Prayagraj: The Allahabad High Court has questioned the delays by police in registering cases related to crime against women.
During the hearing of a PIL, the court, showing strictness, asked the state government to explain the delays.
Significantly, the grandmother of three minor grandchildren had filed a PIL, which was heard by the division bench of Chief Justice Rajesh Bindal and Justice J.J. Munir.
The court told the state government that sometimes it takes over six months to register a case. The court asked why such a situation was being created in the state.
On March 14, the maternal grandmother had accused Mukesh, who was living with her daughter, of raping the minor grandchildren.
The grandmother had tried to lodge an FIR in the Ghaziabad police station, but the police did not register the FIR.
After this, on April 6 after the intervention of the National Human Rights Commission and the Chief Justice, an FIR was registered.
The police registered a case against the accused Mukesh and Rajkumari in Tila Mor of Ghaziabad under IPC 376 506, but despite the victims being minors, the POCSO Act was not invoked.
After this, the grandmother had approached the court and demanded action against the guilty policemen through public interest litigation.
New Delhi: Over 6,000 citizens, including grassroot workers and women and human rights activists, have urged the Supreme Court to revoke the remission of sentences for 11 men convicted of rape and murder in the 2002 Bilkis Bano case.
“The remission of sentences for the 11 men convicted of gang-rape and mass murder will have a chilling effect on every rape victim who is told to ‘trust the system’, ‘seek justice’, and ‘have faith’,” they said in a joint statement.
The statement was given by activists Syeda Hameed, Zafarul-Islam Khan, Roop Rekha, Devaki Jain, Uma Chakravarti, Subhashini Ali, Kavita Krishnan, Maimoona Mollah, Hasina Khan, Rachana Mudraboyina, Shabnam Hashmi, among others.
The civil rights groups include Saheli Women’s Resource Centre, Gamana Mahila Samuha, Bebaak Collective, All India Progressive Women’s Association, Uttarakhand Mahila Manch, Forum Against Oppression of Women, Pragatisheel Mahila Manch, Parcham Collective, Jagrit Adivasi Dalit Sangathan, Amoomat Society, WomComMatters, Centre for Struggling Women and Sahiyar.
Demanding that the remission must be revoked, the citizens noted that the early release of these murderers and rapists only strengthens the impunity of all men who commit rape and other acts of violence against women.
“We demand that women’s faith in justice be restored. We demand the remission of sentences for these 11 convicts be immediately revoked and they be sent back to prison to serve the remainder of their life terms,” the statement said.
Eleven convicts, sentenced to life imprisonment, walked out of the Godhra sub-jail on August 15 after the Gujarat government allowed their release under its remission policy. They had completed more than 15 years in jail.
A special Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) court in Mumbai on January 21, 2008 had sentenced the 11 to life imprisonment on charges of gang-rape and murder of seven members of Bilkis Bano’s family. Their conviction was later upheld by the Bombay High Court.
Bilkis Bano was 21-years-old and five months pregnant when she was gang-raped while fleeing the violence that broke out after the Godhra train burning. Among those killed were her 3-year-old daughter.
India has a political system where the executive makes the laws and rules for the country. The judiciary is meant to ensure the executive walks the path of the Indian Constitution, protecting the values it enshrines. Currently, there is a perception that the judiciary is under pressure from the executive, and that the executive is also losing its way. Some recent statements from the benches and politics have added to this perception. But the problem is deeper, as we shall see.
Recently, Delhi High Court Justice Pratibha M Singh’s remarks were reported in the online legal journal Bar and Bench. At a business chambers’ event, she said that Indian women are a “blessed lot” and cited the reason as “our scriptures”. The religious texts always gave women “a very respectable position”, she said, citing the Manu-Smriti to make her point. According to her, this text says that if women are not respected and honoured, then other religious observances and rites have “no meaning”. “I think our ancestors and Vedic scriptures knew very well how to respect women,” she reportedly said.
The Manu-Smriti does indeed say in verse 3/56 that where women are honoured, the gods are pleased and reside in that household. But does this assertion reflect the actual position of women in society? What Manu-Smriti says is repeated by the ideologues of Hindu nationalism, which is perhaps what the judge has encountered. However, the followers of Manu-Smriti never mention the other assertions in the book, which accord a very low social status to women. Chapter 5, shlokas 148, says, “Even in her own home, a female…should never carry out any task independently. As a child, she must remain under her father’s control, as a young woman, under her husband’s, and when her husband is dead, under her sons.”
The problem is that even Prime Minister Narendra Modi recently used the lexicon of patriarchy when he spoke of giving women “protection”. He said this during his recent address from the Red Fort on India’s 75th anniversary of Independence. In fact, from Savarkar to Golwalkar, the proponents of Manu-Smriti never mention that their favourite book ordains the connection between caste and gender and embodies the hierarchical values which Brahmanism upholds. In Chapter 5, shloka 149, it says, “Though he may be bereft of virtue, given to lust, and devoid of good qualities, a good woman should always worship her husband like a god.” It also lays down a death sentence for a man of a so-called subordinate caste who has intercourse with a woman from the highest caste. Such statements as the Prime Minister’s could make us forget that during the freedom movement, women were neither fighting to protect the Manu-Smriti nor caste hierarchy nor were they seeking ‘protection’.
There a dangerous tendency afoot to project the Manu-Smriti as a revealed text of divine origin that, therefore, cannot be challenged or changed. Such attempts create a conflict between law in the modern sense and the pre-modern religious law enshrined in religious texts. In the third volume of his Writings and Speeches, Dr BR Ambedkar also points out that the Manu-Smriti was likely penned between 170 BCE and 150 BCE, a period of attacks on Buddhism and Buddhists by the Brahmanical King Pushyamitra Shung.
As we know, Buddhism articulated the value of equality but faced numerous assaults in India. Modern education was introduced in India during the colonial period, and social reforms started being conceptualised. That is when social reformers such as Savitribai Phule started schools for girl children and began, in a real sense, the struggle for women’s equality. Phule and Fatima Sheikh taught at the school despite multiple attacks from social conservatives who invariably followed Manu Dharma. The hostility toward Phule was so intense she was subjected to mud and cow dung attacks on her way to school.
Ambedkar stood tall amongst those working for social equality, including the equality of women and members of all castes or social groups. His ideas were an essential feature of the national movement led by Gandhi and others, which contrasts with what the Hindu Rashtra proponents were fighting for. It must be said that nationalists who profess other religions are no different. From the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt to the Taliban in Afghanistan, all echo the sentiment that women need protection. Protection here is nothing but a strategy to control women.
Ambedkar, who later became chairman of the Drafting Committee of the Constitution of India, burned copies of the Manu-Smriti at a historic protest against the inequality it embodies.
Interestingly, the communal outfits—both Muslim and Hindu—are usually exclusively male. Even today, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh or RSS has an exclusively male set-up. To widen its plan of creating a sectarian nation, it has launched the Rashtra Sevika Samiti just for women. But its name itself reveals deep-set patriarchal values—while swayamsevak means volunteer sevika means one who serves. The word swayam—which means ‘oneself’—is missing, quite in sync with Manu-Smriti’s dictate that women need to be ‘protected’ by men.
Religious texts are notoriously opaque and given to any interpretation as a believer wishes. Anybody is free to pick and choose from religious texts at their convenience and ignore the rest. In contrast, what women demanded during the freedom movement and today is equality under the law. That is what the Constitution of India promises—removal of discrimination within the family or society and security from arbitrary action by the state or its institutions.
It is the Constitution of India which reflects the values of the Indian freedom movement. After Phule’s time prominent figures such as Pandita Ramabai and Anandi Gopal defied taboos and fought for this idea of equality. Then, a long list of women participated in the national movement, from Sarojini Naidu to Aruna Asaf Ali and Bhikaji Cama to Usha Mehta. These and thousands of other women broke the shackles of patriarchy to become leading lights of the struggle for freedom.
India has been in the grip of caste and gender hierarchy for centuries. Overcoming it is a long struggle to which many women’s groups are dedicated. They are fighting the atrocities against women, resulting from their being accorded the second position in society. Our learned judges and politicians must understand this grave contrast in our society. On the one hand, we have Manu Dharma’s patriarchy, and on the other, Ambedkar’s Constitution upholding equality. I hope our lawyers, judges, and leaders internalise this truth as India walks the road to gender justice.
The author is a human rights activist and formerly taught at IIT Bombay. The views are personal.
Salman Rushdie has been an outspoken defenders of writers’ freedom of speech. NDZ STAR MAX IPx/AP
The Chautauqua Institution, southwest of Buffalo in New York State, is known for its summer lectures – and as a place where people come seeking peace and serenity. Salman Rushdie, the great writer and influential public intellectual, had spoken at the centre before.
On Friday August 12, he was invited to speak on a subject very close to his heart: the plight of writers in Ukraine and the ethical responsibility of liberal nation-states towards them. Rushdie has been an outspoken defender of writers’ freedom of expression throughout his career.
In the audience of around 2,500 at Chautauqua was Hadi Matar, 24, of New Jersey, who jumped on stage and stabbed Rushdie in the neck and the abdomen.
The fatwa and the spectre of death
It was more than 30 years ago – February 14, 1989 (Valentine’s Day) – when Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, 88, the then spiritual ruler of Iran, condemned Rushdie to death via a fatwa, a legal ruling under Sharia Law. His crime was blasphemy against Prophet Muhammad in his novel The Satanic Verses, on a number of levels.
The most serious was the suggestion that Muhammad didn’t solely edit the message of Angel Gibreel (Gabriel) – that Satan himself had a hand in occasionally distorting that message. These, of course, are presented as hallucinatory recollections by the novel’s seemingly deranged character, Gibreel Farishta. But because of a common belief in the shared identity of author and narrator, the author is deemed to be responsible for a character’s words and actions. And so the author stood condemned.
Blasphemy against Muhammad is an unpardonable crime in Islam: a kind of divine sanctity surrounds the Prophet of Islam. The latter is captured in the well-known Farsi saying, Ba khuda diwana basho; ba muhammad hoshiyar (Take liberties with Allah as you wish; but be careful with Muhammad).
Since the fatwa, the spectre of death has followed Rushdie – and he knew it, even when the Iranian government ostensibly withdrew its support for the fatwa. (But without the important step of conceding that a fatwa by a qualified scholar of Islam – which Khomeini was – could be revoked.) Rushdie himself had not taken the occasional threats to his life seriously. He had lived more freely in recent years, often dispensing with security guards for protection.
Although Rushdie is now off a ventilator, his wounds remain serious. As his agent Andrew Wylie has said, he may lose an eye and perhaps even the use of an arm. He will recover, but it seems unlikely he’ll return as the raconteur of old (as I knew him during my visits to Emory University, Georgia, where for five years during 2006-2011 he was a short-term writer-in-residence, and where his archive had been installed).
Exposing fault lines between East and West
We do not know what motivated Hadi Matar to act in the manner in which he did, but his action cannot be de-linked from the 1989 fatwa, reported by Time magazine in a lead essay titled “Hunted by An Angry Faith: Salman Rushdie’s novel cracks open a fault line between East and West”.
Rushdie made it to the cover of Time on September 15, 2017, when the magazine profiled him, and praised his new novel, The Golden House. In the profile, Rushdie reflected on the effect of the fatwa and the controversy around The Satanic Verses on people’s perceptions of his writing. The humour in his books was overlooked, he said, and his later works began to acquire the “shadow of the attack” on The Satanic Verses.
The Satanic Verses was published more than 30 years ago – some years before Rushdie’s attacker, Hadi Matar, was born. But the insult to Islam felt by Rushdie’s detractors seems to have endured regardless of the decades that have passed.
The ongoing debate over Rushdie (as the 1989 Time essay on the fatwa implied) has exposed fault lines between the West and Islam that had once remained hidden. These fault lines insinuated, the argument went, a radical difference between what constitutes artistic responsibility in the West and in the East (the latter narrowly defined as the Islamic Orient and what V.S. Naipaul called the nations of Islamic “converts”).
This discourse of radical difference had already entered European humanist scholarship, as Edward Said recorded in his magisterial 1979 book, Orientalism. Many have argued Salman Rushdie’s Satanic Verses gave the debate a focus – and a tangible object that could be pointed to as a definitive example of the West’s antagonism towards Islam.
To most readers who value the relative autonomy of the novel as a work of art, this is a false, even misleading reading of the mediated nature of the relationship between art and history. But as Rushdie’s recent stabbing shows, the reading is still potent.
Sadly, Rushdie is overwhelmingly identified (by some) with anti-Islamic sentiments. This has distracted from his achievement as a writer of some of the finest novels written in the long 20th century – a great writer whose name is regularly put forward as a likely recipient of the Nobel Prize for Literature.
More than a writer
Salman Rushdie, an Indian Muslim, was born into a secular Muslim household, and grew up with books and cinema. The long-held wish of his father, Ahmed Rushdie, was to reorganise the Qur’an chronologically.
Rushdie was born a few months before India gained its independence. The India he experienced before he left for prestigious English boarding school, Rugby, in 1961 was the unquestionably secular India of Nehru. That Nehruvian liberal vision, which India seems to have now lost, guided his writing and was the inspiration behind the spectacular success of his Booker prize-winning second novel, Midnight’s Children (1981) – and the critical acclaim that followed his more creative novels, namely, Shame (1983), The Moor’s Last Sigh (1995), The Ground Beneath Her Feet (1999) and The Enchantress of Florence (2008).
Like another writer of the global Indian diaspora, V.S. Naipaul, Rushdie had come to the West with the express purpose of becoming a novelist. The fatwa dramatically turned him into something more than a writer: in fact, into a cultural icon representing the importance of a writer’s freedom of expression.
This claim to freedom is different from the general freedom of speech enjoyed by all in liberal democracies. A writer’s freedom is of a different order. It is a freedom earned through labour and artistic excellence. This freedom is conditional: it is not available to any writer. It has to be earned, by entering the canon of world literature – though not necessarily in terms of a European definition of literariness. Rushdie’s body of work indicates that he has earned it.
But we cannot leave it at that. The Rushdie experience also presents the challenge of how to negotiate that freedom across cultures – especially with cultures governed by carefully defined moral and religious absolutes.
The violent hysteria engendered by Rushdie’s magical treatment of Muhammad in The Satanic Verses was ultimately limited to a small minority. But it is often this small minority that fails to read absolutes allegorically, as intended.
The Chautauqua incident should not have happened, but it did. It is a price that art periodically pays, especially when it is taken as an easy scapegoat for more complex historical differences.
In 2019, the Government of India announced a reduction of corporate tax rate from 30 per cent to 22 per cent, along with a further reduction to 15 per cent for new corporations. The Parliamentary Committee on Estimates has recently stated that this has led to a revenue loss of Rs. 1.84 lakh crore to the public exchequer in the two years: 2019-20 and 2020-21.
This raises the question regarding how much we have lost in terms of funds that could have been utilized for priority tasks. What we should not forget is that many important schemes and programs have been facing severe resource constraints. Inadequate allocations have been made for important welfare and development programs, and then further cuts have been made, citing resource constraints. Hence questions are bound to be asked regarding the additional funds that could have become available for priority needs if this loss of revenue amounting to Rs. 1.84 lakh crore had not taken place.
Here we present calculations to show that an amount of Rs. 1.84 lakh crore would have been adequate to exactly double the allocations for as many 20 departments and ministries which are very important for welfare and development.
In the table below we show the combined actual expenditure for 2019-20 plus 2020-21 for 20 ministries and departments. By adding these we get a figure of Rs. 1.84 lakh crore. In other words, if the loss to revenue caused by corporate tax cut had not taken place, then there was a potential of exactly doubling the budget/expenditure of all these 20 departments and ministries.
The expenditure data has been taken from the expenditure profile for these two years provided by the Budget Division of the Ministry of Finance, and then adding the figures for the two years.
Combined Actual Expenditure of 20 Ministries and Departments for 2019-20 and 2020-21
1. Ministry of Environment, Forests and Climate Change – Rs. 4,486 crores
2. Ministry of Labor and Employment—Rs. 23,003 crores
3. Ministry of Minority Affairs—Rs. 8,351 crores
4. Department of Social Justice and Empowerment—Rs. 16,771 crores
5. Department of Empowerment of Persons with Disabilities—Rs. 1,864 crores
6. Ministry of Tribal Affairs—Rs. 12,821 crores
7. Ministry of Women and Child Development—Rs. 42,395 crores
8. Ministry of Youth Affairs and Sports—Rs. 4,384 crores
9. Department of Science and Technology—Rs. 10,300 crores
10. Department of Health Research—Rs. 4,984 crores
11. Ministry of Ayush—Rs. 3,910 crores
12. Department of Pharmaceuticals—Rs. 1,009 crores
13. Ministry of Culture—Rs. 4,629 crores
14. Ministry of Development of North-Eastern Region—Rs. 4,510 crores
15. Department of Animal Husbandry and Dairying—Rs. 5,175 crores
16. Department of Water Resources, River Development and Ganga Rejuvenation—Rs. 14,650 crores
17. Ministry of Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises—Rs. 12,152 crores
18. Ministry of New and Renewable Energy—Rs. 6,051 crores
As can be easily seen, several very important ministries and departments are covered in the table above, including the Ministry of Women and Child Development, Ministry of Labor and Employment, Ministry of Tribal Affairs, Ministry of Minority Affairs, Department of Social Justice and Empowerment and Department of Science and Technology.
Several schemes and programs of these various ministries and departments have been suffering due to lack of availability of adequate resources and have been in news due to this. Imagine what a relief it would be if the resources available could be doubled, as would have been possible if the loss on account of arbitrary and unwarranted cut of corporate tax was avoided.
Here it may be recalled that this cut in corporate tax, announced in September 2019 just before the Howdy Modi event organised in the USA, had attracted a lot of criticism at that time as well.
The lesson for future is that in situations of severe resource constraints revenue opportunities should not be squandered just to appease some powerful interests. The costs for people can be very heavy, as was soon seen during the pandemic times which followed this tax cut.
*Views expressed are the author’s own. The writer is Honorary Convener, Campaign to Save Earth Now.
Indra Meghwal, a 9-year-old Dalit boy who was allegedly beaten brutally by his teacher, has succumbed to his injuries. The boy’s family alleges that his teacher beat up the boy for drinking water from a pot that was only meant for “upper caste” people such as the teacher.
The family hails from Surana village in Rajasthan’s Jalore district and the beating took place on July 20. The boy succumbed to his injuries on August 13 in an Ahmedabad hospital, after being taken to at least six other hospitals in the interim.
“My boy, Indra Kumar, was a student of standard three,” said his father Devaram Meghwal in an interview to NDTV. “He tried to drink water from a pot following which his teacher beat him up. We found out when he came back home and saw the injuries to his ears and face. He said the teacher beat him,” said Meghwal. “The beating was so brutal, it led to hemorrhage and my boy’s limbs stopped working. First, we took him to a local hospital, but had to keep shifting him from one hospital to another in nearby villages and districts. We even went to Mehsana and finally Ahmedabad,” he recalled.
“My nephew died because of his caste. Dalits face inhuman treatment in our region. “Even today, we have to go several kilometres to find barbers who can cut our hair. Ever since we registered the FIR, we have been living in fear for our own safety,” his uncle Kishore Kumar Meghwal told the Indian Express.
The family has pointed fingers at Chail Singh, an “upper caste” teacher who they say was enraged when Indra touched a pot of water meant for the teacher and proceeded to brutally thrash the boy. Singh was arrested on Saturday after the child’s death, and the police have taken statements of his classmates and other students present on that day.
Shockingly, police say they haven’t found a “caste angle” to the death.
Jalore SP Harsh Vardhan Agarwalla told the publication, “We are investigating the allegation that the boy was beaten up because he drank from a certain pot, and are also interrogating people from the school. But our preliminary investigation hasn’t proved this allegation.”
But the family has found support in local political leaders, one of whom, Congress MLA from Baran-Atru, Pana Chand Meghwal, resigned saying he was “hurt at the constant atrocities being committed upon Dalits and the marginalised, even after 75 years of Independence”. Bairwa, another Congress MLA from Baseri in Dholpur, who is also the Rajasthan Scheduled Caste Commission chairman visited the family and now appears less inclined to believe the police’s findings. He told IE, “The police’s factual report that was sent to us said there was no caste angle. But after talking to people here, I know that is the reason… If police are trying to suppress the motive, I will recommend the suspension of the entire police station.”
Dalit leader and Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) chief Mayawati has also demanded justice for the child. In a Hindi language tweet she said, “No amount of condemnation for this heartbreaking act is enough.” She also demanded President’s rule be imposed in Rajasthan, claiming that the Congress government had failed to protect the oppressed and marginalized people of the state.
1. राजस्थान के जालौर जिले के सुराणा में प्राइवेट स्कूल के 9 साल के दलित छात्र द्वारा प्यास लगने पर मटके से पानी पीने पर सवर्ण जाति के जातिवादी सोच के शिक्षक ने उसे इतनी बेरहमी से पीटा कि कल उसकी इलाज के दौरान मौत हो गई। इस हृदय विदारक घटना की जितनी निन्दा व भर्त्सना की जाए वह कम।
2. राजस्थान में आएदिन ऐसी जातिवादी दर्दनाक घटनाएं होती रहती हैं। इससे स्पष्ट है कि कांग्रेस की सरकार वहाँ खासकर दलितों, आदिवासियों व उपेक्षितों आदि के जान व इज्जत-आबरू की सुरक्षा करने में नाकाम है। अतः इस सरकार को बर्खास्त कर वहाँ राष्ट्रपति शासन लगाया जाये तो बेहतर।
Gujarat MLA Jignesh Mewani has also called out the caste-based crime:
On Tuesday, August 16, the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) took suo motu cognizance and sent notices to the chief secretary and the Director General of Police (DGP), Rajasthan. The NHRC has sought a detailed report, including present status of the police investigation, as well as action taken against the teacher. A news agency quoted an excerpt from the NHRC’s notice: “Apart from the status of payment of the statutory relief under provisions of the SC/ST Act, the Commission would like to know from the state government as to what steps have been taken or proposed to be taken to ensure that such inhuman and cruel acts are not done with the vulnerable sections of the society, including SC and ST.”
Meanwhile, Rajasthan Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot, met with Jignesh Mewani in Ahmedabad and on Thursday, August 18, announced monetary compensation for the family.
SC-ST एक्ट की मुआवजा राशि व मुख्यमंत्री सहायता कोष से सहायता राशि दी गई। इसके अतिरिक्त AICC के निर्देश पर पीड़ित परिवार को 20 लाख रुपये की आर्थिक मदद प्रदेश कांग्रेस कमिटी द्वारा दी जा रही है।
New Delhi: Facing flak over the Rohingya issue, the BJP on Wednesday asserted that the illegal migrants are a “threat” to national security and that the Modi government will never compromise on the issue.
The BJP’s reaction came after Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) on Wednesday hit out at the Centre over Union Minister for Housing and Urban Affairs Hardeep Singh Puri’s tweet that Rohingya refugees will be shifted to apartments in the city.
Puri put out a tweet saying India has always welcomed those who have sought refuge in the country and all Rohingya refugees would be shifted to EWS flats in the east Delhi’s Bakkarwala area.
Thereafter, the Union Home Ministry issued a clarification denying any move to shift Rohingya Muslims in Delhi to economically weaker section (EWS) flats and directed the Delhi government to ensure the “illegal foreigners” remain in detention centres pending their extradition.
Addressing a press conference at the BJP headquarters, party’s national spokesperson Gaurav Bhatia described Rohingyas as a “threat to national security” and said, “Arvind Kejriwal is doing the politics of appeasement keeping the national security at bay.”
Bhatia further asked why was it that in the meeting held on July 29, chaired by the chief secretary of Delhi, “a hasty decision was taken that all these infiltrators would be shifted to the houses being built for EWS.”
He said there were news reports in which the facts were “meant to mislead the public. The Ministry of Home Affairs has clarified that.”
He further said “the law of our country says that Rohingyas will be deported and this jurisdiction lies with the Ministry of Home Affairs.”
Kolkata: Two tragic starvation deaths in the previous fortnight during the 76th independence day celebrations have rattled the state. Both the two deaths were reported from backward regions of West Bengal – one from Bhulabheda of West Medinipur district and the other from Kranti block of Malbazar in Jalpaiguri district.
The first incident involves the death of Sanjay Sardar died on August 3 due to malnutrition as he was left without food for days. The family has been in dire straits after he contracted tuberculosis in the month of June and Sanjay, a daily wage earner, could not go to work.
Though on paper there are schemes like Laxmi Bhandar and other schemes; however Sanjay didn’t have the required Scheduled Caste (SC) certificate, resulting in his family not receiving the stipulated Rs 1,000.
Based on a report by a Bengali news daily, a team from the Right to Food and Work Campaign visited Bhulabheda recently and surveyed the condition of people living there. In the fact finding report it is stated that the death of the daily wage earner should be seen in the context of the food crisis that has set in the area. Sanjay’s family admitted to the fact-finding team that getting even one square meal for a day was difficult for them. Moreover as the family didn’t have Aadhar card linkage with their ration card, they did not get the stipulated Rajya Khadya Suraksha Yojana (RKSY 2) ration which is monthly 1 kg of rice and 1 kg of wheat.
Sanjay Sardar was a migrant labourer who lost his job during the first lockdown, according to the report. After coming home in March 2020 he did not get any work in the village. Sometimes, he got paid as a farmhand but that was extremely irregular. While the family needed an Antyodaya Anna Yojana (AAY) ration card, the government instead gave them a RKSY 2 ration card which is meant for relatively better-off persons. It should be noted that in AAY scheme, a family gets 35 kgs of rice and wheat and cereals.
The second starvation death occurred in a closed tea garden where a tea garden worker, Dinesh Orao, lost his life on August 13 due to malnutrition as he was left without food for months.
The name of the tea garden is Raj Project Garden. As the tea garden owner, Dharmendra Thakur arbitrarily closed the plantation on July 10, Orao’s family had been starving for months.
“The owner of the garden is singularly responsible for this death,” family members of the deceased told reporters.
It may be recalled that in the Malbazar area, a number of tea gardens including Nageshwari tea estate, Bagrakote tea estate, Kilkote tea estate and many other tea estates are closed, and this has resulted in widespread hunger among tea garden workers in the area.
