Tuesday, March 9, 2010

[ZESTCaste] Bangladesh: Dalit miseries told in drama

 

http://www.thedailystar.net/newDesign/news-details.php?nid=129339

Tuesday, March 9, 2010Front Page

Dalit miseries told in drama

Former adviser to the caretaker government Rokia Afzal Rahman
inaugurates a programme celebrating the International Women's Day on
the Dhaka University campus yesterday by releasing balloons. Dhoritri
Foundation organised the event.Photo: STAR
DU Correspondent A group of Dalit girls described their tales of
suffering in their everyday lives by staging a drama at Sarak Deep at
Dhaka University campus yesterday.

The girls used the occasion of International Women's Day to highlight
how Dalit girls and women are being deprived of opportunities in
various sectors, including education and work.

After the play concluded, the Dalits made an eight-point demand to
have their economic, civil, and human rights recognised.

The play was arranged by the Dhoritri Foundation, which is run by
members of Dalit community.

The foundation also hosted a fair with hand-made products on display,
including eye-catching clay ornaments.

Former adviser to caretaker government Rokia Afzal Rahman formally
inaugurated the programme.

Chief guest Rokia said she was delighted to attend the function and
promised to work with the community to strengthen their rights-based
movement.

Rokia placed emphasis on ensuring access to technology to working women.

Executive Director of the Foundation Adan Islam said women of Dalit
community are the most vulnerable in society as they are deprived of
many basic human rights.

Dalits speak different languages as they are a mixed population of
various caste groups across South Asia.

They are traditionally regarded as the lowest caste.

Hundreds of Dalit women also assembled at DU campus to voice their
social, economical and human rights.

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[ZESTCaste] Caste & the labour market

http://www.hindu.com/br/2010/03/09/stories/2010030950081400.htm

Caste & the labour market

MADHURA SWAMINATHAN

Caste discrimination not only persists but has taken new forms and
penetrated into new systems

BLOCKED BY CASTE, ECONOMIC DISCRIMINATION IN MODERN INDIA: Edited by
Sukhadeo Thorat, Katherine S. Newman; Oxford University Press, YMCA
Library Building, Jai Singh Road, New Delhi-110001. Rs. 750.

This is an excellent volume — carefully-researched and eye-opening —
on caste-based injustice in our society and economy. Now, while there
is a literature that documents discrimination and the denial of civil
liberties, there is very little understanding and research on the
practice of caste discrimination in markets, notably in modern, urban
and metropolitan settings, and in public institutions. This book takes
up the challenge of understanding the latter by means of systematic
research on the question.

A useful four-fold classification of the types of discrimination is
proposed by Thorat and Newman: complete exclusion, selective
inclusion, unfavourable inclusion, and selective exclusion. Complete
exclusion would occur, for example, if Dalits were totally excluded
from purchase of land in certain residential areas. Selective
inclusion refers to differential treatment or inclusion in markets,
such as disparity in payment of wages to Dalit workers and other
workers. Unfavourable inclusion or forced inclusion refers to tasks in
which Dalits are incorporated based on traditional caste practices,
such as bonded labour. Lastly, selective exclusion refers to exclusion
of those involved in "polluting occupations" (such as leather tanning
or sanitary work) from certain jobs and services.

Study in rural areas

There is a body of research on discrimination in rural areas and on
the continuation of caste barriers to economic and social mobility in
village India. There is a myth, however, that caste does not matter in
the urban milieu and that, with the anonymity of the big city and with
education and associated job and occupational mobility (assisted by
affirmative action), traditional caste-based discriminatory practices
disappear. This book explodes that myth in a set of chapters that
focus on the formal labour market. These chapters use methodologies
developed in the United States to study racial discrimination, and are
written in collaboration with scholars from the U.S.

Thorat and Attewell ran an experiment to test caste discrimination in
the urban labour market. For one year, researchers collected
advertisements from leading English language newspapers for jobs in
the private sector that required a university degree but no
specialised skills. The researchers then submitted three false
applications for each job. The applicants, all male, had the same or
similar education qualification and experience. One of them had a
recognisable upper caste Hindu name, another a Muslim name and the
third a distinctly Dalit name. The expected outcome was a call for
interview or further screening.

An analysis of the outcomes, using regression methods, showed that,
although there were an equal number of false applicants from three
social groups, for every 10 upper caste Hindu applicants selected for
interview, only six Dalits and three Muslims were chosen. Thus, in
modern private enterprises (including IT), applicants with a typical
Muslim or Dalit name had a lower chance of success than those with the
same qualification and an upper caste Hindu name.

In another chapter, Jodhka and Newman report on detailed interviews
with human resource managers of 25 large firms in New Delhi. All the
managers insisted that hiring was solely on the basis of "merit," and
old practices such as hiring kin or members of the same community did
not exist.

At the same time, every hiring manager said "family background"
(including the educational level of parents) was critical in
evaluating a potential employee. This is clearly discriminatory, for
Dalit applicants may not have the same social and educational
background as those from the upper castes. As the authors note, "one
must take the profession of deep belief in meritocracy with a heavy
dose of salt."

These findings raise serious questions about allowing the corporate
sector to monitor itself in respect of "inclusive employment" instead
of making it abide by a policy of reservation.

Another set of chapters explores the patterns of discrimination in
public services and public institutions, including in health care
services, in schools, and in programmes of food security.

Sanghmitra Acharya gives a detailed account of various forms of
discrimination experienced by Dalit children in gaining access to
health care from both private and public providers in rural Gujarat
and Rajasthan. Untouchability was reported by children "seven out of
10 times" from "doctors, laboratory technicians, and registered
medical practitioners", and it was "more vigorously practised by
pharmacists, ANMs and AWWs." Geetha Nambissan writes of similar
experiences of Dalit children in schools in rural and urban Rajasthan.

Or, take the case of the public distribution system (PDS). Fair price
shops are owned privately or run by cooperatives or, in a few cases,
by government. An analysis by Thorat and Lee, drawing on a survey of
PDS outlets in 531 villages across five States, shows that there was
discriminatory behaviour against Dalits by the PDS staff in respect of
prices in 28 per cent of villages and in respect of quality in 40 per
cent. In 26 per cent of the villages, dealers practised untouchability
"by dropping goods from above into cupped Dalit hands below, so as to
avoid 'polluting contact'."

As the authors say, to term the prevalence of such practices as merely
the "phenomenon of caste discrimination remaining or still continuing
or lingering" is to not understand that these practices are associated
with new institutions set up after Independence and after the legal
abolition of untouchability.

Penal action

An important and urgent policy implication of this set of studies is
that the government needs to ensure that its own policies and
progarammes (such as the public distribution system or provision of
mid-day meal to school children or of health care at Public Health
Centres) are implemented in a non-discriminatory manner. Institutions
(whether public, cooperative, or non-governmental) that accept
government funds or implement government programmes must be held
responsible and penalised if they practice untouchability.

A fair-price shop dealer is both a private individual and an arm of
public policy, and the severest action should be taken if he is found
to discriminate against Dalits or those from other socially
disadvantaged groups.

In conclusion, this book — based on careful and a methodologically
innovative research — shows that caste discrimination not only
persists but has taken new forms and penetrated into new systems and
institutional structures. It also raises serious questions about
patterns of economic development.


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[ZESTCaste] Yadavs torpedo Women’s Bill, upset Sonia’s dream

http://news.in.msn.com/national/article.aspx?cp-documentid=3688176

08/03/2010
Yadavs torpedo Women's Bill, upset Sonia's dream
New Delhi: The celebrations of International Women's Day went awry and
horribly wrong for Sonia Gandhi and the Congress when the 14-year-old
Women's Reservation Bill failed to sail through the Rajya Sabha on
Monday. Just a day before, Sonia had told her partymen that she was
determined to get the Bill passed for two reasons: to fulfill Rajiv
Gandhi's dream and a fitting tribute to the day. Both of that did not
happen, leaving the Congress red-faced.

A TV grab shows Mohammad Hamid Ansari surrounded by falling pieces of
paper - ripped by Members of Parliament - during a debate of The
Women's Reservation Bill on Monday. Photo Courtesy: AFP

But poor floor management of the Congress Party, its lack of
communication with the Opposition parties and utter confusion led to a
flock of Yadavs' men thumbing their nose at the Bill. Going a step
further, few MPs belonging to Lalu Prasad Yadav's RJD and Mulayam
Singh Yadav's Samajwadi Party put the Parliament and democracy to
shame when they tore the Bill and attacked Hamid Ansari, the Vice
President and Chairman of the Rajya Sabha.

A confused Congress sent mixed and contradictory signals when things
started slipping out of hand in a day of fast developments. The Bill
was pushed and shoved for introduction from one time slot to another
till a war weary Congress gave up at dusk, postponing the introduction
of the Bill to Tuesday.

Initially, the Congress, armed with brute support in the Rajya Sabha,
thought it could push the Bill. But realising that the Chair could not
ask disrupters to leave the House when a Constitutional Bill was to be
debated, the Congress went into a huddle at Sonia Gandhi's 10 Janpath.

The deadlock put the government of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on
the defensive as the two regional parties - the Samajwadi Party and
the Rashtriya Janata Dal with their support base in the Hindi
heartland - threatened to withdraw support to the government accusing
it of trampling on the interests of "women belonging to minorities,
Dalits and backward class".

The support withdrawal will not result in the fall of the government
but will make its majority slim in the 543-member Lok Sabha,
especially when the crucial Finance Bill is set to come up.

The proposed legislation to reserve 33.3 per cent seats in Parliament
and state legislatures for women was drafted by the United Front
Government, headed by H D Deve Gowda, and tabled in Parliament for the
first time on September 12, 1996. It was referred to a parliamentary
panel headed by the late Left leader Geeta Mukherjee.
Though it has been introduced in Parliament several times since then,
the Bill could not be passed. When Gowda's successor I K Gujral sought
to introduce it in 1997, he was shouted down by members of his own
party, the undivided Janata Dal. In 1999, when the then law minister
Ram Jethamalani sought to table the Bill during the NDA government's
tenure, an RJD minister snatched the papers from his hands.

So, in 2008, when law minister H R Bhardwaj introduced the Bill in the
Rajya Sabha, he was guarded by Congress ministers like V Narayansamy
and Renuka Chaudhary to ensure that the incident was not repeated.

The Bill provides for reservation for women at each level of
legislative decision-making, starting with the Lok Sabha to state and
local legislatures. If the Bill is passed, one-third of the total
available seats would be reserved for women in national, state or
local governments. In continuation of the existing provisions already
mandating reservations for scheduled caste and scheduled tribes,
one-third of such SC and ST candidates must be women.

The historic bill, first introduced in 1996 that promises to reserve
33 percent of legislative seats for women in the country was moved in
the Rajya Sabha amid unruly scenes as a dozen members opposing it tore
up the document and hurled the pieces at chairman Hamid Ansari before
forcing a fifth adjournment of the day.
This happened on a day when both Houses assembled to the call to
"celebrate and honour women" and include them in the decision making
process to mark Women's Day being observed worldwide.

The controversial bill - for which the ruling United Progress Alliance
(UPA) has support of numbers from the opposition Bhartiya Janata Party
(BJP) and the Communists but opposition from the northern regional
parties - faced repeated opposition in the two houses, though it was
taken up for consideration only in the Rajya Sabha Monday.

The bill is now expected to be taken up for vote Tuesday amid reports
that Manmohan Singh has called an all-party meeting to arrive at a
possible consensus.

The government seems to have been caught completely unprepared by
Monday's turn of events as a huge buzz had been created in the media
and outside over the imminent passage of the bill that was trumpeted
as one of the signal acts of the government. The bill, if it became
law, promised to politically empower women in a way that few countries
could boast of and one that would have radically transformed the way
politics was practised.

But the anti-bill lobby, headed by the Yadav chieftains, Mulayam Singh
Yadav of the SP and Lalu Prasad (Yadav) of the RJD, both former chief
ministers, had come well prepared as they mounted not just vocal but
physical opposition to the bill while threatening not just withdrawal
of support to the government but "political war" if the government
went ahead with it.
POLITICAL DACOITY

"We will use our democratic rights fully whatever the consequences.
This is a political dacoity. It won't be tolerated," Lalu Prasad
thundered to reporters.

The Janata Dal-United (JD-U) is split over the support to the bill
with a section loyal to Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar signalliing
its intention to back the legislation.

With the fate of the bill appearing to hang in the balance and
questions being asked if the government had got cold feet over it, Law
Minister M. Veerappa Moily assured in the evening: "We have a majority
of 200 and we could have passed the bill. But a bill of this nature,
which will have a historical importance and have important
implications and seeks constitution amendment cannot be bulldozed.

"We need a healthy debate. It is listed for consideration tomorrow
(Tuesday). There was a lot of 'hungama' (ruckus) today which was
totally uncalled for," he told reporters after the Rajya Sabha was
adjourned.

The Congress slammed a "handful" of opposition members for their
"churlish" attempts to derail the bill but said the government was
determined to pass it.
"The present reservation bill is a subject where the only question is
when and not if. It's an idea whose time has come and the inevitable
cannot be postponed," he added.

"Despite all the churlish attempts to the contrary, something which
would and will make India, the Indian womanhood and Indian democracy
proud, is being turned by a bare handful of persons into the shame of
democracy," spokesman Abhishek Singhvi said.

Both the BJP and Communists have promised support but criticised the
government on floor management and for not anticipating the nature of
the opposition. Brinda Karat, leader of the Communist Party of
India-Marxist, said the government should have ensured the house
chairman's dignity and said "there were enough women MPs who could
have circled and protected the chairman if the government had only
planned in time."

The bill has otherwise found wide support from India's diverse social
and intellectual spectrum. The Centre for Social Research (CSR), an
activist group, has even begun the process of selecting 1,000 women
from across India and grooming them to contest elections in
anticipation of the legislation.

Source: India Syndicate and IANS


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[ZESTCaste] Man held for raping Dalit woman

 

http://www.indianexpress.com/news/In-brief/588521

Posted: Tuesday , Mar 09, 2010 at 0139 hrs
Man held for raping Dalit woman

Kanpur: A vegetable vendor was arrested on Monday for allegedly raping
a physically-challenged Dalit woman in Kanpur, said a police officer.
Chotelal was arrested after the 20-year-old woman, also a roadside
vegetable vendor, filed a complaint accusing him of entering into her
house forcibly and raping her in Gwaltoli area in the city, said
Circle Officer of Colonelganj police station Shoaib Iqbal.

PTI

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