Friday, June 25, 2010

Diet of mud and despair in Indian village



Poverty is increasing alarming in indian villages. The rich are growing richer and the poor are becoming much more poorer. In few villages people have come to a stage of eating mud to survive as they do not have anything to eat. This is shame on the ministers and the government officials of those region. Indian Government should serioulsly look into such issues.

Read on..

"We live on a day-to-day basis," Suraj says, as the faint sound of hammering echoes across the village. "What we earn is what we spend on our families in a day." In Ganne, just off the main road about an hour south of the city of Allahabad, this is a simple fact of life. It is home to members of a poor tribal community, who live in small huts clustered around a series of shallow quarries.

Inside one of the huts sits a little girl called Poonam. She is three years old, and in the early stages of kidney failure. Like many children in Ganne she has become used to eating bits of dried mud and silica, which she finds in the quarry. Tiny children chew on the mud simply because they are hungry - but it is making them ill.

When reports first emerged of children eating mud here local officials delivered more food and warned the villagers not to speak to outsiders. But Poonam's father, Bhulli, is close to despair. What can we do? We eat the mud from the quarry when we feel hungry ."What can I say," he shrugs. "We can't afford to eat properly, so how can I afford to buy medicines for her?"

"I am really worried about my daughter, but I don't know what to do next. The poor need the government's help - if we had it, we wouldn't be in such a desperate state."

People like Bhulli and Suraj make their money filling lorries with bits of rock. It takes about eight hours for five men to fill one load. They carry the stones up from the quarry in plastic washing-up bowls balanced on their heads.

One of the women in the village, Phulkari, approaches to tell us about her little boy. "My son's name is Suraj, and he's started eating mud too," she says. "What can we do? We eat the mud from the quarry when we feel hungry." "Where do we get the money?" she asks. "We usually eat food only once a day. Last night we went to bed without eating anything at all."

The World Bank estimates that one third of all the very poorest people in the world live in India, and stories like those from Ganne have now inspired a national Right To Food campaign. There have been protest rallies in the heart of Delhi, as the Indian parliament prepares to debate a new Food Security Bill. It will dictate how many people in the country get access to massively subsidised food grain.

There's no doubt that India should be able to afford to feed its people. But the devil is in the detail. "It'll only cost the government about 1.2% of GDP to universalize a system of giving food for all, cheap food for all," says Kavitha Srivastava, the national coordinator of the Right to Food campaign.

"They can do it, if they have the political will. It's prioritising - where do you want to put the money?" "We think it should go in building people's nutrition levels. You can't have a country which is weak, which is hungry, which is anaemic. How can you have a nation like this?"

Now the government seems to be prepared to accept a new way of defining poverty, which will increase the number of people below the poverty line by more than 100 million to about 372 million. If you simply throw money at this problem...you'll have to throw four times the amount to get the result you want. And the government of India can't afford that.

If international poverty standards were used, the number would be much higher still - and some Indian economists believe it should be.But whichever figure is used, the poverty line feels like a rather fictitious divide because feeding more than a billion people is a massive logistical exercise. Vast quantities of food provided by the state go missing every day because of corruption and theft.

"Food ought to be a right," says Dr Kaushik Basu, the Chief Economic Advisor at India's Ministry of Finance. "And I believe this is a movement in the correct direction." "But what worries me at times is that we're being too glib and quick about the delivery mechanism."

Official estimates are that right across the country 75% of subsidised grain does not make it to the intended target in villages like Ganne. "So if you simply throw money at this problem, you'll have to throw four times the amount to get the result you want," says Dr Basu. "And the government of India can't afford that. The budget will go bust." In other words, the delivery system needs to be reformed as well - and corrupt local officials need to be taken to task. There is a long way to go.

Jean Dreze, a highly respected Belgian-born academic who has worked in India for many years, points out that the current debate is only about the most basic levels of food intake. There are fair price shops where people can buy subsidised foodgrain
"For a family of five to have reasonably good nutrition, nothing like meat or fish or any such thing, but just one egg per person per day, one banana, some dhal, some vegetables, a reasonably balanced diet - it would cost more than 200 rupees ($4.4; £3) per family per day," he says.

And that is far more than the amounts being discussed at the moment. It is a sobering reminder that feeding India is a daunting challenge - the government knows it, and the prime minister says it must be a priority. But the Right to Food Campaign insists they are not doing enough. The Indian economy continues to grow at impressive speed, and there is no shortage of food in the country. It just isn't reaching the people who need it most, on a consistent basis.

So in Ganne they continue to eat mud. And without finding a solution here in India, the world will come nowhere near the targets it has set itself for reducing global poverty.

Source: news.bbc.co.uk, 15th May 2010

Blind student in india, guided by blind teacher, gets PhD

Hats off to the student and the teacher!!

He could not see it, but the thunderous, rapturous applause that will ring in Sanjay Jain's ears for a long time told him that he had earned it. Having just won the longest ovation of the ceremony, Jain stood up modestly, a big smile on his face.

For Jain, who is blind since birth, this was one of his life's best moments. He was awarded PhD in law during the 97th convocation ceremony of Nagpur University on Saturday. Interestingly, Jain's guide was head of law department Shirish Deshpande, who is also blind.

This is perhaps for the first time in the country that a blind guide successfully guided a blind scholar. Jain is only the third visually impaired teacher in the university after DW Wadegoankar and Shirish Deshpande. Jain pursued his schooling from a school for blind and also studied at National Institute for Visually Impaired in Dehradun. He, however, pursued further education from regular colleges.

“My friends, teachers and some members of RSS helped me by being my readers. In those days, all material was not available in Braille and there wasn't any technology,” he said. The subject of his thesis was ‘Taking women seriously – A critical inquiry into the changing parameters of judicial review and perspectives on protection and enforcement of rights of women with special reference to the Constitution of India'.

Jain was earlier rejected by Pune University after he applied for the post of a teacher. Not deterred by the disappointment, he bounced back by getting a teacher's job at the ILS law College in Pune. Sanjay met his wife Suleshi, who has normal vision, when she was a student at Nagpur University. They have a son named Sagar.

Source: timesofindia.indiatimes.com, 6th une 2010

Friday, June 11, 2010

Cops in India tell mother to strip and have sex with her son

Such a Shame. Being a government servant,indian police misbehaved in such a cheap manner. Such people should be stripped of their jobs immediately and should get severe punishment for what they did. This is really sick of Indian Police.

Read On..

In a shocking tale, police officers, including a woman constable in Delhi, allegedly asked a woman to strip and have sex with her son, a juvenile accused, inside a police post.

The victim, a resident of Delhi's Mayapuri area, alleges that she and her husband had rushed to the local police station after her two sons were detained by the police on charges of theft.

"While returning home from the Mayapuri police station with my wife, I saw a crowd outside our house. While entering I saw a male and a female cop ransacking the place. When we objected and asked about our sons, the cops started hitting us," said the victim's husband.

"After beating us black and blue they took us to the Rajouri Garden police post around 7pm. I saw both my sons there; they had been severely beaten. The male and female police officers there started flogging all of us. They wanted to know about theft of certain items from a car," he added.

The torture ended at midnight. But only the parents were allowed to go. The children were kept in detention.

"They told me to go back home and come back the next morning at 10. But when we showed up, the policemen asked us to go back and return at 4 pm. We went home. But suddenly around 2 pm on May 22, the cops came to our house and took us to the police post.

"There they started beating us again. But after a few minutes one of the constables took me and my younger son out of the room and locked it from the inside. I was worried about the fate of my wife and elder son," he added.

Inside the room, the wife alleges she found herself in the middle of something horrible.

"They locked me and my elder son Raju. Then they started questioning us about the stolen goods. When my son and I denied all charges, the constable asked me to strip in front of my son. When I refused the constable started beating me with his lathi and forced me to strip," she said.

"Then the cops asked me to have sex with my son. Both of us started crying and I begged them to let us go. Then one of the constables asked me to have sex with him instead if I couldn't do it with my son. We begged them again and again to let us go. Finally after about one or two hours they released us," added the victim.

Terrified by the whole incident, the couple went home, silently. But an NGO Society for Social Research Art & Culture got information regarding the episode and encouraged them to file a complaint.

Top police officers refused to comment on the issue saying that the matter was being investigated. But after the NGO interfered, a local cop took the victims to the police post to identify the culprits and assured action against them. The police had lodged an FIR against the victims under section 145/10 of IPC on May 24.

"One of the neighbours called us and narrated the whole incident. We found the victims and we encouraged them to file a complaint against the culprit cops. Then on June 8, the wife wrote a letter to the Commissioner of Police, narrating the whole matter. We have already emailed the victims' story to the NHRC," said Shahnawaz Akhtar Khan, an NGO worker.

MiD DAY has a copy of the letter written by the victims. When the accused policemen came to know that the family was planning to take action, they allegedly tried to bribe them.

"They gave us Rs 3,500 and told us to go away from the area. But I declined and returned the money. They later offered me Rs 20,000 to back off," claimed the victim.

Source: www.ndtv.com, www.midday.com, June 10,2010

Andhra couple stoned to death for 'honour'

Just for the sake of intercaste marriage, people in india go to such an extent that they kill their own daughter and son in law, that too in front of everyone. Really dont know what they wanna prove..

Read On..

Honour killing isn't restricted to north India: a young Reddy girl and her Dalit husband were stoned to death on Wednesday night. Six people, including the parents of Baddam Swapna Reddy (22), were arrested and charged with murder on Thursday.

Swapna, belonging to the high-caste Reddy community, married Sunkari Srinivas (28) about three months ago. The couple was found stoned to death on the outskirts of Krishnajiwadi village in Nizamabad. Swapna's father B Lal Reddy, mother Radha, uncle N Ram Reddy and three aunts - Yadava, Padma and Shoba - were all booked for murder and under SC/ST Prevention of Atrocities Act.

Cops were deployed in the village after locals staged a dharna outside the girl's parents' house on Thursday.

According to villagers, Srinivas - who was first married to Savithri and has two daughters Nandini and Harini - met Swapna, fell in love and the two got married at Vemalavada temple in Karimnagar district about three months ago.

Srinivas hadn't divorced his first wife but she apparently had no objections to his second marriage. Fearing that their families would not accept their union, the couple began living in Hyderabad after their wedding. Srinivas, a trained computer mechanic, worked with a private firm.

Locals said the couple returned to the village on Wednesday and tried to convince the elders in Swapna's family to accept their marriage. The girl's family members were still in a rage. Later in the day, they allegedly descended on Srinivas's house in the village and attacked the couple.

Kamareddy DSP D Udaykumar Reddy said all the guilty in the double murder would be brought to book. Locals apprehend that those who carried out the crime belonged to the upper caste and hence would get away.

"About 20 members of Swapna's family came barging into our house late last night, dragged them out and lynched them in front of me," said Savithri, Srinivas's first wife, who is now a witness to the death of her husband and his second wife.

Source: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com, 28th May 2010