Casteism, suicide of a student and politics of death

Hyderabad University student Rohith Vemula committed suicide. Based on his suicide note and some previous letters it looks like he was unhappy with the education system or society in general because of some incidents in his life. His being a Dalit might have played a role in this frustration, which resulted in a loss of all hope of justice, and in that frustration, he might have taken this extreme step. These things may or may not be true and may not be the real reason behind his suicide, but this is what everyone is predicting based on events that transpired before and after his death. In his suicide note, he doesn't blame anyone in particular for his death but there are many hints to conclude that the system's failure to make him believe that justice can be done with him might be one of the reasons for this extreme step. Casteism still exists in India in various forms. People still suffer from caste discrimination and it is really sad. There are many attempts from all quarters of society to remove this evil but somehow it still exists. It is a form of discrimination like racism in Western societies, so it is a very serious issue that doesn't get as much attention.

Caste starts playing its role in a person's life in India since their birth. School and college admissions depend on it. Therefore, which field they can choose for their career also depends on it. During marriage, many people are very rigid about the caste criteria so the choice of a life partner also depends on caste. It is still a very important factor in Indian politics. So, no matter how much people deny it, the truth is that caste and casteism still very much exist in Indian society and it plays a major role in people's behavior. But one thing has definitely changed, the way this discrimination is practiced now is very different compared to fifty years back. Now there are no separate wells for Dalits or they are not treated as untouchables publicly as they were in the past but discrimination is practiced in a very subtle way. One can feel it in people's behavior, one can feel it during elections but superficially everything looks very normal until something tragic like this happens. 

Maybe we will never know the real reason behind Rohith's suicide, but we know that caste-based discrimination still exists. When I say caste-based discrimination I am not just talking about so-called lower castes discriminated by so-called upper castes but it happens the other way around also. Discrimination is discrimination it doesn't matter who is a perpetrator and who is a victim. It should be treated with equal seriousness. These castes are nothing but one crude criterion to measure the social status of a particular community. Every society has this system in some form or another. In some countries, it is in the form of race, where only people from certain races occupy certain spaces and hold powerful positions, in India it took the form of a caste system. In some countries, it is in the form of economic class. For this tragedy, instead of trying to find real reasons behind it very ugly politics is being played by every group involved in it. The death of one university student has become a big political capital. Many parties are trying to reap as much political mileage as possible from this tragic incident. University student organizations are involved in politics, so some sort of political power play was expected but the way the HRD minister tried to present wrong facts to cover up their mistakes and other political parties are trying to take advantage of this situation is really sickening. The press conference of the HRD minister was one such horrible scenario where she said that this issue should not be looked at as Dalit vs non-dalit and then went on to mention the word 'Dalit' so many times in her statement. The fact is that a student committed suicide, one can blame him for taking this step but we need to ask was this tragedy preventable? Is the current social, political, and educational system in any way responsible for this? If they are, then we need to look at the system and check what are the things that can be improved to avoid such incidents in the future. The government should recognize its mistakes and try to take corrective action rather than offering some lame excuses. In any progressive society, there should be ample scope to express dissent against anything, if dissenting voices are crushed then it can result in something tragic incident like this.

After Rohith's death, everyone from our PM to ministers, to the general public, and even the media seemed to be concerned about his family and his problems but why no one bothered to look into his problems when he was still alive? Why university administration was so insensitive towards him? Why do farmers, students, or any common person become so important only after their death? All concerned people need to give answers to all these questions. 

Thanks for reading and please share your views on this topic.

[Copyright : Vinay Thakur. Please contact the author for re-posting or publishing]

Farmer suicide - please stop this politics on death

There is an intense battle going on between the ruling party (BJP and its allies called NDA) and the opposition party (mainly Congress and its allies called UPA) in India. The main reason for this current political battle is the issue of the recent land acquisition bill and the farmer suicide issue. The opposition is trying to get maximum benefit from this issue, and the ruling party is trying to dodge the issue of farmer suicide by painting the rosy picture as if everything is under control and suddenly everything will change by the new land acquisition bill that they want to implement. Actually, both the issues, the land acquisition bill and debt-ridden farmers committing suicide are not new. These issues are being exploited for political gains in every election. The land acquisition bill has become a more controversial subject in the last few months mainly because of the bullying attitude of the current government which brought an ordinance to implement the bill rather than choosing the path of discussion and bipartisan collaboration as happened in 2013 to pass a similar bill. Now they have to get it passed through parliament and this is where opposition parties are sensing an opportunity to put the government in a difficult spot as they don't have the majority in the upper house (Rajya Sabha). But the more serious issue here is of situation of many farmers who are forced to commit suicide because of reasons like crop failure, poor weather, and lack of proper value to their crops which results in huge and unmanageable debt on them. There are so many reasons why many Indian farmers get into deep financial trouble where they feel no hope of revival of their situation and are forced to end their lives. Most farm lands are owned by men so they are the ones who are dying, no doubt that their families also go through tremendous trauma and hardships but normally farmer who commits suicide is the male head of the household.

BJP used the issue of farmer's suicide in previous general elections along with many other issues against the ruling UPA government, now Congress is returning the favor by attacking the NDA government on the same issue by linking it with the land acquisition bill. I studied this issue briefly and found that there are many reasons why some farmers choose to take the extreme step of suicide, but the main reason is that they lose hope in a system that is supposed to help them in distress. This system looks reasonably good on paper but its implementation on ground level is so pathetic that it is almost useless for these farmers. The farm sector in India is very ignored and unreformed sector, all other industrial sectors get some reforms and assistance to increase their income but the farm sector and farmers are always treated as a liability. It seems they are continuously asking for help and subsidies to rescue them from endless debt. The attitude of all political parties towards farmers is not very kind, they all exploit them as vote banks or use them as instruments to trouble the government but rarely do they take any substantial steps to help this distressed class when they come into power. This crisis reached its worst point when a farmer committed suicide right in front of the media, police, and thousands of people including the chief minister of Delhi during an AAP rally in the national capital. Since this death, India has witnessed a pathetic display of political opportunism where political parties are busy playing a political blame game over the dead body of a farmer. This blame game which started immediately after this tragic incident doesn't seem to end which displays the pathetic face of all political parties who want to politicize this issue to their advantage. The death of farmers is a result of a failure of the political, economic, and social systems at every level. It is a problem of years of neglect by successive governments to implement their schemes efficiently on the ground level. They declare so many schemes but rarely do they bother to check if those schemes are producing the desired effect or if the benefit of these schemes is reaching the people who really need it.

As per available statistics, more than 60% of people in India are dependent on the farm sector, so it is the largest private sector of the Indian economy. But the truth is that it hardly gets attention proportional to its size from Indian political and economic experts. Farmers and farm laborers are worst affected by this neglect. Every government announces so many schemes for them. Based on political slogans and government announcements one may think that this class is the biggest beneficiary of subsidies and relief packages from all governments, but then the question is, why they are still in distress? If such a large section of the population is dependent on farming and related things why union budget of India do not reflect that percentage in resource allocation for them? Why it is so difficult for farmers to get a loan even from nationalized banks whereas any salaried person whose job is equally uncertain can get a loan easily? Why do relief packages declared by all state and national governments from all political parties fail to reach their most deserving beneficiaries? Why a dead farmer is more valuable than a living one? "Jai jawan, jai kisan" is a very popular slogan, so, why does jawan's (soldier) death trigger completely different emotions among political and social classes compared to kisan's (farmer) death? Instead of discussing this issue seriously, and trying to come up with practical and viable solutions, why our political class is busy playing endless blame games for years? There are many questions like this, but there is no one who is even willing to listen to them, and this is a very scary scenario for those farmers who entirely depend on this broken system for help. This problem is political, economic, and social. But political and economic angles are most important as both can change the situation. Respective governments in state and center need to work towards making farming a profitable enterprise. Today it is not considered a profitable business for most farmers, among the social classes that benefited from the economic boom in India for the last two decades farmers are not one of them. Governments need to design policies that help in increasing farmer's income so that they are not dependent on rescue packages. I request my readers who understand Hindi to watch this brilliant report by Ravish to understand what difficulties farmers face on the ground level even after the declaration of so many schemes by the government to help them.

If we look beyond this political farce and endless TV debates where only the blame game is played we can see the sad face of an Indian farmer who is confused and wondering why his fortunes are not changing even after all the hard work. Why his family is excluded from the picture of shining India? They are already practicing the mantra of "make in India" so why they are not getting the attention and care that they need and deserve? Why their death is required to initiate all this discussion which every time ends in nothing but a blame game? I am sure there are many WHYs in the minds of many farmers and their families but unfortunately, I don't have any answers to their questions. I hope people who can answer them bother to look beyond their party politics and think at least for once about farmers and not about their own political fortunes, until then, there will be one more prime-time show, one more blog, one more headline, one more debate, one more chaotic parliament session but among all this, somewhere, in some village, a farmer will be preparing to end his life and we all will be guilty of allowing that suicide to happen.

Thanks for reading and please share your views on this topic. 

[Copyright: Vinay Thakur. Please contact the author for re-posting or publishing]

Links:
1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_acquisition_in_India
2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farmers%27_suicides_in_India
3. क्यों कर्जे से नहीं लड़ पाता किसान?

Khurshid Anwar - Guilty or victim of media trial

I read news about the suicide of Mr. Khurshid Anwar, a social worker and director of an NGO called the Institute for Social Democracy on my Facebook wall. I didn't know about him before reading the news about his death. The reason why this news caught my attention was because of the cause of his suicide, which was the depression caused because of sexual assault charges leveled against him by a 23-year-old girl who worked for some other NGO. Another reason was, that many women who knew Mr. Anwar personally were really surprised and shocked by this allegation and believed that there might be something fishy going on in this case. They think these charges might be false and someone was trying to implicate him in a crime he did not commit. If this is true, then, this may not be a suicide but a sort of murder. Maybe after a detailed investigation, the real truth will come out, but life is already lost. The role played by some news channels who accused Mr. Anwar of rape is also questioned. Can the media pass on the verdict of guilty or nonguilty without any trial? Such media trials can put a lot of stress on concerned people and results can be devastating as in this case. Media has the right to report the news but do they have the right to take sides and deliver verdicts without any substantial evidence?

Any victim of sexual assault should get all the possible support and help, and the guilty should not be spared in such cases no matter who they are. But at the same time, we should also need to make sure that such laws are not misused for personal or professional gains. Nowadays many cases of misuse of anti-dowry and anti-casteism laws are reported, and there are also cases of false sexual harassment or rape charges, because of the nature of these crimes victim immediately gets all the sympathy, and the accused is immediately painted as evil or declared guilty. No doubt that the victim should get all the required support but at the same time accused should also get the chance to defend and prove his/her innocence. The process should be fair for both of them. The rights of both the accused and the victim should be respected and honored. Media, social networks, and other electronic mediums also should deal with these types of cases sensibly and responsibly. Media plays a very important role in any civilized and progressive society. They are responsible for communicating correct and nonbiased information to people but nowadays we hardly see them doing this. Most of them are becoming like any other entertainment channels that cater to whatever their audience likes to watch, this is really pathetic.

Social and news media also played a very important role in some cases like the Jessica Lal murder case to get justice for the victim. However, tough competition between various news channels to grab the sensational news and report it first has created a situation where there is hardly any time to authenticate the information. Many times the channels broadcast the news as received before validating it or even checking the source and sometimes this creates a lot of damage to concerned parties. Recent sting operation tapes against AAP which were broadcasted on many news channels is another such example. I am against censoring media by any government organization, they should be independent, then only they can do their job without any fear of adverse government actions, but at the same time, they need to be responsible, with complete freedom also comes a lot of responsibility. They need to be really careful with the authenticity of the contents of their reporting when a large section of society depends on them as a source of authentic information. I hope this sense of responsibility prevails in current media houses that are controlled by some of the big corporations. I hope this doesn't become just another business but remains an independent pillar of democracy. If not, then we might see more victims like Khurshid Anwar who were declared guilty before any fair trial.

Thanks for reading and please share your views on this topic.

[Copyright: Vinay Thakur. Please contact the author for re-posting or publishing]

Links:
1. What Khurshid Anwar's suicide should tell the media
2. NGO director jumps to death as rape charges are levelled against him by 23-year-old woman

We need gender unbiased harassment laws

The recent case of the suicide of actress Jiah Khan and the subsequent happenings created a lot of stir in media and social networks. There were a few posts criticizing the way the case was handled and also some people believe that there was an attempt to accuse a man (in this case someone named Suraj Pancholi, her boyfriend) of her suicide. Many also feel that some of the laws like dowry law or sexual harassment laws are heavily biased toward women and they often misuse them to blackmail men and their families. Some of these posts take the familiar route of accusing the victim of her actions and feeling sympathy with the accused. In this case Jiah, no doubt is responsible for what she did but it's also necessary to investigate what made her take this step. This case is an ideal example of our attitude towards these types of problems. Some people want to blame men for whatever wrong happens with women and some people always want to blame women's behavior for whatever wrong happens to them, these two polarized groups always fight with each other. We see somewhat similar attitudes when people try to accuse victims in most rape cases and blame their dress or behavior for a crime committed against them, by doing this they are not helping to solve this problem but they are making things more complicated.

In the last few years, there have been some laws introduced in many countries to curb the number of cases related to sexual harassment. Mainly these laws are designed to protect women's rights and deliver justice if there is a crime committed against them. Some laws are purposely made very strict to make sure that perpetrators of these crimes don't make use of loopholes to escape the punishment. At the same time, we also see that some of these laws can be misused, so there seems to be a two-fold problem here. We need very strict laws to control crime against women but at the same time, we need to make sure that there is no misuse of these laws. Another important point is that it would be a big mistake to assume that only women are sexually harassed or physically assaulted, these crimes are also committed against males, so we must have gender-unbiased harassment laws. This will provide protection to both genders from any harassment crimes against them and also reduce the feeling that some laws are very biased towards a particular gender. There is no doubt that we need these laws but also they need to be unbiased, crime committed against women is as bad as crime committed against men. Victims need justice and proper support to deal with these situations. Our social structure is such that currently women are more prone or vulnerable to these incidents that's why we see most of these laws designed particularly to protect them. It is the responsibility of lawmakers to make sure that laws related to sexual harassment and torture (like dowry) are gender unbiased so that all people feel that they are not unfairly targeted or neglected purposely. Path to seek justice and protection should be offered to all and its availability should not be based on a person's gender, religion, caste, or something else.

Thanks for reading and please share your views on this topic.

(Copyright: Vinay Thakur. Please contact the author for re-posting or publishing)