‘I saw people looting the mutilated bodies,’ says 13/7 victim Avdhesh Singh

(An eye witness narration of the Kalbadevi blasts in Mumbai to mediaeye)

It was all blood and raw human flesh splattered around. The gory tale of human vengeance and the extent this can produce havoc and destruction was mind-boggling. 13/7/2011 was a nightmare for me and will remain forever etched in my memory, said Avdhesh Singh of Uttar Pradesh, a diamond cutter who works in Khau Galli-based diamond firm.

Short and frail Avdhesh’s work belied his physique and startled many those who remained mere spectators. ‘Almost 500 people had gathered there, but none helped the victims, who were lying in almost physically mutilated state,’ he lamented.  

‘I too was injured on 13/7 and suffered a minor injury as metallic shards and nut-bolts from the explosives ripped off the flesh of my lower leg. Though the wound was not so deep, but I was still bleeding profusely. The smoke and dust had made the visibility almost negligible. Stench filled my nostrils. People were speechless, staring around with shock and disbelief.’ he reminisced giving graphic details of the tragic happening.

At a horrendous moment like this people normally loses their sense, but Avdhesh, despite being injured, was very well alert and agile. ‘I immediately rushed to the Saifee hospital which is a couple of furlongs away from Khau Galli where the tragedy occured, to get first aid.’ Any other mortal would have fled from the scene but Avdhesh returned back after receiving dressing to help the other blast victims.

‘It was heart rending to find injured people wailing and moaning all around with trauma. The limbless bodies and the blood stained faces of people still weakens my confidence whenever I remember the traumatic incident. But I gathered courage and despite the stabbing pain on my leg I along with one more person who came to assist me started carrying the injured, blood soaked bodies to the Saifee and JJ hospitals,’ he added. Due to this timely intervention many precious lives were saved.

‘Police, ambulance and fire tenders reached much later. Meanwhile, what I saw there was the most awful thing and extremely inhuman. A bunch of people collecting the valuables watches, wallets, mobiles and jewelleries from the mutilated bodies,’ he said.

Avdhesh was skeptic of the government’s lukewarm approach and official lethargy. ‘Leaders crammed the place only to make things difficult for people attending to injured there,’ he continued.

Is Koyana Dam behind Latur earthquake?

 

Maharashtra’s coastal region is more susceptible to earthquake. But for the first time it was found that Killari and a few villages clustered around the township near Latur – a small township in south-eastern part of the state – too was vulnerable to intense tremor. And on 30 September, 1993 the town suffered the worst earthquake, measuring 8.5 on Richter scale. The epicentre of the tremor was found 300 km away from the actual site near Koyana Dam.

 

It was around 4.00 in the morning when the entire town was immersed in sleep than a powerful creaking sound wakened the people from deep slumber. At first many, those lucky enough to survive the first shock looked around them drowsily rubbing their eyes to find everything shattered. They saw their dreams smithereens into tatter. Many hopelessly tried to escape from collapsing buildings but buried beneath its debris. Houses, bridges and most of the frail and a few sturdy structures too crumbled. A few lucky ones escaped with cracks. The second tremor was more intense. Deep craters ran many yards in the middle of the roads almost dividing it into two at many places. At some places even hot water and sands gushed out from the craters – and permanent ponds developed there.

 

We rushed to the tragic township by a government plane at 6.00 in the morning and reached the place at 7.30. The minister of rural development was leading the spot assessment team. ‘I was under- secretary then in the ministry of agriculture and rural development. As we hovered over Killari, the entire township appeared to be like some historical remains - with broken buildings, caved in roofs interspersed with long and deep craters. Our chopper alighted at a school ground that was relatively little affected and provided flat ground for landing and the collector received us there.

 

The arrival of Chief Minister Sharad Pawar (now the agriculture minister) and the guardian minister of Latur, greatly spurred the confidence of the district officials who were carrying out relief operation. Later, many NGOs and international humanitarian bodies arrived with food, clothes and medicines and coordinated with the government agencies to erect temporary habitations for earthquake affected people. Physical Therapists tried to comfort them make them come out from shocking state.

 

While clearing debris we managed to save a few lucky ones who got trapped under them for over twenty hours!  They were immediately sent to medical tents erected by the Red Cross Society as the hospitals of the town were totally ravaged by the earthquake. The more serious ones were airlifted to a nearby Aurangabad city for further treatments.   

 

The government immediately announced exgratia payments amounting to Rs five lakh to those who lost their kith and kin. It was extremely traumatic to count the dead bodies…

Do away with British legacy

The government has mooted to overhaul the archaic education by infusing vocational training into it  

“When in Rome, do as the Romans do”. It’s a popular adage universally accepted. The present education system is thoroughly incompatible to our changing needs and virtually fails to rejig the nation’s economy. We are in 21’st century where even the kids flirt with the keyboards and play hackers to their elder sibling’s mail. Contrary to this the old-style education is supposedly created to hone people’s drafting skill, born out of exigency to flip through the files of the gargantuan British colony. 

The huge human resources that are generated by this massive industry could better be termed as an exercise in futility. A sea of educated unemployed can prove to be highly deleterious for any nation. For a nation undergoing million mutinies, these ticking time bombs of ever swelling unemployed may make the situation even worse. Jobless people are the soft targets for these hostile forces. When Kanu Sanyal gave the clarion call for ‘sabotaging brutish’ feudal system from an indiscrete village of West Bengal – Naxalbari – horde of unemployed youths from nation’s premier institutions joined his bandwagon. The movement had consumed a large number of starry-eyed unemployed. And the Naxalite movement saw the light of day to ‘root out’ petty capitalists from its soil. Its resurgence in the present time can be ascribed to multiple factors – non-implementation of land ceiling act that is gathering dust, lopsided economic development and universities de-linked from agro-industrial growth.

The vast plateau of Vidarbha, with insignificant industrial growth, central Bihar, where the paucity of irrigation has reduced the area into a gray sandy expanse, the ‘unproductive ’dense forests of Jharkhand, Chattisgarh, Andhra Pradesh and Maharashtra where the semi-literate and unemployed are lured by the charm of ‘egalitarianism’ and ‘each according to his need’ became the core of Naxal movement. We now discover the asymmetrical education at the root of these chronic problems.

Since independence several commissions have been constituted by the government to earmark the lacuna in the existing system and to suggest remedial measures. Reams of paper wasted but nothing ever changed. On the other hand there emerged a new ‘capitation fee oriented’ professional courses such as engineering, medical, MBAs, mass communication, to speak a few. Due to their high capitation fee, they are beyond the reach of poor. Thus, two sets of education system came into being – catering to two different classes. The former,  the minuscule urban rich, who could avail of the any prime existing system and the later, the teeming rural poor who couldn’t and thus rely on the ‘subsidised’ education on a government platter.

 “There should be a level playing field,” said Ansari Nadeem, an NRI who lives in UAE. ‘The capitation- fee-oriented education perpetuates discriminative system. It produces two sets of professionals – one who come out from the regular professional colleges such as IITs, IIMs and state-controlled medical and engineering colleges that admit the students on rigorous competition and the others who fail to make it to competition-oriented colleges donate hefty sums to get into ‘Bangalore-centric’ capitation fee charging colleges.” The government should ban all such ‘colleges and make education uniform to make it accessible to the poor.

In developed economies, the universities and research institutions are linked with industries. Thus, institutions contribute to the GDP of nation. In India we are carrying the burden of outmoded curriculum which is distantly related to agro-industrial production. Moreover, except small numbers of vocational and engineering colleges we have large number of general colleges that are producing graduates and post-graduates in mind-boggling numbers every year. And the jobs remaining scarce, very few among them get employed by government as well as private sectors. The educated unemployed whose number is piling up every successive year is not good for a nation like India which is reeling under politico-economic instability. Consider Germany of the 1930s. It too had confronted with a similar situation – double-digit inflation, resurgence of ultra-right nationalistic forces, xenophobia spurred by Nazi hoodlums - Brown Shirts. The emaciated economy remains the soft target for these parochial hot heads to execute their evil designs. Shouldn’t we mend our economy before it is too late?  

Dads changing nappies, moms flipping through files!

A role-reversal is slowly sneaking into our household breaking the ‘home-hearth’ stereotype of women

See, papa is changing nappies; squeals a six year old RohitSaxena with disbelief, whose dad mingle with household chores as easily as salt dissolves in water. His mother is working with a call center, a high wattage job that demands working at odd hours. Daddy dearest runs a chemist shop, just outside his house and thus remain accessible 24/7.

Mumbai, like other metros in India, is witnessing change not only in its gender profile but also its unique expression since past few years. Globalization has literally forced women out from their traditional ‘home-n-hearth’ closets.

A role reversal is slowly sneaking into our household. Many believe that moms should not step into dad’s shoes. The traditional image of moms attending to kids’ daily chores gets a beating these days. Now, the sight of a dad changing diapers and peeling off potatoes won’t make a big surprise.

Salma Haidar, who works in an NGO believes, now the economic imperatives shape family construct.‘Earlier in our community the women were seldom allowed to peek out, leave alone attending offices for work. Now the situation has diametrically changed. Today they even work in shifts, as you find in news channels, call centers and many more similar workstations,’ says Salma.

‘Hard times require tough decision,’ pontificates a media executive Manuel Fernandez, who believes this reflect gradual empowerment of women. ‘There are many examples of such reversals of roles, particularly in a cosmopolitan city like Mumbai,’ he says.

Out rightly rejecting the contention that it’s the outcome of Western impact, he says, ‘this is wrong to say we have embraced Western culture. In our Indian traditions where women fought valiantly to defend her nation, had to leave her offspring back at home.’ 

Salam Slumbai!

 Govandi, in Mumbai’s backyard, boasts of a slumboat (like houseboats in Srinagar!) –where an entire slum float on sludge and water. It is probably an only city in India with such ‘distinctive’ feature.  Every monsoon when the water level raises this slum too gets ‘taller’.

The city which has a paucity of land and moving vertical – towards skyward, treats this as a living example of the adage - survival of the fittest – a Darwinian principle still not repudiated by scientific community unlike his many other doctrines. The people improvised this watery settlement by using plastics and rubber wastes to erect their floating tents – a habitat borne out of sheer exigency.

This may be an ‘eye-candy’ for news hungry scribes but for the city planners, MHADA, etal it’s a shame as they have miserably failed to stem housing crises despite their unceasing braggadocio appeared in advertisements and hoardings prior to every master plan. These are all seems to keep the visiting World Bank dignitaries in good humour. After all they fund many of our projects.

Even with scarce space the city still boasts of charisma to pull people from grey areas. For the last twenty year or so the city has witnessed huge influx of carpet baggers from dusty villages lying deep in hinterland. The immigrants are from all the four geographical zones of India.  

The city bounded by sea from all the four sides cannot stretch the land and thus a highly scarce commodity here. The ‘floating’ shanty in Govandi highlights another aspect of civic violation. Even the water bodies and nullahs in Mumbai are not immune from encroachment – they are not safe from the prying eyes of developers and land sharks, too!

The recent outbursts against a particular diaspora settled in Mumbai have much to do with the problem like these. It provides fodder to those riding on linguistic chariots. 

The general election is in the offing and the issue will undoubtedly raise questions on the nation’s richest city’s credibility. The prejudiced decisions may create more problems than solving it. The coming election seems to be fought on such local issues as it affects all of us.

Bail out India from political quagmire

India is undergoing astrange spasm as it isrocked by the twin evils of corruption and intimidation. The social strains at ground zero have a telling effect on polity which reflects fractured verdict in every successive election since past two decades. There have also been attempts to subvert the basic nature of our constitution. We are becomingincreasingly illiberal and restive andsuccumb to political indoctrination despite economic liberalism and exposure to global markets.

At this juncture we need a benevolent government that sticks to the concept of welfare state rather thanwhimsical and vengeful.A couple of years agothe buzz was doing the round that India with its impressive growth ratewould soon attain the status of super power. We never hesitated, at that time, comparing India with China.Now that hope has been belied and our growth rate has almost touched an all-time low (from 10% to 5%).

The falling growth rate, poor records of health care, tyrannical tax regime, trailing on foreign policy and even sports have put our heads in shame.There is a serious need to overhaul and cleanse the existing blighted system that has developed an attitude inimical to nation’s growth and people’s aspirations.Even several decades of the end of license-permit-raj the bureaucratic haughtiness is yet to be shaken to provide smooth passage to sound entrepreneurial and commercial development.

Our tax regime is extremely irrational and aggressive that needs to be simplified to pave the country’s economic prosperity. GST is a landmark legislation brought about to reform the paralyzed economy by this government.

Resources allocation is yet another front that requires serious pondering. The wasteful expenditure should be curtailed as our economy is still languishing in recession and economic downturn.

The astronomical figure of our black money stashed in international banks abroad has also added to the common man’s miseries. According to one estimates it is closer to around rupees three lakh crore – the equivalent of amount spent on our annual health care and education budget.

India has a glut of archaic laws that are instrumental in placing us in uncomfortable position. We need to do away with such Victorian laws, such as draconian land acquisition act which was recently modified and its amended version were presented in our parliament.

The moral and spiritual quotient of our nation has seen the worst fall as rape after rape has become the norm. Toughest law is needed to deal with the situation that may send the strong message to the perpetrators of the heinous crime.

Our police, on innumerable occasions are indicted of torture during the interrogation of undertrials. The custodial deaths too at times occur. The trend must be reversed and our law enforcers should rely on modern techniques during interrogation.

Besides this we also need free providence of health care and education till 10^th standard. And English should be made compulsory for the students to remove urban-rural disparity.

The blasphemy and sedition laws too should be removed to allow free expression as this the bedrock of progress of any nation. The history has proved this time and again.  

Do away with fake encounters, third degrees

In its landmark judgment sometimes back, the Supreme Court has elicited its displeasure over the fake encounters frequently carried out by the police. Media Eye revisits the ominous past and explores its wider implications.  

Human rights are frequently violated by thedabang (powerful) people and we meekly watch these happen right under our very nose. Cases of torture, custodial deaths, rapes, fake encounters, caste and creed-centric genocides and pogrom no longer spur our conscience the way it should.

An under trial charged with some petty crime like theft on condition of anonymity said that the police officials have meted out ‘inhuman’ treatment. ‘On one occasion they have even asked me to urinate over a meshwork of live wire. On my blunt refusal, they jabbed baton inside my arse so hard that I convulsed due to unbearable pain. The very next moment I was writhing in a pool of blood on the floor in great agony.’

Third-degree seems to have become a norm as our criminal jurisprudence reeks with age-old British legacy. Torture is widely used by the police. To eliminate the use of torture during investigation stage, it is absolutely necessary to impart scientific training to them. They should be provided with necessary equipments, such as lie detector and DNA Finger printing technology, to avoid third degree torture.

Article 21 of Indian Constitution says, “No person shall be deprived of his life or personal liberty except according to procedure established by law.”  Therefore any form of torture or cruel inhuman and degrading treatment either during investigation, interrogation or otherwise needs the severest condemnation. No civilized nation can permit this to happen.

Terrorists too tortures innocent people. However, state terrorism is no answer to combat terrorism. This would only provide legitimacy to ‘terrorism’. In one of his soul stirring speech, former chief justice of India, Dr A. S. Anand in 8th International Symposium on ‘Torture’ said, “Torture is the wound in the soul so painful that sometimes you can almost touch it, but it is also so intangible that there is no way to heal it. Torture is anguish squeezing in your chest, cold as ice and heavy as a stone, paralyzing as sleep and dark as the abyss. Torture is despair and fear and rage and hate.” 

Violence cannot be spurned through violence. Had that been the case, the nerve-wracking problems of Kashmir, Kabul , Baghdad and Jerusalem would not have pushed the world almost to the brink of third world war. Similarly, fake encounters too cannot bring crime to an end. It is true that violence has surpassed all the previous limits. The demand that heinous crimes require exemplary punishment, too, is justified. But the law cannot be allowed to become a tool to serve unlawful acts, however pristine that may appear.

‘Encounter specialists’ are the product of the intoxicating thinking of our vocal middle class. To buttress their contention, they provide data showing soaring crime. But you allow this to happen today, tomorrow it may be possible that your son coming late in the night may fall prey to police’s bullets. And there is no dearth of ‘finding’ concocted pretexts and doctored evidence for these McCauley’s offspring. It is akin to replacing one set of crime with another.

‘We treat such news with urban callousness’

Says an official on mantralaya fire that gutted several floors of this iconic Maharashtra government headquarter over a year ago to MediaEye

Mantralaya fire that gutted the fourth, fifth, sixth and seventh floors of the iconic head quarter of Maharashtra government have come as a shocker as it was found to be inadequately equipped for emergency firefighting…

‘I was in my office with loads of file to dispose. At around 2.20-2.30 people screamed …’fire erupts on fourth floor…They shouted, ‘run and reach to the ground floor to save your skin’… I thought it may be a small blaze that can be doused soon…but unfortunately it turned out  be a major inferno…reducing everything on its way to cinders….everything reduced into charred n smoky remains post tragedy  … I was part of the supervising team headed by the CM himself.

The fire tenders reached considerably late (though its office remains under one km radius of the iconic Mantralaya, at Nariman Point)…They cited traffic snarl as the reason for the delay…Blame game, post blaze, started being tossed between concerned government departments…this is of no use as the tragedy has already happened and five precious lives lost… The disaster management cell of the state woke up albeit late…in haste took several measures to douse fire… 40% building had suffered ghastly burns…many important files were reduced into cinders…pushed the state many years back…

Mystery clouds every investigative process post inferno. The reports blink at the truth. Why? On June 21, the fire gutted the state government headquarters at Mantralaya. The administration’s reaction was predictable – sirens and bells of fire-fighters pierced through the sleepy afternoon to douse the raging inferno, albeit much after the lashing demon has gutted everything in their reach and jumped over three floors to devour CM’s office and the communication center at 6^th and 7^th floors respectively. 

The civic agency wakes up after tragedy stuck, as usual. We are inured to this, no matter how much destruction it causes. The whopping figure – hundreds of crores have been reduced into ashes as almost one-fourth of the building has been completely burnt. This seldom move us as we lap up news with crispy snacks and steaming tea, glancing intermittently at our watches to ensure that 8. 30-local shouldn’t elude us; they shrug such news with typical urban callousness: bade badeshahronmeinchotee-choteebateinhoteerahteehain –who cares!

Post fire, the opposition came out with sabotage angle which lacks substance…again at their best to play political one-upmanship…   

Art of bluffing people

Media Eye

The politics in India has come of age and so do the bootleggers, bootlickers and law-twisters. Democracy has been reduced to ‘demoncracy’ now. The political class of the pre-independence era seldom smacked of debauchery and chicanery. Sixty seven year down the lane, we find everything in chaotic state.

‘If we grab power, we will free the state from its ninety-eight thousand crore debt,’ bluffeda prominent Maharashtra politician, seducing millions of hoi polloi a decade ago.The debt has multiplied and reached an astronomical figure now. Their ramblings, rantings, musings and utterings are all to keep the people in good humour.

Many development projects kick-started by the government promised to rehabilitate the people dislocated by it, but alas! Years after year disappeared like snowflakes but no sops reached them. Dushyant Kumar, a poet who died at the tender age of 32, wrote, ‘Yehantakaateaatesookhjaateinhainkainadiyan, hameinmaloomhaipaneekahanthehrahuahoga’ (Numerous rivers dry up prior to reaching here we know where the water has stuck). In Bihar, infamous for charlatans and political chicanery, during 80s work of a hydroelectricity project – called Subernrekha Project - on Chandil River in Ranchi district (now in Jharkhand) was in full swing. The area, which was surrounded by lush green overarching mountains, serpentine streams and dense forest (now, it is on the verge of extinction), was the home to distraught tribals and adivasis who were displaced and more than a quarter of century had passed since they are languishing behind uncertainty and yet not rehabilitated! A cruel joke played on them by the power that be. A scribe of an English tabloid Amrit Bazar Patrika who was trying to bust the racket was showered with bullets on Chandil highway! It is the political cannibalism at its worst.

Even our comrades are trying to dust every single grains of ‘Marxian truth’ from their totalitarian attire! Laissez faire has shoved aside the centralized economy. Kolkata will no longer portray a familiar picture of trade unionists holding placards with lustrous red sickle-hammer chanting monotonous ‘Band karo’ (shut down) mantra. Now the poor artists and scribes are soon to shut down their business. Thanks to the didi and her megalomaniac ways.