Monday, 4 March 2013
Wednesday, 27 February 2013
64 daughters married in mass wedding ceremony organized at Sarsa
AHMEDABAD: Sixty-four daughters from
different communities of north Gujarat were married off in a mass wedding
organized at Sarsa village near Anand to mark the birthday of Swami
Avichaldasji Maharaj on Wednesday. The wedding was sponsored by Dashrath
Patel, a billionaire businessman from US, whose daughter Ranu is turning 16
soon.
"Sixteenth birthday is a landmark in a child's life in the US where every parent throws a lavish party to celebrate his daughter turning sweet sixteen. I and my wife Chaya were keen that we share this happiness with daughters back home as well," said Dashrath Patel who spent over Rs 25 lakh for the mass wedding where 64 girls got married.
Each daughter was given five pairs of sarees and a kit of utensils and other items of daily use to help her start the family life. The function was presided over by Swami Avichaldasji Maharaj.
For the past 10 years, Avichaldasji has been organizing mass weddings on his birthday to enable poor parents marry off their daughters without borrowing money from loan sharks. "We realized that most parents, especially poor people, resent having daughters as they see them as a financial burden. We decided to give a helping hand to the parents to get their girls married so that the girl child is not resented but loved", said Avichaldasji.
The swami said that he believes that the religious and spiritual leaders can contribute majorly to the cause of saving the girl child. However, there is need for more people like Dashrath Patel to come forward and donate for social causes.
"While there are lakhs of people who donate for religious reasons, people should also come forward to share the financial burdens of the needy especially during social occasions like weddings. This would go a long way in making people respect and welcome girl child in the family", the swami said.
"Sixteenth birthday is a landmark in a child's life in the US where every parent throws a lavish party to celebrate his daughter turning sweet sixteen. I and my wife Chaya were keen that we share this happiness with daughters back home as well," said Dashrath Patel who spent over Rs 25 lakh for the mass wedding where 64 girls got married.
Each daughter was given five pairs of sarees and a kit of utensils and other items of daily use to help her start the family life. The function was presided over by Swami Avichaldasji Maharaj.
For the past 10 years, Avichaldasji has been organizing mass weddings on his birthday to enable poor parents marry off their daughters without borrowing money from loan sharks. "We realized that most parents, especially poor people, resent having daughters as they see them as a financial burden. We decided to give a helping hand to the parents to get their girls married so that the girl child is not resented but loved", said Avichaldasji.
The swami said that he believes that the religious and spiritual leaders can contribute majorly to the cause of saving the girl child. However, there is need for more people like Dashrath Patel to come forward and donate for social causes.
"While there are lakhs of people who donate for religious reasons, people should also come forward to share the financial burdens of the needy especially during social occasions like weddings. This would go a long way in making people respect and welcome girl child in the family", the swami said.
Wednesday, 20 February 2013
Eight wards shame Mumbai with skewed sex
ratio at birth
MUMBAI: While the civic administration's statistics show that the sex ratio at birth
for Mumbai has improved slightly in the last one year, experts are not too
impressed. They say that the administration has to sustain such results over a
decade before there is any significant change in the city's or even India's
skewed sex ratio.
A senior civic official, however, insisted that any increase, however small, is a step in the right direction.
Both Maharashtra and Mumbai, in particular, have shown an anti-girl bias in the last two census.
Civic figures show that the sex ratio at birth - the number of girls born per 1,000 boys - for 2012 was 922:1,000, up from 917 in 2011. But a closer look at the ward-wise break-up shows that eight wards have registered a dip in sex ratio at birth.
In south Mumbai's Pydhonie area, for instance, only 860 girls were born for every 1,000 boys last year.
In 2011, the locality was placed better at 981 girls per 1,000 boys. In fact, the Pydhonie-Byculla-Parel belt of the island city, the prosperous Goregaon-Malad-Kandivli belt of the western suburbs and the populous belt from Bhandup to Ghatkopar in the eastern suburbs have all shown a dip in sex ratio at birth.
A L Sharada from the NGO, Population First, said it would be premature to think that such marginal increase is of any significance. She added that easy access to medical tools such as ultrasound machines, which can illegally be used to find the sex of the unborn child, was responsible for the skewed sex ratio.
"The cost of living in Mumbai is high. People want small families and still have a great desire for a male child. This is true in both the slums as well as non-slum pockets of the city," she said.
Sharada added that the BMC should now study why certain areas, such as Parel in south central Mumbai, have consistently registered a lower-than-city-average sex ratio.
Her NGO had earlier conducted a survey to underline poor adherence among ultrasound clinics of the rules laid down under the Pre-Conception and Pre-Natal Diagnostic Technique (Prohibition of Sex Selection) Act.
"Until there is stringent conviction for offenders and better gender sensitivity among the population, the problem of skewed sex ratio at birth cannot be solved," said Kamayani Bali Mahabal, Forum Against Sex Selection.
A senior civic official, however, insisted that any increase, however small, is a step in the right direction.
Both Maharashtra and Mumbai, in particular, have shown an anti-girl bias in the last two census.
Civic figures show that the sex ratio at birth - the number of girls born per 1,000 boys - for 2012 was 922:1,000, up from 917 in 2011. But a closer look at the ward-wise break-up shows that eight wards have registered a dip in sex ratio at birth.
In south Mumbai's Pydhonie area, for instance, only 860 girls were born for every 1,000 boys last year.
In 2011, the locality was placed better at 981 girls per 1,000 boys. In fact, the Pydhonie-Byculla-Parel belt of the island city, the prosperous Goregaon-Malad-Kandivli belt of the western suburbs and the populous belt from Bhandup to Ghatkopar in the eastern suburbs have all shown a dip in sex ratio at birth.
A L Sharada from the NGO, Population First, said it would be premature to think that such marginal increase is of any significance. She added that easy access to medical tools such as ultrasound machines, which can illegally be used to find the sex of the unborn child, was responsible for the skewed sex ratio.
"The cost of living in Mumbai is high. People want small families and still have a great desire for a male child. This is true in both the slums as well as non-slum pockets of the city," she said.
Sharada added that the BMC should now study why certain areas, such as Parel in south central Mumbai, have consistently registered a lower-than-city-average sex ratio.
Her NGO had earlier conducted a survey to underline poor adherence among ultrasound clinics of the rules laid down under the Pre-Conception and Pre-Natal Diagnostic Technique (Prohibition of Sex Selection) Act.
"Until there is stringent conviction for offenders and better gender sensitivity among the population, the problem of skewed sex ratio at birth cannot be solved," said Kamayani Bali Mahabal, Forum Against Sex Selection.
Saturday, 16 February 2013
Monday, 11 February 2013
New Terms of Endearment
New Terms of Endearment: Instant love and sex with no emotional baggage. Young urban India redefines relationships
If there's a day when Shashank Wahi, 21, doesn't party, it's on Valentine's Day. For the self-confessed hater of the red hearts-and-balloons ritual, dating is all about "picking up the right chick". No love, no commitment. "We party, have fun and then part ways with no phone numbers, no names, no hard feelings," says the Armani-clad Delhi University student who scours the Capital's upscale nightclubs thrice a week.
Welcome to the age of instant-hook-ups-and-instant-break-ups where a 'date' means heady partying and 'commitment' is oh-so-passe. Men and women no longer 'fall in love'; they are 'in a relationship' and when matters start going wrong, it merely gets 'complicated'; there are no 'heartbreaks'. Flooded with options, the urban youth now wants to explore and experiment. No one bats an eyelid when they hear that their friends are sleeping together; it's all about discovering the other before thinking of commitment. Gone are the days when men wooed girls with silly Hallmark cards and women listened to Backstreet Boys on loop. These are times of tough love, quick gratification and commitment phobia. "The new rule of dating says don't get emotionally involved unless you're sure of the person," says Vikrant Gaba, 22, a finance consultant in Mumbai for whom strobe-lit nightclubs are the perfect place to meet potential dates. An online Valentine's Day poll by india today in February 2013 shows that 28 per cent of the respondents are already indulging in casual sex with multiple partners and 41 per cent crave to get lucky.
New Rules of the Dating Game
The new dating mantra for the urban youth is the Rules of the Macha, which means best friend in Malayalam, the desi version of the western Bro Code. Machas get together for some fun on a night-out. Inspired by sitcoms like How I Met Your Mother and Two and a Half Men, new-age lovers don't want the emotional baggage. "Dating is all about exploring all options, going dancing with a guy who will pick up the tab and then saying goodbye without waiting anxiously for him to call you the next day," says Supriya Khurana, 24, a film animation artist in Mumbai. For her, and other chick code loyalists, the term boyfriend is too cheesy; the men in their bedroom are Schnukums, Mr Big, Man Toy or HottieWith casual being key, young couples are snipping those emotional strings and trading commitment for fun. Teenagers proudly state they are in combolationships or complicated relationships where the status can change from committed to single in a matter of hours. "There is too much stress around anyway. Why would you want to add to it with tears and fights?" says Anuja Singh, 26, a Mumbai DJ who lives in with her boyfriend of two years and shares an 'open' relationship.
Contrast this with an earlier generation where courting couples dreamed of walking down the aisle. India's GenNext wants to discover and explore before taking the vows. Some are even glad to take the matrimonial sites route for a suitable match when relationships get sour. "Once you've had all the fun, you want to settle down with a person who will offer stability and fit into the family," says Bangalore-based engineer Jayant Srivastava, 27, who has hooked up with "at least two dozen women" and is opting for an arranged marriage.
The mindset is evident from the findings of the 10th annual INDIA TODAY-Nielsen sex survey of November 2012, which show that despite growing access to casual sex, 65 per cent of urban men still prefer their spouses who are virgins. "This generation that holidays and studies in foreign lands and grows up listening to (rapper) Eminem is stuck between an open Western culture and traditional values. It's neither here nor there," says Sulochana Desai, a former sociology teacher in Mumbai.
Love Bites and Love Bytes
Blame it on international sitcoms where casual sex is cool or recent Bollywood flicks which celebrate the playboy, popular culture is fuelling no-strings-attached relationships. "It could be the influence of Western entertainment, but the nature of dating has completely changed today in India. Youngsters are less afraid to experiment and switch partners. Casual relationships are seen as cool and romance is labelled as gay," says Sanjoy Mukherji, a Mumbai-based relationship counsellor and psychiatrist.
In the iPad era, youngsters are hooking up on Facebook (FB) or following potential love interests on Twitter. Smartphones and apps have made flirting fast and furious at the click of a key and 140 character declarations of interest can bring a partner into bed. From a tweet to a shared 'like', anything can make the heart beat faster. When Delhi writer Sheetal Mehta, 25, saw pilot Rohit Shaan, 27, share her love for 'Boondein' by indie pop band Silk Route, she sent him a friend request on FB in May 2011, and began a whirlwind long distance romance. A year later, they realised "that the virtual persona and real-life personality didn't match" and called it quits.
Help for the Hapless
For those who don't get lucky on FB, dating sites and meet-ups are helping singles in the city find a perfect match. From getting together on the dance floor at nightspots like Blue Frog and Aurus to bonding over P.G. Wodehouse and Gary Larson, dating sites such as Mypurplemartini.com and Meetup.com are the new meeting places for the lonely heart. If some promise to set you up during cook-outs and car racing sessions, others take the tried-and-tested 'a lot can happen over coffee' route with meetings at Costa and Barista. A Mumbai-based dating site Sirfcoffee.com promises to set people up based on their common choices after vetting their detailed applications. "Urban singles are rich and ready to mingle; they just need a platform to meet other like-minded people. Some want serious relationships but most want to hang out and have fun with people who share music and cocktail interests," says Sahil Sharma, who runs a singles club in Pune. There's also help for those on-the-go with sites like Meetattheairport.com where fliers post their location and meet others headed for the same terminal
Don't Need a Happily Ever After
In the 140-character world, break-ups are as swift as hook-ups. A flirty post, an unsuitable picture or a 'hurtful' tweet can bring the relationship crashing down. Where the music matters more than the man, lack of compatibility over clubbing is reason enough to call it quits. For Janice Mascarenhas, 24, love took a backseat after her boyfriend refused to take her for Spanish pop singer Enrique Iglesias's concert in Pune last year. "Why be with a man who doesn't keep me happy?" says the Mumbai-based interior designer who is now dating a man with similar tastes in music and movies
With instant love comes uncontrollable envy as Kota-based student Urmila Jain, 19, discovered when she saw a picture of her boyfriend, Jasmeet Singh, hugging a girl. Her relationship status promptly went to 'single'. "Even after five years of being together, I couldn't convince her that the girl was my cousin. Facebook and Twitter have made people so presumptuous and irrational. We are governed by what we see and not what we think," says Jasmeet.
Psychologists call it a sign of the instant times where romance is fickle and deep bonds are missing. "Love has become very impersonal and fleeting in nature today and technology plays a big role in it by keeping people from developing personal bonds. In real life, it means people are happy to switch partners without batting an eyelid," says Yash Singh, Delhi-based relationship counsellor.
Parents Play Catch-Up
Parents, too, are fast adapting to the date-and-dump culture, often turning a blind eye to their kids' dalliances. Shobha Kapur, 50, a Chandigarh-based mother of teenagers aged 19 and 17, is aware of her sons' girlfriends but chooses to stay mum. "The peer pressure is so high that they will do what is considered cool. I'm happy that at least they play it safe," she says.
The transition from wild heady partying to matrimony isn't a cakewalk for all. After a series of failed real relationships and two Facebook affairs with older women, including one much married housewife, the Chandigarh journalist Sukant Deepak, 32, is sure of never getting married to "maintain his emotional space".
The fast and furious lives of their children are giving parents like Sangeeta Saxena, 48, sleepless nights. The Chandigarh homemaker cannot find a 'respectable' groom for her 24-year-old daughter Aastha who has had three boyfriends in two years. "My daughter does not want marriage; she says she just wants to have fun. Her plan for the future is to 'chill out'. The situation is beginning to worry me now as she has become the subject of gossip in the neighbourhood. How will I find someone to marry her if she is against serious commitment?" says the anxious mother
For Some, Old's Still Gold
Even as quick flings and cyber dating start to become common, there are still some who dream of the perfect romantic happily-ever-after. Despite five heartbreaks, for Shilpi Rai, 18, a student of Delhi University, the 'knight in shining armour' fantasy still holds true. "I don't want a life that is based on text messages, electronic love and physical intimacy. I want emotional connection and real-life romance. My friends call me old-fashioned and gullible. But I feel I am just a believer," she says. In times of quickies, not all are as hopeful. In Kolkata, Surbhi Chatterjee, 20, went from being a topper to college dropout and commitment-phobic overnight after she caught her boyfriend of four years cheating on her. "Just because I did not want to have sex with him, he was sleeping with other girls," she saysEven Bollywood has caught on to the trend. The out-of-control bunch of friends in Bejoy Nambiar's Shaitaan may have shocked those oblivious of the mindset of today's youth and struck fear into the hearts of most parents but even the more candyfloss cinema isn't blind to new notions of love. Arjun Kapoor's character in Ishaqzaade thinks nothing of seducing and sleeping with the enemy to teach her a lesson, reflecting that the youth in India's Tier II towns are also waking up to premarital sex. Anushka Sharma in late Yash Chopra's Jab Tak Hai Jaan is proud to belong to the "instant make-out, instant break-up generation". And Alia Bhatt's glam character, the Indian version of Gossip Girl, who effortlessly falls out of love with one guy and instantly falls in ishqwala love with another in Student of the Year, has made the debutante actress a teenage heartthrob.
Be it celluloid or middle-class drawing rooms, the modern love story, has given chocolates-and-candy romance a wide berth. For the GenNext lovers, it's right here, right now. They don't always dream of the happily ever after.
The new dating mantra for the urban youth is the Rules of the Macha, which means best friend in Malayalam, the desi version of the western Bro Code. Machas get together for some fun on a night-out. Inspired by sitcoms like How I Met Your Mother and Two and a Half Men, new-age lovers don't want the emotional baggage. "Dating is all about exploring all options, going dancing with a guy who will pick up the tab and then saying goodbye without waiting anxiously for him to call you the next day," says Supriya Khurana, 24, a film animation artist in Mumbai. For her, and other chick code loyalists, the term boyfriend is too cheesy; the men in their bedroom are Schnukums, Mr Big, Man Toy or HottieWith casual being key, young couples are snipping those emotional strings and trading commitment for fun. Teenagers proudly state they are in combolationships or complicated relationships where the status can change from committed to single in a matter of hours. "There is too much stress around anyway. Why would you want to add to it with tears and fights?" says Anuja Singh, 26, a Mumbai DJ who lives in with her boyfriend of two years and shares an 'open' relationship.
Contrast this with an earlier generation where courting couples dreamed of walking down the aisle. India's GenNext wants to discover and explore before taking the vows. Some are even glad to take the matrimonial sites route for a suitable match when relationships get sour. "Once you've had all the fun, you want to settle down with a person who will offer stability and fit into the family," says Bangalore-based engineer Jayant Srivastava, 27, who has hooked up with "at least two dozen women" and is opting for an arranged marriage.
The mindset is evident from the findings of the 10th annual INDIA TODAY-Nielsen sex survey of November 2012, which show that despite growing access to casual sex, 65 per cent of urban men still prefer their spouses who are virgins. "This generation that holidays and studies in foreign lands and grows up listening to (rapper) Eminem is stuck between an open Western culture and traditional values. It's neither here nor there," says Sulochana Desai, a former sociology teacher in Mumbai.
Love Bites and Love Bytes
Blame it on international sitcoms where casual sex is cool or recent Bollywood flicks which celebrate the playboy, popular culture is fuelling no-strings-attached relationships. "It could be the influence of Western entertainment, but the nature of dating has completely changed today in India. Youngsters are less afraid to experiment and switch partners. Casual relationships are seen as cool and romance is labelled as gay," says Sanjoy Mukherji, a Mumbai-based relationship counsellor and psychiatrist.
In the iPad era, youngsters are hooking up on Facebook (FB) or following potential love interests on Twitter. Smartphones and apps have made flirting fast and furious at the click of a key and 140 character declarations of interest can bring a partner into bed. From a tweet to a shared 'like', anything can make the heart beat faster. When Delhi writer Sheetal Mehta, 25, saw pilot Rohit Shaan, 27, share her love for 'Boondein' by indie pop band Silk Route, she sent him a friend request on FB in May 2011, and began a whirlwind long distance romance. A year later, they realised "that the virtual persona and real-life personality didn't match" and called it quits.
Help for the Hapless
For those who don't get lucky on FB, dating sites and meet-ups are helping singles in the city find a perfect match. From getting together on the dance floor at nightspots like Blue Frog and Aurus to bonding over P.G. Wodehouse and Gary Larson, dating sites such as Mypurplemartini.com and Meetup.com are the new meeting places for the lonely heart. If some promise to set you up during cook-outs and car racing sessions, others take the tried-and-tested 'a lot can happen over coffee' route with meetings at Costa and Barista. A Mumbai-based dating site Sirfcoffee.com promises to set people up based on their common choices after vetting their detailed applications. "Urban singles are rich and ready to mingle; they just need a platform to meet other like-minded people. Some want serious relationships but most want to hang out and have fun with people who share music and cocktail interests," says Sahil Sharma, who runs a singles club in Pune. There's also help for those on-the-go with sites like Meetattheairport.com where fliers post their location and meet others headed for the same terminal
Don't Need a Happily Ever After
In the 140-character world, break-ups are as swift as hook-ups. A flirty post, an unsuitable picture or a 'hurtful' tweet can bring the relationship crashing down. Where the music matters more than the man, lack of compatibility over clubbing is reason enough to call it quits. For Janice Mascarenhas, 24, love took a backseat after her boyfriend refused to take her for Spanish pop singer Enrique Iglesias's concert in Pune last year. "Why be with a man who doesn't keep me happy?" says the Mumbai-based interior designer who is now dating a man with similar tastes in music and movies
With instant love comes uncontrollable envy as Kota-based student Urmila Jain, 19, discovered when she saw a picture of her boyfriend, Jasmeet Singh, hugging a girl. Her relationship status promptly went to 'single'. "Even after five years of being together, I couldn't convince her that the girl was my cousin. Facebook and Twitter have made people so presumptuous and irrational. We are governed by what we see and not what we think," says Jasmeet.
Psychologists call it a sign of the instant times where romance is fickle and deep bonds are missing. "Love has become very impersonal and fleeting in nature today and technology plays a big role in it by keeping people from developing personal bonds. In real life, it means people are happy to switch partners without batting an eyelid," says Yash Singh, Delhi-based relationship counsellor.
Parents Play Catch-Up
Parents, too, are fast adapting to the date-and-dump culture, often turning a blind eye to their kids' dalliances. Shobha Kapur, 50, a Chandigarh-based mother of teenagers aged 19 and 17, is aware of her sons' girlfriends but chooses to stay mum. "The peer pressure is so high that they will do what is considered cool. I'm happy that at least they play it safe," she says.
The transition from wild heady partying to matrimony isn't a cakewalk for all. After a series of failed real relationships and two Facebook affairs with older women, including one much married housewife, the Chandigarh journalist Sukant Deepak, 32, is sure of never getting married to "maintain his emotional space".
The fast and furious lives of their children are giving parents like Sangeeta Saxena, 48, sleepless nights. The Chandigarh homemaker cannot find a 'respectable' groom for her 24-year-old daughter Aastha who has had three boyfriends in two years. "My daughter does not want marriage; she says she just wants to have fun. Her plan for the future is to 'chill out'. The situation is beginning to worry me now as she has become the subject of gossip in the neighbourhood. How will I find someone to marry her if she is against serious commitment?" says the anxious mother
For Some, Old's Still Gold
Even as quick flings and cyber dating start to become common, there are still some who dream of the perfect romantic happily-ever-after. Despite five heartbreaks, for Shilpi Rai, 18, a student of Delhi University, the 'knight in shining armour' fantasy still holds true. "I don't want a life that is based on text messages, electronic love and physical intimacy. I want emotional connection and real-life romance. My friends call me old-fashioned and gullible. But I feel I am just a believer," she says. In times of quickies, not all are as hopeful. In Kolkata, Surbhi Chatterjee, 20, went from being a topper to college dropout and commitment-phobic overnight after she caught her boyfriend of four years cheating on her. "Just because I did not want to have sex with him, he was sleeping with other girls," she saysEven Bollywood has caught on to the trend. The out-of-control bunch of friends in Bejoy Nambiar's Shaitaan may have shocked those oblivious of the mindset of today's youth and struck fear into the hearts of most parents but even the more candyfloss cinema isn't blind to new notions of love. Arjun Kapoor's character in Ishaqzaade thinks nothing of seducing and sleeping with the enemy to teach her a lesson, reflecting that the youth in India's Tier II towns are also waking up to premarital sex. Anushka Sharma in late Yash Chopra's Jab Tak Hai Jaan is proud to belong to the "instant make-out, instant break-up generation". And Alia Bhatt's glam character, the Indian version of Gossip Girl, who effortlessly falls out of love with one guy and instantly falls in ishqwala love with another in Student of the Year, has made the debutante actress a teenage heartthrob.
Be it celluloid or middle-class drawing rooms, the modern love story, has given chocolates-and-candy romance a wide berth. For the GenNext lovers, it's right here, right now. They don't always dream of the happily ever after.
Secret life of Indian teens
"I am a virgin. But I know everything about everything," Mimi, a 15-year-old Bangalore girl, flips her ponytail, looking around to make sure all eyes are on her. "Everyone I know has touched first base, at least." That's "kissing and necking", she explains to her parents. Notes are regularly exchanged between girls after sexual encounters and discarded i-Pill packs are often found in the bathrooms of the posh convent she studies in. "I'm sure you won't remain a virgin by the time you turn 18," her mother interjects tearfully. "Dude, will you let me finish," Mimi rebukes. "I'm not stupid enough to get into trouble."
Trouble is the one certain truth about her: she is a teenager. A face among the nation's 250 million adolescents- the world's largest. But how well does the nation know her? Not enough, going by the furore over the new Protection of Children From Sexual Offences Bill, 2010 proposed by the Ministry of Women and Child Development ("Does it mean 12-year-olds will start having sex?"). But now a host of surveys is figuring out what it means to be a teenager: they pack in 38 hours of activities into a day- work, chat, browse, talk, SMS, Twitter, Facebook, smoke, drink, splurge, do drugs, have sex, get pregnant-and they can't wait for the future to arrive. Unknown to the nation at large, teenage seems to have taken on a whole new meaning. To Delhibased counsellor Gitanjali Kapoor, it's a cultural moment: "Constant exposure of different types of media is enhancing their inquisitiveness, encouraging them to question and stretch their boundaries."
Not that the teens care. For them, it's LOL (Lots Of Love) all the way. Sex is cool because, gosh, everybody's doing it. Twenty-five out of 100 teenage girls in a big-city school are sexually active, reports the Indian Association of Paediatricians. But to Taki, 19, a Delhi girl (who prefers to be known by her nickname like the rest of her peer group in this story), that's a gross underassessment: "Over 75 per cent of my classmates are not virgins". Some of them are into serious romance, some are "just FWBs" ("Friends With Benefits. Not dating but together... just a convenience thing".) Some boys carry condoms in their pockets because they don't know when "they might get lucky". During high school socials, dark corners of the venue are "reserved" by couples beforehand, so that they can go and "do it" in a crowded room, "just for the thrill of it", Mimi explains.
In the world of adults, statistic is truth. And surveys reveal*, it's a generation that spends 10 hours a day on some sort of a media, two hours on social networking sites, 1.6 hours on the phone, four hours 23 minutes a week on computer games. While 66 per cent carry mobile phones to school, 47 per cent can't live without TV. Over 45 per cent drink alcohol five times a month and 14 per cent use tobacco. Yet 70 per cent teens show signs of depression and 48 per cent think about suicide. A survey released by one of Bollywood's biggest hits last year, Udaan-all about a 17-year-old boy, who gets expelled from boarding school for sneaking out to watch a semi-porn film-shows: one in five teens watches porn before age 13; every second teen necks and kisses, 15 per cent in the school loo; one out of five claims to have had sex; 90 per cent believe in premarital sex, with 45 per cent of girls opting for clandestine abortions.
If every generation needs a cultural marker, Facebook is the canvas on which the digitally nimble teens spill their secrets. What used to be the rush to the school canteen to tell everyone what's going on has become the rush to social networking sites. "We are the original Facebook generation," says Soapy, 17, a Kolkata boy now based in Delhi. "It took off in 2004, just as we started getting our hands on computers." It's also the new status symbol and an attitude signal. "It can make you or break you." He spends 45 minutes a day on Facebook ("My cousin Miko checks it every hour"), has 600 Facebook friends ("Oh, some have 2,000") and has not changed his profile picture for eight months ("So people are not poking me as much as they used to"). Mimi says, everyone, even 11-12 year-olds, has a Facebook account: "They all say they are 18". Ask her how, and she says "Duh!".
"Duh" is a slice of teen sarcasm aimed at people who state the obvious. What it hides is the danger of entering the world of strangers when you are not quite ready for it. Exactly what happened this week to two teens in Mumbai when they allegedly typed "what's up?" to strike a chat with their principal on Facebook and followed it up with "F***k off" and "Go to hell". One got away. But censured at home and suspended from school for a month, the younger boy, 13, has possibly learnt the lesson of his life. "It's the nature of the medium," says Shelja Sen, consultant psychologist in Delhi, "You can't be held accountable. You don't have eye contact. And you can be as nasty and aggressive as you please." Soapy has a different explanation: "Facebook is like a road. You can bump into anybody but would you speak to all and sundry? Younger people just don't get it. They are not the Facebook generation, you see."
Despite those highs and lows, Facebook is the place where they measure each other's cool quotient. And every teen is aware of the subterranean war of attitude and outlook that rages on the social networking website. As everyone checks out everyone else, the profiles send out varying signals. A massive friend count means, "Don't expect me to give you too much attention." A nicely photoshopped Wall indicates, "I am so weird, wacky and wonderful." Profile shots updated on hourly basis mean, "Check me out, I'm cool".
If you look bad in a photograph, you will be tagged 'Hahaha'. To avoid that label, the pressure to look good on sites goes up tremendously and vanity becomes the byword. "I know girls who put in 'photo albums' of their face taken from different angles," says Rahi, a 14-year-old Mumbai student. The most-feared word among girls, not surprisingly, is "fugly"-a combination of fat and ugly-she points out. "For boys, the in thing now is to flaunt sixpack abs, if they have it," points out Soapy. "And a lot of people are posting pictures taken in a loo-home or a fivestar- in front of the mirror."
Mimi's primary function on Facebook is to keep in touch with boys she meets at socials. She has a lot of "guy friends" and she helps them check out profiles of interesting girls ("Girls they can hit on"). For Rahi, it's a great way to flirt with boys ("I can say things I could never say on their face"). The moment Piu, 15, a student of Modern High School in Kolkata, started dating a year ago, she announced it to the world by changing her "relationship status" from "single to engaged" ("I loved the attention I got".) Her friend, Mou, recalls the only time her parents banned Facebook: "I changed my relationship status to 'widowed' when I broke up with my boyfriend. Some people reported to my parents and there was a huge drama at home."
The year was 2004, when a sex clip, passed around by a bragging schoolboy to his friends, made its way to video disc-sellers in Delhi. The MMS scandal and its unapologetic teen hero and heroine sent shockwaves across urban India, even making it to the iconic Anurag Kashyap film, Dev.D. Today, most teens seem to know couples who post intimate photographs for joy, of girls who get flamed on the Net, of friends who are stalked and bullied by strangers on the cyber space. According to a survey done by Chennaibased NGO, Tulir, 42 per cent of teens on the Net face harassment online. But Taki reassures: "Chill. You can make your account secure. And, really, everybody's smart enough to avoid unknown people on the Net
"I am a virgin. But I know everything about everything," Mimi, a 15-year-old Bangalore girl, flips her ponytail, looking around to make sure all eyes are on her. "Everyone I know has touched first base, at least." That's "kissing and necking", she explains to her parents. Notes are regularly exchanged between girls after sexual encounters and discarded i-Pill packs are often found in the bathrooms of the posh convent she studies in. "I'm sure you won't remain a virgin by the time you turn 18," her mother interjects tearfully. "Dude, will you let me finish," Mimi rebukes. "I'm not stupid enough to get into trouble."
Trouble is the one certain truth about her: she is a teenager. A face among the nation's 250 million adolescents- the world's largest. But how well does the nation know her? Not enough, going by the furore over the new Protection of Children From Sexual Offences Bill, 2010 proposed by the Ministry of Women and Child Development ("Does it mean 12-year-olds will start having sex?"). But now a host of surveys is figuring out what it means to be a teenager: they pack in 38 hours of activities into a day- work, chat, browse, talk, SMS, Twitter, Facebook, smoke, drink, splurge, do drugs, have sex, get pregnant-and they can't wait for the future to arrive. Unknown to the nation at large, teenage seems to have taken on a whole new meaning. To Delhibased counsellor Gitanjali Kapoor, it's a cultural moment: "Constant exposure of different types of media is enhancing their inquisitiveness, encouraging them to question and stretch their boundaries."
Not that the teens care. For them, it's LOL (Lots Of Love) all the way. Sex is cool because, gosh, everybody's doing it. Twenty-five out of 100 teenage girls in a big-city school are sexually active, reports the Indian Association of Paediatricians. But to Taki, 19, a Delhi girl (who prefers to be known by her nickname like the rest of her peer group in this story), that's a gross underassessment: "Over 75 per cent of my classmates are not virgins". Some of them are into serious romance, some are "just FWBs" ("Friends With Benefits. Not dating but together... just a convenience thing".) Some boys carry condoms in their pockets because they don't know when "they might get lucky". During high school socials, dark corners of the venue are "reserved" by couples beforehand, so that they can go and "do it" in a crowded room, "just for the thrill of it", Mimi explains.
In the world of adults, statistic is truth. And surveys reveal*, it's a generation that spends 10 hours a day on some sort of a media, two hours on social networking sites, 1.6 hours on the phone, four hours 23 minutes a week on computer games. While 66 per cent carry mobile phones to school, 47 per cent can't live without TV. Over 45 per cent drink alcohol five times a month and 14 per cent use tobacco. Yet 70 per cent teens show signs of depression and 48 per cent think about suicide. A survey released by one of Bollywood's biggest hits last year, Udaan-all about a 17-year-old boy, who gets expelled from boarding school for sneaking out to watch a semi-porn film-shows: one in five teens watches porn before age 13; every second teen necks and kisses, 15 per cent in the school loo; one out of five claims to have had sex; 90 per cent believe in premarital sex, with 45 per cent of girls opting for clandestine abortions.
If every generation needs a cultural marker, Facebook is the canvas on which the digitally nimble teens spill their secrets. What used to be the rush to the school canteen to tell everyone what's going on has become the rush to social networking sites. "We are the original Facebook generation," says Soapy, 17, a Kolkata boy now based in Delhi. "It took off in 2004, just as we started getting our hands on computers." It's also the new status symbol and an attitude signal. "It can make you or break you." He spends 45 minutes a day on Facebook ("My cousin Miko checks it every hour"), has 600 Facebook friends ("Oh, some have 2,000") and has not changed his profile picture for eight months ("So people are not poking me as much as they used to"). Mimi says, everyone, even 11-12 year-olds, has a Facebook account: "They all say they are 18". Ask her how, and she says "Duh!".
"Duh" is a slice of teen sarcasm aimed at people who state the obvious. What it hides is the danger of entering the world of strangers when you are not quite ready for it. Exactly what happened this week to two teens in Mumbai when they allegedly typed "what's up?" to strike a chat with their principal on Facebook and followed it up with "F***k off" and "Go to hell". One got away. But censured at home and suspended from school for a month, the younger boy, 13, has possibly learnt the lesson of his life. "It's the nature of the medium," says Shelja Sen, consultant psychologist in Delhi, "You can't be held accountable. You don't have eye contact. And you can be as nasty and aggressive as you please." Soapy has a different explanation: "Facebook is like a road. You can bump into anybody but would you speak to all and sundry? Younger people just don't get it. They are not the Facebook generation, you see."
Despite those highs and lows, Facebook is the place where they measure each other's cool quotient. And every teen is aware of the subterranean war of attitude and outlook that rages on the social networking website. As everyone checks out everyone else, the profiles send out varying signals. A massive friend count means, "Don't expect me to give you too much attention." A nicely photoshopped Wall indicates, "I am so weird, wacky and wonderful." Profile shots updated on hourly basis mean, "Check me out, I'm cool".
If you look bad in a photograph, you will be tagged 'Hahaha'. To avoid that label, the pressure to look good on sites goes up tremendously and vanity becomes the byword. "I know girls who put in 'photo albums' of their face taken from different angles," says Rahi, a 14-year-old Mumbai student. The most-feared word among girls, not surprisingly, is "fugly"-a combination of fat and ugly-she points out. "For boys, the in thing now is to flaunt sixpack abs, if they have it," points out Soapy. "And a lot of people are posting pictures taken in a loo-home or a fivestar- in front of the mirror."
Mimi's primary function on Facebook is to keep in touch with boys she meets at socials. She has a lot of "guy friends" and she helps them check out profiles of interesting girls ("Girls they can hit on"). For Rahi, it's a great way to flirt with boys ("I can say things I could never say on their face"). The moment Piu, 15, a student of Modern High School in Kolkata, started dating a year ago, she announced it to the world by changing her "relationship status" from "single to engaged" ("I loved the attention I got".) Her friend, Mou, recalls the only time her parents banned Facebook: "I changed my relationship status to 'widowed' when I broke up with my boyfriend. Some people reported to my parents and there was a huge drama at home."
The year was 2004, when a sex clip, passed around by a bragging schoolboy to his friends, made its way to video disc-sellers in Delhi. The MMS scandal and its unapologetic teen hero and heroine sent shockwaves across urban India, even making it to the iconic Anurag Kashyap film, Dev.D. Today, most teens seem to know couples who post intimate photographs for joy, of girls who get flamed on the Net, of friends who are stalked and bullied by strangers on the cyber space. According to a survey done by Chennaibased NGO, Tulir, 42 per cent of teens on the Net face harassment online. But Taki reassures: "Chill. You can make your account secure. And, really, everybody's smart enough to avoid unknown people on the Net
Thursday, 7 February 2013
August 16, 2012 4:29 PM IST
International Prostitution Racket Busted at New Delhi Airport; 37 Girls Rescued
The Social Service Branch (SSB) of Mumbai police rescued 37 sex workers from New Delhi's Indira Gandhi International Airport on Wednesday, DNA reported.
The girls, who were a part of a high profile international sex racket, were being trafficked to Dubai and were about to board a flight when the SSB officials with the help of Delhi police nabbed the pimps and rescued the girls.
Most of them were brought from Mumbai and the rest from Hyderabad. They were all in their early twenties and were allegedly forced into the flesh trade.
"The women were being taken there on a three month work visa stating that they are artists. Most of the women are aged between 20-25," BG Shekhar of SSB, who headed the team, told the daily.
"Some of them are from Hyderabad and other states. Around 27 of the rescued women are from Mumbai," he said.
"The women were being taken there on a three month work visa stating that they are artists. Most of the women are aged between 20-25," BG Shekhar of SSB, who headed the team, told the daily.
"Some of them are from Hyderabad and other states. Around 27 of the rescued women are from Mumbai," he said.
The police recieved a tip-off about the racket through a complaint filed by one of the victims.
"One of the victims had lodged a complaint with us that she has been induced on the pretext of dance performance to gulf countries. After detailed investigation and follow up we succeeded in rescuing the girls and arrested the pimps," Shekhar said.
The two pimps have been held and the rescued girls have been sent to a shelter in Mumbai after medical examination.
During the recent raids at brothels all across the country, several such rackets have been busted. Police claimed that the latest incident at the airport is the biggest bust so far.
Last month, another such prostitution racket was busted in Shillong, where nearly seven women from Assam and three men were held from a hotel during a raid.
Earlier this year in February, seven sex workers were rescued in central Delhi. Their 40-year-old pimp was arrested by police.
In January, six women allegedly involved in two prostitution rackets in Bangalore were arrested by a squad of Central Crime Branch.
In a similar bust in Mysore, six men were arrested and four girls, including one from Bangladesh and one from Nepal, were rescued during a raid in April this year.
"One of the victims had lodged a complaint with us that she has been induced on the pretext of dance performance to gulf countries. After detailed investigation and follow up we succeeded in rescuing the girls and arrested the pimps," Shekhar said.
The two pimps have been held and the rescued girls have been sent to a shelter in Mumbai after medical examination.
During the recent raids at brothels all across the country, several such rackets have been busted. Police claimed that the latest incident at the airport is the biggest bust so far.
Last month, another such prostitution racket was busted in Shillong, where nearly seven women from Assam and three men were held from a hotel during a raid.
Earlier this year in February, seven sex workers were rescued in central Delhi. Their 40-year-old pimp was arrested by police.
In January, six women allegedly involved in two prostitution rackets in Bangalore were arrested by a squad of Central Crime Branch.
In a similar bust in Mysore, six men were arrested and four girls, including one from Bangladesh and one from Nepal, were rescued during a raid in April this year.
Monday, 4 February 2013
What will it take to end violence against women
Twenty years after the United Nations declared violence against women to be a violation of their human rights, we are still a long way from gender violence becoming unacceptable in a society. The outrage in India has ignited a necessary international conversation about rape and violence against women worldwide
Twenty years after the United Nations declared violence against women to be a violation of their human rights, we are still a long way from gender violence becoming unacceptable in a society. The outrage in India has ignited a necessary international conversation about rape and violence against women worldwide
Her father had a dream that his daughter would be educated and, like his sons, enjoy civil rights and liberties. He was one of those unsung fathers who have played an important role in promoting the goals of feminism, yet remain invisible among the many more fathers who cannot embrace change in their societies.
Millions of women are raped every year. Why this particular gang rape and subsequent death caused an international eruption of anger is not easy to explain. Often, one single act shines a light on injustice: the 'Arab spring' began when a poor vendor set himself on fire; Vietnam anti-war protests grew after monks turned themselves into swirling flames.
Many who protested in India used the language of human rights to denounce the rape and other forms of violence that keep women off the streets and frightened by the “customs” of rape, wife beating, honor killings, and dowry deaths. In India, authorities responded by created all-female taxi cabs and special victim units within the notoriously corrupt police forces who have been known to rape a woman after she reported the crime. They declared New Delhi as unsafe for women.
It has taken a very long time for the people of the world to realize that violence against women constitutes a violation against their human rights. Early attempts in the United States during the 1970s to redefine rape as an assault, rather than as an act of lust, ignited an international conversation and debate about the nature of rape.
But it wasn’t until 1993, at the United Nation’s World Conference on Human Rights held in Vienna, that women around the world testified about how violence—or the threat of violence—kept them off the streets, prevented them from earning a livelihood, and made them fear the “customs” that allowed their relatives to throw acid in their faces or beat them, and even kill them, if they acted in a way that dishonored the men of their family.
Women rights advocates around the world deployed a brilliant strategy at that conference by using the testimony of ordinary women to influence the United Nation’s conference. The Center for Women's Global Leadership at Rutger's university in the United States played an important role in finding women from all continents who were willing to testify about the violence they had experienced-- domestic abuse, mutilation, burning and rape---when they tried to unionize, when they“dishonored their families” by flirting or engaging in pre-marital or extra-marital sex, or when they simply went out in public alone. These testimonies moved the UN to create a High Commission of Human Rights and more important, to write a resolutionthat violence against women was a violation of their human rights.
The General Assembly passed that resolution in March, 1993. Although enforcement was impossible, the resolution created a moral compass by which countries could judge each other.
Naturally, nations fought fiercely over this resolution. China, Syria, Iran, Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia and Vietnam argued that cultural relativism was essential to global peace and mutual respect. The same argument, of course, had been used to defend slavery in the nineteenth century. But other nations stood up for human rights for women and dared to call a custom a crime. The American Secretary of State, Warren Christopher, spoke out strongly against accepting gender violence and said, “We cannot let cultural relativism become the last refuge of repression. The conference concluded with the Vienna Declaration and Programme of Action, which, for the first time, declared that violence against women violated their human rights.
One year later, in 1994, the American Congress followed by passing legislation called The Violence against Women Act (VAWA). Then, in 1995, First Lady Hillary Clinton made international news when, in a rousing and inspiring speech at the Fourth World Conference on Women, she boldly declared, "It is time for us to say here in Beijing, and for the world to hear, that it is no longer acceptable to discuss women's rights as separate from human rights,"
In the wake of the Balkan wars in the former Yugoslavia, the media began to report that all sides had built “rape camps” and that rape and other sexual atrocities had become a deliberate and systematic part of the Bosnian and Serb campaigns for victory in the war. Strong and persistent demands for a decisive response to these outrages came from around the globe.
Still, women remained what they had always been, the “spoils of war.” The countless rapes committed during the Balkan wars revealed to the world, with the help of international media and human rights activists, that the rape of women was deliberately being used to undermine the morale of the enemy. Gradually, advocates of women’s human rights began to challenge another of the world’s longest crimes against women—rape during armed conflict.
In 2002 human right activists successfully fought for the International Rome Statute for the International Criminal Court to declare rape during war as a crime against humanity or as a war crime. Yet, as the American invasion and occupation of Iraq continued, the sexual terrorism women experienced at the hands of American soldiers and Iraqi thugs was one of the most underreported crimes of a war that been waged for resources, by choice, and fueled by the lies of America’s highest officials, including former President George W. Bush, former Secretary of Defense General Colin Powell, and former National Security Advisor, Condoleeza Rice.
No, there were no mass weapons of destruction, but countless women died in the frenzy of sexual terrorism that took place, particularly in cities. In 2006, based on human rights documents, I described what Amnesty International and other had witnessed and documented:
" The invasion and occupation of Iraq has had the effect of humiliating, endangering, and repressing Iraqi women in ways that have not been widely publicized in the mainstream media: As detainees in prisons run by Americans, they have been sexually abused and raped; as civilians, they have been kidnapped, raped, and then sometimes sold for prostitution; and as women-- and, in particular, as among the more liberated women in the Arab world --they have increasingly disappeared from public life, many becoming shut-ins in their own homes".
Controlling women’s access to public life, including work, is one of the consequences of rape. That is why women activists created “Take Back the Night” marches in which women and men protested the brutal rapes, including gang rapes, that make women fearful of taking their rightful place in public life.
No United Nations resolution or action by the International Criminal Court is going stop what is still considered normal all over the world. As nations modernize, and women enter the labor force and enjoy higher education, they pose a threat to some men’s deeply-held belief that women belong in the private world of the home, and that they own the public sphere. Women who trespass risk being stopped, often by rape.
Yet, it is in precisely such modernizing nations, such as India, that the daytime gang rape of a 23 year-old young woman on a bus created such outrage and protest, by both men and women. UN resolutions and conventions create a moral compass and are necessary, but they do not initiate social change. At best, they alter the zeitgeist. It is incidents of brutality against women, protested by ordinary men and women, as well as by advocates for women’s human rights, that can, potentially, change people’s views about violence against women.
And it’s not just in developing countries that ending violence against women is tacitly accepted by authorities. As I write, the U.S. Senate will finally introduce legislation which reauthorizes the Violence Against Women Act, first enacted in 1994. They have even accepted the compromise of exempting certain immigrant women with particular visas. If it passes, the bill will then go to the House of Representative, where right-wing Republicans are working overtime to prevent the reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act. They insist on excluding particular categories of immigrant women and even if the Senate passes what they want, they will come up with another reason to oppose it. Last year, Republicans blocked the bill because they refused to include LGBT and Native American women in the legislation. It’s still not clear it will pass in 2013, here in a country that prides itself the great equality women have supposedly achieved.
In the early nineteenth century, few people in Europe or the United States, would have thought that slavery would one day become unacceptable to the majority of the world’s citizens. Twenty years after the U.N. declared violence against women to be a violation of their human rights, we are still a long way from gender violence becoming a relic of the past. But that is our goal. And the only way this change will happen is the same way that abolitionists ended slavery---through decades of social movement action and education that sought to end slavery.
We are not nearly there. Rape and all kinds of gender violence are still ubiquitous, and a disgrace to our global efforts to expand our ideas about human rights. It will take many more decades before everyone agree that violence at home, at work, and on the battlefield are not customs, but are, in fact, crimes against humanity.
Millions of women are raped every year. Why this particular gang rape and subsequent death caused an international eruption of anger is not easy to explain. Often, one single act shines a light on injustice: the 'Arab spring' began when a poor vendor set himself on fire; Vietnam anti-war protests grew after monks turned themselves into swirling flames.
Many who protested in India used the language of human rights to denounce the rape and other forms of violence that keep women off the streets and frightened by the “customs” of rape, wife beating, honor killings, and dowry deaths. In India, authorities responded by created all-female taxi cabs and special victim units within the notoriously corrupt police forces who have been known to rape a woman after she reported the crime. They declared New Delhi as unsafe for women.
It has taken a very long time for the people of the world to realize that violence against women constitutes a violation against their human rights. Early attempts in the United States during the 1970s to redefine rape as an assault, rather than as an act of lust, ignited an international conversation and debate about the nature of rape.
But it wasn’t until 1993, at the United Nation’s World Conference on Human Rights held in Vienna, that women around the world testified about how violence—or the threat of violence—kept them off the streets, prevented them from earning a livelihood, and made them fear the “customs” that allowed their relatives to throw acid in their faces or beat them, and even kill them, if they acted in a way that dishonored the men of their family.
Women rights advocates around the world deployed a brilliant strategy at that conference by using the testimony of ordinary women to influence the United Nation’s conference. The Center for Women's Global Leadership at Rutger's university in the United States played an important role in finding women from all continents who were willing to testify about the violence they had experienced-- domestic abuse, mutilation, burning and rape---when they tried to unionize, when they“dishonored their families” by flirting or engaging in pre-marital or extra-marital sex, or when they simply went out in public alone. These testimonies moved the UN to create a High Commission of Human Rights and more important, to write a resolutionthat violence against women was a violation of their human rights.
The General Assembly passed that resolution in March, 1993. Although enforcement was impossible, the resolution created a moral compass by which countries could judge each other.
Naturally, nations fought fiercely over this resolution. China, Syria, Iran, Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia and Vietnam argued that cultural relativism was essential to global peace and mutual respect. The same argument, of course, had been used to defend slavery in the nineteenth century. But other nations stood up for human rights for women and dared to call a custom a crime. The American Secretary of State, Warren Christopher, spoke out strongly against accepting gender violence and said, “We cannot let cultural relativism become the last refuge of repression. The conference concluded with the Vienna Declaration and Programme of Action, which, for the first time, declared that violence against women violated their human rights.
One year later, in 1994, the American Congress followed by passing legislation called The Violence against Women Act (VAWA). Then, in 1995, First Lady Hillary Clinton made international news when, in a rousing and inspiring speech at the Fourth World Conference on Women, she boldly declared, "It is time for us to say here in Beijing, and for the world to hear, that it is no longer acceptable to discuss women's rights as separate from human rights,"
In the wake of the Balkan wars in the former Yugoslavia, the media began to report that all sides had built “rape camps” and that rape and other sexual atrocities had become a deliberate and systematic part of the Bosnian and Serb campaigns for victory in the war. Strong and persistent demands for a decisive response to these outrages came from around the globe.
Still, women remained what they had always been, the “spoils of war.” The countless rapes committed during the Balkan wars revealed to the world, with the help of international media and human rights activists, that the rape of women was deliberately being used to undermine the morale of the enemy. Gradually, advocates of women’s human rights began to challenge another of the world’s longest crimes against women—rape during armed conflict.
In 2002 human right activists successfully fought for the International Rome Statute for the International Criminal Court to declare rape during war as a crime against humanity or as a war crime. Yet, as the American invasion and occupation of Iraq continued, the sexual terrorism women experienced at the hands of American soldiers and Iraqi thugs was one of the most underreported crimes of a war that been waged for resources, by choice, and fueled by the lies of America’s highest officials, including former President George W. Bush, former Secretary of Defense General Colin Powell, and former National Security Advisor, Condoleeza Rice.
No, there were no mass weapons of destruction, but countless women died in the frenzy of sexual terrorism that took place, particularly in cities. In 2006, based on human rights documents, I described what Amnesty International and other had witnessed and documented:
" The invasion and occupation of Iraq has had the effect of humiliating, endangering, and repressing Iraqi women in ways that have not been widely publicized in the mainstream media: As detainees in prisons run by Americans, they have been sexually abused and raped; as civilians, they have been kidnapped, raped, and then sometimes sold for prostitution; and as women-- and, in particular, as among the more liberated women in the Arab world --they have increasingly disappeared from public life, many becoming shut-ins in their own homes".
Controlling women’s access to public life, including work, is one of the consequences of rape. That is why women activists created “Take Back the Night” marches in which women and men protested the brutal rapes, including gang rapes, that make women fearful of taking their rightful place in public life.
No United Nations resolution or action by the International Criminal Court is going stop what is still considered normal all over the world. As nations modernize, and women enter the labor force and enjoy higher education, they pose a threat to some men’s deeply-held belief that women belong in the private world of the home, and that they own the public sphere. Women who trespass risk being stopped, often by rape.
Yet, it is in precisely such modernizing nations, such as India, that the daytime gang rape of a 23 year-old young woman on a bus created such outrage and protest, by both men and women. UN resolutions and conventions create a moral compass and are necessary, but they do not initiate social change. At best, they alter the zeitgeist. It is incidents of brutality against women, protested by ordinary men and women, as well as by advocates for women’s human rights, that can, potentially, change people’s views about violence against women.
And it’s not just in developing countries that ending violence against women is tacitly accepted by authorities. As I write, the U.S. Senate will finally introduce legislation which reauthorizes the Violence Against Women Act, first enacted in 1994. They have even accepted the compromise of exempting certain immigrant women with particular visas. If it passes, the bill will then go to the House of Representative, where right-wing Republicans are working overtime to prevent the reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act. They insist on excluding particular categories of immigrant women and even if the Senate passes what they want, they will come up with another reason to oppose it. Last year, Republicans blocked the bill because they refused to include LGBT and Native American women in the legislation. It’s still not clear it will pass in 2013, here in a country that prides itself the great equality women have supposedly achieved.
In the early nineteenth century, few people in Europe or the United States, would have thought that slavery would one day become unacceptable to the majority of the world’s citizens. Twenty years after the U.N. declared violence against women to be a violation of their human rights, we are still a long way from gender violence becoming a relic of the past. But that is our goal. And the only way this change will happen is the same way that abolitionists ended slavery---through decades of social movement action and education that sought to end slavery.
We are not nearly there. Rape and all kinds of gender violence are still ubiquitous, and a disgrace to our global efforts to expand our ideas about human rights. It will take many more decades before everyone agree that violence at home, at work, and on the battlefield are not customs, but are, in fact, crimes against humanity.
TRAGIC TALE
Bengal lags in rape case conviction
Dwaipayan Ghosh TNN
New Delhi: West Bengal has one of the worst conviction rates in rape cases in this country — a measly 11.5%, the second lowest in the country after Andhra Pradesh whose conviction rate was just 11% in 2010-11.
This has come to the light after the Rape Map of India was published recently by a news blog run jointly by the Wall Street Journal and Dow Jones newswire.
According to the figures, verdict against 15,423 cases were given in 2011. There were convictions in 4072 cases and acquittals in 11, 351. In Bengal, there were 2363 reported cases in the same period but conviction was achieved only in 237 cases. In comparison to the national average of 26.4%, the 11.5% in Bengal is abysmally low. The same report also said in between 2009 and 2011, a total of 7,010 rape cases were registered in Bengal, but only 381 people could be convicted. Surprisingly, the state was at par with the national conviction rate of 44.28% in 1973 and 36.83% in 1983 before starting to slip in the nineties.
In comparison, even in Uttar Pradesh — considered to be one of the most crime-prone states — 5364 cases of rape were registered during the three year period and 3816 persons were convicted. A total of 5,052 rape cases were registered in Assam during 2009-11, but only 517 persons could be convicted. Manipur is one state which achieved 100% conviction rate in 2011, with 53 reported cases in the state. Nearly 68,000 rape cases were registered across the country during 2009-11, but only 16,000 rapists were sent to prison.
“The poor rate of conviction is primarily due to prosecution’s inability to gather enough evidence against the accused following inadequate police investigation,” a home ministry official said. A Kolkata Police official though said: “Unless, we have dedicated fast track courts, the problem will remain,’’ said the official who refused to be named.
The same report, though, has painted a better picture for Bengal as far as the propensity of the crime is concerned. While in Mizoram, the number of reported cases per 1, 00,000 women is as high as 14.3 and in Delhi it is 7.4, in Bengal it is 5.3, indicating the state is still comparatively safer than other cities in the country.
STATE’S SHOW
In Bengal, of the 2363 reported cases in 2011, conviction was achieved only in 237 cases
In comparison to the national average of conviction rate at 26.4%, the 11.5% in Bengal in 2010-11 is abysmally low
Between 2009 and 2011, a total 7,010 rape cases were registered in Bengal, but only 381 people could be convicted
The state was at par with the national conviction rate of 44.28% in 1973 and 36.83% in 1983 before starting to slip in the nineties
The report has sounded a positive note for Bengal as far as the propensity of the crime is concerned
PERFORMANCE OF OTHER STATES In Uttar Pradesh, 5364 cases of rape were registered between 2009 and 2011, and 3816 persons were convicted 5,052 cases were registered in Assam during 2009-11, but only 517 persons could be convicted Manipur achieved 100% conviction rate in 2011, with 53 reported cases in the state
Sunday, 3 February 2013
Stop voilance against women and children: Woman Killed by Hired Assassins for Giving Birth t...
Stop voilance against women and children: Woman Killed by Hired Assassins for Giving Birth t...: Woman Killed by Hired Assassins for Giving Birth to Girls Posted on August 12, 2012 by THE 50 MILLION MISSING CAMPAIGN August 11, 2...
Wednesday, 23 January 2013
On average, 24 people per minute are victims of rape, physical violence, or stalking by an intimate partner in the United States, based on a survey conducted in 2010. Over the course of a year, that equals more than 12 million women and men. Those numbers only tell part of the story—more than 1 million women are raped in a year and over 6 million women and men are victims of stalking in a year. These findings emphasize that sexual violence, stalking, and intimate partner violence are important and widespread public health problems in the United States.
Tuesday, 22 January 2013
Woman Killed by Hired Assassins for Giving Birth to Girls
Posted on August 12, 2012 by THE 50 MILLION MISSING CAMPAIGN
August 11, 2012 Gonda, Uttar Pradesh
The husband, in-laws and two other men given life sentence for the murder of Sadhna Singh two years ago. Sadhna had given birth to two daughters, which made her husband and in-laws unhappy. They decided they wanted her husband to marry another woman. So while Sadhna was at school where she taught, two paid assassins on a motorcycle gunned her down.
The husband, in-laws and two other men given life sentence for the murder of Sadhna Singh two years ago. Sadhna had given birth to two daughters, which made her husband and in-laws unhappy. They decided they wanted her husband to marry another woman. So while Sadhna was at school where she taught, two paid assassins on a motorcycle gunned her down.
Woman Burnt To Death For Having Daughters
Posted on April 10, 2012 by THE 50 MILLION MISSING CAMPAIGN
Murshidabad, West Bengal, March 25, 2012
A 25-year old woman, Rupali Bibi was burnt to death by her husband and in-laws, for giving birth to two baby girls consecutively, at Khargram in Murshidabad district of West Bengal on Sunday.
A 25-year old woman, Rupali Bibi was burnt to death by her husband and in-laws, for giving birth to two baby girls consecutively, at Khargram in Murshidabad district of West Bengal on Sunday.
Burnt To Death For Dowry And Giving Birth To Girls
Posted on October 30, 2011 by THE 50 MILLION MISSING CAMPAIGN
Bicholim, Goa, October 20, 2011
Bicholim police on Wednesday arrested Jagdish Chopdekar on charges of allegedly killing his wife Ujwala, who died due to burn injuries recently at Tikhazan-Mayem. Ujwala’s family filed a complaint with the police, in which they reported that she was being abused for not bringing enough dowry and for giving birth to two girls
Burnt To Death For Giving Birth To Girls
Posted on October 13, 2011 by THE 50 MILLION MISSING CAMPAIGNSalora village, Maharashtra, October 19, 2007.
What initially was reported to be a case of self-immolation, later turned out to be cold-blooded murder. Sunita Rathod (30) from Salora village, Maharashtra, died of severe burns early on Thursday. The incident was allegedly a fallout of frequent altercations between the couple over the issue of birth of girls—and no male child
Killed In Hospital After Giving Birth To A Girl
Posted on October 13, 2011 by THE 50 MILLION MISSING CAMPAIGNLudhiana, Punjab, June 26, 2009.
Neha, died under suspicious circumstances in a city hospital, three days after she had given birth to a girl-child. Neha was also being harassed for not bringing enough dowry. The police has registered a case against four members of her marital family.
Saturday, 19 January 2013
Why the world is more dangerous with fewer girls
In India and China, where the ratio of men to women is skewed in favour of men, there are higher levels of rape and violent conflict
There is some optimism emerging from the latest study by the US National Bureau of Economic Research examining the ratio of men to women around the world. The World Bank expressed similar optimism in 2009.
Both institutions are buoyed by the partial reversal of South Korea's skewed child sex ratios, which had peaked in the mid-1990s at 116 boys per 100 girls.
South Korea's restored balance, while retaining a male dominance that remains above the accepted biological range (and with greater imbalances persisting among babies born to older mothers), is attributed to the simultaneous introduction of economic, social and legal initiatives.
Government policies that improved gender equality and promoted awareness-raising campaigns are also credited with fundamentally altering the country's underlying patriarchal no
Both institutions also claim that child sex ratios skewed towards males (masculinised ratios) are peaking in China and India. Such a claim is highly debatable, especially in light of India's most recent census of 2011, which signalled that 37.25 million girls were ''missing'' from the group aged 0 to 6 years.
Similarly contentious is the World Bank's claim that the ''missing girls'' phenomenon can be addressed in Asia with ''continuing vigorous efforts to reduce son preference''.
Certainly son preference is a major factor in a world of disappearing girls, but patrilinear mindsets alone could not have brought about the current crisis in female numbers.
Rather, only by acting in tandem with imposed population control programs, increasingly cheap technologies that identify an unborn child's sex, and the availability of abortion that stretches beyond the rule of law, has son preference succeeded in distorting the age-old balance between male and female births, thereby creating a generation faced with an unnatural excess of males.
Throughout human history, a masculinised population has translated into criminal and violent conflict; and contrary to predictions that females would become more valued in their scarcity, a masculinised sex ratio has instead amounted to the increased likelihood of girls and women contending with rape, abduction, bride-sharing, trafficking, forced marriage, and various other forms of violence and discrimination.
Both India and China are proving no exception to past experiences, with a significant correlation between increased crime and the falling female component of the sex ratio in India, and a doubling of crime rates during the recent period of male-dominated sex ratios in China.
Defying widely held impressions, the crime of rape is yet to be officially linked to masculinised sex ratios. Yet, according to 2011 statistics from India's National Crime Records Bureau, rape has been the country's most rapidly growing crime since 1971.
Increasing by a staggering 792 per cent in those 40 years, rape dwarfs the rise in other serious crimes such as murder (106 per cent), armed robbery (27 per cent) and kidnapping (298 per cent).
At the same time, in India's states where the sex ratio is highly skewed in favour of males, the daily reports of rape and gang rape are consistent with notions that a surplus of men, devoid of the feminising influence of sisters, girlfriends and wives, are driven towards committing violent crimes against women.
In fact, it might well be said that to deny the link between the country's masculinised sex ratio and national average of 22 women raped each hour is to live in disgraceful disregard for the lifelong suffering the crime inflicts upon girls and women.
China and India are not the only nations with masculinised child sex ratios.
Pakistan, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan and Hong Kong in Asia, and the east European countries of Albania, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia and Serbia are plagued by decreasing numbers of female births relative to those of male births.
This has significantly distorted ratios of females to males among children aged from zero to six. Most often this is described as gendercide or the killing of specific members of a sect.
But today's skewed sex ratios amount to outright femicide or the killing, specifically, of women.
In fact, were the girl child instead the endangered white rhinoceros, the entire world would be up in arms on her behalf.
In India and China, where the ratio of men to women is skewed in favour of men, there are higher levels of rape and violent conflict
There is some optimism emerging from the latest study by the US National Bureau of Economic Research examining the ratio of men to women around the world. The World Bank expressed similar optimism in 2009.
Both institutions are buoyed by the partial reversal of South Korea's skewed child sex ratios, which had peaked in the mid-1990s at 116 boys per 100 girls.
South Korea's restored balance, while retaining a male dominance that remains above the accepted biological range (and with greater imbalances persisting among babies born to older mothers), is attributed to the simultaneous introduction of economic, social and legal initiatives.
Government policies that improved gender equality and promoted awareness-raising campaigns are also credited with fundamentally altering the country's underlying patriarchal no
Both institutions also claim that child sex ratios skewed towards males (masculinised ratios) are peaking in China and India. Such a claim is highly debatable, especially in light of India's most recent census of 2011, which signalled that 37.25 million girls were ''missing'' from the group aged 0 to 6 years.
Similarly contentious is the World Bank's claim that the ''missing girls'' phenomenon can be addressed in Asia with ''continuing vigorous efforts to reduce son preference''.
Certainly son preference is a major factor in a world of disappearing girls, but patrilinear mindsets alone could not have brought about the current crisis in female numbers.
Rather, only by acting in tandem with imposed population control programs, increasingly cheap technologies that identify an unborn child's sex, and the availability of abortion that stretches beyond the rule of law, has son preference succeeded in distorting the age-old balance between male and female births, thereby creating a generation faced with an unnatural excess of males.
Throughout human history, a masculinised population has translated into criminal and violent conflict; and contrary to predictions that females would become more valued in their scarcity, a masculinised sex ratio has instead amounted to the increased likelihood of girls and women contending with rape, abduction, bride-sharing, trafficking, forced marriage, and various other forms of violence and discrimination.
Both India and China are proving no exception to past experiences, with a significant correlation between increased crime and the falling female component of the sex ratio in India, and a doubling of crime rates during the recent period of male-dominated sex ratios in China.
Defying widely held impressions, the crime of rape is yet to be officially linked to masculinised sex ratios. Yet, according to 2011 statistics from India's National Crime Records Bureau, rape has been the country's most rapidly growing crime since 1971.
Increasing by a staggering 792 per cent in those 40 years, rape dwarfs the rise in other serious crimes such as murder (106 per cent), armed robbery (27 per cent) and kidnapping (298 per cent).
At the same time, in India's states where the sex ratio is highly skewed in favour of males, the daily reports of rape and gang rape are consistent with notions that a surplus of men, devoid of the feminising influence of sisters, girlfriends and wives, are driven towards committing violent crimes against women.
In fact, it might well be said that to deny the link between the country's masculinised sex ratio and national average of 22 women raped each hour is to live in disgraceful disregard for the lifelong suffering the crime inflicts upon girls and women.
China and India are not the only nations with masculinised child sex ratios.
Pakistan, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan and Hong Kong in Asia, and the east European countries of Albania, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia and Serbia are plagued by decreasing numbers of female births relative to those of male births.
This has significantly distorted ratios of females to males among children aged from zero to six. Most often this is described as gendercide or the killing of specific members of a sect.
But today's skewed sex ratios amount to outright femicide or the killing, specifically, of women.
In fact, were the girl child instead the endangered white rhinoceros, the entire world would be up in arms on her behalf.
Monday, 14 January 2013
The girls stolen from the streets of India
The girls stolen fr
The widespread killing of female foetuses and infants in India is well-documented, but less well-known is the trafficking of girls across the country to make up for the resulting shortages.
Wide-eyed and thin, she stood in the middle of a room clutching a broom in her hand.
Police officers towered above her, shouting questions: "How old are you? "How did you get here?"
"Fourteen," she replied softly. "I was kidnapped."
But just as she began to say more, an older woman broke through the circle of policemen. "She is lying," she shouted. "She is 18, almost 19. I paid her parents money for her."
As the police pushed the girl towards the exit, the woman asked them to wait. She leaped over towards the girl and reached for her earrings. "These are mine," she said, taking them out.
A year ago, Rukhsana was a 13-year-old living with her parents and two younger siblings in a village near India's border with Bangladesh.
For one year she was not allowed to go outside. She says she was humiliated, beaten and routinely raped by the eldest of the three sons - who called himself her "husband".
"He used to say, 'I bought you, so you do as I tell you.' He and his mother beat me. I thought I would never see my family again. I cried every day," she said.
The UN children's agency Unicef says it's a problem of "genocide proportions" and that 50 million women are missing in India because of female foeticide and infanticide - the killing of baby girls. The Indian government disputes this estimate, but the reality of life in Haryana is hard to argue with.
"We don't have enough girls here," the woman who bought Rukhsana cried as she tried to convince the police to let her stay. "There are many girls from Bengal here. I paid money for her," she wailed.
There are no official statistics on how many girls are sold into marriage in the northern states of India, but activists believe the number is on the rise, fuelled both by demand for women in the relatively wealthy north, and poverty in other parts of India.
"Every house in northern India is feeling the pressure, in every house there are young men who cannot find women and who are frustrated," says social activist Rishi Kant, whose organization Shakti Vahini (or Power Brigade) works closely with the police to rescue victims.
In just one area, the Sunderbans in the South 24 Parganas district of West Bengal, the BBC visited five villages all of which had missing children, mostly girls.
According to the latest official data, almost 35,000 children were reported missing in India in 2011 - and over 11,000 of them were from West Bengal. Police estimate that only about 30% of cases are actually reported.
Trafficking peaked in the Sunderbans after a deadly cyclone destroyed rice paddies around the area five years ago.
Local farm worker, Bimal Singh - like thousands of people - was left without income, and so he thought it was good news when a neighbour offered his 16-year-old daughter Bisanti a job in Delhi.
"She went on a train. She told me 'Father, don't worry about me, I will come back with enough money so that you can marry me."
They never heard from her again.
"The police have done nothing for us. They came once and knocked on the door of the trafficker but they didn't arrest him. They don't treat me well when I go to them, so I am afraid to go to the police," Singh says.
"The demand is rising, and because of this growing demand I have made a lot of money. I now have bought three houses in Delhi.
"We are organising training camps and awareness campaigns. We have also recovered many girls, from different areas of the country. The fight is on," he says.
The very existence of his unit, he adds, shows the government's resolve and activists agree that police are now more aware of the problem. Every police station in West Bengal now has an anti-trafficking officer. But their caseloads are overwhelming, and resources are scarce.
"Simply changing the police will not give results. When we rescue a child together with the police, then what?" says Rishi Kant from Shakti Vahini.
"What we need is fast rehabilitation. We need social welfare and judiciary systems that work."
Rishi Kant says there is a need for fast-track courts - like the court being used to try the suspects in the latest gang-rape case - to prosecute perpetrators, and make it more difficult for them to get out on bail.
Even greater, some argue, is the need for a change in attitudes.
Two weeks before the notorious Delhi rape case, a group of influential local elders, all of them men, came together in a Haryana village to discuss what they called the most pressing issues their communities face - rape, illegal abortions and marriage laws.
One speaker addressed what he called an "alarming" increase in rape cases. "Have you seen the suggestive ways that girls ride scooters?" he said. "There is no modesty in the way women dress or act any more."
Another man spoke about the roots of female foeticide. "These days the society has become very educated and the girls from this educated society have started eloping. When girls bring shame on their own parents and behave like that - who would want a girl?" he asked.
Rupa, a 25-year-old woman was trafficked to Haryana from Bihar. She was sold as a wife to a man who failed to find one in his own community. The family forced her to have two abortions until she was finally pregnant with a baby boy.
In India, the cycle of abuse carries on.om the streets of India
The girls stolen from the streets of India
Source: BBC | Natalia AntelavaThe widespread killing of female foetuses and infants in India is well-documented, but less well-known is the trafficking of girls across the country to make up for the resulting shortages.
Stolen
Rukhsana was sweeping the floor when police broke into the house.Wide-eyed and thin, she stood in the middle of a room clutching a broom in her hand.
Police officers towered above her, shouting questions: "How old are you? "How did you get here?"
"Fourteen," she replied softly. "I was kidnapped."
But just as she began to say more, an older woman broke through the circle of policemen. "She is lying," she shouted. "She is 18, almost 19. I paid her parents money for her."
As the police pushed the girl towards the exit, the woman asked them to wait. She leaped over towards the girl and reached for her earrings. "These are mine," she said, taking them out.
A year ago, Rukhsana was a 13-year-old living with her parents and two younger siblings in a village near India's border with Bangladesh.
"I used to love going to school and I loved playing with my little sister," she remembers.Her childhood ended when one day, on the way home from school, three men pushed her into a car.
"They showed me a knife and said they would cut me into pieces if I resisted," she said.After a terrifying three-day journey in cars, buses and on trains, they reached a house in the northern Indian state of Haryana where Rukhsana was sold to a family of four - a mother and her three sons.
For one year she was not allowed to go outside. She says she was humiliated, beaten and routinely raped by the eldest of the three sons - who called himself her "husband".
"He used to say, 'I bought you, so you do as I tell you.' He and his mother beat me. I thought I would never see my family again. I cried every day," she said.
The disappeared
Tens of thousands of girls disappear in India every year. They are sold into prostitution, domestic slavery and, increasingly, like Rukhsana, into marriage in the northern states of India where the sex ratio between men and women has been skewed by the illegal - but widespread - practice of aborting girl foetuses.The UN children's agency Unicef says it's a problem of "genocide proportions" and that 50 million women are missing in India because of female foeticide and infanticide - the killing of baby girls. The Indian government disputes this estimate, but the reality of life in Haryana is hard to argue with.
"We don't have enough girls here," the woman who bought Rukhsana cried as she tried to convince the police to let her stay. "There are many girls from Bengal here. I paid money for her," she wailed.
There are no official statistics on how many girls are sold into marriage in the northern states of India, but activists believe the number is on the rise, fuelled both by demand for women in the relatively wealthy north, and poverty in other parts of India.
"Every house in northern India is feeling the pressure, in every house there are young men who cannot find women and who are frustrated," says social activist Rishi Kant, whose organization Shakti Vahini (or Power Brigade) works closely with the police to rescue victims.
In just one area, the Sunderbans in the South 24 Parganas district of West Bengal, the BBC visited five villages all of which had missing children, mostly girls.
According to the latest official data, almost 35,000 children were reported missing in India in 2011 - and over 11,000 of them were from West Bengal. Police estimate that only about 30% of cases are actually reported.
Trafficking peaked in the Sunderbans after a deadly cyclone destroyed rice paddies around the area five years ago.
Local farm worker, Bimal Singh - like thousands of people - was left without income, and so he thought it was good news when a neighbour offered his 16-year-old daughter Bisanti a job in Delhi.
"She went on a train. She told me 'Father, don't worry about me, I will come back with enough money so that you can marry me."
They never heard from her again.
"The police have done nothing for us. They came once and knocked on the door of the trafficker but they didn't arrest him. They don't treat me well when I go to them, so I am afraid to go to the police," Singh says.
Selling girls for a living
In a Calcutta slum we manage to meet a man who sells girls for a living. He doesn't want to give his name, but speaks openly about the trade."The demand is rising, and because of this growing demand I have made a lot of money. I now have bought three houses in Delhi.
"I traffic 150 to 200 girls a year, starting from age 10, 11 and older, up to 16, 17," he says.The man says he makes around 55,000 rupees ($1,000; £700) from each girl. Local politicians and police, he says, are crucial to his operation.
"I don't go to the source areas, but I have men working for me. We tell parents that we will get them jobs in Delhi, then we transport them to placement agencies. What happens to them after that is not my concern," the man says.
"Police are well aware of what we do. I have to tell police when I am transporting a girl and I bribe police in every state - in Calcutta, in Delhi, in Haryana.The head of the Criminal Investigation Unit in charge of anti-trafficking in West Bengal, Shankar Chakraborty, describes police corruption as "negligible" and says his unit is "absolutely resolute" in its determination to tackle the problem of trafficking.
"I have had troubles with authorities but I am not afraid - if I go to jail I now have enough money to bribe my way out."
"We are organising training camps and awareness campaigns. We have also recovered many girls, from different areas of the country. The fight is on," he says.
The very existence of his unit, he adds, shows the government's resolve and activists agree that police are now more aware of the problem. Every police station in West Bengal now has an anti-trafficking officer. But their caseloads are overwhelming, and resources are scarce.
"Simply changing the police will not give results. When we rescue a child together with the police, then what?" says Rishi Kant from Shakti Vahini.
"What we need is fast rehabilitation. We need social welfare and judiciary systems that work."
Rishi Kant says there is a need for fast-track courts - like the court being used to try the suspects in the latest gang-rape case - to prosecute perpetrators, and make it more difficult for them to get out on bail.
Even greater, some argue, is the need for a change in attitudes.
Two weeks before the notorious Delhi rape case, a group of influential local elders, all of them men, came together in a Haryana village to discuss what they called the most pressing issues their communities face - rape, illegal abortions and marriage laws.
One speaker addressed what he called an "alarming" increase in rape cases. "Have you seen the suggestive ways that girls ride scooters?" he said. "There is no modesty in the way women dress or act any more."
Another man spoke about the roots of female foeticide. "These days the society has become very educated and the girls from this educated society have started eloping. When girls bring shame on their own parents and behave like that - who would want a girl?" he asked.
Rupa, a 25-year-old woman was trafficked to Haryana from Bihar. She was sold as a wife to a man who failed to find one in his own community. The family forced her to have two abortions until she was finally pregnant with a baby boy.
In India, the cycle of abuse carries on.om the streets of India
Sunday, 13 January 2013
Security guard arrested for forcing wife into flesh trade
TNN | Jan 13, 2013, 07.24 AM IST
LUCKNOW: A man was arrested by police on Saturday for allegedly forcing his wife into flesh trade. The complainant approached the police after years of exploitation and when her husband expressed intention to force their daughters into prostitution too. The accused Vishesh Kumar Gupta, 45, has been living with his wife and four daughters in his two-storey residence located in Vikasnagar in the city. "The accused had forcibly filmed his wife in a compromising position several times using his mobile phone and threatened to make the video public if she ever decided to speak out against him," said the official investigating the said incident.
TNN | Jan 13, 2013, 07.24 AM IST
LUCKNOW: A man was arrested by police on Saturday for allegedly forcing his wife into flesh trade. The complainant approached the police after years of exploitation and when her husband expressed intention to force their daughters into prostitution too. The accused Vishesh Kumar Gupta, 45, has been living with his wife and four daughters in his two-storey residence located in Vikasnagar in the city. "The accused had forcibly filmed his wife in a compromising position several times using his mobile phone and threatened to make the video public if she ever decided to speak out against him," said the official investigating the said incident.
Woman found hanging from tree in Bihar
Patna, January 14, 2013
In a shocking incident, a woman from West Bengal was found hanging from a tree in Bihar’s Bhagalpur district on Sunday, after she jumped out of the Delhi-bound Brahmaputra Mail on Saturday.
The police have registered a case of murder and disappearance, but they are yet to confirm rape
Patna, January 14, 2013
In a shocking incident, a woman from West Bengal was found hanging from a tree in Bihar’s Bhagalpur district on Sunday, after she jumped out of the Delhi-bound Brahmaputra Mail on Saturday.
The police have registered a case of murder and disappearance, but they are yet to confirm rape
Youth held for trying to rape mentally-challenged girl
PTI | Jan 13, 2013, 18:41PM IST
Rewari: A 23-year-old youth was arrested for allegedly trying to rape a minor mentally challenged girl here, police said today.
Vicky, a resident of Delhi, who was staying with his relative in Rajiv Nagar colony here, tried to rape the 17-year-old girl last night, they said.
However, the victim was saved due to the timely intervention of her family members.
A case has been registered in this connection while the further probes are on, police added
PTI | Jan 13, 2013, 18:41PM IST
Rewari: A 23-year-old youth was arrested for allegedly trying to rape a minor mentally challenged girl here, police said today.
Vicky, a resident of Delhi, who was staying with his relative in Rajiv Nagar colony here, tried to rape the 17-year-old girl last night, they said.
However, the victim was saved due to the timely intervention of her family members.
A case has been registered in this connection while the further probes are on, police added
Saturday, 12 January 2013
| 17-year-old rape victim attempts suicide | ||||
| 12 Jan 2013, 1346 hrs IST, AGENCIES | ||||
|
A 17-year-old Dalit girl, who was
allegedly raped by her neighbour five days ago, attempted suicide by setting
herself on fire in Sonepat district of Haryana, police said today (Jan 12).
The girl set herself on fire after pouring kerosene on herself yesterday (Jan 11) when her parents were not at home in Kharkhouda town of the district. She was admitted to PGIMS in Rohtak where doctors said she was in a critical state. "The girl is in a critical condition," SP, Sonepat, Anil Nehra said over phone. He said the girl in her statement before a Magistrate yesterday alleged that she was raped, by one Rakesh who was her neighbour, five days back. Nehra said the accused has been arrested within an hour of registration of FIR lodged by the mother of the victim and a case of rape had been slapped on him. |
The girls stolen from the streets of India
Tens of thousands of girls disappear in India every year. They are sold into prostitution, domestic slavery and, increasingly, , into marriage in the northern states of India where the sex ratio be...tween men and women has been skewed by the illegal - but widespread - practice of aborting girl foetuses.
The UN children's agency Unicef says it's a problem of "genocide proportions" and that 50 million women are missing in India because of female foeticide and infanticide - the killing of baby girls. The Indian government disputes this estimate, but the reality of life in Haryana is hard to argue with.
"We don't have enough girls here," the woman who bought Rukhsana cried as she tried to convince the police to let her stay. "There are many girls from Bengal here. I paid money for her," she wailed.
There are no official statistics on how many girls are sold into marriage in the northern states of India, but activists believe the number is on the rise, fuelled both by demand for women in the relatively wealthy north, and poverty in other parts of India.
"Every house in northern India is feeling the pressure, in every house there are young men who cannot find women and who are frustrated," says social activist Rishi Kant, whose organization Shakti Vahini (or Power Brigade) works closely with the police to rescue victims
Tens of thousands of girls disappear in India every year. They are sold into prostitution, domestic slavery and, increasingly, , into marriage in the northern states of India where the sex ratio be...tween men and women has been skewed by the illegal - but widespread - practice of aborting girl foetuses.
The UN children's agency Unicef says it's a problem of "genocide proportions" and that 50 million women are missing in India because of female foeticide and infanticide - the killing of baby girls. The Indian government disputes this estimate, but the reality of life in Haryana is hard to argue with.
"We don't have enough girls here," the woman who bought Rukhsana cried as she tried to convince the police to let her stay. "There are many girls from Bengal here. I paid money for her," she wailed.
There are no official statistics on how many girls are sold into marriage in the northern states of India, but activists believe the number is on the rise, fuelled both by demand for women in the relatively wealthy north, and poverty in other parts of India.
"Every house in northern India is feeling the pressure, in every house there are young men who cannot find women and who are frustrated," says social activist Rishi Kant, whose organization Shakti Vahini (or Power Brigade) works closely with the police to rescue victims
Friday, 11 January 2013
Schoolgirl raped in Assam, accused held PTI | Jan 12, 2013, 04.44 AM IST
RANGIYA: An 11-year-old girl was raped by a man in north Guwahati town in Kamrup district earlier this week.
The accused, 30-year-old Dimpol Baishya, surrendered before the police on Friday evening. The incident came to light after the girl, a class VI student of a local school, informed her mother about the incident on Friday.
Baishya initially fled from his home and police launched a search operation to arrest him. However, he surrendered before the police in the evening.
The victim, a resident of Modhupur locality of north Guwahati, was accosted to a nearby deserted building and raped by Baishya on January 8. The accused lived near the girl's house
RANGIYA: An 11-year-old girl was raped by a man in north Guwahati town in Kamrup district earlier this week.
The accused, 30-year-old Dimpol Baishya, surrendered before the police on Friday evening. The incident came to light after the girl, a class VI student of a local school, informed her mother about the incident on Friday.
Baishya initially fled from his home and police launched a search operation to arrest him. However, he surrendered before the police in the evening.
The victim, a resident of Modhupur locality of north Guwahati, was accosted to a nearby deserted building and raped by Baishya on January 8. The accused lived near the girl's house
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