Dalits Media Watch News Updates 14.08.13 Dalits enter temple amid tight police security- The Hindu thehindu/todays-paper/tp-national/tp-tamilnadu/dalits-enter-temple-amid-tight-police-security/article5020956.ece Dalits in media feel the sting of caste discrimination- FirstPost India firstpost/india/dalits-in-media-feel-the-sting-of-caste-discrimination-1029885.html Reservation- The Hindu thehindu/todays-paper/tp-national/tp-karnataka/reservation/article5020995.ece Dalit leaders’ plea to Collector- The Hindu thehindu/todays-paper/tp-national/tp-andhrapradesh/dalit-leaders-plea-to-collector/article5021255.ece Ward reservation demand hots up- The Times Of India timesofindia.indiatimes/city/pune/Ward-reservation-demand-hots-up/articleshow/21814892.cms Rs 45 crore sanctioned for SC/ST fee- The New Indian Express newindianexpress/cities/bangalore/Rs-45-crore-sanctioned-for-SCST-fee/2013/08/14/article1733537.ece For a pair of new clothes, a Dalit child slogs at stone quarry- Republica myrepublica/portal/index.php?action=news_details&news_id=59479 Scholarship for SC/ST students- The Hindu thehindu/todays-paper/tp-national/tp-karnataka/scholarship-for-scst-students/article5020975.ece The Hindu Dalits enter temple amid tight police security thehindu/todays-paper/tp-national/tp-tamilnadu/dalits-enter-temple-amid-tight-police-security/article5020956.ece Dalits of Oduvankurichi – about 7 km. from Rasipuram Town, in Namakkal District – entered a temple attached to the Hindu Religious and Charities Endowment (HR&CE) Department amidst tight police security on Tuesday morning. Protesting against the entry of Dalits into the temple, Caste Hindus of that village did not come to the temple on that day. Revenue officials sealed the temple during the wee hours of Friday after a group of Caste Hindus staged a dharna inside the temple on Thursday protesting against the move of authorities to allow Dalits into the Kashiviswanathar Temple. While three rounds of peace talks conducted by the revenue officials on August 6, 8 and 10 met with a failure, the seal was removed on Tuesday morning. Puja performed Rasipuram Tahsildar K. Ayyavu opened the seal following which a group of 11 Dalits entered the temple. Puja were performed for them. District Collector V. Dakshinamoorthi and other officials also visited the spot. Police led by the Deputy Inspector General (DIG) of Salem Range Sanjay Kumar, Superintendent of Police (SP) of Namakkal P. Kannammal and Salem Rural SP R. Sakthivel supervised security arrangements. FirstPost India Dalits in media feel the sting of caste discrimination firstpost/india/dalits-in-media-feel-the-sting-of-caste-discrimination-1029885.html Dalit journalists believe caste-based discrimination and antagonism against them is pervasive in the mainstream media, both print and electronic. They say this phenomenon is more rampant in Hindi and other language media than in the English media. This was one of the important findings of the research project that The Hoot, a website on the media, commissioned me to do. Over three months, I interviewed students who were admitted to media institutes in the reserved category and are or were journalists. I also spoke to Dalits who entered the media directly. Of the 21 journalists who agreed to speak to me – there was also a substantial number who turned down my requests for an interaction – 19 spoke on the record, suggesting a growing sense of confidence among them about their Dalit identity. The Hoot study suggests the number of Dalits in the mainstream media has grown over the last two decades, though still nowhere in proportion to their countrywide population of 15 percent; and mostly they’re perched on the lower rungs of the hierarchy in newspaper and TV outlets. Most of the 21 I spoke to also referred to their caste brethren working as journalists elsewhere in the country. This growth, however infinitesimal, improves upon what veteran journalist BN Uniyal found in 1996. In response to a Delhi-based foreign correspondent who wished to speak to a Dalit journalist for a story,Uniyal contacted editors, columnists, and pored through the list of journalists accredited to the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting. He failed to identify a single Dalit journalist. Seventeen years hence, I was able to reach out to a dozen Dalit journalists based in Delhi alone. But the optimism stemming from the rising number of Dalits in the media is offset by their experiences in it. Of the 21 Dalit journalists I met, 12 have or would quit journalism in case they were to get better career options. Caste-based discrimination was ranked as the principal factor why Dalit journalists want to leave the media. Discrimination in its most severe form was experienced in the Hindi media and other languages. Dalits having ambiguous surnames, often adopted to conceal their caste, invited relentless questioning from upper caste colleagues. At the disclosure or identification of their Dalit identity, most of the 21 journalists reported harassment, snide remarks, and deliberate targeting that was manifest in a denial of promotions and increments. Naveen Kumar, for instance, was employed as a trainee in a premier Hindi TV channel, where his boss pestered him to divulge his caste. On Naveen’s disclosure that he belonged to the Scheduled Caste of Bairwa from Rajasthan, his boss began calling him by his caste – “Bairwa do this, Bairwa do that”. When Naveen was assigned to the morning desk of the channel, his boss there would rebuke him even over minor mistakes and blame it on the incorrigible attributes of his jati. Sangh Priy Gautam, a Hindi journalist in Agra, was left aghast when, on getting laid off in Meerut, he approached an influential acquaintance to recommend him to an editor in Haryana. Within hours, Sangh Priy received a text message asking whether he was a Brahmin. Why do you want to know that? asked Sangh Priy. The acquaintance replied: the editor (in Haryana) is Brahmin, wants to hire a Brahmin. Again, Ashok Das was one of the 10 journalists – of whom eight were Brahmin, one Bhumihar – a Hindi daily hired for its bureau in Aligarh, from where it planned to take out a city edition. Ashok realised none of the journalists wanted to share a room with him until one socially conscionable Brahmin offered to take him in. It was this Brahmin journalist who told Ashok of the furious debate he had sparked among the others the day he disclosed his Dalit identity to the group. In Hyderabad, Chanti Kranti Kiran, who is the Input Editor of V6 News, was asked within a few days of joining his first job what his caste was. In response to his reply, his boss said, “You were hired because we thought you were Brahmin.” Their experiences appear inordinately tragic because many of them had overcome terrible odds to enter the media in the first place. For instance, Santosh Valmiki, principal correspondent, Hindustan, Lucknow, would as a child accompany his mother as she went from house to house cleaning toilets; he also hawked newspapers to finance his college education. Despite his over two decades of experience, he rued he was still a principal correspondent. “Those junior to me in the profession have become editors,” he said, arguing that connection and patronage are important to rise in career. But Dalits are poorly represented in the media, and consequently have “no mai-baap” to bank upon, he said. In fact, at times, the desire to transform an unequal, oppressive society prompts Dalits to take to the media. For instance, Ved Prakash, assistant producer in Total TV, decided to become a journalist following the beating he was subjected to by an upper caste bully in a Bihar village where he taught in a school. The upper caste villagers resented a Dalit teaching their children. Or take Mallepalli Laxmaiah, a Telugu columnist, whose inspiration to join the media was linked to the fact his uncle was killed by upper caste landlords. In his more youthful days of activism, Laxmaiah was himself picked up under the draconian TADA. I also came across Satyendra Murli, now with Hindustan, who witnessed his mother and sister thrown out of the village temple. In many ways, Dalits become sorely disappointed at the discovery that the Indian media, which professes to be progressive, tends to reflect the inequalities of the larger social system. Instances of caste-based antagonism against Dalits in the English media were missing from the narratives of most employed in it, barring the case of one woman journalist whose boss was harassingly curious about her caste because of her ambiguous surname. No doubt, some journalists did leave the English media, but it was mostly on account of better salaries offered elsewhere. Nevertheless, journalists in the English media, like their Hindi counterparts, felt deeply insulted by the disparaging remarks of their colleagues against Mayawati and other Dalit leaders in discussions. Their failings, they claimed, were often portrayed as arising from their caste, leading to stereotyping of Dalits. D Karthikeyan of The Hindurecounted such discussions in the newsroom of the newspaper’s Madurai bureau until these chatterings plumbed to such infuriating and pathetic depths that he felt compelled to complain to the bosses, who issued a warning to the errant bureau. There is, however, also a pull-factor that lures Dalit journalists away from the media. For one, salaries at entry into the media are too low for them to sustain themselves in cities, particularly as they have to support other members of the extended family who are economically poor and educationally backward. Their fear of layoffs is particularly acute as most lack a strong economic base, having no inherited ancestral assets. By contrast, government jobs – the most favoured option among Dalits – provide permanent tenure, ensure time-bound promotions till a certain stage, and insulate them from the adverse impact of discrimination and antagonism against Dalits. Government jobs also enable Dalits to marry into higher income groups in their community, thus becoming upwardly mobile. Not all respondents, however, subscribed to the view of being discriminated against. At least one former Dalit journalist, Animesh Biswas, who is now employed in a public relations company, thought Dalits have a tendency to speak about “their background as soon they encounter problems.” He and a few others blamed the abysmal standard of education which fails to equip Dalits with the language skills the media expects them to possess. The overwhelming feeling among Dalit journalists about the prevalence of antagonism against them tends to make them rethink the idea of continuing in journalism. Their still poor presence in the media has serious implications for news coverage. Telugu columnist Mallepalli Laxmaiah thought the media coverage is governed by five Cs – controversy, crime, cinema, cricket and corporate. “Violence against Dalits comes under Crime and is consequently covered. All other aspects of their life don’t make for a story,” he said. Perhaps this explains why the mainstream media eventually ends up speaking to, and about, the upper caste/middle class India. (The longer version of this story, divided into three parts, can be read on The Hoot website here, here and here.) (Ajaz Ashraf is a Delhi-based journalist and can be reached atashrafajaz3@gmail) The Hindu Reservation thehindu/todays-paper/tp-national/tp-karnataka/reservation/article5020995.ece The Government has issued orders asking cooperative organisations to make compulsory provisions for reservation during the election to governing bodies. Accordingly, cooperative organisations below taluk-level status have to elect 11 directors instead of nine. They have to provide reservation for SC/ST (one each), backward communities and women (two each). — Staff Correspondent The Hindu Dalit leaders’ plea to Collector thehindu/todays-paper/tp-national/tp-andhrapradesh/dalit-leaders-plea-to-collector/article5021255.ece A delegation of Dalit leaders on Tuesday urged Prakasam district Collector G.S.R.K.R. Vijaykumar to provide enhanced compensation of Rs. 3.75 lakh to the next of kin of a 32-year-old Dalit who was murdered at Satyavolu village in Racherla mandal in September last year. The delegation led by Dalit Hakkula Parirakshna Samiti district president Neelam Nagendra Rao pleaded with the Collector to use his discretion to provide enhanced compensation to the family of the dalit, S.Sekhar who was done to death in his village. The family had got only Rs. 10,000 as compensation after the district police removed the charge filed under the SC/ST Prevention of Atrocities Act. The Times Of India Ward reservation demand hots up timesofindia.indiatimes/city/pune/Ward-reservation-demand-hots-up/articleshow/21814892.cms PUNE: The demand for reserving a ward for schedule caste/schedule tribe candidates in Punecantonment area is hotting up after the PuneCantonment Board (PCB) released population figures based on Census 2011, recently. The total population as per the Census is 71,781 of which the SC/ST constitutes 9,691 people. Elections to the board are a few months away after the Centre xtended the tenure of the existing elected members by six months up to December 31, 2013. The list has 40,739 voters. Of the total population, 31,042 names were not included in the list. They could be minors who have just attained the voting age and those who are yet to attain it. The other reasons could be locked houses and shifting of residences. The general body meeting of the board on Wednesday is likely to discuss the ward reservation for the SC/ST candidates. The PCB may undertake its own exercise of confirming the population of SC/ST in each ward, officials said. The cantonment unit of the Bharatiya Janata Party has objected to the population figures of persons below 18 years in ward numbers four and six. The party has sought withholding of the declaration for reservation of the ward until the correct figures are available. At present, ward number four represented by Karan Makhwani is a reserved for an SC/ST candidate. PCB office superintendent Chitra Gokhale said the issue of ward reservation will be decided in the general body meeting as per rule 5 (1) of the cantonment election rules of 2007 on the basis of the percentage of SC/ST population as per Census 2011. The government has directed 58 cantonment boards including Pune, Khadki and Dehu Road to take a call on the issue before August 31, she said. The New Indian Express Rs 45 crore sanctioned for SC/ST fee newindianexpress/cities/bangalore/Rs-45-crore-sanctioned-for-SCST-fee/2013/08/14/article1733537.ece By Express News Service - BANGALORE 14th August 2013 08:26 AM The state Finance Department has sanctioned Rs 45 crore to the Higher Education Department to reimburse the fees of engineering students belonging to SC/ST communities and who have secured government quota seats through the Common Entrance Test (CET). A press release from the department said that the reimbursement was pending from three years. As many as 13,109 SC students (10,109 students from the batches admitted from 2010-11 to 2012-13, and 3,000 students this year) and 2,499 ST students (1,649 from 2011-12 to 2012-13 and 850 students this year) would be reimbursed. CET Update The Karnataka Examinations Authority (KEA) has announced the status of seat allotment in the vacancy round on the KEA website kea.kar.nic.in. Candidates who have been allotted seats in this round should invariably report to the allotted colleges on or before August 14, 5.30 pm. According to a press release issued be Karnataka Examinations Authority, out of 87 BSc candidates who have been assigned ranks, 36 attended document verification and 33 have selected engineering seats under the lateral entry scheme, said the release. Republica For a pair of new clothes, a Dalit child slogs at stone quarry myrepublica/portal/index.php?action=news_details&news_id=59479 ROLPA (JASPUR), Aug 13:Ten-year old Hukuma BK hardly flinches as she sits cross-legged in front of a heap of stone, crushing them for most of the day. Though her tender hands are bruised and battered, her eyes glimmer - in the hope of earning enough money to afford a new set of clothes and square meals during the upcoming festival of Teej. “My parents can´t afford to buy a new set of clothes for me. They have been asked me to earn one myself. Let´s see how much I can earn,” says the child from socially as well as economically marginalized Dalit family from Jaspur village in Rolpa district. Come what may, Hukuma is determined to earn enough money to don red Kurta Salwar this Teej. After the black topping works for the Holleri-Swargadwari road started, Hukuma has been working as a laborer for the past ten days, crushing stones to be used on the road. She earns merely Rs 30 for a tin box full of crushed stones. She has not received any payment for her work so far-but she is confident her hard work will pay off at the end of the day. Every day she sets out to the quarry early in the morning carrying a hammer and her lunchbox, and works indefatigably until the sunset. A few minutes into conversation, Hukuma reveals that she has no alternative than to toil day in and day out to help her family to make the end meet. So abjectly poor is her family that the fourth grader at a local public school could hardly afford to go to school even after buying stationeries with her own money. “I rarely go to school. I have to work harder during the vacations and other holidays,” she says. Not only Hukuma, many families in the locality, faced with similar poverty, are compelled to send their children to work instead of school, says Kamala BK, a local. “Most of the school children in the village have to go for work to support the family,” adds Kamala. The Hindu Scholarship for SC/ST students thehindu/todays-paper/tp-national/tp-karnataka/scholarship-for-scst-students/article5020975.ece Canara Bank’s scholarship scheme titled ‘Vidya Jyothi,’ under which financial assistance will be extended for Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe students will be launched at Suvarna Samskruti Bhavan in the city on Wednesday. The programme will commence at 3 p.m. Minister of State for Primary and Secondary Education Kimmane Rathnakar will launch the scheme. Shimoga MLA K.B. Prasanna Kumar, Executive Director of Canara Bank Krishna Kumar V.S. will take part in the programme. News Monitor by Girish Pant
Posted on: Wed, 14 Aug 2013 11:22:23 +0000
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