Dalits Media Watch
News Updates 09.04.14
80 houses gutted in Mahakalpara fire- Odisha Sun Times
Indian Women: Landless In The Village, Homeless In The City - The Indian Republic
2010 Mirchpur violence casts shadow over polls- Deccan Herald
Caste Hindus flee village after locking temple at Uthapuram- The Hindu
Odisha Sun Times
80 houses gutted in Mahakalpara fire
Mahakalpara, Apr 9:
At least 80 houses have been razed to ashes in a fire that broke out this afternoon in Basaghar village under Mahakalpara block in Odisha’s Kendrapara district.
Though no casualty has been reported a calf however, has been burnt alive in the fire.
Local sources said 33 dalit families who lived in these houses have been rendered homeless following the mishap.
Properties including cash, paddy, belongings worth Rs 50 lakh were reduced to ashes as nothing could be saved when the fire broke out, reports said.
The fire is suspected to have originated from a garbage dump located nearby.
Three fire tenders, two from Kendrapara and one from Pattamundai took hours to douse the fire.
While government officials are yet to reach the spot the hapless families have taken shelter under trees to protect themselves from the scorching sun. Fellow villagers and volunteers have arranged cooked food for the homeless families, reports said.
The Indian Republic
Indian Women: Landless In The Village, Homeless In The City
Irrespective of why and how they start living in the open, for women on the streets each day is a challenge – whether it is in cooking a meal by the roadside, finding a place to bathe or fending off sexual predators.
Survival in the absence of any tangible assets like a home, land or cattle is a huge challenge, but the ordeal can get really unbearable for women, especially single women who are either unmarried, abandoned or widowed.
Maria, a street dweller in Bengaluru, Karnataka’s cosmopolitan capital, has been shifting from one footpath to another for the last decade and she is glad that she is not on her own. In her twenties, Maria came here from Tamil Nadu with her husband and child looking for a better source of livelihood because the family had no land back home. But being homeless in the city has proved far more of a nightmare than she had ever imagined.
“Since we can’t afford rented housing, the men take turns keeping a vigil since women face the constant risk of physical and sexual abuse. My children study in a school run by the state government and we cook on the footpath. Taking a bath every day is not possible as we have to pay to use public toilets and bathrooms. There are some shelters run by the Bruhat Bangalore Mahanagara Palike (BBMP, or the Bengaluru Municipality) but we cannot live there as a family. Also, these facilities are far away from our workplace, making commuting difficult and expensive,” she elaborates.
If landlessness forced Maria and her family into a life on the city’s pavements, what compelled Hasnath, a native of Raichur – an arid and economically backward district in northern Karnataka – to migrate?
Unsurprisingly, again it was landlessness that pushed her out of the relative comfort of the countryside into the crowded city. For a few months every year, she comes to work on construction sites getting weekly earnings of Rs 900 after toiling eight hours daily, six days a week. She lives amidst the dust and rubble of the construction site, sharing a small living space with her husband, a teenage daughter and other male and female workers.
Like scores of women, both Maria and Hasnath have hardly any idea of government schemes like the Rajiv Awas Yojana (RAY), the Indira Awas Yojana (IAY) or the Bhoo Odethana Yojane, among others, that could help them gain a small foothold in the city or ensure modest homesteads back home. While the Indira Awas Yojana and Rajiv Awas Yojana are pan-Indian central government schemes initiated in 1985 and 2011, respectively to ensure housing for the homeless rural and urban poor, the Bhoo Odethana Yojane is a Karnataka state scheme introduced in 1992. Incidentally, both the central schemes leave out women from their purview by not explicitly granting property ownership rights to them.
What does such systemic omission mean for them? Today with only 12 per cent of rural Indian women own land – and the numbers are even smaller in urban areas – the fear of being rendered homeless is an all-pervading one. Women even put up with sustained violence in order to give their children a ‘peaceful’ existence. Saroja’s experience typifies that of innumerable women living on the streets. A 44-year-old domestic worker, she lives in a small rented accommodation in a low-income Bengaluru neighbourhood with her alcoholic husband and three children. “My husband used to work as a mason but now he refuses to do anything claiming that he is too old and ill to work. Sometimes I get so fed up, I threaten to leave him, but then he turns on me and says that I would have to pay him for the Rs 30,000 he gave as advance for the 10-month rental lease on our home. How can I even afford to part ways with him? Also, when the landlord threatens to raise the rent or evict us, which is quite often, at least he can tackle him, what can a lone woman like me do in such circumstances?” she asks.
While the odds are heavily against women owning land, a campaign launched by Landesa, a non-profit organisation that advocates for the land rights for women across different states in India, has helped to raise awareness about the issue. Since 2013, it has been studying women gaining their entitlements under the Bhoo Odethana Yojane (BOY), a land purchase and allocation scheme that is implemented by the Scheduled Caste (SC)/Scheduled Tribes (ST) Development Corporation of Karnataka for the benefit of women agricultural labourers, chiefly Dalits or Adivasis. According to the rules, the SC/ST Corporation provides 50 per cent subsidy and 50 per cent loan for the purchase of two acres of dry land or one acre of wet land for each beneficiary at a unit cost of Rs 5 lakh. The period of repayment of the loan amount is 10 years at an interest rate of six per cent. The scheme stipulates that the seller of the land must not be a Dalit or Adivasi.
Explains Lokesh S., State Director, Landesa Karnataka, “When we went to Nagathi Belagal village in Bhadravati taluk of Shimoga district in 2013, we discovered that none of the women had rights to any kind of land originally. Further, they had been unaware of schemes such as BOY or IAY. Therefore, we decided to understand how women and men got the requisite information about what their rights and entitlements. For this we met with the officers at various levels of government and the Gram Panchayat and learnt that the local government officers/representatives assisted the women in availing the relevant benefits by helping them complete the necessary procedures like the submission of caste certificates and the obtaining of land titles.”
Among the beneficiaries of this process in Shimoga district is 38-year-old Lakshmi. A Dalit landless labourer, she came to know about the BOY scheme from a local leader. After she got her name on the list she managed to purchase an acre of land, with the government putting in 50 per cent of the total cost of Rs 2,40,000.
Lakshmi has already paid up Rs 60,000 of this in easy installments. That was the amount she had saved from the time she got married to Harlappa. Today, she is paying out the remainder of the amount from the money she earns by selling the agricultural produce cultivated on the land. While Lakshmi and Harlappa grow paddy, some of the other women beneficiaries have started growing vegetables as well.
The ownership of the land has brought a new sense of confidence to Lakshmi and others but it obviously took sustained effort by the government and Panchyat members over many years to overcome the initial skepticism of the villagers and ensure this positive outcome. Landesa’s study report and persistent advocacy has been vital to ensuring that the government recognises and replicates its successes.
The point to be noted here, however, is that joint property ownership does not guarantee any security for women, as often it is the male members who end up calling the shots. In traditional societies, people still believe that men must be responsible for all assets as women cannot be capable of properly managing them.
Even when women own land independently, or with other women, as in some matrilineal societies, there might be ego clashes with the spouse, father, brother, uncles or other men in their marital family.
Land ownership is key to social transformation in rural India, and a roof over one’s head essential in urban settings. But to ensure that women too can work towards achieving this is an extremely difficult process.
Despite this, as the Shimoga experience has shown, small steps taken in the right direction can lead to new pathways of life.
The names of some of the women quoted have been changed to protect their identity.
Deccan Herald
2010 Mirchpur violence casts shadow over polls
Gautam Dheer Hisar/Chandigarh: April 8, 2014 DHNS
Over 60 Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) personnel at six pickets in Mirchpur village, Haryana is a shrill reminder of the caste violence that shamed the state way back in April 2010.
The CRPF has not moved out of the village since then, given the uneasy calm that lingers.
As Haryana votes on Thursday, the conflict over a trivial issue that left two, including a handicapped girl, dead and dozens of Dalit houses torched and reduced to ashes, will cast its shadow on the polls.
The impact on sentiments of the minority community is writ large and the aftermath of the violence has polarised the communities even further along caste lines in Hisar’s Mirchpur.
The incident lay bare the wedge between Dalits and the upper community Jats.
Observers feel the violence sharpened the caste conflict in Haryana even further, which may lead to a pattern of polling where one or the other community votes on factional lines.
Haryana is dominated by upper caste Jats, constituting 27 per cent of the population. The Scheduled Caste represent 20 per cent of the population.
The incumbent Congress government is likely to be hard hit, despite whatever it did to secure and rehabilitate the affected Dalit families.
The Congress has fielded a Jat candidate from Hisar, so has the INLD.
The formidable Haryana Janhit Congress (HJC) chief and sitting MP Kuldeep Bishnoi, a non-Jat leader, is once again in the electoral fray from Hisar and stands to gain from consolidation of non-Jat votes.
Till date, close to 150 families have not returned home. They have taken shelter in a farmhouse of a local politician on the outskirts.
Continued trouble
Sources said even after four years, the animosity simmers. At a recent wedding of a Jat family in the village, none of the Dalit families were invited or even given the ceremonial shagun or gift money.
The Jats are angry that the Dalits deposed against them in the court which eventually led to the conviction of 15 upper community members.
State Congress leaders say they did everything to help the families–from reconstructing their houses, supporting Dalit youth with vocational jobs and even ensuring that their children are admitted to government and private schools.
But in the 2011 by-election in Hisar, the seat was bagged by Bishnoi who now fancies another term.
While the population of Dalits in the village is far less than the upper caste Jats, the incident still lingers on in voters mind across all constituencies.
The Hindu
Caste Hindus flee village after locking temple at Uthapuram
Dalits chose to stay away from entering the Muthalamman Temple at Uthapuram near here on Tuesday after the caste Hindus fled the village, leaving the temple locked.
A posse of police personnel and a riot-control vehicle were deployed in the village with the Superintendent of Police, Vijayendra Bidari, camping at the nearby Elumalai police station.
Dalit village leaders said they decided not to go to the temple as the police requested them to postpone their plan of worship till the elections were over. However, Mr. Bidari said the police were ready to provide protection to them. “The temple administration is with the caste Hindus and they have fled the village. They are not going to celebrate the temple festival (as scheduled on April 8, 9 and 10). If they come back and celebrate it at the temple, the Dalits will definitely be allowed to worship at the temple as per the High Court order,” he said.
The Dalits worshipped at the temple for the first time in November 2011 after nearly two decades amid police protection. Later, they participated in the kumbabhishekam of the temple in 2012.
However, with their Mariamman temple festival coinciding with the festival at Muthalamman temple, they did not go to the Muthalamman temple in 2013.
“Because of the drought, we could not mobilise funds for the Mariamman temple festival this year. So, we wanted to participate in the Muthalamman temple Panguni celebration,” another Dalit leader, K. Ponnaiah, said.
Meanwhile, the district police registered two cases against 40 persons belonging to the caste Hindu group on several charges including attempt to murder for throwing stones at the police outpost in the village on Monday.
The incident occurred when revenue and police officials were talking with Dalit representatives.
A woman police constable, Kamatchi of Tamil Nadu Special Police, who was injured in the incident, had lodged one of the cases. Windshield of a government vehicle was damaged in the incident.
The accused were booked for rioting with deadly weapons, using criminal force to deter public servant from discharging his duty, voluntarily causing hurt by dangerous weapons and the provisions of Tamil Nadu Public Property (Prevention of Damage and Loss) Act 1992, police said.
News Monitor by Girish Pant
.Arun Khote
On behalf of
Dalits Media Watch Team
(An initiative of “Peoples Media Advocacy & Resource Centre-PMARC”)
Pl visit on FACEBOOK : https://www.facebook.com/
..............................
Peoples Media Advocacy & Resource Centre- PMARC has been initiated with the support from group of senior journalists, social activists, academics and intellectuals from Dalit and civil society to advocate and facilitate Dalits issues in the mainstream media. To create proper & adequate space with the Dalit perspective in the mainstream media national/ International on Dalit issues is primary objective of the PMARC.
On behalf of
Dalits Media Watch Team
(An initiative of “Peoples Media Advocacy & Resource Centre-PMARC”)
Pl visit on FACEBOOK : https://www.facebook.com/
..............................
Peoples Media Advocacy & Resource Centre- PMARC has been initiated with the support from group of senior journalists, social activists, academics and intellectuals from Dalit and civil society to advocate and facilitate Dalits issues in the mainstream media. To create proper & adequate space with the Dalit perspective in the mainstream media national/ International on Dalit issues is primary objective of the PMARC.
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