From: Peoples Media Advocacy & Resource Centre-PMARC <pmarc2008@gmail.com>
Date: Mon, Apr 12, 2010 at 12:15 PM
Subject: [PMARC] Dalits Media Watch - News Updates 12.04.10
To: Dalits Media Watch <PMARC@dgroups.org>
Dalits Media watch
News Updates 12.04.10
Protest against untouchability - The Hindu
http://www.hindu.com/2010/04/12/stories/2010041259180300.htm
They need schools of joy, not hate - The Hindu
http://beta.thehindu.com/opinion/Readers-Editor/article393711.ece
Nitish shows Paswans the Mahadalit carrot - Indian express
http://www.indianexpress.com/news/nitish-shows-paswans-the-mahadalit-carrot/604983/0
From India's poor, a 12-year-old girl rises to become a teacher - KENS5.com
http://www.kens5.com/news/A-12-year-old-Indian-girl-becomes-a--90574574.html
Dalit groups clash in K'pada, 25 houses torched, 1 arrested - The Pioneer
BJP accuses UPA of depriving dalits from reservation - The Pioneer
http://www.dailypioneer.com/248588/BJP-accuses-UPA-of-depriving-dalits-from-reservation.html
The Hindu
Protest against untouchability
http://www.hindu.com/2010/04/12/stories/2010041259180300.htm
Special Correspondent
KURNOOL: Kula Vivaksha Vyatirekha Porata Samiti (KVVPS) a front organisation of CPI(M) organised a protest to remove the age-old residual untouchability in a remote village near Yemmiganur in Kurnool district on Sunday. Under threat from upper caste landlords, the washermen and barbers in the village refused to extend their services to Scheduled Caste families of the village.
The SC families either washed their clothes on the own or went to nearby town to have a haircut. The volunteers of KVVPS led by CPI(M) district secretary T. Shadrak counselled the service castes to extend the service to SC members.
Feudal practice
Bheemanna, an elder from the barber community told the activists that they were willing to undertake the job if protection was given to them from the landlords who wanted to enforce the age-old feudal practice. Mr. Bheemanna trimmed the hair of Samuel and Moshe and received remuneration for the service. Dalits of the village expressed happiness for breaking the age-old caste system and joining the mainstream social life.
The Hindu
They need schools of joy, not hate
http://beta.thehindu.com/opinion/Readers-Editor/article393711.ece
S. Viswanathan
Free and compulsory elementary education for all children in the age group of 6-14 has at long last become a legal reality with the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act, 2009 (RTE), being made enforceable from April 1, 2010. What could have been easily done 60 years ago with massive support from a newly liberated nation and a brand new Constitution has been enacted with much fanfare but little preparation. For implementation, the RTE depends predominantly on the States, many of which are not in a comfortable position, financially and administratively. Anyway, better late than never. The Act is expected immediately to benefit about 9.2 million children in the age group of 6-14 who have never been to school or have dropped out for various reasons.
The Statement of objects and reasons of the Act explains: "The crucial role of universal elementary education for strengthening the social fabric of democracy through provision of equal opportunities to all has been accepted since inception of our Republic. The Directive Principles of State Policy enumerated in our Constitution has laid down that the State shall provide free and compulsory education to all children up to the age of 14 years. Over the years there has been significant spatial and numerical expansion of elementary schools in the country, yet the goal of universal elementary education continues to elude us. The number of children, particularly children from disadvantaged groups and weaker sections, who drop out of school before completing elementary education, remains very large. Moreover, the quality of learning achievement is not always entirely satisfactory even in the case of children, who complete elementary education."
Funds
The Act draws its strength from Article 21A of the Constitution, which was inserted by the Constitution (Eighty-sixth Amendment) Act, 2002. The inserted Article provides for free and compulsory education to all children in the 6-14 age group, as a Fundamental Right in such manner as the State may, by law, determine.
As for the funds to implement the massive scheme, the Centre and the States would share the burden in the ratio of 55:45. The Finance Commission has provided Rs. 25,000 crore for the States in the current financial year (2010-2011) to implement the Act. The Centre has an allocation of Rs 15,000 crore for its part. The Act provides for the participation of private educational institutions under this scheme: they have been instructed to reserve 25 per cent of the seats available with them for the weaker sections of society. The task of identifying dropouts and out-of-school children aged six and above and getting them admitted has been left to school managing committees. They have also been asked to give girls left out in the cold, special training in subjects.
The States are also expected to undertake the challenging task of improving and increasing infrastructure facilities to meet the expanding needs. Recruitment of qualified and dedicated teachers for these institutions has been left with the schools. The Act is also expected to take care of aspiring physically challenged people.
Issues of quality and discrimination
Enrolment is the relatively easy part. But how will the institutions involved in this gigantic foundational project ensure that all the children admitted in the schools are retained until they complete their studies? Apart from a possible repeat of large-scale dropout of students, there is this widely heard complaint: the education offered in most schools is of poor and substandard quality. "The right to education," Kapil Sibal, Union Minister for Human Resource Development, wrote in The Hindu (April 1, 2010), "goes beyond free and compulsory education to include quality education for all. Quality is an integral part of the right to education. If the education process lacks quality, children are being denied their right."
Poverty and the consequential need to support parents in the earning process is often cited as the major cause for dropouts from school. But some recent studies indicate that there are also other factors that force boys and girls, particularly Dalits, to leave schools abruptly. Discrimination by caste Hindu teachers and fellow-students; the open practice of the constitutionally outlawed untouchability; confrontationist attitudes of caste Hindu students; denial of access to drinking water and other facilities; refusal of opportunities to participate in the cultural, sports, and other social programmes of the schools; the reluctance of teachers to help Dalit students in studies while doing it willingly for students from other social groups; the segregation of Dalits in the mid-day meal arrangements in schools; and the humiliation inflicted on Dalit boys and girls in the classrooms have been identified by researchers in States such as Rajasthan as reasons for Dalit children dropping out of school. The mental torture inflicted often drives these children out of school, the studies have found.
Government schools
As for quality education, nothing much has been done by most governments and school managements in government schools, especially in rural India. Despite frequent talk of "inclusive growth," "inclusive education," and "inclusive society," no big, countrywide initiative has been taken in this direction. Unfortunately, even "equitable standard" education has been taken to mean "common syllabi" for all schools. What socially disadvantaged students ask for, and desperately need, is "equal opportunity" — not a "common syllabus." If RTE is to become a success story, the central and State governments must address these issues with more seriousness so that equitable standard education can be provided in a hate-free, congenial, and progressive learning atmosphere in schools across the country. In implementing something as gigantic and socially, financially, and pedagogically challenging as the RTE, it is vital to set up systems to monitor performance and measure results and to ensure transparency. Monitoring committees must necessarily be made up of representatives drawn from all social strata and sections of the community.
Quite obviously, the role of the press and other news media in reporting, analysing, and commenting on the issues raised by the RTE, and on how the governments, schools, and communities across India go about implementing it, will be crucial. Here is a great opportunity for the media to show, while doing their professional job, that they can contribute pro-actively to agenda-building and overcoming national deficits accumulated over decades of neglect of the well-being of India's children. readerseditor@thehindu.co.in
Indian express
Nitish shows Paswans the Mahadalit carrot
http://www.indianexpress.com/news/nitish-shows-paswans-the-mahadalit-carrot/604983/0
Vandita Mishra Tags : Bihar, Nitish Kumar, Mahadalits, dalits Posted: Monday , Apr 12, 2010 at 0158 hrs New Delhi:
The setting was apt and, by itself, the announcement was hardly controversial. At a Dalit conference in Patna on April 4 to mark the birth anniversary of Baba Chauharmal, revered among the Paswans, Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar declared that the state government would begin distributing three decimals of land to landless Paswans, a promise it has earlier made to the newly minted category of Mahadalits in the state.
Yet Kumar's announcement has touched off an extraordinary question: If every Dalit group in Bihar has been officially designated as Mahadalit, or will be treated as such by the government, who is a Dalit in Bihar? Or conversely, if all Dalits are now Mahadalits, or to be treated as such, who is a Mahadalit?
The story so far: In 2007, the Bihar government set up the Mahadalit Commission to identify the Mahadalits, that is, the most deprived of the deprived, ostensibly for better targeting of schemes for their uplift and development. According to the Commission, there were three criteria of inclusion: literacy rates, placement in services and social stigma.
To begin with, the Mahadalit Commission identified 18 of Bihar's 22 Dalit castes as Mahadalit. That is, all Dalit groups except four: Jatavs and Paswans, the two most numerically dominant groups, together accounting for more than 60 per cent of Bihar's SC population, and Dhobis and Pasis, the two groups considered relatively better off in terms of development parameters among Dalits.
A year later, in 2008, Pasis and Dhobis were also included in the Mahadalit list. In 2009, the Jatavs followed them into the burgeoning Mahadalit ranks, leaving out only the Paswans. And now, Nitish has promised to Paswans that the government would extend to them the special schemes it has designed for Mahadalits. So is Nitish setting the stage for the formal induction of the Paswans into the Mahadalit category, in the process abolishing the very distinction his government was responsible for creating with much political fanfare in 2007?
"That situation (of all Dalits becoming Mahadalits) will not arise. Leaders of the Paswan community have said they do not want to be included in the Mahadalit list. They consider it a term of abuse," says Babban Rawat, member of the Mahadalit Commission. "There is no question of including anyone in Mahadalits now," says K P Ramaiah, secretary of the Commission.
But Ramaiah admits that "the facilities that are being given to Mahadalits will also be given to Paswans". These include, apart from the three decimals of land, job training, toilet and health facilities, distribution of uniforms to school-going children from Class I to V, and formation of self-help groups.
According to sources in the Commission, all the benefits to Mahadalits will eventually be extended to Paswans "in one form or another", "with a little variation". For instance, the Bihar Mahadalit Vikas Mission pledges to "enrol and ensure retention of students from Mahadalit families" by the appointment of a "Local Resource Person (Vikas Mitra) who will be in direct consultation with the Mahadalit families and will also ensure the implementation of other schemes". For the Paswans, the plan is to appoint the Vikas Mitra by another name — he will be called the Suraksha Mitra.
Sensing his opportunity, Ram Vilas Paswan, the leading claimant of the state's Paswan vote bank, throws down a challenge: "If the Paswans also get three decimal land, like the Mahadalits, then why create the separate category? Will Nitish Kumar tell the people this: which of the benefits given to Mahadalits will be denied by his government to the Paswans?"
According to Paswan, the creation of the Mahadalit category was a ploy to divide the Dalits. But as the groups left out of the Mahadalit circle mounted pressure and agitations — with Paswan's own Lok Janshakti Party taking the lead — Nitish buckled under the pressure, and included more and more Dalit groups till only one remained outside the boundary. On April 3, Paswan points out, he had called a Dalit Sena Sammelan in Patna, in which a decision was taken to launch a statewide agitation against the Nitish government. A day later, Nitish announced the three decimal land benefit for Paswans.
Ali Anwar, a JD(U) MP and the party's chief in the Upper House, explains the inexorable expansion of the Mahadalit category in Bihar by drawing a parallel with the JD(U)'s "flexibility" on the Women's Reservation Bill after Nitish publicly urged his party to reconsider its oppositional stand. "Just as we showed flexibility on the issue of women's reservation, we are doing the same vis-a-vis demands for inclusion in the Mahadalit list. We are open to new facts and figures. Why should the poor among the Paswans be discriminated against?" he says. "We are not snatching away from one to give to the other, we are only reaching out to more groups."
As Dalit versus Mahadalit becomes the new political battle in Bihar's election year, the state's misfortune is specially amplified by this tug-of-war of the deprived. While Dalits lag behind the other castes on all socio-economic indices all across the country, Bihar's Dalits uniformly lag behind those in other states.
With 93.3 per cent residing in rural areas, Dalits in Bihar are overwhelmingly rural. According to the 2001 Census, the sex ratio of Bihar's Dalit population is 923 females per 1,000 males, lower than the national average of 936 for all Dalits. The overall literacy rate of Bihar's Dalits is 28.5 per cent, nearly half of the 54.7 per cent recorded for all SCs. More than three-fourth of the total Dalit workers in Bihar are agricultural labour, far higher than the national average of 45.6 per cent.
KENS5.com
From India's poor, a 12-year-old girl rises to become a teacher
http://www.kens5.com/news/A-12-year-old-Indian-girl-becomes-a--90574574.html
by CBS News
Posted on April 11, 2010 at 3:19 PM
BIHAR, India -- Twelve-year-old Bharti Kumari, a lower-caste girl of Bihar state's Kusumbhara village, has made her fellow villagers proud by becoming a teacher to other Dalit children of the village.
Bharti was found seven years ago on the platform of Deheri Railway Station by a junkyard worker named Phoola, who adopted the girl. Phoola died a year ago.
A girl of the marginalized Dalit community, Bharti studies in the second standard; despite that, she has taken it upon herself to educate children of Dalit families of Kusumbhara village.
Bharti goes to her school, several kilometers away every day. When returns, her students congregate under a Ficus tree to be taught by her.
"I call everybody from their home and make them study with me. I cross two rivers and go to my school. My mother has died and I only have my father with me," said Bharti.
Bharti's own teachers are all praise for her intelligence and drive in educating children of the village.
"She studies in our school and is very sharp and intelligent. She helps in the overall education of this village. She makes every Dalit child study with her," said Kaushal Kishore Pandey, Bharti's teacher.
Dalits are socially-backward persons, formerly untouchables, who are amongst India's poorest and most deprived people.
The Pioneer
Dalit groups clash in K'pada, 25 houses torched, 1 arrested
PNS | Kendrapada
Tension prevailed on Sunday at Padanipal village under Aul police station following two Dalit groups owing allegiance to different political ideologies clashed. Both the groups hurled bombs and torched the thatched houses, SDPO of Pattamundai Pradipta Kumar Routroy.
About 50 rooms of 25 houses were gutted in the fire and property worth Rs 10 lakh were reduced to ashes following a Dalit group, who were the supporters of the ruling BJD, allegedly set afire the houses of another Congress supporter group, who in turn torched the houses of BJD supporters.
According to SDPO of Pattamundai, tension was prevailing in the village since last couple of days after a cow of BJD supporter Sadananda Mallick entered the agriculture field of Sarat Mallick and damaged the crop. Later, an altercation erupted between the two groups and it turned into a group clash on Friday resulting in injuries to five persons.
Later, both the groups lodged FIRs on April 9 at Aul police station. Police have registered two cases from both the side and are conducting inquiry in this regard.
The fire engulfed the village in no time and gutted everything. Many were seen desperately trying to douse the fire and retrieve their belongings from the ruins, police sources said. Many household goods like televisions, refrigerators, chairs, tables, brass and aluminum utensils, paddy and many valuable items of many houses were gutted in the fire, president of district Congress Debendra Sharma said.
Sharma alleged that the BJD supporters have created a reign of terror in the presence of SDPO of Pattamundai and IIC of Aul police station. The houses of Kalandi Mallick and Mana Mallick were set afire on Sunday by BJD supporters, Hari Mallick, Kailash Mallick and Ram Mallick in the presence of police. But without preventing them from the heinous act the police stood as mute spectators.
Meanwhile, when contacted SDPO Routroy, stated that police have arrested a person, Naresh Mallick, in this incident and conducting raids to nab the other accused involved in the case. The situation is under control and a platoon of police was deployed to avert any further untoward incident. In order to avert arrest, both the groups' male members have fled from the village and were hiding in their relatives houses. The local tehsildar and other Government officials rushed to the spot to take stock of the situation.
The Pioneer
BJP accuses UPA of depriving dalits from reservation
http://www.dailypioneer.com/248588/BJP-accuses-UPA-of-depriving-dalits-from-reservation.html
Pioneer News Service | Lucknow
Alleging that Congress led UPA Government was encouraging conversion, the BJP has accused it of hatching a conspiracy to deprieve dalits from the benefit of reservation by implementing Rangnath Mishra Commission's recommendations.
A conference under the aegis of Anusoochit Jati Arakshan Bachai Manch(AJABM) was orgainsed at the state BJP headquarter on Sunday which was also attended by the newly appointed national general secretary of the BJP Thawar Chandra Gehlot and national convenor of AJABM and spokesman of the national BJP. Addressing the conference Gehlot said that dalits leaders are keeping silent due to vote bank politics while the UPA Government was marching ahead with its evil design of deprieving dalits from the benefit of reservation by including the converted Muslims and Christians in the list as per the recommendations of Rangnath Mishra Commission.
"It seems the UPA Goverment was throwing the Indian Constiution written by Dr Ambedkar in the waste basket" Gehlot said. He warned the goverment that if Rangnath Mishra Commissio's report will be imlemented it will flood the cases of conversions. The national spokesman of the BJP Ramnath Kovid said the issue of including converted Muslims and Christians into the list of SCs/STs was never raised during the NDA regime but as soon as the Congress led by Sonia Gandhi came to ower the issue was brought up in most vicious manner.
The natioal secretay of the BJP and former union minister Ashok Pradhan claimed that only the BJP was real well wisher of the dalits and many welfare schemes were launched during the NDA regime. The state conveor of AJABM Diwakar Seth said that the struggle against the UPA Government on opposition to Rangnath Mishra Commission's recommendations will contnue. The conference was also attended by the state vice president of the BJP Surya Pratap Shahi, former minister Ramapati Ram Shashtri and others.
--
.Arun Khote
On behalf of
Dalits Media Watch Team
(An initiative of "Peoples Media Advocacy & Resource Centre-PMARC")
..................................................................
Peoples Media Advocacy & Resource Centre- PMARC has been initiated with the support from group of senior journalists, social activists, academics and intellectuals from Dalit and civil society to advocate and facilitate Dalits issues in the mainstream media. To create proper & adequate space with the Dalit perspective in the mainstream media national/ International on Dalit issues is primary objective of the PMARC.
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