Victims of Sex Crimes in India - Does Regional Language TV care for them?

Nirbhaya passed away in Singapore on Dec 29 and her body was cremated today in Delhi, but her fight lives on. Millions of us will not forget it and will ensure that what can be done is done to drastically reduce such crimes. Why only reduce? Because statistics show that there are currently an average of 600 rapes a year in Delhi alone. To eliminate them would be a mind-boggling achievement. 

In any case, the goal cannot be to control such crime in metropolitan areas alone. Women in rural areas and small towns suffer a lot, in fact a lot more, because of sex and gender-related crimes: rape and other forms of violence including murder, acid throwing, "honor killings" so-called, Khaps' persecution of women who marry out of caste, denial of inheritance, domestic violence, intimidation, denial of equal wages for equal work, reduced job opportunities, and so on. Socio-economically backward women in urban areas suffer as much as their rural sisters, perhaps more. They and their sisters rarely express themselves in English, so they do not get heard on English language TV channels. 

Regional language TV channels seem to have ignored the revolution taking place in Delhi more or less, denying 90% of Indian women their say. Leaders have failed to recognize that revolutions lack teeth if the masses do not participate in them. I compliment urban youth for taking up leadership roles, but experienced leaders should have strengthened their hands and supplemented them by goading regional language TV channels to come out of their slumber. There should have been gatherings and protests in small towns and rural areas as well. The protest leaders should have taken great care to see that the socio-economically backward women have their voice heard loud and clear. I monitored Kannada and Tamil language channels frequently during the last 72 hours - most of them were running routine movies and entertainment programs most of the time. In contrast, English language TV was spending well over 80% time on the revolution.  

We cannot win if we do not unite. 

Srinivasan Ramani 

The gang-rape victims: Nirbhaya and India

I am quite stunned at the way Nirbhaya’s case reflects the realities of India. The brave woman fought to the best of ability, to survive the grievous injuries inflicted by cruel animals in the garb of humans. There is no doubt that rape deserves the strictest punishment. In cases of gang rape involving death of the victim or life-threatening injuries, I believe that there is justification to consider capital punishment. I would also add custodial rape in this category of heinous of crimes; in fact, put it ahead of the other categories.

However, let us face it; changing of laws alone will not solve the problem. It is not the cardiac arrest or the brain injury alone that kills the injured victim. More often, it is the sepsis that threatens all the organs in the body and causes multi-organ failure. It is my case that we need to worry about the threat of multi-organ failure that the whole country faces.

No change in law will make a corrupt policeman exempt a rape victim from his lust for money. No feudal lord in the form of a powerful politician will voluntarily vote to reduce employing a large percentage of the police force to protect his feudal class. No legal system with its movements frozen by advanced arthritis can jump up and run to settle rape cases expeditiously. No government officer will voluntarily give up tying down as orderlies and menials able young men who ought to be protecting people on our streets.

Running to Singapore for help is also very symbolic.  Our hospitals can no doubt learn about hygiene from their hospitals. I remember sitting in the canteen of a great big Bangalore hospital recently. Specialists were performing the most complex of operations on a patient who had suffered a serious problem, a friend of mine. During the time I had my vada sambhar and a cup of coffee, we saw ten water tankers come in. In fact, while trying to get out of the canteen, I wondered if the tank drivers had a contract from the orthopedic division to create more patients for them right on the hospital premises! It is great to talk of medical tourism bringing wealth to India. But why don’t the politicians gang-raping the country not work once in a while to get piped water to our hospitals?

Singapore is not only for our hospitals. Our law enforcement agencies can also learn a lot about law enforcement and keeping corruption under control. 

It is a great revolution that our youth are crying out for. Let us not trivialize issues by amending a few statutes here and there and forgetting the fundamental problems. Let us have significant changes. Let us hope for national leaders who rise to the occasion and declare what they stand for. The 2014 election is one hope. Will it do us any good? Or will it do for us what the Singapore trip did for Nirbhaya? 

Srinivasan Ramani

The Modern Thuggee

Visit http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thuggee

The visitor has always been a preferred victim. The thuggee had no hesitation in killing the pilgrims and other road farers of India. Sleeman, a British administrator, put an end to this practice about 170 years back.

But a modern version of this practice continues to this day. Several telecom companies around the world charge as much as fifty times for Internet connectivity to the cell phone of a tourist as they charge a local customer. Sleeman! Where are you, now that we need you again?

Overcharging a tourist makes mockery of maps and navigation services offered over the web. The tourist needs them more than the local residents. I plead with the regulatory agencies of the world to review this robbery. The goodwill a country will generate by not fleecing the tourist over the Internet will more than make up for the revenue loss. Travellers’ associations should launch an agitation against this and suggest boycott of countries indulging in this practice.

Srinivasan Ramani 

The Mayan calendar and the Fiscal Cliff

I offer you a guarantee that the Mayans were wrong and that nothing cataclysmic will occur tomorrow (12/21). They got their event timing wrong by ten days. Actually, what they had in mind was the US fiscal cliff! 

I also guarantee they were wrong about the fiscal cliff! I am sure that common sense will prevail and a compromise will be struck. 

Best wishes for a happy new year! 

Srinivasan Ramani 

Jobs versus productive jobs

I believe that intelligent management of a nation’s economy has to aim at availability of jobs for all. There is hardly any politician who disagrees with this. But what amazes me is that the Indian politician rarely mentions productive jobs. Creating jobs that don’t create goods or services is a fraud on the nation. It merely fuels inflation.

Today I heard a politician saying on TV that she had seen drugstores abroad using scanners through which customers scan the bar codes on the goods they wish to purchase. The customer then pays for the goods swiping his or her credit card and goes off. No one is needed at the counter. Our neta was appalled.

It appears to me that nothing is lost and a lot is gained by using technology and education to automate the mundane tasks in life, ensuring that people do better things in their life. Not a great new idea! Norbert Wiener wrote about it in his book The Human Use of Human Beings in 1950.

Associated with this issue is that of worker training and productivity. Let me cite a hilarious instance of poor training leading to wasted human effort. Two weeks ago, I was considering the replacement of my swivel chair for use at my computer desk. A nice leather upholstered chair at Rs 25,000 in a shop window attracted me. I would have bought it except for a concern about disposing off my current chair. It is in good shape, except that its polyurethane arm rests have worn out. I hesitated to give it away in its current run-down condition. Then it occurred to me that I could get the company to replace the armrests. After all we do have a tradition in this country of providing for repair of seven year old products, an intelligent use of our vast under-employed workforce. The chair had been bought from a large, nationally well-known manufacturer of office furniture. I called their call center, and was told that a repairman would call and that I would be charged Rs 250 for the visit. I accepted that offer and the man turned up within day or two. He said that he would have to order a set of armrests and that it would cost me Rs 500 or so. Amazing, isn’t it? I paid the 500; he gave me a receipt and used his cell phone to call his office and convey the order. I was deeply impressed, but was told that the stuff would have to come from Mumbai and it would take ten days. I was willing to wait.

Then yesterday, he turned up again with a package in his hands. I brought the chair out into the hall and he took one look at it and gasped. The package in his hands contained only one of the two armrests required. He stared at some work sheet in his hand, a penciled note on which it read “one set armrest”. He picked up his cellphone and called his office again. The product code used had been wrong. He is an intelligent man though he has trouble in coping with the many languages Bangalore requires you to know, including English. So, I paid another Rs 500. He will come again a couple of weeks later.

Well, that is one of the factors that keeps India poor. Why can’t the big company’s field operations be better managed? Why can’t they train their workforce better? With such an ill-trained workforce and such poor management, no good will come out of our “demographic dividend”! 

Srinivasan Ramani