GOI Monitor Bulletin October 2011

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‘And they call me Maoist’

Kavita Srivastava

PUCL's general secretary speaks out at a conference on grievance redressal and whistleblowing after the police raid on her house in search of an alleged Maoist

I HAVE come here amid you to feel empowered again because there has been an attempt to weaken me with a single blow. I am a simple human rights activist and 70-75 per cent of my work relates to protection of the rights of common people. Whether the violation is to do with police, administration or courts, I struggle for people’s rights in their daily lives and try to provide them security. I am also associated in some big campaigns to work for protection of rights' violation of a collective. Most of my time is spent in Rajasthan where I deal with everyday human rights violation as well as mass violation.

Recently, you all know that on October 3, more than 60-70 policemen surrounded my house as well as my nearby office. Not just simple police in khaki. There were gunmen in black outfits and riot control police in blue. They entered my house forcibly to conduct a search operation because they claimed I am shielding a “dangerous” Maoist in there. During the whole operation, no procedure was followed.

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Burden of GM food and the farcical BRAI Act

Devinder Sharma

Government seems to be hell bent upon forcing GM food on us by proposing quick approvals to the industry under the BRAI Act.

“WE will have 9 billion mouths to feed on this earth by 2050 and there will not be enough food for all of us which is why we need to make technological interventions like GM crop to produce more food.”
At a time when food prices are soaring and agricultural land is increasingly turning into housing societies and shopping malls, increasing food production and providing food security for all times to come to all population is indeed a challenging task. We are repeatedly told, by scientists, economists and politicians, that as population grows in a geometric proportion, the country has to embark new technologies to produce more food. GM crops are therefore being pushed as the only alternative the world has got.

This argument cuts ice with the leaders as well as the gullible masses. This is however not true. There is no shortage of food globally. The reality is that for a human population of around 7 billion, the world produces food for at least 11.5 billion people. In terms of calories, against the acceptable per capita norm of 2,400 to 2,500 kcal, what is available is 4,600 kcal. So in reality we actually produce double the quantity of food than what we need today. We have more than enough food to feed the people even by the year 2050 when the earth’s population reaches 9 billion.

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Caution, dead end ahead

Rakesh Aggarwal

Fleeced by autorickshaw drivers in Delhi? Illegal permit trade and benami ownerships are the reasons why they have to resort to these means

PURANMASI WANTED to replace his old autorickshaw with a new one. Having failed to get it replaced on his own, he approached an agent of a financier who made him sign several documents which Puranmasi could not understand. He was promised a new vehicle as well as easy finance within a few weeks. However, even after 18 months the vehicle was not delivered whereas money was regularly taken from the naive Puranmasi on the pretext of procedural fee. Later, he was shocked to know that a replacement for his old vehicle had been sold to another driver while the registration remains on his name. The matter is now pending in court.

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Blowing it on your face

Hemant Goswami

Tobacco companies continue to kill millions every year while policy makers deceive people by making lenient laws which indirectly benefit corporates

IT IS an accident of history that tobacco became a legal product. It would be a fallacy to assume that a product which kills half its consumers was given a legal status by way of logic. When in the beginning of 19th century, tobacco was commercially used for the first time, it became a lucrative business. It was cheap to produce and easy to sell tobacco since a customer had no other option but to continue consuming it till the end of his or her life. Large profits made it easy for companies to start lobbying with the governments to scuttle out all opposition.

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Reaching out for better care and attention

Manu Moudgil

Millions of people living with HIV/AIDS in India are disappointed with the latest response of Union Health Ministry to the much delayed HIV/AIDS Bill. Are we back to square one?

ON JULY 5 this year, the Union Health Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad seemed to have reinvented the wheel by saying that the government may not be in a position to foot the treatment bill of those living with HIV. The provision of free treatment is one of the key features of the draft HIV/AIDS Bill which has been hanging fire for last five years and this disownment is not acceptable to the community. It wants the government to acknowledge that those living with HIV have no other choice but to take lifelong medications and the costly second and third line treatments are beyond their reach.

Though the second line treatment is being provided for free, it can be discontinued any time and the action can’t be challenged in the court of law. This is the reason why the community wants the HIV/AIDS bill to carry a guarantee for free treatment. It remains to be seen whether our country, which doles out billions of dollars in grants to African nations, will offer indefinite succour to its own people.

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Safe blood efforts in vain

Goi Monitor Desk

Better technology, higher voluntary donation and exclusive law can help achieve absolute blood safety

ON SEPTEMBER 11 this year, 23 children with thalassemia tested HIV positive at a civil hospital in Junagarh, Gujarat, where they were reportedly getting regular blood transfusions. The saddest part is this is not the first incident of its kind. In July 2010, at least 56 thalassemic children had tested positive for HIV, Hepatitis B and Hepatitis C after receiving blood at a government- run hospital in Jodhpur, Rajasthan. Another dozen thalassaemic children

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We Made Sure Paid News Report Is Public

GOI Monitor believes in following a story to its end. Our task doesn’t finish at writing and we make sure things don’t remain stagnant. We followed up the story on paid news report published under the header “Falling for the bait” in the first edition of GOI Monitor and the Central Information Commission (CIC) has now asked the Press Council of India (PCI) to upload the original report on its website for better public access.

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ENDS

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