Observing 'biased' cops, indifferent administration in a Saurashtra taluka

By Rajiv Shah

His name is Dhaval Chopada. A smiling young face, whom I used to meet at the Centre for Social Justice (CSJ), Ahmedabad. I believe it was several months ago, after he got married, and he "disappeared". Never bothered to find out whether he had gone to some other NGO, or got an assignment elsewhere, I saw him suddenly rushing to me the other day with, smiling as always, “How are you, Rajivbhai?”

Oh! Where did you disappear?, I asked him, and he replied, he is with Arvind Khuman, a lawyer and social worker with CSJ in Amreli, Saurashtra, and is currently stationed in Rajula – “just 40 km from Una, where five Dalits of a family were lynched, an incident which shot into national fame”, he recalled. Who doesn’t know the incident? The Una movement that followed threw up Jignesh Mevani, a major Dalit leader from Gujarat. Currently, Mevani is an independent MLA, won with Congress support.
So what’s going on? I asked Chopada, a lean, thin, tall guy, who wore a trendy jean. Prompt came the answer: “Currently, we are looking into atrocities against Dalits. You know, it takes atrocity cases to come up in local courts about a year later after a first information report (FIR) is filed.” Why so? I queried. And his reply was straight: “The cops up there, especially the senior ones, are riddled with a strange bias: That atrocity cases are filed in order to blackmail upper caste people, to elicit money. I heard them as saying.”
But did he meet them? “Yes, we have tried to interact, yet they are adamant. They don’t want to change their bias. I have often found, they first try not to register the case at all, and after registering it, they take a lot of time to investigate. It takes considerable effort to list the case to the board.” Nothing unusual, I thought: The bias exists across the board among upper castes. The cops belonging to the upper castes are surely part of a society, where such a bias exists.
What else? I got curious. Chopada said: “We have been taking up widows’ cases as well. We ensured that a Koli (an Other Backward Class) widow gets her pension. We had helped her fill up the form, which was accepted way back in 2016. Yet, we found to our surprise, the pension payable to her under the Gujarat government scheme had still not begun being disbursed, even three years later.”
“So”, said he, “We filed a Right to Information (RTI) to find out what went wrong. We were told, in the reply, that the mamlatdar (the taluka level revenue official) had cleared this woman’s case. The papers were all intact. With the papers in hand, we approached the mamlatdar to ensure that the pension began being paid.”
According to Chopada, even after this, the pension wasn't disbursed. “We approached the post master at the Rajula post office, which distributes the pension. He called for papers. He told us, they had already written to the widow that the mamlatdar had sent a wrong order for payment. We argued, the woman was illiterate, how could she know what was written in the order?”
I asked him: What went wrong in the order? Chopada said, “The post master was right. It was mamlatdar who was wrong. The order had sought to pay pension in accordance with an old government resolution (GR), which gave Rs 900, while the order should have been based on the new GR, which provides Rs 1,200 pension per month.”
He went on, pointing towards how the administration is so indifferent towards the underprivileged and deprived sections: “So, we decided to send a legal notice to one to mamlatdar and other to the post master, seeking answer as to was such a delay in the payment of pension. Things immediately moved. The widow received the pension of the last three years – Rs 36,000.”

I further wondered if there were more such widows, who had not received the pension, and he said, “We have identified five others, we are working them.”

Comments

Modi’s Israel visit strengthened Pakistan’s hand in US–Iran truce: Ex-Indian diplomat

By Jag Jivan M. K. Bhadrakumar , a career diplomat with three decades of service in postings across the former Soviet Union, Pakistan, Iran, Afghanistan, South Korea, Sri Lanka, Germany, and Turkey, has warned that the current truce in the US–Iran war is “fragile and ridden with contradictions.” Writing in his blog India Punchline , Bhadrakumar argues that while Pakistan has emerged as a surprising broker of dialogue, the durability of the ceasefire remains uncertain.

Incarceration of Prof Saibaba 'revives' the question: What is crime, who is criminal?

By Kunal Pant* In 2016, a Supreme Court Judge asked the state of Maharashtra, “Do you want to extract a pound of flesh?” The statement was directed against the state for contesting the bail plea of Delhi University Professor GN Saibaba. Saibaba was arrested in 2014, a justification for which was to prevent him from committing what the police called “anti-national activities.”

Why Indo-Pak relations have been on 'knife’s edge' , hostilities may remain for long

By Utkarsh Bajpai* The past few decades have seen strides being made in all aspects of life – from sticks and stones to weaponry. The extreme case of this phenomenon has been nuclear weapons. The menace caused by nuclear weapons in the past is unforgettable. Images of Hiroshima and Nagasaki from 1945 come to mind, after the United States dropped two atomic bombs on the cities.

Manufacturing, services: India's low-skill, middle-skill labour remains underemployed

By Francis Kuriakose* The Indian economy was in a state of deceleration well before Covid-19 made its impact in early 2020. This can be inferred from the declining trends of four important macroeconomic variables that indicate the health of the economy in the last quarter of 2019.

Food security? Gujarat govt puts more than 5 lakh ration cards in the 'silent' category

By Pankti Jog* A new statistical report uploaded by the Gujarat government on the national food security portal shows that ensuring food security for the marginalized community is still not a priority of the state. The statistical report, uploaded on December 24, highlights many weaknesses in implementing the National Food Security Act (NFSA) in state.

The soundtrack of resistance: How 'Sada Sada Ya Nabi' is fueling the Iran war

By Syed Ali Mujtaba* The Persian track “ Sada Sada Ya Nabi ye ” by Hossein Sotoodeh has taken the world by storm. This viral media has cut across linguistic barriers to achieve cult status, reaching over 10 million views. The electrifying music and passionate rendition by the Iranian singer have resonated across the globe, particularly as the high-intensity military conflict involving Iran entered its second month in March 2026.

Lata Mangeshkar, a Dalit from Devdasi family, 'refused to sing a song' about Ambedkar

By Pramod Ranjan* An artist is known and respected for her art. But she is equally, or even more so known and respected for her social concerns. An artist's social concerns or in other words, her worldview, give a direction and purpose to her art. History remembers only such artists whose social concerns are deep, reasoned and of durable importance. Lata Mangeshkar (28 September 1929 – 6 February 2022) was a celebrated playback singer of the Hindi film industry. She was the uncrowned queen of Indian music for over seven decades. Her popularity was unmatched. Her songs were heard and admired not only in India but also in Pakistan, Bangladesh and many other South Asian countries. In this article, we will focus on her social concerns. Lata lived for 92 long years. Music ran in her blood. Her father also belonged to the world of music. Her two sisters, Asha Bhonsle and Usha Mangeshkar, are well-known singers. Lata might have been born in Indore but the blood of a famous Devdasi family...

'Batteries now cheap enough for solar to meet India's 90% demand': Expert quotes Ember study

By A Representative Shankar Sharma, Power & Climate Policy Analyst, has urged India’s top policymakers to reconsider the financial and ecological implications of the country’s energy transition strategy in light of recent global developments. In a letter dated April 10, 2026, addressed to the Union Ministers of Finance, Power, New & Renewable Energy, Environment, Forest & Climate Change, and the Vice Chair of NITI Aayog, with a copy to the Prime Minister, Sharma highlighted concerns over India’s ambitious plans for coal gasification and the Prototype Fast Breeder Reactor (PFBR).

Health Day ads spark row as NAPi targets Britannia campaign, criticizes celebrity endorsement

By A Representative The advocacy group Nutrition Advocacy in Public Interest (NAPi) has raised concerns over what it describes as misleading advertising of ultra-processed food products (UPFs), particularly those high in sugar, fat and salt, calling for stricter regulations and an end to such promotions across media platforms.

Search This Blog