As seen from Washington
COME spring, Washington gets busy spreading cheer. At least the Bretton Wood twins, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), do.

Punjab’s army of job-seekers
PUNJAB is heading towards a dangerous situation. The army of its unemployed young men and women today consists of over 15 lakh persons.

Racist attacks
THE Colombine High School massacre in the USA and the nail-bomb attack on a predominantly Bangladeshi settlement in London are part of a disturbing pattern of the revival of the cult of Hitler.

SINO-US RELATIONS
by Sunanda K. Datta-Ray
HOW many people realised when China’s President Jiang Zemin fulminated over India’s nuclear tests that his bad manners enjoyed American support? That the Americans look on China as their surrogate to maintain stability in eastern Asia, underwrite Pakistan’s survival, and keep a wary eye on India in case it grows too strong?

Casualties in Army operations
by Pritam Bhullar
THE Army Chief, Gen V.P. Malik, said at Rohtak a few weeks ago that 4,000 Army personnel were killed and 9,108 wounded from 1986 to 1998 and that these casualties were more than the casualties suffered by us in all the three wars put together.

Who will wipe the tears of rape victims?
By Svati Chakravarty-Bhatkal
HOW does one judge the level of civilisation a society has attained? Arguably, the level of bestial crimes to which women are subjected and the quality of justice they obtain could be a realistic parameter. How does our country India fare on this front? Miserably, of course.

Epidemic of marriages!
by Iqbal Singh Ahuja
FOR the last few years almost every thing has started occurring in the form of epidemics whether it is a disease or a marriage. At present we are witnessing the epidemic of marriages. I pity the salaried class, as it seems the entire month’s salary is going down the drain. A majority of people don’t feel happy when they get a marriage invitation card: the common reaction is “oh! another card!”

75 Years Ago

Madras University senate meeting
AT the adjourned meeting of the senate held last evening it was said that the issue of religious instructions at the University be referred to the syndicate for the purpose of amending it so that any college applying for recognition shall satisfy the syndicate, in addition to the conditions already specified in clauses, that it does not compel the students to attend religious classes or prayers if the parents or the guardians of the students shall have any conscientious objection.

As seen from Washington

COME spring, Washington gets busy spreading cheer. At least the Bretton Wood twins, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), do. It is the time of the year when they summon chiefs of central banks for some pep talk or jawboning. This year the goodwill season is special since it officially marks the end of the Asian economic nightmare. The Bank and the Fund have announced that the worst of the currency and stock market crises is over and recovery is very much on. What is particularly pleasing for the twosome is that hedge funds and greedy banks which set the fuse for the meltdown are the ones leading the turnaround. The Fund attracted a lot of flak for the way it handled the aftermath of the collapse and, hence, its satisfaction is both understandable and genuine. While rejoicing the return of order to the markets in East and South-East Asia, the Fund has thought it fit to announce the opening of a new borrowing window for the countries in dire balance of payments difficulties. It is the lender of last resort and should offer instant relief, cutting short the humiliating and prolonged negotiations between the Fund and any needy member.

For Indians, despondent over the unbecoming political farce, there are two pieces of good news. Despite the three-year coalition interlude, the economy has not suffered and the country’s ranking in the global economic league is respectably high. But that is only in terms of the highly notional purchasing power parity (PPP). What this means is that India’s per capita income of $370 can buy goods worth $ 1660 in the USA. Not all goods, but those of daily use. The PPP is the buzz word of the nineties and adds several kilos of fat to emaciated incomes in the developing countries. One leftwing economist has dismissively dubbed the PPP “Pepsi price parity”. A can of the soft drink costs about one dollar in the USA but only one-fifth of that in India. So Rs 8 in India becomes the equivalent of Rs 42 in the USA, in buying power. It is this formula that converts $ 370 to $ 1660 and pitchforks India to the proud fifth place in the world. It hides several unacceptable facts. The per capita income is the average for the whole country. In India the disparity of income between the rich and the poor is perhaps one of the harshest anywhere in the world. Thus at the lower end of the scale, the income of a whole family (and not every member) must be $370 a year. Statistics are highly unreliable and as one contemplative analyst wrote only half in jest, that even in the worst of times India is not as poor as the GDP tries to project. Only certain sections are very poor and the social structure, rather than the economic system, is behind it.

There is one simple truth in the Fund-Bank assessment that is sure to drive away the political blues. For the past few years the Indian economy has been growing at around 5 per cent every year. This rate is high compared to most countries, but it could be higher. At this pace the country can double its real wealth only after 14 years, If India pushes its growth rate to 7 or 8 per cent, the period can be compressed to nine years. And with a gentler and kinder distribution pattern, poverty as known today can be ended in about 15 years. This goal is attainable, and it is both a mystery and a pity that the attack on poverty still remains unfocused.

Punjab’s army of job-seekers

PUNJAB is heading towards a dangerous situation. The army of its unemployed young men and women today consists of over 15 lakh persons. The figure may go up alarmingly in the post-Ninth Plan period if the problem is not tackled effectively at this stage. The scenario is all the more disturbing as job avenues in the state are becoming fewer and fewer. Among the growing number of job-seekers are properly qualified doctors and engineers besides over 40,000 products of the Industrial Training Institutes. How shameful it is that in a top-ranking state like Punjab even highly skilled people are chasing jobs like the proverbial mirage, or are unable to set up their own enterprise. This is despite the fact that the Punjab government has been claiming that it would welcome proposals from unemployed youth for setting up their own units. Some time ago, appealing to the jobless youth to come forward to establish their own enterprises, the Punjab Local Bodies Minister, Mr Balramji Dass Tandon, said that those looking for government jobs should avail themselves of the subsidies and other benefits offered under self-employment schemes. Yet it seems there are very few takers. Why? Only the government can provide an answer to the tricky question.

The unemployment problem was the major factor that contributed to the growth of terrorism in Punjab not long ago. It is feared that the young job-seekers may again turn to militancy, besides involving themselves in drug-trafficking and activities of the ISI, if no concrete measures are taken to bring down the curve of the unemployed and the underemployed. Government departments and undertakings do not have the capacity to absorb more than 2 per cent of those in search of avenues of employment. Therefore, any strategy that is finalised will have to involve large-scale private participation. The belief that the setting up of big industrial units can help control the problem effectively is also not based on the ground realities. The greatest employers anywhere in India are medium and small-scale industries. It is this sector where the maximum stress will have to be laid. Besides this, there is a strong case for promoting agriculture-based enterprises, specially in rural areas. But no scheme can produce the intended results if there is laxity at the implementation level. There must be an inbuilt system of periodic review. Punjab can draw on the large number of patriotic NRIs who are willing to invest on a grand scale. What they require is a hassle-free system with very little paper work and adequate infrastructural facilities. Punjab can definitely provide all this if the government looks at the unemployment problem with the seriousness it deserves. In fact, Punjab’s industrial policy should be redrawn to create an investor-friendly atmosphere as also to prevent investment skewness which leads to uneven economic development. Projects, once sanctioned, should not be allowed to linger on as it seems to be happening in the case of the Bathinda petroleum plant, even if there is a change of political dispensation. Politics should serve as a facilitator of economic activity, and not as a roadblock.

Racist attacks

THE Colombine High School massacre in the USA and the nail-bomb attack on a predominantly Bangladeshi settlement in London are part of a disturbing pattern of the revival of the cult of Hitler. Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold had planned the high school butchery as a birthday tribute to Hitler and the nail-bombers issued warnings to the racial minorities to pack up and leave the UK before the end of 1999 or face “extermination”. While Americans are trying to come to terms with aftermath of the “Littletown executions” the threat of the stepping up of the scale of attacks on minorities in the UK has jolted the police administration into action keeping in mind the sharp increase in the number of coloured visitors during the five-week World Cup extravaganza. Of course, the International Cricket Council and the England Cricket Board have reassured cricket fans that adequate security would be provided at all the venues, it does not take care of the chances of street attacks. The neo-Nazi groups who have taken responsibility for the nail-bombing of a Bangladeshi settlement in a London suburb want to provoke some kind of a backlash from the coloured population so that they can arouse the anger of the uninvolved English against what one letter describes as “dear black bas...” Copies of the letter have been plastered prominently in Southall, Slough, Birmingham and Bradford which have a heavy concentration of Indians and Pakistanis. One group which calls itself White Wolves has even targeted Jews anti-racist organisations and the ethnic media.

Black Labour Party MP Oona King received a vicious letter from the Wolves which she read out in the House of Commons. But what upset members of the House of Commons more was the reading of excerpts by Mr Piara Khabra, who represents Southall — London’s little Punjab — from the hate mail he receives regularly from racist groups. One letter read: “When we had an empire trying to make scum like you better, you did not want us in your country. But after the British had left, you all realised what a stinking shower you all are and you want to come to our stinking country and make it like a pig hole, like your country”. The strong language of the letter prompted the House Deputy Speaker to request Mr Khabra to tone down his letter-reading. The Southall MP should have been allowed to continue for the world to know the failure of the so-called civilised British society in expelling the protagonists of racial hatred in their midst. The current round of racist attacks are straight out of the thundering speech of Conservative MP Enoch Powell in the seventies in which he had warned of rivers of blood flowing through the streets of Blighty if the coloured people were not thrown out of the country. The fact that the ethnic communities have formed their own vigilance groups for self-protection indicates their lack of confidence in the British police to prevent white hoodlums from attacking them. It is up to Prime Minister Tony Blair to prove wrong the popular impression among the coloured people that British justice is fair only to the British... for the rest the Jallianwalla Bagh seems to be an adequate model to follow.

SINO-US RELATIONS
Deceptive discord
by Sunanda K. Datta-Ray

HOW many people realised when China’s President Jiang Zemin fulminated over India’s nuclear tests that his bad manners enjoyed American support? That the Americans look on China as their surrogate to maintain stability in eastern Asia, underwrite Pakistan’s survival, and keep a wary eye on India in case it grows too strong? This return to “spheres of influence” should have been clear when Mr Jiang broke with protocol to indulge in a petulant outburst about India in President Bill Clinton’s presence. Collusion was confirmed when Premier Zhu Rongji’s visit to the USA coincided with a trip to Pakistan by his predecessor, Mr Li Peng.

What this boils down to is that the present discord in Sino-American relations is deceptive. So high are the stakes on either side that the connection is likely to survive acrimonious argument over a range of issues, including Kosovo, Taiwan’s future, conditions in Tibet, China’s abysmal human rights record, the proposed American theatre missile defence system and alleged Chinese theft of US nuclear secrets. The list is long and formidable, but as Prof Bart S. Fisher of the prestigious Georgetown University School of Foreign Service wrote in the International Herald Tribune, “the United States needs to work with China in many areas.” China, “a great power, representing one-fifth of humanity”, is expected to tackle the east Asian recession, Kosovo, North Korea’s nuclear programme, and “regional nuclear arms control in India and Pakistan.” The implications of the USA not only taking it upon itself to discipline India — the pro forma reference to protege Pakistan can be ignored — but to do so in partnership with a country with which India’s relations are strained are mind-boggling.

It was precisely because the US-China quarrel is soluble that during his visit to New Delhi in January Russian Prime Minister Yevgeni Primakov set diplomatic dovecotes aflutter by mooting the idea of a strategic triangle linking Moscow, New Delhi and Beijing. Mr Primakov’s transparent attempt to pre-empt a Sino-American entente — on which Beijing at once poured cold water — might have seemed to hark back to Cold War polarisation. But the Nixon-Kissinger team’s inspiration for initiatives in respect of China is never far from US calculations. By extending the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (a creature of the Cold War) right up to Russia’s western border while also befriending China on Russia’s eastern flank,the USA is merely continuing the containment theory.

Of course, strategy is not all. There is an economic rationale as well. Many Russians believe that the strikes against Serbia are really an attack on the European body politic which will diminish the Euro’s value and affect the prosperity of the world’s biggest united economy which necessarily competes with the booming USA. Even if this sounds far-fetched, there is no denying that trade policy is foreign policy. The USA would not otherwise have sent the chief executive of Samsonite to Singapore as Ambassador. Nor would a former US envoy to Japan have told a Congressional committee that he would regard himself as America’s foremost salesman in Japan.

So closely, indeed, do Washing-ton’s different, but not necessarily conflicting, objectives overlap that it is sometimes difficult to tell where commercial interests end and the moral mandate that the Americans claim begins. It is no secret that the Bush and Clinton administrations lent a benign ear to the exiled Dalai Lama only when other factors indicated that it would be rewarding to adopt a tougher line towards Beijing. Some Tibetans argue that the USA might have exerted more pressure on the Chinese if it had not been for the fear that this would encourage India.

By that token reduction of a $57 billion adverse trade balance with China and the attractions of Chinese infrastructure projects valued at $1 trillion are considerations that Washington cannot ignore. True, the Republican Congress is hell-bent on denying Mr Clinton any foreign policy success in respect of China, but against that is to be set the power of the business lobby which operates on the basis of the old adage that what is good for General Motors is good for the USA. It played a key role in persuading the administration to exorcise the ghosts of the Vietnam war and explained Mr Clinton’s earlier softpedalling of human rights.

Mr Jiang and Mr Zhu are better placed for dextrous diplomacy than Mr Clinton. They do not have to placate a querulous opposition, woo constituency opinion or even explain their purposes and actions to the party. They can use grumbling by hardliners — their own alter ego — against globalisation and what the Kosovo operation might imply for Taiwan or Tibet as bargaining chips as they ignore immediate setbacks to concentrate on the long term. China’s aims are still regional, but the implications are global, and the Chinese cannot have missed the absence of even a squeak of response from Washington when Beijing turned down the Association of South-East Asian Nations proposal for a code of conduct to determine actions on the ground by claimants to the disputed Spratly Islands.

Clearly, the Americans no longer support their old protege, the Philippines, which is the main victim of Chinese assertiveness and has been pleading for multilateral discussions on the Spratlys. By refusing to internationalise the issue, the USA signalled loud and clear that it accepts China as the Asian hegemon providing sealanes remain open so that American interests are safe. China’s military-political potential cannot be realised without dual-purpose technology. Though the Clinton administration’s rejection of the Hughes Electronics Corporation’s sale of telecommunications satellites was a blow, threatening to disrupt China’s satellite-launching business which is expected to yield billions of dollars, the USA far more readily sells computers and equipment to China than to India, overlooking arms deals with Pakistan.

China needs investment. It wants to join the World Trade Organisation. It must shore up its precipitously falling international trade. These are sound reasons for courting the USA and offering inducements (like reviewing the rule forcing multinationals to operate only through state trading companies) as well as opening markets to American tobacco, wheat, fruit, vegetables, banking and services.This last is significant for 80 per cent of the US GDP is in services. But the bigger purpose is strategic. By offering economic concessions to the business lobby, the astute Mr Zhu also ensured that the USA would ultimately endorse China’s self-image. It may be some distance away, but in spite of appearances, we may be moving towards another bipolar world, one in which the parties are not adversaries. As Mr Tao Wenzhao, Deputy Director of the Institute of American Studies at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, a top government think-tank, says, “Disputes are natural in every relationship. But the USA has not changed its policy of engagement with China and relations remain good.”

Formerly Editor of The Statesman, the author is editorial consultant to The Straits Times in Singapore.

Casualties in Army operations
by Pritam Bhullar

THE Army Chief, Gen V.P. Malik, said at Rohtak a few weeks ago that 4,000 Army personnel were killed and 9,108 wounded from 1986 to 1998 and that these casualties were more than the casualties suffered by us in all the three wars put together. Why are we suffering an abnormal number of casualties in the counter-insurgency operations and that too of officers?

Against this background should be seen the case of Major Harminder Pal Singh who got killed in a North Kashmir village while leading the commando platoon of his battalion on April 13. While praising the courageous action of the officer, Lieut-Gen Krishan Pal, General Officer Commanding (GOC), 15 Corps, said: “He was a brave man who led from the front.”

No doubt, Major Harminder Pal thought nothing of his life when it came to upholding the honour of the Army and the integrity of his country. But, then, his case as well as hundreds of other such cases of officers who have got killed in the low-intensity conflict while virtually performing the duties of section commanders (Naiks) should make the higher commanders sit up and mull over the myopic outlook that they have developed towards these operations.

In this particular case, Harminder, as reported, was in the lead and when he and his five commandos were approaching the second set of a few houses, the militants opened up and wounded him. Despite this, he killed two militants, the second one by lobbying a grenade through the ground-floor window. The surviving militant then pierced Harminder’s temple with bullets and he died on the spot.

Harminder’s dare-devil action resulting in his supreme sacrifice deserves the highest praise of our countrymen. But what has been our gain? We lost a Major just for the sake of killing two militants. The militants would have rightly been jubilant over their gain and our loss. Such actions have always been successfully conducted by our section commanders. The Major in this case should have been located at the right place to influence his men and not by leading them literally “from the front” like a scout.

In case, however, we want to adopt this faulty pattern of operations, then we would need a much larger member of officers to replace those who are killed while acting as section and platoon commanders. This also sends wrong signals down the channel of command that you have no confidence in your junior leadership, that is, JCOs and NCOs. When you form a habit of snatching away their legitimate responsibility by vesting it in the middle-ranking officers, the former also get accustomed to taking no responsibility. Sadly, we have already reached this stage, thanks to our lop-sided command and control policy.

As a rule, a battalion commander (Colonel) should commit himself in action when at least half of his command (two rifle companies) go into action. And a rifle company commander (Major) should go into action when his two out of the three platoons are committed. It should be very rare to make an exception to this rule and that too in independent operations. In counter-insurgency operations, this exception has become our modus operandi.

Granted that clearing of a built-up area is a difficult operation. But that simply means that a Major whose platoon (commando platoon) is entrusted with this responsibility should command and influence the operation rather than act as a section commander or a sepoy. If he does this, then who will do his job? The reason why this happens time and again is that officers are pestered from top to ensure everything personally.

Surely, this is not the way to conduct counter-insurgency operations. For, in a team every member is delegated with his share of responsibility. We suffer more casualties in these operations because of our haphazardness, resulting in lack of proper planning. And the reason why a disproportionate number of officers get killed in these operations is that we commit them at a level which is not theirs.

Ironically, in several such operations, the higher commanders go to the extent of giving directions on what the officer entrusted with the operation will do. To quote only one of the many examples, in 1968, when a battalion commander assaulting with a platoon in Mizo Hills (now Mizoram) got wounded, the then Army Chief, General Kumaramangalam, remarked on the situation report: “Is this the way we are carrying out operations in Mizo Hills?” This remark was enough to set things right for future operations there.

Epidemic of marriages!
by Iqbal Singh Ahuja

FOR the last few years almost every thing has started occurring in the form of epidemics whether it is a disease or a marriage. At present we are witnessing the epidemic of marriages. I pity the salaried class, as it seems the entire month’s salary is going down the drain. A majority of people don’t feel happy when they get a marriage invitation card: the common reaction is “oh! another card!”

It will be an inhuman act to interpret an act of happiness as sorrow. It is an Indian tradition to smile whether you are burning inside or shedding tears. The amount of money spent on the invitation cards and a competitive spirit for a costly card made me a bit sad. As I was lost in the twin feeling of moroseness and gaiety, a gentle knock at the door attracted my attention. My friend who is now posted at Chandigarh, a very senior police officer, was at the door. He had a stint in Ludhiana and earned a good name for his upright and jolly nature. He has a taste for music and gala evenings. I suggested that we go for a short while to a marriage ceremony. With a slight hesitation he agreed.

Since he had come to Ludhiana after a long time, he was surprised to see a line of marriage palaces. The decor and lights of marriage palaces has given the ambience of Las Vegas to Ludhiana. I told him so and he agreed though neither of us had ever visited Las Vegas.

The amount of money people spend on these marriage palaces is shocking. I wish they donate the same amount to the corporation. At least we will have good roads. Or donate it for the Ludhiana-Chandigarh highway so that the journey to the city beautiful may be comfortable. Sometimes, I think people should have simple marriages by law and donate the money once for all, to raise a “Marriage Memorial”. I understand many such marriages go haywire within a year.

After enjoying the scene of Las Vegas we reached our destination. No place to park a car. It seemed the whole world had landed there.We walked half a mile after parking the car. I remembered one of our dear friends who was DC here had thought of constructing community halls for marriages to save the vulnerable class from showing off and spending beyond limits.

To our surprise there were three marriages going on in the same marriage palace. There was a mess, people hogging to their glory without bothering whether the guests were from girl’s side or boy’s side. I told my policeman friend that it was a new cult. Now guests don’t wait for the barat. They just eat and after handing over shagun they just walk out. Perhaps a marriage means just a shagun and food. The relationship has gone into the past. It seems that 80 per cent of guests are interested only in handing over the shagun and in eating.

As usual the people looked familiar and one and all greeted us. To me it seems it is the same set of people whom you meet in all the functions. We wanted to leave as the barat had still not arrived. But the courteous people of Ludhiana will not allow you to go without dinner. My friend was impressed to see the arrangement of food — Italian, Spanish, Chinese, Punjabi and what not. Astonishingly, when God created heaven — He mentioned only 36 types of food, but here one could see at least 101 types of dishes — “a super heaven”.

After enjoying thoroughly, we were back home. The following day the boy who had invited us came and was a bit angry: “Uncle, I am angry with you. You did not come for the wedding”. I laughed and said: “My dear beta, your barat was very late. We were there from 9-11 p.m. and had drinks, chicken, etc. etc”. He seemed a bit non-plussed and said ‘‘uncle, but our barat was punctual. We reached there exactly at 8 p.m. Moreover our food was vegetarian and no drinks were served”. “Oh no which place was your wedding?” “Uncle down in the basement hall and we all waited for you”. “Sorry, Beta we had been enjoying in the lawn of the same palace”. Whose wedding was there then? My friend looked towards me and we both spoke together in unison.

“You mean we both were Gate Crashers”!

Who will wipe the tears of rape victims?
By Svati Chakravarty-Bhatkal

HOW does one judge the level of civilisation a society has attained? Arguably, the level of bestial crimes to which women are subjected and the quality of justice they obtain could be a realistic parameter. How does our country India fare on this front? Miserably, of course.

The repeated gang-rape and sexual abuse over several months of a woman student in a Jaipur hostel that came to light recently makes this evident yet again. The fact that she and her family are being pressurised and threatened by the political big shots involved in the crime to withdraw the charges against them also clearly indicates what justice will be meted out to her.

The recent case of the Jaipur student is only one among thousands of such heart-rending and heinous crimes committed daily.

Rapes in custody, especially in police stations or government shelters for destitute women, are commonplace. Lower caste Dalit and tribal women are routinely raped by powerful upper-caste men, as a show of strength in caste wars. Rape is also seen as an excellent political weapon to quell progressive movements.

Rapes and gang-rapes are regularly committed by military and para-military forces in regions under their control. Politically well-connected goons and slumlords never fear the legal consequences of rapes and gang-rapes.

Rape and molestation of minor girls by family members is rapidly increasing. And the lucrative business of duping, threatening and blackmailing girls from poor families into prostitution and commercial sex rackets is thriving.

The cases of rape that actually come to light are a tiny percentage of those that take place. The majority of rape incidents go unreported, for reporting a rape is no minor matter.

If you pursue a rape case, you are sure to be violated, exploited, bludgeoned, terrorised, doubly traumatised, humiliated in every possible manner, ostracised and forced to face a life-long stigma.

It will mean taking on the police and the judicial system, fighting politically and economically powerful rogues, it sometimes even means being abandoned by family and friends whose ‘sane’ advice of giving up the fight you ignore. It means being psychologically raped all over again by a barbaric and voyeuristic social, judicial and criminal system.

And what is the end result? The rapists either get a mild punishment or, in most cases, go scot-free, while the doubly victimised victim bears her scars all her life. And yet there are some lion-hearted women who take on this challenge bravely and fight. One such woman was Mathura, whose very name became symbolic of the fight against rape. Though old, her story is historic and therefore bears repetition.

Mathura was a 16-year old defenceless tribal girl. On March 26, 1972, she was raped by two policemen in the compound of the Desai Ganj police chowki (station) in Chandrapur district of Maharashtra. Mathura’s relatives were waiting outside the chowki when this crime was being perpetrated by the law-keepers.

Two years later, on June 1, 1974, the Sessions Judge at Chandrapur acquitted the accused policemen, Tukaram and Ganpat, on the grounds that the girl was a ‘shocking liar’, that she was habituated to sexual intercourse and that only sexual intercourse with the accused had been proved, not rape.

On appeal, the Nagpur Bench of the Bombay High Court reversed the Sessions Court order and sentenced Ganpat and Tukaram to five years and one year of rigorous imprisonment. The Bench opined that rape had indeed occurred, because passive submission due to fear induced by serious threats cannot be construed as willing sexual intercourse.

The matter, however, did not end there. The accused appealed to the Supreme Court, where a Bench overturned the high court judgement and set the rapists free.

However, the fact that Mathura’s complaint was registered with the same police chowki where she was raped and that the investigations were conducted by the rapists’ colleagues, even while the accused continued to work at the police chowki which created great doubts about the investigation process, did not even figure anywhere in the judgement.

And yet Mathura became a symbol of hope. Eight years later, her case became the fulcrum around which the anti-rape movement in our country was built.

By 1980, the government was forced to make several amendments in the rape law, which were hailed as milestones. But for rape victims, these milestones have been as effective as millstones around their necks.

Close to three decades have passed since the Mathura rape case and 18 years since the amendments in the law on rape. Yet the ranks of the ‘Mathuras’ only continue to swell. If Mathura was a symbol of the 1970s and 80s, the 90s have their own symbols — Aruna Shanbag, (Jalgaon), Bhanwari Devi, (Jaipur hostel), Vithura...etc

In the last mentioned case, Sakina, a 16-year old girl from rural Kerala, living in an area near the Vithura police station (from which the case gets its name), came from an abjectly impoverished family . The girl was lured to the city of Ernakulam by a woman neighbour, with the promise of a good domestic job.

Once in Ernakulam, she was sold and forced into prostitution. Her procurer repeatedly told her that refusal would mean death. For one and a half years, this helpless young girl was raped by dozens of “customers”, many of whom came from the upper echelons of Kerala’s bureaucracy and society.

A chance complaint of disorderly behaviour made by a neighbour brought the police to the flat where Sakina was housed. She was found there in a locked room. The girl was taken into custody and immediately thereafter gave a statement about her 18-month ordeal of forced prostitution.

Her statements were strongly corroborated with substantial evidence and they revealed a sordid tale of brutal exploitation involving police officials, doctors, government engineers, top bureaucrats and a film star.

Forty-five accused were implicated by name and 65 by description. As the investigations proceeded, the big-shots began running to the courts for anticipatory bail.

Despite the overwhelming load of evidence, the high court quashed the prosecution and dismissed the charges against the accused who had used Sakina as unbelievable. The judgement does not deny that the accused had sex with Sakina, but it refuses to admit that the sex was forced.

The judgement states: “It is improbable to believe that a man who desired to have sex on payment would come to a reluctant woman.” What is more, while letting the rapists off the hook as men paying for sex, the judge assassinates Sakina’s character, and says: “The version of a woman of this disposition is not so sacrosanct as to be taken for granted.”

The Vithura judgement is a fitting successor to the Mathura judgement. It has ceased even to shock, for it comes from a judicial tradition (barring the rare honourable exceptions) in which a 17-year-old, who was gang-raped by five men while sleep- walking, can be asked how she felt when the first rapist inserted his organ and whether or not she felt the warmth of seminal discharge of all five accused (Kunihimon alias Sainudeen and Ors v/s State).

Or where a high court Bench allows a rapist to go scot-free because there is no injury to his penis, therefore indicating there was no struggle put up by the victim. The victim here incidentally is a seven-year-old girl who was raped near a bus-stop before witnesses who have appeared before the court, had suffered a ruptured hymen and had bite marks on her body (Mohammad Habib v/s State).

The only hope of winning exists if we fight and those who are fighting today are examples of hope and valour for the entire nation. But all the fighting will have been in vain if we do not look beyond our hopeless police and judiciary to the society at large.

Are rape victims victimised by their rapists, the politically powerful, the money bags and the state machinery alone? Can society as a whole — family, friends, neighbours, employers, people unknown to the victim — absolve itself of all blame?

The sad truth is that society in general tends to judge the rape victim, not the rapists. It is she who has to hide her face in shame, not the criminals.

Rape is considered sensational and even the ‘responsible’ mainstream press links it with terms like “scandal”. The most inhuman dregs of society find rape titillating. And those who are shocked by it believe it is a closet issue best kept locked in the social cupboard.

How can rape victims ever get a better deal unless we see a change in these deeply ingrained social attitudes towards this crime? Rape is a crime against all humanity.

We have the power to change the lives of our Mathuras. Let us transform ourselves to take up the challenge.

— Third World Network Features

The writer, Svati Chakravarty-Bhatkal is a writer based in Mumbai. This article is an abridged version of one earlier published in VOPA (The Voice of People’s Awakening).

75 YEARS AGO

Madras University senate meeting

AT the adjourned meeting of the senate held last evening it was said that the issue of religious instructions at the University be referred to the syndicate for the purpose of amending it so that any college applying for recognition shall satisfy the syndicate, in addition to the conditions already specified in clauses, that it does not compel the students to attend religious classes or prayers if the parents or the guardians of the students shall have any conscientious objection.

After a heated discussion, the resolution was rejected by a large majority on the ground that religion was not a matter in which the senate has anything to do.