Friday, August 19, 2011

harassment in public places


//There's been a consequent flipside to Anna Hazare's movement against corruption in the country. A number of people have been complaining of some fringe elements in the movement creating a nuisance - harassing and misbehaving with women, raising vulgar slogans and picking pockets.

Shanta Sharma, a student of Delhi University, said that she was harassed by a group of men returning from a protest site on Wednesday evening.//
http://www.deccanchronicle.com/channels/nation/north/harassment-and-obscenity-during-rallies-backing-anna-hazare-792


I saw this news item in today's papers. And it reminded me of the blogs I had seen earlier in the week. Harassment of women is a irksome problem all over India. Anonymity helps those cowards to behave badly and get away with it. It is a fundamental flaw in many men/guys/boys.The seriousness of it is felt only by women . It is time someone took up this cause as well. And who else could be better than...
I think the next civil society agenda can be a good one for women. They can take up this cause, as they have done so much improvement in villages, by using a very strict moral code. Have a look at this.


//Anna Hazare recognised that without addressing the menace of alcoholism, no effective and sustainable reform was possible in the village. He organised the youth of the village into an organisation named the Tarun Mandal (Youth Association).[20] Hazare and the youth group decided to take up the issue of alcoholism. At a meeting conducted in the temple, the villagers resolved to close down liquor dens and ban alcohol in the village. Since these resolutions were made in the temple, they became in a sense religious commitments. Over thirty liquor brewing units were closed by their owners voluntarily. Those who did not succumb to social pressure were forced to close down their businesses when the youth group smashed up their liquor dens. The owners could not complain as their businesses were illegal.[21]

//When some villagers were found to be drunk they were tied to poles/pillars of the temple and flogged, sometimes personally by Hazare. He justified this harsh punishment by stating in an interview to Reader's Digest in 1986 that “rural India was a harsh society”. //
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anna_Hazare

I could not help giving a reference to this:

//The bottom line, however, remains-and this is the National Tragedy in which Anna Hazare is playing the part of Hamlet- is that we have a model of rural Development and Empowerment which institutionalises corruption, stupidity and availability cascades of the silliest sort. Thus, if there is a way forward, it is to be found in Modi's Gurjerat, not Hazare's Maharashtra. Otherwise, yet more momentum will be given to the great rural past-time of everybody forming his own Brashatachar Andolan and filing f.i.r's against everybody else in the village for assault, battery, anal rape, abetment to suttee, being pissed on from a great height, having one's land encroached on, not washing hands after doing tatti etc, etc.
The greatness of Anna Hazare is he finally ran away from the village and came to Jantar Mantar and sat down and declared a tatti bandh and humbly fasted till he got something or the other which would keep him out of the mad-house of N.G.O overpopulated Indian villages and their tremendous moral integrity and pure Gandhian values.
The extract from the Comission's report given below features a complaint by an aggrieved bus-conductor who started up his own Brashtachar Virodh outfit. Truly, we so called 'liberal' middle-class Indians have much to learn from Hazare and his ilk about the real meaning of 'Hind Swaraj'.

//http://socioproctology.blogspot.com/2011/04/justice-sawant-commission-on-anna.html

mmm...... If only wishes were horses , women could walk without fear!