Nashik, Feb 15 (PTI) A farmer in Nashik district of Maharashtra today said he set on fire his onion crop in the field out of frustration.
Representation Image
Krishna Dongare, resident of Nagarsul in Yeola tehsil, said he burnt the crop in his 2.5 acres farm yesterday because the prices had crashed.
"I have spent Rs three lakh on the onion crop in my field, but traders have stopped buying the produce in auctions. Farmers are staging road blockades in the district demanding better prices. The demand was also hit by the demonetisation. If I sold my crop today, I would get only Rs 60,000," Dongare said.
Jaydutta Holkar, chairperson of Lasalgaon's agricultural produce market committee, said onion prices were falling for the past several days and farmers were not recovering even the input costs.
Onion prices have fallen to Rs 100-150 per quintal at some places. APMC centres in the district including those at Mungse and Zodge have stopped auctions of onion, as it is not possible to send the crop to markets across the country due to shortage of railway waggons, traders had said yesterday.
It is not surprising that the right-wing ruling class is usurping Valentine’s Day and stigmatising the celebration of love by Hindu-ising the day. The Directorate of Public Education of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) led Chhattisgarh government has issued notices to schools, directing that February 14 be marked as “Matru-Pitru Diwas” (Mother-Father Day) to inculcate “bharatiya sanskriti”, or “Indian culture”.
This is not the first time a day meant to commemorate an idea has been changed to signify another, more “Indian”, referent. Since 2015, December 25 — Christmas for most of the world — is officially recognised as “Good Governance Day” in India. This was meant as an homage to veteran BJP leader Atal Behari Vajpayee on his birthday. It is no coincidence that December 6 — Ambedkar Mahaparinirvanam Diwas, observed by millions of Indians as a day to pay homage to Dr Bhimrao Ambedkar — was the day chosen by the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) to demolish the Babri Masjid in 1992. In past years we have witnessed organisations like the Shiv Sena, VHP, Bajrang Dal, Students Islamic Organisation of India and others indulging in moral policing, often violently, against couples found in public spaces on Valentine’s Day. This year we see the beginning of a different trend. The attack on this secular day of celebration comes from the ruling government, and through a government institution, the Directorate of Public Education, in the name of Matru-Pitru Diwas.
Last February, some national newspapers reported that the Bajrang Dal and Shiv Sena would not indulge in the usual violence and moral policing on Valentine’s Day. Lalmani Verma's report stated that the “Bajrang Dal’s convener for UP and Uttarakhand, Surendra Mishra, said that the 'acts that couples indulge in' on roads and at public places on Valentine’s Day is 'similar to nature of animals' and interfering with them is useless. 'It has been decided at the top level of the organisation that our workers will not disturb any couple any more,' Mishra said. Bajrang Dal’s Awadh region convener, Rakesh Verma said the organisation was against western culture and hence the workers’ protest will remain confined to torching Valentine’s Day cards only 'but there will be no misbehaviour with any couple.'"
In 2015, just a year prior to these statements, the Bajrang Dal had announced that it would solemnise the marriage of boys and girls found together in public places on Valentine’s Day. As for the couples who refused, the Bajrang Dal karyakartas (workers) would make them leave the area after giving them images of Shiva and Parvathi, as well as Krishna and Radha, and advising them to express their love as these gods did. Even the Shiv Sena had taken a similar decision not to misbehave with couples last year: "'National head of Shiv Sena’s youth wing, Aditya Thackeray, has issued strict directions to not misbehave with any boy or girl on Valentine’s Day. He does not want assault or misbehaviour with youths. Shiv Sena is against western culture and we have communicated our message during past years. We are not going to assault any couple. If any worker will misbehave or assault any couple, he will be expelled from the party', said Anil Singh, UP head of Shiv Sena.” Not only has no leader of the RSS or any other right-wing group made any controversial statements regarding Valentine’s Day this year, the newspapers too, quite surprisingly, are devoid of the usual heteronormative patriarchal advertisements surrounding this day. Like all other festivals, Valentine’s Day has long been a means to make big profits for the markets, and sexist commercials have lured the public into indulging in consumption. Have the cultural right and the economic right come to a consensus to wipe out Valentine’s Day celebrations from India?
While, on the one hand, it is the right wing of this country that invites finance capital into India through neo-liberal policies, on the other hand, the clash between the cultural and economic right wings is most acute on the question of Valentine's Day. While the market wants to make a profit using this day of celebration, for the cultural right the celebration of love stands in the way of constructing a Hindu Rashtra. In past years, it has taken the form of direct attacks. The Shiv Sena, for example, has attacked shops selling Valentine’s Day cards, obstructing their profit-making. The popular mainstream media has stepped back from raising funds from its pages with long advertisements marked with red and pink to mark Valentine's Day. Instead, the newspapers are now printing expressions we can all tell our parents on Matru-Pitru Diwas. Here is a sample: "Without you there would be no me. It's as simple as that! I love you with all my heart. Happy Valentine's Day!" and "As my Mom and Dad… as my friend… as a Valentine… you're the best!" Maybe next year Prime Minister Modi will ask us to take selfies with our parents and post them on Twitter!
It's true that the habit of displaying affection publicly is not common among Indians. Valentine’s Day is an enabler — one that offers a yearly opportunity and vocabulary through which one can express feelings of affection and attraction. Instead, Valentine’s Day has been made the scapegoat for our disturbingly regressive attitudes towards consensual adult relationships outside the narrow bounds of social permissibility. Moral guardians are always ready to stand as gatekeepers of culture.
This day of romance, celebrating individualistic, mutually respectful love, is attacked by those who wish to maintain the status quo. The question is, when do we fight for, and when do we celebrate, equality between the sexes?
Mumbai: The Bombay High Court today said Maharashtra’s progress and prosperity is pointless when 50 per cent of children in the state are malnourished and below the poverty line.
Photo: Dna India
The court also observed that the government has not taken any serious steps to address the problem.
A division bench of Justices V M Kanade and P R Bora was hearing a bunch of PILs highlighting increasing instances of malnutrition-related deaths and illness among those living in Melghat region of Vidarbha and other tribal areas.
“In our state, the children’s population must be over 40 crore. Out of this, 50 per cent children are below poverty line and suffering from malnourishment. What is the point of prosperity and progress in the state when this is the situation,” Justice Kanade observed.
The court further said the state government ought to make separate allocation of funds to address the issue in the upcoming budget session.
The court has posted the petitions for further hearing on March 1, when the secretaries of Women and Child Welfare department and the Tribal Welfare department will have to submit power-point presentations to HC on how they propose to tackle the problem and what measures will be undertaken.
The court had earlier too come down heavily on the government for failing to initiate steps to solve the problem, and had said the concerned ministers will have to take more interest.
New Delhi: The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) won the 2014 Lok Sabha elections and contesting the Uttar Pradesh Assembly polls on development plank, but its MPs from the country’s highest populated state failed to spend a whopping Rs 333.6 crores of MPLAD funds meant for development of their constituencies.
Photo: http://ste.india.com
UP alone gave the party 71 out of the total 80 seats in Lok Sabha seats in 2014 trusting the promises of ‘vikas‘ (development) and ‘achche din‘ (good days).
Notably, Rs 135 crores of these funds not spent in 33 Lok Sabha constituencies where either Dalits or Muslims are in sizeable number, reveals a study conducted by a US-based advocacy group.
Every year, an MP is given Rs 5 crore for development works under the Members of Parliament Local Area Development Scheme (MPLADS) in his constituency.
While Rs 71 crore remained unspent in 17 Dalit-dominated constituencies, over Rs 64 crore could not be spent in 16 other constituencies where Muslims account for more than 20 percent of the population.
All these 33 seats are represented by BJP MPs.
The fund utilization percentage for 17 Dalit-dominated constituencies stood at 58.91 percent, while that for Muslim-majority constituencies was 67.76 percent.
“Average of the percent utilized for MPLAD funds drops for Dalit seats to 58.9 percent while it goes up significantly for Muslim seats to 67.8 percent. The average of all seats is 60.8 percent,” says the report.
However, if individual performance as for utilization of MPLAD funds is taken into consideration, two of all the 71 BJP MPs have performed the best.
BJP MP Satish Kumar of Aligarh has utilized 86 percent of the Rs 15 crore allotted to him for the development of his constituency. Maneka Gandhi, also from BJP, comes close second with 85.9 percent of utilization.
Kanwar Pushpendra Singh, BJP MP from Hamirpur, is the worst performer who utilized only 17 percent of his funds and Kannauj’s Dimple Yadav of Samajwadi Party, with 24 percent of funds utilization, is second from the bottom.
New Delhi: Expressing concern over the increasing number of undertrial prisoners in jails across the country, the government has urged the high courts to take suo motu action for their release after they complete half of their likely term.
Section 436A of the CrPC provides that if an undertrial has completed half of the likely term he is likely to get for the crime he has allegedly committed, then he or she can be granted bail with or without surety. It is not applicable on offence for which the punishment of death has been specified as one of the punishments under the law.
In a recent letter to chief justices of the 24 high courts, Law Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad has said that they should advise the district judiciary to review all such cases and take suo motu action for their release.
“I shall also be grateful if the high court ensures that the undertrial review committee mechanism, for periodic monitoring of undertrial releases, continues to effectively deliver its mandate, so that the basic human rights of the undertrials are not undermined,” he wrote.
In September 2014, the Supreme Court had said that states should release all such undertrials who come under the ambit of Section 436A of the CrPC.
According to National Crime Records Bureau estimates, 67 per cent of the people in jails are undertrials — those not yet convicted of any crime.
At 82.4 per cent, Bihar had the highest proportion of undertrials, followed by Jammu and Kashmir at 81.5, Odisha at 78.8, Jharkhand at 77.1 and Delhi at 76.7.
Successive Union Law Ministers and Union Home Ministers have been regularly writing to high courts and state governments to review the status of undertrials.
Spokesperson for W&J Adrian Burragubba said, “The document Adani is trying to pass off as an Indigenous Land Use Agreement (ILUA) with our people is illegitimate. We launched action last year to defeat this dodgy deal and we are now taking decisive action in the Federal Court to have this fake agreement struck out”.
Burragubba said, “We have put evidence before the National Native Title Tribunal to prove that Adani does not have an agreement with W&J for its mine of mass destruction, which will destroy our ancestral homelands and waters, the cultural landscape and our heritage.”
He added, “Three times we have rejected any deal with the Indian mining conglomerate. Now Adani are on the back foot and have run crying to the Queensland Resources Council and the Federal Attorney General, asking them to do their bidding by pushing through an ‘Adani amendment’ to the Native Title Act.”
Burragubba claimed, his organization has come to know about Adani's move to amend the law from former Federal Resources Minister Ian MacFarlane, who “boasted at a Townsville business breakfast last week that he has spoken to his ‘good mates in Canberra’ about amending native title law.”
He alleged, “This is just additional proof that the Turnbull government is in bed with the Indian billionaire Gautam Adani and the Queensland mining industry.”
Representing W&J, lawyer Colin Hardie said, “Adani and the mining industry are trying to manufacture a sense of crisis and appear desperate to force the Federal government to rush through changes to the Native Title Act to suit their interests.”
The Native Title Act requires all members the Registered Native Title Claimants (RNTC) to sign the ILUA, which is a voluntary agreement between a native title group and others about the use of land and waters, for any changes.
At a meeting of the indigenous group called by the industry group, said W&J, over “200 of those in attendance were people not previously identified as W&J people”, adding, worse, some members of the RNTC refused to sign the purported ILUA – the reason why the Adani is seeking to amend the Act.
Meanwhile, an Australian not-for-profit legal practice group based in Melbourne, Environmental Justice Australia (EJA), has come up with an Adani Brief, which it has forwarded to the Australian governments and potential financiers seeking to back Adani’s coalming project, saying such a move “may expose them to financial and reputational risks.”
Giving details of the Adani Brief, EJA lawyer and report author Ariane Wilkinson said, “The extremely concerning international track record of the Adani Group in India raises serious questions about whether they should be allowed to do business in Australia.”
The report, among other issues, focuses on sinking of a ship carrying Adani coal, which saw oil and coal spill off Mumbai’s coast, damaging tourism, polluting the marine environment and attracting a AU$975,000 court fine; and constructing Hajira Port without approval, destroying habitat, claiming land and blocking access to fishing communities, which resulted in a court order to pay AU$4.8 million for compensation and restoration.
In a development which is likely to go a long way to politically hurt Gujarat BJP rulers' pro-Narmada image, the police on Tuesday allegedly attacked protesting farmers from 15 villages of Ahmedabad district, exploding teargas shells and beating up many of them up with batons for demanding Narmada waters for irrigating their fields.
The farmers were taking out a rally took near Sanand town, which attracted national attention following shifting of the Tata Nano plant from West Bengal with the direct financial support of the Narendra Modi government of Gujarat.
During the scuffle, several farmers, who belonged to Sanand, Bavla and Nalsarovar regions, were injured. At least 3,000 farmers were participating in the rally. The farmers had come in tractors, on motorbikes and other vehicles with huge banners demanding Narmada waters. Many of the vehicles were also damaged during the police attack.
While the state officialdom claimed that seven cops, including district superintendent of police, VR Asari, allegedly because of stone pelting, it admitted, the rally was taken out as the farmers were angry as the state government had refused grant permission for taking out the rally right up to Gandhinagar.
A state government spokesperson further claimed that the stone pelting began even as the cops were in talk with some of the farmers' leaders. This, he added, led to cops resorting to "mild lathicharge and firing some tear gas shells to control the situation." He added, however, "There are no reports of civilian injury." An farmer, however, said, it was the cops which resorted to stone pelting first.
The police said, they have detained more than a dozen farmers for stone pelting, and a first information report has been filed against those who were leading the rally with the Sanand Gujarat Industrial Development Corporation (GIDC) police station.
A senior non-political Gujarat farmers' leader, criticizing the Gujarat government for allowing cops for resorting to the baton charge, said, "It is difficult to understand why Narmada waters, which pass through Ahmedabad district, are not provided to the farmers of the region, but are being sent to far way Kutch and Jamnagar to help industry."
Khedut Samaj Gujarat secretary Sagar Rabari said, "The farmers' anger suggests that people are losing faith in democratic ways of protest. This is not for the first time that they were not allowed to take out a rally. The state government would do well to provide Narmada waters to the region, or face more such protests in the coming days."
Meanwhile, well-known pro-quota Patidar leader Hardik Patel has criticised the “police action” to use force against the farmers, saying this was done "the behest of BJP government in Gujarat, which is known for suppressing people who raise their voice.”
Patel said, the state was trying terrorising people. “Farmers were baton charged for raising their legitimate demand. Such atrocities prove that this government is anti-farmer", he insisted, warning, he would organize more such farmers' protest in coming days." The Congress also gave a statement condemning the police "attack".
Why aren’t institutional deliveries resulting in fewer deaths during childbirth? Simply incentivizing institutional deliveries isn’t enough to push down MMR and infant mortality rate
Surujmuni Marandi, 24, had decided to deliver her baby at the Godda district hospital in north-eastern Jharkhand. Like many other women, she was drawn to the idea of free medical assistance, medicines, nutrition and postnatal care for poor, pregnant women promised by Janani Suraksha Yojana (JSY), the government programme aimed at reducing India’s high maternal mortality rate (MMR).
Marandi ticked all the boxes in the JSY profile of a woman who needs to be incentivised to deliver in a hospital: She was an adivasi, poor, had little access to health facilities, and would have gone for a traditional home-birth if it wasn’t for the scheme. Marandi should have had an easy time delivering her son at the hospital. But, as this documentary by activist media group Video Volunteers shows, she is denied everything that JSY promises.
Marandi, debilitated by labour pain, was made to wait six hours for a doctor who finally did not turn up for duty. She was asked to pay for medical attention and medicines and denied the nutrition and care that was her right. Denied basic facilities, even the use of a toilet, she finally delivered with the help of a nurse.
“We don’t know where the doctor is. You go, find out,” the nurse told Marandi’s mother when she asked for assistance.
Marandi’s story holds answers to India’s maternal mortality puzzle: Despite a rise in institutional deliveries, maternal mortality continues to be a worry for in India.
The number of institutional deliveries rose by 15% over the decade ending 2014, mostly aided by the JSY, according to this 2016 report by the think tank Brookings India, based on National Sample Survey Office (NSSO) data. Deliveries in government hospitals rose by 22%, fell by 8% in private hospitals and home-births dropped by 16%. But 167 women are still dying per 100,000 live births, as per latest government data. This is despite a 70% fall in MMR over a quarter of a century.
Why aren’t institutional deliveries resulting in fewer deaths during childbirth? Simply incentivizing institutional deliveries isn’t enough to push down MMR and infant mortality rate, wrote Ambrish Dongre, fellow at the Centre for Policy Research, in his 2014 analysis of the JSY. Physical and human infrastructure for maternal health and the quality of care too should improve, he said.
An IndiaSpend analysis of multiple reports and studies shows that Dongre’s analysis is right. The public health infrastructure, it appears, is simply unable to support the rising number of institutional deliveries that the government is encouraging. And this could possibly explain why India’s MMR is worse than Sri Lanka (30), Bhutan (148) and Cambodia (161) and the entire Arab world, as IndiaSpend reported in August 2016.
Painless, free care for pregnant women? Not quite
JSY is a 12-year-old government programme focused specially on 10 states with low rates of institutional delivery–Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Bihar, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Assam, Rajasthan, Odisha, and Jammu and Kashmir–termed as low-performing states (LPS).
The other 19 states are clubbed together as high-performing states (HPS).
Source: National Family Health Survey 2005-06 and 2015-16
Under the programme, pregnant women in rural areas who live below the poverty line are to be given cash assistance–Rs 700 in HPS and Rs 1,400 in LPS–irrespective of the mother’s age and number of children, so that they opt for birth in a government or accredited private health facility.
In addition, it provides performance-based incentives to women health workers, ASHAs or Accredited Social Health Activists, to promote institutional deliveries. In reality, the JSY has failed to cover the poorest women, according to this 2014 analysis of JSY data by researchers from Georgetown University. Some focus states report MMRs that match those of world’s poorest countries–Mauritania (320), Equatorial Guinea (290), Guyana (250), Djibouti (230) and Laos (220), IndiaSpend reported in September 2015.
Source: Ministry of Health & Family Welfare
There is a lack of association between MMR and the rise in institutional births, according to this 2013 report, which analysed different government data for 284 districts across nine focus states. It is likely that women most vulnerable to maternal death are not getting the JSY benefits, the report said.
Marandi’s story is repeated in hospitals across India, like this one in Bankeda village in western Odisha’s Subarnapur district. Families of patients are forced to hire private vehicles, pay for check-up and delivery at government health facilities. They do not receive cash incentives–Rs 1,400 under JSY and Rs 5,000 under the state’s Mamata Yojana. “Why should we go to state-run health facilities?” the women ask.
As in Marandi’s case, 60% of women in Uttar Pradesh said they had to pay for certain public maternal health services, according to an assessment of JSY conducted by United Nations Population Fund in Bihar, MP, Odisha, Rajasthan and UP in 2012, IndiaSpend reported in September 2015.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced that Rs 6,000 would be transferred directly to the bank accounts of pregnant women who undergo institutional delivery/and vaccinate their children. But as FactChecker found, the option of giving Rs 6,000 to pregnant women already existed in the National Food Security Act (NFSA), 2013–it just had not been implemented by the government.
Not enough doctors, not even toilets at health facilities
There is a 77% shortage of obstetricians and gynaecologists in Community Health Centres (CHCs) nationwide, according to the Rural Health Statistics 2016 released by the ministry of health and family welfare. And 15 states and union territories have more than 90% shortage of obstetricians, gynaecologists in CHCs.
The CHCs constitute the secondary level of health care. These provide specialist care to patients referred from Primary Health Centres (PHCs), four of which feed into each CHC, serving roughly 80,000 people in tribal, hill or desert areas and 120,000 on the plains.
Nearly 62% of government hospitals–which include CHCs, district hospitals and sub-district hospitals–don’t have a gynaecologist on staff and an estimated 22% of sub-centres are short of auxiliary nurse midwives (ANMs), IndiaSpend reported in September 2016. Additionally, in 30% of India’s districts, sub-centres with ANMs serve double the patients they are meant to.
Sanitation facilities at public health centres where women deliver are inadequate as well. In the video, Marandi can be seen struggling to find a toilet after she is given laxatives before childbirth. In one instance, she simply squats outdoors in public to ease herself.
This is not unique to Godda. There are no toilets in half the postnatal wards of PHCs, as is the case with 60% of larger CHCs in MP, according to a study by WaterAid India in 343 healthcare institutions across six states and reported by IndiaSpend in July 2016. Open defecation was allowed within 38% and open urination in 60% of health facilities in Odisha’s Ganjam district, according to the report.
This should not come as a surprise: Of the 4,000-odd multi-crore infrastructure projects in the country, only nine (0.21%), with a total investment of Rs 938 crore, are in the health sector, IndiaSpend reported in December 2015.
There is no guarantee of quality care
“The government encouragement of institutional deliveries is based on the idea that poor people choose to deliver at home either out of ignorance or an inability to make the right decisions or due to cultural norms and the exercise of (male) power,” argued Jishnu Das, lead economist, World Bank in a 2014 blog. “But an alternate starting point is that people were not using institutions to begin with precisely because quality was low, and that increasing quality would also bring more people in.”
The quality of antenatal care is vital to reduce the risk of stillbirths and pregnancy complications, and the absence of it explains why more women enrolling for hospital deliveries does not translate to fewer maternal deaths.
In Odisha, only 23% of women reported receiving full antenatal care, the highest among focus states, according to National Family Health Survey data for 2015-16 (NFHS-4). The figure in Tamil Nadu, which is considered one of the best states to be a mother, was 45%. Only 3.3% of women in Bihar reported receiving full antenatal care, a decline from 4.2% in 2005-06.
Full antenatal care equates to at least four antenatal visits by health workers, at least one tetanus toxoid injection and iron folic acid tablets or syrup taken for 100 or more days. Source: National Family Health Survey 2005-06 and 2015-16.
Most obstetric complications could be prevented or managed if women had access to a skilled birth attendant–doctor, nurse, midwife–during childbirth, according to the World Health Organization.
The probability of maternal death among Indian women decreased with increasing skilled attendant coverage, among both women who were and were not admitted to a health-facility, according to this 2014 analysis of different government data.
(This story is the result of a collaboration between Video Volunteers, a global initiative that provides disadvantaged communities with story and data-gathering skills, and IndiaSpend. Saha is an MA Gender & Development student at Institute of Development Studies, University of Sussex.)
You can see the full playlist of Video Volunteers’ videos–revealing gaps in maternal-health services–here.
