Anna Hazare begins indefinite fast for Jan Lokpal Bill- Saffron nationalists make presence felt

New Delhi, April 5: Tricolours fluttered atop SUVs also bearing BJP, Rahtriya Lok Dal and yoga guru Baba Ramdev’s Bharat Swabhiman Nyas’ stickers and flags near Jantar Mantar, in the capital, where social activist Kisan Baburao “Anna” Hazare began a fast-unto-death at for a Jan Lokpal Bill.

Hazare said that this bill- drafted by Karnataka Lokayukta N. Santosh Hegde, activist lawyer Prashant Bhushan social worker Arvind Kejriwal- is more transparent and stringent than the government’s Lokpal Bill which, would give to give more teeth to the ombudsman to curb corruption.

Addressing a crowd of around 500- mostly salaried class and small trader audience- 73-year-old Padmashree winner Hazare said that he had is undertaking this fast because the government denied his demand that the drafting committee for the bill have an equal number of government and civil society representatives.

“The government proposed a four-member ministerial committee. I said if ministers could stop corruption, then why is it increasing for 61 years since we became a republic.”

Hazare added that before he attended Ramdev’s anti-corruption rally in Delhi on February 27, he had written to Sonia Gandhi about the bill. “She didn’t even reply. You can’t reply to a man who has given his whole life for the country,” said the 1965-war veteran.

The audience, mesmerized by his simple manner and apparent asceticism, started raising slogans of “Shame! Shame!”

“The NAC kept calling me, but I didn’t go. They want to just use me as a photo opportunity to take the wind out the sails of our movement. I will only go when the de facto PM Sonia Gandhi takes a decision,” he added.

He said that he expected the government to relent in three to four days.

Hazare shared the dais with Magsaysay award winners Kiran Bedi, Sandeep Pandey and Kejriwal, along with activist preacher Swami Agnivesh and Prashant Bhushan. He was also visited by the JD(U)’s Sharad Yadav and the BJP’s Prakash Javadekar, who expressed solidarity with his causebut asked him to call off the fast.

The backdrop of the stage has a large image of Bharat Mata. The compere Kumar Vishwas said that in history books Alexander, Akbar and Babur were on one side a poets like Kabir on the other. Hazare was like the latter. People like the former will be forced to leave the country. Flags and banners of Ramdev’s Patanjali Yogpeeth and Sri Sri Ravi Shankar’s Art of Living Foundation also fluttered at the tent, and their activists chanted nationalists slogans.

Bhushan termed the government’s Lokpal Bill as “useless.”

“The Lokpal,” he said, “should have the power to recover ill-gotten wealth from the guilty.” He explained that they weren’t insisting that the government accept their draft in its entirety. “We are also agreeable to the NAC choosing common people and government representatives to frame the bill.”

While Hazare and Bhushan insisted their objective wasn’t to fell the government, Agnivesh appealed to the crowd to “throw out these corrupt rulers.” He said that simultaneous fasts are on in 500 towns and cities. “If Anna dies don’t think you will win Manmohan Singh. Ten thousand more Annas are here from Dhanbad, Hyderabad, Indore and other places,” he thundered.

Many youth and school students in the crowd said that they had got to know of the meeting from Facebook. Various organizations supporting the fast, like India Against Corruption, have launched a vigorous online publicity campaign.

Defence veterans too had gathered wearing their regimental side caps. Recent scams were the last straw that has brought them out on the street said retired Colonel R. P. Chaturvedi. “As responsible citizens we can’t burn buses. We will protest by peacefully agitating with Gandhians like Hazare,” he said.

Vimla, a slum dweller associated with city based NGO Centre for Advocacy and Research, who attended the demonstration, “This may lead to at least a small change. We trust this movement because we area part of it. We slum dwellers suffer the most due to corruption. Anna will see to it the bug fish are caught, the smaller ones will then follow.”

JNU students, alumnus prevent another Nirupama Pathak

New Delhi, Jan 6: Janta ki aave paltaniya, hilela jhakjhor ee duniya (The platoon of the people is coming, it violently shakes the world) sang the students of Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), accompanied by beats of a daflu, in front of Jharkhand Bhawan.

Their comrade Shruti Tiwari, a first year MA Spanish student, didn’t turn up for registration for the spring semester after the winter vacations. Tiwari, from Ranchi, had married Kaushal Kishore Thakur in August last, in Delhi.

Thakur, a Ph. D researcher at English and Foreign Languages University, Hyderabad, is also from Ranchi. Their marriage was solemnized at a temple followed by a registration in court. Tiwari’s parents had no knowledge of their union.

From friends and her roommate, students got to know yesterday that her brother had leaked the news to her parents. The parents then confined her at home and began threatening Thakur’s family. Though a complaint was registered with the Ranchi police, no action was taken.

The All India Students Association, JNU, contacted Mukesh Kumar, additional district magistrate of Chaibasa, who coaxed the cops to act. In Delhi today, more than 60 students came to see Jharkhand’s resident commissioner Rajiv Kumar.

Kumar called up the state’s DGP, who said that the police had visited the girl today. She would be sent back to Delhi before January 10^th, the last day for registration for the semester. The commissioner then helped them prepare a memorandum, which he accepted.

It’s apparently a happy ending for the couple. But students say they won’t rest till Tiwari’s back. They marched away into the sunset, tapping the daflu and raising slogans against khap panchayats.

Networking for special people

Dr. M. N G. Mani tells Pheroze L. Vincent about his mission to win the battles disabled people fight everyday

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"“Even if a tenth of all buses were disabled friendly, commuters would wait for those buses. Little things like audio signals at road crossings, for the blind, won't cost much.”...

All in a day's work

Biography of a Municipal bullock

In letter and spirit

In the zonal consultative meeting for developing a national dementia strategy happening in Coimbatore on July 25, one of the issues to be discussed is the legal hassles that plague patients and their families.

The Mental Health Act (1987), which came into effect in April 1993, replaced the anachronistic Indian Lunacy Act (1912). It did away with offensive terminology like “lunatic”, established licensing authorities and recognized the human rights of those afflicted. But is this enough?

Reservations to end in IITs, NITs, AIIMS, JIPMER etc

The ruling classes have moved to consolidate and legitimise their casteist hegemony over premier educational institutes by trying to abolish reservation of teaching posts. Soon it will follow even for students. The only Dalits in IIT will then be conservancy staff.

This calls for a Dravida Kazhagam style violent agitation, which rid Guindy Engineering College, AC Tech and other colleges in Tamil Nadu from upper caste hegemony in the 70s.

What I fail to understand is why is the Congress hell-bent on committing political suicide before the General elections?

A collective effort against the flesh trade

The Word talked to B. Baby and Kalaivani, President and Secretary of the Indira Female Peer Educators Collective (IFPEC), respectively. IFPEC is a collective, of former and working female sex workers (FSWs) started in 2003 with 20 members. Today it boasts of 2088 members.

IFPEC has been organised by the Indian Community Welfare Organisation (ICWO), an NGO based in Vallalar Nagar, Anna Nagar West, Chennai. The collective primarily educates FSWs on safe sex and AIDS prevention. It also works as an advocacy group for FSWs, cares for their children, encourages savings schemes among them and even spreads awareness and rescues girls lured into the flesh trade. Pheroze L. Vincent reports…

(Pheroze L. Vincent ) PV: When did you become an FSW?
(B. Baby) BB: When I was 20 years old. I had a love marriage at 13. My husband was a drunkard. I had a friend whom, I didn’t know, was an FSW. One night my friend took me to her house when my husband had beaten me up very badly. She initiated me to the profession.

PV: What problems have you faced as an FSW?
BB: Customers have taken me to unknown locations and have not paid after the night was over. Some have left me off at unknown places. The decent ones give the bus fare for going home. Some get drunk and threaten us with knives. They hold us for more than a night and make us have sex with groups of 5 or 6.

PV: Have you ever been arrested?
BB: I was in a remand home in Bangalore for 6 months. In the home, we were taught Kannada, basket weaving and incense-stick making. The food was bad. We would get kanji (rice soup) and sometimes get eggs. I was bailed out by the owner of the lodge I worked in. Even after my released I faced many raids.

PV: Was there any torture?
BB: Police used to beat up repeated offenders in lock ups. We would pay the fine and get released. After they have been sensitized the torture has stopped for the past two years.

PV: Did you try any other profession after being released?
BB: I remained an FSW. I didn’t know about HIV. Once an FSW, we are stigmatized and we can’t find rented accommodation or jobs. Wherever we went we ended up in the same profession.

PV: When did you leave the profession?
BB: I got in touch with ICWO 12 years ago. We FSWs understand the plight of other FSWs. Another FSW talked me into joining. It has been 5 years since I left the profession.

PV: How do you recruit?
(Kalaivani) K: Our field volunteers distribute condoms to FSWs, free of charge, at soliciting sites, daily. We spread awareness about HIV and even demonstrated how condoms are used. Initially members are enrolled in a thrift society. We even conduct street plays.

BB: We have divided the city into 10 zones for operation. Volunteers and zone leaders need to submit regular reports and are even subject to audits. (She shows this writer, folders of audits and hand written reports.)

PV: What employment is available to former FSWs?
K: We train them in tailoring, driving, flower vending, candle making, running Idli shopsand so on. They also find jobs as domestic helps and security guards.

PV: How many FSWs are there in Chennai?
K: A survey in 2004 listed 6500 FSWs. They are centred mainly around the film production areas of Kodambakkam. When leaders of these zones get information of a procurer bringing girls into the trade, we go rescue them. They victims come here for jobs, especially in the cine field.

PV: Don’t you face opposition from those who run the business?
K: We counsel procurers and pimps too and sensitise them against this trade. We attend public hearings regarding sex workers so we are known to the authorities. We also bail out peer educators, who inevitably get arrested in raids.

PV: Do you face harassment of any sort?
BB: No, we do not operate in the areas we used to practice. The police know we belong to IFPEC. Some of us haven’t revealed our involvement in the trade to even our own children. We tell the landlords that we work for an NGO.

PV: Do you know of any FSW’s children born in prison?
K: No, we do not practice when we are pregnant. But, the atmosphere at home isn’t always good. Most of us, who are in the trade, are there because of irresponsible husbands. When FSWs are arrested we have cluster mothers who take care of them. We also have mentors who see that they get an education. The children often educate their parents.

BB: My daughter is in Class 12 now. She will go to college next year.

PV: What goals have you set for IFPEC?
K: We are now active in Chennai, Tiruvallur, Kanchipuram, Villupuram and Madurai districts. We want to spread our mission all over Tamil Nadu.

ICWO and IFPEC partner with the Tamil Nadu Aids Initiative- Voluntary Health Service (TAI-VHS) and Chennai Corporation AIDS Prevention and Control Society (CAPACS) and have even conducted workshops for the Tamil Nadu Police. The organization is headed by Mr. Hariharan. Information about their activities can be accessed at www.icwoindia.org.

(With inputs and translation from Devasitham, who is doing a Masters in Social Work- Community Development student at Madras Christian College and interning at ICWO.)

Stir in support of Dalit law students

Chennai, Dec 3: A Class 8 schoolboy named Mani from Chromepet demonstrated today in support of Dalits involved in the violence at Dr. Ambedkar Law College on Novemeber 12.

“We have to defend ourselves from upper caste thugs from outside (of Chennai) if we have to study in college,” he said as he joined around 70 supporters of the Revolutionary Students’ Youth Front (RSYF) held in front of Memorial Hall at Park Town here today.

The speakers at the event accused the media of sensationalism and not investigating the root cause of the violence which, they claimed, was discrimination against Dalits.

Veeraswami of the Peoples Art & Literary Association (PALA) said upper caste students would not eat with Dalits and mocked them when they received the SC/ST scholarships.

“They pass comments like, ‘You coolies who live off gruel we give you in villages don’t wear slippers there, yet you show off with shoes here.’ Dalits were attacked during exams. Finally when the three main sub-castes of Dalits jointly resolved to hit back, this violence broke out,” said Veeraswami.

D. Ganesan, joint secretary, RSYF Chennai, said that with the closure of the hostel and canteen, the Rs.1000 SC/ST scholarship is too little to survive. Ganesan suspects a conspiracy by politicians, police and the media, to project a bad image of students, so that students lose the sympathy of the public.

“By tainting students as rowdies, police action to crush student struggles becomes easier and the government can continue to neglect reform in education,” he said.