by admin | May 25, 2021 | Events, News, Social Round-up
By Somrita Ghosh,
Jhunjhunu : Sending her elder daughter Manushree to an English-medium school in Jhunjhunu (Rajasthan) was a distant dream for Sushila Thakan some eight years ago. Though she had her husband’s moral support, she received little cooperation from her in-laws after she gave birth to a girl child.
“Everyone wanted a male child and female newborns were considered no less than a curse. No one wanted a girl child,” the 32-year-old homemaker Sushila told IANS.
As per the 2011 census, Jhunjhunu district of Rajasthan had the worst child sex ratio in the state with 863 girls per 1,000 boys and got tagged because of its regressive traditional practices not only as a “socially backward” district in official statistics but also as a microcosm of the wrongs that ail Indian society.
The child-sex ratio in Rajasthan as per the 2011 census was one of the lowest in the country — 888 females per 1,000 males as against the national ratio of 919 females per 1,000 males. Noted economist Amartya Sen had once said that India had some 40 million “missing women” and this skewed sex ratio has improving slowly, district by district.
Jhunjhunu, itself, is rapidly changing, claims Sushila. She said that although she later gave birth to a son, her daughter is the most pampered and loved one in the family now, an indicator of how society is transforming.
Today with a ratio of 951 girls per 1,000 boys, the district has become a role model for other districts in the country that are attempting to improve their child-sex ratio.
“This is because there has been awareness in the region about the importance of girls and impact of education. The state government came up with many schemes for girls and highlighted the need for equal sex ratio. Now the discrimination has almost ended here,” Sushila emphasised.
However, the road to success was not a smooth one for the Rajasthan district. There were many hiccups which motivated and persevering district officials had to overcome in their mission.
“It’s not something which improved overnight. It’s a continuous process and a collective effort by everyone — former district collectors, women welfare and health departments, NGOs and others,” Dinesh Kumar Yadav, Jhunjhunu’s District Collector, told IANS.
Yadav, who was posted in Jhunjhunu last year, said the biggest challenge for him and the administration was battling the mindset of the people — misogynist thinking and male child-oriented approach of families.
“It was very difficult. We had to chase people, knock doors of every household, engage them with our schemes and make them understand through examples. Many girls from Jhunjhunu have joined the army, become government officers, or are working with multinational companies in big cities like Delhi. And we promoted such success stories, especially among families with girls,” he added.
In order to encourage people to have a girl child, the administration started several schemes, some involving financial incentives, and even pushed for the celebration of rituals like ‘kuan-poojan’ (worship of a well), which were earlier performed only after birth of a son.
“We had to fight certain misconceptions… that only a male child will support them during old age. We showed them how girls have been supporting their families as well,” he said.
Jhunjhunu also had a low literacy rate among women and to improve that the district administration started felicitating meritorious girls who outshine boys in exams.
“We started this felicitation programme called ‘Jhunjhunu Gaurav Samman’ where schools would put up pictures of meritorious girl students. We also took out rallies in honour of such meritorious girls,” Yadav explained.
Jhunjhunu was also facing a high school-dropout rate among girls and to increase the enrolment of girls in schools, the administration first identified families where girls were either not enrolled or had dropped out.
“Then we contacted many women officials in administrative posts for help and made teams who would visit the families and motivate them to enrol their girls in school,” he said.
Not just Jhunjhunu, but nearby Sikar district — which also had a poor child sex ratio of 885 girls per 1,000 boys in 2011 — also improved to 944 girls for every 1,000 boys.
“We understood that change would come only if we managed to engage with local people. We went on to select female brand ambassadors within the community who had already broken the ceiling to create a self-identity,” Naresh Thakral, District Collector of Sikar, told IANS.
Women then started attending awareness classes organised by the Anganwadi centres and NGOs.
“Slowly and steadily, women started raising their voice against discrimination and difficulties faced by them in raising girls. They became vocal and aware of the need for a balanced sex ratio and the importance of having a girl child,” Thakral said.
Although lowering the socio-cultural barriers was the first target, both districts were facing another major challenge — female foeticide.
“There were many cases of female foeticide, which beside being illegal also posed threat to the pregnant women. Initially we connected with families with pregnant women and tried to know if they were seeking for sex determination tests. In such cases, the women activists would try to convince them against foeticide,” Yadav said.
Both districts have succeeded in putting an end to female foeticide with implementation of strict laws and strong vigilance.
“We also started an operation where women became our informers. We stopped about 106 foeticide attempts, of which 60 were reported by women. In some cases, our volunteers chased such families to other districts and states. In some cases, volunteers even chased the families to Haryana to stop foeticide,” Yadav said.
But just a check on hospitals was not enough. Even more important was educating women to stand against female foeticide. And to encourage female births, several schemes for mothers of girl children were started, not just by the state government but also by the Central government.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s flagship “Beti Bachao Beti Padhao” (Save her Educate her) scheme which started off from Panipat in Haryana in 2015 also reached Jhunjhunu.
“Every year, we get around Rs 1 crore under this scheme , which helps our campaigns. Earlier we had to approach people for resources, but now the government has come around to help,” Yadav said.
Modi had on International Women’s Day this year launched the pan-India expansion of the scheme to all the 640 districts of the country and chose Jhunjhunu as the venue for the event. He honoured several officials, including one each from Jhunjhunu and Sikar, who had contributed to uplifting the status of women in their respective districts.
(The weekly feature series is part of a positive-journalism project of IANS and the Frank Islam Foundation. Somrita Ghosh can be contacted at somrita.g@ians.in )
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Corporate, Corporate Governance, Economy, Finance, Investing, News, Politics
By Archana Sharma,
Jaipur : The Modi health care scheme announced in the Union budget this year is quite similar to the one introduced in Rajasthan in December 2015, says Kali Charan Saraf, Rajasthan’s Minister of Health.
Under the Bhamashah Swasthya Bima Yojana (BSBY), health insurance cover of Rs 30,000 for general illnesses and Rs 3 lakh for critical illnesses is being given to beneficiaries.
An individual gets a risk cover for around 1,715 diseases and is also covered for major procedures like heart surgery and kidney transplant. Around 50 million of the state’s estimated 69 million people are said to be registered under this scheme.
The basic aim of the Bhamashah Yojana is to bring about an improvement in health indicators, reduce out-of-pocket expenses and provide financial security to the poor against illnesses, the minister told IANS. He said it is also bringing in a “revolution in healthcare” in the rural areas of the state.
On the “only difference” between the scheme implemented in the state and the one announced in the Union budget, Saraf said under the Modi health care scheme — dubbed ‘Modicare’ by a section of the media — the coverage amount had been increased to Rs 5 lakh for a family.
He says the modus operandi of the new scheme would be similar to the one being executed in Rajasthan, which covers almost two-thirds of the population of the state.
“In the last two years, we have disbursed claims worth Rs 1,000 crore,” Saraf said, adding that, till date, 1.6 million people had benefited from the scheme in urban and rural areas. “We have empanelled over 1,300 hospitals, both government and private, under the scheme,” the minister said.
Asked if the central government had held a discussion on this scheme with the state before its announcement, he said that when the Union Minister of Health and Family Welfare, J.P. Nadda, was in Rajasthan about seven months ago, “we had updated him of this scheme as it was running quite successfully in the state”.
Asked if the Rajasthan government would like to claim credit for the announcement of the central scheme, he said it was the same whether the central government was running it or the state. “It is an ambitious scheme and hence it is always good if the best things are picked up and used for the benefit of others,” he added.
On the challenges in successfully implementing the scheme, he said his team had fought initial hiccups which included the slow rate of card activation, documentation and confusion on treatment packages. “But, it is running smooth now,” he added.
Asked about the reasons for poor performance of the state government in the Niti Aayog report released recently, he said the report had taken 2014-15 figures into consideration. “We had hardly finished a year when the survey for this report was done. A year back, the state was under Congress rule and hence we can’t be blamed for a poor performance in the state,” he said.
Counting the steps his government had taken, he said that it started 581 Adarsh Primary Health Centres in Rajasthan in all panchayat samitis to receive free medicine and free health check-ups. “They do not face any trouble,” he said, adding that a Rajya Janani Yojana had been set which had resulted in a 180 per cent increase in successful deliveries in the state.
(Archana Sharma can be contacted at arachana.g@gmail.com)
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | News
Jaipur : Nearly 11.48 crore tonnes of gold deposits have been confirmed by scientists and geologists in Rajasthan, with experts claiming that the deposits are mostly located in the cities of Banswara and Udaipur.
Speaking to the media, N. Kutumba Rao, Director General of the Geological Survey of India (GSI), said the deposits were expected to be present at a depth of 300 feet under the earth’s surface.
Rao said the work for exploration of copper and gold was going on after traces of these materials were found at these locations. The work is also going on in Neem Ka Thana area in Sikar district.
Besides, gold and copper, scientists have also found traces of other minerals including lead and zinc here.
If the scientists’ estimates are to be believed, there are nearly 350 million tonnes of lead and zinc deposits in Rajpura-Dariba mines.
Search is also on in Bhilwara to see if these minerals are present under the earth here.
To date, 80 million tonnes of copper has been found from under the earth in Rajasthan.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Opinions, Politics
By Amulya Ganguli,
The signs which were available about the decline in the influence of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in Gujarat’s rural areas during the state assembly elections have been substantiated by the drubbing which the BJP has received at the Congress’s hands in the byelections in Rajasthan, where the saffron party is in power.
Earlier, the Congress had shown that it might well be on the comeback trail by its success in the Chitrakoot assembly byelection in another BJP-ruled state, Madhya Pradesh. In all these byelections, it was not so much the Congress’s victory which was noteworthy as the impressive margins of its success.
Although it is too early to say whether these election trends point to an ebbing of the saffron tide after the overwhelming nature of the wave in 2014 and again in Uttar Pradesh last year, there is little doubt that the BJP has reasons to be concerned.
In fact, the emphasis placed on the rural areas in the latest budget is an indication that the party has taken its setbacks in the Gujarat countryside seriously and is trying to make amends by reaching out to the vulnerable sections.
The proposed health insurance cover for 500 million, 40 per cent of the population, is not unlike the previous government’s food security programme for 67 per cent of the people.
More than what happened in Gujarat, where at least the urbanites stood behind the BJP, what the Rajasthan outcome has shown is that all the sections have voted against the ruling party.
The widespread nature of the discontent underlines a deep and extensive popular unhappiness with governance although a minister has sought to explain the party’s defeats by referring to the grievances of the Rajputs over the “Padmaavat” film.
But that can only be one of the reasons. What must have also undermined the BJP’s prospects is the violence unleashed by either cow vigilantes or individuals railing against the minorities.
While the lawlessness of the gau rakshaks was exemplified by the lynching of a Muslim cattle trader although he was carrying the required permits for his trade, the psychopathic wrath of anti-Muslim elements was evident in the killing of a migrant labourer from West Bengal.
Both these heinous crimes were filmed and repeatedly shown on television, but while the murderers of the cattle trader, Pehlu Khan, have gone scot-free because of the inability of the police to provide credible evidence although the lynching took place in broad daylight in front of cameras, at least the killer of Afrazul Khan, the migrant labourer, has been arrested.
While any other government would have expressed deep shock and dismay over the horrific incidents, the Vasundhara Raje government in Rajasthan has largely remained unperturbed, a trait of indifference to near-anarchic conditions demonstrated by several other BJP-led governments as well such as in Haryana.
What cannot but be worrying for the Narendra Modi-Amit Shah duo is that the virtually unchecked violence of saffron groups like the gau rakshaks or the opponents of love jehad is beginning to take its toll on the BJP’s electoral fortunes, notwithstanding all the talk about “Sabka Saath, Sabka Vikas” or development for all.
The popular disquiet about the rampaging mobs might have been assuaged if prompt and effective police action was taken and the criminals were put behind bars. But if the absence of such deterrent steps is proving costly for the BJP, the reason is that it is not only the Muslims — or the Christians who have also been targeted by Hindutva outfits in Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh — who are feeling insecure, as then Vice President Hamid Ansari pointed out, but the ordinary citizens are also distressed by the prevailing intolerance and intimidation.
Moreover, this atmosphere has been building up virtually from the time the BJP assumed power at the Centre and in several states as was highlighted by the return of national awards by a number of luminaries in the last two years in protest against the deteriorating situation. A recent open letter written by retired bureaucrats also referred to the “deeply disquieting trends” in the public sphere.
It is obvious that unless the governments at the Centre and in the states run by the BJP deal firmly with such rowdy elements, the party’s hope of a repeat run of the last general election in 2019 and even improving on its tally, as Amit Shah hopes, will not be fulfilled.
As is not uncommon in India, it is the failure of governments which usually leads to their fall rather than any efforts of the opposition. This tendency is again evident in Rajasthan where the Congress had just to wait in the wings to reap the electoral benefits of its opponent’s missteps.
After the humiliating setback in 2014, the Congress is showing signs of revival. But it will be making a mistake if it hopes to make electoral gains solely on the basis of the BJP’s inability or unwillingness to control its militant followers.
(Amulya Ganguli is a political analyst. The views expressed are personal. He can be reached at amulyaganguli@gmail.com)
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | News, Politics
Ali Anwar Ansari
New Delhi : Rebel Janata Dal-United leader Ali Anwar on Tuesday attacked the Centre over filling up of open salt mines in Rajasthan by “threatening” people ahead of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit on January 16.
“The government has filled up over 20 open salt mines to facilitate re-laying of the foundation stone of the Hindustan Petroleum Corporation Limited (HPCL) refinery in Pachpadara village in Barmer district,” Anwar told the media here.
He said there are about 200 open salt mines in Pachparda area since the time of British rule.
“With the government’s move to fill up the open mines, danger looms over 180 more salt mines, on which over 5,000 persons are dependent for livelihood,” he said.
“We are not against the refinery project, but the government must promise them jobs as their livelihood is in danger now,” he said.
He said the villagers will put up black flags on their rooftops to protest against the government’s move to fill up the mines.
Hitting out at the government, the rebel JD-U leader said: “It is unfortunate that the Prime Minister will again lay the foundation stone of the project, which was earlier laid by Congress President Sonia Gandhi and then Rajasthan Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot in March 2013.”
He said the Bharatiya Janata Party wants to ride on the shoulders of Modi by calling him to the state ahead of the bypolls to the Lok Sabha constituencies of Alwar and Ajmer and Mandalgarh assembly seat on January 29.
—IANS
