Latest News Update

Tuesday, November 3, 2009

[ZESTCaste] Amar dares Maya, says not afraid of CBI

http://www.ptinews.com/news/360260_Amar-dares-Maya--says-not-afraid-of-CBI

Amar dares Maya, says not afraid of CBI

STAFF WRITER 18:12 HRS IST
Firozabad, Nov 3 (PTI) Samajwadi Party leader Amar Singh today accused
Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Mayawati of implicating him in a false
case, and dared her to get him arrested.

"If Mayawati has the guts, she should get me arrested after getting a
false case lodged against me," Singh said addressing an election rally
in support of party candidate Dimple Yadav here.

"I'm neither afraid of CBI nor police baton," the SP general secretary said.

Taking a dig at Rahul Gandhi who had last week campaigned here for
party candidate Raj Babbar, Singh said the Congress, which had given
several Prime Ministers, should also give an account of the situation
of power, water and unemployment.

He also accused BSP and Congress of being in league with each other to
defeat the SP chief Mulayam Singh Yadav's daughter-in-law Dimple in
Firozabad bypoll on November 7.

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[ZESTCaste] Christian groups to stage dharna for SC status to Dalit Christians, Dalit Muslims

http://twocircles.net/2009nov02/christian_groups_stage_dharna_sc_status_dalit_christians_dalit_muslims.html

Christian groups to stage dharna for SC status to Dalit Christians,
Dalit Muslims

Submitted by admin4 on 2 November 2009 - 6:37pm.
Indian Muslim
By TwoCircles.net News Desk,

New Delhi: Leading Christian religious groups will stage a dharna on
Parliament Street in New Delhi on November 18 demanding amendment in
the Constitution to grant Scheduled Caste status to Dalit Christians
and Dalit Muslims in the country.

The National Council of Dalit Christians in collaboration with
Catholic Bishops' Conference of India and National Council of Churches
in India have decided to organize a rally followed by a daylong dharna
"to express the urgency and gravity of Christians', Muslims' and
secular-minded peoples' just demand for Scheduled Caste rights to
Dalit Christians and Dalit Muslims."

The Constitutional Scheduled Caste Order 1950 restricted SC status
only to the SCs professing Hinduism. Later on the order was amended to
include in the fold SCs who embraced Sikhism and Buddhism.

"Dalit Christians and Dalit Muslims have been denied their right for
the last fifty nine years. National Commission for Religious and
Linguistic Minorities (NCRLM) stated that non inclusion of SC
Christians and SC Muslims in the SC list is a discrimination based on
religion and goes against the articles 14, 15 and 25 of the
Constitution of India. Religion must be de-linked from caste. The
discriminatory Para 3 of the Constitution Scheduled Caste Order 1950
should be deleted by appropriate action," said the Christian groups in
a statement.

"But it is very unfortunate that the Union Government has shelved this
report and makes millions of SC Christians and SC Muslims continue to
suffer unjustly," the groups said adding that the Writ petition filed
in the Supreme Court in 2004 is unduly delayed because of the
indifference of the Union Government to give a reply to the Supreme
Court.

Meanwhile the National Commission for Scheduled Castes (NCSC) has also
recommended that Scheduled Caste status must be extended to the
Scheduled Caste Christians and Scheduled Caste Muslims. The National
Commission for Minorities too has supported the demand.

"Most of the political parties have supported the demand of Scheduled
Caste Christians and Muslims. Various dharnas and protest rallies have
been organized in the state and national level to assert our rights.
Prime Ministers including the present one and various Ministers have
made assurances that it would be done. So far they have been only
empty promises."

The groups have also demanded tabulation of the report of the National
Commission for Religious and Linguistic Minorities in the Parliament
with Action Taken Report and implementation of its recommendations.
They have urged the Union Government to give appropriate answer to the
query of the Supreme Court to the Writ Petitions demanding the
deletion of the unjust para 3 of the Constitution Scheduled Castes
Order 1950 to extend Scheduled Caste Status to Christians and Muslims
of Scheduled Caste origin.

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[ZESTCaste] Magic of millets

http://www.hardnewsmedia.com/2009/11/3331

Magic of millets

The marginalised women of Medak district have shown the way to other
farmers, scientists and policy makers to regenerate sustainable and
citizen controlled food systems
Akash Bisht Medak (Andhra Pradesh)

Balamma, a 60-year-old dalit woman from Edavulapalli village in Medak
district of Andhra Pradesh, is savouring her new-found freedom. Not
too long ago she was a bonded labour who led a difficult life living
on the margins of the village. Now she is a self-sufficient farmer.
How did this transformation take place in a span of a few years?

Balamma's narrative is quite stirring. "My husband was a bonded
labour. We owned a small piece of fallow land on the fringes of the
village. We are dalits so we were given infertile land by landlords
under the Land Ceiling Act. We could grow nothing on it as the top
soil was rocky and we did not have the resources - bullocks, seeds,
fertilisers - for farming."

Few years later, Balamma with some other dalit women from her village
decided to lease a small piece of fallow land collectively with the
help of a non-profit organisation, Deccan Development Society (DDS).
On it, they grew multiple crops, primarily millets and pulses. That
changed their lives. It has been more than 15 years now. Balamma owns
cattle and her grandchildren go to school. "My children never had a
chance to go to school because they had to start working at an early
age to sustain the family," she says.

Many other dalit women like Balamma adopted similar cropping patterns
in the wake of severe natural calamities like drought and floods.
They, too, have been phenomenally successful in ensuring food security
not only for themselves, but for the entire village. More than 5,000
dalit women, with the help of DDS, have formed sanghams (village-level
communities) in 70 villages where they sit together and discuss issues
pertaining to agriculture among other things. They have also devised
an alternative public distribution system and set up seed banks in
different villages of Medak district.

Collective farming by small groups of dalit women helped them conquer
poverty. They leased fallow land for which DDS paid them 75 per cent
of the total amount. Then they set about improving the soil quality
using animal manure and local water harvesting techniques.
The women decided to grow multiple traditional crops - millets and
pulses - instead of a single crop. If the harvest of a single crop
failed due to natural conditions, pest attacks et al, they would have
lost it all. However, with multiple crops the women had the advantage
of saving at least 40 per cent of the harvest in extreme conditions
and these crops are naturally resistant to pests as well.

Once the harvest was ready, these women, in a wealth ranking exercise,
gave different coloured cards to each family depending on their
economic status. That determined what portion of the produce each
family would get. Also, they sold their produce at a rupee less than
the market price. They paid back the DDS with a sack full of jowar for
each acre. The surplus crop was sold off and the money it fetched was
invested in a fixed deposit for five years. This money was taken out
only to bring more fallow land under cultivation. After long struggle,
they also got the work of bringing fallow land under cultivation in
the NREGS, too.

Seed banks run by the sanghams follow the traditional method of
storing. A woman in every village is chosen to store seeds and
distribute it to whoever needs them. But, the seed bank has a rule:
one has to return around double the quantity of seeds a person has
borrowed. These banks have helped in storing a wide variety of seeds
that would have been lost over time. "Some of the seeds had long been
forgotten by the locals. But extreme weather conditions in the past
few years have made people realise the value of these crops that had
sustained several generations," a sangham member told Hardnews.

The women also began to grow plantation crops and earned wages similar
to the NREGS. "We did work similar to what the government calls the
NREGS way back in 1987. We paid daily wages to women who were part of
the sanghams and worked in plantations or fallow land," informs PV
Sateesh, DDS director. The plantations provided them with timber,
fruits and fodder.

The plantations not only recharged the groundwater but also brought
money after the women sold off the surplus. Traditional medicinal
plants were also introduced which helped villagers
save money that would otherwise have been spent on commuting to
hospitals and medicines.
"According to our estimates, communities have saved around Rs three
million by using medicinal plants and other traditional medical
techniques. We also have a health worker in every village," says
Sateesh. The women have also set up shops to sell the surplus produce
at a rate lower than what the market offers.

Many women in different villages in Medak district narrate stories of
their poverty-stricken past when the men worked in fields of big
landowners. They couldn't plough their land as they had no bullocks.
And, when they did manage to get bullocks, the harvesting season was
over. "Now, even landlords sometimes come to us for bullocks and
seeds. Many of them have adopted our farming methods after seeing our
success," says a proud Lakshamma of Chilamamedi village.

The DDS has also started the country's first community radio station
run by dalit women. They discuss issues relating to agriculture,
health and music. Some of the women have even been trained in camera
and video editing. They make documentary films that have been dubbed
in several languages and won awards, too.

In 2002, during Chandrababu Naidu's regime, the Telangana region of
Andhra suffered severe drought for nearly five years. Many farmers
committed suicide as they were burdened with huge loans they could not
repay. Their hybrid cash crops had failed as they could not withstand
water scarcity. However, during this phase Balamma and other dalit
women in Medak district didn't face such huge losses. Some of the
millets they had sown were drought-resistant. So, they had food and
fodder during the drought years. "During these tough years the
villagers would ask everyone if they needed any grain or seeds.
Everybody declined as there was a surplus of grain in every house,"
says a local woman farmer. When farmers across Andhra were struggling
just to survive, these women had surplus in grain banks and seed
banks.

The villages also saw a sharp drop in the number of the poor migrating
to bigger cities, locals tell Hardnews. "Locals call millet satyam
pantalu (crops of truth). These crops grow on practically no inputs
and even on highly infertile soil," says Sateesh. Except for coastal
Andhra, most of the other regions also grew millets and other
traditional crops. After the Green Revolution, however, most farmers
gave up millet farming and took to cultivating hybrid cash crops.

"Our cattle were dying after eating Bt cotton. We soon learnt that the
crop required big investment. If one crop failed, farmers would face
huge losses," informs Suryamma of Edavulapalli village in Medak. Some
farmers who incurred such losses committed suicide.

Farmers also figured out that the soil was becoming infertile as no
other crop would reap a good harvest after Bt cotton was introduced.
Yet, cotton is still being grown in large parts of Andhra along with
several other cash crops that require large quantities of water and
other inputs like pesticides, fertilisers and seeds. This is leading
to an environmental crisis as water table in the region is depleting
at an alarming rate as more and more farmers are digging deep for
borewells.

Andhra Pradesh is divided into three regions - Rayalseema, Telangana
and coastal Andhra. Coastal Andhra has fertile lands and a vast
network of irrigation facilities. Most of Rayalseema and Telangana,
however, are rain-fed. Land in the Rayalseema and Telangana regions is
not conducive for crops that require plenty of water. So, millets were
grown in the past and in small quantities post Green Revolution. With
the advent of hybrid crops and genetically modified cash crops,
farmers decided to abandon traditional farming. Bt cotton was first
introduced in Andhra in 2002. It turned out to be a disaster that led
to several farmers committing suicides due to enormous debts.

"Cash crops provide farmers with higher yields but it gets evened out
with the input cost. One bad season can bring misery to farmers,
especially, the poor ones. This has led to farmer suicides in Vidarbha
and other parts of the country," says Suman Sahai of Gene Campaign.

The traditional cropping pattern of most of the rain-fed areas in
India is disappearing at an alarming rate. The government is providing
rice and wheat at a subsidised rate through the public distribution
system (PDS). This has led to small and marginal farmers abandoning
farming, migrating or engaging in some other profession while their
land lies fallow. In spite of the high nutritional value and other
benefits of millets, the area under millet cultivation has declined
over the last five decades, especially after the Green Revolution.
Between 1966 and 2006, more than 44 per cent of millet cultivation
areas have been occupied by other crops, primarily cash crops.
Government policies towards millets have also led to its decline.

"Millets are considered as the food of the poor. So, no one,
especially the new generation, wants to associate themselves with the
crop that is associated with poverty. People of older generations
might like it, but the demand and appeal of millets is on the wane
with the advent of junk food," informs Sahai. However, India still
remains the highest consumer of millets in the world. Indians consume
42 per cent of the total global produce.

Subsidised rice distributed through the PDS has also led to a decline
in the demand for millets as rice posed a competition. "There should
be some political pressure from Punjab which is the reason why surplus
rice from Punjab is being sent to Andhra Pradesh. It doesn't make
sense to transport rice all the way from Punjab and Haryana. People
should eat what they grow locally because it will save transportation
costs and keep alive the traditional farming," says Sahai.

Sateesh, Sahai and others have repeatedly requested the government to
introduce millets through the PDS primarily because they are high in
nutrition and will also inspire farmers to grow the crop. "Millets
should be introduced in midday meal and Integrated Child Development
Scheme (ICDS) because of their nutritional value and fibre. This will
also keep the younger generation in proximity with their traditional
eating habits," appeals Sateesh.

The marginalised women of Medak district have shown the way to other
farmers, scientists and policy makers to regenerate sustainable and
citizen controlled food systems. They have also succeeded in
eradicating poverty and hunger while ensuring environmental
sustainability. Moreover, women have assumed control over agriculture
and become financially secure.

"Farmers are being made into consumers rather than producers through
flawed government policies. The State has to empower people not
disempower them. If these marginalised women
in hostile natural conditions can become self-sufficient, why can't
people in other parts of the country emulate them?" asks Sateesh.

NOVEMBER 2009

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[ZESTCaste] Democracy has failed the Musahars of Bihar

http://news.rediff.com/special/2009/nov/03/democracy-has-failed-these-indians.htm

Democracy has failed the Musahars of Bihar
November 03, 2009 11:40 IST

Prayaag Akbar tells the story of 1,000 years of caste-based
repression, and of a people's quest for dignity under a democracy that
has failed them.
Vilas Ravi Raj, a Musahar, has brought his son Dileep, a shivering
six-year old with bandages across his face like a zebra crossing, to
the Anugrah Narain Magadh Medical College Hospital. The boy's
grandmother has walked with them from the village of Utlibari, around
30 kilometres away, in the same district of Gaya, Bihar.

The father bends over his son, feeding him milk via a syringe and
through a tube that goes up the boy's nose. All the beds in the
children's ward are filled with similarly suffering children. By their
side are parents in tattered clothes and haunted eyes, eyes that are
shrouded by confusion and fear each time the nurses describe what is
happening to their child.

District health officials have just announced there is an epidemic of
meningitis and encephalitis amongst the 30 lakh (3 million) strong
Musahar population of Bihar; their living habits bring them in close
proximity to pigs and cows, making the children of this community
especially susceptible to infectious disease.

This hospital is at the epicentre of the epidemic because Gaya
district has the highest concentration of Musahars, though they are
found all over the state. Twenty seven children have died in the
hospital in just a few days, but members of the medical staff say that
the number of children who receive poor or no medical attention far
outstrips this number. This is the third year in a row that a
meningitis epidemic has been declared in the district.

The Musahars are one of the most deprived communities in India. They
were given Maha-Dalit status by the Bihar government some years ago,
testament to the abject penury in which most live. They are perhaps
best known as rat-eaters (Mus -- mouse; ahar -- eater), a title many
in the community are keen to live down, though the tradition remains.
Even so, in the villages I visited, the villagers refused repeatedly
to hunt rats for the cameras of the freelance photographer who
accompanied me (in one ridiculous interlude, he offered the children
ten rupees for every rat they caught. They still refused.)

And this is one of the main problems the community faces; as the
dominant caste groups in the area and a compliant, sensation-seeking
media continue to frame the Musahars' existence through practices like
rat-eating, their perilous standards of living can continue to be
justified as those deserved by a 'subhuman' community.

Try this for a paradox. Dwarako Sundari is a 68-year old Sindhi
gentleman who crossed the border at Partition. In his twenties he was
entrusted by Acharya Vinobha Bhave to come to Bodhgaya and build an
ashram where Musahirs could be educated and fed. He has been running
his school for more than 30 years with no government support, reliant
on the kindness of people who travel to Buddhism's holiest place. He
received the Jamnalal Bajaj [ Images ] Award for Social Work in 1992,
but otherwise there have been few public plaudits. Almost all the
educated Musahars in the area have studied in his school, including
the aspiring politician Biswas Manjhi, who is hoping for a Rashtriya
Janata Dal Vidhan Sabha nomination. He tells me: "Dwarakoji is akin to
a saint. He has done so much for us."

It is shocking, then, to learn Dwarakoji's views on these people:
"After much thought, I have realised the Musahars are a sub-human
community. Jayprakash Narayan once visited my ashram and he said this
exact thing to me. Now, years later, I have to agree. I have seen
students of mine throw their parents out of the house once they cannot
earn anymore, saying they need to feed their children. Women complain
to me because their husbands refuse to acknowledge their marital
contract. Other families desert their children. Is this the way human
beings live?"

When I point out to him that the practices he has listed are prevalent
in other communities -- could even be considered common practice in
countries like the United States -- he brushes my objections aside.
Once again the problem that faces these people is illustrated.
Dwarakoji has done as much for Musahar children as perhaps anyone in
the world, and when he speaks of the children you can sense his
abiding affection. Yet, after 30 years of interacting with the
community there is a sharp delineation, a need to see people with such
strange and objectionable habits as something quite different from
himself.

About 15 minutes drive from the town of Bodhgaya, where the
Enlightened One has ensured hundreds of tonsured Japanese and European
tourists sit drinking imported Lapsang Souchong (Chinese black tea),
there is the village of Parariya, a dot in the hinterland of 300 homes
and 1,200 people.

To reach this village you must walk through an ankle-deep swamp until
you arrive at a cluster of tiny mud huts. Like every village in India,
living arrangements are segmented sharply along the lines of caste: in
the distance are the houses of the Yadavs and further along are the
Paswans (both of whom are considered upper-caste Dalits and have
enjoyed years of patronage under leaders like Lalu Prasad Yadav [
Images ] and Ram Vilas Paswan).

The biggest houses belong to the Thakurs, the landowners of the area,
though I am told there is a smattering of Muslim families who have
their own conclave.

The Musahar huts are the simplest, reflective of their status within
the village hierarchy. Each hut has two windowless rooms, a small
open-air courtyard that is used as a kitchen and a roof of thatched
hay. The doors and ceilings are built so low you must bend at the
waist to enter the room. It is clear that a Musahar roof cannot be
higher than a Yadav roof, and so on up the chain.

Kuleshar Manji and his wife Sudama Devi have been married for 30
years. They have five children, four of whom scamper in and out of the
house like the mice running around on the floor. They are landowners:
"humraa paanch gaj". Though this is not common in the community, this
is one of the few areas in Bihar with strong Musahar politicians, and
some years ago a land redistribution scheme was implemented that gave
each family in the surrounding villages a parcel of land.

But in the village, land without water is like no land at all. The
Musahars have the smallest freehold plots of the worst land. Manji and
his wife still spend the majority of the agricultural season
cultivating the plots of Yadav families.

The Yadav landowners pay each Musahar man Rs 15 for a day's work,
while every Musahar woman receives just 2.5 kilos of unrefined wheat,
no money. Kuleshar Manji says, "There is no irrigation, so we can't
water any of the crops on our land. But the government put in pumps
and pipes for the areas where the upper-castes have their land. If we
don't work on their land we won't have anything at all."

This works out to around Rs 500 a month during the agricultural
season. Manji and Sudama Devi are lucky because their oldest son is
working as construction labour in Bhutan, from where he sends Rs 500 a
month. "Now with Rs 1,000 we are more comfortable. Three of my
children are in school. But most families here don't have anyone to
send money. If we had to get by on just the wages I am paid to
cultivate the Yadav farms we would be in trouble."

Both husband and wife agree that NREGS (National Rural Employment
Guarantee Scheme) has been a huge boon during the difficult
non-agricultural season, when the steady daily payment of Rs 80 comes
as a massive windfall. The Bihar government has one of the best
records of implementing this scheme.

But such poverty can only breed discontent. Many young men from the
lowest caste groups in each village have taken up cause with the
Naxalites [ Images ], disillusioned by the unchanging patterning of
society.

One former Naxal, a young Musahar who studied in Dwarako Sundari's
school and is now a businessman in Bodhgaya, explains: "A lot of the
villages here are named after Naxal heroes. People get tired of
waiting for change. I drifted in and out of camps since I was 15. We
used to hold tribunals here, because the villagers were tired of going
to the corrupt courts."

The Naxalite problem affects even the least political villagers,
because state functionaries now have a ready-made excuse for not doing
their jobs. The former Naxal continues, "while I was growing up, the
schools did not have teachers, no health officials would ever come to
these areas. They all said the Naxals made it too dangerous for them
to work. It is the same now."

Bodhgaya is jammed with tourists from all over the world. The Bihar
government has built a shiny, metalled road from Patna to this small
town. An international airport has been built at Gaya, so Buddha
tourists can pop in and out without seeing the rest of India. But with
so much spending allocated to ease the journey of foreigners, what
remains for the people of this area? None of the tourism money
trickles down to the poorest people of this district, of which the
Musahars are only one community.

As the Buddha once left the grounds of his palace in Kapilavastu and
found nothing but disease and desolation, leave the city limits of
Bodhgaya and you enter a poverty-stricken wasteland.

It is only the very richest people of Parariya, the Thakurs, who own
motorbikes, so they do not have to trudge through the swamp that
separates the village from the main road. In these villages, the
difference between those who own motorbikes and those who don't is not
a simple one; it tells the story of a 1,000 years of caste-based
repression, and of a people's quest for dignity under a democracy that
has failed them.

Image: Vilas Ravi Raj feeds his son Dileep with a syringe as his
grandmother looks on

Courtesy: Covert Magazine

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[ZESTCaste] Fwd: Seminar On Feminine, Criminal or Manly? Imaging Dalit Masculinities in Colonial North India

---------- Forwarded message ----------

Centre for Historical Studies, JNU

Invites you to a Seminar On Feminine, Criminal or Manly? Imaging Dalit
Masculinities in Colonial North India

Dr. Charu Gupta
University of Delhi

Date: 4th November 2009 (Wednesday)

Time: 3:00 pm

Venue: Committee Room No. 001, SSS I, JNU

All are welcome
Abstract
This talk places Dalit masculinity at its centre as opposed to the
margins of theories of masculinity, in the process messing its current
trajectory. It explores ways in which Dalit male body was socially
imaged and constructed by colonial authorities, by upper castes and by
Dalits. It probes how images of Dalit masculinity were interpreted,
manipulated, and reinterpreted, both for social control and for
identity construction. Ways in which Dalit masculinity was constructed
or destructed by the upper castes reveals the social relations in that
particular historical time and how they were mapped onto available
bodies. In the process it also asks if there are differences in
masculinist assertions of Dalit men from those of upper caste men. The
paper moves at three inter-related levels. First, it attempts to offer
a corrective to earlier historiographic and theoretical paradigms
which focus primarily on upper caste, hegemonic Hindu masculinity, in
which Dalit men are only tangentially referred to, and that too as
negative referents. Second, it takes on a discursive approach in which
it examines Dalit masculinity through its representations within the
dominant culture and the way in which representations constitute, and
are reflective of, the power relationships between upper and lower
castes, in which Dalit men emerge as victims of institutional
casteism. The images of Dalit men were related to larger structures of
oppression, such as lack of education, a discriminatory labour market,
criminal justice system and technologies of surveillance which
resulted in the institutional decimation of Dalit males. Third it
attempts to understand assertions of Dalit masculinity by Dalits
themselves by rooting it in larger historical narratives. It tries to
read Dalit history, and the crisis of Dalit manhood through a gendered
lens. It appears that the construction of Dalit masculinity is neither
a fully cohesive one nor an entirely innocent one. The different,
varied and contrasting images of Dalit male bodies reveal that gender
identities are not fixed or immutable but rather marked by ambiguity,
contradictions, uncertainties and pluralities.
Charu Gupta is an Associate Professor of History in Delhi University.
She did her PhD from SOAS, London. She has been a Fellow at the Nehru
Memorial Museum and Library, the Social Science Research Council, New
York, the Asian Scholarship Foundation, Thailand, the Wellcome
Institute, London, and the University of Oxford. She has also been a
visiting Faculty at various universities in USA. Her publications
include the books Sexuality, Obscenity, Community: Women, Muslims and
the Hindu Public in Colonial India and Contested Coastlines:
Fisherfolk, Nations and Borders in South Asia, and several articles on
gender, sexuality, fundamentalism and nationalism in various national
and international journals. She is currently working on 'Gendering
Dalits in North India'.
THE SEMINAR SCHEDULE FOR THIS SEMESTER IS ATTACHED

Monsoon Semester 2009.pdf
803K View Download

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Tuesday, November 3, 2009

[ZESTCaste] Amar dares Maya, says not afraid of CBI

[ZESTCaste] Christian groups to stage dharna for SC status to Dalit Christians, Dalit Muslims

[ZESTCaste] Magic of millets

[ZESTCaste] Democracy has failed the Musahars of Bihar

[ZESTCaste] Fwd: Seminar On Feminine, Criminal or Manly? Imaging Dalit Masculinities in Colonial North India

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