Latest News Update: Jun 3, 2011

Friday, June 3, 2011

[ZESTCaste] School dignifies the children of squalor in Patna, eastern India

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/world/2011/0603/1224298324151.html

The Irish Times - Friday, June 3, 2011
School dignifies the children of squalor in Patna, eastern India

POVERTY IN INDIA: The tireless efforts of one man have brought hope to
some Musahar untouchables, writes RAHUL BEDI

A SLIVER of hope has emerged recently for India's "untouchable"
Musahar rat-eating community in eastern Bihar state in the form of a
modest residential school that offers their severely deprived youth
not only free and competent education but, more importantly,
long-denied self-esteem.

In two identical buildings in Bihar's capital Patna, the five-year-old
Shoshit Samadan Kendra or School for the Welfare of the Exploited
provides some 200 young Musahar boys from squalid ghettoes with board
and lodging, uniforms, toiletries, books and even access to computers
at no charge.

"I was destined to raise pigs and live a life of wretchedness and
exploitation. But that destiny changed miraculously four years ago
after joining which for me has opened up a dream world of
possibilities," said 14-year-old Pappu Kumar last week. Dressed in his
crisp, white cotton uniform and knee-length stockings, he was barely
distinguishable from students of the nearby exclusive St Xavier's, the
city's oldest, Jesuit-run school.

The academically brilliant Kumar now looks forward to the
unimaginable: competing alongside Bihar's higher castes to join one of
the handful of Indian Institutes of Technology, the world-class
campuses whose alumni manage global firms.

"[We] aim to bring about a palpable revolution in the Musahar
community which has lived in subhuman conditions for centuries," said
the school's founder JK Sinha. He retired in 2005 as one of India's
top intelligence officers and returned home to found the Shoshit Seva
Sangh or Organisation for the Welfare of the Exploited that runs the
school.

Pooling his savings with contributions from family and friends, Sinha
established Shoshit Samadan Kendra to uplift through education the
socially shunned Musahar community who ate infrequently and were
exploited as bonded labourers by upper-caste landlords and mahajans
(money-lenders).

Today, as in centuries past, the "untouchable" Musahar population of
four or five million is confined to foul-smelling ghettoes called
Mushairies or Musahar Tolis on the outskirts of many Bihar villages
without basic rights or privileges.

Being untouchables, they are considered outcasts and outside
Hinduism's rigid caste system – an ancient hereditary class order that
divides society into four categories. They are associated with
cleaning human waste, scavenging for animals and, at best, raising
pigs in soiled environments.

At the top of India's caste system are the Brahmins; at the bottom the
manual labourer Sudras; in between are the Kshatriyas or warriors and
the Vaishyas or traders below them. These antiquated gradations are
strictly enforced in Bihar, India's poorest and most regressive
province.

The high-caste Sinha, however, believes it is not enough to give
Musahar children education: they must be empowered to become a
catalyst for change within their depressed community.

According to official figures, almost all Musahars are landless
labourers and barely 3 per cent of them are literate. Social activists
in Patna estimate that, under prevailing conditions, it would take the
Musahars a mind-boggling 4,419 years to achieve complete literacy.

Decades of deprivation, apartheid and usurious money lenders has
driven many Musahars to crime. A large number of their desperate youth
have joined the proliferating Maoist movement, active across large
parts of Bihar, to secure economic and social justice for the state's
poor and dispossessed through its "people's war".

The sheer hopelessness of the Musahar community was, in small
measures, revealed over four years ago through The Irish Times .
Following a report on its foreign pages, the newspaper paid off
45-year-old Jawahar Manjhi's debt of Rs 5,000 (€77) – he had laboured
to repay this for 27 years. Manjhi's initial loan in 1980 of 40kg of
rice for a family wedding from a money-lender in Paliganj 60km from
Patna turned him, like thousands of fellow Musahars, into a bonded
labourer on his patrons' rice fields.

At the time of securing the loan, it was agreed that for each day of
work on the money-lender's farm Manjhi would be paying back the
equivalent of 1kg of rice from the 40kg he had borrowed, making a
total workload of under six weeks.

But, Manjhi ended up borrowing additional rice to feed himself and his
family and, even after 27 years, being illiterate and disadvantaged
had no idea how much of his debt remained outstanding.

He continued toiling daily in inhuman conditions and searing hot
temperatures. Occasional inquiries regarding his balance resulted
either in severe beatings or starvation – or at times both.

Eventually, in 2006, he was told that a Rs 5,000 payment would
liberate him from his bond. However, this sum remained far beyond his
reach until The Irish Times paid his debt. Bihar's exploitative
money-lenders are unusually usurious, levying crippling monthly
interest rates of 10-20 per cent or 120-240 per cent per year,
rendering debtors wholly incapable of repaying their principal sum.

This, in turn, forces them, much like Manjhi, into a lifetime of
inhuman bondage. Women too are exploited, many of them sexually, and
low-caste children, mostly Musahars, become adults in servitude.

"Musahar children know only poverty and an aimless future which, in
some small way, we aim to mitigate through the school," elaborated
Sinha, who said the initial response to his proposal for a school for
them was sceptical.

The Musahars were unconvinced that this suave former police officer –
who had lived a highly glamourous life in foreign capitals as a spy –
could offer them an alternative to the ramshackle, state-run rural
schools they knew with no teachers or textbooks and where their
persecution as "untouchables" persisted.

But within two years, their attitude changed. In 2010, some 750
Musahar children appeared for the entrance examination for 50
placements in the school.

The medium of instruction is English, the language of social mobility
and guaranteed esteem in India.

The teacher/student ratio of 1:17 is significantly better than most
leading private schools and the instructors are conscientious and well
paid.

"By ensuring the quality of education we can change, in time, the
profile of poverty in the state," Sinha said.

"I was living in filth in a mud hut with no clothes, food or dignity,"
said 11-year-old Pankaj Kumar Manjhi who previously lived on Patna's
outskirts with his widowed mother. She earned Rs 25 (40 cent) a day –
but only during the crop sowing and harvesting season lasting barely
six to eight months each year.

For the remaining period, mother and son scoured Patna's mountainous
rubbish heaps for sustenance.

"All that is behind me now," said the seventh-class student who
aspires to become an engineer, a far cry from the city's garbage dumps
and inhuman environment. "I am somebody now and will become more
important," he added confidently.

Sinha, meanwhile, who rents the school's premises and plans to
increase to 55 his annual intake of students, is determined to soon
build his own school. Land has been acquired but construction funds
are needed.

He recently launched a campaign to raise Rs 55 million (€850,000) from
local and overseas corporate groups and non-governmental
organisations. He is optimistic of achieving his goal.

"It's a meagre sum to give an entire people dignity and to trigger a
cataclysmic change amongst Musahars," he declared.

"We owe it to them."

Series concluded

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[ZESTCaste] RPI-Sena-BJP leaders vow to throw Cong-NCP out of power in state

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/nagpur/RPI-Sena-BJP-leaders-vow-to-throw-Cong-NCP-out-of-power-in-state/articleshow/8701288.cms

RPI-Sena-BJP leaders vow to throw Cong-NCP out of power in state
Ramu Bhagwat, TNN | Jun 3, 2011, 12.14am IST

NAGPUR: Leaders of the Republican Party of India (RPI), Shiv Sena and
the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) came on one platform for the first
time here and claimed that a political revolution was in the offing in
the state. "The confluence of Bhimshakti (followers of Ambedkar) and
Shiv Shakti (saffron parties) would generate enough force to throw the
Congress-Nationalist Congress out of power in the next state
elections," thundered RPI leader Ramdas Athawale.

Leaders of the three parties said they were not at all apologetic
about the disparate parties coming together. They did not mince words
to declare that the objective of this new formidable political
combination was to defeat the Congress-NCP combine in the 2014
elections. "The blue flag of Ambedkar thought will flutter along with
the saffron flag of the Sena-BJP on the Vidhan Sabha in three years,"
Athawale and the second-wrung leaders of the Shiv Sena and BJP
stressed. The packed Deshpande hall, witnessed the rare sight of RPI's
blue turbans mingling with saffron turbans as activists hailed
Babasaheb Ambedkar and Shivaji Maharaj in one voice.

"My shifting to the new combination has already disturbed the Congress
and the NCP. In desperation, my old allies have started targeting me
and also Sena supremo Bal Thackeray. NCP leader Ajit Pawar has
questioned how I was living in a four-storied house of my own in
Mumbai despite being a Dalit leader. He has questioned why Thackerays
were not into constructive projects like setting up sugar
co-operatives and mills. Returning the salvo, Athawale said had
Thackerays got into sugar mills business most of the western
Maharashtra leaders (read NCP) would have been jobless today.

"As far as my house is concerned, I have clear accounts to show that I
used my known sources of income to build it," Athawale said. However,
taking a dig at MNS chief Raj Thackeray, Athawale said Ajit Pawar
should try to find out from where Raj Thackeray got money to purchase
the Kohinoor Mills land worth hundreds of crores. RPI general
secretary Bhupesh Thoolkar accused the Congress of always working
against Babasaheb Ambedkar. It is a fact that for 27 years they did
not find him worth giving the Bharat Ratna award. It was the
non-Congress government led by VP Singh which finally bestowed that
coveted honour on Ambedkar. Only after struggling for 18 long years,
was the Marathwada University renamed after Ambedkar, he pointed out.

Besides Athawale and Thoolkar, the RPI was represented by its women's
wing chief Jyoti Lanjewar and ex-MLC Anil Gondane. The Sena had its
spokesman and MP Sanjay Raut, Vidarbha in-charge Vinayak Raut, ex-MP
Prakash Jadhav and Nagpur's deputy mayor Shekhar Sawarbandhe present
on the occasion. The BJP was represented by BJP leader in assembly
Chainsukh Sancheti, MLAs Nana Patole, Sudhakar Deshmukh,
Chandrashekhar Bawankule and mayor Archana Dehankar. Sena, BJP and RPI
workers were present in large number indicating that the new
combination was already evoking good response at the grassroot.

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[ZESTCaste] Centre to launch training programmes for SC/ST

http://www.newkerala.com/news/world/fullnews-221871.html

Centre to launch training programmes for SC/ST

Chandigarh, Jun 1: Union Ministry of Labour and Employment will start
two free employment-oriented training programmes for the unemployed
persons of Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes registered in the
employment exchanges.

Stating this here today, a spokesman for Employment Department,
Haryana said that during the training programme, the candidates would
be provided scholarships besides books free of cost. The training
programmes would commence on July 1.

He said special coaching scheme for 12th pass unemployed youth of
Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes had been introduced. The
coaching scheme would last for 11 months.

During the training, the candidates would be prepared for the
competitive examinations conducted by Central government, the state
government and various banks for Group-C posts.

During the training, the candidates would be given a scholarship of Rs 5500.

--UNI

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[ZESTCaste] Mayawati counters Rahul Gandhi with new land policy

http://www.ndtv.com/article/india/mayawati-counters-rahul-gandhi-with-new-land-policy-109815

Mayawati counters Rahul Gandhi with new land policy

Anant Zanane, Updated: June 03, 2011 00:37 IST

Lucknow: It was, for Uttar Pradesh, a Kodak moment. A group of 60
farmers pulled into the UP Assembly in a Volvo and were greeted by
Chief Minister Mayawati who spent the afternoon with them.

Mayawati's attempt to make nice comes after four people were killed
during a weekend in May when farmers and the police opened fire in the
villages of Bhatta and Parsaul in Greater Noida. Farmers were upset
over their land being acquired for public projects and then being sold
to real estate companies after a considerable mark-up by the
government. The shape of the protest shifted when Rahul Gandhi spent
the day with farmers and was arrested by the state government before
being led back across the border to Delhi. Mayawati fumed as Mr Gandhi
walked away with headlines and the apparent goodwill of many families
that he encountered.

Stung, Mayawati today announced a whole new policy on land
acquisition. "The government will no longer acquire land from farmers.
It will just act as a facilitator," she clarified. So commercial
developers will have to talk directly to farmers whose land they want
and work out the compensation with them. If 70 per cent of the farmers
in an area don't want to hand over their land, the state government
will consider cancelling the project being developed by real the
estate company. And if a group of farmers don't want to sell, they
will be given 23 per cent of the land after it's been commercially
developed.

However, the farmers of Bhatta, Parsaul and other areas that have
already handed over their land will not benefit from the new
guidelines. Mayawati's announcement today is carefully timed - land
acquisition for most of the significant projects in UP has already
been completed. So her new policy will not likely be tested before the
state votes for its next government next year.

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[ZESTCaste] Bhimshakti-Shivshakti need of the hour: Athawale

http://www.hindustantimes.com/Bhimshakti-Shivshakti-need-of-the-hour-Athawale/Article1-704912.aspx

Bhimshakti-Shivshakti need of the hour: Athawale
Pradip Kumar Maitra, Hindustan Times
Nagpur, June 02, 2011

The former Lok Sabha member and the Republican Party of India leader
Ramdas Athawale on Thursday asserted that nobody could prevent him to
forge an alliance among the Shiv Sena, BJP and RPI against the
Congress-NCP combination in Maharashtra in the ensuing elections.
Addressing a massive joint worke
rs' meeting of Sena-BJP and RPI on Thursday evening he said that the
present Congress-NCP alliance would be thrown out by the new
combination in coming elections.

He also lashed out at the deputy chief minister and NCP leader, Ajit
Pawar for criticising Balasaheb Thackeray and ridiculed the NCP and
its leaders being panicked into the move as they have realised that it
would seriously damage them in state politics.
Athawale said that for two decades the RPI was stuck with the Congress
ideology. But apparently the Congress played the Dalit vote bank
politics as a means to win power and position. "The Congress would
rely on Dalit vote in Lok Sabha and Assembly elections but would
forget us in local bodies' elections. This stunted the RPI growth at
the grassroots and also caused disarray in Dalit leadership," he
pointed out.

"I am not saying the NCP and Sharad Pawar did nothing for me. I was
made a minister and four of my party men were made ministers. Later I
was given chance to contest and win Pandharpur Lok Sabha seat. But
things changed after that. One thing led to another and I had to part
ways with the NCP in 2009," he added.

The RPI leader dismissed the alleged vicious campaign that the
Ambedkarites joined hands with the communal forces. That is a wrong
perception. "I will never deviate from the patch of Ambedkar-Fule
ideology. On February 25 I just happened to pay a courtesy visit to
Balasaheb Thackeray to greet him on his birthday. In a casual
conversation, Balasaheb remarked that Shiv Shakti (represented by
Sena) could work wonders along with Bhim shakti ( Babasaheb Ambedkar
ideology). The idea appealed to my party colleagues too. The BJP was
also roped in. Later I met BJP president Nitin Gadkari and Gopinath
Munde to discuss the prospects and remove any misgivings," he said.

This new combination is being tested to find new social, economical
possibilities to uplift the Dalits who have remained in the penumbra
of powerless existence ditched by vote bank politics of the Congress
and the NCP. History shows that Babasaheb Ambedkar was defeated by the
Congress in 1952 and 1954 (from Bhandara Lok Sabha seat). The Dalit
icon had called the Congress a `house on fire' and asked people to
abandon it and form an anti-Congress political force. I am on the same
path. There is nothing unholy in it. We want to see the Congress and
the NCP out of power, to pay its price for ignoring the Dalits on
whose votes they rule the state and the country. In past Dalit leader
Khobragade too had chosen Jan Sangh as an ally.

He urged his workers to join the proposed massive morcha against
corruption in Mumbai on June 9. "The Mumbai morcha would show our
strength and it would be a befitting reply to those who are
undermining us," he quipped.

The Rajya Sabha member and Sena leader Sanjay Raut, the senior BJP
leaders, Chainsukh Sancheti and Nana Padole also spoke on the occasion
and justified the alliance.

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[ZESTCaste] Man charged under atrocities act for cheating girlfriend

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/chennai/Man-charged-under-atrocities-act-for-cheating-girlfriend/articleshow/8701090.cms

Man charged under atrocities act for cheating girlfriend
TNN | Jun 2, 2011, 11.59pm IST

COIMBATORE: Charges under the provisions of SC/ST (Prevention of
Atrocities) Act were slapped on a 29-year-old MCA graduate on Thursday
for his refusal to marry his 34-year-old girl friend from a scheduled
caste community and for referring to her caste in abusive terms.

Acting on a petition lodged by R Sudha of Kailasapuram near Devakottai
in Sivagangai district, the all women police station in Coimbatore
registered the case using provisions of the act against S Karthikeyan
of Madurai.

According to the police, Sudha and Karthikeyan fell in love around 10
years ago in Madurai but they were not able to meet frequently as
Sudha went Coimbatore to practice chartered accountancy. But
Karthikeyan followed her to Coimbatore by joining for MCA at GRD
college.

Both of them took a house on rent at B R Puram in Peelamedu and lived
together. After completing his course, Karthikeyan went to Chennai to
work in a private company. After reaching Chennai, he tried to move
out of the relationship.

On Sudha's insistence, Kartikeyan met her at Meenakshi temple in
Madurai last year. Sudha was accompanied by her mother and they forced
him to marry her at the temple. But he refused. Whenever Sudha
contacted him thereafter, he ridiculed her calling her caste name and
in filthy language. He also made it clear that it was her caste that
prevented him from marrying her. Karthikeyan belongs to an upper
caste.

In February this year, Sudha lodged a complaint with Race Course
police station here against his breach of assurance and using of caste
name. However, he assured the police that he would marry her.

Manager of a popular textile firm in the city, Sudha approached the
police again and, now, a case has been registered under the prevention
of atrocities act. A special police team has been sent to Chennai to
arrest him, said all women police station (Central) inspector M
Manickam.