On 31st October 1984, six-year old Amrinder Singh became aware of the large scale violence that had been unleashed against his community. Residing in a Sikh majority population area, Vashisht Nagar near Janakpuri, in Delhi, his family were not the target yet. Not taking any chances, they nevertheless shifted their womenfolk to a relative’s house in a posh South Delhi locality.
Their fears came to life the very next day. At around 11 A.M a huge mob, shouting anti-Sikh and pro-Indira Gandhi slogans, fully armed with lathis and axes, suddenly engulfed their area. As if it was a well planned strategy, only the houses belonging to the Sikhs were targeted.
Amarjeet Singh, Amrinder’s father, recalls the fateful day, “They systematically went straight to all the Sikh houses in the locality as if they knew where all the Sikhs stayed.”
Amrinder’s grandfather, a retired army officer, then in his early 70s prepared himself to confront the mob with his Kirpan, but was prevented by Amarjeet. He was forcibly whisked away through the back door to a Muslim family’s house two doors away.
“My father grieved Indira Gandhi’s death as much as the whole nation did. All his life he served the country and this is how he was being rewarded. He could not control his anger,” says Amarjeet.
Amarjeet himself was dragged out by the mob and beaten by lathis. His Muslim neighbours rushed to his help. They managed to drag Amrinder and his bleeding father away from the crowd, bundled them into a car and drove them to a Muslim dominated area, where they stayed for the next four days.
Amrinder, now 30, says, “I still remember how the mob beat up my father. His turban had come off and he was bleeding. I was too young to help him and was terribly scared.”
Amarjeet returned to his house after things settled down in the city and was informed by his neighbours that the mob had first thoroughly removed useful things like the TV, telephone and other electrical appliances and loaded them onto the trucks. The cupboards were then broken open and whatever cash and jewellery they could lay their hands on, were pocketed. They smashed the rest of the furniture with their axes, and then they set the house afire.
“We lost everything in the riots and had nowhere to go. The place that was most safe for us, our home, was gone,” recalls Amarjeet.
Prepared to handle the worst, his family went to the local police station the next day and lodged a First Information Report (FIR). The police visited their burnt-down house and noted all the visible details. “We were a bit surprised as we did not have any problem lodging the FIR. We had lost all our faith in the system,” says Amarjeet.
But that was all the police did. Amrinder’s family had not expected much. They had seen the policemen standing across the road as mere spectators on the day of the attack. They had also noticed a senior police officer talking to some men sitting in white ambassador cars (allegedly used by the mob to commute) a few meters down the road.
Till date they have not heard of any progress on their FIR from the police. They did not get any summons from any court of law. Some journalists visited them and took down all the details of their ordeal, which appeared in some magazines and newspaper columns as a collective problem of their entire locality. Some NGOs came forward and assured them that cases would be filed on behalf of each family. They were assured that the culprits would be brought to book and adequate compensation given to them soon.
Three months after the attack, they received a letter from the Delhi Government, offering them a paltry compensation, which they refused.
25 years down the line, they are both frustrated and disillusioned with the system. They are now well aware that the riots and the police and court actions were all planned, executed and sanctioned by the Congress led government then.
“My heart burns every time I am reminded of that day. I grew up with this grief. I know what it means to be a minority in this country,” Amrinder says.
Amarjeet, now residing with his family in another colony in the same area, does not blame any particular community for the riots. According to him, it was a lesson for the minority community. It taught them that they could not take on the might of the government.
They appreciate the help extended by people of other communities—Hindus and Muslims—who came forward to help them.
Thursday, May 28, 2009
Lost in Transition
Amidst a razed slum area, stands alone the house of Shakuntala, a sweeper and mother of five children. In a kuccha house covered with plastic sheets tied with ropes, lives her family of eight with high hopes that one day they will also be given a land of their own.
On 8 March 2006, the slum dwellers of Pushpanjali slum in Pitampura, Delhi, were moved to Bawana, on the outskirts of Delhi (on Delhi-Haryana highway), by the Delhi Development Authority (DDA) under the beautification project of the State government.
“I was born in here. These municipality people have moved everyone but we are left behind because I do not have a ration card,” says Shakuntala.
Families with no ration card and no voting card were the ones left behind here. More than 100 people in Pushpanjali slum alone have not been given land in any of the areas allotted for the slum relocation project in Delhi (These areas are - Bawana, Narela, Kondli and Madanpur Khader). They still live on, isolated from their community, on the land where they claim they were born, with no drinking water and no electricity.
Sanjay Upadhyaya who runs a tea stall on the sidewalk shares the same plight as Shakuntala. “We came here from Uttar Pradesh in 1987. I have lost my ration card and have spent some 50-60,000 rupees bribing the DDA officials. Still we have not been given land in Bawana.”
Bawana in North-West Delhi is one of the areas where plots were given as per the slum rehabilitation scheme. Two plot sizes, 18 square metres and 12.5 square metres are available in this area. Under the cost-distribution rules as fixed by the Union Urban Development Ministry, the beneficiaries of the plots were to pay Rs.5,000 irrespective of the size of the plot. The rest of the price was to be borne by the Delhi Government and the land owning agency.
Despite this rule, the families who got 18 square metres plot had to pay Rs.7,500 out of their own pockets.
According to a report released by the vigilance department in 2007, more than 500 DDA employees are under scanner for grossly misutilising the funds for the slum rehabilitation scheme. The plots meant for the evicted slum-dwellers in Bawana are sold to property dealers for building shops and multi-storeyed permanent structures. The corner plots and the plots on the main road fetch Rs.4 lakh in the market, while ordinary plots are worth just Rs.50,000. The local MCD and DDA functionaries get a cut from the contractors who get the plots allotted in their names.
The whole area in Bawana for the slum rehabilitations is divided into five blocks – A, B, C, D and E. Slums dwellers in these five blocks came in 2004 and are mostly from the Yamuna Pushta region. Their slum was demolished in the same year and at its place now stands a state of the art facility for athletes competing in the Commonwealth games scheduled to be held in Delhi in 2010.
Four years in a cramped, unhygienic piece of land, yet there is no electricity in the mornings and evenings. Out of the 8,000 houses in these five blocks, hardly 400 have electricity connections.
DDA claims that they have installed 16 hand-pumps for drinking water in the five blocks. But the residents complain that there is hardly any water in them. The situation gets worse in summers when there is water scarcity.
The three far off blocks – F, G and H were set up in 2006. None of these houses have electricity connections. Pradeep Bharadwaj, a private electric contractor in Bawana says, “The electric poles have not yet been put up by the New Delhi Power Limited (NDPL). NDPL gives out contracts to private companies for giving electricity connections to the houses. No tender has been released yet by the NDPL for these three blocks.”
Block B lies on a low land area and is flooded during the rains. With no proper drainage system, the water is left stagnant which provides a breeding ground for mosquitoes. Maqsood, a resident of the same block says, “Last rains a lot of people got malaria. We do not even have a hospital nearby. The nearest one is some four kilometers away. The doctors there do not speak our language and they don’t treat us properly.”
Resettlement areas in Delhi are on the outskirts of the city, far away from their earlier sources of income. There is no scope of earning one's livelihood and with poor standards of sanitation, hygiene and medical assistance are virtually non-existent. Those who still cling on to their old jobs in the city start their day as early as four in the morning to reach their places of work in time. Not to forget the added expense of everyday commuting.
Narendra, school van driver in Pushpanjali says, “We bring women and children here everyday from Bawana. Most women who used to work in the bunglows here full time have left work. The ones who work till afternoon still come.”
The government just gave the land to build houses to the people who were moved to Bawana from all around Delhi. The slum dwellers then had to build their own houses on that land. Given the small chunk of land allotted, none of these houses have toilets.
With all these problems persistent in the resettlement land, those who were evicted from their slums and were not given a share in the resettlement area are still struggling for it.
“I give rent for sitting on this footpath. Policemen come and harass me almost everyday. Once we go to Bawana, at least no one will move us from there. We will have our own land,” says Sanjay.
Sanjay is lucky for his house was not demolished along with the other houses in the area. But he lives under the constant threat of loosing the roof on his head any day. The ones whose houses were razed to the ground have nowhere to go.
When asked if these people were given an alternative arrangement, Devender Singh, Supervisor, Municipal Corporation of Delhi, Slum Development, Bawana said, “They must have gone somewhere; many run away. How are we to know?”
On 8 March 2006, the slum dwellers of Pushpanjali slum in Pitampura, Delhi, were moved to Bawana, on the outskirts of Delhi (on Delhi-Haryana highway), by the Delhi Development Authority (DDA) under the beautification project of the State government.
“I was born in here. These municipality people have moved everyone but we are left behind because I do not have a ration card,” says Shakuntala.
Families with no ration card and no voting card were the ones left behind here. More than 100 people in Pushpanjali slum alone have not been given land in any of the areas allotted for the slum relocation project in Delhi (These areas are - Bawana, Narela, Kondli and Madanpur Khader). They still live on, isolated from their community, on the land where they claim they were born, with no drinking water and no electricity.
Sanjay Upadhyaya who runs a tea stall on the sidewalk shares the same plight as Shakuntala. “We came here from Uttar Pradesh in 1987. I have lost my ration card and have spent some 50-60,000 rupees bribing the DDA officials. Still we have not been given land in Bawana.”
Bawana in North-West Delhi is one of the areas where plots were given as per the slum rehabilitation scheme. Two plot sizes, 18 square metres and 12.5 square metres are available in this area. Under the cost-distribution rules as fixed by the Union Urban Development Ministry, the beneficiaries of the plots were to pay Rs.5,000 irrespective of the size of the plot. The rest of the price was to be borne by the Delhi Government and the land owning agency.
Despite this rule, the families who got 18 square metres plot had to pay Rs.7,500 out of their own pockets.
According to a report released by the vigilance department in 2007, more than 500 DDA employees are under scanner for grossly misutilising the funds for the slum rehabilitation scheme. The plots meant for the evicted slum-dwellers in Bawana are sold to property dealers for building shops and multi-storeyed permanent structures. The corner plots and the plots on the main road fetch Rs.4 lakh in the market, while ordinary plots are worth just Rs.50,000. The local MCD and DDA functionaries get a cut from the contractors who get the plots allotted in their names.
The whole area in Bawana for the slum rehabilitations is divided into five blocks – A, B, C, D and E. Slums dwellers in these five blocks came in 2004 and are mostly from the Yamuna Pushta region. Their slum was demolished in the same year and at its place now stands a state of the art facility for athletes competing in the Commonwealth games scheduled to be held in Delhi in 2010.
Four years in a cramped, unhygienic piece of land, yet there is no electricity in the mornings and evenings. Out of the 8,000 houses in these five blocks, hardly 400 have electricity connections.
DDA claims that they have installed 16 hand-pumps for drinking water in the five blocks. But the residents complain that there is hardly any water in them. The situation gets worse in summers when there is water scarcity.
The three far off blocks – F, G and H were set up in 2006. None of these houses have electricity connections. Pradeep Bharadwaj, a private electric contractor in Bawana says, “The electric poles have not yet been put up by the New Delhi Power Limited (NDPL). NDPL gives out contracts to private companies for giving electricity connections to the houses. No tender has been released yet by the NDPL for these three blocks.”
Block B lies on a low land area and is flooded during the rains. With no proper drainage system, the water is left stagnant which provides a breeding ground for mosquitoes. Maqsood, a resident of the same block says, “Last rains a lot of people got malaria. We do not even have a hospital nearby. The nearest one is some four kilometers away. The doctors there do not speak our language and they don’t treat us properly.”
Resettlement areas in Delhi are on the outskirts of the city, far away from their earlier sources of income. There is no scope of earning one's livelihood and with poor standards of sanitation, hygiene and medical assistance are virtually non-existent. Those who still cling on to their old jobs in the city start their day as early as four in the morning to reach their places of work in time. Not to forget the added expense of everyday commuting.
Narendra, school van driver in Pushpanjali says, “We bring women and children here everyday from Bawana. Most women who used to work in the bunglows here full time have left work. The ones who work till afternoon still come.”
The government just gave the land to build houses to the people who were moved to Bawana from all around Delhi. The slum dwellers then had to build their own houses on that land. Given the small chunk of land allotted, none of these houses have toilets.
With all these problems persistent in the resettlement land, those who were evicted from their slums and were not given a share in the resettlement area are still struggling for it.
“I give rent for sitting on this footpath. Policemen come and harass me almost everyday. Once we go to Bawana, at least no one will move us from there. We will have our own land,” says Sanjay.
Sanjay is lucky for his house was not demolished along with the other houses in the area. But he lives under the constant threat of loosing the roof on his head any day. The ones whose houses were razed to the ground have nowhere to go.
When asked if these people were given an alternative arrangement, Devender Singh, Supervisor, Municipal Corporation of Delhi, Slum Development, Bawana said, “They must have gone somewhere; many run away. How are we to know?”
Another 1971 in Pakistan?
Islam, the religion of love and tolerance, has been incessantly interpreted, misinterpreted and defined in versatile ways. But is the new wave of modern Islam, given the political complacency, giving rise to another Taliban Afghanistan? Or is Pakistan headed towards another 1971?
Unhappy with the broken promises of President Zardari of restoration of the deposed Chief Justice, Ifthikar Chaudhary, Pakistan Muslim League’s (N) leader Nawaz Sharif on Monday warned against creating a “1971-like situation”.
The recent imposition of Governor’s rule in the Punjab province by Zardari’s Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) leading to an immediate dismissal of Shahbaz Sharif led provincial government has further jolted the ever crumbling democratic structure in Pakistan.
With an unstable political situation, religion has become more assertive and hardliner. Barelvi, the tolerant, Sufi-minded form of Islam is now pushed out of fashion by the new wave of Wahhabism flourishing in Pakistan, especially in the north-western frontier province. These Saudi-funded madrasas have adopted a more radical and political face.
The shrine of Rahman Baba, an 18th-century Sufi poet, unable to counter the wrath of these Wahhabi Islamists, was finally blown up on Thursday, a few hours after the Sri Lankan cricket team was attacked in Lahore. The students of the madrasa complained that the shrine was a centre of idolatry and superstition, and tagged it ‘unislamic’.
The Wahhabi sect of Islam, to which the royal family of Saudi Arabia belongs, had its origins in the 13th century. When oil wealth opened Saudi Arabia to the West in the 20th century, some Wahhabi clerics became radical opponents of a royal family they no longer saw as keepers of the faith but as decadent apostates.
One of the main reasons why the Wahhabis have been so successfully infiltrating and sculpturing Islam in Pakistan is because of the vacuum created by the collapse of the state education. Religious education is still prevalent in several parts of Pakistan and the drop out rates stay high. Over 140 schools were shut by the Taliban last month in the Swat Valley because they don’t approve of the curriculum.
Also, many of the madrasa buildings have been financed by the Saudis. Quickly advancing in Pakistan, this imported education has swept an entire generation to abandon the indigenous, tolerant Sufi-Islam.
There are now 27 times as many madrasas in the country as there were in 1947: from 245 at independence, the number has shot up to 6870 in 2001.
The entire Islamic society has been a victim of theological conflicts over centuries. Call it their ulterior motives, successive major political parties have allowed the religious education in madrasas breed alongside democracy. Given the rigid support they get from the international community, in no time these propagated ideologies find acceptance in a politically weak country. Under the military rule of Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq, Pakistan adopted Shariat and other laws based on Islam. In the 2004 national elections, Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal, a coalition of Islamic religious parties, won elections in North-West Frontier Province and increased their representation in the National Assembly until their defeat in the 2008 elections. Lal Masjid, a madrasa in Islamabad, where the madrasa students allegedly held hostage women and children, was said to have faced a “massacre” by the Musharraf’s military regime. Musharraf was said to have “antagonizing the country’s tribal and Pashtun minorities” by doing so.
Over the recent imposing of a ban on education in the Swat Valley by the Taliban, William Darlymple in an interview to a BBC journalist said that the Pakistani Taliban, who were a minor force until about 18 months ago, have come out of FATA, the Federally Administered Tribal Areas, which is a dubious buffer zone between Pakistan and Afghanistan, where the al-Qa'eda high command is presumed to be sheltering. They are now out in the north-west frontier province, which is about a fifth of Pakistan and they control it a great deal now.
With Sufism on its way to be rooted out with Wahhabism, suicide bombings and attacks on the police and the army almost a daily routine and uprooting the democratically elected provincial government in the region, it is high time the government focus to stabalise and check it’s internal matters. In Darlymple’s words, “The Pakistani government could finance schools that taught Pakistanis to respect their own religious traditions, rather than buying fleets of American F-16 fighters and handing over education to the Saudis. Instead, every day, it increasingly resembles a tragic clone of Taliban Afghanistan.”
With widening ideological differences among the leaders and one pitching against the other, the military, as says history, may again assume power. Or is Pakistan heading towards another Bangladesh of 1971?
Unhappy with the broken promises of President Zardari of restoration of the deposed Chief Justice, Ifthikar Chaudhary, Pakistan Muslim League’s (N) leader Nawaz Sharif on Monday warned against creating a “1971-like situation”.
The recent imposition of Governor’s rule in the Punjab province by Zardari’s Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) leading to an immediate dismissal of Shahbaz Sharif led provincial government has further jolted the ever crumbling democratic structure in Pakistan.
With an unstable political situation, religion has become more assertive and hardliner. Barelvi, the tolerant, Sufi-minded form of Islam is now pushed out of fashion by the new wave of Wahhabism flourishing in Pakistan, especially in the north-western frontier province. These Saudi-funded madrasas have adopted a more radical and political face.
The shrine of Rahman Baba, an 18th-century Sufi poet, unable to counter the wrath of these Wahhabi Islamists, was finally blown up on Thursday, a few hours after the Sri Lankan cricket team was attacked in Lahore. The students of the madrasa complained that the shrine was a centre of idolatry and superstition, and tagged it ‘unislamic’.
The Wahhabi sect of Islam, to which the royal family of Saudi Arabia belongs, had its origins in the 13th century. When oil wealth opened Saudi Arabia to the West in the 20th century, some Wahhabi clerics became radical opponents of a royal family they no longer saw as keepers of the faith but as decadent apostates.
One of the main reasons why the Wahhabis have been so successfully infiltrating and sculpturing Islam in Pakistan is because of the vacuum created by the collapse of the state education. Religious education is still prevalent in several parts of Pakistan and the drop out rates stay high. Over 140 schools were shut by the Taliban last month in the Swat Valley because they don’t approve of the curriculum.
Also, many of the madrasa buildings have been financed by the Saudis. Quickly advancing in Pakistan, this imported education has swept an entire generation to abandon the indigenous, tolerant Sufi-Islam.
There are now 27 times as many madrasas in the country as there were in 1947: from 245 at independence, the number has shot up to 6870 in 2001.
The entire Islamic society has been a victim of theological conflicts over centuries. Call it their ulterior motives, successive major political parties have allowed the religious education in madrasas breed alongside democracy. Given the rigid support they get from the international community, in no time these propagated ideologies find acceptance in a politically weak country. Under the military rule of Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq, Pakistan adopted Shariat and other laws based on Islam. In the 2004 national elections, Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal, a coalition of Islamic religious parties, won elections in North-West Frontier Province and increased their representation in the National Assembly until their defeat in the 2008 elections. Lal Masjid, a madrasa in Islamabad, where the madrasa students allegedly held hostage women and children, was said to have faced a “massacre” by the Musharraf’s military regime. Musharraf was said to have “antagonizing the country’s tribal and Pashtun minorities” by doing so.
Over the recent imposing of a ban on education in the Swat Valley by the Taliban, William Darlymple in an interview to a BBC journalist said that the Pakistani Taliban, who were a minor force until about 18 months ago, have come out of FATA, the Federally Administered Tribal Areas, which is a dubious buffer zone between Pakistan and Afghanistan, where the al-Qa'eda high command is presumed to be sheltering. They are now out in the north-west frontier province, which is about a fifth of Pakistan and they control it a great deal now.
With Sufism on its way to be rooted out with Wahhabism, suicide bombings and attacks on the police and the army almost a daily routine and uprooting the democratically elected provincial government in the region, it is high time the government focus to stabalise and check it’s internal matters. In Darlymple’s words, “The Pakistani government could finance schools that taught Pakistanis to respect their own religious traditions, rather than buying fleets of American F-16 fighters and handing over education to the Saudis. Instead, every day, it increasingly resembles a tragic clone of Taliban Afghanistan.”
With widening ideological differences among the leaders and one pitching against the other, the military, as says history, may again assume power. Or is Pakistan heading towards another Bangladesh of 1971?
MDMK condemn Sri Lankan Army General Fonseka
Chennai: Marumalarchi Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (MDMK) organized a protest on December 10 at TTK Road condemning the statement made by the Sri Lankan Army chief Sarath Fonseka, who called the Tamil political leaders ‘jokers’, in an interview.
The Army Chief was quoted as saying, “If the LTTE is wiped out, those political jokers like Nadumaran, Vaiko and whoever sympathising with the LTTE will most probably lose their income from the LTTE.”
MDMK general secretary Vaiko and his supporters demonstrated a protest here and asked for an open apology from the Sri Lankan government. The protest went peaceful and the crowd dispersed after displaying their displeasure over the issue. No arrests were made.
Mr. Nanmaran, MDMK spokesperson said, “We want an open apology from the Sri Lankan government. The General should be sent back.”
Apparently, arresting of sixteen agitators and burning of effigies of Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa and General Fonseka was reported from a few districts of Tamil Nadu.
Discontent by the way the Central Government is reacting, Nanmaran said that the Central government in India is doing nothing and that they should look into the issues seriously when foreigners make comments about our leaders.
“What if they make statements about the Prime Minister (of India)? The government is for everyone. The Indian government should make strict warning to all the Sri Lankan foreign officials and ask for an open apology from (the Sri Lankan) President Rajapaksa and General Fonseka,” he said.
Vaiko and The Tamil Nationalist Movement (TNM) leader P. Nedumaran have been getting support from the other political parties of Tamil Nadu as well. Nanmaran said, “We are glad that all the other political parties supported us. They all expressed their concern, especially the ruling party (Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam).”
On questioning the High Commission of Sri Lanka in Chennai about the security arrangements for the protest, Dominic, Public Relations Officer, said, “Nothing happened in front of the High Commission. The police had the situation in control and the protests happened elsewhere.”
Expecting a positive response from the Sri Lankan government for the demands made by MDMK on the issue of ridiculing the Tamil Nadu politicians, Nanmaran said, “The diplomatic relations with the government of Sri Lanka will change if the demands are not met. This will have an impact on the Sri Lankan embassy here.”
MDMK has sent a letter to the Prime Minister regarding the same. “We’ll have to wait and see what response comes from the Centre,” Nanmaran said.
AIADMK-CPI((M) alliance
MDMK is at present in alliance with the All-India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK), headed by former Chief Minister J. Jayalalithaa.
Commenting on the Communist Party of India (Marxist) (CPI-M) being AIADMK’s new ally in Chennai, for the Lok Sabha elections in 2009, Nanmaran said, “We will continue our alliance with the AIADMK. We are willing to wait and see if anyone is coming forward to form an alliance with us.”
The Army Chief was quoted as saying, “If the LTTE is wiped out, those political jokers like Nadumaran, Vaiko and whoever sympathising with the LTTE will most probably lose their income from the LTTE.”
MDMK general secretary Vaiko and his supporters demonstrated a protest here and asked for an open apology from the Sri Lankan government. The protest went peaceful and the crowd dispersed after displaying their displeasure over the issue. No arrests were made.
Mr. Nanmaran, MDMK spokesperson said, “We want an open apology from the Sri Lankan government. The General should be sent back.”
Apparently, arresting of sixteen agitators and burning of effigies of Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa and General Fonseka was reported from a few districts of Tamil Nadu.
Discontent by the way the Central Government is reacting, Nanmaran said that the Central government in India is doing nothing and that they should look into the issues seriously when foreigners make comments about our leaders.
“What if they make statements about the Prime Minister (of India)? The government is for everyone. The Indian government should make strict warning to all the Sri Lankan foreign officials and ask for an open apology from (the Sri Lankan) President Rajapaksa and General Fonseka,” he said.
Vaiko and The Tamil Nationalist Movement (TNM) leader P. Nedumaran have been getting support from the other political parties of Tamil Nadu as well. Nanmaran said, “We are glad that all the other political parties supported us. They all expressed their concern, especially the ruling party (Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam).”
On questioning the High Commission of Sri Lanka in Chennai about the security arrangements for the protest, Dominic, Public Relations Officer, said, “Nothing happened in front of the High Commission. The police had the situation in control and the protests happened elsewhere.”
Expecting a positive response from the Sri Lankan government for the demands made by MDMK on the issue of ridiculing the Tamil Nadu politicians, Nanmaran said, “The diplomatic relations with the government of Sri Lanka will change if the demands are not met. This will have an impact on the Sri Lankan embassy here.”
MDMK has sent a letter to the Prime Minister regarding the same. “We’ll have to wait and see what response comes from the Centre,” Nanmaran said.
AIADMK-CPI((M) alliance
MDMK is at present in alliance with the All-India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK), headed by former Chief Minister J. Jayalalithaa.
Commenting on the Communist Party of India (Marxist) (CPI-M) being AIADMK’s new ally in Chennai, for the Lok Sabha elections in 2009, Nanmaran said, “We will continue our alliance with the AIADMK. We are willing to wait and see if anyone is coming forward to form an alliance with us.”
Development at the cost of fisherfolk’s livelihood
T. S. S. Mani is a social activist who is a member of the People’s Union of Civil Liberties (PUCL). He is the convener of the Fisher Movements Coordination of Tamil Nadu and Puducherry.
How will the expansion of the Chennai Port affect the fishing hamlets?
Every expansion of the harbour, based on dredging of the shore, leads to breaking of roads all along the shore. Fishing hamlets have to face all the problems because of that.
The Multinational Companies (MNCs) fill up the shipyards with monstrous containers. These containers and the huge trucks (in which the containers are carried form the harbour to the city and vice versa) are all along the fishing harbours, right outside the fishermen houses. Children play and get hurt in that area. They may even get killed. No fishing hamlet can be peaceful this way.
The fishing community is known to be very vociferous. Why are they not protesting now?
These MNCs bribe the chiefs of the fishing hamlets. They give them Rs. 1000 each and a few lakhs for the temple festivals.
What according to you is the solution to this problem?
Burn all the containers. We should burn all the containers and all the politicians. Till 20 kilometers from the fishing hamlets, there should be containers.
But the expansion of the Chennai Port is planned. How do you plan to stop it?
There is an irony in what the politicians say. They can’t displace the fisher folk but, the construction of the bridge has already started and in the process, the fishermen will be displaced. This is what the local bureaucrats want.
They have tried to displace us several times before too. Some well renowned Non-governmental Organisations (NGOs), which I will not name, are getting funds from America to spread rumors that the houses will be displaced. They print pamphlets and spread the word around to get more funds from these foreign countries.
The politicians will save their faces when the fishermen will resist. No politician will dare go against our wishes.
How has the government tried to displace the fishermen in the past?
In 2003, Jayalalithaa (the then Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu) had a joint venture with the Malaysian Construction Board. The fishermen got a blueprint of the document and came to us (PUCL). The plan was to evict the fishermen and build foreign embassies and hotels there (Nochikuppam). We exposed the document through all the media. The venture was stopped. The document was exposed through the local as well as the English media. But most of the English media refused to believe us. They needed authorization.
Then in 2004, Jayalalithaa signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the Mr. Samy Velu (he is a Malaysian of Tamil origin and belonged to the Malaysian Indian Congress party), minister in the Malaysian government. This information was picked up seriously by the fishermen. On January 15, 2004, the leaders of the fisher organizations of all 19 hamlets met and had all the media to publish/telecast the information. 15 January onwards, we had these meetings every week.
We approach the media because the Tamil Nadu media is very strong. They reach out to every single person in the state including the rural areas.
Haven’t the fishermen taken to arms?
We are not for raising them to arms.
In 1985, MGR government tried to remove the fishing hamlets. The fishermen clashed with the police on Kamaraj Salai. They wanted to kill Director General of Police Walter Deva Ram. The fisherwomen saved him. In return, on December 4, the police killed 7 fishermen. That was the price given to the fishermen for saving the lives of a policeman.
In 2004, the fishermen were ready to fight. All the ministers travel through this road Kamaraj Salai. If the fishermen come down on this road, many deaths will occur. We make sure that these don’t come out on the road. If they do, then there will be no stopping them.
The fishermen have been struggling for long. Have you tried to persuade the government to change the policy towards the fishing community?
They talk about beautification of the Marina beach. And they want to achieve it by removing the fishermen. Fishermen are ready to become martyrs for it.
The White House sent a 5 page letter to the Chief Minister telling him not to evict the fishermen. The scheme (beautification) was then withdrawn. Events have happened in the past and we deal with the government on our own. So now, what right do these NGOs have to spread the rumors that the houses will be displaced?
The government says that the fishing hamlets violate the Coastal Regulation Zone Act that’s why they want to move these hamlets.
On December 26, 2004, the Tsunami came. It caused many deaths. The bureaucrats then adopted the Coastal Regulation Zone Act as a weapon against the fishermen. They gave notice to remove the fishermen from 5 kilo meters from the high tide area.
All the traditional hamlets are next to the shore. These are needed by the fishermen to fish. This is their mode of survival. Their livelihoods are based on that. The land based bureaucrats know nothing about the sea men.
People of the sea can’t be understood by the people of the land. Their relations of the production can’t be understood by the intelligentsia of the land. All the IAS, IPS officers are land based. They don’t understand the people of the sea. They occupy the chairs of decision making in Delhi and elsewhere.
When the government’s Malaysian project failed, they came up with the CRZ.
How did you protest against this?
We organized rallies and demanded that the new CRZ policy should be for the new private commercial profit based projects and not for the fishermen who are the traditional owners. These people can’t be displaced. On March 16, 2005, we gave this proposal to Jayalalithaa.
PUCL filed a case which went up to the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court gave direction to organize public consultation in the states by the participation of NGOs in which 6 PUCL members participated.
In Tamil Nadu, PUCL organizes meetings. We organized 8 meetings, from 18 to 21 March 2005, in Tamil Nadu and Puducherry. Leaders from all coastal districts attended this meeting. Invitation was also sent to the government and Jayalalithaa sent district collectors and fishery department representatives to these meetings. We also met the director of Tsunami relief and rehabilitation in the Secretariats.
Were these meetings fruitful? Did the government act upon it?
On March 25, 2005, Jayalalithaa announced a statement under section 1(10) (according to him, under this section, no opposition party can either oppose or change the statement) that the fishermen shouldn’t be shifted from the shore because of the nature of their profession.
On March 30, the government of Tamil Nadu released an order announcing the same.
Haven’t these orders been implemented? Why are the fishermen still against the government?
In April 2005, the government said that in the cities, the fishermen should be moved at least 500 meters away from the sea. They build commercial buildings in this area but want the fishermen to move away from the sea.
In 2005, the Collector of Chennai said that the houses in the fishing hamlets are old and are dilapidated so they will be given new houses. The fishermen were given the assurance that their houses won’t be shifted. They allotted maps, made model houses, did everything but the construction hasn’t started yet. This is bureaucracy.
An elevated bridge along the Adyar Creek is under construction. What steps are you taking to prevent the fishermen families from getting displaced there?
Who is getting displaced? We are not going anywhere. I have been in activism for four decades now. They can’t build the elevated bridge till the time we want.
What is the Adyar creek project?
The Adyar Poonga project was launched by Karunanidhi in 2006. It is a 100 Crore project. They want to make a park for the elite who have already violated the CRZ by constructing their private buildings. They are making money out of it. It is of interest and is profitable to the Chief Minister and his family.
First they tried through the Malaysian contracts, then through Tsunami and now they are coming through the Adyar creek. We will fight back. We will protest again. But soon the government will change and will throw away the Adyar project to trashes.
Are you sure the government will change?
I’m sure Jayalalithaath will come to power. Till then we just have to postpone the construction.
But even the Jayalalithaa government has tried to shift the fishing hamlets in the past. They may do it again if they come to power. What will your policy be then?
Our ambition is to make people more politicized than the politicians. We want people to be politically aware. We will not let the politicians do what they like. These politicians are destroying livelihoods with their rotten policies. The government needs to take it back. If they don’t, we will take to arms. In fact, it is happening now to threaten to pressurize democratic politics. These politicians have a dagger hanging on their head. If they upset us, all hell will break loose.
Reclaim politics, reclaim democracy and make space for the young to question.
Is the passion to fight back still alive in the fishing community?
I am a powerful optimist. We will re-motivate our fisher folk and we will fight. We are the Maoists. People are our strength. Power of the media and the politicians is temporary. It fluctuates. But the power of the people is steady and strong. I have full faith in my people. We will fight.
How will the expansion of the Chennai Port affect the fishing hamlets?
Every expansion of the harbour, based on dredging of the shore, leads to breaking of roads all along the shore. Fishing hamlets have to face all the problems because of that.
The Multinational Companies (MNCs) fill up the shipyards with monstrous containers. These containers and the huge trucks (in which the containers are carried form the harbour to the city and vice versa) are all along the fishing harbours, right outside the fishermen houses. Children play and get hurt in that area. They may even get killed. No fishing hamlet can be peaceful this way.
The fishing community is known to be very vociferous. Why are they not protesting now?
These MNCs bribe the chiefs of the fishing hamlets. They give them Rs. 1000 each and a few lakhs for the temple festivals.
What according to you is the solution to this problem?
Burn all the containers. We should burn all the containers and all the politicians. Till 20 kilometers from the fishing hamlets, there should be containers.
But the expansion of the Chennai Port is planned. How do you plan to stop it?
There is an irony in what the politicians say. They can’t displace the fisher folk but, the construction of the bridge has already started and in the process, the fishermen will be displaced. This is what the local bureaucrats want.
They have tried to displace us several times before too. Some well renowned Non-governmental Organisations (NGOs), which I will not name, are getting funds from America to spread rumors that the houses will be displaced. They print pamphlets and spread the word around to get more funds from these foreign countries.
The politicians will save their faces when the fishermen will resist. No politician will dare go against our wishes.
How has the government tried to displace the fishermen in the past?
In 2003, Jayalalithaa (the then Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu) had a joint venture with the Malaysian Construction Board. The fishermen got a blueprint of the document and came to us (PUCL). The plan was to evict the fishermen and build foreign embassies and hotels there (Nochikuppam). We exposed the document through all the media. The venture was stopped. The document was exposed through the local as well as the English media. But most of the English media refused to believe us. They needed authorization.
Then in 2004, Jayalalithaa signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the Mr. Samy Velu (he is a Malaysian of Tamil origin and belonged to the Malaysian Indian Congress party), minister in the Malaysian government. This information was picked up seriously by the fishermen. On January 15, 2004, the leaders of the fisher organizations of all 19 hamlets met and had all the media to publish/telecast the information. 15 January onwards, we had these meetings every week.
We approach the media because the Tamil Nadu media is very strong. They reach out to every single person in the state including the rural areas.
Haven’t the fishermen taken to arms?
We are not for raising them to arms.
In 1985, MGR government tried to remove the fishing hamlets. The fishermen clashed with the police on Kamaraj Salai. They wanted to kill Director General of Police Walter Deva Ram. The fisherwomen saved him. In return, on December 4, the police killed 7 fishermen. That was the price given to the fishermen for saving the lives of a policeman.
In 2004, the fishermen were ready to fight. All the ministers travel through this road Kamaraj Salai. If the fishermen come down on this road, many deaths will occur. We make sure that these don’t come out on the road. If they do, then there will be no stopping them.
The fishermen have been struggling for long. Have you tried to persuade the government to change the policy towards the fishing community?
They talk about beautification of the Marina beach. And they want to achieve it by removing the fishermen. Fishermen are ready to become martyrs for it.
The White House sent a 5 page letter to the Chief Minister telling him not to evict the fishermen. The scheme (beautification) was then withdrawn. Events have happened in the past and we deal with the government on our own. So now, what right do these NGOs have to spread the rumors that the houses will be displaced?
The government says that the fishing hamlets violate the Coastal Regulation Zone Act that’s why they want to move these hamlets.
On December 26, 2004, the Tsunami came. It caused many deaths. The bureaucrats then adopted the Coastal Regulation Zone Act as a weapon against the fishermen. They gave notice to remove the fishermen from 5 kilo meters from the high tide area.
All the traditional hamlets are next to the shore. These are needed by the fishermen to fish. This is their mode of survival. Their livelihoods are based on that. The land based bureaucrats know nothing about the sea men.
People of the sea can’t be understood by the people of the land. Their relations of the production can’t be understood by the intelligentsia of the land. All the IAS, IPS officers are land based. They don’t understand the people of the sea. They occupy the chairs of decision making in Delhi and elsewhere.
When the government’s Malaysian project failed, they came up with the CRZ.
How did you protest against this?
We organized rallies and demanded that the new CRZ policy should be for the new private commercial profit based projects and not for the fishermen who are the traditional owners. These people can’t be displaced. On March 16, 2005, we gave this proposal to Jayalalithaa.
PUCL filed a case which went up to the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court gave direction to organize public consultation in the states by the participation of NGOs in which 6 PUCL members participated.
In Tamil Nadu, PUCL organizes meetings. We organized 8 meetings, from 18 to 21 March 2005, in Tamil Nadu and Puducherry. Leaders from all coastal districts attended this meeting. Invitation was also sent to the government and Jayalalithaa sent district collectors and fishery department representatives to these meetings. We also met the director of Tsunami relief and rehabilitation in the Secretariats.
Were these meetings fruitful? Did the government act upon it?
On March 25, 2005, Jayalalithaa announced a statement under section 1(10) (according to him, under this section, no opposition party can either oppose or change the statement) that the fishermen shouldn’t be shifted from the shore because of the nature of their profession.
On March 30, the government of Tamil Nadu released an order announcing the same.
Haven’t these orders been implemented? Why are the fishermen still against the government?
In April 2005, the government said that in the cities, the fishermen should be moved at least 500 meters away from the sea. They build commercial buildings in this area but want the fishermen to move away from the sea.
In 2005, the Collector of Chennai said that the houses in the fishing hamlets are old and are dilapidated so they will be given new houses. The fishermen were given the assurance that their houses won’t be shifted. They allotted maps, made model houses, did everything but the construction hasn’t started yet. This is bureaucracy.
An elevated bridge along the Adyar Creek is under construction. What steps are you taking to prevent the fishermen families from getting displaced there?
Who is getting displaced? We are not going anywhere. I have been in activism for four decades now. They can’t build the elevated bridge till the time we want.
What is the Adyar creek project?
The Adyar Poonga project was launched by Karunanidhi in 2006. It is a 100 Crore project. They want to make a park for the elite who have already violated the CRZ by constructing their private buildings. They are making money out of it. It is of interest and is profitable to the Chief Minister and his family.
First they tried through the Malaysian contracts, then through Tsunami and now they are coming through the Adyar creek. We will fight back. We will protest again. But soon the government will change and will throw away the Adyar project to trashes.
Are you sure the government will change?
I’m sure Jayalalithaath will come to power. Till then we just have to postpone the construction.
But even the Jayalalithaa government has tried to shift the fishing hamlets in the past. They may do it again if they come to power. What will your policy be then?
Our ambition is to make people more politicized than the politicians. We want people to be politically aware. We will not let the politicians do what they like. These politicians are destroying livelihoods with their rotten policies. The government needs to take it back. If they don’t, we will take to arms. In fact, it is happening now to threaten to pressurize democratic politics. These politicians have a dagger hanging on their head. If they upset us, all hell will break loose.
Reclaim politics, reclaim democracy and make space for the young to question.
Is the passion to fight back still alive in the fishing community?
I am a powerful optimist. We will re-motivate our fisher folk and we will fight. We are the Maoists. People are our strength. Power of the media and the politicians is temporary. It fluctuates. But the power of the people is steady and strong. I have full faith in my people. We will fight.
CPI-M banks on Jayalalithaa
Chennai: All-India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK) and the Communist Party of India (Marxist) CPI(M) formed an alliance in Tamil Nadu on December 5 for the next Lok Sabha elections.
CPI(M) general secretary Prakash Karat and AIADMK chief J. Jayalalithaa held a meeting at latter’s residence and decided to form a strong opposition to jointly fight the General Elections, early next year, in Tamil Nadu.
W. R. Wardharajan, CPI(M) Central Committee member said, “The Central committee has decided to work for defeating Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and rejecting Congress in the next General Elections.”
The Communist parties broke the alliance at the Centre with the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government after the Congress went ahead with the Nuclear Deal with the Unites States of America.
“The global meltdown, its aftermath and disastrous economic policies are the main focus of the UPA and it is pushing the financial sector,” Wardharajan said. “We work for the people. We are more concerned about their issues,” he added.
The two parties will work out the election tactics state wise. Since CPI(M) has a strong hold in Kerala, West Bengal and Tripura, they will fight both the Congress and the BJP there, Wardharajan said. Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu are important states for the CPI(M). The tactics for Andhra Pradesh have been worked out and Communist Party of India (CPI), CPI(M) and Telugu Desam Party (TDP) will coordinate there.
“We have a strong force in these two states (Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu) and we can successfully fight to win,” he said.
AIADMK had an alliance with BJP in 2004 and 2006. After 2006 Tamil Nadu Assembly Elections, the alliance broke. During 2004 to 2006, AIADMK was successful in retrieving its mass base which was eroded in 2004 resulting in its complete rout in Lok Sabha polls. Now there are constant attempts by the BJP to form an alliance with AIADMK again. “AIADMK is not responding to the Right party’s requests,” Warhdharajan said. (AIADMK officials were not available for comment)
“To weaken the BJP from getting a foothold in Tamil Nadu and to take on Congress, CPI(M) - AIADMK alliance is the best choice,” Wardharajan said.
CPI(M) believes that the BJP is reviving its Hindutava plan through the terror blasts for gaining political advantage. The Left party’s effort will be to rally secular democratic parties who are opposed to both BJP and Congress in the states.
Wardharajan said, “We have a regional interest. All parties sharing power at the centre are making compromises with the Congress and the BJP.”
The two newly alligned parties have not yet discussed the constituencies but will soon make evaluation with the proposals.
Broadly, CPI(M) will be focusing on communalism and terrorism, rural distress and global economic meltdown in the coming elections.
Party Workers
On asked whether the party workers of the two parties will be willing to work together, Wardharajan said, “Dialogue with the AIADMK is on to sort the differences. We are trying to put a common plank comprising of peoples issues. We are narrowing down the differences and keeping off the divergent views away from the election campaign.”
Ram Sethu
“AIADMK earlier championed the cause as part of the election manifesto. Now, it is opposing the execution of the project. Even the UPA is re-thinking and looking for alternative allignment. The Tamil Nadu Chief Minister (M. Karunanidhi) is also open to choosing a different allignment and even naming the project as Ram Sethu. We will discuss these issues with them,” Wardharajan said.
The CPI(M) has formally ended its ties with the ruling Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) and had finalized AIADMK, Janata Dal (Secular) (JD-S) and TDP as its allies. MDMKis already with the Left, with AIADMK trying to rope in other Parties for forming a strong opposition front to defeat DMK in the General elections.
CPI(M) general secretary Prakash Karat and AIADMK chief J. Jayalalithaa held a meeting at latter’s residence and decided to form a strong opposition to jointly fight the General Elections, early next year, in Tamil Nadu.
W. R. Wardharajan, CPI(M) Central Committee member said, “The Central committee has decided to work for defeating Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and rejecting Congress in the next General Elections.”
The Communist parties broke the alliance at the Centre with the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government after the Congress went ahead with the Nuclear Deal with the Unites States of America.
“The global meltdown, its aftermath and disastrous economic policies are the main focus of the UPA and it is pushing the financial sector,” Wardharajan said. “We work for the people. We are more concerned about their issues,” he added.
The two parties will work out the election tactics state wise. Since CPI(M) has a strong hold in Kerala, West Bengal and Tripura, they will fight both the Congress and the BJP there, Wardharajan said. Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu are important states for the CPI(M). The tactics for Andhra Pradesh have been worked out and Communist Party of India (CPI), CPI(M) and Telugu Desam Party (TDP) will coordinate there.
“We have a strong force in these two states (Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu) and we can successfully fight to win,” he said.
AIADMK had an alliance with BJP in 2004 and 2006. After 2006 Tamil Nadu Assembly Elections, the alliance broke. During 2004 to 2006, AIADMK was successful in retrieving its mass base which was eroded in 2004 resulting in its complete rout in Lok Sabha polls. Now there are constant attempts by the BJP to form an alliance with AIADMK again. “AIADMK is not responding to the Right party’s requests,” Warhdharajan said. (AIADMK officials were not available for comment)
“To weaken the BJP from getting a foothold in Tamil Nadu and to take on Congress, CPI(M) - AIADMK alliance is the best choice,” Wardharajan said.
CPI(M) believes that the BJP is reviving its Hindutava plan through the terror blasts for gaining political advantage. The Left party’s effort will be to rally secular democratic parties who are opposed to both BJP and Congress in the states.
Wardharajan said, “We have a regional interest. All parties sharing power at the centre are making compromises with the Congress and the BJP.”
The two newly alligned parties have not yet discussed the constituencies but will soon make evaluation with the proposals.
Broadly, CPI(M) will be focusing on communalism and terrorism, rural distress and global economic meltdown in the coming elections.
Party Workers
On asked whether the party workers of the two parties will be willing to work together, Wardharajan said, “Dialogue with the AIADMK is on to sort the differences. We are trying to put a common plank comprising of peoples issues. We are narrowing down the differences and keeping off the divergent views away from the election campaign.”
Ram Sethu
“AIADMK earlier championed the cause as part of the election manifesto. Now, it is opposing the execution of the project. Even the UPA is re-thinking and looking for alternative allignment. The Tamil Nadu Chief Minister (M. Karunanidhi) is also open to choosing a different allignment and even naming the project as Ram Sethu. We will discuss these issues with them,” Wardharajan said.
The CPI(M) has formally ended its ties with the ruling Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) and had finalized AIADMK, Janata Dal (Secular) (JD-S) and TDP as its allies. MDMKis already with the Left, with AIADMK trying to rope in other Parties for forming a strong opposition front to defeat DMK in the General elections.
Waste Wanted
Today is Vasanti’s lucky day. She found two over-ripe guavas in the garbage amassed from the last train. Digging her hand in the huge rug, she pulls out the pale, unappetizing fruits and splashes them with the remnant crystal water of the mineral bottles she collected from the train. Clandestinely, she rests the guavas at the corner of her soiled navy saree, rolls it into a knot and swings it over her shoulder.
Clutching a long broom under her left armpit, she separates all the plastic bottles from the trash, throws them in a crumbling carton, picks up her sack and strides to the end of the platform number two of the Chennai Central station, to deposit the collection.
Her angular body swinging to the rhythm of the tingling sounds of her anklets on bare feet. Jasmine flowers dangling on her dark, unkempt hair, striking a contrast.
“I am a train cleaner. I don’t clean the platform,” Vasanti clarifies as she spreads the ‘Opportunities’ supplement of The Hindu for her food box. She squats in a corner of the sullied platform, joining her colleagues. Resting her aching back against the thick rusted metal beam, she pulls out a rumpled polythene bag, containing her afternoon meal.
A single mother feeding her two sons, on a meager thirty rupees a day wage, she has no choice but to cull out food from the trains while she cleans them.
Before depositing all the plastic she collects from the trains, for which she is paid ten rupees per kilogram, she cumulates the water from the bottles into one for her consumption.
A streak of red sindoor shimmering on the parting of her oiled hair, hiding the scalp, a big maroon bindi decorated on her sun burnt forehead, chiming glass bangles and a nose pin, all symbolic of her wedded status, yet, no mention of her husband.
“Her husband left her,” Laxmi, Vasanti’s unhesitant thirty-five year old colleague volunteered. “Her younger son is tenth fail and has polio. He doesn’t work. And her older son is a coolie but he doesn’t bring home any money,” she adds.
Amidst a strong stench of fish and filth, Vasanti, shy and embarrassed, opens the lid of the little white plastic box. Half filled with boiled rice and curry, she delves her fingers in the food unenthusiastically, as if the question, in a jiffy, killed her appetite.
Vasanti and Laxmi, two of the many who migrate to the cities in search of work, end up getting exploited under private contractors as much as in their homes. Working for twelve hours a day and cleaning about fifteen to eighteen trains daily, many like Vasanti make no more than Rs. 1000 per month. To augment this meager income, they sell used plastic.
As Vasanti sat harmlessly swallowing her rice-curry, a sturdy figure, in mud-coloured uniform, her supervisor, came to inspect the stranger she is spilling the beans to.
“Don’t tell your name,” he warned Vasanti in his heavy voice, “I will tell the boss.”
Vasanti nods, without meeting his eyes.
“Ya, Ya, we know what to do. Let us eat our food,” Laxmi, evidently the more outspoken one, playfully shoos him off.
Foxing suspicious glances, the man leaves.
With no trade union or workers’ group to eavesdrop their grievances, these women work obstinately, day after day. Every year, the railway department releases tenders for these secondary jobs on the station. The lowest bidder wins.
Vasanti, a fourth standard drop out, now thirty-two years old, succumbs to all the injustices inflicted on her. “I may loose my jobs if I protest. There is no one to support me,” she says helplessly. “My son works, but he drowns it all away in alcohol,” Vasanti renounced.
Holding the rim of her saree she whispers that the money for this uniform too came from her own pocket. “I had to pay hundred rupees to the contractor for this,” she quetches.
With a stony face, she rattles how the women working under the present contract have no medical aid, even when hurt on the job. Without any protective gear, they soil their hands; the minimum wage rules are flouted, even though the tenders are approved by the State governments. There is no limit on the working hours or days. If they fall sick, chances are that someone else will replace them within a day.
Vasanti unties the knot on her saree’s edge and picks one guava, the smaller one. Effortlessly, she squishes it into two portions and hands one to Laxmi who gayly accepts it.
As Vasanti takes the first bite her eyes become glassy with tears. Her hollow stare like a dark tunnel with no light at the end, tells many abject dreams, as she slowly chews the soft fruit pulp.
“This one,” she ties the other guava in her saree knot, “I will give to my younger son.”
In the ado of the busy cities, hiding behind the rich-coloured sarees, many Vasantis kill their dreams.
Clutching a long broom under her left armpit, she separates all the plastic bottles from the trash, throws them in a crumbling carton, picks up her sack and strides to the end of the platform number two of the Chennai Central station, to deposit the collection.
Her angular body swinging to the rhythm of the tingling sounds of her anklets on bare feet. Jasmine flowers dangling on her dark, unkempt hair, striking a contrast.
“I am a train cleaner. I don’t clean the platform,” Vasanti clarifies as she spreads the ‘Opportunities’ supplement of The Hindu for her food box. She squats in a corner of the sullied platform, joining her colleagues. Resting her aching back against the thick rusted metal beam, she pulls out a rumpled polythene bag, containing her afternoon meal.
A single mother feeding her two sons, on a meager thirty rupees a day wage, she has no choice but to cull out food from the trains while she cleans them.
Before depositing all the plastic she collects from the trains, for which she is paid ten rupees per kilogram, she cumulates the water from the bottles into one for her consumption.
A streak of red sindoor shimmering on the parting of her oiled hair, hiding the scalp, a big maroon bindi decorated on her sun burnt forehead, chiming glass bangles and a nose pin, all symbolic of her wedded status, yet, no mention of her husband.
“Her husband left her,” Laxmi, Vasanti’s unhesitant thirty-five year old colleague volunteered. “Her younger son is tenth fail and has polio. He doesn’t work. And her older son is a coolie but he doesn’t bring home any money,” she adds.
Amidst a strong stench of fish and filth, Vasanti, shy and embarrassed, opens the lid of the little white plastic box. Half filled with boiled rice and curry, she delves her fingers in the food unenthusiastically, as if the question, in a jiffy, killed her appetite.
Vasanti and Laxmi, two of the many who migrate to the cities in search of work, end up getting exploited under private contractors as much as in their homes. Working for twelve hours a day and cleaning about fifteen to eighteen trains daily, many like Vasanti make no more than Rs. 1000 per month. To augment this meager income, they sell used plastic.
As Vasanti sat harmlessly swallowing her rice-curry, a sturdy figure, in mud-coloured uniform, her supervisor, came to inspect the stranger she is spilling the beans to.
“Don’t tell your name,” he warned Vasanti in his heavy voice, “I will tell the boss.”
Vasanti nods, without meeting his eyes.
“Ya, Ya, we know what to do. Let us eat our food,” Laxmi, evidently the more outspoken one, playfully shoos him off.
Foxing suspicious glances, the man leaves.
With no trade union or workers’ group to eavesdrop their grievances, these women work obstinately, day after day. Every year, the railway department releases tenders for these secondary jobs on the station. The lowest bidder wins.
Vasanti, a fourth standard drop out, now thirty-two years old, succumbs to all the injustices inflicted on her. “I may loose my jobs if I protest. There is no one to support me,” she says helplessly. “My son works, but he drowns it all away in alcohol,” Vasanti renounced.
Holding the rim of her saree she whispers that the money for this uniform too came from her own pocket. “I had to pay hundred rupees to the contractor for this,” she quetches.
With a stony face, she rattles how the women working under the present contract have no medical aid, even when hurt on the job. Without any protective gear, they soil their hands; the minimum wage rules are flouted, even though the tenders are approved by the State governments. There is no limit on the working hours or days. If they fall sick, chances are that someone else will replace them within a day.
Vasanti unties the knot on her saree’s edge and picks one guava, the smaller one. Effortlessly, she squishes it into two portions and hands one to Laxmi who gayly accepts it.
As Vasanti takes the first bite her eyes become glassy with tears. Her hollow stare like a dark tunnel with no light at the end, tells many abject dreams, as she slowly chews the soft fruit pulp.
“This one,” she ties the other guava in her saree knot, “I will give to my younger son.”
In the ado of the busy cities, hiding behind the rich-coloured sarees, many Vasantis kill their dreams.
Escape to Paradise
Like a fairy tale land described in children’s books, Yelagiri is a place on earth where the stars shine bright and the path is lit by moonlight. The only sound you hear is the rustling of the leaves when the wind plays with it and the croaks of frogs. The crushing of red sand under your footsteps makes the dogs bark. The tingling of cowbells completes it all. No boundaries, no restrictions. Nothing could be more perfect.
Coming from a highly commercialized city, Delhi, my friend Ruhi and I had only read about such un-invaded beauty in Ruskin Bond’s novels. Situated amidst four mountains of the Eastern Ghats in Tamil Nadu, Yelagiri is a paradise for trekkers and heaven for romantics.
After scaling the breath taking 14 hairpin curves carved out on a hill, we reach the Yelagiri hilltop. Situated at a height of 920m above sea level, Yelagiri is one of the quieter hill-stations of this state. As we drive uphill, the magnificent view only gets better. With dense, tall eucalyptus tree on one side and the deep downfall on the other, I could feel my pulse rising.
The scenic beauty of this place can be best relished by traveling by road, so the two of us zeroed down on taking a bus. With the wind blowing in our faces and the rickety vehicle swerving at every curve as it scaled the single lane road, an indescribable mixed feeling of fear and exhilaration persisted.
The easy-paced life of this cluster of villages inhabited by the tribals, the originals of Yelagiri, can be easily sensed. With mostly bicyclers and pedestrians seen on the smooth tarred road, the only polluting vehicles spotted there were the private busses and the SUVs. Small road side food and tea stalls line the sidewalk with few concrete shops. A dominating red bricked police station, right opposite the tourist information centre is hard to miss.
As we stride uphill, the shops become scarce and the tarred road gradually narrows down to a muddy path. Small stretches of paddy amidst wild bushes and fallen trees, fenced with barbed wire and granite stone, signals the existence of humans in the area.
Stationing our bag packs at the YMCA camp, and filling our bellies with light rice and rasam, we decided to take a stroll around the campus at mid-night. As the glowbugs decorated our path, we walked down the red sandy slope, anxious, scared and awed.
The continuous hissing sound of the night and the dim yellow light from the bugs flying from one bush to the other was rather spooky. The falling branches from the still trees and the grim shapes of the dark clouds reminded me of all the childhood ghost stories. My mother’s voice echoed in my mind, “Don’t go near the trees at night, evil spirits live on them.”
My mind was repelling my heart. Ordering my body to turn around this very instant and hide in the safe concrete room of the hotel. But the rebel heart won. With the eyes wanting to capture more, the footsteps did not stop.
Hiding my goose bumps under my thin pale jacket in the cool of the night, I turn around to Ruhi who was happily bending, almost falling, over a bush to take a closer look at a tiny creepy glowbug.
A bleak scratching and huffing sound caught my already up antennas. I swing around to see nothing at all. I dug my stone cold fingers in my friends arm. No more bothered to conceal my fears, I signaled her to RUN!
Straining her eyes my friend saw a baby pig scratching its back against a log of wood. Well, my flushed face was the reason for her loud laughter for the next two hours.
As the sun rose from behind the sturdy mountains the next morning, we stood there with our jaws dropped at the splendid scenery. The unpolluted air filled our senses. Yet another laid-back, relaxed day welcomed us.
About six-seven kilometers down the hill from the YMCA camp is Yelagiri’s famous boat park. Bubbling like kids on their first ride at the Merry-go-round, we jumped into a bright blue paddle boat. Pushing the paddle and turning the metal bar for changing directions, we circumferenced the wide lake. Our half-an-hour ride for Rs.50 got over in less than twenty minutes as all our excitement washed away in straining to rotate the paddle. Huffing and puffing, we somehow managed to complete one round of the lake. But our over-exercised aching calves did not complain after the sight of huge lotus flowers sprouting from the edge of a tiny grassy patch in the lake.
After all the labour, our growling stomachs pulled us towards food. With hardly any shops or restaurants, the best food available in Yelagiri can be found at the shadiest places. Under tiny sheds and open kitchens, we did not even think twice as we hogged like dogs on our yummy meals and fried fish. The unadulterated taste of the fruits, brought directly from the thick forests and sold at negotiable prices on the roadside, is priceless.
Yelagiri has a huge Muslim population and Hindi is often spoken by them. Much to our surprise, several small shops and businesses in Yelagiri are owned and run by women.
From honey production and packaging to managing small tea shops, women take the lead. Thanks to the various Self Help Groups that give the much needed opportunity to the women in various fields. One of the many SHGs in Yelagiri won the award for the best SHG in Tamil Nadu for 2008.
Licking the sweet mountain fresh honey, we stroll down the only road and reach the tourist information centre. If all the boat paddeling was not enough, for Rs.30 an hour, we hired two bicycles to ride around the place. Humming our own tunes and balancing on two thin wheels, we could smell the fresh breeze while riding down the slope. The steeper the slope, the more difficult it was to ride the bicycle up the same slope. Dragging the cycle more than paddling it, we stopped in the middle of the road every five minutes to point and gape at things so new to us. Midway teas and snacks at the shadiest places gave the final touches of perfection to the whole trip.
Zero pollution, zero crime rates, no internet, no mobile phones and no deadlines. The rawness of the place grips you. With strangers passing gentle smiles and government officials giving away bicycles without filling forms, you sometimes wonder if this poor man’s nirvana is a fragment of your imagination.
Coming from a highly commercialized city, Delhi, my friend Ruhi and I had only read about such un-invaded beauty in Ruskin Bond’s novels. Situated amidst four mountains of the Eastern Ghats in Tamil Nadu, Yelagiri is a paradise for trekkers and heaven for romantics.
After scaling the breath taking 14 hairpin curves carved out on a hill, we reach the Yelagiri hilltop. Situated at a height of 920m above sea level, Yelagiri is one of the quieter hill-stations of this state. As we drive uphill, the magnificent view only gets better. With dense, tall eucalyptus tree on one side and the deep downfall on the other, I could feel my pulse rising.
The scenic beauty of this place can be best relished by traveling by road, so the two of us zeroed down on taking a bus. With the wind blowing in our faces and the rickety vehicle swerving at every curve as it scaled the single lane road, an indescribable mixed feeling of fear and exhilaration persisted.
The easy-paced life of this cluster of villages inhabited by the tribals, the originals of Yelagiri, can be easily sensed. With mostly bicyclers and pedestrians seen on the smooth tarred road, the only polluting vehicles spotted there were the private busses and the SUVs. Small road side food and tea stalls line the sidewalk with few concrete shops. A dominating red bricked police station, right opposite the tourist information centre is hard to miss.
As we stride uphill, the shops become scarce and the tarred road gradually narrows down to a muddy path. Small stretches of paddy amidst wild bushes and fallen trees, fenced with barbed wire and granite stone, signals the existence of humans in the area.
Stationing our bag packs at the YMCA camp, and filling our bellies with light rice and rasam, we decided to take a stroll around the campus at mid-night. As the glowbugs decorated our path, we walked down the red sandy slope, anxious, scared and awed.
The continuous hissing sound of the night and the dim yellow light from the bugs flying from one bush to the other was rather spooky. The falling branches from the still trees and the grim shapes of the dark clouds reminded me of all the childhood ghost stories. My mother’s voice echoed in my mind, “Don’t go near the trees at night, evil spirits live on them.”
My mind was repelling my heart. Ordering my body to turn around this very instant and hide in the safe concrete room of the hotel. But the rebel heart won. With the eyes wanting to capture more, the footsteps did not stop.
Hiding my goose bumps under my thin pale jacket in the cool of the night, I turn around to Ruhi who was happily bending, almost falling, over a bush to take a closer look at a tiny creepy glowbug.
A bleak scratching and huffing sound caught my already up antennas. I swing around to see nothing at all. I dug my stone cold fingers in my friends arm. No more bothered to conceal my fears, I signaled her to RUN!
Straining her eyes my friend saw a baby pig scratching its back against a log of wood. Well, my flushed face was the reason for her loud laughter for the next two hours.
As the sun rose from behind the sturdy mountains the next morning, we stood there with our jaws dropped at the splendid scenery. The unpolluted air filled our senses. Yet another laid-back, relaxed day welcomed us.
About six-seven kilometers down the hill from the YMCA camp is Yelagiri’s famous boat park. Bubbling like kids on their first ride at the Merry-go-round, we jumped into a bright blue paddle boat. Pushing the paddle and turning the metal bar for changing directions, we circumferenced the wide lake. Our half-an-hour ride for Rs.50 got over in less than twenty minutes as all our excitement washed away in straining to rotate the paddle. Huffing and puffing, we somehow managed to complete one round of the lake. But our over-exercised aching calves did not complain after the sight of huge lotus flowers sprouting from the edge of a tiny grassy patch in the lake.
After all the labour, our growling stomachs pulled us towards food. With hardly any shops or restaurants, the best food available in Yelagiri can be found at the shadiest places. Under tiny sheds and open kitchens, we did not even think twice as we hogged like dogs on our yummy meals and fried fish. The unadulterated taste of the fruits, brought directly from the thick forests and sold at negotiable prices on the roadside, is priceless.
Yelagiri has a huge Muslim population and Hindi is often spoken by them. Much to our surprise, several small shops and businesses in Yelagiri are owned and run by women.
From honey production and packaging to managing small tea shops, women take the lead. Thanks to the various Self Help Groups that give the much needed opportunity to the women in various fields. One of the many SHGs in Yelagiri won the award for the best SHG in Tamil Nadu for 2008.
Licking the sweet mountain fresh honey, we stroll down the only road and reach the tourist information centre. If all the boat paddeling was not enough, for Rs.30 an hour, we hired two bicycles to ride around the place. Humming our own tunes and balancing on two thin wheels, we could smell the fresh breeze while riding down the slope. The steeper the slope, the more difficult it was to ride the bicycle up the same slope. Dragging the cycle more than paddling it, we stopped in the middle of the road every five minutes to point and gape at things so new to us. Midway teas and snacks at the shadiest places gave the final touches of perfection to the whole trip.
Zero pollution, zero crime rates, no internet, no mobile phones and no deadlines. The rawness of the place grips you. With strangers passing gentle smiles and government officials giving away bicycles without filling forms, you sometimes wonder if this poor man’s nirvana is a fragment of your imagination.
Accursed Motherhood
A woman dies every five minutes in India because of pregnancy-related causes, for maladies which are absolutely curable, says a recent report by the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF).
The maternal mortality ratio or maternal deaths per 100,000 live births in one year in India is 540 and rises to 619 in rural areas (UNICEF, 1998-1999). Maternal mortality is generally defined as the death of a woman during pregnancy or delivery or within 42 days after the end of pregnancy from a pregnancy-related cause.
Nearly 136,000 maternal deaths occur annually in India, mostly due to anemia and haemorrhage. Studies have found that between 50 and 90 percent of all pregnant women in India suffer from anemia which can be treated relatively simply and inexpensively with the intake of iron tablets.
Dr. Anoop Nangia, who works in a public hospital in Delhi says, "Pregnant women, infants and young children have a high demand but low dietary intake of iron. Poor absorption of iron, or blood loss, from repeated childbirth or heavy menstruation, reduces the iron content in the body causing anemia."
UNICEF report, for 1998-99, states that 47 percent of maternal deaths in rural India are attributed to excessive bleeding and anaemia ensuing from poor nutritional practices. Severe anemia accounts for 20 percent of all maternal deaths in India (The World Bank, 1996). It also increases the chance of dying from a hemorrhage during labour.
Excessive bleeding during delivery, obstructed and prolonged labor, disorders caused by high blood pressure, infections because of unhygienic conditions and occupation-linked ailments because of high pollution and poor sanitation at the workplace also form the prime grounds for the maternal deaths.
Sangeeta Sabharwal, who works for a women's non-governmental organisation in Delhi, says, "With little care and precaution, all these ailments can be prevented with ease. But it is sheer ignorance, especially among the poor, that leads to the maternal deaths."
India is one of the few countries in the world where women have almost the same life expectancy as men. Yet, a woman's health largely depends on her social standing. "It is a shame for India to let its women die when they have a child in their womb," adds Sabharwal.
The reasons for high maternal mortality are not purely medical. The social, cultural and economic barriers in a woman's life stand as a hurdle even before she is born, she fears getting killed in her mother's womb. If born, she is considered an economic burden in the family. Her right to education and nutritious food is seldom given to her and she is confined to the household. The constant subordination by her father, brother, husband and then her son leaves a scarring impact on her overall physical and mental health. Her life is repressed to a continuous struggle for survival.
Dr. K. Nagraj, a development economist says, "Females are the stronger sex, if given a chance to live, they fare much better than men. But unfortunately, the social structures of our society don't give the women the much deserved opportunity to grow."
Poor health of women has repercussions on her family as well. An unhealthy female is more likely to give birth to an unhealthy child. Her potential to productively contribute to the family also reduces.
Feminist writer V Geeta says, "Earlier living within a community used to be the main source of knowledge. Our lifestyle changes have led to more ignorance. The culture of eating healthy food is decaying, especially among working women who have extra responsibility."
Lack of health care, especially in the rural areas, is the leading reason for high maternal mortality ratios in India, reported The World Bank in 1996. Various governments over the years have made efforts to make the health care accessible in all districts but have made slender progress.
The detailed exposure of the sorry state of the Indian Health System in the National Health Policy (NHP) 2002 streamlined the government's goals. Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) replaced Health for All 2000. Simultaneously, the National Rural Health Mission (NRHM) 2005, initiated by the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government, has gained some mileage recently. The NRHM underlines reducing the infant and maternal mortality rates as their main aim and henceforth, the whole programme is woven around this central idea.
Schemes such as Accredited Social Health Activist (ASHA), where volunteers escort expectant mothers to private or public hospitals and both - the volunteer and the expecting mother - are given incentives, started at the grassroots. Unfortunately, even after crossing three years, the scheme, could not make much headway.
At many places, the volunteers under ASHA were not given either proper training or the drug kits. In the States, the local language version of the NRHM is not available and has not been understood by many. Health problems vary greatly by state but the rigidity of the programme makes it hard for the states to mould it according to their requirements. NRHM's design and budgeting leaves little creative freedom for States.
The entire mission has a provision of Rs 12,000 crore in the 2008-09 national Budget. The funds for the programme move from the Centre to a State and from the State to the district. This gives rise to red-tapism and opens the doors for wide corruption. Corrupt practices under NRHM shake the foundation of an already crippled health system.
Given the wide variation in cultures, religions, and levels of development among the States, women's health also varies from State to State. Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Jharkhand, Orissa, Uttar Pradesh and Bihar have a comparatively high maternal mortality. Madhya Pradesh and Orissa have ratios over 700 when compared with Kerala with the lowest ratio of 87.
A strong behavioral change along with dedicated and persistent efforts by the respective governments is required to combat the problem by ensuring implementation of safeguard measures. Policy measures that guarantee adult female literacy in rural areas, public health clinics in every village, nutritional food for pregnant women and keep a check on female infanticide can keep address the problem and pave way for a healthier environment for women in the country.
The maternal mortality ratio or maternal deaths per 100,000 live births in one year in India is 540 and rises to 619 in rural areas (UNICEF, 1998-1999). Maternal mortality is generally defined as the death of a woman during pregnancy or delivery or within 42 days after the end of pregnancy from a pregnancy-related cause.
Nearly 136,000 maternal deaths occur annually in India, mostly due to anemia and haemorrhage. Studies have found that between 50 and 90 percent of all pregnant women in India suffer from anemia which can be treated relatively simply and inexpensively with the intake of iron tablets.
Dr. Anoop Nangia, who works in a public hospital in Delhi says, "Pregnant women, infants and young children have a high demand but low dietary intake of iron. Poor absorption of iron, or blood loss, from repeated childbirth or heavy menstruation, reduces the iron content in the body causing anemia."
UNICEF report, for 1998-99, states that 47 percent of maternal deaths in rural India are attributed to excessive bleeding and anaemia ensuing from poor nutritional practices. Severe anemia accounts for 20 percent of all maternal deaths in India (The World Bank, 1996). It also increases the chance of dying from a hemorrhage during labour.
Excessive bleeding during delivery, obstructed and prolonged labor, disorders caused by high blood pressure, infections because of unhygienic conditions and occupation-linked ailments because of high pollution and poor sanitation at the workplace also form the prime grounds for the maternal deaths.
Sangeeta Sabharwal, who works for a women's non-governmental organisation in Delhi, says, "With little care and precaution, all these ailments can be prevented with ease. But it is sheer ignorance, especially among the poor, that leads to the maternal deaths."
India is one of the few countries in the world where women have almost the same life expectancy as men. Yet, a woman's health largely depends on her social standing. "It is a shame for India to let its women die when they have a child in their womb," adds Sabharwal.
The reasons for high maternal mortality are not purely medical. The social, cultural and economic barriers in a woman's life stand as a hurdle even before she is born, she fears getting killed in her mother's womb. If born, she is considered an economic burden in the family. Her right to education and nutritious food is seldom given to her and she is confined to the household. The constant subordination by her father, brother, husband and then her son leaves a scarring impact on her overall physical and mental health. Her life is repressed to a continuous struggle for survival.
Dr. K. Nagraj, a development economist says, "Females are the stronger sex, if given a chance to live, they fare much better than men. But unfortunately, the social structures of our society don't give the women the much deserved opportunity to grow."
Poor health of women has repercussions on her family as well. An unhealthy female is more likely to give birth to an unhealthy child. Her potential to productively contribute to the family also reduces.
Feminist writer V Geeta says, "Earlier living within a community used to be the main source of knowledge. Our lifestyle changes have led to more ignorance. The culture of eating healthy food is decaying, especially among working women who have extra responsibility."
Lack of health care, especially in the rural areas, is the leading reason for high maternal mortality ratios in India, reported The World Bank in 1996. Various governments over the years have made efforts to make the health care accessible in all districts but have made slender progress.
The detailed exposure of the sorry state of the Indian Health System in the National Health Policy (NHP) 2002 streamlined the government's goals. Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) replaced Health for All 2000. Simultaneously, the National Rural Health Mission (NRHM) 2005, initiated by the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government, has gained some mileage recently. The NRHM underlines reducing the infant and maternal mortality rates as their main aim and henceforth, the whole programme is woven around this central idea.
Schemes such as Accredited Social Health Activist (ASHA), where volunteers escort expectant mothers to private or public hospitals and both - the volunteer and the expecting mother - are given incentives, started at the grassroots. Unfortunately, even after crossing three years, the scheme, could not make much headway.
At many places, the volunteers under ASHA were not given either proper training or the drug kits. In the States, the local language version of the NRHM is not available and has not been understood by many. Health problems vary greatly by state but the rigidity of the programme makes it hard for the states to mould it according to their requirements. NRHM's design and budgeting leaves little creative freedom for States.
The entire mission has a provision of Rs 12,000 crore in the 2008-09 national Budget. The funds for the programme move from the Centre to a State and from the State to the district. This gives rise to red-tapism and opens the doors for wide corruption. Corrupt practices under NRHM shake the foundation of an already crippled health system.
Given the wide variation in cultures, religions, and levels of development among the States, women's health also varies from State to State. Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Jharkhand, Orissa, Uttar Pradesh and Bihar have a comparatively high maternal mortality. Madhya Pradesh and Orissa have ratios over 700 when compared with Kerala with the lowest ratio of 87.
A strong behavioral change along with dedicated and persistent efforts by the respective governments is required to combat the problem by ensuring implementation of safeguard measures. Policy measures that guarantee adult female literacy in rural areas, public health clinics in every village, nutritional food for pregnant women and keep a check on female infanticide can keep address the problem and pave way for a healthier environment for women in the country.
Mental Health in India
More than 122 thousand people committed suicide in 2007, which corresponds to 14 people killing themselves, every hour in the country. One among five, of these people was a housewife. One in four patients, who visit any health centre, suffers from at least one mental or neurological or behavioural disorder. However, in the absence of any policy on concerns related to mental health care, most of these disorders are neither diagnosed nor treated.
Health is a state subject. WHO defines 'Health' as a "state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity." Mental health is an integral part of this definition.
Present both in rural and urban areas, in developed as well as the developing countries, a mental illness is hard to detect. Once detected, there is often denial by the patient and the people associated with the person, in taking corrective action.
India is in the last six months of the 10th five-year plan. The progress and the transition of its health policies over the years is evident. The Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) control and prevention schemes are taken in a big way by the government, also, the Indian pharmaceutical industry has enjoyed spectacular growth.
The gradual shift from the public health care to private health care system has stemmed medical “brain drain” by giving rise to a massive unorganised health sector. Yet, mental health has remained neglected in this country. Ten five year plans down, there is no policy on mental illness in India
Seeking medical assistance for mental disorders is avoided due to the stigma attached. As a result, most people fall back on the religious and spiritual healing. Those unaware of mental problems, believe the victim's is 'possessed' by a spirit and rely on practices like chanting mantras and drinking holy water, for relief. Mental health experts have often pointed that alternative healing methods may prove helpful for curing minor mental disorders. In severe cases it delays treatment, which may prove fatal.
Abuse of tranquilizers, drugs or alcohol are escape mechanisms mentally ill use, which may eventually become addictions. 91 million alcohol related disorders and 15 million drug abuse disorders, worldwide, were recorded by World Health Organisation (WHO) in 2002. 154 million people in the world, suffer from depression. Alcohol and drug dependence only worsens their situation.
The reluctance to awareness of mental health, plagues both, the afflicted and the physicians. Neither Psychiatry nor Psychology are popular fields of study among doctors. According to the WHO, in 2005 seven to eight million Indians faced serious mental illness and mental disability, yet there were hardly 3,500 psychiatrists in India. They too, were concentrated largely in the south. That works out to 0.4 psychiatrists per 100,000 mentally ill people. The ratio of trained psychiatric nurses to mentally ill people was even poorer at 0.04 per 100,000. Psychologists and social workers fare no better. They are 0.02 per 100,000 patients.
The apathy of the Indian government with regard to the mental health of its people can be seen in governmental hospitals and research institutes. The hospital buildings are in a dilapidated state. Due to a fund crunch, mental health research is minimum. The hospitals are grossly understaffed and the employees working for the care of the mentally ill are not trained for the same.
Health spending, in India, was just 0.83% in 2001, according to WHO. An extensive National Health Policy (NHP) was launched by the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government in 2002, which has a mention of the need for a mental health programme in the country. It says, "Mental health institutions are woefully deficient in physical infrastructure and trained manpower. NHP-2002 will address itself to these deficiencies in the public health sector."
With the NDA government uprooted from power in 2003 and United Progressive Alliance (UPA) nearing the end of their five years at Centre, neither the "physical infrastructure" nor the "trained manpower" at the mental health institutions has seen any improvement. The condition has, in fact, worsened.
In 2001, 28 inmates of Moideen Badusha Mental Home in Erwadi, Tamil Nadu were burnt alive in a fire. They couldn’t escape as they were tied in chains.
Then, the State government closed down unauthorized treatment centres and transferred patients to mental hospitals. A Judicial enquiry probing the incident recommended that five mental health hospitals be set up in the state, including one exclusively for women. The Supreme Court ordered the establishment of one Central government run hospital and one State government run mental health hospital (separate from establishing psychiatric wards in existing hospitals), in each state. Strict enforcement of licensing and regulatory provisions on private psychiatric hospitals was also imposed.
But these government orders have done the Erwadi rescued patients no good. They continue to live in misery, isolated and ostracised. Of the 571 persons who were rescued, 152 were sent to the Government Institute of Mental Health (IMH) in Chennai, the only government hospital for the mentally challenged in Tamil Nadu. The deaths of inmates due to diarrhoea in October 2001, the collapse of the main building a month later, and some incidents of violent inmates killing each other, brought to light the abysmal conditions at the IMH.
An IMH psychiatrist said that the IMH is like a concentration camp. There are no doctors. Patients with physical complications are referred to other government hospitals. Some of the 21 wards do not have toilets. Like in jails, lunch is served at 1 p.m. and dinner at 4 p.m. At 5 p.m. all patients are locked in their wards until 8.30 a.m. the next morning, when they are given breakfast.
A water-borne disease outbreak in IMH in November this year killed four inmates and left 25 with diarrhoea.
No consent, oral or written, of a patient is required for admission for medical treatment. There are no methods to check for involuntary treatment of patients in a psychiatric facility. Also, Indian penal laws still regard attempted suicide a criminal act leaving the mentally ill, vulnerable to harassment.
Mental disorders are the maximum in people aged 15-44 years, which is economically the most productive section of the community. Farmer suicides remain a major cause of worry in the country. The number of mentally ill people untreated, is huge, especially in the rural areas. Suicide rates stay high in Puducherry, Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, West Bengal and Tamil Nadu. Tamil Nadu accounts for 11 per cent of suicides in India
Health is a state subject. WHO defines 'Health' as a "state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity." Mental health is an integral part of this definition.
Present both in rural and urban areas, in developed as well as the developing countries, a mental illness is hard to detect. Once detected, there is often denial by the patient and the people associated with the person, in taking corrective action.
India is in the last six months of the 10th five-year plan. The progress and the transition of its health policies over the years is evident. The Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) control and prevention schemes are taken in a big way by the government, also, the Indian pharmaceutical industry has enjoyed spectacular growth.
The gradual shift from the public health care to private health care system has stemmed medical “brain drain” by giving rise to a massive unorganised health sector. Yet, mental health has remained neglected in this country. Ten five year plans down, there is no policy on mental illness in India
Seeking medical assistance for mental disorders is avoided due to the stigma attached. As a result, most people fall back on the religious and spiritual healing. Those unaware of mental problems, believe the victim's is 'possessed' by a spirit and rely on practices like chanting mantras and drinking holy water, for relief. Mental health experts have often pointed that alternative healing methods may prove helpful for curing minor mental disorders. In severe cases it delays treatment, which may prove fatal.
Abuse of tranquilizers, drugs or alcohol are escape mechanisms mentally ill use, which may eventually become addictions. 91 million alcohol related disorders and 15 million drug abuse disorders, worldwide, were recorded by World Health Organisation (WHO) in 2002. 154 million people in the world, suffer from depression. Alcohol and drug dependence only worsens their situation.
The reluctance to awareness of mental health, plagues both, the afflicted and the physicians. Neither Psychiatry nor Psychology are popular fields of study among doctors. According to the WHO, in 2005 seven to eight million Indians faced serious mental illness and mental disability, yet there were hardly 3,500 psychiatrists in India. They too, were concentrated largely in the south. That works out to 0.4 psychiatrists per 100,000 mentally ill people. The ratio of trained psychiatric nurses to mentally ill people was even poorer at 0.04 per 100,000. Psychologists and social workers fare no better. They are 0.02 per 100,000 patients.
The apathy of the Indian government with regard to the mental health of its people can be seen in governmental hospitals and research institutes. The hospital buildings are in a dilapidated state. Due to a fund crunch, mental health research is minimum. The hospitals are grossly understaffed and the employees working for the care of the mentally ill are not trained for the same.
Health spending, in India, was just 0.83% in 2001, according to WHO. An extensive National Health Policy (NHP) was launched by the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government in 2002, which has a mention of the need for a mental health programme in the country. It says, "Mental health institutions are woefully deficient in physical infrastructure and trained manpower. NHP-2002 will address itself to these deficiencies in the public health sector."
With the NDA government uprooted from power in 2003 and United Progressive Alliance (UPA) nearing the end of their five years at Centre, neither the "physical infrastructure" nor the "trained manpower" at the mental health institutions has seen any improvement. The condition has, in fact, worsened.
In 2001, 28 inmates of Moideen Badusha Mental Home in Erwadi, Tamil Nadu were burnt alive in a fire. They couldn’t escape as they were tied in chains.
Then, the State government closed down unauthorized treatment centres and transferred patients to mental hospitals. A Judicial enquiry probing the incident recommended that five mental health hospitals be set up in the state, including one exclusively for women. The Supreme Court ordered the establishment of one Central government run hospital and one State government run mental health hospital (separate from establishing psychiatric wards in existing hospitals), in each state. Strict enforcement of licensing and regulatory provisions on private psychiatric hospitals was also imposed.
But these government orders have done the Erwadi rescued patients no good. They continue to live in misery, isolated and ostracised. Of the 571 persons who were rescued, 152 were sent to the Government Institute of Mental Health (IMH) in Chennai, the only government hospital for the mentally challenged in Tamil Nadu. The deaths of inmates due to diarrhoea in October 2001, the collapse of the main building a month later, and some incidents of violent inmates killing each other, brought to light the abysmal conditions at the IMH.
An IMH psychiatrist said that the IMH is like a concentration camp. There are no doctors. Patients with physical complications are referred to other government hospitals. Some of the 21 wards do not have toilets. Like in jails, lunch is served at 1 p.m. and dinner at 4 p.m. At 5 p.m. all patients are locked in their wards until 8.30 a.m. the next morning, when they are given breakfast.
A water-borne disease outbreak in IMH in November this year killed four inmates and left 25 with diarrhoea.
No consent, oral or written, of a patient is required for admission for medical treatment. There are no methods to check for involuntary treatment of patients in a psychiatric facility. Also, Indian penal laws still regard attempted suicide a criminal act leaving the mentally ill, vulnerable to harassment.
Mental disorders are the maximum in people aged 15-44 years, which is economically the most productive section of the community. Farmer suicides remain a major cause of worry in the country. The number of mentally ill people untreated, is huge, especially in the rural areas. Suicide rates stay high in Puducherry, Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, West Bengal and Tamil Nadu. Tamil Nadu accounts for 11 per cent of suicides in India
Safe blood still a luxury
More than a decade after the Supreme Court of India came out with the blood safety measures for the blood banks across the country, safe blood still remains outside the ambit of most people.
The approved and accepted blood screening procedures (the Rapid test) followed in the country are outdated and life threatening Hepatitis B (HBV), Hepatitis C (HCV) and Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) may go undetected.
Dr. Saranya Narayan, medical director, Jeevan Blood Bank, Chennai, says, “We make sure that the safety standards are followed throughout. Unlike the other blood banks, we follow the Nucleic Acid Test (NAT) for blood screening.”
NAT, a Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved test for screening donors of whole blood and blood components intended for use in transfusion is developed by Gen-Probe Inc., San Diego, California. It spots very small amount of HBV, HCV and HIV infections in donors’ blood as it reduces the “window period” of infections. Window period is the time between first infection and when the test can reliably detect that infection.
Unfortunately, there is no test available that can detect viruses immediately after someone has been infected, but NAT detects viral genes and not antibodies (a protein produced by certain white blood cells in response to entry into the body of a foreign substance) in blood, leading to earlier detection. If the blood test shows positive results, the donor can be stopped from donating blood. In addition to the window period, antibody testing has a very high rate of false-positives.
Jeevan blood bank in Chennai and Apollo hospitals are the only ones which have adopted NAT for blood screening. This means that very few Indians receiving transfusions can be reasonably confident that the blood they receive is free from infections.
Department of transfusion medicine, Indraprastha Apollo Hospital, New Delhi, concluded after a study conducted in 2006 that with high prevalence of virus in blood of donors, blood safety is a challenge in India.
The blood banks in India are licensed by the Drugs Controller General and are maintained under the dual authority of the Central and the State Governments, still standardised screening procedures lack.
Supreme Court, in 1992, in the case of Common Cause vs. Union of India came out with the blood safety guidelines for the blood banks in the country.
Dr. Saranya says, “Things have improved now. Prior to the Supreme Court judgment, people had no clue about the quality of blood they were buying to save the lives of their loved ones.”
There were hardly any tests done to check the purity of blood till the awareness about transmission of HIV through blood transfusion spread. Till then, anyone in need of blood could walk into a blood bank and buy whatever was given. Only the test to match the blood type was conducted.
“The Supreme Court’s guidelines banned the professional, remunerative blood donors from donating blood. This surely improved the quality of blood at the blood banks. But still, blood that is widely available is not completely safe,” says Dr. Saranya.
A study was conducted by the departments of regional blood transfusion centre, University College of Medical Sciences & Guru Teg Bahadur Hospital, Delhi, India. In 2003, it concluded that blood transfusion has been the transmission mechanism in 15 per cent of total patients infected with HIV between a period of 2000 to 2002 in northern India.
Some of the replacement donors, the study claims, are actually professional donors who are paid by the patient’s relatives instead of blood banks. They sometimes conceal their medical history to donate blood for their relatives. Thus, blood safety still depends highly on open and honest answering of the screening questions.
To make sure that the blood received at Jeevan blood bank is completely pure, Dr. Saranya says, that the donors are supposed to fill a questionnaire at the first stage, where they even have to answer some personal questions about their health and behaviour. If they are not comfortable with the questions, they are free to walk out. Once this first barrier is crossed, donors’ haemoglobin, weight, blood pressure and temperature are checked to assess their physical condition. If the person is fit, only then he or she is allowed to donate blood.
Only a healthy person between the age group of 18 – 60 years, weighing 45 kg or more with haemoglobin content of 12.5 grams per 100cc or more can donate blood.
Although NAT screening cannot completely eliminate the risk of infections transmitted, it has reduced the risk where it has been implemented.
Japan was the first country to implement NAT screening and observed a significant reduction in transmission of the HIV, HBV and HCV. South Africa and a number of EU countries also employ the NAT, the study by Indraprastha Apollo Hospital states.
“Today, we can confidently say that we are the safest blood providers in the country,” Dr. Saranya says.
The application of NAT still hasn’t been made mandatory by the policy makers in India. This tool could provide the next large step in improving the safety of blood supply in our country. Since many of our modern blood banks break the whole blood into multiple components like red cells, plasma and platelets, a single infected unit may transmit the infection to 2 or 3 recipients, further increasing the number of infections transmitted, if NAT is not used.
Dr. Jayalaxmi Shreedhar, technical health advisor, Internews network says “NAT is really expensive. But all those who can afford it shouldn’t be deprived of it. People should be made aware of this technology.”
The approved and accepted blood screening procedures (the Rapid test) followed in the country are outdated and life threatening Hepatitis B (HBV), Hepatitis C (HCV) and Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) may go undetected.
Dr. Saranya Narayan, medical director, Jeevan Blood Bank, Chennai, says, “We make sure that the safety standards are followed throughout. Unlike the other blood banks, we follow the Nucleic Acid Test (NAT) for blood screening.”
NAT, a Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved test for screening donors of whole blood and blood components intended for use in transfusion is developed by Gen-Probe Inc., San Diego, California. It spots very small amount of HBV, HCV and HIV infections in donors’ blood as it reduces the “window period” of infections. Window period is the time between first infection and when the test can reliably detect that infection.
Unfortunately, there is no test available that can detect viruses immediately after someone has been infected, but NAT detects viral genes and not antibodies (a protein produced by certain white blood cells in response to entry into the body of a foreign substance) in blood, leading to earlier detection. If the blood test shows positive results, the donor can be stopped from donating blood. In addition to the window period, antibody testing has a very high rate of false-positives.
Jeevan blood bank in Chennai and Apollo hospitals are the only ones which have adopted NAT for blood screening. This means that very few Indians receiving transfusions can be reasonably confident that the blood they receive is free from infections.
Department of transfusion medicine, Indraprastha Apollo Hospital, New Delhi, concluded after a study conducted in 2006 that with high prevalence of virus in blood of donors, blood safety is a challenge in India.
The blood banks in India are licensed by the Drugs Controller General and are maintained under the dual authority of the Central and the State Governments, still standardised screening procedures lack.
Supreme Court, in 1992, in the case of Common Cause vs. Union of India came out with the blood safety guidelines for the blood banks in the country.
Dr. Saranya says, “Things have improved now. Prior to the Supreme Court judgment, people had no clue about the quality of blood they were buying to save the lives of their loved ones.”
There were hardly any tests done to check the purity of blood till the awareness about transmission of HIV through blood transfusion spread. Till then, anyone in need of blood could walk into a blood bank and buy whatever was given. Only the test to match the blood type was conducted.
“The Supreme Court’s guidelines banned the professional, remunerative blood donors from donating blood. This surely improved the quality of blood at the blood banks. But still, blood that is widely available is not completely safe,” says Dr. Saranya.
A study was conducted by the departments of regional blood transfusion centre, University College of Medical Sciences & Guru Teg Bahadur Hospital, Delhi, India. In 2003, it concluded that blood transfusion has been the transmission mechanism in 15 per cent of total patients infected with HIV between a period of 2000 to 2002 in northern India.
Some of the replacement donors, the study claims, are actually professional donors who are paid by the patient’s relatives instead of blood banks. They sometimes conceal their medical history to donate blood for their relatives. Thus, blood safety still depends highly on open and honest answering of the screening questions.
To make sure that the blood received at Jeevan blood bank is completely pure, Dr. Saranya says, that the donors are supposed to fill a questionnaire at the first stage, where they even have to answer some personal questions about their health and behaviour. If they are not comfortable with the questions, they are free to walk out. Once this first barrier is crossed, donors’ haemoglobin, weight, blood pressure and temperature are checked to assess their physical condition. If the person is fit, only then he or she is allowed to donate blood.
Only a healthy person between the age group of 18 – 60 years, weighing 45 kg or more with haemoglobin content of 12.5 grams per 100cc or more can donate blood.
Although NAT screening cannot completely eliminate the risk of infections transmitted, it has reduced the risk where it has been implemented.
Japan was the first country to implement NAT screening and observed a significant reduction in transmission of the HIV, HBV and HCV. South Africa and a number of EU countries also employ the NAT, the study by Indraprastha Apollo Hospital states.
“Today, we can confidently say that we are the safest blood providers in the country,” Dr. Saranya says.
The application of NAT still hasn’t been made mandatory by the policy makers in India. This tool could provide the next large step in improving the safety of blood supply in our country. Since many of our modern blood banks break the whole blood into multiple components like red cells, plasma and platelets, a single infected unit may transmit the infection to 2 or 3 recipients, further increasing the number of infections transmitted, if NAT is not used.
Dr. Jayalaxmi Shreedhar, technical health advisor, Internews network says “NAT is really expensive. But all those who can afford it shouldn’t be deprived of it. People should be made aware of this technology.”
Stripped off their work choices
To augment the meager income of her family, Geeta rolls beedis. To meet the growing needs and demands of her two children, a seven year old boy and a five year old girl, she has sacrificed her health. Her body aches from the constant sitting her work involves, but the inaccessibility of any medical facility in her village gives her a reason to ignore the pain.
There are many others like Geeta at Velumbet village, employed in beedi making. Health problems like tuberculosis and asthma at an early age of 30 to 35 are very common among them owing to involuntary inhalation of tobacco dust.
“There is no health centre in our village. I don’t go to a doctor,” says Geeta. Paid 60 rupees for rolling 1,000 beedis, she earns approximately 2,000 rupees per month. A factory worker supplies her raw materials once a week and collects the finished products.
Geeta has been rolling beedis for three years now. One of the reasons she sticks to this job is because it allows her to stay at home and work. “I don’t have to go anywhere. This way I can take care of the house too,” she says.
A report was published in May last year about beedi consumption and manufacture patterns. Titled ‘Bidi Smoking and Public Health’, it reveals that India is the world’s largest market of beedi consumers and producers with more than 100 million beedi smokers. The study was carried out over a five-year period and developed by the Healis, Sekhsaria Institute for Public Health based in Mumbai and the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The study also claims that beedis contain higher levels of tar, nicotine and carbon monoxide than regular cigarettes. Also the beedi makers who did not smoke or chew tobacco had tobacco present in their blood, saliva and urine.
Bhaskar, a beedi maker and Geeta’s neighbour, works for a Chennai based Raja Company. His wife Chithira helps him with the finishing work. They have a nine year old daughter and a seven year old son. With Bhaskar the only earning member of the family, they barely manage with rupees 1,000 per month.
Unlike Geeta, Bhaskar goes to the company’s office, which is 1 kilometer away, to get the raw material and deposit the finished product. The income he gets from rolling beedis is not enough to sustain a family of four, says Bhaskar.
“We have no savings at all. I insist for weekly payment but they refuse every time,” says Bhaskar.
The government has legislation to monitor the beedi industry, protect beedi workers’ rights and guarantee minimum wages along with health care and education. But the beedi making sector is unorganized which makes the implementation difficult. Most employees in this industry work under piece-rate wages and are deprived of the statutory minimum wage rate. Lack of job security adds to their problems.
The beedi industry reported annual revenue of Rs.900 crore in 2006. More than eight million people are employed in the beedi manufacturing industry.
Bhaskar and Geeta, both educated, are aware of their rights but can’t raise their voices against the exploitation they are going through.
“What if they don’t give me the supply for next month? What will I do? This is my only source of income,” says Bhaskar.
There are many others like Geeta at Velumbet village, employed in beedi making. Health problems like tuberculosis and asthma at an early age of 30 to 35 are very common among them owing to involuntary inhalation of tobacco dust.
“There is no health centre in our village. I don’t go to a doctor,” says Geeta. Paid 60 rupees for rolling 1,000 beedis, she earns approximately 2,000 rupees per month. A factory worker supplies her raw materials once a week and collects the finished products.
Geeta has been rolling beedis for three years now. One of the reasons she sticks to this job is because it allows her to stay at home and work. “I don’t have to go anywhere. This way I can take care of the house too,” she says.
A report was published in May last year about beedi consumption and manufacture patterns. Titled ‘Bidi Smoking and Public Health’, it reveals that India is the world’s largest market of beedi consumers and producers with more than 100 million beedi smokers. The study was carried out over a five-year period and developed by the Healis, Sekhsaria Institute for Public Health based in Mumbai and the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The study also claims that beedis contain higher levels of tar, nicotine and carbon monoxide than regular cigarettes. Also the beedi makers who did not smoke or chew tobacco had tobacco present in their blood, saliva and urine.
Bhaskar, a beedi maker and Geeta’s neighbour, works for a Chennai based Raja Company. His wife Chithira helps him with the finishing work. They have a nine year old daughter and a seven year old son. With Bhaskar the only earning member of the family, they barely manage with rupees 1,000 per month.
Unlike Geeta, Bhaskar goes to the company’s office, which is 1 kilometer away, to get the raw material and deposit the finished product. The income he gets from rolling beedis is not enough to sustain a family of four, says Bhaskar.
“We have no savings at all. I insist for weekly payment but they refuse every time,” says Bhaskar.
The government has legislation to monitor the beedi industry, protect beedi workers’ rights and guarantee minimum wages along with health care and education. But the beedi making sector is unorganized which makes the implementation difficult. Most employees in this industry work under piece-rate wages and are deprived of the statutory minimum wage rate. Lack of job security adds to their problems.
The beedi industry reported annual revenue of Rs.900 crore in 2006. More than eight million people are employed in the beedi manufacturing industry.
Bhaskar and Geeta, both educated, are aware of their rights but can’t raise their voices against the exploitation they are going through.
“What if they don’t give me the supply for next month? What will I do? This is my only source of income,” says Bhaskar.
The Night Riders
“Hi Barbie…Hi Ken…Wanna go for a ride?...Sure Ken!”
Rings sub-inspector K. Venkatesan’s mobile phone as he hops on next to the wheel in a white Toyota Qualis for his night ride.
“Ready?” he glances at his two new companions for the late Saturday night’s round from the corner of his eyes. The small curve of his lips and the arched right eyebrow evincing pride and excitement.
“Let’s go,” he nods to the head constable driving the four-wheeler. The engine coughs. The wheels rotate. The disturbing radio cracklings do not stop. And off go the men in khaki to save the world.
As the car sailed on a partly deserted road in Kilpauk, spank, got the head-constable on the head for jumping the signal. Crouching in his seat submissively to the orders of his boss, the head-constable drives to Ega cinemas.
Outside Ega cinema hall, a short well-built man, with curly hair, thick moustache and red angry drunk eyes wide open, walks out of the main gate, with his black t-shirt in his hand, yelling in his fancy blue Sony Ericsson.
The boot of the car opens with a clicking sound, four young men mount in, and it closes with a thud. The four faces, queasy, grave, frightened, try and prove their innocence. With a squeaky voice, one of the four starts narrating what happened in the cinema hall in Tamil.
“Wait till we reach the police station,” commands Venkatesan.
A brawl broke in the cinema hall, right in the beginning of the film, Dev D. The four young IT professionals apparently beat up the drunkard who claims that one of them was sitting on his seat.
“He is too drunk. He fell on his own, sir. We didn’t do anything,” Suresh, one of the four volunteered.
The youngsters squat on the long wooden bench lined across the dilapidated wall with pixeled photographs of missing persons pinned on a soft board, flipping constantly with the fanning. Ancient wooden tables, with broken drawers sit in front of them, right across them and on their side, glistening with blackened dust, edges smoothed by perhaps the constant whipping of the wooden rods, balancing stacks and stacks of files spilling with yellowing paper tied with thin strings. A carton of LG colour screen monitor could be seen trashed on an unreachable shelf, but no sign of an electronic machine in the room. Only paper.
On their right stood tall a locker cupboard, as antique as the tables. Some lockers locked, some unlocked, some broken. A mud coloured overcoat hung from one of the corners of the cupboard.
The man who claimed to have been beaten up, strides in wearing his black t-shirt. The entire room gets filled with a strong stench of liquor. “I have not done any mistake. I don’t want to close this matter. They have beaten me, sir. You look at me,” he says as he willingly lifts the edges of his t-shirt. He stops. “There’s a lady here,” he hesitates. “I am 35 years-old. This is the first time I am wounded,” he continues dramatically blowing on his wound.
As the sub-inspector Venkatesan notes down the vitals of Suresh and his friends, the 35 year old man makes calls after calls from his phone.
“You are educated, but your behaviour is not right,” Venkatesan scolds the young men as they defend themselves.
As Venkatesan walks out to join the arguments going outside the police station, Suresh mutters, “I’m afraid because my parents got to know.”
Meanwhile, one of the accomplices of the man in black walks in the police station with clinched teeth and a stern look. He points a finger to the boys sitting on the bench and warns them. In frustration, the drunkard bangs his glares on the wooden table, breaking it into two.
As the drama unfolds, more and more people gather and move in and out of the police station. Venkatesan, without warning slaps Suresh and his friend Vasanth. With fear and humiliation, 27 years-old Vasanth’s eyes fill with tears.
“This man has political contacts. He has lost his wallet and his bracelet. He wants money from us for that and also for the broken glares,” Suresh whispers.
As the negotiations carry on with other officers taking charge of the matter, Venkatesan slips in his Qualis to continue his rounds. “Everyday we face so many difficulties. Police job is not a bed of roses. It’s a bed of thorns,” smiles Venkatesan.
A hairbrush stuck at the ceiling of the car. Ugly black equipment, with tiny psychotic green and red lights dancing, stared at the policemen from the dashboard. A small pink teddy-bear stuff toy hung from the rear-view mirror, swaying with the rhythm of the car’s speed. With the cracking of the walkie-talkie, Venkatesan stiffens his back and puts on his cap that lay on the hand break.
“The Deputy Commissioner is on night rounds and is in this area,” says Venkatesan.
The 28 year-old deputy commissioner of police, T. S. Anbu, was leaning on his car, commandingly. Sitting on the pavement in front of him was a labourer, crying, almost pleading, sniffing white adhesive sprinkled on his hanky.
The big paunch Inspector appears at the scene, salutes the deputy commissioner and slaps the young labourer on the road who shudders with a squeaky scream. The inspector then drags him behind the van and comes back after a few minutes with three small bottles of whitener. The deputy commissioner nods. The inspector puts the labourer in the van and drives off.
“Every night 100 police jeeps go out on rounds in Chennai, all find at east one or two such people on the roads. These people don’t harm anyone. After a hard day’s work, they just relax. But we can’t leave them on the roads like this. What if they do cause harm? Then the police will be blamed for not doing anything. So we pick these people from the roads. Keep them in the police station for the night and release them in the morning,” Anbu said.
“Our officers work hard 24 hours. There are no fixed hours of duty,” he said, pointing at Venkatesan, who flashed a broad grin. “Last year we caught four Nepali citizens for a petty crime. When we matched their fingerprints, we could solve a 2005 murder case as their fingerprints matched with those found at the crime scene,” he adds.
As the deputy commissioner zip past in his white ambassador, Venkatesan said, “You can’t understand the problems in one night. You have to be with us for 24 hours.”
Venkatesan joined the police services nine years back. He has a 12 year-old boy and a 5 year-old girl. His duty has no fixed hours. Giving night shifts after staying in office for the whole day is something he has become quite used to now. By the time he reaches home, his children are already asleep. He hardly gets to see them. “But I am the only breadwinner of my family. I am happy. This is my career,” he says.
As the cab snails on the roads of Kilpauk, stopping at street shops, making entries in the patta books, Venkatesan recalls his student days. “When I was in the training, I thought to have the uniform,” he said. “Now, I just perform my duties honestly. There is always pressure from the top. If I get transferred, my family will be affected more than me. But I am prepared for it. I am even prepared to die. This is my job.”
“Whatever happens, the police get the first call. Last year, during floods, we spent Rs.5000 to Rs.10,000 from out own pockets to clean the slum area even though it doesn’t come under us. For several hours we were knee deep in the water. If we don’t do anything, people come out on the roads,” he narrates.
The 40 kilometres ride on the dead streets continue, with Venkatesan striking conversations with sleepy guards, lone auto drivers and strangers on the streets, asserting his presence.
As the Qualis stops outside the Abhirami theatre, Venkatesan talks to an Asamese security guard in Hindi.
“Kitna dete hain? (How much do they give you?),” asked Venkatesan.
“Rs.4000,” the guard said.
“Kahana peena? (Does this include food and other supplies),” Venkatesan said.
“Wo apne aap sir (That we have to manage on our own),” replied the guard.
Venkatesan recalled all the years in service with great zeal throughout the night. “I’m not talking from my mouth, I am talking from my heart,” he said. “Have good relations with the police,” smiles 38 years old Venkatesan for whom there are perhaps many more such nostalgic, lonely nights to brave.
Rings sub-inspector K. Venkatesan’s mobile phone as he hops on next to the wheel in a white Toyota Qualis for his night ride.
“Ready?” he glances at his two new companions for the late Saturday night’s round from the corner of his eyes. The small curve of his lips and the arched right eyebrow evincing pride and excitement.
“Let’s go,” he nods to the head constable driving the four-wheeler. The engine coughs. The wheels rotate. The disturbing radio cracklings do not stop. And off go the men in khaki to save the world.
As the car sailed on a partly deserted road in Kilpauk, spank, got the head-constable on the head for jumping the signal. Crouching in his seat submissively to the orders of his boss, the head-constable drives to Ega cinemas.
Outside Ega cinema hall, a short well-built man, with curly hair, thick moustache and red angry drunk eyes wide open, walks out of the main gate, with his black t-shirt in his hand, yelling in his fancy blue Sony Ericsson.
The boot of the car opens with a clicking sound, four young men mount in, and it closes with a thud. The four faces, queasy, grave, frightened, try and prove their innocence. With a squeaky voice, one of the four starts narrating what happened in the cinema hall in Tamil.
“Wait till we reach the police station,” commands Venkatesan.
A brawl broke in the cinema hall, right in the beginning of the film, Dev D. The four young IT professionals apparently beat up the drunkard who claims that one of them was sitting on his seat.
“He is too drunk. He fell on his own, sir. We didn’t do anything,” Suresh, one of the four volunteered.
The youngsters squat on the long wooden bench lined across the dilapidated wall with pixeled photographs of missing persons pinned on a soft board, flipping constantly with the fanning. Ancient wooden tables, with broken drawers sit in front of them, right across them and on their side, glistening with blackened dust, edges smoothed by perhaps the constant whipping of the wooden rods, balancing stacks and stacks of files spilling with yellowing paper tied with thin strings. A carton of LG colour screen monitor could be seen trashed on an unreachable shelf, but no sign of an electronic machine in the room. Only paper.
On their right stood tall a locker cupboard, as antique as the tables. Some lockers locked, some unlocked, some broken. A mud coloured overcoat hung from one of the corners of the cupboard.
The man who claimed to have been beaten up, strides in wearing his black t-shirt. The entire room gets filled with a strong stench of liquor. “I have not done any mistake. I don’t want to close this matter. They have beaten me, sir. You look at me,” he says as he willingly lifts the edges of his t-shirt. He stops. “There’s a lady here,” he hesitates. “I am 35 years-old. This is the first time I am wounded,” he continues dramatically blowing on his wound.
As the sub-inspector Venkatesan notes down the vitals of Suresh and his friends, the 35 year old man makes calls after calls from his phone.
“You are educated, but your behaviour is not right,” Venkatesan scolds the young men as they defend themselves.
As Venkatesan walks out to join the arguments going outside the police station, Suresh mutters, “I’m afraid because my parents got to know.”
Meanwhile, one of the accomplices of the man in black walks in the police station with clinched teeth and a stern look. He points a finger to the boys sitting on the bench and warns them. In frustration, the drunkard bangs his glares on the wooden table, breaking it into two.
As the drama unfolds, more and more people gather and move in and out of the police station. Venkatesan, without warning slaps Suresh and his friend Vasanth. With fear and humiliation, 27 years-old Vasanth’s eyes fill with tears.
“This man has political contacts. He has lost his wallet and his bracelet. He wants money from us for that and also for the broken glares,” Suresh whispers.
As the negotiations carry on with other officers taking charge of the matter, Venkatesan slips in his Qualis to continue his rounds. “Everyday we face so many difficulties. Police job is not a bed of roses. It’s a bed of thorns,” smiles Venkatesan.
A hairbrush stuck at the ceiling of the car. Ugly black equipment, with tiny psychotic green and red lights dancing, stared at the policemen from the dashboard. A small pink teddy-bear stuff toy hung from the rear-view mirror, swaying with the rhythm of the car’s speed. With the cracking of the walkie-talkie, Venkatesan stiffens his back and puts on his cap that lay on the hand break.
“The Deputy Commissioner is on night rounds and is in this area,” says Venkatesan.
The 28 year-old deputy commissioner of police, T. S. Anbu, was leaning on his car, commandingly. Sitting on the pavement in front of him was a labourer, crying, almost pleading, sniffing white adhesive sprinkled on his hanky.
The big paunch Inspector appears at the scene, salutes the deputy commissioner and slaps the young labourer on the road who shudders with a squeaky scream. The inspector then drags him behind the van and comes back after a few minutes with three small bottles of whitener. The deputy commissioner nods. The inspector puts the labourer in the van and drives off.
“Every night 100 police jeeps go out on rounds in Chennai, all find at east one or two such people on the roads. These people don’t harm anyone. After a hard day’s work, they just relax. But we can’t leave them on the roads like this. What if they do cause harm? Then the police will be blamed for not doing anything. So we pick these people from the roads. Keep them in the police station for the night and release them in the morning,” Anbu said.
“Our officers work hard 24 hours. There are no fixed hours of duty,” he said, pointing at Venkatesan, who flashed a broad grin. “Last year we caught four Nepali citizens for a petty crime. When we matched their fingerprints, we could solve a 2005 murder case as their fingerprints matched with those found at the crime scene,” he adds.
As the deputy commissioner zip past in his white ambassador, Venkatesan said, “You can’t understand the problems in one night. You have to be with us for 24 hours.”
Venkatesan joined the police services nine years back. He has a 12 year-old boy and a 5 year-old girl. His duty has no fixed hours. Giving night shifts after staying in office for the whole day is something he has become quite used to now. By the time he reaches home, his children are already asleep. He hardly gets to see them. “But I am the only breadwinner of my family. I am happy. This is my career,” he says.
As the cab snails on the roads of Kilpauk, stopping at street shops, making entries in the patta books, Venkatesan recalls his student days. “When I was in the training, I thought to have the uniform,” he said. “Now, I just perform my duties honestly. There is always pressure from the top. If I get transferred, my family will be affected more than me. But I am prepared for it. I am even prepared to die. This is my job.”
“Whatever happens, the police get the first call. Last year, during floods, we spent Rs.5000 to Rs.10,000 from out own pockets to clean the slum area even though it doesn’t come under us. For several hours we were knee deep in the water. If we don’t do anything, people come out on the roads,” he narrates.
The 40 kilometres ride on the dead streets continue, with Venkatesan striking conversations with sleepy guards, lone auto drivers and strangers on the streets, asserting his presence.
As the Qualis stops outside the Abhirami theatre, Venkatesan talks to an Asamese security guard in Hindi.
“Kitna dete hain? (How much do they give you?),” asked Venkatesan.
“Rs.4000,” the guard said.
“Kahana peena? (Does this include food and other supplies),” Venkatesan said.
“Wo apne aap sir (That we have to manage on our own),” replied the guard.
Venkatesan recalled all the years in service with great zeal throughout the night. “I’m not talking from my mouth, I am talking from my heart,” he said. “Have good relations with the police,” smiles 38 years old Venkatesan for whom there are perhaps many more such nostalgic, lonely nights to brave.
Encounter Killings
Introduction
The encounter killings by the Indian Police Force in various States have come under scanner by several Civil and Human Rights organizations, but despite all the protests and resistance, the phenomenon finds acceptance and recognition in the society and the present frame of policing. The arguments given for this lawless phenomenon comfortably fills the vacuum created by the sluggish Criminal Justice System in India.
The euphemism ‘Encounter Killings’ has been in use since the 1960s to describe extrajudicial killings. A study conducted by the Asia Pacific Human Rights Network noted that ‘encounter killings were not isolated incidents but occurred as practice throughout India’.
Those wielding the gun have their set of arguments intact to support extrajudicial killings. One of the main reasons for shooting these criminals, they say, is the fact that if these law breakers are able to escape the Courts, they get emboldened and come back with a vengeance. The Parliament Attack of 2001 has become a benchmark for this vicious cycle. According to the police, the masterminds behind the Parliament Attack were the same men released during the Kandahar hijacking of 1999.
The vociferous Human Rights agencies have seldom been heard. Their arguments that the police often shoot innocents in fake encounters simply to win laurels, fades away in thin air. The police’s undeterred statement in every single encounter killing that they fired in ‘self-defense’ and in return the suspect got killed, is too inflated to be believed. The guidelines set by the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) on how to deal with the encounter killings are seldom followed.
The unfortunate part is that apart from the Human Rights activists, there is no one to keep a watch on the unleashed activities of the police. However, their claims have fallen on deaf ears of the authorities and media has largely ignored the complexities of the issue. The crude class, caste and religious divisions are stark even in encounter killings. The minorities and the marginalized communities are known to bear a greater brunt of it. Media coverage is mostly insensitive to the nuances of the concern, in fact, media somehow makes audiences believe that the person dead was a hardened criminal or a ‘terrorist’ and would have caused grave damage to the national security had not killed.
There is deafening silence in our media about the fact that though India has signed the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (CAT), there has been no ratification on the pretext that existing laws have adequate provisions to prevent torture, in addition to Constitutional safeguards.
Apart from targeting the wider gamut of terrorism, encounter killings are believed to cleanse the local criminals of a State by completely wiping out these ghetto kings. The protectors of law, under the full knowledge of their crime, when gaily flout the rules themselves, they are termed as the real ‘heroes’. They are elevated to a respectful, magical position in the office. Masculinity and heroism is reflected from this post in the police force. The whole aura of power that surrounds these fearless and strong officers is what makes them the reason for their colleagues’ envy.
Contrasting this with the efforts put in by diligent police officers who try to make a change staying in their assigned powers, their efforts often go unrecognized or are perhaps not considered brave enough.
Several Indian films with encounter specialists as protagonists have portrayed them as the real champions. The terror of encounter killings is spread not only by the police but the paramilitary forces stationed across the length and breadth of the country. They are held equally responsible for faking encounters and killing innocent people. The most horrific examples include the operations against Naxalite movements in West Bengal, Andhra Pradesh and the operations against Punjab extremists. Tamil Nadu and Kerala committed the excesses of encounter killing during the days of Emergency. The Vimadlal Commission took the lid off so-called encounters in Andhra Pradesh during the mid-1970s. Uttar Pradesh is noted for its encounter deaths and this has assumed alarming proportions in recent times. The paramilitary operations in Jammu & Kashmir, Manipur and Assam cause grave concern as human rights activists report wide spread instances of encounter killings, rape and torture of militant suspects. Surrendered militants are picked from their homes on the slightest of suspicion, are accused of having contacts with banned fundamental organizations and are shot by the army under the full protection of the State.
Treading on this path by the police to overcome the systematic flaws is simply unacceptable. Suggested reforms if followed diligently can bring about a systematic change.
The police is the executive arm of the State. The power it yields is indirectly the power of the State. This phenomenon is State sponsored and encouraged. Hence, to root it out completely, it needs to be struck at point zero. It is the State that needs constant reminders to relinquish this form of hegemony and governance, the reforms in policing will follow.
Police
With immense responsibility over their shoulders, the authority given to police comes with strings attached. The hazardous routine follows even while maintaining law and order and preventing and detecting crime in otherwise normal situations. The situation gets worse when the untrained police force is spilled over with the added duties of checking terrorism and insurgency. The threat to internal security further challenges the position of the law protectors of our nation.
In post-independence India, the police have an appalling record of mishandling communal violence, endemic corruption, and having resource constraints. Handling terrorism in post-independence Punjab was the first real challenge to the administration, especially the police. The inept handling of the same by a professionally mediocre police leadership with direct interference from unprincipled politicians stamped the executive arm of the State with the character of a malignant disease. In effect, questioning their credibility.
The menace in Punjab was ultimately controlled by using controversial methods which are sprouting and are questioned till date. Call it fortunate or unfortunate, it gave an alternative shortcut to many other States’ police across the country thriving to combat organized violence - Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra and Uttar Pradesh to name a few.
The Mumbai police once enjoyed the reputation of being the best police force in the country. As the city rose to the stature of being the crime capital, a small, tightly-knit group of policemen took hold of the extortions, random shootings and gang-wars. These policemen are said to have broken the back of the city’s crime syndicates. Mumbai was divided in five territories, each managing one, without competing. The question remains about the methods used by these cops for cleaning up India's commercial and entertainment capital Mumbai.
The Human Rights activists say that the law enforcers regard themselves above the Law. The Mumbai police especially, under the full protection of the State, indulged in encounter killings to clear the criminal mess in the city. Though it is outright unlawful, the city today boasts of its ‘encounter specialists’. This is no such official post, but the officers who indulge in such killings are often rewarded and are honoured as fearless super cops.
Praful Bholse, Vijay Salaskar, Daya Nayak and Pradeep Sharma, four out of five from the Mumbai’s elite Criminal Intelligence Unit, are dreaded by criminals, loathed by Human Rights activists and envied by their colleagues. As organized crime spiraled out of control in the city, these men were assigned the job of wiping out the dirt, guns blazing if necessary.
In 1997 police shot 71 in "encounters", 83 in 1999 and 97 in 2001. In all, since 1982, police have killed 1,200 gangsters in and around Mumbai. Pradeep Sharma, with 100 "successful" encounters with suspected criminals leads the team. Daya Nayak admits to have killed 83 criminals in four years. And Vijay Salaskar, with 33 encounter deaths to his credit, says he has never taken law into his hands.
The effects were out in the open and visible. From two a week at the height of the violence in the early 1990s, inter-gang gun battles are down to two a month. With the dramatic effects of this phenomenon on the crime rates in Mumbai, it soon spread across the continent. The same cops, who are given much of the credit for making the criminal niches in Mumbai spineless, are now accused for the surge of encounter killings in the city.
But unfortunately, the victims of encounter killings recently have not been recognised as hardened criminals. Many believe that the reformed criminals, those with insignificant crime records, fall prey to the police bullets now. As with the immense media propaganda and support for encounter killings, we are repeatedly reminded of the horrors of state terrorism and how these heroic cops keep the city safe for us.
These encounter specialists are also eulogized by Bollywood. Films like Shootout at Lokhandwala, Risk, Ab Tak Chappan, Encounter: The Killing, and many others show the encounter specialists as honest police officers performing their duties well within the law.
But the truth is that the cops can set aside all concern for truth and legality and can act with unholy speed. A lawyer-activist P.A. Sebasian attacked the police saying that in every single encounter killing conducted by the police, they have claimed to have killed in self-defense. Yet in none of these encounters had a single policeman been injured.
Most of the victims are shot in the back, which would perhaps not be the case in a real encounter where the police are also fired upon. The police surgeons who conduct post mortems conveniently doctor the findings to support the encounter myths.
Pradeep Sharma in an interview to a national magazine said that most deaths at his hands have been accidents. "When criminals on the run resist arrest, such encounters happen. It is more of an accident when we go to arrest criminals," said Mr. Sharma. "They fire towards us and in self-defence we also do the same." Daya Nayak said that he does not resort to fake encounter killings. "I am a Brahmin (a high caste Hindu), a teetotaller and a vegetarian. I have no social evil, why should I kill people without a reason?" "We are not trigger-happy," Vijay Salaskar said. "We kill criminals only when we are fired upon first." "The allegations of fake encounters are baseless," says Pradeep Sawant, Bombay's Deputy Police Commissioner. "It's not that we always go to kill. Our idea is to arrest the gangsters. We only retaliate if we're fired upon."
But these claims by the police are seldom believed. The command and control in this uniformed disciplined force is under great stress.
Police being the executive arm of the state, has the responsibility of maintaining the internal security. Instead, it has become the armed wing of the ruling party in these states. It has been thoroughly politicized and in the worst insurgency infected areas, where it is expected to be most vigilant, it is hardly a functional force.
In the J&K police, the Special Operations Group (SOG) better known as the Special Task Force (STF) is particularly notorious for Human Rights violations. Modelled on the Punjab pattern, the J&K STF suffers from the same ills as its predecessor. The Punjab SOG was found guilty of repeated human rights violations, and Civil Courts are still investigating unaccounted for deaths and disappearances. Like in Punjab, STF officers and ranks are given out of turn promotions and large financial rewards proportionate to the number of militants they kill, force to surrender, and the arms they recover. In such an environment, fake encounters, the killing of civilians, including petty criminals, claiming that they are militants are bound to occur and even be rewarded. The Committee appointed for its enquiry repeatedly heard allegations that seized arms and explosives had actually been purchased from the black market, in order to further career prospects and to obtain financial rewards.
The laid-back attitude of the senior officers and playing puppets in the hands of the governments, the politician-police-criminal nexus is getting stronger everyday. These are the two main causes of the apathy that has crept into the police over a period of time. Shorn of pride and commitment to their job, most police officers are content to serve their political masters. In the process, the enforcers of the rule of law are frequently seen to be on the outside of the violators of law.
It is widely evident that in States, it’s the ruling parties that are directly interfering in the recruitment, posting, transfer and promotions of police officers. Beholden to their political masters, the police take less interest in the difficult task of enforcing the rule of law and spend more time in serving their benefactors.
M. Venkatesan, Sub-Inspector of Kilpauk police station, Chennai, says, “We have to maintain the balance. Even though I am prepared to be transferred for my actions some time in life, I would not like it. It will affect my family more than me.”
Zero tolerance for terrorism will remain a rhetorical statement until and unless the police radically improves its performance. And that is not possible without undertaking basic police reforms.
Government
A former civil servant and social activist S.R. Sankaran says that the extrajudicial killings are part of a “deliberate and conscious state administrative practice” for which successive Indian governments must bear responsibility. The failure of various administrative departments to resist illegal orders with devastating consequences from the government reflected the official behaviour in virtually every incident of major national crisis.
The constant complicity and denial of the permanent executive of Human Rights, fake encounter killings and suppression by brute force of militant Maoist/Naxalite uprisings and separatist insurgencies in the North East and later in Punjab and Kashmir, is all starkly visible in the media and elsewhere.
The ruling Congress Party openly engineered the massacre against Sikhs for partisan political gains in 1984 in the wake of then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi’s assassination at the hands of her Sikh body guards in 1984. The massacre left more than 3,000 Sikhs dead. The slaughter of unarmed Muslim youth at Hashimpura by paramilitary soldiers in 1987; the riots in Bhagalpur in 1989; the demolition of Babri masjid in 1992 and the slaughter that followed in its wake in Mumbai and Bhopal; and the state-sponsored massacre in Gujarat in 2002, all these incidents not only stamp the evidence that the state considers itself superior than the law, they also show the partisan ways in which the state makes the other departments dance on its fingertips.
The bureaucracy unresistingly obeyed instructions to deny people their constitutional rights, including to life, liberty and democratic dissent, and failed to extend equal protection of the law to people because of their religious or ethnic identities or economic powerlessness.
In order to prevent such injustices, investigation plays a very important role. Poor investigation gives little hope of prosecuting and convicting the perpetrators. The Central as well as the State governments have terribly failed to ensure adequate enquiry of complaints and reports of the extrajudicial killings hence, the guilty is hardly held accountable for his offence. The lax attitude towards such reports reflects the non-commitment on the governments’ part. Moreover, there is no independent body in India that is empowered to investigate such complaints without bias.
Arundhati Roy in her book, 13 December: The Strange Case of Attack on the Indian Parliament said, “Given the track record of the Indian governments (past, present, right, left and centre), it is naïve – perhaps utopian is a better word – to hope that any government will ever have the courage to institute an inquiry that will, once and for all, uncover the real story. A maintenance dose of cowardice and pusillanimity is probably encrypted in all governments. But hope has little to do with reason.”
When it comes to effectively combating the extrajudicial killings, even though National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) is a towering institution in India, it is reduced to a toothless tiger. NHRC’s recommendations in relation to the Human Rights violations, more specifically, the extrajudicial killings, have not been given due consideration by the government. This exacerbates NHRC’s ineffectiveness. NHRC has issued guidelines to be followed by the police in case of extrajudicial killings but it is evident that they are never complied; neither do the police feel any pressure from the government to follow them.
The next step after investigation is the prosecution. The Indian government has not merely failed to prosecute those involved with the killings, it has infact provided a protective coverage for them. Through the doctrines of sovereign and official immunity, the Indian Law insulates the officials who commit Human Rights violations.
Under the Code of Criminal Procedure, 1973 the sanction of the Central or State government is required to arrest or institute criminal prosecutions against public servants, including police officers and members of the civil or armed forces. The Indian government has ignored the repeated calls by various institutions to amend this law so that these officials lie outside the ambit of state protection and are no longer sheltered from prosecution.
Successive governments have failed to divert attention to various pitfalls in the extrajudicial killing. There is no adequate compensation system in India for the families of those killed. These families don’t even enjoy a statutory right to compensation. Those related to the victims may be encouraged to file reports and fight for justice through judicial process if the compensation system is in place. It may also deter the government from committing and authorizing such crimes. The Indian government is obliged to provide compensation to those affected by the extrajudicial killings under the International Law as well.
There have been various cases where it is quite evident that the governments, instead of opposing extrajudicial killings, encourages and supports the practice. Till now, no extreme reaction against such criminal acts by the police has come to surface. Indeed, the governments now accept these killings as a part of the state machinery and use it as their personal tools. There is evidence that the governments have funded and rewarded the police officers who commit such offences. This clearly shows that the Indian government sanctions extrajudicial killings.
The Amnesty International in its report dated 10 August 2001, about torture in Communist Party of India (Marxist) ruled state of West Bengal observed, "Police are being urged to use whatever means necessary to deal with crime and are often allowed to use torture as a substitute for investigations, while action is rarely taken against the perpetrators. This system of policing is having little if any impact on crime." CPI (M) leader Benoy Konar, defending police brutality once said, "It must be viewed whether police is carrying out torture with a correct aim or an incorrect aim...In a class divided society, the police has the duty of carrying out repression.... You [journalists] have the pen in your hands, the police has the stick." Hence, it would be a mistake to view human rights abuse from an ideological perspective.
The Criminal Procedure Code lays the responsibility for Law and Order squarely in the hands of the police and the magistracy. It gives absolutely no authority to the government to interfere in the role of the police. Yet police abdicate their responsibilities to dance to the tunes of their political masters.
Human Rights
Article 21 of the Constitution of India guarantees the Right to Life. Extrajudicial killings clearly contravene this right. With the increasing incidents of encounter killings in India, it clearly shows that the government has not followed the International Human Rights Laws.
International Human Rights Law prohibits the arbitrary deprivation of life under any circumstances. Article 3 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights states that “everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person.” Article 6 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (‘ICCPR’) provides that “[e]very human being has the inherent right to life. This right shall be protected by law. No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his life.” Article 4 of the ICCPR states that this right cannot be waived “even in times of public emergency threatening the life of the nation.” The state is obliged to provide effective remedies to the victims of Human Rights violations under Article 2(3)(a) and (b) of the ICCPR.
The Indian Government ratified the ICCPR in 1979. By ratifying an international treaty, India is bound not only to respect that right in principle, but also to take effective measures to ensure that extrajudicial killings do not occur in practice.
As mentioned earlier, the NHRC’s guidelines are seldom followed by the police and the governments with regard to the extrajudicial killings. NHRC has failed to bring the guilty to book for gross human rights violations. Lawyer Seema Gulati warns that the "growing trend of police killings" is endangering India's democratic foundations.
The striking caste and class disparities and biases can be spotted even in the cases of the encounter killings. Human Rights activists have time and again warned against the anti-terrorism and security laws in India, pointing that they facilitate human rights abuses in a large way targeting lower caste and minority communities. Prolonged detention without trial and inflicting torture in jails resulting in custodial deaths abuse the whole idea of security laws in the region.
In the north-eastern part of India, the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act (AFPSA) has been quite unpopular, especially in Manipur, as it offers immunity to the army from the Human Rights injustices they commit in the region. This draconian law has been criticized for its 'oppression and high-handedness' by the Justice Jeevan Reddy Committee which has asked for scrapping it.
The AFSPA active in many states in India, including J&K, does not define a ‘disturbed area’. It is a prerogative of the Governor of the State or the Central Government to declare an area ‘disturbed’. Under Section 4(a) of the act, even a non-commissioned officer can order his men to shoot to kill ‘if he is of the opinion that it is necessary to do so for maintenance of public order.’ This gives very wide discretion to even very junior officers. Section 4(c) of the act permits the arrest without warrant, with whatever ‘force as may be necessary’ vis-a-vis any person against whom ‘a reasonable suspicion exists that he is about to commit a cognizable offence.’ This has provided the basis of indiscriminate arrests, and the use of brutal force including firing against innocent civilians.
Further, Article 4(2) stipulates that no derogation from certain key articles, including Article 6 (right to life), may be made under this provision. But Section 4 of the act empowers firing, which may result in death, merely based on a relatively junior officer’s opinion or suspicion. This violates Article 6(1) of the covenant which states that, ‘No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his life.’
Human Rights activists have consistently held that the act is also violative of the Constitution. It, like Terrorist and Disruptive Activities (Prevention) Act (TADA), violates Articles 14 and 21 of the Fundamental Rights. A United Nations Human Rights Committee expert pointed out that such an emergency must be a “temporary measure, and cannot be in operation for decades, as this act has been in various parts of India”.
On September 25, 2006, the Committee on International Human Rights of the New York City Bar Association released a report, Anti-Terrorism and Security Laws in India, calling on the Indian government to limit its application of anti-terrorism laws. The report notes "Attentiveness to these human rights concerns is not simply a moral and legal imperative, but also a crucial strategic imperative. As the Supreme Court of India has recognized, 'terrorism often thrives where human rights are violated' and '[t]he lack of hope for justice provides breeding grounds for terrorism.'"
The report bluntly mentions that the excessive powers given under the acts such as TADA, Prevention of Terrorism Act (POTA) and Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA) were implied as a tool to inflict abuses by the police rather than prosecuting and punishing actual terrorists. Pervasive use of preventive detention, extortion and torture were resorted to by the authorities. The human rights agencies in India as well describe TADA as a lawless law which violates both the Constitution and the International Law.
In Jammu and Kashmir, the State Human Rights Commission (SHRC) indicated a total of 708 allegations of human rights violations between 1996 and 1999. These figures are purely based on the complaints made and also it excludes the security forces from the police. Neither the NHRC nor the SHRC is empowered to investigate either the army or the paramilitary forces. These departments have their internal, layered and opaque corrective mechanisms like the court martial, which are not open for public scrutiny. Even though they claim to maintain discipline through the internal checks, it is hardly surprising if the Human Rights violators in the Rashtriya Rifles (RR) and the Border Security Force (BSF) go unchecked.
Even if the army and the paramilitary forces are excluded, the figures that reflect in the media through the human rights agencies are grossly underestimated. A large number of cases do not get registered and many don’t reach the stage of investigation. Given the long and porus procedure of investigation, justice is seldom awarded.
Conclusion
Successive Indian governments have failed to hold the police, the army and the security forces accountable for their actions. Neither have these governments amended the laws which have been regularly condemned for providing a protective shield to those who are involved in the extrajudicial killings.
Even though the armed and security forces enjoy immense powers, they have their internal mechanisms to discipline the officials. But, it is very difficult to access those hearings. Human Rights agencies claim that if the punishment is awarded at all to them, it is grossly inadequate. Human Rights violations should be considered a serious criminal offence and even the army and security force personnel must be charged under the general law and tried in a public court.
Rewarding the officials and security personnel for killing ‘militants’ must be stopped. They should be encouraged, as per the Indian as well as the International Law, to capture the suspects alive.
The problems Indian police force faces today are immense and widely documented. However, police reforms are yet to see the light of the day. The National Police Commission (NPC) submitted its last report in 1981, but till date no Central Government has been willing to implement any of its major recommendations. Even the Supreme Court directives of September 2006, based on the NPC recommendations, have not found favour with the government.
Almost all political parties resist reforms in one pretext or the other. The duties of the police officer, as incorporated in Section 23 of the Police Act are ‘to obey and execute all orders and warrants lawfully issued by any competent authority.’ The democratically elected leaders are no better than the colonial masters as they easily manipulate the police for their unsavoury ends and simply ignore the word ‘lawfully’ in actual practice.
The Indian Penal Code enacted in 1860, Criminal Procedure Code in 1862 and the Evidence Act in 1872 have given the semi-literate and ill-trained policemen enormous legal powers. A constable has enormous powers of arrest, search and seizure, but is not trained or paid enough for this job. Some may argue that the police already have enough powers and that it would further corrupt them if empowered with more authority. It needs to be understood that the police reforms are not about giving more powers to the police, but to protect life and property of the ordinary citizens and maintain public order irrespective of caste, creed and religion.
Given the disturbances our country faces today, the need of a professional police force with a well polished training cannot be delayed further. The first step towards reforming the Indian police force is to insulate it from undue political interference and by giving it functional autonomy.
There are well-set rules notified in the police manuals by State governments about postings, transfers and promotions of officers, but they are being blatantly flouted by many persons in high authority. Investigation and Law and Order duties in metropolitan cities must be separated and a fixed tenure must be provided to officers posted in the field. The selection of police chiefs must be more transparent to make it more accountable.
David Bayley, one of the world’s experts on police, has succinctly observed – the police can influence political developments by just being deliberately inactive, or selectively active.
Unfortunately, the government under the pressure of public criticism takes to easier option and short-cuts. Instead of tackling the basic problems and strengthening the Criminal Justice System, it allows the police to combine in itself all the powers of that of the investigator, judge and executioner. If this phenomenon of ‘fake encounters’ is to be eliminated, the criminal justice system needs to be put back on the rails. The corrupt and the incompetent should not be allowed to rise to the top, and in no case should they be entrusted with the cutting-edge jobs with greater scope for indulging in corrupt practices.
Our media also needs to be more conscious. Trapping high potential, media can bring out the human rights violators under the public scrutiny. Public interest creates an opportunity to refocus attention on the issues concerning the masses. There is awareness about the extrajudicial killings in the international arena but the gravity of the systematic nature of this problem is still unknown. The Indian government must be reminded of its obligations under the international law, which can be best done through persistent reminders from the various media.
Media must not ignore the various layers hidden under a larger blanket of what the state terms as ‘internal security’ and ‘fighting terrorism’. Terrorism needs to be understood with a deeper meaning. Terrorism is different from the normal form of violent activities and is resorted to when the conventional forms of protests and agitations do not work. The roots of terrorism lie in misery and frustration arising from neglected causes, which may even be political. The repercussions of killing innocent targets, trading them as ‘terrorists’, and not even giving them a chance to prove their innocence, can in no way solve the bigger problems and disturbances faced by our nation.
Acts and reforms may help in bringing down the encounter killings to a point, but what needs to change is the attitude of the public. The upper class is too comfortable with their money power. The middle class which is supposed to be the transitional point of any society is a sitting duck, unless it is affected. The poorer sections and the minority communities which bear the maximum brunt of atrocities in a state lack representation. Hindustan Times editor Vir Sanghvi says, "We know the vast majority of encounters are fake. We do not think that this is a perfect situation, but in common with the rest of the middle class we have come to the regrettable conclusion that there is no real alternative."
After encountering repeated terror attacks, the public attitude has stiffened. The alternative for the Great Indian middle class is tougher police tactics which they approve, without questioning the authenticity of it. They also demand results, the abuse of which is borne by the marginalized poor.
Praful Bidwai, a social commentator said, "Growing illiberalism and intolerance... lack of moral clarity among large sections of middle class on issues of justice, fairness, pluralism, secularism and other constitutional values, leave alone compassion for the underprivileged."
The Right to Life is the most fundamental right, and its continued abuse in India through the commission of extrajudicial killings
must not be tolerated.
The encounter killings by the Indian Police Force in various States have come under scanner by several Civil and Human Rights organizations, but despite all the protests and resistance, the phenomenon finds acceptance and recognition in the society and the present frame of policing. The arguments given for this lawless phenomenon comfortably fills the vacuum created by the sluggish Criminal Justice System in India.
The euphemism ‘Encounter Killings’ has been in use since the 1960s to describe extrajudicial killings. A study conducted by the Asia Pacific Human Rights Network noted that ‘encounter killings were not isolated incidents but occurred as practice throughout India’.
Those wielding the gun have their set of arguments intact to support extrajudicial killings. One of the main reasons for shooting these criminals, they say, is the fact that if these law breakers are able to escape the Courts, they get emboldened and come back with a vengeance. The Parliament Attack of 2001 has become a benchmark for this vicious cycle. According to the police, the masterminds behind the Parliament Attack were the same men released during the Kandahar hijacking of 1999.
The vociferous Human Rights agencies have seldom been heard. Their arguments that the police often shoot innocents in fake encounters simply to win laurels, fades away in thin air. The police’s undeterred statement in every single encounter killing that they fired in ‘self-defense’ and in return the suspect got killed, is too inflated to be believed. The guidelines set by the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) on how to deal with the encounter killings are seldom followed.
The unfortunate part is that apart from the Human Rights activists, there is no one to keep a watch on the unleashed activities of the police. However, their claims have fallen on deaf ears of the authorities and media has largely ignored the complexities of the issue. The crude class, caste and religious divisions are stark even in encounter killings. The minorities and the marginalized communities are known to bear a greater brunt of it. Media coverage is mostly insensitive to the nuances of the concern, in fact, media somehow makes audiences believe that the person dead was a hardened criminal or a ‘terrorist’ and would have caused grave damage to the national security had not killed.
There is deafening silence in our media about the fact that though India has signed the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (CAT), there has been no ratification on the pretext that existing laws have adequate provisions to prevent torture, in addition to Constitutional safeguards.
Apart from targeting the wider gamut of terrorism, encounter killings are believed to cleanse the local criminals of a State by completely wiping out these ghetto kings. The protectors of law, under the full knowledge of their crime, when gaily flout the rules themselves, they are termed as the real ‘heroes’. They are elevated to a respectful, magical position in the office. Masculinity and heroism is reflected from this post in the police force. The whole aura of power that surrounds these fearless and strong officers is what makes them the reason for their colleagues’ envy.
Contrasting this with the efforts put in by diligent police officers who try to make a change staying in their assigned powers, their efforts often go unrecognized or are perhaps not considered brave enough.
Several Indian films with encounter specialists as protagonists have portrayed them as the real champions. The terror of encounter killings is spread not only by the police but the paramilitary forces stationed across the length and breadth of the country. They are held equally responsible for faking encounters and killing innocent people. The most horrific examples include the operations against Naxalite movements in West Bengal, Andhra Pradesh and the operations against Punjab extremists. Tamil Nadu and Kerala committed the excesses of encounter killing during the days of Emergency. The Vimadlal Commission took the lid off so-called encounters in Andhra Pradesh during the mid-1970s. Uttar Pradesh is noted for its encounter deaths and this has assumed alarming proportions in recent times. The paramilitary operations in Jammu & Kashmir, Manipur and Assam cause grave concern as human rights activists report wide spread instances of encounter killings, rape and torture of militant suspects. Surrendered militants are picked from their homes on the slightest of suspicion, are accused of having contacts with banned fundamental organizations and are shot by the army under the full protection of the State.
Treading on this path by the police to overcome the systematic flaws is simply unacceptable. Suggested reforms if followed diligently can bring about a systematic change.
The police is the executive arm of the State. The power it yields is indirectly the power of the State. This phenomenon is State sponsored and encouraged. Hence, to root it out completely, it needs to be struck at point zero. It is the State that needs constant reminders to relinquish this form of hegemony and governance, the reforms in policing will follow.
Police
With immense responsibility over their shoulders, the authority given to police comes with strings attached. The hazardous routine follows even while maintaining law and order and preventing and detecting crime in otherwise normal situations. The situation gets worse when the untrained police force is spilled over with the added duties of checking terrorism and insurgency. The threat to internal security further challenges the position of the law protectors of our nation.
In post-independence India, the police have an appalling record of mishandling communal violence, endemic corruption, and having resource constraints. Handling terrorism in post-independence Punjab was the first real challenge to the administration, especially the police. The inept handling of the same by a professionally mediocre police leadership with direct interference from unprincipled politicians stamped the executive arm of the State with the character of a malignant disease. In effect, questioning their credibility.
The menace in Punjab was ultimately controlled by using controversial methods which are sprouting and are questioned till date. Call it fortunate or unfortunate, it gave an alternative shortcut to many other States’ police across the country thriving to combat organized violence - Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra and Uttar Pradesh to name a few.
The Mumbai police once enjoyed the reputation of being the best police force in the country. As the city rose to the stature of being the crime capital, a small, tightly-knit group of policemen took hold of the extortions, random shootings and gang-wars. These policemen are said to have broken the back of the city’s crime syndicates. Mumbai was divided in five territories, each managing one, without competing. The question remains about the methods used by these cops for cleaning up India's commercial and entertainment capital Mumbai.
The Human Rights activists say that the law enforcers regard themselves above the Law. The Mumbai police especially, under the full protection of the State, indulged in encounter killings to clear the criminal mess in the city. Though it is outright unlawful, the city today boasts of its ‘encounter specialists’. This is no such official post, but the officers who indulge in such killings are often rewarded and are honoured as fearless super cops.
Praful Bholse, Vijay Salaskar, Daya Nayak and Pradeep Sharma, four out of five from the Mumbai’s elite Criminal Intelligence Unit, are dreaded by criminals, loathed by Human Rights activists and envied by their colleagues. As organized crime spiraled out of control in the city, these men were assigned the job of wiping out the dirt, guns blazing if necessary.
In 1997 police shot 71 in "encounters", 83 in 1999 and 97 in 2001. In all, since 1982, police have killed 1,200 gangsters in and around Mumbai. Pradeep Sharma, with 100 "successful" encounters with suspected criminals leads the team. Daya Nayak admits to have killed 83 criminals in four years. And Vijay Salaskar, with 33 encounter deaths to his credit, says he has never taken law into his hands.
The effects were out in the open and visible. From two a week at the height of the violence in the early 1990s, inter-gang gun battles are down to two a month. With the dramatic effects of this phenomenon on the crime rates in Mumbai, it soon spread across the continent. The same cops, who are given much of the credit for making the criminal niches in Mumbai spineless, are now accused for the surge of encounter killings in the city.
But unfortunately, the victims of encounter killings recently have not been recognised as hardened criminals. Many believe that the reformed criminals, those with insignificant crime records, fall prey to the police bullets now. As with the immense media propaganda and support for encounter killings, we are repeatedly reminded of the horrors of state terrorism and how these heroic cops keep the city safe for us.
These encounter specialists are also eulogized by Bollywood. Films like Shootout at Lokhandwala, Risk, Ab Tak Chappan, Encounter: The Killing, and many others show the encounter specialists as honest police officers performing their duties well within the law.
But the truth is that the cops can set aside all concern for truth and legality and can act with unholy speed. A lawyer-activist P.A. Sebasian attacked the police saying that in every single encounter killing conducted by the police, they have claimed to have killed in self-defense. Yet in none of these encounters had a single policeman been injured.
Most of the victims are shot in the back, which would perhaps not be the case in a real encounter where the police are also fired upon. The police surgeons who conduct post mortems conveniently doctor the findings to support the encounter myths.
Pradeep Sharma in an interview to a national magazine said that most deaths at his hands have been accidents. "When criminals on the run resist arrest, such encounters happen. It is more of an accident when we go to arrest criminals," said Mr. Sharma. "They fire towards us and in self-defence we also do the same." Daya Nayak said that he does not resort to fake encounter killings. "I am a Brahmin (a high caste Hindu), a teetotaller and a vegetarian. I have no social evil, why should I kill people without a reason?" "We are not trigger-happy," Vijay Salaskar said. "We kill criminals only when we are fired upon first." "The allegations of fake encounters are baseless," says Pradeep Sawant, Bombay's Deputy Police Commissioner. "It's not that we always go to kill. Our idea is to arrest the gangsters. We only retaliate if we're fired upon."
But these claims by the police are seldom believed. The command and control in this uniformed disciplined force is under great stress.
Police being the executive arm of the state, has the responsibility of maintaining the internal security. Instead, it has become the armed wing of the ruling party in these states. It has been thoroughly politicized and in the worst insurgency infected areas, where it is expected to be most vigilant, it is hardly a functional force.
In the J&K police, the Special Operations Group (SOG) better known as the Special Task Force (STF) is particularly notorious for Human Rights violations. Modelled on the Punjab pattern, the J&K STF suffers from the same ills as its predecessor. The Punjab SOG was found guilty of repeated human rights violations, and Civil Courts are still investigating unaccounted for deaths and disappearances. Like in Punjab, STF officers and ranks are given out of turn promotions and large financial rewards proportionate to the number of militants they kill, force to surrender, and the arms they recover. In such an environment, fake encounters, the killing of civilians, including petty criminals, claiming that they are militants are bound to occur and even be rewarded. The Committee appointed for its enquiry repeatedly heard allegations that seized arms and explosives had actually been purchased from the black market, in order to further career prospects and to obtain financial rewards.
The laid-back attitude of the senior officers and playing puppets in the hands of the governments, the politician-police-criminal nexus is getting stronger everyday. These are the two main causes of the apathy that has crept into the police over a period of time. Shorn of pride and commitment to their job, most police officers are content to serve their political masters. In the process, the enforcers of the rule of law are frequently seen to be on the outside of the violators of law.
It is widely evident that in States, it’s the ruling parties that are directly interfering in the recruitment, posting, transfer and promotions of police officers. Beholden to their political masters, the police take less interest in the difficult task of enforcing the rule of law and spend more time in serving their benefactors.
M. Venkatesan, Sub-Inspector of Kilpauk police station, Chennai, says, “We have to maintain the balance. Even though I am prepared to be transferred for my actions some time in life, I would not like it. It will affect my family more than me.”
Zero tolerance for terrorism will remain a rhetorical statement until and unless the police radically improves its performance. And that is not possible without undertaking basic police reforms.
Government
A former civil servant and social activist S.R. Sankaran says that the extrajudicial killings are part of a “deliberate and conscious state administrative practice” for which successive Indian governments must bear responsibility. The failure of various administrative departments to resist illegal orders with devastating consequences from the government reflected the official behaviour in virtually every incident of major national crisis.
The constant complicity and denial of the permanent executive of Human Rights, fake encounter killings and suppression by brute force of militant Maoist/Naxalite uprisings and separatist insurgencies in the North East and later in Punjab and Kashmir, is all starkly visible in the media and elsewhere.
The ruling Congress Party openly engineered the massacre against Sikhs for partisan political gains in 1984 in the wake of then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi’s assassination at the hands of her Sikh body guards in 1984. The massacre left more than 3,000 Sikhs dead. The slaughter of unarmed Muslim youth at Hashimpura by paramilitary soldiers in 1987; the riots in Bhagalpur in 1989; the demolition of Babri masjid in 1992 and the slaughter that followed in its wake in Mumbai and Bhopal; and the state-sponsored massacre in Gujarat in 2002, all these incidents not only stamp the evidence that the state considers itself superior than the law, they also show the partisan ways in which the state makes the other departments dance on its fingertips.
The bureaucracy unresistingly obeyed instructions to deny people their constitutional rights, including to life, liberty and democratic dissent, and failed to extend equal protection of the law to people because of their religious or ethnic identities or economic powerlessness.
In order to prevent such injustices, investigation plays a very important role. Poor investigation gives little hope of prosecuting and convicting the perpetrators. The Central as well as the State governments have terribly failed to ensure adequate enquiry of complaints and reports of the extrajudicial killings hence, the guilty is hardly held accountable for his offence. The lax attitude towards such reports reflects the non-commitment on the governments’ part. Moreover, there is no independent body in India that is empowered to investigate such complaints without bias.
Arundhati Roy in her book, 13 December: The Strange Case of Attack on the Indian Parliament said, “Given the track record of the Indian governments (past, present, right, left and centre), it is naïve – perhaps utopian is a better word – to hope that any government will ever have the courage to institute an inquiry that will, once and for all, uncover the real story. A maintenance dose of cowardice and pusillanimity is probably encrypted in all governments. But hope has little to do with reason.”
When it comes to effectively combating the extrajudicial killings, even though National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) is a towering institution in India, it is reduced to a toothless tiger. NHRC’s recommendations in relation to the Human Rights violations, more specifically, the extrajudicial killings, have not been given due consideration by the government. This exacerbates NHRC’s ineffectiveness. NHRC has issued guidelines to be followed by the police in case of extrajudicial killings but it is evident that they are never complied; neither do the police feel any pressure from the government to follow them.
The next step after investigation is the prosecution. The Indian government has not merely failed to prosecute those involved with the killings, it has infact provided a protective coverage for them. Through the doctrines of sovereign and official immunity, the Indian Law insulates the officials who commit Human Rights violations.
Under the Code of Criminal Procedure, 1973 the sanction of the Central or State government is required to arrest or institute criminal prosecutions against public servants, including police officers and members of the civil or armed forces. The Indian government has ignored the repeated calls by various institutions to amend this law so that these officials lie outside the ambit of state protection and are no longer sheltered from prosecution.
Successive governments have failed to divert attention to various pitfalls in the extrajudicial killing. There is no adequate compensation system in India for the families of those killed. These families don’t even enjoy a statutory right to compensation. Those related to the victims may be encouraged to file reports and fight for justice through judicial process if the compensation system is in place. It may also deter the government from committing and authorizing such crimes. The Indian government is obliged to provide compensation to those affected by the extrajudicial killings under the International Law as well.
There have been various cases where it is quite evident that the governments, instead of opposing extrajudicial killings, encourages and supports the practice. Till now, no extreme reaction against such criminal acts by the police has come to surface. Indeed, the governments now accept these killings as a part of the state machinery and use it as their personal tools. There is evidence that the governments have funded and rewarded the police officers who commit such offences. This clearly shows that the Indian government sanctions extrajudicial killings.
The Amnesty International in its report dated 10 August 2001, about torture in Communist Party of India (Marxist) ruled state of West Bengal observed, "Police are being urged to use whatever means necessary to deal with crime and are often allowed to use torture as a substitute for investigations, while action is rarely taken against the perpetrators. This system of policing is having little if any impact on crime." CPI (M) leader Benoy Konar, defending police brutality once said, "It must be viewed whether police is carrying out torture with a correct aim or an incorrect aim...In a class divided society, the police has the duty of carrying out repression.... You [journalists] have the pen in your hands, the police has the stick." Hence, it would be a mistake to view human rights abuse from an ideological perspective.
The Criminal Procedure Code lays the responsibility for Law and Order squarely in the hands of the police and the magistracy. It gives absolutely no authority to the government to interfere in the role of the police. Yet police abdicate their responsibilities to dance to the tunes of their political masters.
Human Rights
Article 21 of the Constitution of India guarantees the Right to Life. Extrajudicial killings clearly contravene this right. With the increasing incidents of encounter killings in India, it clearly shows that the government has not followed the International Human Rights Laws.
International Human Rights Law prohibits the arbitrary deprivation of life under any circumstances. Article 3 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights states that “everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person.” Article 6 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (‘ICCPR’) provides that “[e]very human being has the inherent right to life. This right shall be protected by law. No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his life.” Article 4 of the ICCPR states that this right cannot be waived “even in times of public emergency threatening the life of the nation.” The state is obliged to provide effective remedies to the victims of Human Rights violations under Article 2(3)(a) and (b) of the ICCPR.
The Indian Government ratified the ICCPR in 1979. By ratifying an international treaty, India is bound not only to respect that right in principle, but also to take effective measures to ensure that extrajudicial killings do not occur in practice.
As mentioned earlier, the NHRC’s guidelines are seldom followed by the police and the governments with regard to the extrajudicial killings. NHRC has failed to bring the guilty to book for gross human rights violations. Lawyer Seema Gulati warns that the "growing trend of police killings" is endangering India's democratic foundations.
The striking caste and class disparities and biases can be spotted even in the cases of the encounter killings. Human Rights activists have time and again warned against the anti-terrorism and security laws in India, pointing that they facilitate human rights abuses in a large way targeting lower caste and minority communities. Prolonged detention without trial and inflicting torture in jails resulting in custodial deaths abuse the whole idea of security laws in the region.
In the north-eastern part of India, the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act (AFPSA) has been quite unpopular, especially in Manipur, as it offers immunity to the army from the Human Rights injustices they commit in the region. This draconian law has been criticized for its 'oppression and high-handedness' by the Justice Jeevan Reddy Committee which has asked for scrapping it.
The AFSPA active in many states in India, including J&K, does not define a ‘disturbed area’. It is a prerogative of the Governor of the State or the Central Government to declare an area ‘disturbed’. Under Section 4(a) of the act, even a non-commissioned officer can order his men to shoot to kill ‘if he is of the opinion that it is necessary to do so for maintenance of public order.’ This gives very wide discretion to even very junior officers. Section 4(c) of the act permits the arrest without warrant, with whatever ‘force as may be necessary’ vis-a-vis any person against whom ‘a reasonable suspicion exists that he is about to commit a cognizable offence.’ This has provided the basis of indiscriminate arrests, and the use of brutal force including firing against innocent civilians.
Further, Article 4(2) stipulates that no derogation from certain key articles, including Article 6 (right to life), may be made under this provision. But Section 4 of the act empowers firing, which may result in death, merely based on a relatively junior officer’s opinion or suspicion. This violates Article 6(1) of the covenant which states that, ‘No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his life.’
Human Rights activists have consistently held that the act is also violative of the Constitution. It, like Terrorist and Disruptive Activities (Prevention) Act (TADA), violates Articles 14 and 21 of the Fundamental Rights. A United Nations Human Rights Committee expert pointed out that such an emergency must be a “temporary measure, and cannot be in operation for decades, as this act has been in various parts of India”.
On September 25, 2006, the Committee on International Human Rights of the New York City Bar Association released a report, Anti-Terrorism and Security Laws in India, calling on the Indian government to limit its application of anti-terrorism laws. The report notes "Attentiveness to these human rights concerns is not simply a moral and legal imperative, but also a crucial strategic imperative. As the Supreme Court of India has recognized, 'terrorism often thrives where human rights are violated' and '[t]he lack of hope for justice provides breeding grounds for terrorism.'"
The report bluntly mentions that the excessive powers given under the acts such as TADA, Prevention of Terrorism Act (POTA) and Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA) were implied as a tool to inflict abuses by the police rather than prosecuting and punishing actual terrorists. Pervasive use of preventive detention, extortion and torture were resorted to by the authorities. The human rights agencies in India as well describe TADA as a lawless law which violates both the Constitution and the International Law.
In Jammu and Kashmir, the State Human Rights Commission (SHRC) indicated a total of 708 allegations of human rights violations between 1996 and 1999. These figures are purely based on the complaints made and also it excludes the security forces from the police. Neither the NHRC nor the SHRC is empowered to investigate either the army or the paramilitary forces. These departments have their internal, layered and opaque corrective mechanisms like the court martial, which are not open for public scrutiny. Even though they claim to maintain discipline through the internal checks, it is hardly surprising if the Human Rights violators in the Rashtriya Rifles (RR) and the Border Security Force (BSF) go unchecked.
Even if the army and the paramilitary forces are excluded, the figures that reflect in the media through the human rights agencies are grossly underestimated. A large number of cases do not get registered and many don’t reach the stage of investigation. Given the long and porus procedure of investigation, justice is seldom awarded.
Conclusion
Successive Indian governments have failed to hold the police, the army and the security forces accountable for their actions. Neither have these governments amended the laws which have been regularly condemned for providing a protective shield to those who are involved in the extrajudicial killings.
Even though the armed and security forces enjoy immense powers, they have their internal mechanisms to discipline the officials. But, it is very difficult to access those hearings. Human Rights agencies claim that if the punishment is awarded at all to them, it is grossly inadequate. Human Rights violations should be considered a serious criminal offence and even the army and security force personnel must be charged under the general law and tried in a public court.
Rewarding the officials and security personnel for killing ‘militants’ must be stopped. They should be encouraged, as per the Indian as well as the International Law, to capture the suspects alive.
The problems Indian police force faces today are immense and widely documented. However, police reforms are yet to see the light of the day. The National Police Commission (NPC) submitted its last report in 1981, but till date no Central Government has been willing to implement any of its major recommendations. Even the Supreme Court directives of September 2006, based on the NPC recommendations, have not found favour with the government.
Almost all political parties resist reforms in one pretext or the other. The duties of the police officer, as incorporated in Section 23 of the Police Act are ‘to obey and execute all orders and warrants lawfully issued by any competent authority.’ The democratically elected leaders are no better than the colonial masters as they easily manipulate the police for their unsavoury ends and simply ignore the word ‘lawfully’ in actual practice.
The Indian Penal Code enacted in 1860, Criminal Procedure Code in 1862 and the Evidence Act in 1872 have given the semi-literate and ill-trained policemen enormous legal powers. A constable has enormous powers of arrest, search and seizure, but is not trained or paid enough for this job. Some may argue that the police already have enough powers and that it would further corrupt them if empowered with more authority. It needs to be understood that the police reforms are not about giving more powers to the police, but to protect life and property of the ordinary citizens and maintain public order irrespective of caste, creed and religion.
Given the disturbances our country faces today, the need of a professional police force with a well polished training cannot be delayed further. The first step towards reforming the Indian police force is to insulate it from undue political interference and by giving it functional autonomy.
There are well-set rules notified in the police manuals by State governments about postings, transfers and promotions of officers, but they are being blatantly flouted by many persons in high authority. Investigation and Law and Order duties in metropolitan cities must be separated and a fixed tenure must be provided to officers posted in the field. The selection of police chiefs must be more transparent to make it more accountable.
David Bayley, one of the world’s experts on police, has succinctly observed – the police can influence political developments by just being deliberately inactive, or selectively active.
Unfortunately, the government under the pressure of public criticism takes to easier option and short-cuts. Instead of tackling the basic problems and strengthening the Criminal Justice System, it allows the police to combine in itself all the powers of that of the investigator, judge and executioner. If this phenomenon of ‘fake encounters’ is to be eliminated, the criminal justice system needs to be put back on the rails. The corrupt and the incompetent should not be allowed to rise to the top, and in no case should they be entrusted with the cutting-edge jobs with greater scope for indulging in corrupt practices.
Our media also needs to be more conscious. Trapping high potential, media can bring out the human rights violators under the public scrutiny. Public interest creates an opportunity to refocus attention on the issues concerning the masses. There is awareness about the extrajudicial killings in the international arena but the gravity of the systematic nature of this problem is still unknown. The Indian government must be reminded of its obligations under the international law, which can be best done through persistent reminders from the various media.
Media must not ignore the various layers hidden under a larger blanket of what the state terms as ‘internal security’ and ‘fighting terrorism’. Terrorism needs to be understood with a deeper meaning. Terrorism is different from the normal form of violent activities and is resorted to when the conventional forms of protests and agitations do not work. The roots of terrorism lie in misery and frustration arising from neglected causes, which may even be political. The repercussions of killing innocent targets, trading them as ‘terrorists’, and not even giving them a chance to prove their innocence, can in no way solve the bigger problems and disturbances faced by our nation.
Acts and reforms may help in bringing down the encounter killings to a point, but what needs to change is the attitude of the public. The upper class is too comfortable with their money power. The middle class which is supposed to be the transitional point of any society is a sitting duck, unless it is affected. The poorer sections and the minority communities which bear the maximum brunt of atrocities in a state lack representation. Hindustan Times editor Vir Sanghvi says, "We know the vast majority of encounters are fake. We do not think that this is a perfect situation, but in common with the rest of the middle class we have come to the regrettable conclusion that there is no real alternative."
After encountering repeated terror attacks, the public attitude has stiffened. The alternative for the Great Indian middle class is tougher police tactics which they approve, without questioning the authenticity of it. They also demand results, the abuse of which is borne by the marginalized poor.
Praful Bidwai, a social commentator said, "Growing illiberalism and intolerance... lack of moral clarity among large sections of middle class on issues of justice, fairness, pluralism, secularism and other constitutional values, leave alone compassion for the underprivileged."
The Right to Life is the most fundamental right, and its continued abuse in India through the commission of extrajudicial killings
must not be tolerated.
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