are not taking responsibility for their lives.

It doesn’t mean you let the government off the hook; you should hold them accountable. But one must also focus on solving the problem; one must focus inward and see what can be done by oneself.

Build Resilience – Adopting A Multi-Pronged Approach

We, along with the Tata Trusts and with guidance from Dr Sanjiv Phansalkar, analysed the situation on the ground. Having understood the enormity of people’s aspirations, we realised that if the development indicators had to change for good, we had to look at two aspects, things that:

• Communities can do themselves with a little support in terms of knowledge and capacity
• Need external support from governments and markets

For instance, in the area of child malnourishment, the women can do the recommended IYCF practices themselves. But when the child is ready for vaccination, that has to be supplied by an external entity and injected by a trained person. This external ecosystem support could come either from the government or a private, market-based enterprise.

Having understood this, we broke it down further to understand the basic things that people require to live comfortably. After several conversations across multiple states we narrowed it down to four key areas:

• Prosperity: People in the bottom 100,000 villages need about ₹8,000-12,000 monthly cash income to live well. This translates to around ₹1-1.5 lakh additional income.
• Healthcare and nutrition: With a focus on pregnancy to the first five years of a child’s life and basic cognitive development. In essence, preventive, formative and curative healthcare.
• Education: Primary education to ensure a certain level of foundational education and mobility.
• Water and sanitation: Safe drinking water and sanitation.

In order to ensure that the marginalised communities have an influence in local decision making and are not excluded from services and infrastructure, we also included local governance and gender as cross-cutting issues as these parameters are closely interlinked.

Therefore, if we have villages where we are able to move the needle on these four result areas and the cross-cutting issues of governance and gender, then we will be in a position to say that this village has the wherewithal to thrive on its own steam and that its children are well-equipped to capitalise on opportunities across India and the world.

Connecting To Urban India On Equal Terms To Achieve Those Aspirations

The opportunities outside of the village are the ones that the woman who met Venkat wanted for her son. If the country is growing, the bottom two deciles of rural India should also be able to participate in this growth. However, if I have to connect with the opportunity only as a coolie, and my child also has to engage with that world only as a coolie, then that is not an opportunity.

To be able to participate on equal terms and negotiate these opportunities, there has to be an interplay between what the communities can do themselves and a supportive ecosystem of public and private markets – Samaj-Sarkar-Bazaar – have to come together if we have to address the rural-urban divide.

About the authors: 

Anirban Ghose is Co-Lead of Transform Rural India. He has been on the leadership team at India’s leading India’s leading rural development NGO, PRADAN. Anirban is recognized for his role in expanding comprehensive engagement with women collectives beyond financial services, livelihoods and a pioneer of automated book-keeping systems in women’s Self Help Groups. He is known for expertise around community managed irrigation, natural resource-based livelihoods and numerous technology for development initiatives. Anirban graduated in Business Studies from University of Delhi.

Anish is Co-lead at Transforming Rural India Foundation. Anish was part of the senior management team at PRADAN, India’s leading rural development nonprofit. His areas of expertise include creating business organizations run by poor communities and facilitating participation of small-holder farmers in modern value chains. He has been part of erstwhile Planning Commission’s Working Group on disadvantaged farmers, and has been involved in designing programmes on producer collectives. Anish was involved in developing small-holder poultry model, run by poor women, which has emerged as the largest family poultry network in India with turnover of US $56 million. He chairs National Smallholder Poultry Development Trust, supporting more than 11,000 women.

The post What Will It Take For Next-Gen Indians To Have The Same Opportunities As Urban Privileged? appeared first and originally on Youth Ki Awaaz and is a copyright of the same. Please do not republish.

It is a sunny July day at Jadavpur University. Sheltered from the sun beneath the canopy of the Arts building, a bunch of postgraduates stand and talk. All of them belong to the Department of English. A couple of them have recently returned from Europe, and the group laughs about the continent’s propensity for wine. The conversation turns to a posh private school in the city many of them are from, and those not in the know exchange a few uncomfortable glances.

Just then, a younger girl rushes into the scene, panting, backpack unzipped. Her hair is the short, natural kind ubiquitous to girls on this campus, and she holds a notebook, proffered to the general public. She is a second-year undergraduate, conducting a survey for her class, as instructed by the professor. Since then, students of the department have been faced frequently, on campus and on Facebook messenger, with some uncomfortable questions that demand to be answered: is the department elitist? If so, how? What do we do to rectify this?

These are not new questions. They have always been around, lining the corridors of the department, from the sunny ledges overlooking the professors’ rooms to the dusty stairs littered with cigarette stubs. They have been around, often muttered and marginal.

Everyone knows why they are plastered all over the walls now. These are doubts about the fancied revolutionary credential of the university and the department that cannot be cast away as a right-wing conspiracy. Or maybe they could have been, but amidst the humanities departments’ latest crusade, a postcolonial professor from Cambridge had approvingly shared an article on Facebook about the whole thing as being *gasp* elitist.

For years, admission to the department of English had been conducted through a test. The criteria for appearing in this test was not set high, and thousands would show up. The entire campus would be taken up to accommodate examinees, and current faculty and students, along with members of the alumni would volunteer to conduct it. Other humanities departments conduct tests too, but the English department believes its test to be the most iconic. Indeed, it is the one drawing phenomenal numbers.

This year, university authorities took upon the suggestion of an irate state education minister Partha Chatterjee, pushed to the edge by the disruptive students of Jadavpur University and Presidency University, to scrap admission tests at the undergraduate level and introduce a procedure of admission based on marks obtained in the end-of-school board examinations. Of course, students of colleges and universities across the state have rebelled against and resisted the tyranny of successive repressive state governments, but if students of JU and Presidency have appointed themselves the flag-bearers and gatekeepers of the revolution, the casting of them as bad eggs is a matter to gloat over.

Arrogance issues aside, Jadavpur University students, along with their professors, can be pretty good at getting things done. So, a complex series of protests, and teenagers risking their lives with hunger strikes later, admission tests were re-introduced. The extent to which this was a victory was debated, since half of the weightage in the selection procedure has been allotted to board examination grades. All this while, another debate has been brewing up.

Those campaigning for the re-introduction of admission tests have largely seen their partial victory as the right step on the road to something revolutionary – resisting the state. A counterview wishes to portray the entire ordeal as an elaborate theatricality of the bhadralok – the Bengali elite that comprises the ranks of spaces like Jadavpur University Department of English. It is a little mystifying as to how the alternate mode of admission is something more ‘subaltern’. After all, preparations for board examinations in the city are long drawn out procedures that feature expensive schooling, tuition centres and mock testing galore. This is not to say that admission tests are automatically more egalitarian, and much of the discourse in favour of the same within the department, and university at large, has been one of exceptionalism and elitism. It is a little amusing when the discourse around selection procedure – essentially a process of elimination, comes to centre around egalitarianism. Studying English in a postcolonial country, some argue, is an inherently elitist endeavour, and can one accommodate the subaltern here? Can the subaltern read Shakespeare or Spivak? To add to this, English in India is not simply a subject of study or a language of communication, it is immense socio-cultural capital.

At the end of the day, it can be both true – doing away with admission tests is a bad idea, and the department of English, here and in many places else, has severe problems it had better address. The entirety of this debate brings us, really, to the paradox of public education in India. School education becoming increasingly privatised means socio-economic class and financial resources becoming increasingly important to access to quality education, and impeded social mobility, this goes without saying.

The recent fiasco at Jadavpur is only one in the line of reminders of the threat public universities, and the humanities in particular, increasingly face in India. It points also, however, to the problems within these public universities – quality public education is scant and busy gloating over low acceptance rates; and eligibility procedures can never completely free themselves of class impediments.

The admission exams test a great many things that are required for the study of English literature at the university level and the acquisition of many of these skills does not rest solely upon the student applying. In a country where English is the only remotely acceptable way to study literature, if at all, choices become narrower. Students mould themselves to fit the right department rather than seek out the departments that fit them best. These are not problems that can be addressed in isolation, or in their entirety at the level of, or within the space of the university, but they are something to consider. Considering these does not dilute the importance of all the department, and the university have fought for. And besides, validity has never been a synonym for the perfect revolutionary.

Update: On July 5, Jadavpur University reversed its stand and scrapped the entrance test for 6 humanities subjects, including English. 

The post Admission Fiasco At Jadavpur Uni: Is The English Entrance Test Fair Or Elitist? appeared first and originally on Youth Ki Awaaz and is a copyright of the same. Please do not republish.

Today, on July 26, India celebrated the 19th anniversary of Kargil Divas marking India’s victory over Pakistan in the 1999 Kargil war. From Prime Minister Narendra Modi to Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, everyone paid homage to 527 martyrs of the war that was fought in the harsh weather conditions of the Kashmir valley.

While the ministers across states acknowledged the efforts and gallantry of our Armed Forces in the Kargil war, the family members of both retired and martyred defence personnels in Bengaluru demanded the government unveil the long-pending National Military Memorial by August 15 this year.

In 2010, then Karnataka government commissioned the National Military Memorial(NMM), country’s first war memorial recognising the sacrifices of armed forces. Eight years after,  the memorial is awaiting its inauguration as a 75-foot obelisk called Veeragallu or the Hero Stone is yet to be installed. The obelisk is inscribed with the names of 22,600 martyrs. For eight years the state has been shirking its responsibilities with vague promises and flimsy excuses. As a result, the memorial that was to recognise and honor the valor of the defence personnels is currently lying incomplete and poorly-maintained.  

Spearheaded by Priya Chetty Rajagopal, daughter of Col DGK Chetty, the group of ‘fauji kids’- as they preferred to be called- has started a campaign #UnveilNMM its #vijaykargildiwas. From writing letters to the CM and Bangalore Development Authority(BDA) commissioner to taking to social media to gather support of the people, the group has vowed not to stop until the state fulfills its promise of of formally inaugurating the memorial by erecting the monolith, Veeragallu.

“The Army does its job without excuses. They have done their bit. The least government can do is fulfil their promise. We didn’t ask them for this. They promised but then forgot. This is disrespect to the people who stand on borders and fight for the freedom we all live with. How hard it is to move an obelisk 45 kms? They say it’s not easy. Do army men carry that attitude?,”  Priya Chetty told Youth Ki Awaaz.

Reiterating Rajagopal’s points, Ms Padmini, wife of a Kargil veteran, said, “We shouldn’t have to a point where we have to push the government so hard to fulfil their promise of honoring the defence personnel who fought for the country and never let anyone down. I and my husband once went to Australia and he was so moved to see their war memorial that celebrated the fallen soldiers. He wondered if India would ever have something like this that honors the soldiers.”

Pointing out the inconsistency in the state’s efforts towards National Military Memorial, Rajagopal argued that the state government covers it’s lack of will with several excuses. She rejects to subscribe that the state is facing logistic challenges to to its rightful place in NMM, while it has all the capacities to stall the traffic and destroy the road to carry and stall a 62-foot-tall and 750-tonne heavy Hanuman statue.

“They either give promises of excuses. The Army never does that even when the governments dumb them to services that ideally should be handled by civic bodies,” she argued.

After Rajagopal’s effort to raise the issue of eight years delay in unveiling the NMM, former Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah and other officials to admit their inaction. In a TV debate on June 2017, the state government not only acknowledged the issue, but also assured that they would expedite the process and unveil NMM by August 15 last year. However, the promises never translated to reality.

“Many promised deadlines have passed but nothing has happened on ground.  But we aren’t giving up our resolve. We have approached the current CM and deputy CM and will keep out efforts on until NMM is unveiled. It’s for those who fight for us and the least we can do is honor them and show that we haven’t forgotten their services to the country,” said Surabhi Tomar, daughter of wing commander SS Tomar.

Meanwhile, Member of Parliament Rajeev Chandrashekar — who was also the chairman of the National Military Memorial Committee — has written to Chief Minister H D Kumaraswamy regarding the condition of the memorial.

The post 19 Years Since Kargil War, India Still Awaits First War Memorial Promised By The Govt. appeared first and originally on Youth Ki Awaaz and is a copyright of the same. Please do not republish.

I fit the ‘ideal middle-class Indian boy’ image. I was a topper in school, played a little sport, but focused on studies, got into a top-tier engineering college, then got a dream job with a six-figure salary. I have travelled to Amrika, and six other countries. But, Amrika. Now my parents are looking to get me married, they tell me, “Shaadi karlo, fir life set hai (Get married and then your life is set).”

Being entitled so, I’ll give you advice. As already explicitly mentioned in the title, it’s really bad advice. You should not be reading this. But then, if you’re a teenager reading publications like these, things aren’t going great for you anyway. On the upside though, you can read English.

I have one advice to give to kids in school: DO NOT PAY ATTENTION TO THE CLASSES. Why? Because our education system is not just bad, it actually makes you stupider. Please note, I’m not saying don’t go to school. You must go to school, but try not to pay attention to the classes.

As my parent’s income rose, I went to two types of schools. First, where speaking English was the focus and a big thing. Second, where maths and science were a big thing.

I do give credit partially to my school, more to my parents and mostly to my privilege for teaching me how to read and write at a very young age. I was writing sentences in two languages and had learned basic maths. So all said and done, I’d still give credit to the classes till about 5th standard. After that, it’s all <insert f-word>. In my first school, pseudonym English-Makes-Me-Climax Public School, I was hailed as a hero for my ability to speak English so fluently at a young age. Well, school had nothing to do with it, “Titanic” did.

One afternoon, while watching TV at home I stumbled onto “Titanic”. Two things immediately followed: I started trying to sketch and I found a whole new world of English movies. The sketching didn’t go very far (or anywhere at all), but watching English movies every afternoon for one academic year was enough for a young kid to pick up very good conversational English. One year, some real inspiration, good content, that’s it. From there, it became a virtuous cycle of confidence, opportunities, curiosity and learning.

But how much did the actual English class contribute? My grammar isn’t that perfect, as the more sharp-eyed readers reading this will perhaps realise. The movies covered pronunciation, vocabulary, and sentence structures. Guess the one thing that the English class is supposed to teach? Yup, grammar. After all these, I still keep learning that the grammar taught was not only inadequate, but very often outright wrong. Had I not paid attention to Kundu Ma’am for those three years, my grammar would have perhaps been better.

But my bigger problem is not with how languages are taught, but how other fields aren’t.

Starting in my first school, but growing exponentially in the second, supposedly “better” school, pseudonym: Engineer-Doctor-Dharti ka Bojh Public School, the overvaluation of maths and science can only be explained by the startup people who come from such schools. For eight years, from class 6th to 12th, you are taught but one thing, ‘how to solve the question’, nothing more.

Take science for example. If you are reading this article, it’s likely that you studied it as a separate subject for a minimum of five years in school.

How many people who do go through this same system do you think confidently can answer that question? Scientific method is not a fact, it is never asked as a question in exams, yet it is the very basic foundation of science. It is arguably as basic as knowing addition in mathematics. Yet, most students are never taught this. Far more problematic is the fact that they’re never taught how to practice it, not just to answer the question but as a way of thinking about anything in life. It stings even more because if you actually study science further, everything you ever studied early was either actually wrong or in most cases, an astounding oversimplification.

My science classes taught me that there’s one right answer. And I must learn that answer. Period. I never questioned if what I reading was true, The way I was taught to answer questions was to erase all other questions from my head. Believe what’s written there, learn it. Do not question. If you want to understand how dangerous that is, ask WhatsApp how much it costs to have a full page advertisement in every newspaper in India, just to tell them that what they are reading might be wrong.

Another good example is math classes. I never struggled with maths, thankfully, though it took me a long time to understand why my friends did. For most, mathematics was not about learning problem-solving, but pattern recognition. All you’re taught are 60-80 odd patterns of questions that are asked in exams, and how to solve them. If you recognise a pattern, you follow a set of fixed steps, and as long as you’re okay with basic calculations, you’ll get the answer. I remember my disenfranchised friend asking me what’s the point of ever learning trigonometry while playing a computer game. It was neither of our faults that we realised the irony of the situation only several years later.

However, my #FirstWorldProblems in maths were an interesting perspective later in life. Again, for four years of my high school and intermediate, my maths teacher struggled to teach me three things:

1. There’s only one right answer, but that’s not as important.
2. There’s only one right way (read steps) to the right answer. If you don’t follow them, you won’t get marks.
3. There might be other ways, perhaps more efficient, of arriving at the right answer, but that doesn’t matter, because for that, you won’t get marks.

There was no room for creativity in maths, which in perspective, is both tragic and hilarious. Mathematics is nothing if not creative. There was no idea of different perspectives to the same goal. I was just taught to answer the question.

So, all things considered, the more attention I paid to the classes in school, the more damage I incurred. I wish I had spent more time talking to girls, playing in teams, picking up fights, understanding emotions, listening to music and above all, value the 60 confused souls sitting around me more than the book in my hands.

The post Bad Tips From A Topper: Do Not Pay Attention To Your Classes appeared first and originally on Youth Ki Awaaz and is a copyright of the same. Please do not republish.

By Anand Bang:

This is the story of an itch.

It is set in the tribal villages of Gadchiroli — a remote, semi-tribal district located in central India.

The year was 2006. Like in every other year, the climate was hot and humid with heavy rainfall, and tribal people from several villages were repeatedly complaining of ‘itching’. Though it is a common health complaint, the magnitude of itching, they told us, was unprecedented in 2006.

Usually, in this community, itching was caused by scabies. Therefore, trained Community Health Workers (CHW) of SEARCH (Society for Education, Action & Research in Community Health), the organisation I was working with, were treating people with standard scabies medication, but to no avail. The cause of this mysterious spurt in itching remained unknown.

What follows is an account of our investigation into this condition and what it taught me, a young medical graduate who had then just started working in these tribal villages, about how to approach a community — its culture, ecology, and the problem itself.

We were curious about why this sudden outbreak of itching, which one intuitively associates with poor hygiene, had occurred, because tribal communities are known to be scrupulously clean, personally and as a community. Hence, our team, consisting of myself, several non-medical health supervisors and tribal village volunteers, decided to study a village — Gathanyeli — in-depth to try to ‘research’ a community we had known so well, to identify the cause and how we might help it abate.

A Curious Case Of Itching

Gathanyeli is five kilometres from the main road, 15 km from the nearest primary health centre, and 50 km from the District Hospital. Only a kaccha road provided some connectivity, a road which would invariably be under water during the monsoon. It had 12 houses with a total of 60 inhabitants. The main livelihood was paddy cultivation during the rainy season and selling minor forest produce such as bamboo, tendu leaves (Diospyros melanoxylon, the key ingredient in bidis), and mahua (Madhuca longifolia) flowers collected from the surrounding dense forest.

We examined all inhabitants present in the village, several of whom were children. Clinically, several morbidities such as scabies (the most common), skin infection, fungal infection, head lice and dandruff, insect bites (especially mosquitoes), and allergies were present, all causing itching. In fact, most individuals had multiple conditions. So, we were faced with a wide-ranging diagnoses profile. Hence, we decided to conduct an environmental study of all 12 households in order to delve deeper.

What We Learned 

Individual Behaviour

As expected, everyone was bathing daily, some in fact twice. Almost all were using soap. But because many didn’t have private bathrooms, their private parts weren’t well-washed, especially in the case of women. Men were bathing in the nearby stream, along with cattle, which exposed them to insects. To scrub their bodies, they were using small sharp stones, which caused abrasions, increasing their likelihood of skin infections.

In most houses, the family was using the same hairbrush, transmitting hair lice easily. The linen was commonly exchanged, so scabies would spread rapidly too.

In tribal communities, menstruating women live in huts called ‘Kurma’, which lack proper shelter, making it difficult for the women to bathe properly. They sleep on a mud floor. Living together for four to five days in a small, unclean, humid hut further spreads scabies and fungal infections.

Households

Tribal houses were mini zoos, with dogs, cows, buffaloes, hens, cocks, goats, pigs, ducks, parrots, pigeons, and sometimes deer living inside. In some houses, we even found bats. Dogs, hens, and ducks slept on the same bed as the family members. This allowed for easy transmission of lice and ticks.

Paddy was also stored in the bedrooms, and the husk was possibly causing allergic itching.

The mud flooring and walls allowed water to soak in, and so, especially during the monsoon season, houses remained wet and humid. Most of the rooms had no windows. This was not uncommon in tribal communities because windows provide open access to predators or snakes and were also impractical during the rainy season. The drawback of this though was that it was cutting off any ventilation or natural light.

In all the houses, clothes were washed daily using detergent, but in most houses clothes were dried under the shade, shielded from the sunlight. Hence, even clean clothes remained sticky and wet. When asked why they were avoiding the sun, they explained to us that heavy winds would cause their clothes to fly away if left out in the open.

Environment

Further confounding the issue was the immediate environment of these tribal households. The courtyards had small, open water tanks full of algae and dirt, and were the ideal breeding ground for mosquitoes. Needless to say, people complained of constant mosquito bites, leading to vigorous scratching with dirty nails, causing infections. And why were the tanks not emptied daily? Because there was no water source nearby, creating a state of continuous water insecurity.

People also reported that three varieties of vegetables and grass — commonly found in the field and surrounding forest — were causing itching, as was working in the rice fields. But obviously, there was no escaping farming or the forest, given that it was their main source of livelihood.

Not only were there a large variety of causes for the itching, but once diagnosed, compliance with our medication regimen was also an issue. For instance, our CHWs had offered scabies medication—Gamma Benzene Hexachloride (GBHC), but its use was inappropriate. Some were not applying the lotion to their private parts while others stopped using it entirely because it caused a stinging sensation.

The CHWs also advised people to bathe with hot water after applying GBHC, but because hot water exacerbated the itching, people stopped using it. It became a vicious cycle as GBHC is a cure for scabies, but because of partial compliance with the CHWs recommendations, results were limited. This decreased people’s confidence in the CHWs and further impacted their inclination to comply, and increased their complaints.

We Were Still Left With The Question: What Made This Year Different?

First, the rainy season was longer than usual, with the rains being distributed over many months rather than concentrated in a shorter time window. This left no dry days and a constantly overcast atmosphere, which meant that wet clothes did not dry and ponds in cattle sheds remained stagnant with continued mosquito breeding.

Second, the veterinarian doctor serving these tribal villages had disappeared for reasons unknown, leaving most cattle untreated. So, zoonotic transmission of infections from animals to humans remained unchecked.

Third, most of the vegetables that were causing allergic itching had been distributed by the government as subsidised crop some time back, which was now harvested and caused allergic reactions.

Fourth, children were running away from their tribal residential schools and returning home more often that year, probably due to worse than usual administration in these schools. Because they had contracted scabies and lice in their schools, those conditions were now spreading in their villages. In fact, in many homes people themselves traced the start of itching to an index case—the returning child.

Finally, though Gadchiroli had been ravaged by the violent, ultra-leftist insurgency for many years, that year in particular, the Naxalites were organising repeated strikes against even farming. This meant that the communities had to shift their cultivation schedule. As a result, they were more exposed to rain and insects in the farms.

This Was A Unique Situation

Instead of only focusing on an individual as a clinical case, we found ourselves trying to fathom the reasons for a condition within the overlying ecology. We had to decipher the interaction between factors including environmental (climate, plants, farms, and houses), human (personal, occupational, societal, habits and traditions), and vector (mosquito and cattle), all of which ultimately converged and contributed to the health challenge.

Hence the seemingly paradoxical observation: bathing daily and scrubbing the body, washing clothes regularly, sending children to school, and the distribution of plants by the government were all contributing to itching.

As treatment, we conducted clinics in many villages and demonstrating the ideal method of using GBHC, ensuring its mass application. We also administered antibiotics, anti-fungal, and anti-allergic medication, in addition to GBHC, to treat the several other causes of itching, and not just scabies. Focused health education was provided pertaining to several of the behaviours. The hygiene of the cattle shed was improved and water tanks nearby were emptied, eliminating the mosquito breeding sites.

Soon reports started reaching us that the problem had abated. The following year, the rains were regular, the ultra-leftist movement had stopped calling strikes against cultivation, scabies was aggressively identified and treated, and people, in general, were more aware of the different causes of itching, seeking treatment. There was no recurrence of the itching epidemic.

For Me, This Was A Journey Of Discovery

Though I had joined our team at SEARCH recently, we as an organisation had been working with this community for more than a decade. We thought we knew them—their health, their challenges and their environment—so well. And yet, through this micro-study in a village, many new lessons emerged.

For me, it was also a great first-hand insight into the difference between clinical medicine (inside the hospital) and public health (inside the community) as to just how many related and seemingly unrelated factors were contributing to causing something as innocuous as itching. Prima facie, the ideal solution seemed to involve a complete change of tribal lifestyle, ranging from building houses with proper ventilation and sunlight, and cement flooring in neighbouring cattle sheds, to administering an easier-to-use medicine than GBHC, improving governance, and bringing peace in an insurgency-affected community.

Of course, solving the problem doesn’t mean we must try every single solution mentioned above. I have learned that instead, we must identify solutions based on our abilities, and much like the Gandhian approach to change, focus on evolution and incremental steps rather than a complete revolution.

Looking back, I recollect the vivid memories of those tribal children, initially fearful, full of lesions and pain, but joyously coming to meet us just a few days later. In serving them, I received the answer to the question: Whose Am I?

About the author: Anand Bang is a medical doctor and public health practitioner. He works with the Society for Education, Action & Research in Community Health (SEARCH), a nonprofit working in the Gadchiroli district of Maharashtra, as well as with the Tata Trusts and the Chief Minister, Maharashtra as Advisor, Health.

This article was originally published in India Development Review. You can view it here.

The post A Village-Wide Itch Completely Changed How I Looked At Healthcare In Tribal Maharashtra appeared first and originally on Youth Ki Awaaz and is a copyright of the same. Please do not republish.

Riding on the nationalist agenda and claims to transform Pakistan by defeating family-based nepotism in politics, former international cricket star Imran Khan is inching closer to becoming Pakistan’s 19th Prime Minister. Amidst claims of Pakistan Army rigging the elections and backing Khan’s candidacy, his party Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), on Thursday (July 26), was leading in 119 out of 272 nationally contested seats. Subsequently, 65-year-old Khan declared victory and delivered a speech reiterating his claims to make the country corruption-free and improve relations with India.  

The formal election results are yet to be announced and it’s still to be seen whether or not Imran Khan will take charge of the PM office. There’s, however, a widespread apprehension over the possibilities of positive developments in Indo-Pak bilateral relations that are plagued by historic animosity and distrust.

“It is yet to be seen how Imran Khan becomes the PM as he’s still short of the numbers. Practically, what is going to happen is that an Army’s pick would form a minority government. This means that the new candidate would be more dependent on the establishment’s outlook towards India or any other country for that matter of fact. We can’t expect a dramatic change in Pakistan’s foreign policies,” said Stanly Johny, an international affairs expert and author of “ISIS Caliphate: From Syria To The Doorsteps Of India”.

Khan became the favourite of Pakistan’s establishment – army, judiciary and bureaucracy – when in 2013, he supported then army chief General Ashfaq Parve’s decision to block the US convoys taking crucial supplies to Afghanistan. Furthermore, Khan’s party’s slogan ‘Jo Modi ka yaar hai who gaddar hai (A friend of Narendra Modi is a traitor)’ earned him a strong backing from the Army. The establishment, in turn, strategically manoeuvered Khan’s campaign with the support of the media.

“Nawaz Sharif and Asif Ali Zardari were warmer towards India and that’s not what Pakistan’s establishment wants. Flamboyant Imran Khan suited their taste and the kind of policies they want in the country. He was the perfect poster boy for the Pakistan Army and hence they backed him. With him as a PM, you can’t expect any drastic change in Pakistan’s approach towards India and Kashmir. He’ll follow everything the Army asks him to,” said R K Radhakrishnan a senior political journalist and winner of prestigious RedInk Journalism Awards 2017 in politics.

Continuity Of Animosities 

Imran Khan, in his nationally televised victory speech, asserted that he’s willing to talk to India over Kashmir and bring peace between the two nations that have been in conflict ever since their formation. However, while addressing the Kashmir issue he sent mixed signals. On one hand, he displayed his willingness to discuss Kashmir. While on the other, he reinstated Pakistan’s age-old tactic of making Kashmir an internationalized issue. Internationalization of the Kashmir issue has always been a bone of contention between India and Pakistan, with India being firm that it’s a bilateral issue and no third party should be involved.

“He has practically re-emphasized Pakistan’s historic stand towards Kashmir. This wouldn’t be welcoming news for India because India wants the issue to be settled through dialogue between the countries without any external involvement,” pointed out Stanly Johny.

According to senior journalists and experts in international relations, Imran Khan’s victory in the Pakistan elections is bad news for both India and Pakistan. Bad for Pakistan because Khan is Army’s proxy which is hoodwinking the country’s democracy through backdoors. And for India because Khan has openly lent weight to the fundamentalist outlook of Pakistan’s establishment.

“He’s bad news for both countries. His victory means that the Army’s grip over Pakistan’s political landscape is further getting tighter. Also, for India, it means that the age-old diplomacy of hostility and suspicion. Pakistan Army and the traditional and fundamentalist elites there don’t want to change equations with India.  When then PM Atal Bihari Vajpayee went to Pakistan, Kargil war followed. Nawaz Sharif faced the brunt of inviting Modi to Lahore. He’s now in Jail and there’s no visible revival of his party in the near future. Army micro-managed the elections and will continue to dictate country’s policies towards India,” said senior journalist and political analyst Zafar Agha.

Mass Acceptance Of Rhetoric Leaders

Amidst all the apprehensions over the victory of cricketer-turned-politician Imran Khan in Pakistan’s elections, few claim that the Khan-Modi duo has the opportunity of orchestrating a new approach towards Indo-Pak bilateral relations.

“Conditions aren’t going to deteriorate from here onward. Ambani and Adani, who are allegedly very close aides of Modi government, are seeing great business opportunities in Pakistan and vice-versa. These trade lobbyists will do their best to encourage better relations at least in terms of trade. I am hoping within next six months both PMs would come together on one platform,” said Prakash Ray, a New Delhi-based senior journalist with expertise in Indo-Pak relations.

Commenting on the future course of Modi government in terms of Indo-Pak relations, Ray argued, “Both are showmen and personality-based politicians. Whether or not relations are going to get smoother, we’ll have to wait and watch. But, they’ll definitely be meeting at least in an international event. Modi has that demeanour. Although in domestic issues, his kind of politics calls for strong criticism, his projection in the international forum is impressive. He will never miss a good photo session at the least.”

However, rejecting any future possibilities of both Modi and Khan working towards better relations between the two nations, Radhakrishnan pointed out, “With less than six months left for the general elections, I don’t see Modi government trying to sort out things with Pakistan. In the Gujarat election, we saw how Pakistan rhetoric is important part of their politics. On the contrary, we can expect Pakistan related rhetoric to start making rounds very soon.”

It is yet to be seen how India and Pakistan proceed from here. However, Imran Khan’s rise to power re-asserts the global rise of neo-nationalism. There’s a mass acceptance of rhetoric leaders with nationalist agendas like Narendra Modi in India, Donald Trump in the US, Britain’s Nigel Farage, and Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Image source: Gurpreet Singh/Hindustan Times via Getty Images

The post ‘Imran Khan Is Pakistan Army’s Proxy, Bad News For India’ appeared first and originally on Youth Ki Awaaz and is a copyright of the same. Please do not republish.

After a year-long opposition and multiple campaigns held by activists to protest the matter, the GST council recently declared that sanitary napkins would be exempt from the GST. This means that sanitary pads, which were earlier taxed at 12% due to being classified as ‘luxury goods’ – something I still have difficulty wrapping my head around – have now been completely exempt of the tax levied on them.

But the fight is far from over, as there’s much more that needs to be done. In the National Family Health Survey (NFHS-4) conducted during 2015-16 by the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, it was discovered that only 57.6% of women in India within the 15-24 year age bracket used hygienic methods of protection during their menstrual period (‘hygienic methods’ translate to locally prepared napkins, sanitary napkins and tampons). Apologies for being a glass-half-empty kind of person, but this means that there are 42.2% of women out there who still use old fabrics, rags, dried leaves, sand, wood shavings and even ash during their period.

Using unhygienic methods for the absorption of period blood not only leads to menstruation-related problems like yeast infections but also restricts adolescent girls and women from performing basic daily tasks, such as going to school or helping their families in household work. In India, about 23% of adolescent girls drop out of school every year, not only because of lack of access to proper methods for period-management (Sanitary pad dispensers? What are those?), but also because of the absence of functional toilets in schools.

What’s even more alarming is the persistent shame and taboo which is associated with the word ‘period’. Even my modern, urban class mother refuses to say the word out loud, or says it in a hushed tone, reminding me of how almost no one was willing to say the name ‘Voldemort’ in the “Harry Potter” series. My mom also insists that shopkeepers wrap her sanitary pads in a newspaper and turns as red as a tomato when a Whisper or Stayfree add comes up on TV. But her behaviour doesn’t surprise me anymore, as during my research I found that 70% of mothers consider menstruation ‘dirty’, perpetuating a culture of silence around the completely normal biological process. So, if my mother finds the word ‘periods’ embarrassing, it’s only because she was raised in a time when society taught her that menstruation is something that is not to be talked about.

And while some may argue otherwise, not much has changed when it comes to conversations about menstruation in our urban neighbourhoods. We still talk about it in hushed tones. We still hide our pads/tampons when we walk to the washroom at work. We still separate girls and boys in schools to educate girls about their periods and then tell them not to tell the boys. We can’t even watch period-centric films like “Padman” and “Phullu” with the male members of our family.

The situation in rural areas isn’t any better either. The same study which said that 57.6% women use hygienic methods of menstrual protection also states that out of that 57.6 %, 48.2% belong to rural households, which means more than half of the 166,064 rural women aged 15-24 years don’t use proper methods of period blood absorption.

Besides not having access to sanitary napkins (reasons vary from unaffordability to the fear of public embarrassment), women in rural areas also have to deal with ridiculous myths regarding the subject. Whether it’s not touching pickles or not entering temples/kitchens, they’ve seen it all. However, the most astonishing discovery I made during my research was when I came across the concept of a ‘gaokor’ in Maharashtra, prevalent amongst Gond and Madiya ethnic groups. What is a gaokor, you ask? It is a hut located outside the village, where menstruating girls are banished for five days during their periods. In an article by The Guardian on goakors, the conditions of the huts were described as follows:

“Since the huts are considered public property, no one takes responsibility for their upkeep. Gaokors lack a kitchen as women who are menstruating are not allowed to cook; those staying inside rely on family to bring them food and other items. Women usually sleep on the floor with just a thick sheet for a mattress, which is folded and used as a cushion during the day.”

Isn’t is bad enough that women have to deal with blood coming out of their vagina for five days, menstrual cramps and absurd myths and taboos that they’re also being banished to tiny huts in the middle of nowhere?

The good news is that the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) has instructed the Maharashtra state government to take steps to eradicate the practice of gaokors, which it described as a “serious violation of the human rights of women”. The bad news is that this was three years ago, and there have been no updates on the matter since then.

There are no clear-cut solutions to the problems we’re facing today. There are many areas which need improvement. The tax exemption on sanitary pads was just a small (but commendable) step towards the right direction.

Providing access to sanitary pads or other affordable alternatives to women all over the country needs to be a priority for the authorities. I’d say tampons and menstrual cups too, but inserting anything into a vagina before marriage is another taboo that needs to be addressed, so let’s just leave it at that for the time being.

Both adolescent girls and mothers need to be educated on the fact that menstruation is a normal biological process, and not something to be ashamed of. I specifically say, mothers, because more often than not, mothers are the main source of information when it comes to a girl’s period. Schools need to create a safe and comfortable environment for girls to talk about their period related queries if they can’t talk about it at home.

But, more importantly, we need to educate young boys and men about periods too, so that we can raise more men to be like Arunachalam Muruganantham, who take the mantle into their own hands and help women overcome the stigma surrounding their periods. Or we could just educate them enough so that they turn out like my boyfriend, who’s bought pads for me on multiple occasions without complaining about it, and has taken care of me when I’ve been bed-ridden by my painful menstrual cramps.

Like many issues, the period taboo needs to go too. A woman’s period is not something she needs to be ashamed of, nor is it a valid excuse for society to impose unnecessary restrictions on her. There’s still a long way to go for us, with so many hurdles to overcome. But the least we can do is stop treating it like a sin, or as something that shouldn’t be mentioned in our day-to-day conversations.

The post She-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named: India’s Period Shaming Problem Still Persists appeared first and originally on Youth Ki Awaaz and is a copyright of the same. Please do not republish.

Tea gardens that once brewed the world-famous Darjeeling tea have now become a hotbed for trafficking, owing to the undermining of labour rights and rising deprivation.

The Dooars region of West Bengal is known for its alluvial soil and cool climatic conditions, making it a fertile ground for tea gardens. But as tea gardens shut owing to financial and operational constraints, they have in turn become a fertile ground for human trafficking. As production declines, exploitation and deprivation rise.

Pooja was trafficked from Chuapara Tea Estate, Alipurduar, in 2013, when she was 13 years old. She was taken to Srinagar, Jammu and Kashmir, and sold to a ‘placement agency’ called City Service. Two more girls and two boys were also sold to the agency at the same time. Muskan Khatun, the main accused, insisted that she was actually 16 when she was trafficked and that she went with the agents despite Khatun’s warning her against it. Community Correspondent Harihar Nagbansi, reporting on the case, accessed her birth certificate which proved that she was 13 at the time she was trafficked.  Regardless of whether she was 13 or 16, she was still a minor who was illegally taken away and sold for domestic labour, quite possibly in highly exploitative conditions. For four years, the family could do nothing but wait.

Pooja was brought back home in April 2018, thanks to the local police that tagged team with the Jammu and Kashmir police. It was Harihar’s video, along with the efforts of NGOs like Kripa and Bachpan Bachao Andolan, that got the police to act with urgency. Harihar also credits Chandmuni, Pooja’s mother, for her determination. But the story does not end here, because what happened with Pooja was not an isolated case and not a problem unique to Chuapara alone.

Trafficking is an organised crime, across domestic and international borders. The numbers from the latest National Crime Records Bureau data, speak for themselves. 8,057 persons were reported to be trafficked in 2016. 44% of the cases were reported from West Bengal, of these, the largest proportion was of minor girls. And these are only the on-record figures. Police apathy, lack of awareness and stigma are known to be some of the reasons human trafficking is underreported.

While Pooja was fortunate to be brought back, the other children who were taken with her are still in Srinagar. On an average, 174 children go missing in India every day. Unlike Chandmuni, many parents do not even have a lead. Moreover, trafficked persons are often sold many times over, making it all the more difficult to trace them. In the worst cases, they are killed by those who keep them as bonded slaves.

Underlying causes

Poor economic conditions, lack of educational opportunities, social exclusion and isolation, make people vulnerable to trafficking. At the other end of this deal are rapid urbanisation and the consequent want for cheap labour in other parts of the country. Placement agencies that supply cheap labour to middle and upper-class households in metropolitan cities, to development projects, to brothels, and to villages in Punjab and Haryana as brides.

Minors are particularly vulnerable to trafficking. Presented with the prospects of a glamorous city life, many children might choose to escape from their present living conditions. Khatun also said the same thing about Pooja, that she consented to go despite warnings. But the crucial difference here is that children, and even adults, might give consent but not informed consent. To a 13-year-old living in harsh poverty, the prospect of living in a city and having access to facilities, even at the cost of some labour, might sound appealing. In fact, sometimes, children who are brought back often get tricked into being trafficked once again.

Why tea gardens?

The tea industry is touted as the country’s second largest employer, but also an industry that undermines labour rights and deprives workers and their families deprived of the most basic needs. There’s widespread poverty and malnutrition, obvious factors underscoring the desire for a better life. The availability of basic facilities like healthcare and education is also poor. Wages are as low as ₹132 a day, says Harihar, especially in Dooars. And sometimes, even this wage is not paid on time, never mind the bonus.

As the tea shrubs age, production declines and many tea gardens and tea factories shut down temporarily or permanently without rehabilitating their workers. Political instability in the Darjeeling hills, which has spread to the foothills, has also taken a toll, especially on already-sick tea gardens. Of the 60 tea gardens in Alipurduar, 28 are sick or stressed and six entirely shut. To make ends meet, some take up stone-crushing, and others continue to work in the tea gardens but for independent contractors; both jobs pay even lower.

In the Dooars region, the majority of the workers are Adivasis whose families migrated to the foothills generations ago, mostly from what is present-day Jharkhand. In a state and an industry dominated by upper-caste and upper-class Bengalis and business communities, Adivasi lives are already valued less, isolating them socially and culturally. In such a situation, both migration and trafficking abound.

Dooars is also contiguous with the ‘chicken-neck’ area on the map of India, a narrow region neighbouring Nepal, Bangladesh and Bhutan, all porous borders. Women and children are often trafficked from both sides of these borders, for manual and sexual labour.

What is being done to combat it?

When Harihar asks Chandmuni what she will do to ensure that her daughter is not taken away again, she says that she will engage her in some work and even educate her if she wants to study. The lack of rehabilitation facilities for those rescued coupled with stigma, especially for girls who are trafficked, make it difficult for children to adjust to life in their homes once again.

However, education, like Chandmuni points out, is an important step. Binay Narjenary, a representative of Kripa, says that awareness is crucial. “People must be made aware of the problems girls and women face, and then take steps to ensure their safety”, he says.

NGOs seem to be at the forefront of tackling the problem, as of now. But local NGOs have limitations in curbing a country-wide crime with networks and nodes that cannot be traced. They can provide support in individual cases, but putting an end to trafficking requires the active participation of the state.

To this end, the government introduced the Anti-Trafficking Bill which has recently been passed by the Lok Sabha. But the Bill, unfortunately, does more injustice than justice. To begin with, it continues to criminalise victims of trafficking by trying them for working without authorisation in case of domestic labour or soliciting in case of sexual labour. Moreover, it runs into the danger of conflating migration and trafficking; both phenomena might have similar underlying causes, but the former is voluntary and cannot be penalised. The Bill also recommends rehabilitation measures like state-run shelter homes, which have been rejected by bodies like the UN.

If passed, the Bill will be an insensitive piece of legislation, even on paper. While on the ground, no legislation is enough to change attitudes towards trafficking or to break the silence around it. Combined efforts by local communities, NGOs, individuals and state officials, like in Pooja’s case, are a beginning, but long-term solutions will come from regular awareness, sensitive laws, efficient implementation and socio-economic development and sustainable livelihoods.

Video by Community Correspondent Harihar Nagbansi

Article by Alankrita Anand, a member of the VV Editorial Team

The post Tea Gardens Of North Bengal: A Hotbed Of Human Trafficking appeared first and originally on Youth Ki Awaaz and is a copyright of the same. Please do not republish.

Guddu* was trafficked from his village in Bihar when he was only eight years old. He was sold to a dhaba (roadside eatery) on the outskirts of Delhi where he was made to cook and clean, working for almost 20 hours every day. He was barely given any food, had no days off, and was given no wages. If he protested, he was severely beaten and burnt.

After three long, painful years, he was rescued after a customer noticed the young boy’s injuries and complained to the police. He is now at a children’s welfare home, awaiting rehabilitation.

Devi’s* case is similar. She was trafficked to Delhi from Guwahati, and placed as a domestic help in Faridabad, where she did grueling household chores for almost 18 hours a day, but was not paid any wages. Devi was fortunate because she was rescued after two years, produced before the Child Welfare Committee, and was later sent to a home in Guwahati. She was also given her back-wages. She now stays at the home with the consent of her father, and is pursuing her studies.

Rani* was trafficked from West Bengal at the tender age of 12, and sold to multiple people who raped her. Her ordeal was unending, as she ended up at a brothel in Punjab, being repeatedly raped daily by 5 to 10 people. She was rescued after five years of sexual slavery.

16-years-old Soni Kumari did not have the fortune of seeing freedom. Employed as a domestic help in New Delhi, Soni was trafficked from her home in Jharkhand, taken to Delhi where she was exploited for three years and then murdered. Her body was chopped into a dozen pieces and thrown into a gutter. Why? Because she asked for her wages.

There are millions of such Guddus, Devis, and Sonis who are trafficked every day, and sold like inanimate commodities in homes, factories, massage parlours, and eateries. Some are employed as labourers, many are sexually abused, and all are denied their childhood. Even if some children are eventually rescued and rehabilitated, the wounds are deep and permanent. The larger issue is: Why should any child spend even a second of life in slavery?

Children need love, care and education. They need to be in an environment that promotes their full potential, and enables them to become happy, balanced individuals who play a key role in the growth and development of India. Instead, it is a matter of deep shame that while, on the one hand, India is on a fast growth trajectory, on the other, her children are in slavery, abused and denied their fundamental rights.

The Trafficking of Persons (Prevention, Protection and Rehabilitation) Bill 2018 has just been passed by the Lok Sabha on July 26 and will be discussed in the Rajya Sabha soon. This Bill has several significant provisions, some that include stringent punitive measures, others that hit at the organised nature of trafficking by seizing the assets of the perpetrators as a preventive bid, and some that have rehabilitation of the victims at the core.

India is a land that has accepted and provided shelter to people from all religions, cultures, castes, and even nationalities in her fold for centuries. India is on the  This Monsoon Session ends on August 10, on the brink of the 71st anniversary of Independence, a day celebrated with great pride across the country. Can our leaders ensure that when the Indian Tricolour is hoisted on 15th August this year to commemorate Independence Day, they have passed this landmark Bill which holds the promise of freedom for the millions of trafficked children? Can our leaders put aside all partisan differences and unite to free the millions of children who will fall prey to trafficking?

It is the responsibility of all leaders who have pledged to upholding the Constitution of India to honour their unspoken commitment to the children of India. If India has to see an educated and healthy next generation, it is the responsibility of this generation to pass the Bill. The Trafficking of Persons (Prevention, Protection and Rehabilitation) Bill 2018 needs to be passed now. Our children need their freedom now.

*Some names have been changed. Featured image for representation only.

The post Even As The Anti-Trafficking Bill Is Discussed, The Lives Of 3 Children Hang In The Balance appeared first and originally on Youth Ki Awaaz and is a copyright of the same. Please do not republish.

Editor’s Note: This week, Youth Ki Awaaz has launched the campaign #FeedLoveNotStigma to fight off stigma against breastfeeding in public. It’s time to question the status quo, share our stories out loud, and demand safe, clean public spaces for breastfeeding! Scroll till the end to find out how you can join in.

When was the last time you saw a mother breastfeeding her baby in public? Maybe somewhere on public transport, maybe in a park, a restaurant. Did you notice the way people around her reacted? Some of them may have averted their gaze, some may have covered their kids eyes, their boyfriend’s eyes, their own eyes! Some may have even approached her and asked her to leave! This is the reality of so many nursing moms all over the word, and we just can’t let this fly. Women have a right to breastfeed in public without stigma, and here are 9 reasons why:

1: A baby’s hunger can’t be determined according to your ‘comfort’.

No. You will not make a baby wait until the mother escapes to a secluded place. What is so awkward, uncomfortable, or improper about a mother taking care of her child’s needs?

2: If you have a right to eat in public, so does her baby.

There’s a double standard here. Your golgappas in a park vs nourishing a child? In her powerful spoken word poem, Hollie McNish talks of how mums have even been forced to go to restroom to feed. Can you imagine eating in such an unsanitary place?

3: This is an important aspect of our right to occupy spaces equally.

If you still hold the idea that ‘the public’ is a males-only zone, it’s time to join the 21st century. Women are out there, in male-dominated arenas, smoothening them into gender-equal spaces. We all have a right to public spaces, and moms should be able to feed their babies without fear or discrimination.

4: Just because she’s in public doesn’t mean she’s public property.

You know, in the 21st century, people have learnt to stop objectifying women’s bodies. That means that a woman in public is not an object for you to own and control, so mind your own business!

5: Motherhood is not a secret, shameful affair.

Even in a country where goddesses are referred to as mothers, that puts mothers on a pedestal, that, hell, even holds the problematic belief that a woman’s life goal is to have a child – even in a country of all this, we wrinkle our noses at the mothers who are, you know, doing what mothers do for their kids.

6: So you can get used to the fact that breasts aren’t for your entertainment.

All of us have been fed the glossy, photoshopped, billboard-sized lie that women’s bodies exist to be looked at, to be enjoyed, to possess.

7: It’s as natural a process as walking, speaking or breathing in public.

Let’s not kid ourselves. Breastfeeding is a mammalian characteristic. Across species, this is how mothers get their kids healthy and kickin’. It’s something that bodies do. Why single it out?

8: You’re not a sniggering little 12-year-old, grow up.

I mean, maybe puberty-ridden kids reading about reproduction for the first time might be caught off guard, but if you’ve move far ahead from your adolescent years and still think breastfeeding is weird, then you still have maturing to do.

9: Like beauty, shame is in the eye of the beholder.

For so many moms, feeding their child is a beautiful, caring bonding process. There is nothing to be ashamed or afraid of. The person who should be ashamed is the one try to humiliate a nursing mother.

10: The ‘male gaze’ doesn’t get to decide what’s ‘appropriate’ in public.

Women’s bodies aren’t for men (and other prying eyes) to look at, assess, judge, and discard or censor at their convenience! That attitude comes from a magical place called ‘male entitlement’, and it’s about time we destroyed it.

Join the campaign! Throughout this week, we want to hear what you feel. Here’s how:

1. Answer our polls on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram about breastfeeding in public.

2. Hold up a sign that says #FeedLoveNotStigma and share it on Instagram. Tag @youthkiawaaz, so we can share it ahead.

3. Login to Youth Ki Awaaz and publish a story on why the stigma around breastfeeding in public needs to be removed!

The post 10 Reasons Women Have The Right To Breastfeed In Public (Without Stigma) appeared first and originally on Youth Ki Awaaz and is a copyright of the same. Please do not republish.

16 जुलाई 2013 की वह सुबह दूसरे अन्य दिनों की तरह ही बिहार के सारण ज़िले के धर्मासती गंडामन गांव के निवासी सुरेंद्र प्रसाद के लिए भी एक सामान्य दिन था। उस दिन भी उनकी पत्नी आशा देवी ने अपनी दोनों बेटियों ममता और सविता और बेटे उपेंद्र को तैयार करके स्कूल भेजा। बच्चों को स्कूल भेजकर आशा घर के कामों में व्यस्त हो गईं। दोपहर करीब एक बजे उन्हें खबर मिली कि स्कूल में मिड डे मील खाकर बच्चों की तबीयत बिगड़ रही है। सुरेंद्र और आशा दोनों भागे-भागे स्कूल पहुंचे। स्कूल के पास अफरातफरी का माहौल था। दर्जनों बच्चे बेहोश पड़े थे।

सुरेंद्र तुरंत अपने बच्चों को लेकर मशरक प्राथमिक अस्पताल पहुंचे लेकिन, यहां की बदइंतज़ामी देखकर वह छपरा सदर अस्पताल गए। यहां उनके सामने कई बच्चों की जान चली गई। इसे देख बच्चों के परिजनों ने हंगामा करना शुरू कर दिया। फिर देर रात एम्बुलेंस से बच्चों को पटना ले जाया गया, जहां उन्हें पीएमसीएच में भर्ती कराया गया। लेकिन सुरेंद्र की बेटी ममता ने इलाज के दौरान दम तोड़ दिया। सुरेंद्र के बच्चों (सविता और उपेंद्र) का पीएमसीएच में करीब एक महीने तक इलाज चला और वे ठीक हो गए। सुरेंद्र ने अपनी 10 साल की बेटी ममता को इस हादसे में खो दिया।

सुरेंद्र कहते हैं,

अगर हमारे बच्चे उस दिन स्कूल नहीं गए होते तो मेरी बेटी ममता आज ज़िंदा होती। उस हादसे को पांच वर्ष हो गए लेकिन हमलोग आज भी उसका दुख भोग रहे हैं। अभी तक हम गरीबों के आंसू पोछने के लिए मुख्यमंत्री नीतीश जी नहीं आए। उन्होंने इस गांव को गोद लिया था।

सुरेंद्र आगे कहते हैं,

ऐसा मुख्यमंत्री हमलोगों ने पूरे हिन्दुस्तान में नहीं देखा। 23 बच्चे मर गए लेकिन सीएम हम सब से मिलने तक नहीं आए। हमलोग को आश्वासन दिया जाता है कि मुख्यमंत्री मिलने आएंगे लेकिन, आज तक वो नहीं आए। सीएम एक बार आकर हमलोग के दुख को समझें, वो ही ना हमारे सबकुछ हैं।

हादसे के दौरान स्कूल एक सामुदायिक भवन में चलता था लेकिन, अब यहां स्कूल भवन बना दिया गया है। स्कूल के बगल के मैदान में 23 बच्चों को दफनाया गया था। इस मैदान के पास एक स्मारक का निर्माण कराया गया, जिस पर सभी मृत बच्चों के नाम और उम्र व उनके माता-पिता का नाम दर्ज है।

सुरेंद्र बताते हैं,

मेरी बेटी तो नहीं रही। अब बस यह स्मारक ही है जो उसकी याद दिलाता है। हालांकि घटिया निर्माण होने के कारण अब स्मारक भी क्षतिग्रस्त होने लगा है। इसमें लगा पत्थर गिर रहा है।

हादसे में अपने दो बेटों राहुल और प्रह्लाद को गंवा चुके हरेंद्र किशोर मिश्रा उस मनहूस दिन को याद कर सिहर उठते हैं। हरेंद्र सरकार के प्रति अपनी नाराज़गी ज़ाहिर करते हुए कहते हैं,

नीतीश सरकार से कोई सहयोग नहीं मिल रहा है। देखिए हमारे बच्चों की याद में बनाया गया स्मारक टूट रहा है। सरकार अगर सहयोग करने को तैयार है तो सबसे पहले हमारे बच्चों के स्मारक की मरम्मत कराए।

हादसे के बाद खोले गए स्कूल में शिक्षकों और अन्य सुविधाओं की कमी

स्थानीय मुखिया प्रतिनिधि महेश सिंह अधिकारियों के बारे में बोलने से बचते हैं लेकिन कहते हैं कि मिड डे मील क्वालिटी के अनुसार नहीं बन रहा है। महेश कहते हैं कि जो सरकार का मेन्यू है उसके हिसाब से खाना नहीं बन रहा है। हादसे के बाद प्राइमरी स्कूल के सामने बने उच्चतर माध्यमिक स्कूल (प्लस टू की पढ़ाई तक अपग्रेडेड) के बारे में महेश बताते हैं कि इस स्कूल की हालत बहुत खराब है। स्कूल में सयाने बच्चे-बच्चियां पढ़ने आते हैं लेकिन, वहां कोई व्यवस्था नहीं है। उसमें बैठने के लिए बेंच तक नहीं है। महेश बताते हैं कि इस स्कूल में लगभग 250 बच्चे पढ़ते हैं लेकिन, शिक्षक केवल दो हैं और एडमिशन अभी भी हो ही रहा है।

शिक्षक बिपिन कुमार बताते हैं कि यह स्कूल जुलाई 2017 में शुरू हुआ था। इसमें अभी 2017-19 का सेशन चल रहा है। यहां दो शिक्षक हैं और दोनों प्लस टू के हैं। हाई स्कूल के एक भी शिक्षक नहीं है। हम दो शिक्षक ही मिलकर 9वीं से 12वीं तक के बच्चों को पढ़ाते हैं। बिपिन बताते हैं कि यहां इंटरमीडिएट के साइंस और आर्ट्स विषय में एडमिशन लिया गया है। लेकिन जो दो शिक्षक हैं वे आर्ट्स के हैं, साइंस के एक भी शिक्षक नहीं हैं।

बिपिन कहते हैं कि हमलोग आर्ट्स पढ़ाते हैं लेकिन, मजबूरी में साइंस की क्लास भी लेनी पड़ती है। इस स्कूल में इंटरमीडिएट (बायोलॉजी) के छात्र विकास कुमार कहते हैं कि अगले साल इंटर की परीक्षा है लेकिन, हमारे विषय के शिक्षक यहां हैं ही नहीं। ना लैब है और ना शिक्षक। सब भगवान भरोसे है।

बिपिन बताते हैं कि इस स्कूल में सबसे बड़ी समस्या शिक्षकों की कमी है। इस स्कूल में 22 शिक्षकों की जगह है लेकिन, सिर्फ दो शिक्षकों पर यह स्कूल चल रहा है। बिपिन बताते हैं कि स्कूल को चालू हुए एक साल हो गए लेकिन, अभी तक एक भी बेंच, कुर्सी और पंखा नहीं मिला है। हैंडपम्प है लेकिन वो भी खराब है। स्कूल में बिजली वायरिंग की हुई है। पास में बिजली का खंभा भी है लेकिन, स्कूल में कनेक्शन अभी तक नहीं लिया गया है। इस दो मंजिला स्कूल में सिर्फ दो कमरों में क्लास चलती है। एक कमरे में पास के मीडिल स्कूल से चार-पांच बेंच लाकर लगाया गए हैं जबकि दूसरे कमरे में एक भी बेंच नहीं है।

इन सब समस्याओं को लेकर डिस्ट्रिक्ट एजुकेशन ऑफिसर (डीईओ) को बार-बार लेटर लिखकर दिया गया है लेकिन, कोई सुनवाई नहीं हुई। बिपिन कहते हैं कि इस स्कूल के और डेढ़ किलोमीटर दूर मीडिल स्कूल के हेडमास्टर एक ही हैं लेकिन सर का ज़्यादा ध्यान मीडिल स्कूल पर रहता है। इस स्कूल का सारा काम हम देखते हैं, सर महीने में बस एक-दो बार आते हैं। वजह पूछने पर बिपिन बताते हैं कि उस स्कूल में मिड डे मील चलता है और पांच साल पहले हुए कांड की वजह से अब जब तक बच्चे स्कूल में खाना नहीं खा लेते तब तक सर स्कूल नहीं छोड़ते हैं। उस कांड के बाद से यहां का माहौल कुछ दूसरा हो गया है।

प्राइमरी स्कूल के हेडमास्टर राजेश कुमार कहते हैं कि हमारे यहां तीन स्टाफ हैं। एक हम और दो मैडम हैं। स्कूल में कुल 133 बच्चों का नामांकन है। रोज़ 70-80 बच्चे स्कूल आते हैं। स्कूल का टाइम सुबह नौ से शाम चार बजे तक का है। हालांकि स्थानीय मुखिया प्रतिनिधि महेश कहते हैं कि इस स्कूल का हेडमास्टर किसी काम का नहीं है। हेडमास्टर 10 बजे से पहले कभी स्कूल नहीं आते और 11 बजे छुट्टी कर देते हैं।

मिड डे मील का है ये हाल

गांव के लोग बताते हैं कि हादसे के बाद स्कूल के पास रसोईघर बना, उसमें अभी तीन रसोईया हैं लेकिन हर दिन स्कूल में खाना नहीं बनता। हादसे की बरसी है और आज आपलोग आए हैं तो खाना बन रहा है। बाकी दिनों में खाना नहीं बनता है। आज जो 70-80 बच्चे आए हैं वो भी इकट्ठा करके लाए गए हैं वरना मुश्किल से 40-50 बच्चे आते हैं।

हालांकि स्कूल की रसोइया राजपति कुंवर कहती हैं कि यहां रोज खाना बनता है। मेरे साथ संपत्ति कुमारी और जानकी देवी भी मिड डे मील बनाती हैं। आज शनिवार है और बच्चों को खिचड़ी-चोखा बनाकर खिलाया जाएगा। राजपति बताती हैं कि हादसे से पहले वह मीडिल स्कूल में रसोइया थीं लेकिन, हादसे के बाद इस स्कूल की रसोइया मंजू देवी को मीडिल स्कूल भेज दिया गया और मुझे यहां भेज दिया गया।

प्राइमरी स्कूल में चौथी क्लास में पढ़ने वाली पूजा कहती हैं कि यहां रोज़ पढ़ाई होती है। सर-मैडम रोज़ आते हैं। हर दिन अलग-अलग खाना मिलता है। हालांकि पूजा से बात करके लगता है कि सर और मैडम ने उसे पहले ही समझा दिया था कि उसे हमसे क्या बोलना है।

प्राइमरी स्कूल में शिक्षिका कुमारी कल्पना बताती हैं कि यहां भी शिक्षकों की कमी है। यहां  मेरे और हेडमास्टर राजेश के अलावा एक और मैडम हैं जिनका नाम कुमारी लीलावती है। लीलावती अभी प्रशिक्षण पर गई हुई हैं। कल्पना बताती हैं कि शिक्षकों की कमी के कारण बच्चों को पढ़ाने में दिक्कत होती है। अभी मैं पहली से तीसरे क्लास तक के बच्चों को एक क्लास में बैठा कर पढ़ा रही हूं जबकि बगल के कमरे में चौथे और पांचवी क्लास के बच्चे बैठे हैं। अब इनको छोड़कर उन्हें पढ़ाने जाऊंगी तो ये सब बाहर निकल जाएंगे। हादसे के दौरान कल्पना इसी स्कूल में थीं, हालांकि उस दिन वो छुट्टी पर थीं।

स्वास्थ्य उपकेंद्र खुलने से नहीं हुआ कोई फायदा

हादसे के बाद स्कूल के पास में ही एक स्वास्थ्य उपकेंद्र खोला गया। यहां पिछले एक साल से एएनएम मंजू कुमारी की ड्यूटी लगी है। मंजू बताती हैं कि पहले यहां मेरे अलावा एक और एएनएम थीं लेकिन मई में उनका ट्रांसफर कहीं और हो गया। मंजू रजिस्टर में दर्ज नाम दिखाते हुए बताती हैं कि आसपास के गांव के लोग यहां आते हैं और उपलब्ध दवाओं का लाभ लेते हैं।

हालांकि गांव के लोग कहते हैं कि यह स्वास्थ्य उपकेंद्र भी बंद रहता है और इसके खुलने बंद होने का टाइम टेबल नहीं है। स्वास्थ्य उपकेंद्र में मरीज़ के लिए लगे बेड पर  जमी धूल और शौचालय की गंदगी की ओर इशारा करते हुए गांव के लोग कहते हैं कि एएनएम झूठ बोल रही हैं, वो रजिस्टर में खुद से लोगों के  नाम भर देती हैं। गांव के लोग कहते हैं कि यहां स्वास्थ्य सेवा का कोई साधन नहीं है। एमरजेंसी में भागकर छपरा जाना पड़ता है।

इंदिरा आवास में हुआ घोटाला, पीएम को लिखी चिट्ठी

हादसे के बाद मृत परिवारों को इंदिरा आवास देने की घोषणा हुई थी। सुरेंद्र एक अखबार में छपी खबर को दिखाते हुए कहते हैं कि 20 सितम्बर 2013 को मृत परिवारों के नाम पर दूसरे लोगों को इंदिरा आवास योजना का चेक दे दिया गया। खबर में छपी फोटो में एक आदमी भी मृत परिवार से नहीं है। सुरेंद्र कहते हैं हमलोग के साथ बहुत घोटाला हुआ है। रिश्वत लेकर किसी और को लाभ दे दिया गया। इसकी जांच के लिए चार-पांच बार मुख्यमंत्री नीतीश कुमार को चिट्ठी लिखे हैं, इसके अलावा प्रधानमंत्री नरेंद्र मोदी और राष्ट्रपति प्रणब मुखर्जी को भी पत्र लिख चुके हैं।

मृत परिवारों को मिलती है धमकी

शंकर ठाकुर कहते हैं कि सीएम-डीएम के जनता दरबार में लोगों को बेवकूफ बनाया जाता है। लोग पैसा खर्च कर जाते हैं लेकिन कोई काम नहीं होता है। शंकर पूछते हैं कि कर्मचारी सब ठीक होता तो हमलोग का बच्चा मरता? हम लोग स्मारक को लेकर, इंदिरा आवास में हुए घोटाले को लेकर सवाल उठाते हैं तो हम सब को डराया-धमकाया जाता है। अधिकारी और गांव के दबंग लोग कहता है कि सवाल मत करो। क्षतिग्रस्त स्मारक को दिखाते हैं तो कहता है कि ये सब मत दिखाओ। अब बताइये हमलोग ये सब नहीं दिखाएं? सब मिलकर बहुत घटिया व्यवहार करता है हमारे साथ। मृत परिवार को देखने सुनने वाला कोई नहीं है। मीडिया पर नाराज़गी ज़ाहिर करते हुए शंकर कहते हैं कि अब मन भर गया है। कहते कहते थक गए हैं लेकिन कोई सुनवाई नहीं हुआ अब तक। हमलोग आपसे कह तो रहे हैं लेकिन डर लगता है कहीं कोई कुछ कर दिया तो।

स्थानीय सांसद ने भी नहीं की मृत परिवार से मुलाकात

महराजगंज लोकसभा सीट से बीजेपी के सांसद जनार्दन सिंह सिग्रीवाल के प्रति नाराज़गी जाहिर करते हुए शंकर ठाकुर बताते हैं कि सिग्रीवाल जी कहते हैं कि आएंगे लेकिन कभी नहीं आए। बगल के गांव में आते हैं लेकिन गंडामन कभी नहीं आते। पिछले साल हादसे की बरसी पर उनसे संपर्क किया गया तो कहे कि हम दिल्ली में हैं। फ्लाइट छूट गया हमारा। सब नेता लोग झूठ बोलते हैं। कोई हमारा सहयोग नहीं करता है। हालांकि शंकर बताते हैं कि हादसे के वक्त तत्कालीन सांसद प्रभुनाथ सिंह आए थे लेकिन अभी वे जेल में हैं।

हरेंद्र किशोर मिश्रा कहते हैं कि मिड डे मील हादसे में मेरे दोनों बेटे छपरा अस्पताल में ही दम तोड़ दिए थे। मेरे बच्चे मेरे बुढ़ापे का सहारा थे। अब हमलोग मुसीबत में हैं तो कोई भी नेता हमलोग से मिलने नहीं आता। हमलोग को सरकारी नौकरी का भी आश्वासन दिया गया था लेकिन वो भी नहीं मिला।

गांव वालों से बातचीत के दरम्यान पन्ना देवी खुद चलकर हमारे पास आती हैं। पन्ना देवी के साथ हादसे के दिन प्राइमरी स्कूल में खाना बनाने वाली रसोइया मंजू देवी भी हैं। दोनों अभी मीडिल स्कूल में रसोइया हैं और अभी खाना बनाकर घर लौट रही हैं। पन्ना देवी बताती हैं, “उस दिन मेरे तीन बच्चे उस स्कूल में खाना खाए थे। इसमें मेरी बेटी की मौत छपरा में हो गई जबकि मेरे बेटे रोहित ने पटना पहुंच कर दम तोड़ दिया। हालांकि मेरी बेटी निशा का पटना में इलाज हुआ और वो बच गई।”

मंजू देवी उस दिन को याद नहीं करना चाहती हैं। हालांकि मंजू कहती हैं,

उस दिन मैंने खाना चखा था और मेरे तीन बच्चों ने भी खाना खाया था। हम सबकी भी तबीयत बिगड़ी लेकिन, पटना में इलाज चला और हम सब बच गए। हालांकि मंजू कहती हैं कि तबीयत अभी भी ठीक नहीं रहती। मुझे और मेरे बच्चों को अक्सर पेट दर्द और चक्कर आने की समस्या होती है। प्राइवेट डॉक्टर से दिखवाया है। डॉक्टर कहते हैं कि जीवनभर इस तरह की स्वास्थ्य समस्या होती रहेंगी।

पन्ना देवी अपनी बेटी निशा का पटना में हुए इलाज के बारे में बात करते हुए कहती हैं कि वहां बच्चा सबका ठीक से इलाज हुआ। वहां मीडिया के लोग वीडियो कैमरा लेकर आते थे तो पुलिस-डॉक्टर मंजू देवी को छोड़कर बीमार बच्चों के परिवार को सो जाने को कहता था। वो लोग कहते थे ये सब सरकार आपलोगों के लिए किया है, मीडिया के लिए नहीं। वो कहते थे मीडिया से बात नहीं करिए। वो आएं तो सो जाइए। पन्ना देवी कहती हैं वहां हमलोग को देखने लालू जी आए और कहे आपलोग के लिए व्यवस्था किया जाएगा।

रसोइयों से ज़्यादा कमा लेते हैं मज़दूर

पन्ना देवी और मंजू देवी की शिकायत है कि सरकार रसोइयों की तनख्वाह बढ़ाए। पन्ना देवी कहती हैं कि अभी हमें हर महीने 1200 रुपये मिलता है, मतलब एक दिन का 40 रुपया। हमलोग का काम खाना बनाने का है लेकिन, हमलोग से स्कूल में झाड़ू लगवाया जाता है, बर्तन धोना पड़ता है। हमलोग सुबह स्कूल जाते हैं और दोपहर-शाम तक घर लौटते हैं। पन्ना देवी पूछती हैं कि अब बताइए आज के टाइम में 40 रुपया में पूरा दिन कोई खटेगा? भिखारी भी भीख मांगे तो एक दिन में 40 रुपया से ज़्यादा जमा कर लेगा। आज गांव में मज़दूर भी रोज़ 250-300 रुपया मज़दूरी कमा लेता है।

मंजू देवी कहती हैं कि तबियत ठीक नहीं रहता, नहीं तो किसी के खेत में मज़दूरी करके ज़्यादा कमाई हो जाता है। सरकार को हमलोग पर ध्यान देना चाहिए, हमलोग का वेतन बढ़ाना चाहिए।

____________________________________________________________________

[नोट- रिपोर्ट की सभी तस्वीरें बैचलर ऑफ मास कम्युनिकेशन के फर्स्ट इयर के स्टूडेंट प्रशांत राज ने ली हैं।]

The post छपरा मिड डे मील हादसा: 23 बच्चों की मौत के 5 साल बाद कितने बदले हैं हालात appeared first and originally on Youth Ki Awaaz and is a copyright of the same. Please do not republish.

मुज़फ्फरपुर की घटना में जितना दिख रहा है, मामला उससे कहीं ज़्यादा खतरनाक है। ऐसा नहीं है कि रेप की शिकार सिर्फ 34 लड़कियां ही थीं। ये लड़कियां सैकड़ों भी हो सकती हैं, शेल्टर होम में लड़कियां आती-जाती रहती हैं। ये वहां की परमानेंट निवासी नहीं थीं। सरकार के आंकड़ों पर भरोसा नहीं कर सकते, सरकार का वश चले तो इन लड़कियों को भी बांग्लादेशी कहकर डिपोर्ट करा दे।

ये लड़कियां समाज के ही नहीं, दुनिया के सबसे कमज़ोर तबके से आती हैं। एक सात साल की मूक बधिर बच्ची, जिसका कोई नहीं है, सामाजिक रूप से उससे कमज़ोर इस दुनिया में और कौन है? इन लड़कियों को पुलिस ने किसी रस्ते से, किसी चौराहे से या किसी ट्रेन से उठाया होगा और यहां पहुंचा दिया होगा। हो सकता है किसी और ने पहुंचाया हो। इन लड़कियों से अभी तक ये नहीं पूछा गया है कि शेल्टर होम में आने से पहले उनके क्या अनुभव रहे हैं। लोगों ने क्या किया है उनके साथ, शोषण तो किया ही होगा।

कल्पना कीजिए कि दिन-रात एक मर्द 10-15 लड़कियों की रखवाली करते हैं। इन लड़कियों का कोई नहीं है, ये अनपढ़ हैं, समाज की नज़र में इनका कोई अधिकार नहीं है। और ये मर्द इन सबके खाने-पीने रहने का इंतज़ाम करते हैं। इन लड़कियों को अपना अधिकार तो नहीं पता है, इन्हें मीडिया, सिनेमा, लिट्रेचर या फिर सामान्य घरों की बात भी नहीं पता है। जो लाया, वो क्या कह रहा है, वही फाइनल है उनके लिए। जिस पुलिसवाले ने यहां तक पहुंचाया, उसका विरोध करना भी असंभव ही रहा होगा। तो ये लड़कियां इन मर्दों के सामने क्या बोल पाएंगी?

फिर उस मर्द के सामने क्या बोल पाएंगी जो दस-दस गनर ले के आता हो इनसे मिलने? TISS की टीम के सामने भी ये लड़कियां बस ‘गंदा काम’ ही बोल पा रही थीं। उनके बयान पढ़ के लगा कि मारने-पीटने से उनको दर्द तो हुआ, पर गंदा काम एक ही था। शायद बाकी से वो एडजस्ट भी कर लेतीं। उनके पास कोई चुनाव नहीं था, अभी तक समझ नहीं आया कि इन लड़कियों को उन मर्दों को अंकल बुलवाना किसने सिखाया।

इनकी परिस्थिति ऐसी थी कि किरण कुमारी, जिनका घर-परिवार भी है, जो इनकी केयरटेकर थीं, वो भी इनका शारीरिक शोषण करने लगीं। उनके कपड़े उतरवा कर साथ सोती थीं। किसी को नहीं पता कि उनमें लेस्बियन ट्रेट थे कि नहीं, अगर थे भी तो ये डिस्कवर करने की जगह नहीं थी। सच तो यह है कि शोषण का स्तर इतना ज़्यादा था कि जिसको कोई मतलब नहीं था, वो भी खूंखार रेपिस्ट हो गया। एक महिला ने कम उम्र की लड़कियों का खुद शारीरिक शोषण किया और दूसरे मर्दों से करवाया।

ऐसी वल्नरेबल स्थिति वाली लड़कियों के लिए किसी सामाजिक अध्ययन की ज़रूरत नहीं है। अपने आस-पास के घरों में देख लीजिए, कमज़ोर आर्थिक सामाजिक स्थिति वाली लड़कियों के साथ क्या होता है? मामा के घर जाती है, तो वहीं के लोग शोषण करते हैं, बुआ के घर गई तो वहां के लोग। कहीं काम पर लग गई तो पूरी व्यवस्था के लिए वो खिलौना बन गई, कहना ना होगा कि इसमें उम्र का कोई बंधन नहीं होता। अभी कुछ दिन पहले ही एक 10 साल की लड़की का 22 लोगों ने रेप किया था महीनों तक। उसमें 15 साल से लेकर 66 साल तक के पुरुष शामिल थे।

प्रशासन पता नहीं क्यों आंख बंद कर के रहता है, समाज भी। जहां भी ऐसी वल्नेरेबल लड़कियां हैं, वहां उनका शोषण होता है, चाहे वो हमारे घर हों, स्कूल-कॉलेज हों, नौकरी संस्थान हों या फिर शेल्टर होम्स। इस चीज़ में किसी पर भरोसा नहीं किया जा सकता, ममता कालिया ने आउटलुक के ताज़ा अंक में लिखा है कि धिक्कार से, मक्कार से और जयकार से प्रबुद्ध लोगों ने ‘नारी की देहमुक्ति’ की बात की। जब पढ़ी-लिखी लड़कियों का शोषण करने से बाज़ नहीं आते लोग, तो ये लड़कियां तो बिल्कुल ही कमज़ोर थीं। इनके पास तो प्रतिरोध करने की बातें भी नहीं थी।

सोचने में अजीब लगता है, ये लड़कियां आपस में क्या बातें करती होंगी, क्या कहती होंगी अपने अनुभवों के बारे में ? कोई आता होगा तो क्या गुज़रता होगा इनके मन पर, क्या गुज़रता होगा इनके शरीर पर, आपस में क्या कहती होंगी ये! कैसे दिलासा देती होंगी। 15 साल की लड़की ने 7 साल की बच्ची से क्या कहा होगा! 19 साल वाली ने 15 साल वाली से क्या कहा होगा, 7 साल वाली से किसी ने बात भी की होगी या नहीं? या सब चुपचाप इग्नोर कर रहे होंगे, जैसे कुछ हुआ ही ना हो!

ब्रजेश ठाकुर की हंसी बताती है कि ना तो वो अकेला है, ना ही बस 34 लड़कियां हैं, अगर उसका हाथ नहीं होता इस मामले में तो वो हंसता नहीं। एक साधारण निर्दोष इंसान पैनिक तो ज़रूर करता, उसे पता है कि बिहार के शीर्ष लोग भी शामिल हैं इस मामले में। छोटी बच्चियों के शोषण की फेटिश बढ़ती ही जा रही है। सबसे बड़ी बात कि उसकी पहचान करनेवाली लड़की गायब करा दी गई है, वो भी तब जब कि सीबीआई इसकी जांच कर रही है। ब्रजेश ठाकुर के खिलाफ सबूत नहीं मिलेंगे, वो छूट जायेगा, बाकी तो कोई पकड़ा ही नहीं जायेगा।

ये मामला राम-रहीम और आसाराम वाले मामलों के टक्कर का है। इनमें भी जब तक चार-पांच लोग अपनी जान नहीं देंगे, प्रशासन कुछ नहीं करेगा। धीरे-धीरे सारे सबूत गायब कर दिये जायेंगे, अंत में यही आ जायेगा कि गलत रिपोर्ट आ गई। सेक्शुअली एक्टिव होने की आशंका जताई गई थी, रेप की नहीं। छह महीने बाद इस केस को कौन पूछेगा? अगर पूछना ही होता तो देश के बाकी बालिका गृहों पर अब तक छापे पड़ चुके होते। कौन कह रहा है कि ऐसी जगहों पर शोषण नहीं होता? सबको पता है कि ‘कोशिश’ की टीम हर जगह नहीं जा सकती। जहां गई, वहां का बवाल काट लो, बस!

किरण कुमारी के मानस की जांच कराई जानी चाहिए, इस पूरे प्रकरण के दौरान क्या चल रहा था इनके मन में।

The post वो शेल्टर होम हमारे समाज जैसा ही तो है जहां लड़कियां बस शोषण का मौका हैं appeared first and originally on Youth Ki Awaaz and is a copyright of the same. Please do not republish.