Get me a bride, take my vote: Haryana bachelors tell candidates

Some Lok Sabha candidates in Haryana, which has the country's lowest sex ratio, are facing a strange demand from bachelor voters -- "get us brides in return for our votes".

"Bahu dilao, vote pao" (Get us a bride for our vote) is the demand of Avivahit Purush Sangthan (Unmarried Union). The outfit was set up by Bibipoor village panchayat head Sunil Jaglan in February, to look into the issue of gender imbalance, caused by female foeticide.

Members of Avivahit Purush Sangthan are putting forward their demand to candidates of different political parties who are coming to their constituencies for campaigning. But so far they have failed to get any positive response from the candidates.

"This (female foeticide) is a very serious problem which, if not tackled now or if proper action is not taken, will have disastrous consequences in the near future," Jaglan told PTI.

On the slogan, he said, "The slogan itself does not mean that all the youth are going to get their partners right now. But it's an effort to attract the attention of the political parties towards the problem."

But Jaglan said, "Except the AAP, prominent candidates from Jind have come to our village seeking votes, but none of them uttered a single word on our demand. Political parties are not interested in serious issues."

According to the 2011 Census, Haryana has 879 females per 1,000 males. Radha Rani, wife of Indian National Lok Dal candidate from Rohtak Shamsher Kharkara, said, "Female foeticide is not an election issue. It's a social problem which can be addressed through social awareness."

Jaglan, who organised an 'anti-female foeticide Mahapanchayat' in Bibipoor a few years ago and is now a proud father of two girls, said, "There are 7,000 villages in the state and in every village on an average, at present, 50 boys are unmarried. It means, around 3,50,000 males are without life partners."

In 2009, the female foeticide issue was raised by a group of youths who took out a march, but it failed to achieve the desired results. According to Jaglan, "Since 2009, the problem has grown manifold."

In Bibipoor village, at the Chaupal, a huge poster welcomes people with a message: "Netaji janiye, Haryana main kunwaron ka ganit (Netaji have a look at the data of unmarried youth in the state)."

The poster gives a glimpse of the total population of the state, the male and female ratios and the number of unmarried youth. In the Sonipat Lok Sabha seat, under which the assembly constituency of Jind comes, Jagbir Singh Malik of Congress, the Bhartiya Janata Party’s Ramesh Chander, Padam Singh from Indian National Lok Dal and Jai Singh from Aam Aadmi Party are in the fray.

Avivahit Purush Sangthan, which has a presence on social networking sites such as Facebook and also Whatsapp, has attracted lots of unmarried males to its fold, Jaglan claimed.

According to theatre personality Naresh Prerna, "No major political party has included this issue (female foeticide) in their poll agenda and there is total lack of any honest movement at the grassroots level."

Although Left parties have shown some seriousness, but their base is very limited in the state, Prerna said.

http://m.rediff.com/news/report/ls-election-get-me-a-bride-take-my-vote-haryana-bachelors-tell-candidates/20140409.htm

Women's issues missing from poll campaign in Haryana

Monday, 7 April 2014

"Who talks about us sahab (sir)?" said Noor Begum and walked away towards her house through the dusty roads of Mewat. And probably her statement best highlights where women's issues stand in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections in the male- dominated Haryana which has the worst sex ratio in the country.

It's clearly a no women's land and all the major political parties – whether BJP, Congress or the Indian National Lok Dal (INLD) – in the fray talk about women's issues with none having any solid concrete vision to put forward to the voters regarding them.

It's not only women issues that are absent from the poll festival, the major parties have not even given enough tickets to women. For the 10 Lok Sabha seats, Congress and INLD have given ticket to one woman candidate each while BJP has fielded none.

Also, Congress and INLD's candidate got ticket due to their political lineage rather than their gender. Congress's women candidate from Bhiwani – Mahendragarh seat Shruti Choudhry – is granddaughter of Chaudhary Bansi Lal, who was a freedom fighter, a senior Congress leader and former chief minister of Haryana. INLD's Kusum Sherwal, who is contesting from Ambala seat is wife of INLD's secretary general Ashok Sherwal.

Aam Aadmi Party, which is contesting all 10 seats, has given ticket to only one woman – Balwinder Kaur from Kurukshetra constituency. Balwinder Kaur is wife of Bharatiya Kisan Union state president Gurnam Singh. Overall, among the 230 candidates fighting for 10 seats in Haryana, only four per cent are women.

So just like the women candidates, their issues are also missing from numerous political rallies, meetings and jansabhas across Haryana -- whether it is NCR area of Faridabad or more rural areas such as Mewat, Bhiwani, Hisar or Karnal.

Senior advocate and INDL's candidate from Faridabad seat, RK Anand, told dna, "Women's security is an issue in this area as you can see a change when you step into Faridabad from Delhi."

However, the issue probably does not hold much importance for the party, as it was evident in a political meeting that Anand attended half an hour later with INLD chief Om Prakash Chautala's grandson Digvijay Chautala. They discussed many issues, including Congress's misrule and about izzat (respect) of his grandfather who is in jail but there was not a word about women's issues.

There were a few woman who were standing at a corner of the programme with their faces covered. Speaking to dna, they said the decision to vote for a particular candidate is taken by the head of the family who is unmistakably a male.

Thus problems like sanitation for women, literacy, crime against women are off the radar of political parties.

The gravity of the situation becomes quite clear in inner rural regions of Haryana such as Mewat, Mahendargarh and Bhiwani and others.

In Badhra area of Mahendargarh, a woman Sarita Singh, said that basic problems like lack of toilets are one of their main issues.

"Sometimes, we have to hold on and wait for going to toilet until it becomes dark so that no untoward incident happens and we are not exposed to anyone. We just want political parties to provide us basic facilities. But we are forced to vote as per the orders of elders in the families," Savitri said.

Haryana Janhit Congress, which is led by Bhajan Lal's son Kuldeep Bishnoi, is also no different. HJC's Kamal Singh Pradhan said, "Safety of women and sex ratio" are the most important issues for them. He, however, admitted that political campaigns in Haryana do not have any special focus on women.

As per 2011 census, Haryana had the dubious tag of having India's worst sex ratio with only 879 females per 1,000 males compared to the national average of 943.

Decline in female population has resulted in men 'buying' women for marrying from states such as Chhattisgarh and north eastern parts of the country. But they are shy to admit the same and often introduce them as their field workers.

"At many places, men have bought women for marriage. But they are not open to talking about it due to fear of being ridiculed or made fun of in the society," said Dharmendra Kumar of Bhiwani.

Political parties only talk about women when they are repeatedly asked or pressed about it. But none of them has turned it into a big issue in their fight.

BJP's candidate from Karnal constituency, Ashwini Kumar, also was speechless when asked about women issues that he is highlighting in his election campaign.

"We are fighting for development of everyone. Our main issue is development. Villagers here are innocent and there is nothing for them," Kumar, who himself is an owner of a newspaper, told dna when asked about women issues in his campaign.

But interestingly, his campaign is being run by his wife, sister-in-laws and other women of the family.

Caste bias seen in rape cases

DIVYA TRIVEDI

A cursory look at the recent incidents of violence against Dalit women in Haryana shows that caste bias is deeply entrenched not only in committing crimes but also when they come up for investigation. From the filing of FIR to the medical examination to investigating the matter, there is a lack of professionalism, said advocate Vrinda Grover at a press meet recently.

In the case of the alleged abduction, rape and murder of a Dalit girl in Jind which received wide press coverage recently, the Superintendent of Police, Hissar, Satish Balan told the family members on Tuesday that the All India Institute of Medical Sciences post mortem report (the third) has ruled out rape and the hymen of the girl was intact. He insisted it was a suicide. However, women of the village told him: “We are women and we saw her body and we saw what was done to it. Don’t try to tell us it wasn’t rape,” according to advocate Rajat Kalsan of the Human Rights Law Network. The AIIMS report has still not been handed over to the family or the advocate.

With no proper figures available to quantify the atrocities, some voluntary organisations have been recording the cases. In Hisar alone, there have been 25 rape cases of Dalit girls in the past one year, said Rajat. Some of the cases are: An 18-year-old girl in Daya village was gang-raped by four people. All the accused have been released and the girl has dropped out of school. In Dabra village, 10 people from the dominant caste raped a 16-year-old girl. The case is pending in High Court.

A girl at Kalsi in Karnal was raped by three men from the dominant caste and she was threatened to not disclose it. A month later, her mother was abducted, raped and murdered allegedly by the same three persons. In the same village, in August a minor girl was kidnapped and gang-raped by two men in a moving car.

In October last, a 13-year-old girl was abducted from the hospital and gang-raped in Safidon, Panipat.

In May this year, a class 8 student was gang-raped and a video film was shot in Kurukshetra. All the three accused have been released on bail.

Apart from the fact that the gang-rapes were committed by dominant caste men on Dalit girls, they have some common features: Girls were abducted, gang-raped in isolated places, given sedative and threatened to not disclose the matter to anyone. The victim girls dropped out of school and the accused allegedly enjoyed community’s protection.

http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-national/tp-newdelhi/caste-bias-seen-in-rape-cases/article5215724.ece

http://epaper.jansatta.com/162016/Jansatta.com/20092013#page/1/2

http://epaper.jansatta.com/161767/Jansatta.com/19092013#page/1/1

One rescue and the multiple existential crises of policemen in Palwal

In early August, a group of activists, lawyers and one journalist arrived at Sadar police station in Haryana. They demanded the rescue of an Assamese teenager who had been trafficked, raped, beaten and imprisoned by a local family. But it was never going to be straightforward.

Shamsul, 20, had spent a month in Delhi looking for his younger sister Sakina. 

He and his three siblings grew up in a small village in Kokrajhar district of Assam. They were brought up by a physically disabled father who earned his living by begging. Their mother had passed away three months after Sakina was born. After the ethnic violence in 2012 Sakina’s three brothers, who worked as daily wage labourers, stopped getting work. They were Muslims in a Bodo-dominated village.

Theirs is one of the 11 districts in Assam currently receiving funds from the Backward Regions Grant Fund Programme. Since 1994, Kokrajhar has witnessed several bouts of ethnic violence between Bodo tribes and non-Bodo people. 

In fact, the BJP and RSS have been claiming for the last 15 years that all the Muslims in this area are Bangladeshis. Posters and wall writings that read, “Bangladeshi Bharat chhodo,” are as common in this area as they are in Delhi. In July 2012, there was another round of violence between Bodos and Muslims. Nearly four lakh people were displaced from over 400 villages.

for full text http://in.news.yahoo.com/one-rescue-and-the-multiple-existential-crises-of-policemen-in-palwal-071539504.html

http://epaper.jansatta.com/161767/Jansatta.com/19092013#page/1/2

The Bizarre Story Of Rape And Murder Of A Dalit Girl In Haryana

It has been seven days since a 20-year-old Dalit girl was allegedly raped and murdered in Haryana’s Jind city

by Aradhna Wal , August 30, 2013

What does it take for a rape to be declared a rape? A girl gone missing, her mutilated body found on a deserted stretch, an unprecedented three post-mortems? Apparently in Haryana, even that is not enough.

It has been seven days since a 20-year-old Dalit girl was allegedly raped and murdered in Haryana’s Jind city. There are no suspects and the police refuses to give details of their inquiries and investigations. The body has not been cremated; it’s lying wrapped in white sheets, in a refrigerated glass case in the grounds of Jind’s Samanya Hospital. It has for company, the girl’s father and about 300 protesters camped out in the hospital agitating everyday for justice and action from the police and the state.

In the midst of chants against CM Bhupinder Singh Hooda, the Congress party and the police force, the father Surat Singh sits silent, head downcast, in the centre of the agitation but not quite a part of it. A slight, wiry man, he recalls how his youngest daughter left their home in Baniya Khera gaon at 11 am on 24 August, going to Jind to give her Junior Board Teacher (JBT) exam. It was her final exam. Had she passed, three years of hard work would have finally paid off. She never made it for the exam.
The JBT exam was scheduled from 2 pm to 5 pm. At 4 pm Surat Singh got a call from an unknown man, saying he had found some papers with his number on them. Singh, busy at the time, says it didn’t strike him that anything was amiss. However, when their daughter didn’t make it home by 7pm, the family started getting worried. The father and his two sons went out searching for her, and when they found no trace of her whereabouts they went to the Pillukhera police station in Jind. The cops asked them to call back the unknown afternoon caller. It emerged that the man was a resident of Amarheri gaon, just outside Jind city, and that he had found the papers and a bag lying by the side of the road. They both belonged to Singh’s missing daughter. The family rushed to Jind where they spent all night searching for the girl with the police. They returned home defeated in the morning.

for full text  http://www.tehelka.com/the-bizarre-story-of-rape-and-murder-of-a-dalit-girl-in-haryana/#