Vol. 12 Issue 16 Indian Institute Of Journalism and New Media, Bangalore January 18, 2013

An activist from a men’s rights group claims that women are raped because Indian men are ‘frustrated’ by bogus rape claims.

Rukama Chary of the Save Indian Family Founda-tion said: “Rape happens because there are no rights for men. They get frustrated and rape women.”

Chary, a lawyer claims that his foundation has over 10 million members across the country who have been falsely accused of rape.

He added: “Rape cases get registered in police stations across the country when prostitution comes to the limelight. To extort more, money prostitutes allege their clients are rapists.”

Shaibya Saldanha, a feminist from Enfold India, a trust which deals with sexual harassment cases said: “This is rubbish. Rape and harassment cases are increasing rapidly. Often some men’s organizations oppose sexual harassment or the domestic violence bill. It doesn’t mean that the bill should be withdrawn. Any act or bill is not an error, the error lies in the implementa-tion of the act by judiciary.”

Chary’s comments come in the wake of the Delhi gang rape, which sparked outrage across the country

and will be viewed by many to be misogynistic.

Another activist, Santosh Patil, said: “Women even make false allegations in the workplace against men in order to harass them.

”Even then the convic-tion rate is negligible which clearly depicts misuse of anti-male laws by women.”

Chary spoke about a victim his group supported, Anil Kumar, who had been happily married and was the father of a baby boy. After the delivery his wife demanded a separation or she would file a fake assault

case against him.Mr. Chary added: “The

group believes various bills will encourage women to file false claims against men.”

The Save Indian Family Foundation (SIFF) claims to be a non-profit NGO (Non Governmental Organisation) in Bangalore, fighting for men’s rights, gender equality and family harmony, by cre-ating awareness against the misuse of what they claim are anti-male laws. They meet every week in

Bangalore, and accord-ing to Chary, new members are flooding in every day.

“Laws should not be changed in haste based on imaginations and emotions. The existing laws are al-ready biased and draconian in nature against the tenets of natural justice,” he said.

He added: “The orga-nization demands that the Sexual Harassment Bill must be reviewed and amended immediately to make it gen-der neutral. It unnecessarily targets men.

If the case is found to be false or fabricated or filed with an intention to derive personal benefit, the person should be fined,” he said

Rukama Chary claims that most women who claim to have been raped are prostitutes.

Lawyer justifies rape; blames male “frustration”By Urmi Sengupta

5 crore rupees owed to garment workers in

stateBy Rohan Premkumar

Garment manufacturers in Bangalore owe workers nearly Rs. 5 crore in mini-mum wages, according the Workers Rights Consortium (WRC).

The minimum wage, which was revised in March 2009 by the Department of Industrial Policy and Promo-tion, was the first increase in wages since 2001. Under the new wage guidelines, the minimum wage for labor-ers was increased to Rs. 126.97 per person.

The WRC claims that over 1,25,000 laborers have been denied their legally mandated wages.

Laborers at Shahi Ex-ports, one of India’s largest garment exporters, said that the factory manage-ment had threatened to sack them if they went on strike to demand their wages. Par-vathi Lakshman, a laborer at a garment factory, said, “We were unaware of such an increase initially. How-ever, when some people told us, we took it up with the management, who said they would sack us if we went on strike.”

>>>>> Continued on Page 4

02| The Weekly Observer January 18, 2013

License touts swarm transport department

State vaccination drive against FMD flagging

Clampdown on benefit cards saves state crores of rupees

A BPL card hplder and his family

By Krishnaprasad S

A CLAMPDOWN on ben-efit cards for some of India’s poorest has saved the state almost half a billion rupees.

Regulators are targeting Below Poverty Line (BPL) card holders and in 2011 applied new rules in an ef-fort to cut out what they described as widespread

abuse within the system. The new rules saved

the Food Civil Supplies De-partment 445.298 million Rupees last year alone.

Strict rules now pro-hibit people from having a BPL card if they own a ve-hicle of 100 CC or more or if any member of the family is a government employee.

Supply and Revenue officials marched from door to door to verify documents submitted.

M.C. Gangadhar, Deputy Director of FCSD said: “We compare the electricity meter number with that of the num-ber mentioned in the card. If it mismatches then we straight-away cancel the card. ”

The majority of BPL and APL card holders are from Rural Karnataka, ac-cording to the FSCD.

Three million Above Pov-erty Line cards were also cancelled from Jan 2012 to Dec 2012 while 1 million BPL cards were cancelled or sus-pended for the same period..

Almost one in six peo-ple have been affected by the cuts and to BPL cards and one in nine people by the APL clampdown.

State government pur-chased food grains form Government of India at Ru-pees 8.35 per kilogram..

FSCD department of-fers a subsidy of Ru-pees 5 per kilogram.

Every month BPL card holders receive 20kg of Rice for Rs. 3, 3kg of wheat for Rs. 3 and 1.2kg of Sugar for Rs. 13.50.

Those figures, without factoring in health and other benefits, add up to a saving of almost 500 million rupees.

By Satyajith G D & Sneha BanerjeeThe state has barely im-

plemented 40% of the vacci-nation programs for livestock over the last three years.

India’s export of meat to international market has re-duced drastically due to short-comings in the implementa-tion of vaccination programs.

Statistics from Kengeri Veterinary Hospital suggest that the there is a steep de-cline in the implementation of Foot and Mouth Disease (FMD) vaccination in the state. This results in 45%-50% of depreciation in the market

value of the infected animals.Dr. Rame Gowda , Assis-

tant Director of Development at the Department of Animal Husbandry and Veterinary Services (DAHVS), Karna-taka, said: “Export of live-stock products was restrict-ed to Asian markets only.

The European livestock products are of superior quality and the livestock in-dustry has better technical infrastructure, and hence Indian products aren’t pre-ferred by those nations.

Foot and Mouth disease and Brucellosis are two major diseases that occur on a seasonal basis mak-ing the cattle quality poor and reducing its worth in the market by 45%-50%.”

According to B. Ganesh Kumar’s agricultural econom-ic report of 2008, estimated annual loss due to livestock diseases in India for FMD was Rs. 15000- 20000 crores.

ADCP (Animal Disease Control Project) had found

out the constraints in imple-menting the FMD vaccina-tions. They are categorized it into three categories. In the most relevant cases, the rea-son was the wrong belief of farmers about the reduction of milk yield.This ignorance is mainly due to the lack of awareness among farmers.

Dr. Motaiih , Assistant Director, (DAHVS), said: “Farmers are reluctant to vaccinate cattle. Most of them are ignorant and have misconceptions about the vaccination program”.

The doctor said that na-tive breeds develop a resis-tance capacity on their own whereas hybrid breeds aren’t accustomed to the new envi-ronment and require special attention, and farmers need to understand the vaccination needs of different breeds.

Veterinary Officer, Dr. Kumara Swamy, said: “Most farmers carelessly miss the scheduled dates to get their animals vaccinated which has a very negative impact on the animal. The vaccines should be administered at intervals of five-six months.”

Dr. Motaiih further added: “Karnataka has the high-est number of hybrid and crossbred cattle. Milk pro-duction is the main rea-son for adopting hybrid cattle for livestock farming.

With 56.25% of ex-otic blood in their bodies, the animals’ resistance to diseases decreases, which makes vaccination all the more necessary.”

Foot and mouth disease has been on the rise

The transport department has been issuing licenses to people who are not aware of minimal traffic rules or regula-tions, and to people who have failed in the driving track test.

People who now apply for a driving license (DL) can easily get them without passing in any of the tests conducted by the Region-al Transport Office (RTO). The middlemen who have been involved in the process have made this business a viable source of income.

The procedure to obtain a driving license starts off with a test to obtain a learner’s

license. After a minimum pe-riod of six months, one can apply for a driving license by taking the test prescribed by the transport depart-ment. While the total fee to obtain the driving license is Rs. 350, the agents in the RTO have been charging Rs. 3000 to obtain the same without passing the test.

“I got the driving license without passing the test. I paid Rs. 3500 to one of the agents there and he got me the driving license. We just have to behave as though we know driving in front of the inspector”, said Nikhil,

one of the commuters who obtained a license recently.

In the case of obtaining a permit for a truck, bus and oth-er public vehicles, the agents have been charging flat Rs. 15,000-20,000 against a reg-istered fee of Rs. 2000- 5000.

An official from the trans-port department, however, said, “We are monitoring each and every Regional Transport Office in the city to ensure clean, smooth and le-gal functioning of the system. There is no way people can obtain a driving license or a permit without it being tested or checked by our officials”.

By Nikita Malusare

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03 The Weekly Observer January 18, 2013

Bangalore Metro rail car-ries just 15,000 passen-gers a day in a city of over eight million people.

Metro rail can be a bet-ter choice of transport dur-ing the office hours to avoid massive traffic jams.

But lack of awareness about the transport sys-tem and short distance covered by metro ser-vice, hinders the progress of Bangalore Metro Rail.

Mr.BLY Chavan, PRO of Bangalore Metro Rail Corpo-ration Limited (BMRCL), said: “Since October 2010 total 96 lakhs commuters have trav-elled by metro rail and it car-ries 15,000 people every day.”

Even if the metro rail covers the commuters’ destinations, they prefer taking the bus.

Mr. Chavan adds, “Ini-tially a large number of commuters used to travel as they were enthusias-tic about this new mode of

transport. But the numbers have reduced dramatically. Only a few daily office go-ers and students travel by it.”

Narayana Srivastava, an IT professional in Ban-galore, said, “I usually go by bus to my office which is in C.V. Raman Nagar. If I travel by metro I have to cover additional distance after getting out of train”.

But many commuters avoid the service intention-

ally as they are not aware of the efficiency the metro.

Busy cities like Kol-kata and Delhi maintain their metro services well .

While Kolkata Metro car-ries approximately three thousand passengers ev-ery 5-15 minutes, Delhi Metro carries over 13 lakh commuters in a single day.

Abesence of Metro at IT and inudstrial areas like Peenya, Whitefield and Dod-

danakundi make Commuting difficult, asserted IT official

BMRCL promises new projects under Phase 2, which consists of these prime industrial areas.

However the pending clearances from state and central government and triv-ial issues triggered by local union parties have not allowed the projects to materialize.

Mr. Chavan says, “The re-cent issue with Dr. B. R. Ambed-

kar statue was needless. Earlier also we had re-

moved the statues of Jawa-harlal Nehru and Subhash Chandra Bose for a short time for the purpose of clearing rocks and blocks inside the tunnel path.

But this time they are rigid with this statue and thus the progress in work is delayed.”

The upcoming projects which are likely to com-mence by July or August this year cover areas like Peenya and Malleshwaram. Chavan said that BWSIL has already received clearance from the state secretary.

Projects covering areas un-der North like Kengeri, Krish-narajapuram and Yeshwant-pur will be completed once the other projects are finished.

Chavan said that travel-ling by metro is safe and time efficient.The routes de-signed have been planned to suit the convenience of the working strata of the city.

Metro still not a part of daily life By Priyanka Roy

Buzz in the city The Cauvery Crisis: Water Cuts

Karnataka is on the verge of facing the greatest water crisis this summer.

Scanty rainfall has left rural and urban areas of Karnataka thirsty. 73 taluks received deficit rainfall in 2012, as against to 15 taluks in 2011. This has badly affected agri-culture and revenue in these taluks.

Bangalore Water Supply and Sew-erage Board( BWSSB) has warned

Bangaloreans about the possible short-age of water between May-August.

BWSSB claims that it has just enough drinking water to suffice its needs.Citi-zens all across the state aren’t really ready for the approaching water crisis.

Bangaloreans feel that going by the current rainfall statistics, Karnataka shouldn’t have been forced to share the Cauvery water with Tamil Nadu.

Griggin Alexiuis, 25 , IT employee

Karnataka needs o fulfill its requirement of water first and then share the available water. we haven’t had wa-ter crisis in years so most. We have no idea how to tackle this water crisis. This may affect the packed water and tanker prices in future.

Girish Gangad-har, 29,Marketing Analyst Lead,IBM.

Krishnappa , 55, Shopkeeper

I don’t think gov-ernment should im-pose such rule on Karnatka. Karnataka has very scanty rain-fall . Whenever it rains heavily, water auto-matically flows to the neighbouring states. I don’t see point in making this compulsory. People pay Rs. 1000 or Rs.1,500 for dig-ging borewells but still they don’t get water.

Karna-taka should not share Cauvery water with Tamil Nadu as Tamil Nadu has enough natural water resources of its own. Tamil Nadu just needs the water for some standing crops which they can easily manage. Already there is less rainfall in the state. Sharing might increase the water crisis. The issue is being unnecessarily politicized

Rainfall was scarce in Karna-taka last year, thus water is scarce in the state. Thus, sharing Cauvery wa-ter is not a good idea. I think the gov-ernment would have shared the wa-ter if they had enough water resources.

Yamini Priya B, 25, Senior Soft-ware Engineer, SAP Labs IBM

Namma metro covers only 7 kms of the city

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January 18, 2013 The Weekly Observer |04

A transcendental journeyacross genres

Vineeth Vincent, tells The Weekly Observer reporter Hansa, about his journey, about the ups and downs that he has faced to be-come an achiever.Vineeth started off as an emcee in 2007, skipped a year of studies for beat boxing, this student performs for a living. A month of training and experience at Mrinalini Sarabhai’s Darpana Acade-my of Performing Arts, Ah-madabad, the 22-year old’s passion for beat-boxing deepened. Christ Univer-sity’s proud student, as he holds the Guinness World Records for beat-boxing and the Limca book of records.

Rhythms and coordina-tion are not that easily achieved. How did you manage to pull off a mas-sive choir of over 1000 participants?

It seemed like a difficult task but once the execution team sat down and devised the method, it all seemed to fall into place. We sim-ply played a very large game of follow the leader.

The audience was di-vided into four sectors and each sector had to follow a particular leader and all four leaders would take cues from me. The audience of 1300 to 2500 played their part perfectly. This would have been impossible without each and every one of them. What were the self-train-ing strategies that you had followed to reach this level of success?

Setting realistic standards for myself and giving it my all at all times. I get a little lazy now and then but those one or

two days every month seem to be a good break from all the work. Most artists these days confuse fame with success.

My target is to just make a decent living do-ing what I love doing.

Treating beat boxing as a product/service, finding the right way to package it for the right kind of target market.

How do you look upon your achievements regarding beat box-ing Guinness records?

The Guinness and Limca records, where I was a part of the largest beat box ensem-ble, were just exercises to prove to the youth that com-petition is not always a good thing. We are always taught to compete, be it in fests, academics and careers.

Sometimes working to-gether to see the bigger picture is more important. And every one of those par-ticipants proved that. In-stead of working against, they worked together to cre-ate something beautiful. It was a thrilling experience.

It is not even close to being my ultimate goal. I don’t believe I will ever have an ultimate goal. Life is never that simple.

Do you think music, in any form, could be ex-pressed in the form of ‘Flash mob’, in place of dance?

Firstly, I firmly believe that a majority of Indians are obsessed with dance.

I always come across flash mobs that are dance oriented. People find it easier to copy ideas rather than to innovate and play around with new ones.

All voices no instruments, I now and then go back and watch this to remind me

what we are capable of as artists... as human beings.

So yes, I believe there are so many other options.

Do you think that music could be used as a form of protest for various things, say for example corruption?

Music is an expression of an individual. In fact any art is. Artists like John Lennon and Bob Dylan wrote songs that became anthems against war during their times and we still sing them to this day. Hip Hop was a movement back in the day when it began.

It was an art from used to protest the injustice inflicted onto the African American population. Hip Hop gave them the voice that trav-eled across nations. Some-where down the line all of us lost the meaning of art.

The quality is degrad-ing and music has become perverse. Of recent, I have come across a few tunes that stand against corruption

but the message seemed to get lost among all the profanity and the unnec-essary vulgarity. But there are a few rays of hope left.

Are you planning to stay in music industry or do you have any further aca-demic plans? If so what?

My last academic plan was to finish my three-year degree course in five years. I nicknamed it “Vineeth’s five year plan” and I recently suc-ceeded when I finished my last paper a few months age.

So no more book educa-tion. But maybe if someone paid me a million bucks, I might consider studying again.

What would be your mes-sage to the youth today?

I’ve always said - “When you do something, do it with style but more impor-tantly, do it with honor!”

Getting high is not as important as mak-ing something out of your life, make it worth living.

Labor violations

plague state

garment industryShahi Exports, which sup-plies major clothing lines such as Walmart, JC Penney, Gap and Philips Van Heu-sen, claims that the Clothing Manufacturers’ Association of India issued a directive to all the manufacturing units, instructing them to not com-ply with the guidelines issued by the government.The management at the gar-ment factory, when contact-ed, said that the minimum wage laws have not been implemented anywhere in the industry. “Unless the industry as a whole raises the minimum wage, it will be difficult for us to maintain our competitive-ness in the market,” said an official on behalf of the man-agement.J.M. Venkateswara, the Joint Labor Officer at the Karna-taka Ministry of Labor, said that implementation of mini-mum wage guidelines was extremely difficult, but the government was taking ad-equate steps to ensure that the directives are being im-plemented. “We will have a formal dis-cussion with the garment fac-tories soon. ““And if they still fail to imple-ment the guidelines, then we will begin issuing penalties and fines,” he said.Manodeep Guha, a field rep-resentative of the WRC, said that it was also the respon-sibility of the retailers, many of them from across America and Europe to ensure that the factories from which they source their products follow the guidelines laid down by the government of India.

Vineeth Vincent: journey across different professional sectors

Continued from Page 1>>

Editorial TeamIndian Institute of Journal-ism and New MediaKengeri Hobli, Opp. BGS International SchoolKumbalagodu, Bangalroe-74

website: http://www.iijnm.org/media_up-loads/observer/2012_13/

email: editor@iijnm.org

Editor:Priyanka RoySub-Editor:Shreya MukherjeePhoto Editor:Krishnaprasad

Page Editors:Rohan D PremkumarDeepu Aby VargheseSneha BannerjeeNikia MalusareHansa V

Proof Readers:Kakoli MukherjeeSatyajith GDAheli RaychauduriUrmi Sengupta