WE NEED TO LISTEN TO WOULD BE SUICIDERS

 State and society needs to watch warning signals of would be suiciders and respond. The next question is how the state will respond and do that to respond . One way for state is to start help lines with the help of employees such as psychiatrists, psychologists and Social workers but this kind of work requires selflessness, understanding, sympathetic nature and empathetic behaviour besides dedication and devotion to fellow human beings. How are we going to ensure that help cells will be manned when the most important HELP CALL IS GOING TO BE MADE BY A WOULD BE SUICIDAL PERSON ?. What if it meets the voice of an irritated not willing employee who wants to with his/her family rather than be counseling someone who is bent upon killing him/herself?

Therefore the solution is voluntary societal action combined with government support. The print and electronic media group  need to tie up with NGO’s and open a website like www.pleasedonotcommitsuicide.com with volunteers who are good at counseling. The victims just need to have re look at his/her problem, be given a new way to look at his/her problem, a new sympathetic ear which honestly listens, a new source of help and inspiration.

The victim if he/she can contact a easy to find website/telephone will be in 99 percent cases can be dissuaded to take the extreme step. There is very thin line which separates threshold which when crossed cannot get a life back but a few seconds of good listening and promised action, advise, solace and other such steps to ameliorate the grievance, understand the plight, giving strength to the effected soul/family, getting their grievances re addressed, listened to and sorted out are all the actions which are required at that particular moment to provide the necessary help by this voluntary listening post.

Such action will require selfless volunteers who will be on net working and who must have the state government support to sort out matters of the effected persons. Most of the cases are redeemable situations. The police and concerned departments which are on the grievance list of the would be suicidal person, must treat these cases with utmost sympathy rather the their usual brusque manner . Additional help will  be to establish a psychiatrist help cell at each sub division under the SDM to coordinate and help these would be suicide cases. The society needs to be sympathetic rather than mock at individuals as is the normal wont. Their soul cries for help and we the happy beings of the society need to help them ti save their precious lives by all means. 

PUNJAB POLICE REQUIRES TO RETRAIN IN VIEW OF CHANGED ENVIRONMENT

Punjab police is known world over for its robust tackling of the crowds and offenders rather than scientific methods of crowd control and policing. No doubt the Punjab Police did a good job in tackling terrorism and now period that phase is over. Now Punjab police is faced with actual hard core policing tasks like maintaining law and order with a major evil of drugs cropping up in a big way. In addition a very fast tech savvy environment is evolving to keep it on its toes where filming an incident does not require elaborate equipment but just a cheap mobile which actually became its undoing.  Punjab Police and  for that matter any police in India is in habit of twisting facts and creating  situations to suit its FIR story /theory is now no more possible that easily. So challenges for these law enforcement agencies are many, varied and ever increasing.

Another fact of increasing crime against women in rate and proportion is also laying bare the lack of training, preparedness, values and quality of human resource of our police force. It is causing constant humiliation for the ruling elite. It is such a situation that ruling party wants to blame others for its failures but is not able to do so despite such high pitch speeches in the parliament. It is thanks to the media activism that the most incidents have been brought in public domain. It is so ludicrous that on one hand the state is not able to give a safe environment to our own daughters but our parliamentarians are busy finding fault with the central government apparatus rather than apply balm to the affected families through their own government.

It is also a fact that not much had been done for women safety previously where as the present government has initiated recruitment of women constables and other women officials which was required since long. This is a very welcome step. But is it enough? As we are all aware that nothing is static in our environment and society hence because of it dynamics it will not and cannot stop for the government to prepare and post enough numbers of well trained and sensitive human beings to its police force.

 If a crowd is tackled well by sincere police officers, nine out of ten times the crowd will listen, sometimes they just want to be heard, it is a very basic right to be heard by Powers That Be who can ameliorate their grievances .The government needs to be proactive in perceiving the future policing requirements and modify their training syllabus accordingly to sensitize the new recruits as well as retrain the old policemen who are now holding positions such as SHO's and others   such posts that matter.

The police needs to study changing patterns of crime, preempt certain incidents, sensitise male police force till we have enough members from the female gender to man the stations as required by their population ratio. Mind you these female numbers are set to increase with such laudable schemes such as Nanhi Chhaan and other women centric welfare schemes set up to decrease infant mortality ratio and provide education to all girls free. These future women as we shall call them generally are going to be more aware, alert, militant in their outlook and ever ready to fight for their legitimate rights.

Hence time has come for our forces to evolve and come out of police functioning of male dominating police force of British era when women mostly stayed at home. We need a police force that is human ,modest, talking to offenders, segregating the first time offenders, employing negotiators to break dead locks, employ psychologists, sociologists and employing scientific proven methods to tackle issues of unruly but rights demanding crowds ,strikes and mobs. The state that is on path of development does not portray a very rosy picture when such videos of merciless beating of innocent public are shown across the world. We need to introspect about our entire administration of policing .Times are changing and the rulers must change accordingly and they should not only promise positive action in public but must practice the same in their instructions to their subordinates in private too when they are away from media and public glare. Any political party which after coming to power becomes a government and this government is directly responsible and is constitutionally bound to provide fair governance and thus treats all its citizens as equal despite their having different political affiliations or no affiliation at all.

 

WOMEN'S RESERVATION BILL IS WAITING TO BE PASSED

The women reservation bill for ensuring quota for women is nowhere near its becoming a law - leave aside implementation despite the plea on the Women's Day i.e. yesterday in The Rajya Sabha by left parties and DMK. Even as the debate rages on the need for protecting women in the country, the long pending issue of the Women's Reservation Bill seems to have been put on the back burner. The Bill was first drafted in the Lok Sabha on September 12, 1996; it was then introduced in March 2010 after much half hearted effort to keep it in abeyance. The Bill, having been passed in the Rajya Sabha in 2010, can become a law only if it is also passed in the Lok Sabha. Proposed to provide reservation for women at each level of legislative decision-making, the Bill ensured that one-third of the total available seats would be reserved for women in national, state and local governments. But why is that after almost 17 years after its drafting, the Bill has still not seen the light of day? Why is it that a move to promote gender equality in decision-making bodies has not been allowed to get implemented?

It is so because the males still largely believe that women are not so smart in dealing with worldly matters. Ask any male about this very few will grudgingly admit in public that women are equal or better than them in certain aspects but their number will be more if asked to comment in private. Such is the hypocrisy attached to this issue. For window dressing purposes we have a UPA chairperson at top, speaker of Lok Sabha and leader of Opposition etc. These are few ornamental to be seen posts but political parties at large still do not want to give them the share as per their ratio of population because they consider that they will lose the grip on their respective outfits or they consider them as more as ornamental constitutional necessities rather than capable functional human beings equal in all respects. Politicians camouflage their vested interests with the argument that the Bill would deny adequate representation for the backward sections of society. What they propose is a quota within a quota for certain classes.

Most programmes for women fail to take off due to improper planning at the grass root level. Corruption at all levels; slow implementation and lack of concerted effort nepotism threaten to eat into the little good that has been done for women’s empowerment in this country. This is an outcome of the continuous failure of women’s welfare policies. That the socio-economic condition of women can only be ameliorated if they are also a part of the governance is a fact that is widely accepted the world over. In spite of this realisation, gender sensitivity in administration is still struggling to get a foothold because of the general fear that women might surpass men in all spheres and also intrude in their political affairs, which is largely considered to be a male domain.

The individuals who oppose the Bill tooth and nail should be made to arrive at a consensus in the interest of the nation.  Now let us take a situation where the bill is passed and women are elected to all the three tiers of the government. Here arises a point that Are our women really ready to take up the assigned mantle as desired?
The niggling doubt in mind and unseen writing on the wall says -......"not at all".
Barring a few women who belong to active political families and have their fathers, brothers, in-laws families and husbands already in the politics, the rest of women in the society are not trained, sensitised or ready for the role which is going to be thrust on them by this new women reservation. The reasons are very clear because in the house holds she is led by men and in society too she has been following her man from centuries. All this needs to be taken into account at this stage to mentor and groom future women politicians who are not from political background or lineage.
So then what should be done by the powers that be - to make women aware about their constitutional role and responsibilities from the level of Panchayat to Parliament pan India.
The time is fast running out for Govt of India (if it has the will) to really empower women. Because in actual sense they should prepare women before they bring in the legislation? But nobody is giving it a heed. The Central/state governments should start programmes to specifically train them. The future women leaders have to be educated trained and supported continuously so as to help them to assume and perform their assigned role in the governance of the state at all the three tiers. This has to be done so that their husbands do not usurp the actual powers while they remain just ornamental elected representatives. This cannot be done unless we train and test them on their assigned constitutional roles. Otherwise they will not measure up to their male counter parts.

·     The biggest challenge for a novice is to know and learn - even bigger challenge is to unlearn what they learnt which is wrong and follow the path which is right.

·     They need to be trained because in order to become good leaders they must know all about public administration and governance.

·     It is required so that they learn and know all about their rights, duties, responsibilities, rules and regulations.

·     Above all they need to know the functioning and character of present day bureaucratic structure. They need to know who controls whom so that they do not end up as rubber stamps.

·     They need to be taught about the strengths, weaknesses, hollowness and failures of the existing system so that they know that the whole system before they enter it.

·     They need to know that system is not corrupt by itself but made so by political-bureaucratic nexus. They need to be taught what has happened and what can happens to corrupt leaders and bureaucrats who do not stay within rules of honest and transparent public dealing and functioning. They must know it all and they must be taught to choose the right but difficult path. They need to be taught all about what happens to corrupt political leaders - the laws which can strangle them and finish their careers. They need to be told that the red beacon vehicle can be driven straight to jail also. The need to be taught about the honourous task of dealing with public money without being corrupt.

·     The need to have total commitment to public they are serving being public servants and to have impeccable integrity while being a political leader needs to be over emphasised to them in to days very corrupt environment.

Keeping all the above reasons and facts in view it does need to over emphasised that the government needs to provide a training platform to train WOULD BE AND PRESENT WOMEN POLITICIANS so that they become trained and competent to take their rightful place alongside their male colleagues without feeling inferior to them in any way. The facilities to train/retrain/continuously educate and update the potential women leaders are an urgent need to back up any Women Reservation Legislation. The Government must be gutsy enough to ensure the Bill is passed even if it is at the cost of losing its allies.

IN ORDER TO BUILD THESE WOMEN LEADERS OF FUTURE WE NEED TO  THINK QUICKLY IN UNISON WITH ALACRITY  FOR PROVIDING  CENTRES FOR TRAINING THEM  FOR ALLTHE CONSTITUTIONAL TIERS BE IT LOKSABHAS,STATE ASSEMBLIES OR PANCHAYATS   BECAUSE WITHOUT THE TRAINING AND EDUCATION THEY WILL NOT BE ABLE TO PERFORM THEIR ASSIGNED ROLES.