Bihar poll exigency?: Modi govt to introduce tougher anti-atrocities bill in Parliament

The Narendra Modi government -- which allowed a more stringent Prevention of Atrocities (PoA) Ordinance, promulgated by the previoius UPA government in March 2014, to lapse after it came to power -- wants to "secure" Dalit votes for the forthcoming Bihar assembly polls. According to sources, it has "decided" to introduce the Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Amendment Bill this monsoon session of Parliament.
The move is particularly significant, as the Dalits constitute about eight per cent of the Bihar population. Also, a new category, Mahadalit, has been added to include certain castes which have been allegedly left out of the scheduled castes -- Musahar, Bhuiyan, Dom, Chamar, Dhobi and Nat. Activist Satya Narain Madan categorizes Mahadalits are "the poorest of the poor, majority of them have yet to taste the fruit of development."
Mahadalits, including Dalits, constitute 16 per cent of the state's population. Paswans -- a sub-caste to which Union Food and Consumer Affairs Minister Ram Vilas Paswan belongs -- alone make up four per cent of the state population. Jitan Ram Manjhi, former chief minister who broke away from Nitish Kumar and joined hands with Modi, is also a Mahadalit.
Keen on promulgation of Land Acquisition Ordinance thrice in order to ensure that its amended pro-corporate version does not lapse, the Modi government did not give a similar treatment to the PoA Ordinance. While it did introduce the ordinance as a Bill in Parliament in July last year, the Bill was sent to the a parliamentary standing committee, and allowed the Ordinance to lapse.
However, say sources, the Modi government is now "keen on pushing it" by making a few changes in the UPA's ordinance and wants it to pass in the current session of Parliament. The UPA promulgated the Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Amendment Ordinance on March 4, 2014, just before the Lok Sabha elections were announced.
On one hand, the BJP-led government is is pressure from the opposition, facing criticism from the Congress for sending the Bill to the standing committee despite the fact that most parties have supported it. On the other, the RSS, say reports, is puzzled for another reason. It wants the Modi government to insert provisions that it is not "misused" against members of the upper castes.

Interestingly, the RSS has found support from a top non-profit body involved in worldfide fight for freedom of expression since 1921, PEN International, which says, the anti-atrocities Act's provisions banning “intentionally insults or intimidates with intent to humiliate” to Dalits has been "misused" in India.
The UPA ordinance sought to strengthen the Prevention of Atrocities Act, 1989, by adding new categories of actions to be treated as offences. This included forcing an individual from a Dalit community to vote or not to vote for a candidate unlawfully and occupying land belonging to such individuals wrongfully.
The ordinance specified punishment for public servants from other communities who neglect their duties relating to Dalit and Adivasi people, such as not registering a complaint or a first information report. The ordinance mandated the setting up of special courts at the district level, with exclusive public prosecutors for each special court, to speed up the trial process.
The ordinance was promulgated amidst wide feeling among Dalit and Adivasi leaders that the PoA, 1989 had "failed" in deterring crimes. The National Crime Records Bureau data show that cases registered under the Act in conjunction with Indian Penal Code provisions increased from 38,449 in 2010 to 46,114 in 2013, while the conviction rate under it was below 30 per cent.
The parliamentary standing committee tabled its report on the Bill last December, affirming most of its provisions and adding some clauses on special courts for atrocities against women, headed by a woman judge. Yet, the Modi government did not table the Bill for discussion during the budget session, prompting Congress president Sonia Gandhi to protest.

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Ahmedabad's civic chaos: Drainage woes, waterlogging, and the illusion of Olympic dreams

In response to my blog on overflowing gutter lines at several spots in Ahmedabad's Vejalpur, a heavily populated area, a close acquaintance informed me that it's not just the middle-class housing societies that are affected by the nuisance. Preeti Das, who lives in a posh locality in what is fashionably called the SoBo area, tells me, "Things are worse in our society, Applewood."

RP Gupta a scapegoat to help Govt of India manage fallout of Adani case in US court?

RP Gupta, a retired 1987-batch IAS officer from the Gujarat cadre, has found himself at the center of a growing controversy. During my tenure as the Times of India correspondent in Gandhinagar (1997–2012), I often interacted with him. He struck me as a straightforward officer, though I never quite understood why he was never appointed to what are supposed to be top-tier departments like industries, energy and petrochemicals, finance, or revenue.

PharmEasy: The only online medical store which revises prices upwards after confirming the order

For senior citizens — especially those without a family support system — ordering medicines online can be a great relief. Shruti and I have been doing this for the last couple of years, and with considerable success. We upload a prescription, receive a verification call from a doctor, and within two or three days, the medicines are delivered to our doorstep.

Powering pollution, heating homes: Why are Delhi residents opposing incineration-based waste management

While going through the 50-odd-page report Burning Waste, Warming Cities? Waste-to-Energy (WTE) Incineration and Urban Heat in Delhi , authored by Chythenyen Devika Kulasekaran of the well-known advocacy group Centre for Financial Accountability, I came across a reference to Sukhdev Vihar — a place where I lived for almost a decade before moving to Moscow in 1986 as the foreign correspondent of the daily Patriot and weekly Link .

Environmental report raises alarm: Sabarmati one of four rivers with nonylphenol contamination

A new report by Toxics Link , an Indian environmental research and advocacy organisation based in New Delhi, in collaboration with the Environmental Defense Fund , a global non-profit headquartered in New York, has raised the alarm that Sabarmati is one of five rivers across India found to contain unacceptable levels of nonylphenol (NP), a chemical linked to "exposure to carcinogenic outcomes, including prostate cancer in men and breast cancer in women."

Dalit rights and political tensions: Why is Mevani at odds with Congress leadership?

While I have known Jignesh Mevani, one of the dozen-odd Congress MLAs from Gujarat, ever since my Gandhinagar days—when he was a young activist aligned with well-known human rights lawyer Mukul Sinha’s organisation, Jan Sangharsh Manch—he became famous following the July 2016 Una Dalit atrocity, in which seven members of a family were brutally assaulted by self-proclaimed cow vigilantes while skinning a dead cow, a traditional occupation among Dalits.

Tracking a lost link: Soviet-era legacy of Gujarati translator Atul Sawani

The other day, I received a message from a well-known activist, Raju Dipti, who runs an NGO called Jeevan Teerth in Koba village, near Gujarat’s capital, Gandhinagar. He was seeking the contact information of Atul Sawani, a translator of Russian books—mainly political and economic—into Gujarati for Progress Publishers during the Soviet era. He wanted to collect and hand over scanned soft copies, or if possible, hard copies, of Soviet books translated into Gujarati to Arvind Gupta, who currently lives in Pune and is undertaking the herculean task of collecting and making public soft copies of Soviet books that are no longer available in the market, both in English and Indian languages.

Boeing 787 under scrutiny again after Ahmedabad crash: Whistleblower warnings resurface

A heart-wrenching tragedy has taken place in Ahmedabad. As widely reported, a Boeing 787 Dreamliner plane crashed shortly after taking off from the city’s airport, currently operated by India’s top tycoon, Gautam Adani. The aircraft was carrying 230 passengers and 12 crew members. As expected, the crash has led to an outpouring of grief across the country. At the same time, there have been demands for the resignation of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Home Minister Amit Shah, and Civil Aviation Minister Venkaiah Naidu. The most striking comment came from BJP MP Subramanian Swamy, who stated : "When a train derailed in the 1950s, Lal Bahadur Shastri resigned. On the same morality, I demand PM Modi, HM Amit Shah, and Civil Aviation Minister Naidu resign so that a free and fair inquiry can be held. All that Modi and his associates have been doing so far is gallivanting, which must stop." Amidst widespread mourning, some fringe elements sought to communalize the tragedy. One post ...

Revisiting Gijubhai: Pioneer of child-centric education and the caste debate

It was Krishna Kumar, the well-known educationist, who I believe first introduced me to the name — Gijubhai Badheka (1885–1939). Hailing from Bhavnagar, known as the cultural capital of the Saurashtra region of Gujarat, Gijubhai, Kumar told me during my student days, made significant contributions to the field of pedagogy — something that hasn't received much attention from India's education mandarins. At that time, Kumar was my tutorial teacher at Kirorimal College, Delhi University.

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