Marital and other rapes grossly under-reported

Just 2.3 per cent of rape was by men other than the husba

Husbands commit a majority of acts of sexual violence in India, and just one per cent of marital rapes and six per cent of rapes by men other than husbands are reported to the police, new estimates show.

In keeping with the widely held belief among women’s rights activists in India that sexual violence is grossly under-reported, social scientist Aashish Gupta with the Research Institute for Compassionate Economics compared National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) statistics on officially reported cases of violence against women with data from the National Family Health Survey (NFHS), which asked women respondents whether they had faced any sexual or physical violence.

Since the most recent round of the NFHS was conducted in 2005, Mr. Gupta compared the NCRB statistics for that year with the extent of violence that women had admitted to in the NFHS survey.

Mr. Gupta found that while 157 per 1,00,000 women reported to NFHS surveyors that they had experienced rape by men other than their husbands in the past 12 months, 6,590 said their husbands had physically forced them to have sexual intercourse against their will. This meant that just 2.3 per cent of all rapes experienced by women were by men other than their husbands.

For both marital and non-marital rapes, however, the officially reported figures were extremely low, Mr. Gupta said in a working paper he shared with The Hindu. Comparing the NCRB and NFHS data in 2005, just 5.8 per cent of rapes by men other than the woman’s husband were reported to the police, and just 0.6 per cent of rapes by the husband. Since marital rape was not recognised as a crime in India, it was probably reported as “cruelty,” Mr. Gupta found.

While India lacks a “crime victimisation survey,” which in countries such as England has largely replaced police statistics as official crime data, Mr. Gupta’s findings are confirmed by other sources.

The NFHS itself asks women who experienced violence if they reported it to the police; just 0.6 per cent said that they had.

The Delhi-based women’s rights organisation Jagori made similar findings in a sample survey in Delhi in 2011 — just 0.8 per cent of women who had been sexually assaulted, stalked or harassed reported it to the police. “There have been some area-specific studies like ours, but the NFHS is really the only victimisation study that India has,” Kalpana Viswanath, researcher and executive committee member of Jagori, told The Hindu. “Our recommendation has been for the NFHS to expand their questions on violence and look at sexual violence other than rape too,” she said.

Severe physical violence was equally under-reported, Mr. Gupta found. At the State level, Mr. Gupta looked at physical violence and marital rape, since the numbers on rape by men other than the husband were too small at the State level for statistical analysis.

Delhi has the lowest actual incidence of violence against women and highest rates of reporting in the country.

In general, States associated with gender equality — the North-Eastern States, Kerala, Tamil Nadu and Karnataka — had both lower levels of actual incidence of violence and higher levels of reporting, but no State reached double digits in its extent of reporting.

Keywords: marital rape, rape reporting, crimes against women

Walking is a super pill, says survey

“Walking is super pill,” according to the findings of a recently released survey which was conducted among doctors who are treating the four most rampant chronic diseases in the present times -- obesity, cardiovascular, asthma, joint and backache.

“If sitting is the new smoking of the current generation then walking is the super pill prescribed by doctors across categories. But the survey found that the patients are not always following the right dosage of the pill for the desired effects,” noted the findings of the Max Bupa survey.

‘The Max Bupa Walk for Health Survey 2014’, the first of its kind conducted among doctors noted that the aim of the project was also to decode the benefit of walking for patients suffering from various ailments. For the study, general physicians, specialists in respiratory diseases, orthopaedics and cardiologists were interviewed along with 1,000 patients in Delhi and Mumbai.

The study noted that walking is the most prescribed exercise for obese patients (84 per cent), followed by diabetics (76 per cent) and patients suffering from blood pressure (72 per cent), cholesterol (65 per cent) and cardiovascular diseases (56 per cent).

Academics must question more: Romila

Urges intellectuals to resist assault on liberal thought

Historian Romila Thapar asked a full house of Delhi’s intelligentsia on Sunday why changes in syllabi and objections to books were not being challenged.

Prof. Thapar was delivering the third Nikhil Chakravartty Memorial Lecture here on Sunday, titled ‘To Question or not to Question: That is the Question.”

“There are more academics in existence than ever before but most prefer not to confront authority even if it debars the path of free thinking. Is this because they wish to pursue knowledge undisturbed or because they are ready to discard knowledge, should authority require them to do so,” the eminent historian asked.

Tracing the lineage of the modern public intellectual to Shamanic philosophers of ancient India, Prof. Thapar said the non-Brahminical thinkers of ancient India were branded as Nastikas or non-believers. “I am reminded of the present day where if you don’t accept what Hindutva teaches, you’re all branded together as Marxists,” she added.

“Public intellectuals, playing a discernible role, are needed for such explorations as also to articulate the traditions of rational thought in our intellectual heritage. This is currently being systematically eroded,” she explained.

Prof. Thapar stressed that intellectuals were especially needed to speak out against the denial of civil rights and the events of genocide. “The combination of drawing upon wide professional respect, together with concern for society can sometimes establish the moral authority of a person and ensure public support.”

However she said academics and experts shied away from questioning the powers of the day.

Why no reaction?

“This is evident from the ease with which books are banned and pulped or demands made that they be burned and syllabi changed under religious and political pressure or the intervention of the state. Why do such actions provoke so little reaction from academics, professionals and others among us who are interested in the outcome of these actions? The obvious answer is the fear of the instigators — who are persons with the backing of political authority,” Prof. Thapar said.

“When it comes to religious identities and their politics, we witness hate campaigns based on absurd fantasies about specific religions and we no longer confront them frontally. Such questioning means being critical of organisations and institutions that claim a religious intention but use their authority for non-religious purposes,” she said.

Prof. Thapar rued the fact that not only were public intellectuals missing from the front lines of defending liberal values, but also alleged a deliberate conspiracy to enforce what she termed a “Lowest Common Denominator” education.

“It is not that we are bereft of people who can think autonomously and ask relevant questions. But frequently where there should be voices, there is silence. Are we all being co-opted too easily by the comforts of conforming,” she asked.

Keywords: Historian Romila Thapar, Nikhil Chakravartty Memorial Lecture, Romila Thapar, academicians

Oct 27 2014 : The Times of India (Delhi)

NEW APPROACH - CBSE to focus on NE issues

manash gohain

New Delhi:





CBSE may soon ask its students to work on a project on the northeast or a question may be part of the open book assessment--the region is to become a focus area in its curriculum.Besides setting up a centre of excellence for teachers in Guwahati in collaboration with IIT Guwahati, Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) is going to include various aspects of northeast studies in its Continuous and Comprehensive Evaluation (CCE) system as well as emphasize on the region in Heritage India Quiz.
In a meeting of the Bezbaruah Committee earlier this month, the board had proposed implementing a sixpoint strategy to sensitize students on the northeast issues.
To include these issues in the curriculum, CBSE is planning to introduce such project works under CCE from classes VI to VIII. At the meeting with the committee, set up to look into the concerns of the people from the northeast, the board said it had already advised the schools to take up these projects. “We will also ensure that these cannot be bought off the shelf,“ said CBSE, which will release related guidelines for the schools.
For higher classes, CBSE is planning to make use of open text book assessment, which has been introduced in all main subjects in classes IX and X and in economics, biology and geography in Class XI. These study materials will be based on situations found in the northeast.
Under Formative Assessment of CCE, the teachers from the Northeast will be trained to devise assign ments in local, social, economic and political contexts.CBSE has specifically asked them to include freedom fighters from the region in these materials.
At the centre of excellence, the teachers from the northeast will train their counterparts and students from other parts of the country for better connect with the region.
The value education kits--the handbook for the CBSE teachers--will also be improved to introduce activities for creating awareness about the students from the region.

Makers of India

Early in the morning, the door-bell rings. The paperwala throws the bundle of newspaper at our door-step and moves away hurriedly. Soon afterwards, we get ready and hop into a rickshaw, auto or bus to go to our offices, factories or shop. Reaching our work places we find the watchman respectfully securing our workplaces and the cleaning personnel doing their jobs. In a typical government office, we meet our personal staff and assistants working with us. The common element between all these kinds of workers- paperwala, auto-driver or bus driver, rickshaw puller, watchman, office boys, cleaners, computer operators etc. is that they all belong to the informal sector. In fact, our socio-economic space is overwhelmingly informal whether it is relating to employment or other aspects of our life. However we tend to overlook and underestimate the importance of this sector which is multi-dimensional in its structure. The concept of ‘Informal Sector’ owes its origin to the British anthropologist Keith Hart’s study in Ghana. Later on in 1970s ILO brought in the element of ‘decent work’ into this concept which ‘involved rights to work, at work, to labour organisation (or dialogue) and to social security’. But some scholarshave pointed out that it would be extremely limiting if the idea of ‘informality’ is restricted just to the economic sphere.

Urban Informal Sector in India
Arup Mitra

The urban urban informal sector plays a crucial role in providing sources of livelihood particularly to the rural migrants and several low income households residing in urban slums. This paper examines the relative size and composition of the informal sector and delineates the recent changes relating to contractualisation and ancillarisation and their impact on work practices and performance. Several studies on informal sector have been carried out in the Indian context in last thirty to twenty years or so – a brief review of which may be seen in Das (2011) and Mitra (2013). The rural labourers who are pushed out of the agricultural sector due to the lack of a productive source of livelihood and at the same time could not be absorbed in the rural non-farm sector or the high productivity manufacturing sector in the urban areas are likely to get residually absorbed in the low productivity urban informal sector (Mitra, 1994). Also, a rapid natural growth of population in the urban areas has been adding substantially to the urban labour supplies. Despite a rise in enrolment ratio, a large component of this labour force is either of unskilled or semi-skilled variety. Contrastingly, the growth process is becoming increasingly capital and skill intensive, forcing many to pick up petty activities in the informal sector.

Oct 24 2014 : Mirror (Pune)

Worshipping false Gods





The lack of awareness of the law on the national anthem among law enforcers is disturbing

It is a controversy brewing into a storm. A patriotic mob in Mumbai turned its fury against a foreign national, who did not stand to attention when the national anthem was played in a movie hall. Dismissing both the mob and the victim, police officers are reported to have discouraged the couple against filing an official complaint, by suggesting that not standing up for the national anthem could amount to a crime.The national anthem and the lack of awareness of the law around it is turning it into a social nightmare. In August this year, a Kerala magistrate had refused bail to a student of philosophy who had refused to stand up for the anthem. The magistrate is reported to have commented that his alleged crime was worse than murder. The local police took the incident as a cue to go through his Facebook posts, and charged the kid with sedition. The kid eventually got bail from the high court, but only after spending a month in jail, with the next few years of his life consigned to legal proceedings.
In 2004, dealing with public interest litigation, the Madhya Pradesh High Court directed that the movie Kabhi Khushi Kabhi Gham should not be screened in any movie hall unless the national anthem scene embedded in the film were deleted.The grouse was that the anthem would be insulted if viewers did not stand up when it played in the movie. The court directed the film's certification to be revoked unless this cut was made. On appeal, the Supreme Court set it aside. The court took on board instructions from the Government of India that clarified that the audience was not expected to stand to the national anthem if incidentally played in a film. The court ruled that standing to the anthem in the midst of a movie “would create disorder and confusion, rather than add to the dignity of the national anthem“.
Way back in the 1980s, the Supreme Court had intervened firmly and clearly to hold that three Kerala kids belonging to the Jehovah's Witnesses sect had done no wrong when they refused to sing the anthem, which they believed would violate their freedom to profess their religious faith. The students would stand to attention for the anthem but refused to sing along. The school, in response, rusticated the kids. (The clash of beliefs of this sect with social themes worldwide is legendary. The judiciary in the UK has had to rule on members of the sect refusing blood transfusion, which has also inspired a recent book The Children Act, by Ian McEwan).
The Kerala High Court found the case to be in favour of the school while the Supreme Court directed that the kids be re-admitted to school and be permitted to continue without hindrance. Allowing the appeal with costs, the Supreme Court sighed in closing: “We only wish to add: our tradition teaches tolerance; our philosophy preaches tolerance; our Constitution practises tolerance; let us not dilute it.“
Yet another lunatic example of the anthem being used to foment trouble was a private criminal complaint against Shashi Tharoor for exhorting an audience to place their right hand on the heart when singing the anthem. He was being American, seeking patriotic zeal right after the Mumbai terror attacks, apparently. He was discharged only last year. The complainant surely did not know much about the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh's chest salute.
The philosophy student in Kerala and the foreign national in the Mumbai movie hall have intellectual issues about standing up for the anthem, just as the Jehovah's Witnesses have religious issues with it. But they cause no disruption to those differently minded.
The lack of awareness of the law -for sure, on the part of the mob, and sadly, also on the part of the law-enforcers, worshipping false Gods -is disturbing. The only real legal provision relating to dishonouring the anthem is Section 3 of the Prevention of Insults to National Honour Act, 1971. It criminalises intentional prevention or disruption of singing of the anthem. Surely, someone who does not subscribe to the notion of standing to attention, without disrupting or preventing others, would never be guilty.
TWITTER@SOMASHEKARS