Plight of Gujarat saltpan women: Govt admits all-round failure; Kanya Kelavni drive for girl education flops

Counterview Desk
The Gujarat government has acknowledged its complete failure in ameliorating the plight of the women involved in cultivating salt in hundreds of agariyas (saltpans) in the Little Rann of Kutch in Gujarat. A still unreleased “research” study, running into 40-odd pages, the Gender Resource Centre, operating directly under the department of women and child, Gujarat government, has said that, despite existence of large number of government schemes, “there is no change in the economic, social and health related problems of the women working in agariyas.”
Nearly 43,000 men and women from 108 villages situated on the border of the Little Rann work in the agariyas for eight months in a year, living in sub-human conditions, mainly poorly knit tents, without electricity, drinking water, health facilities and education for children. Belonging to other backward class (OBC) communities, they have been demanding recognition as “forest dwellers”, as the Little Rann is a Wild Ass Sanctuary, as it would give them right to own land under the forest rights law.
Admitting that women have to work for longer working hours – 15 hours continuously on an average as against the men who work for 10 hours – the study, titled “An Overview of the Condition of Women Working in Agariyas”, and based on an interaction with 33 women working in agariyas, says that women are not even provided with even “health health facilities”, as a result of which one witnesses “a high incidence of health-related problems among women.” The result is that, there is a “higher incidence of widows among agariya families compared to others.”
“Women begin their day at around 4 in the morning, cleaning up the tent, cooking food, go to the agariyas to work with menfolk, look after children, and sleep at 9.00 pm”, the study reports.
“Skin-related diseases are widely prevalent among agariya cultivators. The emergency 108 service, available in villages, refuses to reach up to them in agariyas, which are situated at least 7 kilometres inside the Little Rann. Nor is there any availability of vehicles, especially during night hours so that they could reach a hospital”, the study says, adding, women further feel discriminated as the “mobile health vans, which reach agariyas just once a week, have no women health workers, and women refuse to reveal gynecological problems to the men health workers.”
The study says, “One witnesses a higher incidence of malnutrition among women and children during the months they work in agariyas. Despite hard labour they do, they face a shortage of of nutritious food. Living in the Little Rann they are unable to access ghee, oil, milk, green vegetables, fruits, and the vicious circle of lack of these food items continues unabated. It is only once in a fortnight that they are able to go to their villages to access food items.”
Pointing towards poor literacy rates among agariya women, with just about one-third of them literate, the study quotes them as saying that they are unable to make their children study continuously. “Many children work in agariyas. They live in the Little Rann for eight months, and go to school only for four months, as a result of which they are often very weak in studies”, the study admits, suggesting failure of the state-sponsored Kanya Kelavni girl enrolment drive. “There is no emphasis on ensuring that agariya girls study”, it underlines.
During group discussions, the study says, the agariya women complained of lack of availability of drinking water in the Little Rann. “The tankers provide water to us next to the agariyas just once or twice a day. They pour water into the tanks put up by us. We bath just twice or thrice a week. Often we must bring water in buckets on bicycles several kilometres away. The river is far away. There is a real shortage of water”, an agariya woman is quoted as saying.
Other problems the agariya women face include no toilets in the Little Rann, drunkenness among male agariyas leading to high incidence of domestic violence, inability to marry girls in non-agariya families, lack of social life, and so on. The study has asked the Gujarat government's urgent intervention, recommending, among other things:

Regular supply of water through tanker
Setting up of mobile toilets
Provision of all-weather tents which could withstand strong winds and torrential rains
Provision of basic facilities at the agariya doorsteps, including food items, including vegetables and other nutritious food at regular interval
Regular visit by mobile health vans consisting of female health workers, with availability of basic medicines needed to address gynecological problems women
Provision facilities to vaccinate of infants
Provision of mobile schools for out of school children
Regular availability of basic information about government schemes meant for women
Special programmes to empower especially young women

Comments

World Bank clarifies: Its 26th rank to India not for universal access to power but for ease of doing business

By Our Representative
In a major embarrassment to the Government of India, the World Bank has reportedly clarified that it has not ranked India 26th out of 130 countries for providing power to its population. The top international banker’s clarification comes following Union Power Minister Piyush Goyal’s claim that India has “improved to 26 position from 99” in access to electricity in just one year.

"Misleading" satellite images being shared on Balakot surgical strike on Jaish camp

By Dr Vinay Kate*
With every passing day more questions are being raised about the surgical strike India did in Balakot as a response to Pulwama attacks. So far the Indian media has claimed mass casulaty of 300+ terrorists of Jaish-e-Mohammad in this surgical strike, but there is hardly any report from foreign media about the same.

Extreme repression, corporate loot, cultural genocide "characterise" India's tribal belt

Counterview Desk
As Lok Sabha polls approach, there is considerable ferment in one section of the population -- India's Adivasis, forming about 8.6 per cent of India's population. Things became particularly critical following the February 14, 2019 Supreme Court order, allegedly seeking to evict lakhs of tribals from their forest lands.

Industry in India "barely growing", export growth 0%, whither moral anchors?

Counterview Desk
In a sharp critique of the Modi government, the Indian Institute of Management-Ahmedabad (IIM-A), one of world renowned economist Prof Kaushik Basu, who is Professor of Economics and Carl Marks Professor of International Studies at Cornell University, has told students at the IIM-A’s 54th Annual Convocation on March 16, 2019 that they have a “special responsibility” on their shoulders, “the responsibility to reject narrow sectarianism, uphold scientific thinking, openness to new ideas, and freedom of speech.”

Gujarat model? Industrial effluents "invade" borewells, discharge coloured water in farms

By Rajiv Shah
In a major embarrassment for Gujarat model, of the 21 samples taken by officials of the state government's environmental watchdog Gujarat Pollution Control Board (GPCB) in two villages of Vadodara district and analyzed by its laboratory in Gandhinagar, the state capital, to find out pollution level in groundwater, 16 were assessed as highly contaminated – these were, in fact, found to be discharging reddish, brownish, reddish, or yellowish water.

Refugees as criminals? US govt report blames Amit Shah for calling Bangladeshis termites

Counterview Desk
The chapter “Freedom of Movement” of the US State Department’s “India 2018 Human Rights Report”, released recently, has criticized BJP chief Amit Shah for terming alleged Bangladeshis who may be in Assam as “termites”, because their names were struck down from the list of National Register of Citizens, under preparation in the state.
Pointing out that four million residents were excluded from Assam’s final draft list, leading to “uncertainty over the status of these individuals, many of whose families had lived in the state for several generations”, the report regrets, the Indian law does not even contain the term “refugee,” treating refugees like Rohingiyas as “any other foreigners.”
“Undocumented physical presence in the country is a criminal offense. Persons without documentation were vulnerable to forced returns and abuse”, the report says.
Text of the Freedom of Movement chapter: The law provides for freedom of internal movement, foreign travel, emigration, a…

Congress would win just 9 of 26 Lok Sabha seats: Gujarat Assembly segment-wise analysis

By Rajiv Shah
Even as the Congress plans its first working committee meet in Gujarat on February 28 after an almost 58 year gap, there is reason to wonder what is in store for India’s grand old party in a state which has been long been a BJP bastion – in fact ever since mid-1990s. Ahead of the then assembly polls in late 2012, talking with me, a senior Gujarat Congress leader, currently Rajya Sabha MP, frankly said he saw no reason why Congress would win.

"Pro-corporate" Supreme Court order on FRA would further marginalize Adivasis

By VS Roy David, JP Raju*
For millions of Adivasis and other traditional forest dwellers February 13, 2019 will go down in history as the day of apocalypse. This is like the proverbial Black Friday where millions of most marginalized people of India were ordered by malicious anti-people draconian Supreme Court order depriving them the life and livelihood by evicting them from their habitats.

Financial inclusion? Not micro-loans; India's poor "need" investment in health, education

By Moin Qazi*
India has grown into a global powerhouse. Its economy is soaring but the picture on the ground is still quite arid. The green shoots that you see are only a patch of its landscape. Most Indians are hapless victims of inequity. India is one country where intense poverty abounds in the shadow of immense wealth.

India, Pakistan told to eliminate nuclear weapons: N-war "would kill" 2 billion

Counterview Desk
The International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW), a non-partisan federation of national medical organizations in 64 countries, representing tens of thousands of doctors, medical students, other health workers, and concerned citizens, claiming to share the common goal of creating a more peaceful and secure world freed from the threat of nuclear annihilation, has warned that “an unprecedented global catastrophe” awaits the globe against the backdrop of warmongering in India and Pakistan.

Counterview

Search This Blog