Elementary, dear commissioner
Given the discrimination and downright hostility that their people experience in the national capital and other cities of India, it’s hardly surprising that there are several vigorous insurgencies in the alienated north-eastern states of India. For one, ill-framed school curriculums and the media offer very little coverage of these ethnically distinctive states of the Indian Union. Moreover because the great majority of them are English-fluent Christians, citizens from the north-east are widely mistaken for foreigners. And one of the worst kept secrets of the country which is wooing foreign tourists to visit this unsafe, under-policed country through the smarmy Incredible India promotion campaign, is that foreigners are considered fair game for lumpen elements allowed to roam free on the streets of the minimally governed national and state capitals. A recent booklet issued by the Delhi police titled Security Tips for North-East Students/Visitors in Delhi has outraged students from north-eastern states living in the national capital. The booklet with a foreword written by an IPS deputy commissioner of police, implies that students and women in particular from the seven sister states of the north-east invite sexual harassment by not doing "in rooms as Roman does" (sic) and not dressing "according to the sensitivity of the local population".
Quite obviously neither the impressively uniformed but ill-trained members of the IPS nor the 18 million policemen serving under them have been taught that the prime responsibility of the police is to apprehend law-breakers rather than make life easy for themselves by preaching crime prevention. On the basis of this widespread ignorance, bars and entertainment spots are closed early across the country, depriving millions of citizens of recreation and legitimate employment opportunities. In particular it’s astonishing that police personnel across India seem to be unaware that one of the basic principles of effective policing is to deploy plain-clothes police personnel in sting operations to trap criminals.
It is this abysmal ignorance of the basic principles of police work that has permitted the open, continuous and uninterrupted harassment of women citizens in Delhi’s streets and buses for over half a century. As even amateur readers of detective fiction will vouch, periodic deployment of plain-clothes policewomen in trouble spots and buses to make on-the-spot arrests followed by swift prosecution would have ended this menace long ago. If IPS officers and policemen in the national capital are unaware of such elementary canons of policing, one shudders to think about the curriculums of the hundreds of police academies across the country.
War of saints
Even as West Bengal’s 89 missionary and Anglo-Indian schools are battling with the state’s communist-led Left Front government for autonomy (see EW June p.12), the Kolkata-based Association of Christian Schools (ACS) has castigated the government for masterly inaction over the rampant practice of newly-promoted private schools of non-Christian character naming themselves after Christian saints.Last month, an association delegation met with state school education minister Partha De and urged government action against managements of non-Christian schools named after Christian saints. According to Herod Mullick, general secretary of the Bangiya Christiya Pariseba, a member of ACS, such passed off institutions are cheating parents and students and "also confusing the government," which is according them parity with member institutions of ACS.
However the state government disclaims control over all "private schools". "We cannot allow these under-performing schools to tarnish the image of minority schools. Such institutions should not be given the autonomy and status of minority schools," says Father Faustine Brank, president of the education cell of the Bangiya Christiya Pariseba.
With the minister and the government keen to impose a welter of rules, regulations and controls over Christian minority schools, but none on competing institutions of suspect antecedents passing themselves off as ASC members, the state’s missionary and Anglo-Indian schools, much preferred by the aspirational middle class, are suffering a siege mentality.
Christian priests and party commissars are well aware that they are traditional antagonists. Therefore a huge church versus state war of words culminating in prolonged courtroom battles is about to break out in West Bengal.
True justice
The National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) has rapped the Uttar Pradesh state government for the use of children as "showpieces" at a function held in Kanpur to commemorate the birthday of Mahatma Gandhi on October 2, 2005. An estimated 49 school children, press-ganged into attending a celebratory function at Kanpur’s Green Park stadium to be graced by cinestar and member of Parliament Jaya Prada and the then ruling Samajwadi party’s general secretary Amar Singh, fainted while waiting for these worthies who turned up six hours late. The organisers of the event had not thought fit to make provision for food or water for the children.The NHRC order directed the state government to pay Rs.5,000 each as compensation to the affected children. "Forcing children to sit in the scorching sun for six long hours is blatant violation of human rights and the state government should pay token relief to the affected to prevent recurrence," said the commission.
Some 10,000 school children from 74 schools in Kanpur were rounded up at 7.00 a.m for the function which was scheduled to start at 9.30 a.m. They were to present a cultural programme to the distinguished guests. There was no canopy or seating accommodation for the children.
The NHRC notice to the state government demands a response within eight weeks. But with the state government having changed following the defeat and ouster of the Samajwadi party in the UP assembly elections concluded in May, there’s every possibility of the incumbent Bahujan Samaj Party administration headed by chief minister Mayawati intervening and insisting that the liability is of the Samajwadi party, which became mysteriously rich during its term in office, rather than of the newly installed state government.
That would be true justice.