[ZESTCaste] Dalit rights: NGOs say more women coming forward (News)
http://www.expressindia.com/latest-news/Dalit-rights-NGOs-say-more-women-coming-forward/224557/ Dalit rights: NGOs say more women coming forward Tarannum Manjul Posted online: Friday , October 05, 2007 at 12:00:00 Lucknow, October 4 Call it Maya or Metadata effect. With a Dalit woman leading the state, the Dalit population seems to have woken up to their rights. The women helplines in the state have started getting more and more cases from Dalit women, who are reportedly coming up with their smallest problems. According to helplines, the women are not just coming to them with detailed information about their case but are also asking for speedy justice. According to Nai Dishayen, one of the prime helplines in the state which runs with support from the Union ministry of Women and Child Development, since June, the helpline has got at least three to five cases from Dalit women almost every week. Said Pooja Mahesh, Chief Functionary of Nai Dishayen and Counsellor, The number since June is mind blowing. In fact, a number of women come to us from districts like Sitapur and Hardoi with complaints of molestation, domestic problems and even encroachment on their land. In July, the helpline got 22 cases from Sitapur, Lucknow, Unnao and Hardoi areas. Mahesh added, They knew that if the culprit is taken to task, they will surely get justice as they know a Dalit woman is heading the state. Lalti Devi, a widow living in Kasmand block of Sitapur, approached us as her neighbours were threatening to throw her out of her house. We first spoke to the neighbours and told them the punishment in case they continue to harass Devi, said Mahesh. When things got out of hand, the helpline referred the matter to the Sitapur DM. The helpline recently held an open meeting for women in Sitapur, where a number of dalit women reported their cases which were forwarded to the SP and the DM. Said Deepak Agarwal, DM Agra: We have been getting a lot of cases from the helpline and are trying to help in all possible ways. Another helpline, run by the Rashtriya Mahila Sansthan at River Bank Colony, too has reported that a lot of women are coming forward with their problems. Said Krishna Singh, a counsellor at the state-supported helpline, The Dalit women come in groups and discuss their problems. The NGO has received 10 cases in July, of which, five were referred to local NGOs, while others were forwarded to DMs for immediate action.
[ZESTCaste] Dalit Panthers observe Black Day (News)
http://www.hindu.com/2007/10/04/stories/2007100459610400.htm Karnataka - Bangalore Dalit Panthers observe Black Day Staff Reporter BANGALORE: Demanding that the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) should not come to power in the State, members of Dalit Panthers of India (DPI) observed a Black Day on Wednesday. As a mark of protest against the BJP's ideologies, DPI leaders from the State led by their national leader Thol. Thirumavalavan trashed a model of the Ram Sethu bridge at the Town Hall. They shouted slogans against the BJP and pledged to uphold B.R. Ambedkar's values. DPI State unit president Dalit Nagaraj said that if the BJP came to power, atrocities on Dalits would increase. It is unfortunate that such communal parties do not think about the well being of other communities. After the Ram Mandir issue, the party is now creating the Ram Sethu issue. These are all attempts to come to power. But we Dalits will not allow that to happen, he said. On the Janata Dal (Secular)-BJP coalition Government in the State, Mr. Nagaraj said: The Government functioned under the black shade of the BJP's communal ideologies in the last 20 months. The political strategies being worked out by the coalition parties are damaging the State's political future. Elections are the best option now. Reiterating that no governments in the past worked for the welfare of Dalits, Mr. Nagaraj demanded that the accused in the Kambalapalli massacre should be hanged. The State Government should distribute sites to the homeless instead of auctioning the recovered land from encroachers, he added. Mr. Thirumavalavan and Lakshman, Jati Vinasha Vedike president, spoke.
[ZESTCaste] ‘War’ launched for uplift of poor (News)
http://www.hindu.com/2007/10/04/stories/2007100452940400.htm New Delhi 'War' launched for uplift of poor Special Correspondent Janhit Seva Sangathan for time-bound programme to eradicate poverty CHANDIGARH: Janhit Seva Sangathan, a social organisation, on Tuesday launched a Second War of Independence to liberate the poor and the downtrodden from the clutches of the exploiters. In a statement here, Janhit Seva Sangthan president and former Haryana Minister K.R. Punia said that even though his organisation does not work for a particular caste or creed or even religion, it was a harsh reality that people belonging to the Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes and Other Backward Classes form the lowest rung of society and are being criminally exploited by the rich and the powerful. He said his organization was not interested in a change in Government; it wanted a change in the attitude and perspective of the political and the administrative leadership so that the destitute could benefit economically. We are not targeting any one particular group or sect, but our goal is the uplift of the poor and Dalits through education and social mobilisation….We will create such a pressure group of enlightened citizens that the Government is forced to bow to the wishes of the people. Today we take a solemn oath and declare that the Sangthan will continue to fight for the rights of the Dalits and the poor and that the struggle will continue till the goal is reached, he added. Dr. Punia said the prime objective now was to bring about such a revolution at the grassroots levels, a mobilisation of the under-privileged masses that no matter which party was in power, they would have to be pro-people and pro-poor. The organisation had constituted core committees to identify families living below the poverty line in various districts of Haryana, he added. He demanded that the Government announce a time-bound 10 year programme to eradicate poverty and identify those living in abject poverty so that BPL ration cards could be issued to them without bureaucratic obstacles. Right to work should be declared a fundamental right and the Government should either provide employment or an unemployment allowance, he added. -- Subscribe to ZESTCaste by sending a BLANK email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] OR, if you have a Yahoo! ID, by visiting http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ZESTCaste/join Yahoo! Groups Links * To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ZESTCaste/ * Your email settings: Individual Email | Traditional * To change settings online go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ZESTCaste/join (Yahoo! ID required) * To change settings via email: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] * To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] * Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
[ZESTCaste] Wizardry or dignity? (Kancha Ilaiah)
http://www.deccan.com/Columnists/Columnists.asp Wizardry or dignity? By Kancha Ilaiah My children's book, Turning the Pot, Tilling the Land: Dignity of Labour in Our Times, published by Navayana, was supposed to be launched at a famous bookshop in Chennai in the third week of August. But the manager postponed the launch saying, These are Harry Potter days and no other programme can be held now. It is obvious that the Indian elite prefer their children to read a book on fantasy rather than one on dignity of labour. The hype and marketing wizardry surrounding Harry Potter is so big that parents and teachers too get caught up in the wave and encourage their children to read it. A book on dignity of labour does not appear to inspire them. But the latter will cure a historical disease that India has been suffering from, whereas Harry Potter will not. The government is thinking of introducing compulsory sex education in schools. A furious debate is now on about its pros and cons. No doubt sex education is necessary to tackle the problem of AIDS and venereal diseases. But even though the whole nation suffers from the indignity of labour, no one ever proposes that every child should be compulsorily taught the dignity of labour. We have suffered a huge loss on the scientific front, and in terms of human efficiency and productivity because of inbuilt values that teach the indignity of labour. But this has never been an issue for any educationist in the country. Our public spaces are dirty, ugly and murky. No citizen has a sense of cleanliness. The houses of the rich, the middle class and the poor are all unclean because the householders themselves are not ready to clean their houses themselves. Either paid servants or the women are forced to clean the houses and the streets. Men, young or old, have the right to use the whole space at home and outside but never think that it is their duty to keep their living spaces clean. Imagine all our citizens contributing their mite to keep our villages, towns, cities and our environment clean. Thus we can save of lot of money which is now spent fighting contagious diseases. But the whole process of maintaining cleanliness requires the constant involvement of the people in the labour process. However, caste and gender discriminations built into the Indian ethos have always assigned such work to the lower castes and the women. Since no schoolbook teaches our children the dignity of labour, the so called educated children too are indifferent to all this. Even now, the educated lot is unwilling to get their hands dirty. Only the Dalit-Bahujan castes should get their hands soiled. What will happen when the children belonging to these castes too get educated? Who will do all the work? At one level, the problem of indignity of labour is universal, but India suffers from it more than any other nation. Even in the United States, the blacks and the Hispanics do much of the work related to cleaning and construction. But in everyday life, an average Euro-American, or the Chinese or Japanese, has more respect for labour than an average Indian. At homes, offices, in scientific laboratories, in industries, a person who considers every work to be dignified develops a different attitude to life itself. This is where we need to introduce sufficient reading material for children, but not merely in a narrative form. There ought to be a national debate on the issue of teaching dignity of labour. In fact, this is more urgent than the debate on sex education, since it has to do with the development of the nation. There can be a debate on when it should be taught and in what form. Several questions need answers, but the debate has not even started.
[ZESTCaste] Welfare schemes for SC/ST: ‘Role of local bodies vital’ (News)
http://www.newindpress.com/NewsItems.asp?ID=IER20071004023324Page=RHeadline=Welfare+schemes+for+SC%2FST%3A+%91Role+of+local+bodies+vital%92Title=KeralaTopic=0 KERALA Oct 5, 2007 Welfare schemes for SC/ST: 'Role of local bodies vital' Thursday October 4 2007 12:54 IST Express News Service Speaker K Radhakrishnan inaugurating the district-level solidarity week observation organised by SC/ST Department at Ezhikad Colony near Aranmula on Wednesday. K C Rajagopalan MLA, is also seen. PATHANAMTHITTA: Assembly Speaker K Radhakrishnan has highlighted the role of three-tier panchayats for the successful implementation of the welfare programmes for the scheduled caste/tribe people. Inaugurating the district-level solidarity week observation organised jointly by various departments of scheduled castes and tribes at Ezhikad Colony near Aranmula on Wednesday, Radhakrishnan said that wide disparity was seen in the allocation of funds and the benefits accrued for the targeted groups. He said that the local people should be taken into confidence before implementing the schemes. The grama panchayats should implement the schemes that are approved for the local people. Schemes should not be enforced on the people, the Speaker said. K C Rajagopalan MLA, presided over the function. District Panchayat president Appinazhikathu Santhakumari delivered the solidarity message. District Panchayat member Ashaben, Kulanada block panchayat president K M Gopi, K Jayasree, T V Stalin, G Raghunath, R Jayakumar and Prasad Verunkal spoke.
[ZESTCaste] Untouchable and unthinkable (Opinion)
http://www.economist.com/opinion/displaystory.cfm?story_id=9905554 Indian business Untouchable and unthinkable Oct 4th 2007 From The Economist print edition Hiring quotas would not help lower-caste Indians and would harm business AFPBUSINESSES in India are used to bad government. Indeed, this hardship has proved perversely useful: through coping with rotten infrastructure, throttling labour laws and mutable investment policies, many world-class Indian companies have emerged. A proposal to force firms to hire more workers from the dregs of Hinduism's caste system (see article) would be different. It would be a disaster. India's long history of affirmative action springs from decent instincts. The caste system is possibly the world's ugliest social system. And it is sanctified by India's largest religion: according to the Laws of Manu, an ancient Hindu text, anybody from the lower orders who has the temerity to mention the name of a higher caste should have a red-hot nail thrust into his mouth; if he makes the mistake of telling a brahmin what to do, he gets hot oil poured into his ears and mouth. Fortunately, India has moved on a bit since then. But socially and economically the place is still sharply stratified. Upper castes get a far larger share of good jobs than do lower castes; dalits—or untouchables—get virtually none. Which is why, soon after independence, India's government used affirmative action to try to redress the balance; and why calls for that action to be extended to business are so loud. Affirmative action necessarily has a cost, both in fairness to those who in its absence would qualify for jobs and educational opportunities that they are denied, and consequently in efficiency. Still, if it went a long way to righting a big historical wrong, that might be justifiable. But that hasn't happened in India. Nearly a quarter of university places and public-sector jobs have been reserved for dalits and tribal people since 1950; and, in 1993, a successor government handed a further quarter over to other backward classes. Yet there is no evidence that this has made any difference to the fortunes of the lower orders. They have certainly been getting richer—but, over the past two decades, at almost exactly the same rate as the rest of the population. What's more, the policy has had dangerous side-effects. Cynical politicians promise their fellow caste members more jobs and university places. Reservation inflation has therefore been on the rise, infuriating the losers. As a result, battles over reservations have become a common source of riots, and politics has thus become increasingly polarised along caste lines. Extending into the private sector a policy that has been a disaster in the public sector is lunacy. This must be clear to India's prime minister, Manmohan Singh. As finance minister in the early 1990s, he started dismantling a system of industrial quotas, thus unleashing the economy. He should understand better than anyone the likely effect of introducing a quota on people. Yet he has been threatening to impose penalties on companies that don't hire more low caste workers. Don't blame business Reservations in companies would not just damage business. They would also distract attention from the real source of the problem. Responsibility for lower castes' lack of advancement does not lie with the private sector. There is no evidence that companies discriminate against them. The real culprit is government, and the rotten educational system it has created. Originally, reservations were supposed to be needed only for a decade. After that, it was reckoned, they would be unnecessary, because primary education would be universally available. Nearly six decades on, it is not. And the quality of much of India's higher education is execrable. By one reckoning, only a quarter of engineering graduates, the raw material of a booming computer-services industry, are employable. The government should concentrate on sorting out schools and universities, not piling new burdens on business. There's another effective weapon against ancient prejudices: growth. As Indians get richer, their caste biases fade. Middle-class urban Indians are less likely to marry within their caste than the rural poor, and less likely to wrinkle their noses at a dalit. Happily, the ranks of the middle class are swelling in a fast-expanding economy—for which India has its businessmen to thank. Hobbling them with quotas will only make it harder for them to help the country change. -- Subscribe to ZESTCaste by sending a BLANK email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] OR, if you have a Yahoo! ID, by visiting http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ZESTCaste/join Yahoo! Groups Links * To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ZESTCaste/ * Your email settings: Individual Email | Traditional * To change settings online go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ZESTCaste/join (Yahoo! ID required) * To change
[ZESTCaste] Dalits prevented from entering temple in TN village (News)
http://www.outlookindia.com/pti_news.asp?id=509036 DALITS Dalits prevented from entering temple in TN village MADURAI, OCT 5 (PTI) Dalits, led by CPI-M cadres, have gained entry into a temple in Dindigul District which remained out of bounds for them for 40 years but the party's programme ended in failure in a village in Virudhunagar District of Tamil Nadu following resistence by a forward community. Dalits and party cadre, under the CPI-M's state-wide Temple Entry Campaign programme, entered the Badrakali Amman Temple in Ayakudi near Palani in Dindigul District yesterday and offered prayers, officials said. The Dalits were not allowed into the temple for the past 40 years by caste Hindus. However, in Padali village in Virudhunagar District, forward Reddiar community members prevented about 700 Dalits and other community people, led by CPI-M MLA Nanmaran, from entering the Kannimar Kamatchi Amman Temple, whose ownership is in dispute, according to local CPI-M leader Venkataraman. The temple was locked under the RDO's orders for some time but the Madurai Bench of the Madras High Court had ordered officials to open it and allow Dalits a few years ago. A case over the ownership is pending before the high court. Despite the court order, Dalits could not enter the temple yesterday. About 150 police personnel were deployed in the village as the situation was tense with people belonging to Reddiar community and Dalits and others gathering there. There was also a scuffle between the two groups in which a few persons suffered minor injuries, officials said. Revenue Divisional Officer R Venkatesan, who intervened, persuaded both the groups to disperse and assured them that the issue would be resolved within a week's time. The 150-year old temple was built by then Zamindar of Padali who belonged to Reddiar community. From 1998, the community members were not allowing others, particularly Dalits, into the temple, officials said.
[ZESTCaste] Discrimination against cook continues (News)
Discrimination against cook continues http://www.indiapress.org/gen/news.php/The_Hindu/400x60/0 Staff Correspondent Udupi: The discrimination against Jayalakshmi Bhovi, a cook in the Zilla Panchayat Higher Primary School at Thombattu village in Udupi district, continues with students refusing to eat meals prepared by her. Jayalakshmi is a victim of a smear campaign by some vested interests that she is HIV positive. A related report was published in these columns on August 7, 2007. However, medical tests have proved that she is not HIV positive. Thombattu is a naxal-infested hamlet, 65 km from Udupi, in the Western Ghats. The branding of Ms. Bhovi, who belongs to a Scheduled Caste, as HIV positive and the subsequent boycott by the villagers has taken a toll on her family too. Keshav Koteshwara, head of Spoorthi Dhama, an NGO, who has been closely following the case, told The Hindu that only three of the 110 students of the school ate the food prepared by Ms. Bhovi. Though another NGO, Namma Bhoomi, on the directions of Deputy Commissioner V. Ponnuraj, met the villagers and tried to convince them that it was false propaganda, it was of no use. The Karnataka Janapara Vedike has urged the State Human Rights Commission to take action. Vedike convener Sriram Divana urged the commission to take action against those spreading canards about Ms. Bhovi. Though I lodged a complaint with the commission, I did not get any reply, he said. Superintendent of Police A.S. Rao said that a case had been registered based on the complaint lodged by Ms. Bhovi. However, the accused had obtained anticipatory bail.
