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| << October07, 2004 - [India Thinkers Net]Separate polling booths for SCs/STs ? |
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#1 The Hindustan Times, October 05, 2004, Tuesday BJP, Hindu Munnani activists held Press Trust of India Coimbatore, October 4 More than 800 activists of BJP and Hindu Munnani were arrested on Sunday, while attempting to stage a demonstration in the city condemning CPI for its 'role' in damaging an idol of Lord Ganesha in nearby Tirupur a fortnight ago. Defying a ban on the demonstrations, the workers assembled near the city bus stand and raised slogans against CPI and its MP, K Subbarayan. The agitators, led by BJP district secretary, KN Chandrasekhar and Munnani Tamil Nadu Secretary, K Subramani, were included among those arrested, police said. Tirupur had remained tense for nearly one week, following the damage to the idol during Vinayaka Chaturthi. Several thatched sheds in front of the offices of both CPI and CPI(M) in and around that town were set on fire by workers belonging to various Hindu organisations, after the damage to the idol, police said. http://www.hindustantimes.com/news/181_1040642,000900020001.htm ----------------------------------------------------------- #2 CHHATTISGARH: Another Custody Death Of Dalit In Raman Home District Indian Express, October 07, 2004, Thursday Another custody death in Raman home district RAIPUR, OCTOBER 6: While the dust kicked up by two alleged custodial deaths in the state is yet to settle, another in Kawardha, Chief Minister Raman Singh??™s home district, is set to give sleepless nights to the Chhattisgarh government. Sources said tension gripped Kawardha today after the body of a Dalit youth, Bannu Ram alias Babloo, was recovered from a field. Babloo, who hailed from Sodha village, had been summoned to Pipriya police station yesterday in a case relating to an attempt to murder in his village, the sources added. His body was found this morning lying in a field a few metres away from the police station, which has a power substation of the Chhattisgarh State Electricity Board nearby. Police claimed that the youth died of electrocution by high-tension overhead wires. As news of the youth??™s death spread, over 2,000 angry villagers today ghaeroed the Pipriya police station. Refusing to allow the body to be taken for post-mortem, the villagers shouted slogans against the Chief Minister and the police, demanding the arrest of SHO D.K. Sisodia and other policemen involved in the killing of the youth. Inspector General of Police (Raipur) D.M. Awasthi said additional police personnel have been rushed to Pipriya to prevent any untoward incident. ??????The situation is tense and efforts are being made to get the post-mortem conducted,??™??™ Awasthi added. District Collector S.K. Tiwari, who has already been to the spot, has ordered a magisterial inquiry into the death of the youth, and the entire staff at the police station have been placed under suspension. Meanwhile, Leader of the Opposition in the State Assembly Mohinder Karma and Pradesh Congress Committee working president Charan Dass Mahant joined the villagers protesting outside the police station late this evening. Karma demanded a judicial inquiry into the incident and registration of criminal cases against the guilty police officials. Former chief minister Ajit Jogi, who is currently in Delhi, has, in a fax statement, accused the Raman Singh government of committing atrocities on Dalits and tribals. ??????It appears that this vulnerable section, which needs protection, has become soft targets. The government has to take moral responsibility for these custodial killings,??™??™ he said in the statement. Last month, a tribal youth, Ram kumar Druv, was found dead inside a police station in Raipur and it was only after the high court??™s intervention that criminal cases were registered against the accused police officials. Later, another youth died at Bhilai in police custody. http://www.indianexpress.com/full_story.php?content_id=56536 --------------------------------------------------------------- #3 SC Seeks Centre's Response On Separate Polling Booths For SCs/STs The Hindu, October 05, 2004, Tuesday SC seeks Centre's response on separate polling booths for SCs/STs New Delhi, Oct. 4 (PTI): The Supreme Court today sought the Centre's response on a PIL seeking fresh delimitation of constituencies reserved for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes on the basis of a recent census report as the earlier demarcation was based on the 1971 census report. A Bench comprising Chief Justice R C Lahoti and Justice G P Mathur, passed this direction on a writ petition filed by the Federation for Upliftment of Depressed Classes which also sought setting up of separate polling booths for SCs and STs to enable them to cast their votes in a free and fair manner. Basing the petition on the States of Maharashtra, Bihar, Jharkhand and Haryana, where elections would be held in the near future, the petitioner through S C Aggarwal contended that the demarcation of Assembly constituencies in these four States for SCs and STs was based on the 1971 census. The petitioner requested the court to direct withholding the election process in these States till the Delimitation Commission completed the fresh demarcation of the SC/ST constituencies there. It also requested the court to direct the authorities in the States to set up more polling booths in the reserved constituencies with additional police protection so as to enable the people from the weaker sections to cast their votes without fear. http://www.hinduonnet.com/thehindu/holnus/002200410041920.htm --------------------------------------------------------------- #4 GUJARAT: UNTOUCHABLES IN NEW BATTLE FOR JOBS The Guardian (London), Oct. 03, 2004, Sunday Untouchables in new battle for jobs : India's lowest class raises its sights from the gutter Randeep Ramesh in Ahmedabad 'I couldn't get the bank job I wanted. When my father died I took his job as a sweeper'. Flanked by green cricket fields where he once played and a university from which he graduated, Arvind Vaghela tries not to notice the stream of students walking past. 'I used to be like them, attending lectures and going out on the fields. But now I just hide my face,' he said. The reason for his shame is the broom in his hand. Despite a masters degree in economics from Gujarat University in Ahmedabad, the best job Vaghela, 24, could get was one done by generations of his family: roadsweeper. 'I wanted to work in sales for a bank, but you needed to have your own vehicle. I come from a poor family, so how could I afford that? When my father died I was offered his job and I took it,' he said. As a Dalit, or untouchable, Vaghela's story is familiar in this sprawling west Indian city. Nearly 100 of its council sanitation workers have degrees in subjects ranging from computing to law, but cannot get better jobs because they are Dalits. Their experience is part of an increasingly heated debate in India, where the government has announced that it will consider extending public-sector job quotas for people from the lowest castes to the private sector. Industrialists, who insist private-sector jobs and promotions are earned on merit, say that this will make businesses inefficient and uncompetitive. Rahul Bajaj, who chairs a large motorcycle manufacturer, wrote in the Times of India that public-sector job quotas had reduced the 'effectiveness of government' because decisions were not made on the basis of ability. This argument leaves Ahmedabad's roadsweeping graduates unimpressed. Most say that they have had to face discrimination or exploitation in the booming private sector. 'I got a job with a firm of accountants and then had to present my qualifications. On one school certificate it mentioned my caste. 'The next day I was told there had been a mistake - I was not required any more,' said Dalit sweeper Prakash Chauhan, 32, who has a a degree in commerce. Chauhan stresses he is relatively well paid, at 4,000 rupees (??50) a month, and his job is secure.'This is a job for life. But it was my father's life. Our parents had a dream that education would mean we would not have to do the jobs they did. It did not turn out that way.' Dalits, the lowest caste, have endured centuries of discrimination and violence because of a social order that consigns them and their descendants to jobs nobody else wants to do and a tradition that all humans are created unequal. In rural India Dalits have been murdered for proposing to marry somebody further up the social ladder, barred from temples, forced into bonded labour and made to carry human waste from the homes of high-caste Hindus. In the cities, where it is easier to change one's name and slip into the crowd, Dalits say economic exclusion is now the biggest issue. The ingrained unfairness of the caste system has brought pressure for reform on human rights grounds against Western firms doing business in India. Unions have written to 300 companies in Europe which outsource work to India to check that their subcontractors do not discriminate on the basis of caste. 'There are many parallels with the situation in South Africa in the Sixties, when foreign companies needed to be persuaded to address the discrimination in the system of apartheid,' said David Haslam, the London-based chair of the Dalit Solidarity Network. Chandra Bhan Prasad, a Dalit writer who has proposed many new affirmative action programmes in India, says businesses should look for inspiration to the United States, where firms carry out diversity audits and give contracts to firms from minority groups. 'About a fifth of General Motors managers are African American, Hispanic or Native American. GM actually goes out of its way to recruit from these communities. The company also places $2 billion of business into the minority communities. No Indian business has done the same.' These measures helped to create a black middle class, he says, making African Americans part of mainstream life in the US. By contrast, Prasad says, if Oprah Winfrey had been born in India she would have remained chained to poverty rather than become one of the world's richest women. 'Here family connections and caste matter more than ability. It is still the case of who you know, not what you can do. 'In the US you have black billionaires, industrialists, black film stars, black professors. In India university professorships are closed to us. We do not have one Dalit millionaire. There is not one Dalit newspaper editor, nor a Dalit newscaster.' Academics caution, however, that there is one big difference between race and Indian caste. 'No one can tell from your appearance that you are a Dalit. The same cannot be said for African Americans,' says Shyam Babu, a research fellow at the Rajiv Gandhi Institute, a think-tank in New Delhi. 'It is more subtle. Once you know someone's name and where they are from, most Indians can identify your caste. The basic bigotry is the same: you assume an entire ethnic group is incompetent.' http://www.guardian.co.uk/india/story/0,12559,1318632,00.html Confederation of Human Rights Organizations (CHRO) 3, Rams' Cottage Ambalathumukku Pettah Thiruvananthapuram-695024 Kerala South India Ph.: 0471-2476262 www.humanrightsindia.com www.humanrightskerala.com |
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| << October07, 2004 - [India Thinkers Net]Separate polling booths for SCs/STs ? |
October08, 2004 - [India Thinkers Net] Gujarat & Manipur Watch >> |
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