Image Courtesy: Hindustan Times

‘Foot in Mouth King’ Manohar Lal Khattar is at it again! He is notorious for his ‘anti-women’ remarks. He’s been pulled up by women and men alike for his misogynistic comments. Yet, he doesn’t stop!

Here are some statements by the Haryana CM that will make you squirm and question his legitimacy as the Chief of a major state in India.

1. Spewing venom against Congress Chief Sonia Gandhi, Khattar said, “After the defeat in the Lok Sabha election, Rahul (Gandhi) quit as the president and said Congress’s president will not be from the Gandhi family. Everyone welcomed this; as it signalled an end to dynasty politics. It was like khoda pahaad, nikli chuhiya, woh bhi mari hui…” where he likened Sonia Gandhi to a ‘dead rat’. While this remark sparked a lot of outrage amongst the Congress party, Twitter users took it upon themselves to teach M L Khattar a lesson, when they started trending #MaafiMaangoKhattar!

Chief Minister or Cheap Minister? You decide!

2. However, this is not the first time that Khattar has spewed out misogynistic and sexist statements against women.
Right after the abrogation of Article 370 in August, at a Beti Bachao Beti Padhao event, Khattar made the following statement:
“Earlier bahus used to come from Bihar but now we will bring girls from Kashmir.”

It’s Not Over Yet

3. Not just this, his disrespectful comments against women go way back. At another event last year, his remarks belittling rapes led to a controversy. He had said, “Sabse badi chinta yeh hai ki yeh ghatna ye in jo hain rape aur Chhed chhadki, 80-90% jankaroke beech mein hoti hai. Kafi samay ke liye ikhatte ghumte hain, ek din anban hogai, uss din uthakarke FIR karwa dete hain ‘isne mujhe rape kiya’”.

*Slow Clap* for Mr. Khattar for such a statement implying that most rape incidents are not to be taken seriously for they happen mostly between lovers who’ve ended up fighting or gone their separate ways.

Leader of Misogyny

4. Calling pre-marital sex “ultiseedhicheezein” and blaming girls for the rise in rapes he’d said, “If a girl is dressed decently, a boy will not look at her in the wrong way.”

When someone questioned him about youngsters having freedom of choice, he remarked, “If you want freedom, why don’t they just roam around naked? Freedom has to be limited. These short clothes are western influences. Our country’s tradition asks girls to dress decently.”

Khaps support honour killings, Manohar supports Khaps

5. His infamous remarks supporting the Khap Panchayat went something like this – “Khaps maintain the tradition of a girl and boy being brother and sister. They are just making sure that a girl and boy do not see each other in the wrong way. These rulings help prevent rapes too.”
Whatever Manohar Lal Khattar says is a deep reflection on not only his personal outlook, but a reflection on his party’s mentality. He has not been condemned by his party officials for any of his remarks and this just goes to show that the BJP has turned a deaf ear to the people and their preferences of such leaders not being included in the party.

Related:
Chief Minister or “Cheap” Minister? Haryana CM is a disgrace
Misogyny at its peak: Haryana CM Khattar on Kashmiri Girls
 
 

The post Misogynistic Manohar: 5 times sexist Haryana CM Khattar put his foot in his mouth appeared first on SabrangIndia.

Netra Jangam, 24, from the village of Gove in Satara district, south-central Maharashtra, where most women want two sons and a daughter. Unlike them, Jangam, who now lives in Pune, wants one child–and “it doesn’t matter if it is a girl or a boy”. Behind this change in perception is not just Jangam’s post-graduate degree in commerce, it is her exposure to the world beyond her village and the opportunity to work before and after marriage.

 
Latest figures show that at 914, India’s child sex ratio—a better marker of son preference than the overall sex ratio—is at its lowest since 1951.
 

Source: Declining Child Sex Ratio in India: Trends, Issues and Concerns
 
This is despite the fact that female literacy in India has soared to 65.46% as per Census 2011 and should have resulted in greater gender parity in the child sex ratio.
 
This implies that female literacy alone is not enough to improve the sex ratio as is commonly assumed and suggested by Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Beti Bachao, Beti Padhao (save daughter, educate daughter) campaign.
 
As Part 1 of the series pointed out, the educated are more likely to afford sex-selective abortions.
 
The bias against daughters can only end if women’s education is accompanied by social and economic empowerment, concluded a study conducted over a period of 30 years in Gove, Maharashtra, by Carol Vlassoff, a professor at the University of Ottawa.
 
Education is not changing gender norms
 
“Not only is it impossible to achieve gender equality without education, expanding education opportunities for all can help stimulate productivity and reduce the economic vulnerability of poor households,” the United Nations (UN) said, about the role of education in achieving gender equality, in its 2013 report, Making Education a Priority in the Post-2015 Development Agenda.
 
But statistics in India do not bear out the UN’s assumptions. Young graduate mothers gave birth to 899 girls per 1,000 boys, lower than the national average of 943, IndiaSpend reported in May 2016.
 
In Haryana, the female literacy rate has risen 25 percentage points over 20 years, to touch 65% in 2011, and it is still known for its low sex ratio, IndiaSpend reported in November 2015.
 
“Education of women is clearly not enough to change preference for sons, a pervasive deep-seated social expectation,” said Priya Nanda, group director, Social and Economic Development, International Center for Research on Women, Asia Regional Office. “While education does give women abilities, changing gender norms requires other complementary efforts.”
 
The right to choose is as important as a degree
 
Netra Jangam, 24, from Gove village in Satara district, in western Maharashtra, holds a postgraduate degree in commerce. Her mother had studied only upto seventh grade.
 
Jangam did more than arm herself with a degree: She made the most of the freedom to travel–something her parents agreed to–and make independent decisions. “I pursued my higher studies in nearby Satara, living with relatives, visiting my parents at the weekends. Living away from home taught me to manage myself and broadened my thinking. My mother hardly ever travelled out of the village before marriage,” she said.
 
Her mother earned some money from taking on small tailoring jobs and this had helped her realise the value of financial independence. “So she supported my decisions. I made it clear to my husband that I would always work after marriage. I always want to be financially independent,” said Jangam.
 
Given the high cost of living, she wants only one child—“it doesn’t matter if it is a girl or a boy”—and is confident her husband will support her decision. “I am not having a child to depend on in my old age; we will invest for our future.”
 
Gender perceptions linked to empowerment
 
Education, travel, the freedom to grow and make decisions, and the opportunity to use education just like men are the key ingredients for changing gender perceptions, not education or economic development alone or jointly, Vlassoff and others concluded in their 2014 Asian Population Journal study, Economic Development, Women’s Social and Economic Empowerment and Reproductive Health in Rural India.
 
“Social empowerment—an outcome of education, mobility (travel related) and the freedom to make decisions—and economic empowerment—symbolised by a woman’s employment status—have a greater impact on a woman’s reproductive health—including the number of daughters she is prepared to have in the hope of having a son—than economic development—quantified by family asset ownership,” said Vlassoff.
 
In her 30-year-study, Vlassoff saw great changes in Gove’s social empowerment indicators: 58% of women had eight or more years of schooling in 2008, compared to only 8% of the 1975 respondents; 65% of respondents travelled to the district capital at least once a month in 2008, compared to only 25% in 1975.
 
The impact of all this: 86% women were willing to stop trying for a son after three daughters in 2008 versus only 24% in 1975.
 
“The more socially empowered respondents were, the more likely they were willing to stop at fewer children,” said Vlassoff. To trigger social change, she added, “it is important for more women to take up formal employment to gain confidence and independence, start thinking for themselves and standing up for their beliefs”.
 
Sons are still the ‘ideal’  
 
Ham do, hamare do (We two, our two)—India’s iconic family planning slogan in Hindi dates back to the early 1970s–encourages couples to limit themselves to two children.
 
But Vlassoff, who has authored Gender Equality and Inequality in Rural India, Blessed with a Son, found that women’s perception of an ideal family remained largely unchanged—and it differed from the government’s suggested family size of four.
 
“In 1975, women desired two sons and one daughter, as against one or two sons in 2008,” said Vlassoff. “Although most women also said they wanted one daughter in 2008, they tended to consider this as an added bonus.”
 
Source: Gender Equality and Inequality in Rural India, Blessed with a Son
 
To produce one son, women were willing to have upto three daughters—one wanted, two unwanted.
 
“Women with more children than intended had about as many boys as they had desired, but one or two more girls—clearly the number of daughters, rather than sons, led women to exceed their desired family size,” said Vlassoff.
 
Once women had given birth to as many sons as they desired, they were more likely to get sterilised–a common family planning method in rural India.
 
Why women still risk their lives for a son
 
Seema Alika, 35, a resident of district Sirohi, southwest Rajasthan, got sterilised after having a son and two daughters.
 
“I was happy with one son, and three children are enough,” she said.
 
Three years ago, Seema lost her son, aged 15, when her daughters were 12 and 9. Her loss has prompted other women in her neighbourhood—with one son—not to get sterilised for fear of not being able to bear a son again if tragedy were to strike.
 

Seema Alika, 35, from district Sirohi, southwest Rajasthan, got sterilised after having a son and two daughters. Three years ago, she lost her son. Since then she has had her tubal ligation reversed and has been trying to conceive again–in the hope of having a son. Like many women across India, she wants a son “to take forward the family name”.
 
After spending a year mourning the loss, Seema reversed her tubal ligation, hoping to conceive a son again.
 
She doesn’t expect a son would support her when she is old because “sons aren’t always helpful, my husband hardly helps his family”.
 
“But it would be good for my daughters to have a brother, and for us to have a son to take forward the family name,” she said.
 
Women want a son—or two—for a variety of economic, religious and social reasons. Out of desperation, some consume sex-selection drugs—concoctions made of herbs such as shivalingi (bryonia laciniosa) and majuphal (gtuercus infectoria), rich sources of the sex hormones testosterone, progesterone and natural steroids—believing that these will increase their chances of having a boy.
 
In Haryana—known for its low overall sex ratio, at 879 in 2011, the third-worst in India and lower than poorer countries such as Malawi and Somalia, IndiaSpend reported in November 2015—sex-selection drugs made by fly-by-night operators are freely available in grocer’s shops, said Sutapa Bandyopadhyay Neogi, additional professor and maternal and child health specialist with the Indian Institute of Public Health-Delhi, Public Health Foundation of India.
 
“Even faith healers make the medicine available,” said Sapna Chopra, research consultant with the Indian Institute of Public Health-Delhi, who did some investigative work with Neogi. “‘Are you in your first trimester,’ they ask, and if you say yes, then they assure you of a son.”  
 
Close to half of all pregnant women in Haryana admitted to having consumed sex-selection drugs either during their current pregnancy or an earlier one, in a 2007 community-based study Neogi co-authored. Interestingly, “all of these women had no sons”, she said.
 
One in five women taking sex-selection drugs will have a still birth, a 2015 government of Haryana-sponsored study by Neogi and others estimated. And the numbers will be significant because India recorded 592,000 still births last year, the most in the world, IndiaSpend reported in February 2016.
 
“If not cause a still birth, sex-selection drugs increase the odds of birth defects and developmental disorders in babies by three to four times,” said Neogi.
 
Sex-selective abortions are still rampant
 
If all else fails, families that are affluent and educated go for selective abortion of female foetuses. “Doctors are complicit in helping couples abort female foetuses,” said Surinder Saini, founder of the Jalandhar Welfare Society, an NGO that runs a 24×7 child helpline. Saini’s NGO has helped book practitioners under the Pre-Conception and Pre-Natal Diagnostic Techniques (PCPNDT) Act, 1994.
 
Since he started campaigning for gender equality in 1981, Saini, a lecturer and father to two daughters–one a doctor and the other, a professor—has rescued about 100 baby girls “put in polythene bags and thrown on rubbish piles, who attracted the attention of passers-by when they cried out in pain, bitten by ants or out of discomfort”.
 
“Throwing away foetuses shows the extreme pressure on women from their in-laws to bear a son,” said Saini.
 
The pressure to have a son grows with the second-born. Whereas the sex ratio at birth of the first born was 843 as per the National Family Health Survey (NFHS) III, this dropped to 762 for the second born, to cite a 2011 paper, Declining Child Sex Ratio in India: Trends, Issues and Concerns.
 
Source: Declining Child Sex Ratio in India: Trends, Issues and Concerns
 
“The sex ratio of the second-born is closely related to the gender of the first-born, especially as middle to upper income families want only two or maximum three children nowadays,” explained co-author of the paper Tenepalli Chandrasekarayya of the Department of Population Studies and Social Work, SV University, Tirupati.
 
If the first-born was male, the ratio of the second-born rose from 871 to 1,102, according to a 2006 Lancet study, showing how the pressure on women eases when they give birth to a son.
 

Source: Lancet study: Low male-to-female sex ratio of children born in India: national survey of 1·1 million households
 
If the first-born was female, however, the ratio dropped to 759.
 
Is punitive action the answer?
 
Logging one of India’s lowest child sex ratios in 2011 prompted the government of Haryana to launch an inquiry into the causes of deaths of infants. This brought up the misuse of sex-selection drugs and a prevailing nexus between customers and providers of sex-selection and abortion services.
 
The task of improving the state’s dismal child sex ratio–that stood at 879 in 2011–was enormous.
 
“Enabling women to give birth to sons was a big illegal industry in Haryana, estimated at about Rs 200 crore annually,” said Rakesh Gupta, additional principal secretary to the Chief Minister of Haryana.
 
The Chief Minister created a special cell in his office to monitor concerted efforts involving personnel from the health department, the food and drug administration, the police and district administration. More effective implementation of the PCPNDT Act and Medical Termination of Pregnancy Act has resulted in 376 First Information Reports (FIRs) being filed since May 2015, according to Gupta.
 
Of 176 FIRs filed under the PCPNDT provisions, 69 are from neighbouring Delhi, Uttar Pradesh, Punjab and Rajasthan. Another 39 cases have been booked for the distribution of sex-selection drugs.
 
In December 2015, Haryana’s sex ratio at birth crossed 900, a first in recorded history. Since then, Haryana has averaged a ratio of 898. A rising trend in recent months makes Gupta hopeful of “ending 2016 with an average annual sex ratio above 900”.
 
Series concluded. You can read the first part here.
 
(Bahri is a freelance writer and editor based in Mount Abu, Rajasthan.)

Courtesy: India Spend
 

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डीएम ऑफिस परिसर में लाठीचार्ज होते ही भगदड़ मच गई। इस दौरान महिलाएं निर्वस्त्र भी हो गईं। कई महिलाएं जमीन पर गिर गईं। कुछ महिलाओं के गोद में बच्चे थे। वे जमीन पर गिर गए। बच्चों को भी चोटें आई। पुलिस ने घसीटते हुए सभी महिलाओं को वहां से बाहर निकाला। लाठीचार्ज और पत्थरबाजी में आधा दर्जन से अधिक महिलाओं को चोटें आईं।

पुलिस की बर्बरता इतनी भयावह थी कि देखने वालों की रूह कांप गई। पुलिस ने अनशन पर बैठे जन संसद के सदस्यों को भी खदेड़ा और उनका टेंट- शामियाना उखाड़ कर कब्जे में ले लिया।
 

 
आपको बता दें कि कलेक्ट्रेट परिसर में चार दिन से भूमिहीनों को जमीन का पर्चा दिलाने की मांग को लेकर अनशन पर बैठे थे जब चार दिन तक प्रशासन नहीं चेता तो लोगों के सब्र का बांध टूटने लगा। करीब 250 से 300 की संख्या में महिला पुरुष जब डीएम के चैंबर में घुसने का प्रयास करने लगे। 
 

 
इसकी जानकारी मिलते ही तिलकामांझी पुलिस मौके पर पहुंची और लाठी भांज कर खदेड़ना शुरू कर दिया। थोड़ी देर बाद सदर एसडीओ कुमार अनुज, डीएसपी सिटी शहरयार अख्तर आदि पुलिस बल के साथ पहुंचे और लाठीचार्ज का आदेश दिया। लोग इधर-उधर भागने लगे। कई लोगों के चप्पल-जूते और शॉल डीएम ऑफिस परिसर में पड़े मिले। 
 

Courtesy: National Dastak
 

The post बिहार पुलिस की बर्बरता देखकर कांप जाएगी रूह, महिलाओं को लातों से मारा appeared first on SabrangIndia.

Ayla Akat Ata, spokeswoman of Free Women’s Congress (KJA), 8th March celebration 2014 when she was still an MP.

‘’We will resist and resist until we win!“ chants Sebahat Tuncel before her mouth is forcibly shut by half a dozen police officers who drag her along the floor and detain her in early November.

Nine years ago, a convoy of victory signs, cheerful slogans, and flowers received Tuncel as she was released from prison to enter parliament, having been elected while still inside. Tuncel, now in jail again, is one of dozens of Kurdish politicians from the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) or the regional Democratic Regions Party (DBP) arrested by the Turkish security forces since late October under Turkish president Erdogan’s “anti-terror” operations against those challenging his authoritarian rule. This crackdown follows the attempted coup in July and represents a re-escalation of the war between the state and the Kurdish movement since the summer of 2015, ending a-two- and-a-half-year-long peace process. Like the advice given to the German anti-terrorist squad in the 1980s “Shoot the women first!” the toxic masculinity of the state became apparent in its declaration of a war on women; the strength of the militant Kurdish women’s movement poses the biggest threat to the system. Sebahat Tuncel’s case is not unique.
 

Gültan Kışanak's photos. All rights reserved.

At the end of October, Gültan Kisanak was detained.  She was the first female co-mayor of Diyarbakir Metropolitan Municipality and former MP,  who spent two years in the 1980s in the notorious Diyarbakir prison, where she survived the most atrocious forms of torture, such as having to live for months in a dog hut full of excrements because she refused to say  ‘I am a Turk‘. Her arrest was immediately followed by the violent arrest of Ayla Akat Ata, former MP and now spokeswoman of the Free Women’s Congress (KJA), the largest women’s umbrella organisation in Kurdistan and Turkey, which is among the 370 civil society organizations banned by the government since mid-November. She was hospitalised several times due to police violence during her parliamentary term and survived assassination attempts.

Sebahat Tuncel, Ayla Akat Ata, Selma Irmak and Pervin Buldan protest a security bill in parliament. All except Pervin Buldan are now in jail. Photo: Murstafa Istemi/Milliyet

Selma Irmak is among the MPs elected from prison, where she spent more than 10 years on terrorism charges and participated in hunger strikes. Gülser Yildirim was imprisoned for five years before elections. Another MP is Leyla Birlik, who stayed with the civilians under military fire in Sirnak during the entire duration of the military lockdown, witnessing the brutal killings of countless civilians by the army. Her brother-in-law, Haci Lokman Birlik, activist and film-maker, was executed by the army in October 2015; his corpse was tied to an army vehicle and dragged through the streets. Soldiers filmed this and sent the video to Leyla Birlik with the message “Come pick up your brother-in-law”.

The list goes on. We chose such courageous women as our representatives. They are now political prisoners despite being elected by more than five million people.

The ultra-conservative policies of the Justice and Development Party (AKP) under Erdogan have led to the rise of violence against women in Turkey over the last decade and a half. Not only do high profile members of the administration, including Erdogan himself, frequently reject equality between women and men in favour of attitudes that normalise rape culture, gender violence and misogyny, the AKP further launches explicit physical attacks on women and LGBTI+ people. The hyper-masculine state not only collectively punishes the Kurdish community as separatists, terrorists, or conspirators against the state, it portrays Kurdish women activists as “bad women”, shameful whores and violators of the nuclear family.

Historically, rape and sexual torture, including post-mortem “virginity tests”, have been used by the Turkish state to discipline and punish women’s bodies as noted by Anja Flach in her book Frauen in der Kurdischen Guerrilla which has not been translated from German.  In prisons, women are subjected to intimate searches to humiliate them sexually. Recently, soldiers stripped the clothes off Kurdish women militants’ corpses and shared these images on social media. Another  brutal video showed the Turkish army shooting guerrilla women in the head and throwing them off mountain cliffs. GermanG3 rifles were used in the video illustrating western complicity in these war crimes.

While such atrocities were often committed secretly in the 1990s, sharing images on social media is a new attempt at demoralising women’s resistance and demonstrating state power.  These methods resemble those of ISIS across the border and violate all war conventions. Sexually abusing an activist woman, who dares to challenge male hegemony, aims to break her willpower and deter further activism. The attacks on women politicians need to be read in this context.

A Kurdish woman protesting the Turkish army in Kerboran last year. Image:Zehra Dogan/JinHa.

Long before mainstream media was under fire in Turkey, reporters of JinHa, the first all-women news agency of the Middle East, were attacked. Committed to an explicitly feminist lens in their work, JinHa’s workers exposed the state’s crimes from a gendered perspective. Now JinHa is banned and several members are in jail.

The HDP is the only progressive oppositional party left in Turkey with its secular, diverse, pro-minority, pro-women, pro-LGBT rights and ecological agenda. It has by far the highest percentage of women in its ranks. Even without the system of co-presidency, a policy of the Kurdish freedom movement which ensures shared leadership between a woman and a man, the vast majority of female mayors are in the Kurdish regions. Through a decades-long struggle, especially encouraged by the imprisoned Kurdish leader Abdullah Öcalan, the active role of women in politics is a normal part of life in Kurdistan today.

The women of the HDP and DBP do not embody bourgeois ideas of representative politics and corporate feminism. Almost all politicians currently under attack have spent time in prison, been subject to police brutality, sexualised torture, assassination attempts or some form of violent treatment by the state. They are always at the forefront in the protests against the state and army.

Women were also significant actors in the peace process initiated by Abdullah Öcalan with the Turkish state in March 2013. Every meeting on Imrali Prison Island included women. In 2014, Öcalan recommended that women be represented in the meetings as an organised force, rather than only as individuals. Thus, Ceylan Bagriyanik joined the meetings as the representative of the women’s movement. The Dolmabahce Declaration, the first joint declaration between the warring parties included women’s liberation as one of the ten points for justice and lasting peace. The state and media were unable to make sense of the Kurdish movement’s insistence on the centrality of women’s liberation in the peace process.

We face collective punishment for passing the highest election threshold in the world which requires a political party to win at least 10 per cent of the national vote to enter parliament. Our cities are razed to the ground, our loved ones murdered, burned alive, bombed, shot, or beaten to death. Our cultural heritage and environment are erased forever, our MPs dragged on the streets, our mayors replaced by governmental trustees against our will, our media censored, our social media blocked. By destroying the possibility of peaceful, legal politics within democratic frameworks, Turkey has left the Kurds with no other option than self-defence. International institutions, above all the European Union, have failed the Kurdish people in appeasing Erdogan. In other words, western governments support the systematic elimination of one of the strongest and most radical women’s movements in the world.

The philosophy of the Kurdish women’s movement proposes that every living organism has its mechanisms of self-defence, like the rose with its thorns. This concept is not defined in a narrow physical sense, but includes the creation of autonomous self-governance structures to organise social and political life. Protecting one’s identity against the state through self-defence is partly enabled by building self-reliant political institutions.

In an era when women’s naked corpses are exposed on social media by the army and elected officers are subject to torturous abuse by the capitalist-patriarchal state, women are fighting back to show that their honour is not up for men to define because honour does not lie between women’s legs; it lies in our resistance, the resistance culture established by the trailblazers of our movement. Our jailed politicians defend this honour.

From prison, the HDP co-chair Figen Yüksekdag sent this message: “Despite everything, they can’t consume our hope, or break our resistance. Whether in prison or not, the HDP and us, we are still Turkey’s only option for freedom and democracy. And that's why they are so afraid of us. Do not, not a single one of you, allow yourself to be demoralised, do not drop your guard, do not weaken your resistance. Do not forget that this hatred and aggression is rooted in fear. Love and courage will definitely win“.

Dilar Dirik is from northern Kurdistan (Turkey). She is an activist of the Kurdish women's movement and writes on the Kurdish freedom struggle for an international audience. She is currently working on her PhD at the Sociology Department of Cambridge University

Courtesy: Open Democracy

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A total of 7,909 cases of crimes against women were reported across the state upto July, according to state police’s crime statistics.

Of them, 2332 were cases of molestation, 190 cases of eve teasing and 78 cases of kidnapping of women besides 910 cases of rape, it said.

The number of rape cases reported last year was 1263, it said.

Expressing concern over the alarming figures, state Women’s Commission Chairperson K C Rosakkutty said awareness seminars and classes were not enough to tackle the increasing atrocities against women.

Absence of fast-track courts and speedy trials are among the major challenges in dealing with rape cases, she said.

“In most of the rape cases, we fail in ensuring that the accused gets the right punishment at the right time for the gruesome crime committed.

“The delay in trials and awarding of punishments also contribute to increase in such cases,” Rosakkutty told PTI.

“We have been demanding fast-track courts for years to ensure speedy trial in rape cases. But, it still remains as a demand. The delay in trials gives criminals ample time to escape through the loopholes in law,” she said.

Stating that the Women’s Commission conducts state-wide seminars and awareness classes regularly, she said such drives were not enough to check the atrocities against women.

“Despite all these drives, women are still considered and treated as second grade citizens in our society. This attitude should be changed first. Mothers should be given special awareness to nurture their children as good citizens,” she said.

Local bodies and community outfits also have a role to play at the grassroot level to check attacks against women.

According to the statistics, the highest number of crimes against women including rape were reported from the northern district of Malappuram, where as many as 861 cases under various categories were registered during the period.

The total number of rape cases reported from Malappuram was 106, followed by Thiruvananthapuram rural (78) and Ernakulam rural (64), it said.

Malappuram also witnessed highest number of cases in terms of molestation (160) and cruelty by husbands and other relatives (266), the statistics added.

Source: PTI

Courtesy: Janta Ka Reporter

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Image: Indian Express

आयोग का आरोप है कि उपराज्यपाल द्वारा नियुक्त् आयोग की सदस्य सचिव अलका दीवान ने कर्मचारियों का वेतन जारी करना बंद कर दिया है।

आयोग ने अपने एक बयान में कहा है कि आयोग के पिछले एक साल में किए गए कार्यों के बावजूद, खास निहित स्वार्थों ने पैनल की स्वायत्ता पर हमले की शुरूआत कर दी है। इसमें ताजा घटनाक्रम केंद्र द्वारा सदस्य सचिव की अवैध नियुक्ति है। बयान में कहा गया है कि आयोग में अक्टूबर में नियुक्त अलका दीवान ने ठेके पर कार्यरत सभी कर्मचारियों का वेतन पिछले दो महीनों से रोक दिया है। वेतन का भुगतान नहीं किए जाने के नतीजतन महिला हेल्पलाइन 181, बलात्कार संकट प्रकोष्ठ, मोबाइल हेल्पलाइन सहित आयोग के अन्य कार्यक्रम बंद हो जाएँगे।

इसमें कहा गया है कि ये कर्मचारी काफी संवेदनशील पृष्ठभूमि से आते हैं और वे बिना वेतन लंबे समय तक काम नहीं कर सकते।

आयोग के अधिकारियों ने आगे यह भी आरोप लगाया कि इस पद पर दीवान की नियुक्ति अवैध है।

आयोग के बयान में कहा गया है कि आयोग में दीवान की नियुक्ति पूरी तरह से अवैध है क्योंकि इसके लिए सरकार की ओर से कोई मंजूरी नहीं मिली और एक कार्यालय आदेश के जरिए ही नियुक्ति कर दी गयी। वे अभी सरकारी अधिकारी हैं और
वैट आयुक्त पद पर कार्यरत हैं तथा उन्हें आयोग में सदस्य सचिव का अतिरिक्त पद दिया गया है।

आयोग ने कहा है कि यह दिल्ली महिला आयोग कानून का उल्लंघन है जिसमें पूर्णकालिक सदस्य सचिव की बात की गयी है।

Source: PTI

The post बलात्कार संकट प्रकोष्ठ बंद होने की कगार पर appeared first on SabrangIndia.

After an exhilarating march through the lanes of Delhi University last Friday, we arrived at Vijaynagar tea point to begin our night vigil against sexual harassment. The Vijay Nagar tea point, which is usually occupied only by men,took a different dimension that night as women took over and redefined the nature of that space. When we began our Pinjra Tod street play, Satender Awana (Ex-DUSU President from ABVP) arrived at the vigil along with his drunken companions. As expected, they smirked, laughed, passed comments and started to take videos on their phones, as though our protest was for their entertainment. The ABVP men ordered the chai-wallah to shut down, acting as the bully they are, in a display of their male, upper caste entitlement and insecurity. At the end of our play, Awana and Co, very predictably, began to scream “bharat mata ki jai!”. One of these ABVP men in a green T-Shirt, thought it would be ‘fun’ to flash a hundred rupee note at a Pinjra Tod activist and provocatively dance with it, in a desperate attempt to shame us by suggesting that we were ‘randis’ dancing for their pleasure. On being challenged, the man caught hold of the Pinjra Tod activist’s wrists and kept tightening his grip, while attempting to corner her with his friends.

We, women were not going to tolerate this infuriating display anymore! The anger that lies buried in us from facing such harassment and aggression everyday in our universities, was to erupt that night. The manner in which ABVP behaved at the vigil, was not an isolated incident, but it happens repeatedly in our classrooms, during elections, on the streets, in public meetings and protests, turning the university into a hostile masculinist space, instead of a democratic and liberating one for all students.

This night had to be ours, truly ours! A night where a different imagination of the streets, of universities, of our lives was to be built. With loud screams of “hum bharat ki mata nahi banenge”, “sanghi gunde hosiyaar”, “yeh university hamari hai, purusho ki jagir nahi”, “jab jab ladyika sadko peh utri hai, itihas ki dhara badli hai”, we took on ABVP on their home turf and forced them to retreat. By throwing money at us, they thought they could ‘humiliate’ us by implying that we women who were protesting, screaming and dancing on the streets at night are ‘randis’ who must be ridiculed. This is a label which BJP and RSS leaders repeatedly give women who dissent against them, who fight patriarchal and castiest dictats. Unfortunately for ABVP, alluding to us as ‘randis’ was barely going to work for ‘insulting’ or ‘shaming’ us.

This binary of the ‘good woman’ and the ‘bad woman’ is much the same as ‘national’ and ‘anti national’. Refuse to live by their patriarchal, casteist diktats and you soon find yourself sliding down the slippery slope of their binaries. This night, we did not only chant, ‘Hum bharat ki mata nahin banenge’ but also embodied it fiercely. The act of drinking and waving a note at us reproduces, historically, the savarna gaze and control over women’s bodies, meanwhile also belittling our politics. We not only challenged that but we also defy being shamed into these categories. ABVP by extension became a metaphor for this University, which also wants to shame us constantly. We defy these patriarchal attempts!

The collective power and rage of women students who had joined the Pinjra Tod vigil refused to let ABVP destroy a night that we had so painstakingly created, we successfully shooed them off and reclaimed our space back with a joyous hopeful energy, filling the night with poetry and songs of love and resistance.

tum ney loota hey sadiyoon humara sakoon,
ab na hum per chaleyga tumhara fasoon!
aiseh dastoor ko, hum nahi mante, hum nahi jante!
Sanghi gundon campus chhodo!

Do watch and share this video.

The post When Women fought ABVP off the streets to reclaim back our space and our night! #pinjratod appeared first on SabrangIndia.

सूरत पुलिस के अनुसार, पीड़ित महिला दलित है जो सूरत नगर निगम के शहरी विकास विभाग में पहले काम करती थी। शिकायत के अनुसार, जुलाई 2014 से जून 2015 के बीच नगर निगम के अधिकारियों ने उसे प्रताड़ित किया। लालगेट थाने में की गई शिकायत में सूरत नगर निगम के उपायुक्त केतन पटेल, कंप्यूटर विभाग के राकेश राणा, इंजीनियर निरीष पटेल, सहायक इंजीनियर संजय पटेल और सेक्शन अधिकारी हेमलता देसाई के नाम शामिल किए हैं।

पीड़ित महिला ने अपनी शिकायत में कहा है कि आरोपी उसे फोन भी करते थे, खुश करने को कहते थे और उसे मैसेज भेजते थे। पीड़ित महिला की उसी विभाग में कॉन्ट्रेक्ट पर काम करने वाली बेटी के पास भी ये आरोपी मैसेज भेजते थे।

मामले की जाँच सूरत पुलिस के अनुसूचित जाति/जनजाति प्रकोष्ठ को सौंप दी गई है। एससी-एसटी सेल की सहायक आयुक्त नीता देसाई ने बताया है कि अभी तक किसी आरोपी को गिरफ्तार नहीं किया गया है। पहले सभी आरोपियों के बयान लिए जाएँगे, फोन कॉल और मैसेज के सबूतों का विश्लेषण किया जाएगा और फिर उनके खिलाफ ज़रूरी कार्रवाई की जाएगी।

मामला दर्ज होने के बाद से आरोपी जवाब देने से बच रहे हैं।
 

The post सूरत में निगम उपायुक्त पर यौन प्रताड़ना का मामला appeared first on SabrangIndia.

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The chairperson Suman Sharma is also in the selfie along with the member

The Press Trust of India (PTI) reported this morning that a selfie clicked by the member of Rajasthan State Commission for Women with a rape victim courted controversy prompting the chairperson of the commission to seek a written explanation. By late evening the outrage had forced Suman Sharma to quit. 

Interestingly, the Chairperson Suman Sharma is also in the selfie along with the member Somya Gurjar. The selfie was clicked by Gurjar on Tuesday when she along with chairperson had gone to meet the rape victim in Mahila police station (Jaipur North). 

"I was talking to the victim when the member of the commission clicked these selfies. I am not aware when she (Somya Gurjar) clicked. I do not favour such act and has sought a written explanation from her. She has been asked to submit the explanation by tomorrow," Sharma told PTI. 

Interestingly, two pictures, in which Gurjar is seen clicking the selfie, got viral on WhatsApp on Wednesday. Both Gurjar and Sharma are in the frame of the selfie and the pictures of the act were clicked by someone standing near them in the chamber of the police officer. 

In the pictures, Gurjar is seen holding the mobile device and the Chairperson is also looking in the frame (of the selfie). 

The selfie culture has been pioneered by Narendra Modi ever since he was chief minister of Gujarat and encouraged the cult following around him. The famed victory sign as he emerged out of the voting booth in Vadodara resulted in a court challenge to the ethics of the move.

A year to the day today, June 30, 2015, the ‘Mann Ki Baat’ of Narendra Modi, took Twitter by storm on Sunday when he asked people to post selfies with their daughters. The hashtag #SelfieWithDaughter soon started trending worldwide, with several fathers as well as mothers tweeting pictures of themselves with their daughters.

A prompt brake to the selfie storm came when, daughter of slain parliamentarian, Ahsan Jafri shared her photograph with her revered father. Nishrin Jafri is the daughter of Ahsan Jafri, a former Congress MP who was brutally murdered in the Gulbarg society massacre in 2002 along with 69 Muslims by a Hindu mob.  Ehsan Jafri’s wife Zakia Jafri continues to hold the then Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi for being complicit in the riots.  

In a shocking incident in Alwar district, a 30-year-old woman was allegedly raped by her husband and his two brothers who tattooed expletives on her forehead and hand for not giving Rs 51,000 as the dowry.
 
On Monday, an FIR was registered under sections of 498-A (Protection of Women Against Domestic Violence Act), 376 (punishment for rape) and 406 (punishment for criminal breach of trust) of IPC and an investigation in the case has been initiated.

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