Vol 10 Issue 4
NGOCT
E N N O C
www.ngoconnect.org
July-August 2013
My final words of advice to you are educate, agitate and organize; have faith in yourself. With justice on our side I do not see how we can lose our battle.” - Dr. B.R. Ambedkar
Regn. no. MAHENG/2004/15104
India’s First NGO Newstabloid CONNECTiNG
While we were silent
Why aren't women and girls safe in India?
A story of destructive governance and citizens who did not speak out
How do we make every place safe for women, men and others? How do we make freedom from fear of violence a part of who we are? By taking responsibility.
irst, the UPA came for the roads s e c t o r. T h e y d e s t r o y e d contracting. They slowed down road construction. They left highways half built. We did not speak out. Next, they came for the airline sector. They let Air India suck more money from taxpayers. They let bad regulation destroy the private sector. They let crony banking sustain bad bets. They ensured India would never be an aviation hub. We did not speak out. Then they came for the power sector. They confused creation of mega capacities with actual generation. They had no rational pricing plans. They were arbitrary in the awarding of licences. They could not make up their mind whether they wanted to protect the environment or destroy it. We did not speak out. Then they came for education. They promulgated the RTE after 100 per cent enrolment. They expanded capacity, but cut-offs still rose. They confused university buildings with building universities. We did not speak out. Then they came for industry. They turned the clock back in every way-Ensured that regulations became more complex and uncertain. Ensured that input costs rise. Ensured crummy infrastructure. Promulgated a land scam policy known as SEZ and sold it as industrial policy. They encouraged FDI. But they forgot which one they wanted: outbound or inbound. But we did not speak out. Then they came for employment. There was some growth. But they decided that the only good employment is that which has the hand of the state. So the NREGA's expansion was seen as a sign of success, not failure. By its own logic, if more people need the NREGA, the economy has failed. But we did not speak out. Then they came for agriculture. First, they created artificial shortages through irrigation scams. Then they had a myopic policy for technology adoption. Then they decided India is largely a wheat and rice economy; we will have shortages for everything else. But we did not speak out.
Women and girls have always thought about safety. How could they not, when the threat of violence is pervasive and shadows them from conception through their lifetimes? After Delhi it is now Mumbai that has become the centre of all media attention –international and national.-because of gang rapes. Why aren't India's women and girls safe? Who is responsible for their safety? How should that safety be assured? Since December 2012, these three questions have become a fixture on the national agenda, as has the issue of freedom from violence. However, concerns about safety tend to limit women's mobility and activities and teach them to strategise everything from timings to travel, to how to walk or dress for office or college. The Indian women's movement has always raised the issue of violence against women. India's library of laws dealing with violence against women are a legacy of the women's movement's to deter this violence such as the Pre-Natal Diagnostic Te c h n i q u e s ( R e g u l a t i o n A n d Prevention Of Misuse) Act, 1994, Sexual Harassment of Women at Workplace (Prevention, Prohibition and Redressal) Act, 2013, and earlier the Anti- Dowry Act. We think first about the law because we repose primary responsibility for women's safety in the hands of the state. and the notion that certain kinds of behaviour are unacceptable to this society..When violence against women occurs, it's because someone else failed—the police, the courts, the law and order apparatus, governance, politicians. In the context of violence, safety takes the form of restricting mobility, choice and freedom. Protection against violence outside the home becomes a pretext for control. How do we make freedom from fear of violence a part of who we are? By taking responsibility. The first step is to recognize violence as “violence.” Then we start building the world in which we would like to live and we would like our children to inherit. (--Excerpts from an article by Swarna Rajgopalan (DNA Web team)
F
Courtesy India Today
went after those. They used institutions as instruments of their political design. They demoralised every single branch of government. But we did not speak out. Then they came for the telecom sector. They got greedy and milked it. They got arbitrary and retrospectively taxed it... we can always revert to fixed lines. Then they censored the internet. After all, the internet can be a threat to government. But we did not speak out. Then they came for financial stability. They produced a large deficit. They brought the current account deficit close to an unsustainable point. They nearly wrecked the banking sector. They created every macro-economic instability you can imagine, which makes investment difficult. And they made sure the rupee sank 20% since Jan 2013. But we did not speak out. Then they came for regulation. It was back to the 1970s. More arbitrary regulation is good. More rules are good. Uncertainty makes business more careful. The answer to every administrative problem is enact a new law...fill in more forms. Multiple regulators are good for corruption. We did not speak out. Then they came after freedom. They promulgated more restrictive rules for everything: freedom of expression, right to assembly and protest, foreign scholars. They used sedition laws. They kept the architecture of colonial laws intact. They said they stood against communal forces but also encouraged them. We did not speak out. Then they came for virtue itself. They preached : Avoid responsibility. They legitimised being corrupt. They encouraged subterfuge. They
Then they came for institutions. They always had. This has been Congress DNA for four decades. They drew up a list of institutions that remained unscathed: Parliament, the IB, bureaucracy, you name it. They then 1
believed that integrity does not exist. That they were the people- when they were supposed to be the servants of the people. We did not speak out. Then they came for the poor. They said the poor only need Rs. 32 per day to feed, clothe and house themselves. Enact policies that keep India in poverty a little longer. But we did not speak out. Then they came for the citizens. They used the secularism blackmail to reduce our choices. If you are not with us you are evil they said. Then they infantilised us. You are not capable of exercising choices so we will make them for you. They acted as if we were so stupid that the three top parties and leaders felt no need to justify themselves to us. But we did not speak out. (Excerpts from an article by Pratap Bhanu Mehta with some changes. (The writer is president, Centre for Policy Research, Delhi )
FCRA Update FCRA Department has put up a list of NGOs who have not filed their FC-6 in 2010-11 or 2011-12. A number of wellknown NGOs figure on the list. Visit the web-site and find out whether your name is on the list! If you are sending a letter to FCRA Department, do write ‘For FCRA Wing’ on the envelope. This will help ensure that your letter does not get lost in the MHA labyrinth. (Reference: FCRA notice dated 7May-13. [mha.nic.in/fcra/intro/FCRANGOs-Inst-050613.PDF] Contact: publications@ accountaid.net Income Tax scrutiny for NGOs receiving more than 1Crore from FC 1. The Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) has issued Instruction No. 10