The Big Story: Subjects not citizens

State violence against India’s Adivasis is a tale as old as the Indian state. Yet, even by this standard, reports of the alleged mass sexual assault of Adivasi women in Chhattisgarh is shocking. On the weekend, the National Human Rights Commission said there was prima facie evidence to prove that at least 16 Adivasi women had been raped by security forces in Chhattisgarh. It said that it was able to examine only 14 of 34 women who are alleged to have been sexually assaulted by the police. The sexual violence was accompanied by looting of property.

Yet, so disconnected are India’s urban residents from the plight of their Adivasis fellow citizens that this act – almost like that of an invading army – has failed to elicit outrage. In fact, the National Human Rights Commission itself has taken a rather mild view of the situation, recommending only a monetary fine on the Chhattisgarh state. It said nothing about criminal prosecutions of the rapists and their superivising officers.

The incident shines a spotlight on the Indian state’s treatment of Adivasis. The region suffers from debilitating poverty and neglect. Starvation and disease that most of the world has moved on from still affect India’s Adivasis. In 2016, for instance, 93 severely malnourished children died from encephalitis in Odisha’s Malkangiri. It seems the only time the Indian state takes an interest in these regions is when it wants to tap its minerals. Recently, the Modi government has even sanctioned air strikes on India’s Adivasi belt, copying the Pakistani government in Baluchistan.

It isn’t only the Indian state that displays a medieval level of callousness towards its own citizens. India’s influential city dwellers – who have the power to get the state to act – are also quite unconcerned with the shocking levels of depredation in their midst. The story of sexual molestation in Bengaluru appeared at about the same time as the National Human Rights Commission issued its order about the Chhattisgarh mass rape. Yet, only one story went viral in the English-language media. The double standard could hardly be starker.

The Big Scroll

Chhattisgarh must identify and prosecute policemen who raped 16 women, reports Raksha Kumar.

Political Picks

  1. Sonia Gandhi appears to have devised an ingenious way of handing over the Congress reins to Rahul Gandhi by fully withdrawing from the political scene.
  2. Wholesale prices of vegetables have crashed across India.
  3. Pune civic polls: As the Bharatiya Janata Party aggressively poaches top leaders, the Nationalist Congress Party is keen on an alliance with the Congress, but the latter hasn’t responded yet.
  4. After two former Reserve Bank of India Governors YV Reddy and Bimal Jalan, Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen raised questions on the institution’s autonomy saying the central bank does not decide anything and all decisions are taken by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

Punditry

  1. It is one thing to insist on secularism in elections; it’s another thing for the Supreme Court to effectively allow appeals to the majority religion but not to minority religions, argues Noah Feldman in Mint.
  2. It is high time to discard the pernicious myth of India’s medieval Muslim “villains”, writes historian Audrey Truschke in the Wire.
  3. In the News Minute, Ramanathan S writes about why secessionism from the Indian Union will never leave the Tamil people’s psyche.

Giggle

Don’t Miss

“The small people are angry”: Supriya Sharma describes how an Uttar Pradesh village is getting ready for elections in the time of demonetisation.

“Of the trip, what Anil Shukla remembers most fondly is the food served to the rally-goers 20 kms short of Lucknow.

‘Buffer system tha,’ he said. There was a buffet. People lined up and picked boxes of poori, sabzi and pickle.

But what about the rally?

‘More than half the public was giving gaalis,’ the 48-year-old said.

For what? To whom?

‘Modi ji, who else. After all, he has ended the notes, not the bank managers, so what if they are the ones who are profiting from it.’”

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