Dalits Media Watch
News Updates 02.01.13
Government decides not to shift
Ambedkar statue - The Hindu
Breaking through - Business Standard
The Hindu
Government
decides not to shift Ambedkar statue
Anil Kumar Sastry
Instead, it will be kept
in an iron cage that will hang from a crane at its original position
In what appears to be a politically expedient decision
ahead of the Assembly elections, the government has decided against temporarily
shifting the B.R. Ambedkar statue to pave the way for the Vidhana Soudha
underground metro station work.
This decision comes even as the Karnataka High Court in its
December 12 order directed the State government to shift the statue temporarily
to facilitate the work. However, the government’s plea for extension of time to
shift the statue is pending before the High Court along with a PIL petition by
Dalit organisations opposing the removal of the statue and a contempt petition
for not shifting the statue.
The government, instead has said the statue may be
separated from its pedestal and kept in an iron cage that would remain hanging
from a crane at its original position.
In its order dated January 22, 2013, the government also
accorded administrative approval to spend Rs. 15 lakh for preparing the cage
and for the safekeeping of the statue.
Technical committee
While issuing the order, the government constituted a
technical committee, headed by chairman of the Task Force on Quality Control in
Public Constructions C.S. Vishwanath and comprising B.R. Sreenivasa Murthy,
retired civil engineering professor of the Indian Institute of Science, and
A.N. Thyagaraj, Chief Engineer (South), Public Works Department, to suggest
modalities for the safekeeping of the statue.
However, Bangalore Metro Rail Corporation Ltd. (BMRCL) has
been claiming that the delay in shifting of the statue would cause an
additional expenditure of Rs. 110 crore and increase the length of the
passenger exit from the underground station by about 20 mt.
Work to ensure safety of the statue, which BMRCL managing
director N. Sivasailam recently revealed had sunk by about 19 mm, commenced on
Friday afternoon by providing cantilever support to the statue as a temporary
measure.
Mr. Vishwanath told The Hindu that the committee,
after inspecting the site on Thursday, decided to take temporary safety
measures from Friday itself. As a short-term measure, a 40-tonne crane has been
stationed to provide support for holding the statue through a cantilever boom.
Apart from the crane, two metal legs on hard ground have been provided to
support the holding. This measure will be in place for about 15 days, Mr.
Vishwanath said.
The long-term measure is to keep the statue inside an iron
cage, he said, adding that the BMRCL thereafter could continue the work
unhindered.
Meanwhile Dalit organisations plan a meeting on Saturday to
examine the government’s move, said Mavalli Shankar, Dalit Sangharsh Samiti
secretary.
He told The Hindu that the government has not given
a categorical assurance about relocating the statue in its original position
after completion of the Namma Metro work. This is why Dalits are apprehensive
about the government’s intentions, he said.
Business
Standard
Breaking through
Kalpana Saroj and Milind Kamble, who will get the Padma
Shri this year, are epitomes of a new resurgence in the Dalit community
Aditi Phadnis / New Delhi Feb 02,
2013, 00:52 IST
When Kalpana Saroj,
chairperson of Kamani Tubes, walks up to the President of India to receive her Padma Shri later this
year, she will be wearing a diamond necklace and a
Kanjeevaram sari. What
she would really like is to be able to travel to Delhi in her own aircraft, but
she isn’t sure purchase negotiations (which are going on) will be complete by
then.
“What do you think?” she asks. Her voice is husky, almost
contemplative, but she has an infectious giggle. This is a woman who was born
to grinding poverty in Akola in Maharashtra, was
married at 12 although her burning ambition was to study, and ran away from
abusive in-laws at 14 when they would not let her study beyond class 9. She
lived in Mumbai earning Rs 2 a day doing small tailoring jobs. Today, the
company she runs is worth Rs 68 crore, and her office is the room that was once
the boardroom of the Kamani group, at Kamani Chambers, in Mumbai's Ballard Estate,
a stone’s throw from the building that houses Mukesh Ambani.
She talks about the lowest point in her life when she tried
to kill herself by drinking pesticide, because she didn’t want to face the
taunts of villagers. “I left my in-laws’ home and came back to my father’s,
because I was tired of being abused. But villagers thought I was at fault, it
was something I had done. How could I explain? My father was a police havaldar,
we had nothing. How was I going to live? I asked myself: why should I live?”
she says.
But she was saved and set out to save herself. Tailoring
jobs helped her earn enough to expand her business. A furniture shop joined her
assets and she ploughed her savings into buying land that she later sold. Her
big break was to buy a disputed piece of land which she nursed out of disputes,
following the file through the corridors of Mumbai’s labyrinthine government
departments tenaciously. She set up a business complex there called Kohinoor:
in the dim hope that one day, she would be able to buy something close to the
most valuable diamond in the world.
* * *
What caught her eye were large advertisements put by IDBI for the sale of
Kamani Tubes in Kurla, set up by a venerable Gujarati family that was once
right up there with the Tatas and Birlas. Designed to manufacture copper-alloy
tubes and pipes, the unit closed down in 1985 but reopened in 1988 on a Supreme
Court order and was handed over to a workers’ cooperative society. But the
workers couldn’t run it either and in 1995, it was on the verge of liquidation,
with even BIFR having thrown up its hands.
The workers came to her in 2005 and begged her to take it
over. Many were Dalits. “The situation was so bad that they hadn’t been paid
for months. Many had no money even for food and medicines. I felt I needed to
do something,” she says.
She went to IDBI and they agreed to make her president. She
had to start looking after the day-to-day management of the company
immediately. The more she unravelled the company’s affairs, the deeper was her
despair. “The company had no assets. The land it was standing on was rented.
Its building housed government tenants who were paying rent of 25 paise and 50
paise a month. And for obvious reasons, no one wanted to touch the company
until they got back what was already owed to them” she says. “We didn’t even
have the money to hire security services to guard the machinery which was being
stolen by the workers themselves as scrap to pay for food.”
Saroj’s priority was to secure trust — of the workers, the
creditors and lending agencies. A long slog followed with Saroj going from
office to office, begging for a break, just one chance. She looks back with
gratitude at all the help that did come. The red letter day was the day she
retired the debt of the company. Some time last year, newspapers reported her
meeting with the former owner, now in his 80s, Navinbhai Kamani. Saroj handed
him a cheque for Rs 51 lakh — his dues, including provident fund, as part of
the restructuring of KTL. “Navinbhai's financial condition was precarious; and
I think the money did him some good,” she was quoted as saying. KTL may make a
small book profit this year. The Kamani brand is selling in west Asia through
Al Kamani in Kuwait and Kalpana Saroj LLC in Dubai to cater to the huge demand
for copper tubes, especially from the water and sanitation sector.
Her daughter is studying hotel management in London and her
son is training to become a pilot in the US. She plans to set up an aviation
academy in Maharashtra, because there aren’t enough opportunities for Dalit
children in India.
* * *
It is entrepreneurs like Kalpana Saroj that inspired Milind Kamble,
Chairman and Managing Director of the Rs 100 crore-Fortune Construction, to give
Dalit entrepreneurship a profile. Kamble started out as a sub-contractor; and
success spurred him to focus on securing a share for Dalits in the nation's
GDP. And so was born the Dalit Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry ( DICCI).
“I was perplexed by two questions— I wondered why India Inc
needs organisations like Ficci and CII. I saw Indian business houses strong
enough to influence political leaders, Government policies and guard their
individual interests. I found the answer. To magnify the power of influence, a
collection of individuals is a better way than individually addressing issues.
Why shouldn’t Dalits follow the same path, was my next thought. As Dalits, with
no previous history of business and trade and situated outside India’s social
fabric, Dalit business persons needed a business body more than India Inc.
Plus, when Dalits have so many organisations in so many fields— from student bodies
to political parties — why not a business network?” Kamble said.
DICCI was born to break the old boys’ network of Ficci and
CII. DICCI recently helped launch a venture capital fund with a Rs 100 crore
corpus, underwritten by the Planning Commission. The first big function DICCI
celebrated last year was at Mumbai’s Taj Mahal Hotel, a black-tie event where
single malt flowed.
Capitalism will save the Dalits, says Chandrabhan Prasad,
advisor to DICCI. Not everyone agrees, but Prasad says Dalits need to remember
where they came from him. This is a story, in his own words, of his childhood
of great poverty and want.
“At aged less than 10, I too joined the band of rat
catchers. As per the tradition, only those who hunted rats had the right to eat
rat meat. Since I was too young to hunt rats on my own, I would join the rat
catchers and run around with them to justify my claim. I was given a bit of rat
meat to eat— often the baby rats.
“The only Dalit meat, field rats were a great source of
protein — though we didn’t hunt rats with protein in mind. We waited for three
seasons to arrive— harvesting of wheat in April; harvesting of paddy in
October; and the first rain in the final week of June as those are the main rat
catching seasons.
There were two ways of hunting rats during harvesting
season. Either we would dig the land following tunnels rats would make; or fill
the tunnels with water. We carried digging instrument and buckets, both. If the
land was dry — more often in the month of April — we deployed water to choke
oxygen flow to the rats. Once the tunnels were filled with water drawn from
nearby ponds, the rats would come out one by one. Before rats actually arrived,
there would be signals of their arrival. The water at the top would develop
movements and we would wait breathlessly. The moment a rat came out; either the
animal would be caught by hand, or he would start running. We would chase rats
with sticks in our hands. The rats were roasted in the field with a little salt
and eaten there.
Once an upper caste friend of mine asked me a pointed
question: why do you people continue eating rat and pig meat when your economic
situation is so good now? I wish I had asked him: why am I asked to sit
separately at public dinners at your place when the clothes I wear are as good
as yours ?"
--
.Arun Khote
On behalf of
Dalits Media Watch Team
(An initiative of “Peoples Media Advocacy & Resource Centre-PMARC”)
No comments:
Post a Comment