How Young People in Uttar Pradesh Are Helping the Elderly Access Benefits

“There are many who want to do something good for their community, and this effort is not only inspiring them but also showing them the path of working for the society.”

“There were mistakes in my Aadhaar, and I was not able to produce my income certificate due to problems beyond my understanding. I gave up on this pension thing.” However, the life of Asharfi Begum of Sanathpur village is much better now as she recently started getting Rs 500 per month under the old age pension scheme.

Though this money is not a lot, it takes cares of her basic needs. Broke due to various family problems, illiteracy and fear of documentation work, she was not able to engage in the formalities required for availing the benefits of the scheme.

However, with help and guidance from the educated youth of her village, now she has availed the benefit and feels happy and secure. “It is a warm feeling that there is someone who thinks about the elderly like me and ready to help anytime,” said Asharfi Begum.

Dependent elderly

Elderly people are a highly vulnerable section of society, but they are the most neglected, starting from the family level. This population is voiceless and disunited. As per 2011 Census, there are 15.44 million elderly in Uttar Pradesh (UP), out of which 12.44 million are living in rural areas. The landholding of rural agrarian families is shrinking, and the youth are migrating in search of employment.

About three-fourths of the elderly are financially dependent on others. On a gender-wise split, of all the elderly men, 38% are financially dependent, partially or completely; among the elderly women 84% are dependent. They do not have enough money for their daily needs and health expenses.

As per the Building Knowledge-base on Population Ageing in India (BKPAI) research project reports-2011, around 65% of the elderly have some or the other chronic health ailment. The life expectancy at the age of 60 years in UP is 15.8 years for men and 18 years for women. It means, on an average, one elderly person would be in a state of dependency for these many years; it is crucial from the planning point of view.

Unutilised welfare schemes

After realising the gravitas of the problem, the government started many elderly welfare schemes over the last decade. Provisions such as elderly pension scheme and widow pension scheme give direct monetary benefit to the beneficiaries.

Educated youth are helping the elderly like Riyakat Ali get old age pension, by assisting them with the necessary documentation (Photo by Anand Pande)

Educated youth are helping the elderly like Riyakat Ali get old age pension, by assisting them with the necessary documentation. Image: Anand Pande/VillageSquare

But the elderly in the villages are not aware of the various schemes that can help them and improve their lives. Even if a few of them are aware, there are many hurdles in getting the actual benefits of the well-meaning schemes. Most of the people who are eligible for the benefits of various schemes are unaware of the process involved.

The literacy rate of the elderly in rural UP is 30.7%. They lack the confidence to do the complicated documentation tasks required for getting the benefits of various schemes like the old age pension scheme. Also going to district headquarters for documentation related queries or further persuasion is not an easy task for the elderly. There is no help as their children are away or are negligent.

Unfortunately, last mile hurdles are proving to be a major challenge even for the bureaucracy. They are not able to reach out to deserving beneficiaries due to overload of work. In many welfare schemes, there is limited enrolment and funds are not utilised optimally.

Youth support

Professionals and the educated people of Raipur village in Gyanpur administrative block felt this evident gap. They are the industrious people from the same village, who completed their education and are working in different locations.

Relatively better placed than the villagers, whenever they looked at the status of the elderly in the neighbourhood, they felt disturbed. They started helping the elderly in their capacities; but there were many who needed help.

This group of few, with age range from 25 to 45, has inspired others, and many are showing interest to get associated with such effort. After understanding that they could help in various ways and many were willing to assist, the group started a not-for-profit organisation called Fundamental Action and Research Foundation (FARF), which run completely on voluntarism.

Also read: Why Govt Employees Are Up in Arms About the New Pension Scheme

Helping hands

Today, there are more than 25 schemes and programmes for the elderly population in India and most of them are underutilised. Not much action is seen on the ground, irrespective of good intentions of the lawmakers. However, things seem to be changing slowly.

There are many success stories in villages across India, where the youth have struggled to overcome various barriers to achieve great careers and livelihood options. But it is crucial for the development of other rural poor that this well-settled youth use their experience and talent for the guidance of the needy.

“There are many who want to do something good for their community, and this effort is not only inspiring them but also showing them the path of working for the society,” said Anand Pande, one of the founder members, who works in a multinational company in Bengaluru.

The youth are helping the needy elderly, by visiting various offices to complete complicated documentation work, so that the elderly receive the benefits of the schemes. They have plans to look into other such underutilised schemes as well. Their work is also spreading along with the volunteer pool, and currently, the work is on in six villages in Bhadohi district of UP.

This article was originally published on VillageSquare. Read the original article here.

BJP Mahila Morcha Leader Says Hindus Should Gangrape Muslim Women; Gets Expelled

Sunita Singh Gaur said Muslim mothers and sisters should have their “honour looted” as there is “no other way” to “protect India”.

New Delhi: Sunita Singh Gaur, leader of the Bharatiya Janata Party Mahila Morcha in Uttar Pradesh’s Ramkola, has reportedly been removed from her position after she posted on Facebook that Hindu men should enter Muslim homes and rape the women.

“There is only one solution for them (Muslims). Hindu brothers should make a group of 10 and gang rape their (Muslims) mothers and sisters openly on the streets and then then hang them in the middle of the bazaar for others to see,” Gaur’s post in Hindi says.

She goes on to say that Muslim mothers and sisters should have their “honour looted” as there is “no other way” to “protect India”.

Lallantop reported that the comment has since been deleted and The Wire was unable to ascertain the exact date of the comment. Screenshots of the post have since gone viral on social media.

Also read | Sudan: Another Example of Sexual Violence Being Used as a Weapon During Conflict

Vijaya Rahatkar, national president of the BJP Mahila Morcha, responded to a tweet about Gaur’s posts by saying that such “hateful comments” would not be tolerated and Gaur has been expelled.

According to the press release Rahatkar tweeted, Gaur was removed from her post on June 27.

While this would not be the first time BJP leaders have been accused of propagating hate online or offline, the fact that a Mahila Morcha leader was instigating rape and gruesome sexual violence shocked many on social media.

Narendra Modi Urges People Not to Take Democracy ‘for Granted’

The prime minister said that in order to ensure smooth conduct of the social order, a constitution is required.

New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi Sunday reminded people of the Emergency and urged them not to take democracy “for granted”, saying in day-to-day life, it is difficult to savour the joy of democratic rights, unless they are snatched away.

In his first ‘Mann ki Baat’ monthly radio address after returning to power, he said everyday when one gets to eat food on time, one doesn’t realize what hunger pangs are.

“Similarly, in day-to-day life, it is difficult to savour the joy of democratic rights, unless they are snatched away. During Emergency, every citizen of the country had started getting the feeling that something that belonged to him had been snatched away. If what was snatched had never been enjoyed by that person, ever, it had to eventually precipitate into a painful inner agony,” he said.

The prime minister reminded people that in order to ensure smooth conduct of the social order, a constitution is required. “Laws and rules are necessary, rights and duties should be part of due discourse,” he said.

Also read: The Emergency Had a Silly – and Surreal – Side Too

On June 25, India marked the 44th anniversary of Emergency.

In 1977 Lok Sabha elections, the PM said, people voted without bothering about other rights and requirements.

They voted, he said, “just for the sake of saving democracy. And the country had witnessed one such Election in 1977.”

“When something is in close proximity of us, we tend to underestimate its importance. We ignore even amazing facts about it. We have been blessed with a democracy so invaluable, yet we take it for granted so easily,” he said.

Modi was of the view that people must keep reminding themselves that democracy is “gloriously great, it flows in our veins, through centuries of dedicated practice.”

Referring to the recently-concluded Lok Sabha election, he said a record 61 crore out of nearly 91 crore voters exercised their franchise.

“If you exclude China, the number of people who voted in India exceeds the population of any other country in the world. The number of people who voted in the 2019 Lok Sabha election is more than the entire population of America, close to double the figure. The total number of voters in India exceeds the entire population of Europe,” said in his address.

He said that lakhs of teachers, officers and staff strived day and night to carry out the exercise.

Also read: From Emergency to Now: The Wide Arc of a Hack’s Ideological Journey

Three lakh personnel of the central armed police forces, 20 lakh state police personnel ensured free and fair elections.

“Besides this, there is another fact pertaining to these elections that swells our hearts with pride. Perhaps, this is the first time ever that women have enthusiastically voted, as much as men did. This time the ratio of men and women who voted was almost the same.

“Another encouraging fact is that, today, there are a record 78 women Members of Parliament. I congratulate the Election Commission and every person connected with the electioneering process and salute the aware voters of India,” Modi said.

The prime minister also used the opportunity to ask people to read more and more books at a time when everything is available using “Google guru”.

He said he prefers books and not bouquets as gifts and referred to a collection of Munshi Premchand’s stories which he went through again recently.

” … in today’s digital world and in the time of Google Guru … take some time out from your daily routine and devote it to books,” he said.

(PTI)

Data Show Groundwater in 16% of Talukas, Mandals and Blocks Is ‘Over-Exploited’

As many as 1,034 units have been categorised as “over-exploited”, the data state.

New Delhi:  Groundwater level in 16% of the taluka, mandal, block level units in the country fall under the “over-exploited” category, while 4% falls under the “critical” category, government data show.

Groundwater level of the 6,584 block, mandal, tehsil level units assessed by the Central Groundwater Board reveal that 4,520 units fall under the “safe category”, according to the data shared by the government in Lok Sabha last week.

As many as 1,034 units have been categorised as “over-exploited”, the data state.

Nearly 681 block, mandal, taluka level units in the country, constituting 10% of the total figure, fall under the “semi-critical” category, while 253 fall under the “critical” category. Nearly 1% of the blocks, mandals and talukas had saline water.

Also read: Doubts Over NITI Aayog Claim That 21 Cities Face Groundwater Extinction by 2020

The figure is based on the government’s 2013 assessment.

“As per the 2013 assessment, out of total 6,584 assessment units (blocks, talukas, mandals, watersheds, firkas) in the country, 1,034 units in 17 states and Union territories have been categorised as over-exploited where groundwater extraction is more than the net groundwater availability and there is significant long-term decline in water levels.

“Two hundred and fifty-three units have been categorised as critical, 681 units as semi-critical and 4,520 units as safe,” the minister of state in the jal shakti ministry said in parliament last week.

The overexploitation of the groundwater was highest in the states of Punjab (76%) and Rajasthan (66%), followed by Delhi (56%) and Haryana (54%).

Also read: To Avoid Future Crises, Water Needs to Be Politicised

There was no over-exploitation of groundwater reported in the states of West Bengal, Uttarakhand, Tripura, Odisha, Nagaland, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Manipur, Jammu and Kashmir, Assam, Arunachal Pradesh and Goa.

Groundwater levels in all the block, taluka, mandal level units from 12 states and Union territories Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Goa, Manipur, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Nagaland, Andaman and Nicobar Islands, Chandigarh, Dadra and Nagar Haveli were reported to be in the safe category.

(PTI)

Woman Officer Assaulted in Telangana, TRS MLA’s Brother Held

Forest department officials said that C. Anitha, Forest Range Officer, has been hospitalised.

Hyderabad: A Telangana woman forest department official was injured Sunday when she was attacked by some people, allegedly led by the brother of a TRS MLA, at a village in Komaram Bheem Asifabad district over a land issue.

Superintendent of Police Malla Reddy said Koneru Krishna, brother of TRS MLA Koneru Kannappa, has been arrested and booked under various sections of the IPC.

Forest department officials said that C Anitha, Forest Range Officer, has been hospitalised.

They said Anitha had gone to Sarasala village with some officials to plant saplings as part of the government’s ‘Haritha Haram’ green initiative programme when some villagers, led by Krishna, attacked them with bamboo poles, claiming that the land belongs to them.

A video footage of the attack, which went viral, shows Anitha climbing a tractor to escape the attack and Krishna and other villagers hitting the vehicle.

An unidentified man is then seeing hitting the woman official.

Speaking to reporters from the hospital, Anitha alleged that Krishna first hit her with a bamboo stick, followed by the others in the group.

Telangana Principal Chief Conservator of Forest P K Jha said the land where the officials went belonged to the forest department and the MLA was also informed about it.

He said the department would take this issue seriously “at a higher level”.

“It was forest land. I was given to understand that earlier there were some attempts to encroach it. That time our people got them vacated. It was totally under our control. There is no cultivation. His (MLAs) brother was there (during the attack),” Jha told PTI.

Kannappa could not be reached for his reactions.

Koneru Krishna Rao was recently elected as vice chairman of the Komaram Bheem Asifabad zilla parishad.

(PTI)

Interview | Meet the People Trying to Make Workplaces More LGBTI+ Inclusive

Pride Circle is organising India’s first LGBTI+ job fair in Bangalore.

Some years ago, a World Bank report indicated that homophobia and the exclusion of LGBTI+ people in India had a significant economic cost in terms of loss of GDP. On account of factors such as social stigma leading to mental health issues or the fear of being oneself at home and in any public space including the workplace, the community has been denied the opportunity to leverage choices and its own skills, and explore freely its ability to sustain itself with dignity and contribute to the economy.

There is no quick-fix solution for the inclusion of LGBTI+ people in the workplace, but organisations such as the Bangalore-based Pride Circle have been working relentlessly in this direction.

Set up two years ago by Srini Ramaswamy and Ramkrishna Sinha, both seasoned professionals in the diversity and inclusion (D&I) space, Pride Circle has about 500 followers – a mix of LGBTI+ people, allies from the corporate world and workplace inclusion consultants. It has organised over a dozen events including round-tables and webinars with business and mental health leaders from across India and the world, and is now aiming to make history with India’s first LGBTI+ job fair, RISE, on July 12 in Bangalore.

In a conversation, Pride Circle’s co-founders shared their views and plans for workplace inclusion and the RISE job fair.

Workplace inclusion has emerged as a buzz term for sections of industry ever since Section 377 was read down last September. How do you view this sudden interest in the LGBTI talent pool?

The reading down of Section 377 has enabled the LGBTI+ community to ask for a workplace where they are treated with dignity and respect. It has broken the silence surrounding the bullying faced by LGBTI employees – for instance, an ex-employee of Tech Mahindra tweeted about the harassment he faced from the person heading the company’s D&I department. The tweet led to an internal investigation and eventually resulted in the termination of the D&I head.

Today, in addition to such action, industry has shown a willingness to talk about LGBTI+ inclusion, change policies and engage with the community.

There’s a view that the industry could have taken steps towards inclusion long before Section 377 was read down. After all, being gay was never a crime. How do you see this?

Many inclusive organisations like IBM, Goldman Sachs and Godrej championed the cause of LGBTI+ inclusion despite  Section 377 because the law did not prohibit organisations from fostering equality and inclusiveness in the workplace. However, some organisations were extra cautious. They were worried about the implications of any potential abetment to a violation of Section 377.

Also read: A Crowdfunded Campaign Is Using Art to Flesh Out What a Bystander Is

For the LGBTI+ community, inclusion has often remained a policy in the rule books of corporations, to be leveraged for goodwill rather than implementation. What is your take on this?

Inclusion takes a great deal of effort. To create a culture where everyone feels they belong requires action, patience and a long-term plan. While there is plenty of research on the benefits of diversity and its positive impact on the bottom-line, that aspect is either missed out or gets relegated to the bottom of the to-do list.

There is a lot of work to be done in benchmarking good practices and grading the performance of companies from time to time. What also needs to be addressed is research-based evidence on the various factors that impact the community and how they present  real challenges for any LGBTI+ person  in the workplace. It is a journey as much for the industry as it is for the community.

In the Indian context, we have seen only a handful of local companies adopting inclusive policies. The leaders, so to speak, are largely MNCs, that too from the IT and financial services sectors. Despite the statements made by FICCI on inclusion last year, why is there such slackness when it comes to moving towards the goal of diversity and inclusion in the workplace? 

MNCs come with the advantage of having seen such efforts in their workplaces in the Americas or Europe or the Philippines, and due to their learnings from diverse  geographies they  have reaped the benefits of inclusion. So while they lead the pack due to this advantage, we are seeing more Indian companies like Godrej, Tata Steel, TCS and Infosys  working towards LGBTI+ inclusion.

Also read: In a First, Railways Shortlists Transgender Person for Train Driver/Technician Post

What made you think of organising a job fair such as RISE?

We have worked with multiple organisations, assisting them in drawing up a strategy of inclusion and an action plan. There have been many conversations, stories, panel discussions and awareness sessions which are great and create an impact, but they proceed at their own pace. We want to accelerate the pace of inclusion.

We realised that many LGBTI+ people are either unemployed or underemployed. Hiding your identity at the workplace impacts productivity and in turn impacts careers, restricting the potential of LGBTI+ employees. We also wanted to create an opportunity for visionary leadership organisations to take affirmative action.

Till now the narrative has been: you will not be hired because you are different, you won’t be a ‘fit’ despite your skillset. We want to change that narrative to “you are welcome, we celebrate the difference”.

The job fair is an opportunity to not only hire skilled LGBTI+ talent but also to reach out and extend a welcoming hand to those from the marginalised transgender community who have been treated as outcastes. Kicked out of home, bullied in school and denied admission in college, they may not have the requisite educational qualifications, but they surely have skills and the ambition to work hard to make a living. We want companies to open their doors to this section too.

Will RISE be limited to a one-off event in Bangalore or will it travel to other cities as well?

RISE in Bangalore is just the beginning, and we plan to travel to 10 cities where Pride Circle has a presence. There are LGBTI+ people everywhere and so are the jobs. Our job is to match LGBTI+ talent with inclusive organisations all over India.

Sharif D. Rangnekar is a communications and workplace sensitisation (LGBTI+) consultant and former journalist. He is the author of Straight To Normal – My Life As A Gay Man

Caste Wasn’t a British Construct – and Anyone Who Studies History Should Know That

This false thesis allows upper-caste intellectuals to maintain privilege in both India and the US.

The geographer Sanjoy Chakravorty recently promised that, in his new book, he would “show how the social categories of religion and caste as they are perceived in modern-day India were developed during the British colonial rule…” The air of originality amused me. This notion has been in vogue in South Asian postcolonial studies for at least two decades. The highest expression of the genre, Nicholas Dirks’s Castes of Mind, was published in 2001.

I take no issue with claiming originality for warmed-over ideas: following the neoliberal mantra of “publish or perish,” we academics do it all the time. But reading Chakravorty’s essay, I was shocked at the longevity of this particular idea, that caste as we know it is an artefact of British colonialism. For any historian of pre-colonial India, the idea is absurd. Therefore, its persistence has less to do with empirical merit, than with the peculiar dynamics of the global South Asian academy.

The origins of this idea lie in Bernard Cohn’s work on the census’ role in codifying jāti, and on the role of Brahmin native informants in shaping the British imagination of Hinduism. The first process was peculiar to British colonialism, since this bureaucratic technology was new. The second process is familiar: Brahminism has shaped state ideology since the Gupta empire. Exceptions – like the 17th-century Nāyaka states that celebrated the commerce and cultural life of ‘left-hand castes’ – only prove the rule.

Also read: To See Just How Far Outside Our Genes Our Differences Lie, Step out of Caste

Somehow, scholars leapt from Cohn’s work to a thesis that caste as we recognise it is a poisoned gift of the British. In the region where I have some expertise, the Marathi-speaking pre-modern world, English and Marathi scholarship amply document caste as both material oppression and varna ideology. More viscerally, low caste sants speak to us, centuries later, of their poverty, their back-breaking labour, and the dishonour and loneliness of their social position. Consider just two examples, the first an abhaṅg by Tukaram, the second by Janabai:

Born a shudra, I was a tradesman.
God comes to me like a sacred keepsake…
I was miserable in mundane life
Ever since I was orphaned.
Famine reduced me to utter poverty, I lost all honour.
I watched my wife starve to death…

§

 

Jani has had enough of mundane life—
But how will I repay my debt?
Discard your grandeur
To grind grain with me.
Hari, become a woman
Bathing me and washing my dirty clothes.
You carry the water with pride
And gather dung with your own two hands…

For both poets, imagining God as their companions in the daily grind of labour, poverty and social marginality, poetry and devotion were their only refuge. To read them and deny the existence of caste ‘as we might recognise it today’ is a violence that no historian should commit.

In my own research, evidence of caste as an organising principle of social life is everywhere. At the Goa State Historical Archives, I recently transcribed a late-17th-century register of slave manumissions. The vast majority of the freed slaves were from lower castes in the Konkan, such as kunbis and kolis, which still exist today:

So durable and adaptable is caste that it continued even after conversion. In the 17h-century baptismal records of the village of Loutulim, we see how caste even affected godparenthood, a new form of elective kinship brought by Catholicism.

Undoubtedly, caste changed under the British ­– but this is trivially true of every period of Indian history. Caste adapts to changing state technologies and political economy, but remains a total social fact, organising every realm of Indian life: legal, economic and political, religious, aesthetic and cultural.

This is not to minimise the pernicious nature of colonialism, or postcolonialism’s critique of it. The horrific immiseration of the Indian countryside by British colonialism – which wiped out rural wealth, laid waste to millions of lives in famine after famine, and destroyed artisanal economies that had driven global trade for centuries – affected the lower castes in particular. Simultaneously, British education created both the upper-caste elites who became their successors, and nurtured lower-caste thinkers like Mahatma Phule and Dr B.R. Ambedkar who articulated devastating critiques of varna ideology. Colonialism, like all forms of rule, had complex effects on caste. Yet the British did not create it.

Also read: ‘Voices of Dalit Women More Marginal Than Men – That’s Why Their Resistance Hits Hard’

Given how evidently untrue this thesis is, the question is why it persists. The answer, in part, is that postcolonial studies is its own echo-chamber. Works like these are not vetted by boring historians of pre-colonial India like myself. Rather, under the sexy sign of theory, postcolonial scholars make sweeping claims about pre-colonial India, without expertise in the period.

More importantly, this thesis allows upper-caste intellectuals to maintain privilege in both India and the US. The Indian educational system, which disproportionately benefits upper castes, allows them to migrate. Once there, without the prop of caste privilege, postcolonial theory provided an avenue for critiquing white elites. Scholars like us have held elite academic positions for decades now on the basis of representing the brown voice of the subaltern in the West.

By then foisting the blame on colonialism, we absolve ourself of complicity in caste, even as we continue to benefit from caste oppression in India. Academic gate-keeping – through patronage networks of teaching and hiring, journal editorial boards and conference invitations – keeps this monopoly in place. Meanwhile, the same tired theory is repackaged and resold by scholars eager to profit from this monopoly. If you think about the academy as an economic institution, it is a fascinating case of covert collusion.

I speak as an insider, a whistleblower. I come from precisely this class of upper-caste diasporic intellectuals. The big secret of South Asian postcolonial theory is that its obfuscatory language – signalling sophistication to mere mortals – actually hides power. The scholars avow progressivism, but their theories defend privilege in both India and the US.

Also read: The Casteist Underbelly of the Indian Private Sector

No wonder that Hindutvadis in both countries are now quoting their works to claim that caste was never a Hindu phenomenon. As Dalits are lynched across India and upper-caste South Asian-Americans lobby to erase the history of their lower-caste compatriots from US textbooks, to traffic in this self-serving theory is unconscionable.

The painful irony is that Dalit scholars have said this before, while struggling to get past academic gate-keepers and scholarly chowkidars. It took a Chakravarti saying it on Twitter for this critique to garner mainstream attention. In 2019, the question is not whether the subaltern can speak – it is whether us double-Brahmins of the academy, who perform progressivism while maintaining caste, will ever allow them to be heard.

From August 1, Ananya Chakravarti is associate professor of history at Georgetown University. Her first book, The Empire of Apostles: Religion, Accommodatio and the Imagination of Empire in Early Modern Brazil and India, was published by Oxford University Press in 2018. She is working on a monograph on the Konkan, as well as a co-authored volume on caste with Varsha Ayyar. As part of RadicalxChange Foundation, Chakravarti is working on solutions for remaking the global academy as a non-capitalist institution.

Akash Vijayvargiya Released on Bail, Video Shows Supporter ‘Firing’ in Air

Kailash Vijayvargiya’s son was caught on camera assaulting a municipal officer with a cricket bat.

The Congress has demanded that a criminal case be registered in connection with a video which shows a suspected supporter of BJP MLA Akash Vijayvargiya firing in the air. Akash was released on bail on Sunday, four days after having been held for assaulting a civic official at Indore in Madhya Pradesh.

The purported video of the celebratory firing following Akash’s release has gone viral on social media.

In the video, several people are seen dancing to drumbeats in front of what appears to be Akash’s AB Road office, adjoining the city BJP headquarters. In the course of the celebrations, a person can be seen firing a gun five times in the air.

Congress spokesman Neelabh Shukla demanded that the police file an FIR and take action. “Firing at a public place, where a crowd has gathered, is a crime,” he said.

The BJP’s city unit media in-charge Devkinandan Tiwari said that neither the party nor any of its workers were associated with the firing.

Meanwhile, Sanyogitaganj police station in-charge Subodh Shrotiya said, “This video of celebratory firing was not shot on Sunday. It looks to be an old video, though we are aware of it.”

Also read: Raids on Kamal Nath’s Aides Take Political Hue

Akash, a first-time MLA who represents the Indore 3 Assembly segment, was released after his bail order from the Bhopal court of additional sessions judge Suresh Singh reached Indore on Sunday.

He was arrested last Wednesday after having been caught on television cameras while assaulting a civic official with a cricket bat while opposing the demolition of a dilapidated house in the city. A magistrate’s court at Indore had sent him in judicial custody till July 11 after his arrest, denying him bail.

The Bhopal court also granted him bail in an earlier case where he was accused of staging an illegal protest. Akash was asked to furnish a personal bail bond of Rs 50,000 in the case of assault and of Rs 20,000 in the illegal protest case.

Akash is the son of BJP general secretary Kailash Vijayvargiya.

(With PTI inputs)

The UN Has Failed the Rohingya in Myanmar. Now it Should Take Responsibility

The United Nations recently accepted a 36-page report that examined the body’s systemic failures in the country.

The United Nations recently accepted a 36-page report that examined the body’s involvement in Myanmar from 2010 to 2018.

The report, by former Guatemalan foreign minister and UN executive Gert Rosenthal, acknowledges that there were “systemic failures” in how the UN responded to the crisis in Myanmar.

The Rosenthal report (dated May 29, 2019) finds that the UN response was “dysfunctional” in Myanmar, and that its leadership and conduct was “relatively impotent.” These organisational failures were a result of various officials pursuing their own narrow end, often with conflicting approaches and interests.

Though the absence of the Security Council’s political backing has weakened the UN position, Rosenthal has gauged that the organisation could have done more to address persecution of Rohingya.

Also read | Explained: India’s Opposition to ICC Probe on Myanmar’s Rohingya Crisis

It could have, for instance, restricted Myanmar’s access to international markets, investment and finance. Instead, both UN’s Myanmar Country team under the Resident Coordinator and the Secretary General and his senior executive team in New York made policy decisions that sent the wrong signal that the UN would continue to conduct its operations in a business-as-usual fashion.

In fact, the expansion of the UN Development Program (UNDP) into a “fully-fledged” country development program, emboldened Myanmar to scale up its systemic persecution of the Rohingya community in the west.

The Rosenthal report finally admits to what several generations of survivors of Myanmar’s genocide against Rohingya Muslims have always known through collective and individual experiences: that the UN has failed them not simply since 2010, the report’s cut-off year, but since the first wave of Myanmar’s genocidal destruction in 1978.

This is not the first-time that the UN’s own diplomats and officials have assessed its failures in cases of atrocity, which includes war crimes, genocide, crimes against humanity and ethnic cleansing.

In 2012, former Assistant Secretary General Charles Petrie, who served as UN resident coordinator in Myanmar from 2003 to 2007, reached a similarly damning conclusion: that the UN failed to effectively and properly discharge its mandate of protection and reconciliation in Sri Lanka.

Rohingya Refugee Deportation

People belonging to Rohingya Muslim community sit outside their makeshift houses on the outskirts of Jammu May 5, 2017. Image: Reuters/Mukesh Gupta/Files

The UN’s official admission of its failures in Myanmar is welcome. But it is disturbing that that the world’s foremost inter-governmental organisation working to maintain international peace and security remains incapable of heeding the lessons of the past and self-correcting.

Deep scepticism is called for when Secretary General Antonio Guterres promises to implement Rosenthal’s recommendations. When he was the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, he was told in a meeting held by Myanmar’s then president Thein Sein that the country’s government intended to confine Rohingya to camps.

Myanmar’s intention to commit international crimes had therefore been clear to United Nations leadership since 2012 — yet no
effective action was taken.

The organisation should have done more, including establishing an early warning genocide mechanism, creating an emergency response team and plan, and working with the Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Children and Armed Conflict and the Office on Genocide Prevention and Responsibility to Protect. They did not.

According to the report, the United Nations also went back and forth on whether to even use the word “Rohingya,” a term the Myanmar government has tried to erase from use.

Also read: UN Fears Blackout in Myanmar Is a Cover for Human Rights Violations

Former Secretary General Ban Ki Moon had used the term in a speech in 2016 — but UN officials have, since then, used the phrase “Muslim minority,” thereby proving to be complicit in the government’s attempts to strip Rohingya of their identity and rights.

The Rosenthal report inspires no confidence that this system will change. The Secretary General’s mandate for Rosenthal seemed to preclude the essential question of the UN’s own accountability.

The report itself says, “the consultant was not asked to evaluate the conduct of entities or individuals in the mode of personal or institutional accountability.”

For an internal assessment report to merely point to the systemic failures without apportioning any responsibility to those
within the organisation entirely evades the central issue.

Rohingya activist Nay San Lwin who coordinates campaigns and media relations told Al Jazeera English, “the system failed because individuals didn’t fulfil their obligations. This is blaming the system to avoid accountability.”

These individuals in charge at the time include the former UN resident coordinator in Myanmar, Renata Lok-Dessallien, who was accused of suppressing an internal report critical of the UN’s strategy in Myanmar.

Instead of holding her responsible for failing to uphold the organisation’s 2014 Human Rights up Front initiative, Guterres rewarded Lok-Dessallien with a larger portfolio — she was made UN resident coordinator in India.

To address impunity within Myanmar, the secretary general and other UN leaders should take responsibility for the failures that emboldened Myanmar’s ongoing genocide against the Rohingya ethnic minority. The current UN leadership and management has failed the thousands of Rohingya who were slaughtered, maimed, raped or violently deported.

They have also shown that their commitment towards reform simply does not encompass the deep institutional change necessary to prevent such issues from arising again. They should resign.

After all, if the UN cannot even hold its own officials responsible, how can it expect to hold entire governments to account
for their crimes?

Maung Zarni is a Burmese coordinator of the Free Rohingya Coalition, an umbrella network of Rohingya refugees and human rights activists, and co-author, with Natalie Brinham, of the book, Essays on Myanmar Genocide (2019).

Hidden Stories Reveal the Depth of Institutional Racism in British Universities

It’s time race equality was practised in the academy, not just preached.

“So how’s it going at work?” It’s a common question. The kind of question which normally opens a nice warm catch up between friends. But if you are a non-white academic, the question carries a different connotation.

You might respond to it with an eye-roll and a sigh, which tells your friend what they already know – work isn’t going well at all. For years I have been having this same conversation. It begins with that question. And just like that, we share.

We share the all too recognisable stories of racism. The frustrations and the relief that we are not alone, paranoid, or being unreasonable. These conversations equipped me mentally, they prepared me practically, and in doing so they have helped me to survive my workplace for the past 12 years.

But as I continued in my academic career, I soon got to thinking about all those people who were unable to share, who haven’t had the luxury of having others to speak to, who have felt alone, excluded and isolated. And so the foundations of my research began, as I sought to speak to those silent voices who as yet have not had the opportunity to fully communicate the depth and complexity of their answer to the question: “So how is work?”

Endemic racism

The fact is everyday racism is hiding behind a string of superficial tag lines that have come to brand universities across the UK. Myths about the “liberal” university can often be seen touted in marketing brochures, job announcements, and website pages, promoting the values and responsibilities of the institution.

Myth 1: Universities encourage inclusivity and diversity

Myth 2: Universities invest in non-white academics

Myth 3: Universities are “post-racial”

Myth 4: Universities desire curriculum reform

Myth 5: Universities are committed to race equality

Beyond these false advertising scams, the real message is clear and simple: racism in British universities is endemic. Academic research has pointed to this fact for well over a decade. Alongside the studies, there is also a catalogue of data that explicitly shows the bleak prospects for non-white academics. For example, statistics around Black and Minority Ethnic (BME) representation in universities continue to demonstrate that non-white academics are marginalised from British universities.

Data generated from the Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA) in 2012-2013 revealed that out of 17,880 professors, only 85 were black, 950 were Asian, 365 were “other” (including mixed race). The majority of 15,200 were white.

In terms of black female professors, there are just 17 in the entire British university system. And in January 2017, for the third year in a row, HESA figures recorded no black academics in the elite staff category of managers, directors and senior officials in 2015-2016.

As a result of this skewed landscape, non-white academics are on the whole less likely to be shortlisted, appointed, or promoted in comparison to their white counterparts. In addition to this, it has been reported that BME academics at top universities across Britain earn on average 26% less than their white colleagues.

The data is therefore showing us that very little has been done to encourage progress and racial equality in British universities. The failure of senior managers to accept or even acknowledge the existence of systematic racism operating in their universities, departments and boardrooms is where the heart of the problem lies. My research exposes the entrenched practices of structural and everyday forms of racism in the white academy.

Personal stories of racism

I conducted 20 in-depth interviews ranging from early career, mid-career, and advanced career academics, working either as lecturers or researchers, on permanent, part-time or fixed-term contracts. I spoke with a fairly equal mix of male and female respondents, and they came from a range of racial, ethno-national, and religious groups based at Russell Group and post-1992 universities across Britain.

The research is a collection of different voices. These people shared with me their pain, their strength, their challenges, their courage, and their resistance to racism in the academy. Whether in their office, or in a coffee shop, the conversations flowed. For some, it was like they needed the space to finally get things off their chest – a kind of therapy session, where they could speak about their experiences in the academy.

Also read: Can India Learn From Canada’s Dark History of Residential Schools for Indigenous Children?

There were tears, sometimes from them, and at other times from me. There was also a sense of defiance, perseverance, and hope. Some conversations were particularly emotional and harder than others. On some occasions, hours and even days after they had taken place, I found myself replaying their experiences in my head, overcome with a deep feeling of sadness that our bodies had all been injured in some way or another by systemic, structural, and symbolic manifestations of racism in our universities.

‘Liberal’ racism

Subtle practices of racism in the form of micro-aggressions are often more challenging because they operate against the common sense understanding of racism as easily identifiable. My interviews reveal the way in which micro-aggressions – the everyday slights and indignities non-white people encounter all the time – are intensely bound up with forms of structural “liberal” racism.

In the British university setting, liberal racism is perhaps the most dominant form of racism practised by white faculty staff members. For Eduardo Bonilla Silva, professor of Sociology at Duke University, liberal racism – or what he characterises as “colourblind racism” – takes the form “racism lite” or “smiling face discrimination”.

What is essentially being described here is the idea of the “post-racial” which signals an apparent “end” of racism. This post-racial logic has steadily cemented itself into the very culture of our universities. The idea that we are “over race” is precisely how racism is sustained. This manifests itself in the dismissal or trivialisation of racism and operates to both facilitate and embolden it. The liberal, post-racial culture of denial, which my interviewees say is operating in British universities, has meant the daily realities of racism experienced by non-white academics are obscured, as white faculty members are unable to conceive themselves as perpetrators of racism.

As one said:

Racism is much more insidious in HE (Higher Education). It’s this idea that they don’t want to look bad that gets to me the most.

The notion that white colleagues are more nuanced in their exercise of racism – as they are keen to present themselves as “nice”, “respectable” and “tolerant” people –- was also echoed by another respondent:

People in academia are a bit smarter, they’re more subtle and they understand what they can’t say. Everything is just a bit more institutionalised. But you get the sense that it’s also the place where things are unchecked. I think in general people try to be nice and they want to be nice but they have all these ingrained biases.

‘Sometimes it’s just so damn subtle’

My participants frequently felt that such enactments of liberal racism produced hidden forms of differential treatment, which in most cases could not be placed as direct discrimination due to their very subtleties. Another academic told me:

The problem with the day-to-day encounters of racism is that it’s difficult to pinpoint them down. I’ve felt that I’ve not been included a number of times, or I am the last person to be consulted on something. Sometimes it’s just so damn subtle. It’s in the gestures, it’s in what’s not said.

Feelings of otherness, marginality, and white discomfort around difference, were all common, everyday experiences. Those I spoke to shared examples of their names being mispronounced by white staff members, being mistaken for the only other academic of colour in the department and being made to feel both visible and invisible at the same time.

These daily realities are indicative of the racism lurking beneath the “liberal” university, in which white colleagues like to claim that they are tolerant, and certainly not racist. But the examples given by my interviewees show that when confronted with these situations they can only revert back to their ingrained biases.

My participants went on to point out that the lack of other minorities within the institution produced feelings of alienation and discomfort as they were positioned as “outsiders”:

I always feel like an outsider in the academy … like I am the only one … my experience of the academy is that I’m a black man in a white world. All it takes is for you to go to a meeting and you immediately realise that the one thing that is missing here is colour – there is no colour … it’s a colourless environment.

Teaching and decolonising the curriculum

The classroom is often thought to represent a “safe space” that encourages critical learning and the exchange of ideas. But it would be naive to simply suggest the classroom is free from antagonism because it sits within the broader university environment which is structured by institutional racism.

In fact, my research demonstrates how the classroom can often become a key site in which white students may express feelings of resentment and guilt, as well as a place to confront their privilege. One respondent recalled:

A white male undergraduate student challenged me on a series of issues when I explained the topic of political violence. He started to ask questions and make points that were Islamophobic. He was talking about child molestation by the Prophet Muhammad, how Islam had been a religion spread by the sword, how Muslims believed in female genital mutilation, and so on. I was constantly having to explain and defend a religion of over a billion people, because somehow in the eyes of the student, I was Islam. So I found that to be a really uncomfortable experience.

All my participants said they were made to feel as though they lacked authority and credibility by many of their students. The notion of having to “prove” themselves was an experience that came up time and again. These incidents demonstrate the insidious workings of racism at play, whereby non-white academics have to almost always go the extra mile to prove their competence.

Also read: It Will Take Critical, Thorough Scrutiny to Truly Decolonise Knowledge

For example, another participant recalled how students “snigger”, “roll their eyes” and walk out of their classes and how uncomfortable this makes them:

I start sweating, I start rushing my material and I just want to get it over with because it’s such a horrible experience. They make out over and over again that I don’t know what I’m talking about, or that I’m biased and it makes me extremely uncomfortable.

From direct insults, to accusations of being biased, my interviews reveal that for some non-white academics, teaching can be a challenging experience. By being made to feel as though they lack authority or having to prove themselves, non-white academics encounter disruptive behaviour that is fundamentally racialised in nature.

The inability of the largely white student body to critically reflect upon their own histories, practices, and structures of oppression is symptomatic of white privilege, white entitlement and a lack of awareness of other cultures in general.

This suggests the need for universities to take seriously calls to decolonise the curriculum as a way to dismantle discourses and practices that reaffirm white superiority. Currently, intellectual agendas in British universities operate to maintain a narrow, inward looking perspective that reinforces the logics of Orientalism (the Western attitude that views Eastern societies as exotic, primitive, and inferior).

The call to decolonise seeks to equip students with more complex and critical understandings of global debates and issues as a way to generate more productive and insightful accounts, beyond eurocentric narratives. Decolonising the curriculum is vital to both the transformation of higher education and the development of inclusive, non-hostile spaces where difference is respected, not denigrated.

Career progression

On the surface, universities have strutted out various strategies that seem to promote positive action around equality.

But beneath these jamborees the reality is dire. My respondents shared their experiences of being unsupported in applications for promotion, a lack of mentoring, job insecurity, and an overwhelming sense of being undervalued. The obstacles and challenges that they have encountered in relation to hiring practices and career progression are immense and for the most part appear impossible to overcome. One of my interviewees said:

I don’t get the support networks, I don’t get the mentoring, but I get overburdened with teaching. I don’t see a future where I will progress. I see my white colleagues being encouraged, but that never seems to happen to me. There really is no support. It’s dismal.

Both my research and my own personal experience have shown that non-white academics are at a real loss without proper mentoring. It is so often the case that we go to other non-white academics (externally and informally), who take on mentoring in an unofficial capacity. This support has often been crucial for us, however, at the same time – as my respondents pointed out – it is utterly disgraceful that they have had to actively seek support in other places as a result of their own institutions failing to provide them with sufficient or appropriate mentoring.

Feelings of being “expendable” or “disposable” were common across my interviewees who frequently said employment opportunities tended to be “rigged” in favour of white candidates.

The inability to access (white) hidden rules or (white) hidden networks was a common experience across my interviews. The academics felt their future prospects, particularly in terms of promotion, were negatively impacted as a consequence. One said:

I’ve always struggled to know what the rules are. I’ve gone to sessions on what you need to do to get promoted, but I think there’s a whole set of hidden rules that I don’t know or that I can’t find out and that’s frustrating.

It comes as no surprise then that many of my respondents, despite having all the skills and knowledge, often found themselves continuously blocked from promotion and career advancement opportunities that were frequently afforded to their less established, white peers.

Another respondent commented:

I know people are less experienced than me, who might have a similar role, but are on higher pay and at a higher grade. I look at the rate at which white colleagues are promoted and I often think how have they got that? I thought promotion was to be based on your value and what you put in, and it seems that isn’t the case. This is definitely about race.

Meanwhile another academic said:

We have to be exceptional just to be ordinary. And I’m so sad this has manifested in higher education the way that it has. There’s no reprieve for us, there’s no meritocracy.

Discriminatory practices are entrenched within the university environment. My respondents felt that no amount of achievements could surpass whiteness, in other words, meritocracy in the academy is a myth. If non-white academics are to feel truly valued and supported then a series of structural, intellectual, and ethical obligations, must be implemented in higher education to ensure advancement and inclusion for all.

There must be a commitment across the university sector that recognises racism as a fundamentally structural issue. This means engaging with strategies that actively promote the inclusion of non-white academics and students (including those who are classified as international) to ensure that their needs are being addressed appropriately.

Those of us from non-white backgrounds working and studying within British universities are quite simply fed up of the racism that we continue to endure on a daily basis. If universities are serious about tackling racism, discrimination and under-representation they must take the following steps.

1) Senior management must set annual targets to increase BME representation. To ensure this process is formalised, they must implement a systematic monitoring unit to measure hiring rates of BME staff and student admissions against targets. Regular audits of the data must be made available to all staff and failure to meet quotas should result in penalties.

2) Race equality needs to be on the agenda in every department across every university in the UK. Management committee meetings must report on these issues as a standing item to demonstrate the work that they are doing to tackle institutional racism.

3) Mentoring schemes for new and current BME staff members need be formalised, and they should be partnered with a colleague who is sensitive and fully committed to supporting their needs around career progression and personal development.

4) Promotions committees must take equality issues into special consideration for BME applicants.

5) An independent ombudsman must be established who can properly investigate racist and other discriminatory practices.

6) A commitment to decolonising the curriculum must be led by university management.

7) University and departmental policies on race equality must be fully implemented and formally reviewed and updated on an annual basis.

For too long, non-white academics have been absent from the conversation. We need to feel like we are included within the debate and that our voices matter. The day-to-day and structural racist operations of the university need to be systematically reviewed and these failures need to be addressed seriously. Race equality must be practised in the academy, not just preached.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.