A delegation of Bishops which comprised of Bishop Theodore Mascarenhas SFX, the Secretary General of the Catholic Bishop’s Conference of India (CBCI), Archbishop John Barwa SVD, the Regional Chairman of the Odisha Catholic Bishops’ Council (OCBC), Bishop Kishor Kumar Kujur, the Bishop of Rourkela, Bishop Telesphore Bilung SVD, the Auxiliary Bishop of the Archdiocese of Ranchi, Bishop Alphonse Bilung, SVD, Bishop Emeritus of Rourkela, visited the affected areas of Sundargarh, Odisha on Saturday to take note of the situation after the vandalism that took place on April 1.
Marian statue inside the grotto of Bihabandh Catholic Church in Odisha (Photo by Rourkela Diocese)
According to the press statement put out by the CBCI, a large crowd comprising of priests, sisters, and devotees received the delegation as it reached Sundargarh.
On April 1, 2018, during the late night of Easter Sunday, few “anti-social” elements vandalised a grotto outside the compound of St. Thomas Church, Salangabahal, and mutilated the statue of Marian. The vandals also broke the head of the statue of baby Jesus in the grotto.
Moreover, goons reportedly smashed a statue of Marian in another grotto in Gyanpali village and attempted to burn the Church of the Victory of the Cross in Bihabandh, the Diocese of Rourkela. To make the situation more grave, the head of a statue of a bull of a Shiva Temple in the vicinity was also found chopped off.
The church did not link the incident with any of the radical groups or Hindutva groups as such. However, it has accused the state of showing apathy in dealing with such cases.
According to the assessment of the security forces, it seems to be a systematic premeditated ploy to disturb the peace of the people “who have been living in age-old harmony with each other in these villages,” stated the press statement.
“It appears that the anti-social elements targeted the holy places of two communities seeking to create a communal divide,” it reads further.
“The alertness of our priests and the Bishop Kishor and Archbishop Barwa, both of whom began contacting immediately the government and police authorities saved the situation which could have otherwise turned grave,” it added.
Condemning the attacks on both the Christian and Hindu places of worship, the delegation exhorted the locals to not to fall prey to the divisive forces.
Later, the Bishops also visited the damaged temple and met with the managing committee members which belonged to the temple.
The incident comes at a time when every church in the country was involved in the Easter celebrations. Moreover, the state has also been in news in the past for being the ground of anti-Christian violence which has resulted in the loss of more than 100 lives of members of the Christian community.
“While we reiterate that the incidents against the places of worship should have never happened and bring us shame and pain, we are proud of the people of Sundargarh District who have shown that we are capable of fighting the forces that want to divide us and polarise us,” the press statement concluded.
Over the last few years, the Islamic State (IS) terror group has shocked the world with its gruesome public spectacles. Especially abhorrent to our moral sensibilities is its overt use of children as frontline fighters, suicide bombers and propaganda tools.
From macabre hide-and-seek exercises, in which children hunt and kill enemy prisoners in specially constructed mazes, to the mass execution and decapitation of adult soldiers, young people living under IS have been indoctrinated and encouraged to engage in violence.
Meanwhile, IS’s quasi-government instituted an education system explicitly aimed at indoctrinating and weaponising the children living under it.
Mathematics was practised by determining how many more fighters IS has than an opposing force. Chemistry was taught by discussion of methods of gas inhalation. And physical education focused on the correct body positions for firing various weapons.
Their education has been compounded by the retaliatory and sometimes excessive violence of the vast array of forces committed to destroying IS. Through this, children have been exposed to horrific violence on a daily basis – thus generating trauma and, undoubtedly, genuine long-term grievances.
How IS’s use of child soldiers differs
There is a fundamental difference between IS’s use of child soldiers and the practice elsewhere.
IS hasn’t just recruited child soldiers. It systematically militarised the education systems of captured Iraqi and Syrian territory to turn the region’s children into ideological timebombs.
These children, saturated in IS’s particular brand of violent and uncompromising “religious” instruction from about the age of five, were trained in the use of small arms before their teenage years. They constitute a new challenge for the international community.
IS’s state-building efforts appear to have been thwarted for now. But saving the children exposed and potentially indoctrinated in its ideology is key to avoiding further terror attacks in the West, tackling the root causes of regional upheaval, and working toward a future where children play instead of fight, and schools teach instead of drill.
What children have been taught
Military activity, superiority based on IS’s interpretation of Islam, and the need to defeat unbelievers are embedded in its school textbooks.
Various videos, produced both through journalistic investigation and by IS itself, show the more practical side of education under the group’s rule. Children are taught how to fire small arms and use hand grenades.
Although IS extensively forced children into its ranks, many joined voluntarily – with or without their families’ blessing. But, in the long term, it doesn’t matter whether a child is forcibly recruited or not. And this is the matter of gravest concern.
IS’s primary concern is building and maintaining the children’s loyalty. The phrase “cubs of the caliphate” is a microcosm of how it views them. Cubs are unruly, ill-disciplined and dependent on strong (sometimes violent) guidance from their elders.
However, with time, resources and patience they can turn into a generation of fighters and idealists who will foster IS’s ideology even if its current military setbacks prove terminal.
Programs need to take a new approach
Disarmament, demobilisation and rehabilitation programs designed to reintegrate child soldiers into post-conflict society have significantly progressed in recent years. This represents the continued evolution of military-civil partnerships in the quest for a conflict-free world.
But IS’s systematic and meticulous radicalisation of an entire region’s children presents new challenges.
It’s understandable to interpret IS’s rapid retreat as its death knell, and thereby view traditional rehabilitation techniques as an appropriate remedy for yet another region recovering from violence at the hands of a radical armed insurgency. However, this conflict has been highly unusual in its pace, tactics and impacts – both now and potentially in the future.
So, we must revisit the fundamental assumptions of what it means to inspire peace within a society. This starts with the children subjected to the ideological extremism of IS and other armed groups.
If there is to be sustainable peace in the areas liberated from IS control, rehabilitation programs must be viewed as a community-wide process. Even if children did not directly participate in IS activities, the group has moulded their worldview and underpinning life philosophies.
Such philosophies may be especially productive in a region where resentment of perceived foreign – Western – interference and exploitation is long-lasting and multifaceted.
What can be done
The regular processes of identifying child combatants, disarming and reintegrating them into their communities through rehabilitation (such as by ensuring they are physically and mentally capable of rejoining their communities) and reconciliation (developing peace, trust and justice among children and their communities) are all necessary. But they are vastly insufficient in this instance.
Rarely has there been such systematic youth radicalisation and militarisation. So, the international response must be equally far-reaching and methodical.
Rapid reimplementation and revisiting of pre-IS school curricula is of the highest priority. National and local governments should ensure children are shielded from further recruitment by instituting a curriculum drawn from principles of tolerance and inclusion.
It’s essential to develop locally run initiatives to measure the level of radicalisation among a community’s children and to construct child-friendly spaces for young people to socialise, reconnect with their wider community and “unlearn” what they adopted under IS.
Such practices will help to heal the wounds of IS occupation and ensure the potential for cyclical violence is removed. Done right, it will hinder IS’s ability to rise anew.
It is trying to rewrite political equations by inflaming religious bigotry and attacking minorities.
A series of reports from Bihar, published by Newsclick, have unequivocally shown that the recent communal violence in nine districts of the state was engineered through a massive inflow of weapons, propaganda material, vehicles and manpower in sensitive areas in order to turn the Ram Navami festival into a bloodbath. State machinery was found sitting on its hands while armed processions shouting provocative slogans forced their way into minority localities. This led to altercations and then widespread arson, looting and casualties. Local organisations, formed and named for the festival became vehicles for this incendiary pogrom.
All this is now public knowledge. But the question is: is this just the general drive of the Sangh parivar to spread communal poison and militarise Hindu society or is there some more immediate objective? Both seems to be the answer.
One immediate objective for the BJP is to rewrite the political equations in the state. The nine districts where the most recent round of communal violence took place, seven are those where minority population is between 7% and 12% of the district’s total population. These districts are: Gaya, Nawada, Aurangabad, Kaimur, Samastipur, Munger and Nalanda.
The BJP appears to be targeting these seven districts because a it is easier to target the minority population and spread terror, without having to face severe retaliation. And the gains – or so the BJP hopes – will emerge in the form of a consolidation of majoritarian votes behind itself. It’s a Cambridge Analytica-Trump type of diabolical strategy but with a likelihood of grave consequences for society.
These seven districts also have another commonality. Barring Nalanda, the other six were handsomely won by the BJP or its ally the LJP (of Ram Vilas Paswan) in the 2014 elections. Nalanda would have been won too but the LJP lost it by a whisker, getting 33.9% votes compared to the JD (U)’s 34.9%. In the remaining two districts, Bhagalpur and Siwan, where minority population is about 18% each, BJP won in Siwan but lost in Bhagalpur. Bhagalpur’s loss was particularly galling because the margin of its defeat was a mere 9000 votes or about 1% of the votes cast.
But here is the rub: in the 2015 elections, with Lalu Yadav’s RJD, Nitish Kumar’s JD(U) and Congress in alliance, BJP and its allies got wiped out in these districts. Of the 49 Assembly constituencies falling in these nine districts, BJP managed to win just 12 with the alliance winning 46 seats and one going to CPI(ML) which too was opposed to BJP. This was of course partly due to the sheer arithmetic of electoral equations: RJD with JD(U) was a formidable force. But it also denoted the fragility of BJP’s victory in 2014.
With 2019 general elections approaching, the BJP is trying to rework and reverse this equation. It has already made a dent by winning over JD(U) to its side. But that is insufficient because JD(U)’s betrayal of its anti-BJP mandate will be unacceptable to its base. It is increasingly a weakened force. BJP is trying to strike it on its own. And, the only way it can do so is hope that its solitary weapon – communal polarization leading to consolidation of Hindu votes behind it – will work next year.
All the piety, all the religious zeal, all the talk of Hindu identity and worship of Lord Rama is nothing but the deadly calculus of retaining political power. It is all the more necessary because Modi’s rule has been such an utter disaster with unkept promises, failing economy, rising joblessness, unchecked corruption etc. that Indians are ready to throw the ruling BJP out.
So, the question now becomes this: how will the people of Bihar face up to this challenge? Will they fall into the trap being set by the Sangh Parivar or will they reject it lock stock and barrel. Coming weeks will give the answer.
Dalit Rights Activist Chandrashekhar Azaad “Ravan” has started a staggered hunger strike at Saharanpur District Jail demanding amnesty for those facing cases for participating in Bharat Bandh, an all India strike of Dalit and progressive groups on April 2, 2018. Azad, who has been incarcerated since June 2017 on seemingly fabricated criminal cases as well as under the draconian National Security Act (NSA) has started by foregoing one meal a day and will keep increasing the intensity of his hunger strike if his demands are not met.
The Bandh was called against the Supreme Court order of March 20 diluting the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989 by the bench of U.U. Lalit and A.K. Goyal. The court order says that the SC/ST Prevention of Atrocities (PoA) Act, 1989 is being “misused” and lays down procedures which will make it difficult for vulnerable communities to lodge cases against people in powerful positions such as government officials.
The protests organised to oppose the dilution and weakening of the order, saw more police and right wing violence inflicted on Dalit groups and individuals. More than 11 people were reportedly killed and several injured in protests that took place in Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh during the strike. Sanjeev Mathur, the convener of Bhim Army defense committee explained that Azad has been skipping one meal a day since Saturday, April 7 and and that he will give up both food and water if the outfits demands weren’t met. The demands included the withdrawal of the FIRs against all the Dalit protesters across India and compensation for the family members of people who lost their lives.
Bhim Army president, Vinay Ratan Singh, speaking at a meeting at the Press Club, New Delhi said “We are constantly being harassed and Dalit activists are being detained and assaulted across North India by the police as well as private citizens. Teachers in the Bhim Army’s schools are being forced to give bonds of good conduct under Section 107 of the Criminal Procedure Code,”
He demanded a judicial probe into the attacks on the peaceful protesters on April 2, and an end to continuous harassment. “We will test the government’s resolve to oppress us by protesting with black bands on Sansad Marg and courting arrest at social justice minister Thaawar Chand Gehlot’s residence on April 18”. He added,”We Ambedkarites don’t want a civil war. Even if you shoot 10,000 of us, we won’t resist. We call upon all Dalit, Adivasi, Other Backward Class (OBC), Muslim organisations and others interested in improving the country, to join us.”
Several other progressive and Ambedkarite groups present at the meeting alleged that many individuals were being framed in false cases after the strike as the goons who initiated the violence during the protests roam around with impunity.
Shriram Hiteshi, an 85-year-old educationist from Jatwada in Ghaziabad, Uttar Pradesh, has been booked in two FIRs at two police stations. “I can’t walk much, so I rode a scooter to hand over a memorandum to the collector. After the FIRs, the young men have fled. I won’t,” Hiteshi said. The FIR includes sections on grievous offences such as attempt to murder and offences under nine other penal code sections along with Prevention of Damage to Public Property Act, 1984, and the Criminal Law Amendment Act, 1932.
On April 6, Times Now aired a segment on its 8pm show India Upfront, where anchor and Times Now Editor in Chief, Rahul Shivshankar, released a list of twitter handles and claimed that the handles belonged to people who were a part of Rahul Gandhi’s troll army. He called the people ‘gutter snipers’ and ‘Amit Shah baiters’ among other things and alleged that some of them were even ‘Hindu haters’. However, when he named Riyaz Ahmed as one of these troll army members, the allegation ended up costing Ahmed his job.
The video that may be viewed here shows Shivshankar naming Riyaz at 5 minutes 15 seconds into the video. However, Ahmed who goes by the twitter handle @simpleriyaz has refuted the claims in a series of tweets:
Riyaz also felt threatened due to this sudden invasion of his privacy. He feared for his life.
Shortly afterwards Riyaz tweeted that he had been fired from his job because of what Shivshankar said on his show:
Riyaz was also deeply disturbed by an article in OpIndia where a previous tweet of his was quoted out of context to make it look like he was an abusive troll. Riyaz had used foul language while defending Asansol Imam Imdadul who forgave the killers of his teenaged son. This inappropriately worded tweet was in response to another user who was dissatisfied with the Imam’s forgiveness and wanted some kind of retaliation. Riyaz used swear words to shut him down. It was this poor choice of words that drew attention to him in the first place. However, did it justify branding him as a member of a troll army and a hater of Hindus? However, shortly after he tweeted about losing his job because of the Times Now show, he got many words of support from twitter users. #IStandWithRiyaz and #ShutDownTimesNow started trending. Riyaz has now decided to take legal action:
We reached out to Rahul Shiv Shankar for his response to Riyaz Ahmed’s allegation that he lost his job because of the show on Times Now. At the time of publishing this story we have not received any response or quote from Shiv Shankar. We will update the story if and when Shiv Shankar or Times Now respond to us. Meanwhile, the bigger questions still remain:
While social media trolls are an unfortunate aspect of our reality, how do we define a troll?
While people should be encouraged to avoid abusive language, especially on public platforms like social media, should a person be branded or labelled as a part of a political party’s “troll army” without adequate proof?
If a television show makes allegations based on nothing more than a person’s social media posts and that leads to that person losing their job, should the channel and the anchor not take some responsibility and at least apologise?
Press Release: Setalvad and Anand make statement before Ahmedabad Crime Branch
On April 5, Justice Revati Mohite Dere of the Bombay High Court granted interim transit bail till May 2, 2018 to Teesta Setalvad and Javed Anand. As per the orders of the Hon’ble Court, Teesta Setalvad and Javed Anand appeared before the Ahmedabad Crime Branch at 10 a.m. on April 6. Both gave their statements in response to all the questions put to them until after 5 p.m.
Both responded to the best of their knowledge to the questions put to them by a team of investigating officers led by ACP CN Rajput. Besides the oral statements they also handed over to the IO many documents which they had carried with them to Ahmedabad. The IO asked for certain other documents which will be provided within the next 15 days. A list of the documents submitted and to be submitted can be viewed here:
Among the documents submitted were four (4) ‘Utilisation Certificates’ issued by the auditors of Sabrang Trust. The Utilisation Certificates were a financial report detailing the amounts received in three (3) installments received by Sabrang Trust from the HRD Ministry during the grant period.The amounts received were: (i) Rs. 58,72,500 (ii) Rs. 26,66,750 and (iii) Rs. 54,20,848. A detailed ‘Activities Report’ accompanied by a Utilisation Certificate detailing all the payments made out of the grant received was submitted each time before the next installment was released by the ministry. As reflected in the last and fourth Utilisation Certificate, an amount of Rs. 5,91,871 remained un-utilised at the end of the Project Period. The same was duly returned to the Ministry.
As detailed in the Schedules to the Receipts & Payments, expenses were incurred under 7 budget heads as per the original Project Proposal (KHOJ programme for schools in Maharashtra ) approved by the Grants-in-Aid Committee (GIAC) appointed by the ministry’s Department of School Education and Literacy for grants under “Innovative and Experimental Education Programme”.
The budget heads: (1) Project Staff Costs (2) Development/Distribution of Learning Materials (3) Training of Nw Staff (4) Children’s Libraries (5) Meetings/Seminars/Workshops (6) Infrastructure Expenses (7) Administration Expenses.
Under Project Staff costs, as Project Director, Teesta Setalvad received an Honorarium between Rs. 20,000 p.m. in year one and Rs. 21,600 p.m. in the last year of the KHOJ project for schools in Mumbai and Maharashtra. Under Administration Expenses, as Project Administrator, Javed Anand received an Honorarium between Rs. 20,000 p.m. in year one and Rs. 21,600 p.m. in the last year of the KHOJ project.
Neither Teesta Setalvad nor Javed Anand received even a rupee for discharging their duties as Trustee of Sabrang Trust.
A Brief Background of how Rais Khan has been harassing Setalvad and Anand
Rais Khan, a disgruntled ex-employee of Citizens for Justice and Peace (CJP), has filed an FIR against Setalvad alleging that Setalvad and her husband Javed Anand used fraudulent means to get funds to the tune of Rs 1.4 crores from the Ministry of Human Resource Development under the UPA Government.
Khan has, since 2010, thirty two months after he was discontinued from services of field coordinator of CJP, a renumerative post where rental accommodation was also provided, literally been forum shopping and at the root of several malicious and false cases against first Setalvad alone, then both Anand and Setalvad. Setalvad was first targeted in 2004 through wings of the Gujarat state who induced star witness, Zahira Shaikh. A Supreme Court appointed Registrar General report completely exonerated Setalvad and CJP of baseless charges and found Zahira guilty of inducement by influential politicians. She was sentenced to one year simple imprisonment in 2006. Allegations against Setalvad have ranged from kidnapping to perjury now financial embezzlement.
Clearly, today Khan who enjoys the patronage of the regime in Delhi having been appointed to the Central Wakf Board also has senior counsel closely associated with the ruling party appearing for him. Since September 2010 his forum shopping has meant him approaching five trial courts specially hearing the Gujarat 2002 cases, the Nanavaty Shah Commission, the SIT and now the Crime Branch of the Gujarat police. In two judgments, in the Sardarpura matter and the Naroda Patiya matter, the judgments have passed remarks against Khan labelling his conduct as interference in the administration of justice.
Clearly the path-breaking work by CJP, spearheaded by its Secretary, Setalvad that has ensured the conviction of 172 persons — 124 of which to life imprisonment– is the single most significant reason for her being singled out by a vindictive regime. The continued historical legal battle in the form of the Zakia Jafri case too, is a serious thorn in the flesh for the powers that be.
Khan has now, in a new FIR, made a series of baseless allegations suggesting Setalvad and Anand got this funds for their education NGO KHOJ under the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan, but the funds so obtained were utilised for personal purposes. The complaint also states the fund were used for creating and distributing printed materials that could cause communal disharmony. Khan first tried to get CBI, then MHRD to lodge this complaint. When that did not work, his allies in the crime branch have come to his aid.
So far, Teesta Setalvad, a human rights defenders with three decades of courageous work behind her, has had to seek anticipatory bail in false criminal cases eight times already. Curtailing her personal freedoms and threatened incarceration is clearly the preferred way of this regime. Anand too, has now been falsely implicated three times.
Do you tolerate or encourage bigoted views at the dinner table and in the living room, or do you behave like a true Indian and speak out?
Image Courtesy: Mumbai Mirror
I was at a very dear friend’s wedding and was seated at a table with a dozen other guests. Most of us were done with our food and were waiting for dessert when the conversation suddenly shifted to Kashmir. A well-known retired officer from the armed forces said the situation in Kashmir had never been this bad and the government was not doing enough to defuse tensions. It seemed interested only in portraying a macho image. “Kashmir is slipping away from India,” he said.
Bawana (Delhi): When Momeena got a job at a purse factory on February 25, 2018, her husband flew into a rage. Never mind that he is, she said, a drug addict who beats her regularly, works occasionally and gives her money rarely. Yet, when she announced that she would be leaving home every day to go and work, he wasn’t happy, she said.
Momeena (centre) is blind in one eye. She takes a shared rickshaw to work at a factory cutting loose threads from purses eight hours a day, six days a week for which she is paid Rs 5,500 a month. In India’s metros, women travel shorter distances, with most preferring to walk or take the bus to work, many choosing low paying jobs over long commutes.
“People talk rubbish about women who go out to work,” said Momeena, who uses only one name. But she was undeterred. “For me going out is a way to forget all my problems at home.”
The problems are plenty. Momeena was born blind in one eye. Her younger daughter, now 10, was born with a more severe disability and cannot walk, talk or move without assistance. An elderly father with whom the family stays in a ramshackle brick house constructed on a 12.5 sq m plot here on the north-west outskirts of Delhi, contributes what he can spare from giving tuition classes at home.
Momeena wasn’t waiting for her husband’s approval. “I don’t need his permission,” she said, “At least now I don’t have to beg for money from my family and neighbours every time my child is ill.”
It wasn’t easy for her to get a job. Not many people want to hire a woman with one eye. But a neighbour put in a word, and Momeena now has a job that pays her Rs 5,500 a month for cutting loose threads from purses eight hours a day, six days a week.
She’s not complaining. It’s a regular income for a woman who has only studied until the sixth grade. Unlike many women here who prefer to walk to work, Momeena takes a shared rickshaw, the fare each way is Rs 5, but she has no other choice since the factory is too far away for her to reach on foot.
India’s women are opting out of employment at a rising rate. Over 10 years to 2011, the year of the last census, as many as 19.6 million women fell off the job map at a time of increasing educational attainment and economic growth. At 24%, India’s female labour force participation is now the second-lowest in South Asia, just above Pakistan.
IndiaSpend’s ongoing nationwide investigation (read part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4, part 5, part 6, part 7 and part 8), which examines why women are quitting jobs, revealed a complex layer of constraints, from the burden of housework to social attitudes.
In part 9 of the series we visit a resettlement colony on the outskirts of Delhi to understand the link between physical infrastructure, specifically transportation, and women’s participation in economic activity.
Located some 40 km away from the broad, tree-lined boulevards of Lutyen’s Delhi, Bawana (population: 73,680), like many of the city’s 45 resettlement colonies on the periphery of India’s capital, is the sum of its discards. When the Supreme Court ordered polluting industries out of Delhi, they came here. When slums were demolished and squatters were rendered homeless, they, too, came here.
Across India, women bear the highest cost of forced eviction. For instance, if the slum where a domestic worker lives is relocated to the outskirts of the city, she is not likely, given the cost and time taken, to be able to travel 40 km or so to get to work. And, so, she will end up quitting her job and will opt for a low-paying one that is closer home.
Data released by Census 2011 show the very different ways in which men and women commute to work, a story reported by IndiaSpendhere.
In India’s metros, women travel shorter distances, with most preferring to walk or take the bus to work. Men seem to have greater choice, with bicycles, two-wheelers and four-wheelers to choose from.
Across India’s cities, women form only 22% of people who travel for work. In Delhi, it’s just 15%, according to Census 2011. “Women’s choices, whether for jobs or for colleges, is often determined by distance,” said Kalpana Viswanath of Safetipin, an NGO that supports safer cities.
For instance, Viswanath said, a 2017 study by economist Girija Borker found that women in Delhi University actually chose lower-ranked colleges if it made their commute shorter and safer.
Women may turn down better employment opportunities further away from home in favour of lower-paying jobs when public transportation is unreliable or unaffordable, said Viswanath.
Men and women also use public transportation very differently, found a December 2017 report, Women and Transport in Indian Cities, by the Institute for Transportation & Development Policy (ITDP) and Safetipin. For instance, women tend to combine multiple destinations within one trip–to pick up groceries on the way back from office, or drop a child off to childcare on the way to work.
“Gender-responsive transportation recognises not only the differences in the way men and women travel, but also addresses the inequities which women and girls face as users, transport workers and decision makers,” said urban planner and the report’s lead author, Sonal Shah. The goal of such an approach is to “enable women and girls’ access to social and economic opportunities”.
Safety concerns means women can’t leave home
Momeena’s family moved to Bawana from Yamuna Pushta in the early 2000s. Like the other houses on her lane, her house has no attached toilet, and since her daughter cannot be carried to the community toilet, she goes to the toilet on her bed, and Momeena just washes the sheets everyday. Like the other residents here, she gets running water for two hours every morning.
“Public policy can address inequalities in the household division of labour by supporting initiatives that reduce the amount of time women spend doing unpaid work,” noted a 1995 World Bank study. Improved water, sanitation, electrification and public transport are examples of policy intervention that would enable women to devote more of their time to income-generating, income-augmenting and income-saving activities, said the study.
Momeena’s house is located on one of the many identical narrow bylanes of the slum, lined with open sewers, goats and chickens running alongside. Piles of garbage lie rotting. Flies are everywhere.
But more than the lack of sanitation, for most parents, the big concern is the lack of safety. Described as the ‘most crime-wracked borough in the most crime-wracked city in the country’, outer Delhi (including Bawana) saw 1,093 abductions of children–an average of three a day–between June 1, 2014 and March 31, 2015, according to National Crime Records Bureau data.
For parents, this means extraordinary vigilance. Many mothers are simply unable to leave their children unattended and unsupervised for long hours. Momeena’s younger daughter is looked after by her elder daughter who is in the seventh grade. Her parents who live above her keep an eye on the girls. Is she worried about their safety when she’s gone? Momeena shrugged but looked away.
Shafeeqan, who also uses one name, has a husband who doesn’t have a regular job. So she needs to supplement the household income, which she does by packing agarbattis (incense sticks) at home. After sorting them according to size, she must make bundles of exactly 44 similar-sized agarbattis, six of these bundles are then slipped into in a tight, plastic sheath cover. For every 1,000 of these bundles of six–roughly a full day’s work–she is paid Rs 25.
“It’s very hard work but I don’t have a choice since I can’t go out and work until my daughter gets married,” she said.
Bawana was once slated to be the great industrial hub of Delhi, with small and medium enterprises churning out plastic toys, shoes, handbags, garments, fans, light bulbs, biscuits and so on. This dream didn’t quite materialise and, according to one report, over 5,500 of 16,000 factories and industrial plots are either vacant or not operational.
The women prefer factory jobs, such as they are, because they pay better than piecemeal work done at home, even though most pay only a third of the legally-mandated minimum wage of Rs 14,052.
Jamuna Kumari, who quit school after the sixth grade, has worked in various factories since she was 13. She earns Rs 8,500 at her present job at a readymade garments factory, working eight hours a day, six days a week.
Both Jamuna’s parents work in factories, as do two elder sisters. The youngest is still in school in the 11th grade. The responsibility of getting dinner ready falls on this sister. “Someone has to cook since we’re all exhausted when we get back,” shrugged Jamuna.
Like most women who work in factories, Jamuna prefers to walk to work. It’s a 30-minute walk each way along the Bawana Canal, a long, narrow stretch of water where boys can be seen swimming and older men drinking and doing drugs. Petty theft along this canal is so commonplace that it is often not even reported to the police, said Jamuna. The real danger is of more serious crimes against women, including rape, and so Jamuna knows better than to walk to work and back alone.
Groups of boys pass lewd comments, but it’s a daily hazard that she has learned to ignore, she said.
Sexual harassment on public spaces in Delhi is now so commonplace that it has become a stereotype–a fact of life that girls and women like Jamuna take in their stride.
Sexual harassment in public places is rampant and an overwhelming concern of 85.4% women–higher than fears of a violent physical attack and even rape–found a 2010 study of 5,010 women and men in Delhi by the NGO Jagori.
Almost two of three women reported facing sexual harassment between two to five times over the previous year. The harassment occurred day and night, in places secluded and crowded with most being reported from buses, public transport and roadsides, found the report.
Another report by ActionAid, released in 2016, found that 79% of women surveyed had experienced some form of harassment in public.
‘Transportation is the fulcrum that gets women to jobs’
The December 2012 gang-rape and murder of a young medical student in a bus in Delhi resulted in a focus on safety in public transportation. Various schemes have been announced, from GPS tracking and video recording in public transport vehicles, in 32 cities to a proposal for women-only ‘Tejaswini’ buses with women drivers and conductors in 2016 in Maharashtra.
“What we need currently is an economic development and a rights-based approach as well as concrete recommendations and actions to be taken by different stakeholders,” said Sonal Shah, the urban planner “Since gender is not a core competence in urban local bodies, there is a gap in understanding what they need to do.”
“Transportation is the fulcrum that allows women to participate in the workforce,” said Shah.
Yet, the factories prefer hiring younger women, said Radha, a social worker with Jagori who lives in Bawana. The reasons are many: Women workers are paid less, and they don’t generally unionise or agitate for their rights. When a fire at a firecracker storage unit broke out on January 21, 2018, 10 of the 17 workers killed were women.
The women don’t mind working in the factories because this is the best work they can get for their limited education, said Radha. But after 40, it is impossible to get any work in the factories.
Aarti Devi was laid off some six months ago and now does piecemeal work for a fan factory, assembling a plastic part that she calls a ‘conductor’, making Rs 90 for every 1,000 ‘conductors’ she assembles by screwing eight tiny bolts with an equally tiny screwdriver. It’s a job that strains her eyes, and, so, when her kids are home, everybody pools in and helps her complete her required 1,000 pieces.
Aarti Devi does piecemeal work for a fan factory, assembling a plastic part that she calls a ‘conductor’, making Rs 90 for every 1,000 ‘conductors’. It’s a job that strains her eyes, and, so, when her kids are home, everybody pools in and helps her complete her required 1,000 pieces.
The women are vulnerable to the slightest fluctuations in the job market.
Immediately after demonetisation, many lost jobs, as did their husbands. “I sat at home for five months without any work,” said Jamuna “It was an awful time.”
This is the latest in an ongoing nation-wide IndiaSpend investigation into India’s declining female labour force participation.
