February-March 2006
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Combat Law offers you the latest on human rights issues in India. Subscribe to the magazine to access the complete website and receive regular updates. CombatLaw.org is a subscribers-only site; you have to log in to view complete contents. Non-subscribers, or registered users who have not logged in, will be able to see only summaries of articles, and the full contents of two articles per issue, indicated with a 'Full Access ' icon. |
Lowering Depths, Growing Pangs
India has one of the highest levels of child malnutrition in the world, higher than most countries in sub-saharan africa . It was calculated that 80 per cent of the indian population was living on less than two dollar per day
Minds sans borders
The Central Advisory Board of Education has approved, despite strong notes of dissent, the National Curriculum Framework, 2005. With minor cosmetic changes, without addressing major issues, including the most dangerous trend of communalisation of education.
Financing Unfreedom
Why does India have such a transparent failure in attaining the goal of ‘Education for All’? Clearly because of the sheer lack of political will which is amply reflected in the financial allocations and expenditures on elementary education by the Centre and state governments.
Dropout or Pushed Out?
Lack of well-trained teachers, stale curriculum and uncritical bookish knowledge, especially in a context of stark poverty in India, has pushed students to a difficult crossroad. It is high time activists and academicians should see to it that the right to education is universally implemented.
The Alphabet of Status Quo
The Right to Education Bill, 2005, like many such bills introduced by the State, is basically lopsided and myopic.
Retreat of the Judicary Last Frontier Lost?
At a time when right to education is becoming an impossible dream, the State is gradually evading its responsibility, allowing private profit seekers to run amok in the absence of any control or regulatory mechanisms. At this juncture, the judiciary was expected to deliver the last ray of hope. Ironically, if recent judgements are any indicators, the courts seem to have tilted in favour of privatisation, making education inaccessible to vast population more than ever before. In this backdrop, Mihir Desai wonders, have we lost the last frontier
Old Issues for the New Year
The Right to Education Bill 2005 seems utterly hollow. It has not defined the role of the Common School System (CSS) in any way. Neither does it talk of providing free and compulsory education to children in a manner whereby all categories of schools become part of this network.
Teachers on Sale
Instead of strengthening the existing educational infrastructure in India, state governments have decided to take the easy way out. They are increasingly opting for an ad hoc approach. Contract teachers and guest lecturers who are paid a measly sum and have no work tenure. The result is a group of insecure and poorly qualified teachers manning the education system in India.
Higher education
With the basic issues of quality, equity and access to higher education in
India still unresolved, the country is ill prepared to generate knowledge
creators or workers of the highest quality largely due to government apathy. If the current trends are any indication, reliance on the market forces is further aggrevating the crisis
ABC of Enlightenment
Human rights education must be imbibed as an integral part of school curriculum. It's time to usher in a universal culture of rights in the classroom and outside.
Of Birds and Bees
Moral Science of Sex ducation
The inclusion of sex education in the school curriculum has been repeatedly ignored despite India having 300 million people in the age group of 12 to 24 years. Instead of inculcating sex awareness through classrooms, successive governments seem to be sweeping under the carpet a sensitive issue which inevitably affects a young person's life.
Dalit, Decapitated, Defiant
At a time when we are given to believe that India is the next superpower, uppercaste goons chop off the hands and leg of a Dalit singer in Punjab for daring to approach the judiciary in order to bring to book his daughter’s rapists.
Buying into a corporate dream
Obsession with blatant genetic modification of foods and mindless adoption of an American style corporate agriculture and food habits pose a serious threat to humans, animals, plants, microorganisms and to the planet itsellf
When Journey is Enlightenment
Did you cross a rope bridge over a ferocious river to get to school? Did you meet for school in the middle of the desert? Did your school bus double up as a classroom? In these inspiring narratives, Lisa Heydlauff travels across 21 states in India, taking the reader through a child’s rugged but enlightening journey to school.
Hong Kong Ministerial Much Ado About Nothing
The big boys have played a huge hoax yet again. At Hong Kong, the rich nations have managed to dupe the grand coalition led by India and Brazil by successfully selling them the utopian dream. Developing countries have no one to blame but themselves.
The Toxic Legacy Nothing Golden About It
Indiscriminate dumping of industrial wastes is a serious problem in India where inadequate rules and lax enforcement makes it easy for profit-driven companies like Golden Chemicals to function at the expense of the people and environment.
'Dissent is Patriotic’
Taking every possible inspiration from Mahatma Gandhi to Milan Kundera, he ventures into the waters of fighting corporate-driven globalisation and stands every inch to fight tooth and nail violations of human rights. Asserting the importance of collective struggles in the form of various civil disobedience movements, Ward Morehouse, one of the editors of The Bhopal Reader was in a brief conversation with Harsh Dobhal and Vijay Sai
For Justice is not a Privilege…
The poor and the marginalised in India have long been denied justice, unable to afford access to, or comprehend intricacies of, a judicial system tilted in favour of the rich and the powerful. The emergence of a Public Interest Litigation (PIL) movement has ushered in a new era, where the judiciary provides the last ray of hope for the deprived and dispossessed.
Policing the Police
The police in India is expected to act as a democratic and responsive public service, but it has truned out to be a coercive apparatus, dreaded by the people it is supposed to protect.
M for Margins
Indian Muslims have been grappling between the traditional Ulema's Islamic education and modernity's dynamic demands.
Pedagogy of the Oppressed
There is much ferment within the country as we pledge to get all our children basic primary education by 2010. Will this impossible dream bring hope for the Indian child across the spectrum, especially the disabled and those who are pushed outside the mainstream.
Sorry Kids, You are Girls!
Culture and laws inherently discriminate against them, they are not required to go to schools, earn money, own property, or even, in some cases, eat enough. In a society where sons are valued more than daughters, the gender bias gets deeply embedded in a system that perpetuates patriarchal values through denying the girl child basic right to education.
Displaced and De-schooled
India has often provided asylum to thousands of refugees fleeing neighbouring countries. But in the absence of adequate laws in place, refugee children are denied basic education in government schools, rendered to grow up amongst abuse, trafficking and violence in a land that sheltered them first.
Eklavya’s Experiment with Truth
Imaginative and alternative learning projects like the Eklavya in Madhya Pradesh are grounded in the people's movements. Rex D'Rozario explores these innovative and path-breaking experiments
Justice, at Last!
I was in the temple when the judgment was delivered. Finally the man stands convicted. I am thankful to you all. Thankful to all those who stood beside me". Nalini Netto, an IAS officer, uttered soon after the judgment on her sexual harassment case against a former minister. The vindication of her right to justice followed harrowing years of a humiliating journey through courts, a protracted battle fought by a woman officer against a hostile society.
For Das Capital is Caste Capital
The Communist movement in India has failed to combine the existence reality of caste, an ‘imperialist’ institution, with class. A democratic and revolutionary path should bring together the radical caste struggles along with the Communist movement and fuse anti-caste battles with class struggle to ensure emancipation of dalits and other oppressed sections of society, Anand Teltumbde’s new book underlines
Damned Dispossessed Displaced
Over 33 million people have been displaced by development projects like large dams in India, especially tribal communities who have been waiting endlessly for rehabilitation, in some cases, for over 50 years. Despite such a large population being pushed out of their homes and habitat, the government does not have any national policy to protect the rights of the displaced
Xenophobes Xeroxed
Members of a fact finding team of Indian People’s Tribunal (IPT) were subjected to severe intimidation by Shiv Sainiks and their cohorts in Orissa. The incident is a grim reminder of the deadly overtones that Hindutva’s aggression has assumed in eastern India. However, the Naveen Patnaik-led regime has chosen to remain a mute spectator, tacitly backing the Hindutva fanatics
Multiculturalism Up in smoke?
Young people in and out of France’s ghettos are subject to constant racial and religious profiling resulting in extremely sharp and strained relations between the police and the youth
The Minority Report
Affirmative action for the minorities will not only uplift dalits and other backward classes in civil society, it will eventually strengthen the bonds of secularism and communal harmony in the country.
Taming or Empowering Tribals
In order to make education a tool to empower and not to tame India's tribals, new community-based strategies have to be evolved that would treat wisdom as education.
Shining India missed a spot
More than a year after the devastating tsunami struck the Andaman and Nicobar islands, the survivors are still waiting for adequate rehabilitation. Instead of taking local people into decision-making in view of their distinct needs and tribal ethos, an ill-informed administration has added to their wounds.
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