NAXAL 'SRINIVAS', KINGPIN OF CHHATTISGARH ATTACK?

By Mithilesh Mishra / Raipur

He’s never once mentioned them, even in passing, in all the interviews he’s given: the brother called Parshuraman, who was killed in a firefight with the Andhra Pradesh police back in 1994; the sister called Kanukamma, whose body was torn apart by bullets while fighting by his side.

He never once mentioned the son born that year, who went to school in Sukma wondering if one the things he’d learn that day was that his father and mother were dead. He’s spoken only of ‘The Cause’, the man who ordered the massacre of 29 in Chhattisgarh last week.

“The language of war is killing”, said 9/11 perpetrator Khalid Sheikh Muhammad. Ravula Srinivas, secretary of the Communist Party of India (Maoist) Dandakaranya Special Zonal Committee, has long known this. His story tells us what happens when people cease to matter and only a cause remains.

Exclusive: How ULFA Strongholds Are Falling To The Reds?

By Akshaye Mahapatro / Guwahati

Maoists in Assam tap ethnic discontent to make inroads into an already volatile region. n April, Assam Governor JB Patnaik summoned all top officials of the state’s insurgency-hit Tinsukia district to the Raj Bhawan in Guwahati. He was keen to know about the development work in the state’s eastern-most sub-division, which is part of the district. Cut off from the rest of the district by the Brahmaputra, Sadiya, 60 km from Tinsukia, has turned into a cradle for the Maoists who are trying to make inroads into the Northeast. That is why the governor wants to keep an eye on this remote area.

Special Report: Asaram Bapu, The Saint And His Taint

By Aakaar Patel & Kajol Singh

Who is Asaram Bapu and what keeps his cult going? INN tracks the controversial godman’s legacy from his base in Ahmedabad. Once his name is mentioned, almost everybody seems to have an Asaram Bapu story. A popular Bollywood director known for his comedies with a message recalls how Asaram’s men were after him to get him to popularise the idea of celebrating Matri Pitri pujan diwas, Bapu’s brainwave to counter Valentine’s Day, even offering to fly him to “locations” in the ashram’s chartered planes.

Elections 2014 - Phase II: Polling Begins In 91 Lok Sabha Seats Spread Across 11 States And 3 Union Territories

INNLIVE Election Teams

Voting begins in Delhi 
Voting is being held for seven Lok Sabha seats in the country's capital, seen as test of Aam Aadmi Party's perceived erosion of support base, BJP's claim of 'Modi wave' and assertion by Congress that it was regaining lost ground after drubbing in last assembly polls.

'Communal Forces Dominating Political Spaces Of Modi'

The perceived communal overtones dominating the political space in the form of the saffron outfits’ ghar wapsi programme are beginning to hurt the Narendra Modi-led NDA government.

The latest India Today Group-Cicero Mood of The Nation Survey shows that the BJP would lose at least 27 Lok Sabha seats from its current tally if elections were held today.

In the opinion poll, 38 per cent of the 12,000 respondents rated Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s performance as ‘good’. 

Of those who participated in the opinion poll, 22 per cent categorised it as ‘excellent’ and only 11 per cent said they were ‘unhappy’ with the first 10 months of the National Democratic Alliance government. 

The findings of the opinion poll should come as a wake-up call for the Union government as people might be satisfied overall with its performance on the counts of governance, economy and foreign affairs, but the communal tag is pulling its image down.

A direct fall-out of the government’s image taking a beating is evident in terms of seat projections for the BJP. The survey shows that the ruling party will lose 27 seats while others will gain 24.

IS JHARKHAND NEXT ON CHIT FUND PONZI SCHEMES?

By Sumit Rajan / Ranchi

West Bengal and neighbouring Odisha and Assam might be bearing the maximum brunt of the recent chit fund scams, but Jharkhand is not far behind. The deadly tentacles of the ponzi scheme have also gripped several people in the state. As usual, the people bearing the brunt are the lower middle class and the poor who trusted their life’s savings with these companies.

Why The Gandhi Family Has Outlived Its Sell-By Date?

If anybody needs any further proof that the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty is past its sell-by date, Shekhar Gupta’s column today in The Indian Express today should remove any lingering doubts on this score.

The general argument trotted out by apologists for dynasty is simple: why blame the Gandhis, when every other party is also family run, from the Yadavs of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar to the Reddys of Andhra Pradesh, the Badals of Punjab, the Pawars and Chavans of Maharashtra, the Naveen Patnaiks of Odisha, and the Karunanidhis of Tamil Nadu.

The simple counter is this: the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty is older than the hills, having run into over five generations, from Motilal Nehru to Rahul Gandhi. In the case of the remaining state-level dynasties, the family is still into the second generation and the first generation leader is either still around or very visible.

The corollary is this: dynasties do last for one or two or even three generations, since the aura of the original creator remains alive. But after the third generation, unless you have another super hero (or heroine) entering the picture, it will start fraying.

And this is precisely the case with the Sonia-Rahul combine. According to Shekhar Gupta, the Gandhi family is no longer a vote-winner, and the only reason why they are still at the top of the Congress power pyramid is because other Congress leaders find it useful to give them the casting vote when they can’t decide things themselves.

This is what a Congress leader told Gupta when he asked them why the Gandhis were still around when they can’t help them win any election. “Surely, they cannot help anybody win elections, but they keep the party together. 

Their word is law and the party needs that discipline. Illustration: the moment Sonia or Rahul says something, everybody nods and falls in line. If Narasimha Rao or Sitaram Kesri said something, everybody broke out in rebellion and rashes.”

This argument, of course, is weak. If everyone knows that the emperor has no clothes (or rather, can’t get you votes) it is an indirect acknowledgement that the Gandhis have no power beyond what you are willing to notionally confer on them by mutual consent. In short, the Gandhis have changed from being real powers to symbolic powers – something like hereditary monarchs. This is hardly a recipe for long-term growth of either the Congress party or for the longevity of the Gandhi family’s political future.

Gupta, however, makes a more controversial point. The reason why the Gandhi family’s power is slipping is because it has failed to counter the rise of new dynasties. He writes: “The Gandhi family has lost its pan-national appeal because several new dynasties – at least 15 of them politically significant – have risen in key electoral zones of India. Each one of these now has a strong, proprietary vote-bank and total ownership of its party. A pan-national dynasty no longer has the ability to breach these fortresses.”

He concludes; “The inability to counter, or now challenge, the rise of these dynasties is the Congress party’s biggest failure.”

However, it is doubtful if any family, any dynasty, can really counter strong regional leaders without giving up its own power. The power is not in the Nehru-Gandhi family name, it is in deeds. The Nehru-Gandhi family can grow the party only by allowing regional leaders to develop, but this is the inherent contradiction in a family-based dynastic party.

To build real strength, you need to develop leaders outside the family. But if you do this, you have to start sharing power. You will no longer remain unchallenged and all-powerful as before. Dynasties have to choose between personal power and growing the party – and this is where dynasties are always doomed to fail, for they will always need to put family above party.

So, it is no accident that the Gandhi family is in decline. It has two options: let the party bloom and fade out itself.  Or it can behave like Bahadur Shah Zafar. Pretend you have empire when it is going, going, gone.

As this writer has noted before, “limited dynasties are in the natural order of things – as the course of human civilisation shows. The history of evolution is a history of sons (and daughters) following in their parents’ footsteps – whether it is business, profession or vocation.”

But usually success does not last beyond the third generation.“The Gandhis’ longevity in this ‘family business’ is an unnatural exception that has continued for five generations because of extraordinary events (assassinations of 

Indira Gandhi and Rajiv) that catapulted many family members to do what they were not equipped to do. They are (thus) an aberration.” The right conclusion to draw about the Gandhi family is this: the leader(s) is no longer good enough to lead the party. It is the party that is keeping the leader(s) in power.

Opinion: The Tangled Question Of Political Succession

By Ajaz Ashraf / INN Live

Regional leaders need to reorient their parties around the ideas they symbolise. Underlying the anxiety gripping the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) is the concern over whether or not someone should inherit the mantle of leadership from Lalu Prasad Yadav. Considering the improbability of his contesting elections in the foreseeable future, the existential crisis confronting the RJD is that it cannot now seek power for the man who broke the hegemony of the upper castes and banished communal rioting from Bihar. Already 66 years old, is it not logical for him then to become the RJD’s patriarch and mentor his successor? Should such a successor belong to his family or be chosen from among his trusted lieutenants?

FDI Tango: It's Useless Band-Aid For The Wrong Disease

By M H Ahssan / INN Bureau

It is hard to imagine the suave, Harvard Business School educated Palaniappan Chidambaram as the legendary Dutch boy who saved his country by putting his finger in a leaking dike holding back the sea, and staying there all night. But that’s pretty much the situation that the Indian finance minster is facing: the economy is collapsing, and times are desperate.

How Motherhood Is No Longer The “Frightful Experience It Used To Be” In The Villages Of Odisha State?

Binita Kanhara, 32, a tribal woman from Rajikakhol village in Chakapada block of Kandhamal district in Odisha was very happy the day she learnt that she was expecting her first child. 

Nine months later, when the day came, her mother-in-law decided that the delivery would take place at home. Unfortunately, the newborn child did not survive as it was weak and anaemic and needed medical care. The incident left Binita traumatised for months on end.

'34,000 Infant Deaths' In Delhi's Govt Hospitals, RTI Exposed The Shocking Statistics Of Last Five Years

An RTI response has revealed the shocking record of Delhi government hospitals, which boast of world-class healthcare facilities but have failed to save the lives of their newborn and young patients. 

The reply reveals that 12-15 per cent children admitted to the hospitals’ neo-natal and paediatric ICU wards have died in the past five years. In some cases, the death rate has averaged 25 per cent.

The 34,000 casualties in five years were reported from 19 Central and Delhi government hospitals. 

Shocking: Odisha Doctor Uses Bicycle Pumps For Sterilisation, Inflates Women Abdomen During Laproscopic Tubectomy

It seems no lesson has been learnt from the horrific Chhattisgarh sterilisation tragedy where about 13 women lost their lives. A new case has emerged in Bhubaneswar wherein a doctor used a bicycle pump to inflate the abdomen of 56 women while conducting laparoscopic tubectomy on them. This has triggered public outrage in the area, officials said. 

The doctor Mahesh Prasad Rout operated the women at a sterilisation camp organised by local authorities at Banarpal village, about 150 km from state capital Bhubaneswar.

Spotlight: Women Can Build A New Politics In New India

By Sumera Shahnaz | INNLIVE

Engaging in formal politics is basically about engaging in making a claim for power or for access to it. This power can, of course, be used in ways that are enabling to the groups that the elected politician represents. Given this, we could ask how far reservation of seats in legislative councils for women would enable them to gain the power to negotiate the issues and concerns that impact their lives and affirm the rights demanded by the women’s movement.

Exclusive: Fear Of The Unknown Grips The BJP In Bihar

By Sanjay Singh / Delhi

A divorce after 18 years of togetherness is never easy. But it doesn’t seem that way for JD(U) leader and Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar. He is all set to part ways from the NDA and dump the BJP from his government.

For the moment he looks like a winner. He will continue to be chief minister of the state and his party men are happy for many more would become ministers. In this separation the BJP is not entitled to any alimony.

When 'Telangana' Separated With Andhra Pradesh State?

By M H Ahssan | INNLIVE

ANALYSIS Fifty-eight years after the unification of Telangana and Andhra region, the Lok Sabha separated them by dividing the state of Andhra Pradesh. After blacking out the live coverage of the Telangana debate on Lok Sabha TV, the Hower House voted for Telangana state in a controversial voice vote. Interestingly, both Congress and BJP joined hands to divide Andhra Pradesh. Only the TMC and JDU staged a walkout calling it a murder of democracy.

According to experts the Congress which is staring at a rout in most parts of the country is likely to win big in Telangana which has 17 Lok Sabha and 119 Assembly seats. The Congress is expected to be decimated in Seemandhra region.

'Congress Made Devastation In Seemandhra': Jagan Reddy

By M H Ahssan / INN Live

Jaganmohan Reddy launched a vehement attack on Congress today by hinting that Sonia Gandhi‘s personal ambitions to see her son as the Prime Minister of the country has split Andhra Pradesh into to. “Someone wanted the son to become a PM and bifurcated Telangana,” Jagan said, adding, “Just for 16-17 seats, how can they play with the future of lakhs of people in a state.”

Speaking to INN Live, Jaganmohan Reddy who has began an indefinite strike to oppose the bifurcation of Andhra Pradesh, said that the Congress government has split a state without considering important issues like water supply.

International Women’s Day: Why India Cannot Keep Its Promises?

The theme for this year’s International Women’s Day observed today appears to have been coined with India in mind: “A promise is a promise — time for action to end violence against women.”

It’s public knowledge across the world that India is a horrible place for women, with some even saying that it’s the fourth worst; but the pain, outrage and the simmering anger that followed the Delhi gangrape almost entirely turned the world’s gender-spotlight on the violence that women face in India.

No other incident in the recent past brought so much notoriety to the country.

There were no two opinions on the fact that the Delhi gangrape victim was a symbol of India’s inability to protect its women, and the country’s poor gender equality index, which is even worse than that of Pakistan and Bangladesh. No other single incident had enraged people, particularly the youth in Delhi and across the country, so much.

Unsurprisingly, our politicians — men and women — shed crocodile tears and made promises.

“A promise is a promise” said the UN, but did India keep its promise? Or will it keep its promise?

Hardly. It neither has the intent or the ability because it truly doesn’t care for its women.

If it had, in roughly about a month after the gangrape, Delhi wouldn’t have witnessed roughly two rapes a day and the figures of the National Crime Records Bureau would have shown at least a temporary blip.

Nothing of that sort happened. Rapes, particularly that of minors, continued to make headlines from literally every part of the country even as the central and state governments continued its promises and announcements of law-and-order fixes. The country also witnessed other forms of gender-based violence such as acid attacks, which claimed the lives of two young, educated girls in Tamil Nadu.

There will be so much fanfare and customary banalities to mark the Day today — but India will not be able to be truthful to the theme of a promise because there is something fundamentally wrong with this country.

Last week, union law minister Ashwani Kumar said that 24,000 cases of rapes and sexual harassment are pending in the countries’ courts — both the Supreme Court and the High Courts of various states.

The numbers plainly betray two horrors — one, a huge number of our women and girls suffer rapes and sexual violence, and that our judicial system is unable to get them justice.

Extrapolate these numbers with the fact that for every rape reported, at least three others go unreported for reasons of stigma and shame, fear of further violence and other social reasons. And of all the reported cases, only a very few go to court. If we have 24,000 cases still pending, how many rapes and instances of violence would have happened?

Of the numbers Ashwani Kumar gave, 335 are pending in the SC and about more than a third in a single state — Uttar Pradesh, the republic of people like Raja Bhaiya. The next big number is in Madhya Pradesh (3758) followed by Punjab and Haryana (2717).

Here is how other states fare: Chhattisgarh (1,533), Odisha (1,080), Rajasthan (1,164), Bombay HC (1,009) and the Delhi HC (924).

Going strictly by statistics, these figures are not necessarily an indication of the reported cases. Madhya Pradesh, which accounts for 14 percent of rape cases in the country according to the National Crime Records Bureau, is India’s rape state, which in fact comes second in the list in terms of justice.

UP has the second highest number of rapes, but comes on top in not delivering justice. West Bengal comes third in terms of the number of reported rapes, but there are only 27 cases pending in the Calcutta High Court – either the state has an exemplary Court or there is hardly any law and order or justice system that is useful to women.

A further break-up of the figures highlights the worst kept secret—- India’s lawless and poor states, which pull down the country’s development indicators, are the worst for women, when it comes of justice for the violence they suffer. It’s certainly a BIMARU-trend in sexual violence and rape as well and it shows a coorelation between poor human development and status of women. It’s nothing new — development economists been saying this for ever.

This will be our problem in making a promise and keeping it as the UN and the rest of the world want us to do on the Women’s Day because our backyard is littered with inequalities, contradictions and vested interests. And we don’t have the political will or intent to clean it up.

WHO notes that “ideologies of male sexual entitlement” and “the unequal position of women relative to men and the normative use of violence to resolve conflict” are associated with violence against women. In layman terms, it means men have this irrational notion of power over women.

India also has this culture of masculine-control. Our dismal data on women shows it too: it has a poor sex ratio (more men than women and a son-bias), very poor gender inequality index and shameful indices for women’s economic opportunity, literacy and income.

India is a signatory to CEDAW – Convention of Elimination of All forms of violence against Women. The convention demands that we

• incorporate the principle of equality of men and women in our legal system, abolish all discriminatory laws and adopt appropriate ones prohibiting discrimination against women;

• establish tribunals and other public institutions to ensure the effective protection of women against discrimination; and

• ensure elimination of all acts of discrimination against women by persons, organizations or enterprises.

Doesn’t this sound like a joke? They are very simple, but we cannot handle it. If the central government says they do, let’s throw the figures and the contradiction (actual figures Vs the number of cases in the courts, for example, in West Bengal) back at them.

Where do we start?

We have to start with our men — in politics, in popular culture, in community and at home. There is an increasing acknowledgement of the role of men and boys in reducing violence against men. Studies show that boys who grow up watching gender-based violence, whether at home or in society, tend to be violent against women.

The men who exercise dominance over women, whether in parliament, khap panchayats, public places or in movies, set the norms for other men to exercise power in a similar way. Kids who grow up watching this tend to be like them.

These role-models have a pathological problem, whether they are our politicians or film-stars.

The countries that have ratified CEDAW are legally bound to implement its provisions into practice. And they have to submit reports on measures that they have taken to comply with their treaty obligations.

It will be interesting to read India’s CEDAW report of tall claims.

How about including this in the report as a big achievement: “On the eve of the World Women’s Day, a church in Kerala has asked the Suryanelli rape victim not to come to the church until her case is settled.”

The girl, as a minor, was abducted, trafficked and raped by 42 men in roughly as many days 17 years ago and has since been shunned by everybody. She and her family are still fighting for justice justice and even after so many years, the church also wants to ostracise her. Even recently, the opposition leader of the state visited her and promised whatever helps she needs.

“A promise is a promise”.

Why did it need an incident so unspeakably brutal to trigger our outrage?

Is misogyny a deep-seated mindset? Or is India on a fascinating journey? This is a moment that could go either way. It can deepen a crucial engagement or it can leave one with the chaotic debris of a fierce, but passing storm. As the intense outrage over the gangrape in New Delhi on 16 December begins to live out its heat, it’s imperative to question, which of these will we be left with?

Over the past few weeks, many angry questions have been hurled at the police, the judiciary and the political establishment. The failures of the State are staggering and one cannot be grateful enough for the initial rage and outpouring on the street. Without that, there would have been no conversation.

But there is an urgent need now for calmer review, for genuine and calibrated suggestions that can lead to long- and short-term change. There is a need also to ask, are we framing this discourse wisely? Can its shrillness or the suggested remedies have adverse impacts one did not intend?

Before examining any of that though, there is a big missing piece that must find voice. The anger against the State — the demand for greater efficiencies and accountability — is hugely legitimate. But what about the giant shadow in the room? How endemic is the prejudice that stalks our society? What produces and perpetuates it? What creates the idea of women as ‘fair game’ for sexual violence? What, in effect, do Indian men think about women?

The surging outrage at the gangrape of a paramedic in New Delhi this week is welcome and cathartic. But it is also terrifying. There’s a fear that this too shall fade without correctives. But there is also a question we must all face: why did it need an incident so unspeakably brutal to trigger our outrage? What does that say about our collective threshold as a society? Why did hundreds of other stories of rape not suffice to prick our conscience?

The harsh truth is, rape is not deviant in India: it is rampant. The attitude that enables it sits embedded in our brain. Rape is almost culturally sanctioned in India, made possible by crude, unthinking conversations in every strata of society. Conversations that look at crime against women through the prism of women’s responsibility: were they adequately dressed, were they accompanied by a male protector, were they of sterling ‘character’, were they cautious enough.

It’s not just the extreme savagery the young girl suffered that has jolted everyone therefore. Running beneath that is the affront that it could happen at 9.30 pm, while a decently dressed woman was with a male friend, in a well-lit tony south Delhi neighbourhood. This certainly accentuates the impunity that’s set in. But it also lays bare the maddening subtext that blunts our responses at other times. The assumption that rapes later at night, in places more secluded or less privileged, and of women who may be alone or sexily dressed is less worthy of outrage because they feed into two pet ideas India holds: that a woman asks for rape either through her foolishness or promiscuity. In some way or the other, she is fair game.

There are other deep examinations this rape forces on us: what do we consider violence? Does it really need a woman to be tossed out naked on a road with her genitals and intestines ripped up for us to register violence? Why does gangrape horrify us more than mere rape? Why do rapes of Dalit or tribal or Northeastern women not shock the nation into saying “enough is enough”? We do not distinguish between bearable murders and unbearable murders; why does rape come graded in such debasing shade sheets?

Rape is already the most under-reported crime in India. But beneath that courses a whole other universe of violence that is not even acknowledged. It’s not just psychopathic men in a rogue white bus who can be rapists: it’s fathers, husbands, brothers, uncles, friends. Almost one in every two women would have a story — perhaps told, perhaps untold — of being groped, molested or raped in the confines of their own homes. If they dare speak of it at all, they are told to bury and bear it. Take it as a part of life. To name an uncle who has been molesting a minor niece would be to shame the family. And marital rape — that stretches the very imagination. It’s a mark of our bestial ideas about women that even judges often suggest that rape survivors marry their rapists to avoid the hell of life as a single woman rejected by society.

There are, therefore, three reckonings this horrific rape forces upon us now. How can India change its endemically diseased mindset about women? How can strong deterrences be built against rape? And how can contact with the police and justice process not be made to feel like a double rape?

Harsher, swifter punitive measures are definitely needed to puncture the idea of immunity that’s built up around rape. Fear of consequence is a powerful tool. But that can be only one aspect of the correctives. What is equally needed is a government-led gender sensitisation blitzkrieg at every level of Indian society: in schools; in anganwadis; in pop culture; in village shows; in the police, legal and judicial fraternity. Even ‘sensitisation’ is too patriarchal a word: what we need is a determined drive towards modernity. Indians have an inherent impatience for process. We prefer the drama of retributions: demands for lynching and capital punishments. Set aside for a moment the larger argument against death penalties, we forget to ask, who will take these cases to a point where judgments can even be handed out?

Earlier this year, we published a sting investigation on how senior cops in the National Capital Region think about rape. It made for bone-chilling insights. But there was absolutely no action from the establishment. The argument went that the cops’ attitudes were merely a reflection of the society they came from. Nothing should make us more fearful than that.

What we need to fix and how
1.  How to Revive a Defunct National Commission for Women
When we did a cover story on violence against women, National Commission for Women (NCW) chairperson Mamta Sharma told this reporter that what women wear isn’t the primary reason for them being raped but it IS a secondary issue. 

And that women “need to take their Indian culture along with them when they leave their homes”. While the recent mass outrage has pinned down every politician and religious leader for their misogyny, Sharma’s comments have so far escaped any serious censure even though she heads the watchdog for women’s rights.

The NCW was created in January 1992 out of a clamour from the women’s movements for a national-level advocacy bodycum-watchdog. But over the past two decades, women’s groups say its structure has rendered it practically defunct. Appointments to key positions are political and as gender activist and lawyer Malavika Rajkotia puts it, “even the politicians give it step-sisterly treatment and don’t care about who they appoint”.

Kalpana Vishwanath of the Delhi-based NGO Jagori says a serious review of the NCW is needed to revamp it. Akhila Sivadas, executive director of the Centre for Advocacy Research, remembers a time when the NCW did function as a proactive body that fought for women’s rights. That was 15 years ago when Mohini Giri was its chairperson. Since then, she and many others from the women’s movements believe, it’s only been downhill.

If the NCW engages with women’s movements again, it could be revived, say both Sivadas and Vishwanath. Another suggestion is for the NCW to liaise with government departments such as the home ministry and draw up a list of protocols to pass on to police stations, hospitals and trauma centres for all those involved, from doctors to beat constables, to follow. Now thanks to the public outrage, the NCW is finally developing a ‘Guideline for Rape Manual’.

NCW member Charu Wali Khanna says the commission has a skeletal staff and could do with an investigative cell to probe cases of violence against women. She also says part of the problem is that the NCW is only an advisory body. According to Khanna, the NCW chairperson only has a secretary-level rank whereas other institutional heads are given the status of Cabinet secretaries.

Others argue that this is precisely the problem. Looking for a better place in the hierarchy is equal to placing the NCW right in the middle of the patriarchal set-up it was meant to smash.

2.  Planning Gender-Safe Public Spaces and Transport
Could the gangrape have been prevented if our pubic spaces had been made safe for women? In the conversations on how to prevent such crimes, Delhibased NGO Jagori has been conducting safety audits in the city since 2007. In 2010, it put together a comprehensive document on how women need access to the city just as much as men. But for them to actually live up to the promise of equality, some basics need to be in place:

• Adequate street lighting
• Proper maintenance of public spaces
• Clean, safe and adequate toilets for both men and women — male public toilets should be redesigned so that they don’t open out on the street
• Well-designed bus stops, with voice announcements
• Safer public transport
• Bringing back street hawkers in public spaces and bus stops as they act as the “eyes on the street”, making them safer for women

A simple but essential measure that could go a long way is to widen the pavements. “If you are a woman walking on a very narrow pavement, and you see a man walking towards you, instinctively you will step off the pavement,” says Jagori’s Kalpana Vishwanath.

Transport is another crucial area where Jagori has made some interventions. In 2008, it partnered with Delhi Transport Corporation (DTC) to make buses safer for women. Signages were designed and 3,800 bus drivers and conductors were put through one-hour training programmes on how to pay attention to the predicament of women on buses. Many drivers said the fact of men “falling onto women” when the driver slams the brakes was never seen by them before as deliberate or a violation. Now, in the DTC training programme for drivers, a module on gender sensitivity is an essential part, albeit for 30 minutes of the total two-hour training.

Another example comes from Mumbai. An umbrella group of community organisations called Aastha Parivaar set up a rapid response system five years ago to deal with violence committed against sex workers by their clients and the police. The system has been described by an observer to be as efficient as the dabbawallas. In case of distress, a sex worker’s call is responded to within 30 minutes.

3. Helplines that Work, Police that Responds
IN THE past few weeks, the Delhi government was faced with the embarrassment that its much-publicised crisis helpline for women — 181 — wasn’t working at all. The flaws with helplines isn’t a new story, but in other parts of the country, systems have been put in place that could serve as solutions. In Odisha, Satish Agnihotri, former secretary of the Department of Women and Child Development (DWCD), explains how he took on the system and changed it.

He found that communication gaps between various departments often become the large gaping holes in the crisis response system, rendering it dysfunctional or inefficient. Police stations across the state didn’t have a list of shelter homes available for sending women to when they faced violence. The homes existed, but the information didn’t. This was immediately corrected and lists put up at stations.

Agnihotri created desks at all police stations in Odisha to deal with women and child-related issues. Standard operating procedures were put in place and training of police personnel set up. But crucially, a radical step was taken to enable the desks to be set up. 

From the DWCD funds, 1 crore was set aside and transferred to the home department, which looks after the police. This transfer of funds made it possible for the desks to be set up at police stations, along with counsellors who would be paid on a case-by-case basis to deal with victims of violence and trauma.

The message Agnihotri would like to send out is this: it can be done not just in Odisha, but in every state. Provided there is the will to track the conversations and outrage against violence into simple, workable solutions.

Another part of the problem with the police force is their response time to victims and much of this centres on setting up effective and workable helplines.

Kalpana Vishwanath of the Delhi-based NGO Jagori has an interesting suggestion. 911 in America is a helpline that is not manned by the police. Similarly, our police personnel didn’t join the force just “to answer the phone”, she explains. So, why not create a synergy with BPOs trained in responding to calls within a certain period of time and free up more police personnel to do what they really signed up for?

4. Trauma Centres that Don’t Add Trauma
THE CLERK told me a male doctor will conduct the test (forensic examination) and asked me whether that was ok. I said ‘yes’… I was so scared and nervous and praying all the time: ‘God, let this be over and let me get out of here fast.’ I didn’t even know it was going to be like a delivery examination (an internal gynecological examination).” This account from Mumbai is how Human Rights Watch begins its report on the way in which forensic examinations of rape victims are conducted.

The report came out in 2010 but anecdotal evidence suggests little has changed since then. The report also found that at least three leading government hospitals in Mumbai still conduct the two-finger test. Where two fingers are thrust up the often damaged and bruised rape victim’s vagina to check if her hymen is broken and whether she regularly has sex or not. In fact, the Delhi and Maharashtra governments brought out new templates for forensically examining rape victims in 2010 that make it de rigueur to ask for the hymen size.

Far removed from this government-endorsed misogyny, a Mumbai-based NGO, Centre for Enquiry into Health and Allied Themes, has been working on an alternative. It has in place training and manuals for doctors, nurses and counsellors dealing with rape victims. 

They have also brought out a Sexual Assault Forensic Evidence Kit (Safe Kit) with cue cards and easy-to-use devices for forensic teams examining rape victims. It is in use in Rajawadi Hospital and Oshiwara Maternity Home in Mumbai.

Dr Abhijit Das, a community health specialist and head of the Centre for Health and Social Justice, laments that healthcare is still not acknowledged to be an essential part of the crisis management and care given to a victim even though the first interface for her is most often the hospital. “The procedures prescribed are archaic and inappropriate, and even those aren’t carried out properly,” he says. At the trauma centres, victims are often asked to take a bath without any care given to collecting clothes and samples of semen before crucial evidence is washed away.

Another problem is the predicament of the doctor who conducts the forensic exam and pronounces the case to be rape. Since the case drags on for years, the doctor is now at the receiving end of the system and years after he/she is transferred out of his/her post, is expected to make trips to the court to be there in person and tell the court once again all that is already there in the written report. “Even the best-intentioned medical officer often feels harassed,” says Das.

5.  Sex Education that Informs
I think one of the worst things that parents do when children touch themselves is to say ‘shame, shame’. That’s where it starts. I’m not saying one should encourage children to masturbate all the time. But it’s normal and you must tell them about it,” says dancer Mallika Sarabhai, one of India’s most strident voices on women’s empowerment. She represents the small and enlightened section of parents who don’t obfuscate sexuality in bringing up kids.

“My five-year-old son saw a tampon and wanted to know what it was. So, I didn’t say it was an earplug. I told him that women have eggs. And some of these eggs can become a child and you came out of my egg. But when the egg doesn’t become a child, the inside of a woman needs to clean itself. So everything goes out as blood. And that blood spills everywhere. In order for it not to spill, this is what we use. I’m sure it made no sense to him then. But my kids never came back to me to say, ‘You lied.’ Of course, they never felt ashamed of their bodies,” she says.

Tarshi, an NGO that has worked on educating India about sex for 20 years now, has a yellow book that parents can buy and an orange one for teachers that explains how to talk about sex to a child. How even in naming the parts of the body, if parents and teachers omit the genitals, they are creating taboos around sex. Tarshi is frequently called upon to hold workshops with parents and teachers to train them in how to have conversations on sex. It has also tried to impress upon government bodies to mainstream these lessons. While a few more progressive officers readily agree, the overall takeaway has still been a big NO.

The most common misgiving Tarshi encounters among parents and teachers is, “Will sex education endorse having sex with each other for my adolescent kid?” Tarshi explains that there has so far been no link to show that adolescents are encouraged to start having sex because they are told about it any more than they try making bombs after their chemistry class. However, the absence of knowledge of their bodies is actually harmful. Girls grow up frightened of their bodies, especially of menstruation. Boys grow up thinking that wet dreams are abnormal. Warped notions on sexuality are the first steps in creating conditions for warped ideas about sex and violence.

Tarshi has also started a campaign for asking for sexual education in India to be revamped. Its critique of the existing lessons makes a compelling and urgent case for taking sex education out of the dark ages, where it is still described to students and even to teachers in their training manuals as “a sperm fusing with an ova”, which, as far as students are concerned, could be an activity happening in outer space.

Focus: The Coercive Powers Of The CBI, The ‘Caged Parrot’

By Amitabh Pandey | Delhi

The clamour for CBI reform should focus on accountablility first, not autonomy. With the cries for CBI autonomy becoming shriller and the Supreme Court joining the chorus, the investigation agency has sensed a unique opportunity of transitioning from being an institution that would occasionally help political masters in their dubious political ends to becoming a self-propelled behemoth of coercive harassment and extortion. The transition enables it to be an ‘autonomous’ player in power politics and command its own price in political power markets.

The recent FIR against former coal secretary PC Parakh and Aditya Birla Group chairman Kumar Mangalam Birla is a masterstroke towards asserting the claim to autonomy in the perverse use of power.

Salman Khan, Coca Cola Launch Career Forum For Youth

As a part of the Corporate Social Responsibility, Noida Hindustan Coca-Cola Beverages Pvt. Ltd. (HCCBPL) has partnered with actor Salman Khan’s Being Human foundation to empower rural, educated and underserved youth, a statement said.

The initiative, in association with NIIT Foundation and NGO Gram Niyojan Kendra, established its pilot centre near the HCCBPL bottling plant at Dasna in Noida and will branch out to Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Maharashtra and Odisha.

“Our vision is to bring quality training within easy reach of the educated, unemployed and underserved youth to enhance their employability potential and bring them into the employment mainstream,” said T. Krishnakumar, chief executive officer of HCCBPL.

Salman Khan said: “The training is very practical and prepares the youth for entry-level jobs. Being Human: The Salman Khan Foundation is proud to partner this endeavour.”

Being Human foundation is working the modalities and association with some leading NGOs across India to source the project and get implemented at grass root level.