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Monday, March 16, 2015

Comments on India’s social ills: How to damage India’s reputation | The Economist

Comments on India’s social ills: How to damage India’s reputation | The Economist


India’s
social ills
How
to damage India’s reputation
By stifling debate about social problems, politicians
make them harder to solve
Mar 14th 2015 | DELHI | From the print edition


“THIS is an international conspiracy
to defame India,” raged one min
ister in
parliament last week, upset by a foreign film about a rape in Delhi. Another,
Rajnath Singh (the home minister), claimed that he would somehow order
Britain’s state broadcaster, the BBC, not to show it. Pressed by the
opposition, the government prevented the film from being shown on national
television—guaranteeing it a large audience online.

Thin-skinned Indian politicians
often claim that a “foreign hand” is plotting against the country and
besmirching its good name. When outside researchers point to worryingly high
levels of air pollution, open defecation or bad public hygiene, for example,
nationalists call such observations malign or defamatory.
In this section

A fuss in the past few days over the
BBC documentary is typical. It retold the terrible story of the gang rape and
murder of Jyoti Singh, a medical student, in 2012. Controversially, it aired
interviews from jail with one of her unrepentant killers, who blamed his victim
for her own murder. “It takes two hands to clap,” he said. An attention-seeking
defence lawyer described how he would kill his own daughter in public if she
“dishonoured” him.

Such comments make Indian men look
repressive and thuggish. In fact in the film, and elsewhere, many voices (men
included) speak sensibly about the wider causes of women’s ill-treatment. “These
men are ours,” says the author of a judicial commission on rape in India. His
point is that Indians are perfectly capable of confronting abusive attitudes:
denial helps nobody.

To his credit, the prime minister,
Narendra Modi, has done more than most to discuss social problems. Since
becoming prime minister last year he has called rape a national “shame”; he has
talked about the “mental illness” of ill-treating girls; he has called for a
minimum level of representation of women in parliament (a third); and has said
bluntly that sex-selective abortion “needs to stop.” Female foeticide remains
prevalent, reflecting a cultural preference for boys.

The government might also welcome a
wider debate because it has a decent case to make. Maternal mortality has fallen
by almost half since 2000. Female literacy rates have risen (see table). Even
the increase in the numbers of rape cases reported to the police might indicate
greater willingness to report it, as well as (or rather than) rising incidence.
 

Of course, too few women have jobs or bank accounts; murders happen over dowry
and “honour”; fathers and husbands wield most control overall. Nonetheless, a
national debate should be possible on fixing social ills.
A crushing burden

Instead, most politicians have plumped
for denial, “the one form of intellectual argument we have mastered,” says
Mihir Sharma, author of a book on Indian policymaking. Dipankar Gupta, a
sociologist, says India’s leader “in general says the right thing, but
significant sections of his party say the opposite”. Even Mr Modi’s record is
mixed. He refused to speak out against religious violence during this year’s
state-election campaign in Delhi, even as several churches were burnt or
damaged. He did vow to ensure “equal respect to all religions”. But this came
only after the electoral rout of his Bharatya Janata Party (BJP) in the Delhi
election, and following a warning from Barack Obama, America’s president, that
India must avoid “splintering” along religious lines.
On environmental matters and freedom
of expression, Mr Modi’s government—adopting the habits of its predecessors—has
tended to silence those who would raise awkward subjects. In January officials
at Delhi airport used trumped-up charges to stop an Indian woman leaving the
country. She had planned to tell a parliamentary committee in Britain that a
coal-mining project would harm forest dwellers in India. She worked for
Greenpeace, a non-governmental organisation, which, like other NGOs, is facing
visa bans and a financing clampdown. On March 12th the Delhi High Court,
calling the action “illegal and arbitrary”, said the government could not stop
her from travelling.

The national censor board (now
crammed with BJP appointees) in January upheld a decision to cut the word
“Bombay” from a music video, because nationalists want only to hear the city’s
official name, Mumbai. Also in January, ruling BJP politicians in that city
filed a legal complaint and launched an official investigation over a comedy
stage show that they deemed “vulgar”. Its online broadcasts promptly ended. A
year ago (shortly before Mr Modi came to office) Penguin, a publisher
(part-owned by Pearson, which is The Economist’s largest shareholder),
limply gave up publishing books by a respected American academic, Wendy Doniger,
because Hindu nationalists dislike her view of Indian history.

Of course, Indians sometimes have
cause for complaint. A German professor in Leipzig had to apologise on March
9th for saying that Indian men could not apply to be her interns because of India’s
reputation for sexual violence. Swapan Dasgupta, a columnist close to Mr Modi,
thinks foreign opinion is distorted by a caricatured “Oxfam view” of India as a
place only of “poverty, inequality, oppression of women and now the added
element of rape”. But the best way to correct such views would surely be to
rebut them, not (as so often now) to censor them.

COMMENT:

It is very unfortunate that a very conservative
country like India should have to confront with vicious face hiding shame.

It is not because of foreign creation of social crimes but by the creation of
the sons of the land with no remorse of the crime committed and without regard and
respect for their motherland's good name.

Isn't it  amazing that the Indian's sing their
national anthem so loudly surpassing all other world countries but at home they
even do not spare fucking mothers sisters and even their daughters out reaching
their jurisdictions to even raping the foreigners.

Unfortunately, which is beyond expectation of the
International Community of nations. I would not elucidate on the issue and
increase the burden of shame on the innocents. Many who are being blamed even
though they are absolutely innocent.

In addition, the time is not far when if such
social crime carries on and shows to spiral high, then the innocents would be
bound to feel ashamed of these crimes and might even refuse to own up India as their
country in front of the world.

What a shame would that be indeed.Would not it?

The other sectors that needs through deliberation
is already mentioned in the article and the negative effects have been given to
find remedial measures for the sectors as those sectors concerned ministries and
department needs to be more vigil and work to see things improve to the required
standard.

Now The required standard should be issued by the concerned authorities.

The vital sector obviously is not mention is the
corruption which is also another very important sector that needs to be watched
as it has reached the red line.

Having stated the above facts the present Political
Party in power is understood to have inherited the above mentioned anomalies and might
have to carefully work out all odds to better the situation in every case or
else the Country might be faced with dire consequences economically ,
financially and socially entailing to pay a heavy dividend in future coming
days.




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