Justice For Assaulted Tripura Doctor After 15 Years

Agartala, Sep 2 : After waiting for 15 years, a doctor from Tripura, who was picked up by two police officers and tortured in police custody has finally got justice. The Tripura high court on Thursday held the two police officers guilty of human rights violation and slapped a fine of Rs 50,000 on each of them.

The case was pending for judgment with the Agartala bench of the Guwahati high court ever since Sanjit Reang filed his writ petition in 1998, alleging that the then deputy superintendent of police, Arindam Nath, who is at present the SP (traffic), and the officer in charge of West Agartala police station, Rupak Chakraborty, who has retired now, beat him up in police custody without any valid reason.

A division bench comprising Chief Justice Deepak Gupta and justice Subhashis Talapatra observed that the incident was a gross violation of human rights because Reang was arrested and tortured in police custody without proper evidence.

Reang, who was posted in a remote location at that time, had come to his home in the Bijoy Kumar Chowmuhani area the city when one night a police team led by Nath and Chakraborty stormed the house and picked him up.

"Branding me as a collaborator of a banned militant outfit, they took me into custody and beat me up severely, which resulted in irreparable damage to my body. However, ultimately, they could not prove any of the allegations levelled against me," Reang said.

Reang's counsel, Chandrasekha Sinha said, "This was a clear case of violation of human rights by the policemen. The verdict has established the high-handedness of police in the name of raids and anti-insurgency operations in Tripura."

Government advocate Abhijit Ghosh said, "The incident occurred during such a period when militancy was at its peak and there was panic and tension among the civilians. We argued that it was difficult for police to immediately establish Reang's association with the militants." He added that the state government will take the decision as per the high court's direction and if the accused officers so desire, they may move the Supreme Court.

Police said the raid had been conducted on specific information of militant movement in the house. Later, it turned out that before the policemen could reach, the militants had fled.

Here’s Why India is Never Going To Be Safe For Women

By Sidin Vadukut

Protests can't succeed unless India's streets are well-policed and its courts are quick and efficient. Reuters/Danish Siddiqui

 

A few days ago, after news of the sexual assault case in Mumbai broke out, someone on Twitter said something that got me thinking. A female resident of Mumbai, presumably, lashed out after seeing the umpteenth tweet asking women in Mumbai to “take care” and “be safe.”

Enough of this patronizing nonsense, she said. Instead of asking women to “take care” it was time that men actually did something to make the city safer for women.

In the days since that attack, such outbursts from men and women alike have become common. And they have been part of a much broader collection of discussion and debates about women’s safety. There are several concurrent threads to these debates: How can we teach our men to respect women better? Is violence against women an expression of social faults, if so which ones? How can these faults be alleviated? How does the portrayal of women, women’s issues and violence against women in mass media play a role in making things better or worse? Should minors involved in sex crimes be treated as adults? What can we do to make our neighborhoods safer? More recently there has been substantial debate on the trivializing of the idea of rape in the form of jokes and in other contexts not directly related to sex crimes.

Essentially, I suppose we are all trying to figure out how India can be made safer and more empathetic for all women. And these lines of questioning are legitimate. They might eventually help us make our cities, towns, and homes safer. But not immediately, not right now.

Right now, make no mistake about it, we need something that forms the foundation of a safe society: a functioning law-and-order system. No amount of soul searching, cultural self-flagellation, sex education, local activism, and behavioral conditioning will succeed unless our streets are well-policed and our courts function with speed and efficiency.

And this is exactly why I am afraid India will remain an unsafe country for women for the foreseeable future. Now I know this is not the message that many campaigners for women’s safety want to hear. Many of them are optimistic that some kind of governmental or non-governmental campaigning will make India safer. But as long these campaigns are divorced from a substantial overhaul of law and order mechanisms, they will not work.

Let us just take the case of of the city of Mumbai, arguably India’s most commercially important metropolis. Mumbai has a sanctioned police strength of approximately 45,000 officers. Around 3,000 of these posts are currently vacant. The effective number police on the streets are even lower. The New Indian Express recently said that Mumbai had a serving police force of 33,000 officers.

Earlier this month, in response to a Right To Information request, Mumbai police revealed that in the first two months of this year 27,740 police personnel had been deployed on VIP security duty, generally meaning they guard politicians. It is unclear if these deployments were short or long term. But there is no question that this substantially reduces the number of police officers the city actually needs on its streets.

An optimistic estimate suggests that, on an ongoing basis, Mumbai police has around 20,000 police taking care of its population of around 20 million residents. Therefore, Mumbai enjoys an effective police coverage of approximately 100 police officers per 100,000. (This number can vary somewhat depending on how you approximate police and population. But by my reckoning, it gets no better than around 165 per 100,000.) The United Nations recommends coverage where a population of 100,000 are served by 220 to 250 police officers.

What about courts? It is common knowledge that Indian courts have millions of cases pending at any given point in time. Yet another Right To Information request, filed by the same applicant in June, found 49,170 cases of crimes against women pending in courts across the state of Maharashtra (Mumbai is its capital). This number has increased by 40% between 2008 and 2012. Of the 14,414 rape cases tried in Maharashtra last year, 13,388 remain pending.

To be sure, better police and faster courts will not solve these problems alone, and columnist Praveen Swami explains this, but I can think of no conceivable solution that does not include better police and faster courts as key elements.

The need for immediate intervention is staring us in the face. So why don’t the people who run Mumbai, Maharashtra or India see this? What prevents them from overhauling the police force and legal system? Why does law minister after law minister lament about the masses of pending cases in Indian courts … and then actually do nothing radical about it?

This situation is doubly ludicrous when you consider that the government is also struggling to create sufficient jobs each year to occupy its exploding youth demographic. The nation is simultaneously drowning in both unemployed youth and undelivered public services.

Is it because these reforms are overly complex?

Cleaning up the courts is admittedly complex. But surely hiring a few thousand policemen can’t be as complex as rolling out multi-billion dollar job guarantees, food security or biometric identity schemes? Those are all initiatives the government has somehow managed to undertake.

Is it too expensive?

One estimate puts the annual budget of Mumbai’s police force at about 6 billion rupees (or $91 million). Almost all of this, around 85%, goes toward paying salaries. Can Mumbai, the beating heart of India’s economy afford to, say, double this? Given that the budget of the city of Mumbai is 280 billion rupees ($4 billion), and the city has a GDP which is at least 10 times as much, an escalation wouldn’t break the bank.

Then why not?

Your guess is as good as mine. But I think it is because overhauling Mumbai’s police or drawing up a radical plan to create new courts and hire new judges is exactly the kind of granular reform that, from a political perspective, Indian governments find difficult to execute. And unless these reforms deliver an immediate return (and one that can be politically leveraged), most stakeholders aren’t going to be interested in at all. In a given term in office there are only so many fights you can fight. So why pick the tough ones?

This is perhaps why the life cycles of legislation such as the Food Security Bill are relatively short, while those of a politically unsexy but economically important nature such as a new Companies Bill take decades.

There is a peculiar pattern that often pops up when “India’s problems” are discussed on social networks or in the comments section of news websites. Somehow while all of India’s problems are all universal—rapes happen in the US also, corruption happens in China also, malnutrition happens in Indonesia also—all the solutions to India’s problems become unique and complex. Police reform is complex, education is complex, food is complex, taxation is complex and on and on.

Not always. Some of India’s problem are simple things with simple solutions that unfortunately have no political capital.

I am afraid efficient courts and more and better police are among these problems. And I don’t think we should expect major reforms any time soon. Of course I hope I am proven completely wrong and Mumbai, and Delhi, and every other local administration immediately implements steps to improve law and order. Volunteer action, social awareness campaigns and neighborhood watch programs can all make marginal improvements. They will not, however, make up for a law and order system that works.

Until that happens—and I have no intention of being patronizing or sexist here—my fellow citizens will have to take care and be safe.
**Sidin Vadukut is a London-based writer. He is the author of three novels and is currently working on a non-fiction book on Indian patriotism.

The Wireless Network With A Mile-Wide Range That The “internet of things” Could Be Built On

By Christopher Mims

Now you can drive your remote-controlled car over the horizon. Flutter

 

Robotics engineer Taylor Alexander needed to lift a nuclear cooling tower off its foundation using 19 high-strength steel cables, and the Android app that was supposed to accomplish it, for which he’d just paid a developer $20,000, was essentially worthless. Undaunted and on deadline—the tower needed a new foundation, and delays meant millions of dollars in losses—he re-wrote the app himself. That’s when he discovered just how hard it is to connect to sensors via the standard long-distance industrial wireless protocol, known as Zigbee.

It took him months of hacking just to create a system that could send him a single number—which represented the strain on each of the cables—from the sensors he was using. Surely, he thought, there must be a better way. And that’s when he realized that the solution to his problem would also unlock the potential of what’s known as the “internet of things” (the idea that every object we own, no matter how mundane, is connected to the internet and can be monitored and manipulated via the internet, whether it’s a toaster, a lightbulb or your car).

The result is an in-the-works project called Flutter. It’s what Taylor calls a “second network”—an alternative to Wi-Fi that can cover 100 times as great an area, with a range of 3,200 feet, using relatively little power, and is either the future of the way that all our connected devices will talk to each other or a reasonable prototype for it.

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Flutter’s range is 3,200 feet in open air, but multiple Flutters can also cover even larger areas in a “mesh” network.Flutter

“We have Wi-Fi in our homes, but it’s not a good network for our things,” says Taylor. Wi-Fi was designed for applications that require fast connections, like streaming video, but it’s vulnerable to interference and has a limited range—often, not enough even to cover an entire house.

For applications with a very limited range—for example anything on your body that you might want to connect with your smartphone—Bluetooth, the wireless protocol used by keyboards and smart watches, is good enough. For industrial applications, the Zigbee standard has been in use for at least a decade. But there are two problems with Zigbee: the first is that, as Alexander discovered, it’s difficult to use. The second is that the Zigbee devices are not open source, which makes them difficult to integrate with the sort of projects that hardware startups might want to create.

Flutter’s nearest competitors, Spark Core and Electric Imp, both use Wi-Fi, which limits their usability to home-bound projects like adding your eggs to the internet of things and klaxons that tell you when your favorite Canadian hockey team has scored a goal. Flutter’s other differentiator is cost; a Flutter radio costs just $20, which still allows Taylor a healthy margin above the $6 in parts that comprise the Flutter.

Making Flutter cheap means that hobbyists can connect that many more devices—say, all the lights in a room, or temperature and moisture sensors in a greenhouse. No one is quite sure what the internet of things will lead to because the enabling technologies, including cheap wireless radios like Flutter, have yet to become widespread. The present day internet of things is a bit like where personal computers were around the time Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs were showing off their Apple I at the Palo Alto home-brew computer club: It’s mostly hobbyists, with a few big corporations sniffing around the periphery.

Flutter radios connect to tiny Arduino computers, which is the de facto control and processing system for many startup and open source hardware projects.Flutter

“I think the internet of things is not going to start with products, but projects,” says Taylor. His goal is to use the current crowd-funding effort for Flutter to pay for the coding of the software protocol that will run Flutter, since the microchips it uses are already available from manufacturers. The resulting software will allow Flutter to create a “mesh network,” which would allow individual Flutter radios to re-transmit data from any other Flutter radio that’s in range, potentially giving hobbyists or startups the ability to cover whole cities with networks of Flutter radios and their attached sensors.

Taylor’s ultimate goal is to create a system that answers the fundamental needs of all objects in the internet of things, including good range, low power consumption, and just enough speed to get the job done—up to 600 kilobits a second, or about 1/20th the speed of a typical home Wi-Fi connection. One reason for that slow speed is that lower-bandwidth signals, transmitted in the 915 Mhz range in which Flutter operates, travel further. These speeds are more than sufficient when the goal is transmitting sensor readings, which are typically very short strings of data.

Relief for Students From Northeast who were denied admissions in Maharashtra

Mumbai, Sep 2 : Several students from the northeast who sought admissions to technical institutions in Maharashtra post the deadline (August 15) set by the Supreme Court have got some relief.

Intervention by the ministry of human resources development (MHRD) has ensured provisional admissions for the students in the institutions where they were originally allotted seat. The All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) too has filed a review petition in the SC seeking an extension in the deadline for this year to facilitate admissions for affected students.

On July 1, the MHRD sent a letter to state governments stating that seats be reserved in technical institutes for northeast students. Around 1,500 students from the northeast were allotted seats in technical institutions in several states. The letter stated that the students could take admissions till August 30. However, a SC order set a deadline of August 15 for admissions to all technical institutes in the country. While some candidates sought admissions before the August 15 deadline, some could not, for several reasons. In Maharashtra, around 40 candidates were denied admissions as they arrived post August 15. - Yogita Rao

The AICTE has now filed a review petition seeking an extension in the admission deadline. "We have also sent letters to the technical board in all states asking them to give provisional admissions to the affected candidates up to September 15. The review petition was filed in the court three days ago and we are expecting the matter to be resolved," said AICTE chairman SS Mantha. A student from Sikkim claimed that their state government, AICTE and MHRD officials have ensured that all students who returned to their respective states, after not getting a seat, were called back.

Home Ministry Report Reveals Infiltration Woes

Shillong, Sep 2 : Meghalaya has been in a quandary over infiltration for the past many decades and the problem continues to persist till date with no concrete solution in sight.

Going by media handouts from the BSF, infiltrators have been detected almost every second day from the frontier areas of Meghalaya and the faces of infiltration are predominantly found in the coal mining areas of the state.

Meghalaya, a state blessed with enormous coal and limestone deposits in various pockets from Jaintia Hills to West Khasi Hills and to the Garo hills region, has arguably been at the receiving end of infiltration as “infiltrators” manage to squeeze themselves in and get refuge in the mining areas.

According to the annual report of the Union ministry of home affairs for the year 2012-13, the Indian side of the Indo-Bangladesh border passes through West Bengal (2,216.7km), Assam (263km), Meghalaya (443km), Tripura (856km) and Mizoram (318km).

The entire stretch, comprising plains, riverine belts, hills and jungles, is heavily populated and is cultivated right up to the border.

“The Indo-Bangladesh border is marked by a high degree of porosity and checking illegal cross-border activities has been a major challenge. The main problem is of illegal migration from Bangladesh into India,” the report added.

In order to prevent illegal immigration and other anti-national activities from across the border, the Centre had sanctioned the construction of border roads and fencing in two phases.

The total length of Indo-Bangladesh border sanctioned to be fenced is 3,359.59km of which 2,762.11km of fencing has been completed (up to December 31, 2012), the report stated.

The report, however, said there had been some problems in fencing certain stretches on the border because of riverine/low-lying areas, population residing within 150 yards of the border, pending land acquisition cases and protests by border people, which led to delay in completion of the project.

In addition to the fencing, 3,585.53km of border patrol roads were constructed out of a sanctioned length of 4,407.11 km.

In Meghalaya, the 198.06km first phase of border fencing has been completed.

Of the 264.17km second phase, 129.07km has been completed.

Of the border roads, 211.29km has been constructed in the first phase while only 152.24km has been completed out of the 320km second phase.

At the internal security meeting held in New Delhi in June this year, Meghalaya chief minister Mukul Sangma was candid when he touched upon the issue of infiltration.

He told the gathering that Meghalaya had a 443km border with Bangladesh and 695km border with Assam but had only 265 sanctioned posts of police officers and men under the prevention of infiltration scheme.

“There are about 125 BSF border outposts whose main responsibility is to guard the border and check illegal infiltration from across the international border. Considering the length of the international border, the existing number of posts under the PIF scheme is highly inadequate to deal effectively with the illegal influx of foreign nationals,” he had said.

He said Meghalaya had also been facing the problem of “influx of outsiders with doubtful citizenship” from the neighbouring states of Assam, Tripura and West Bengal “claiming to be genuine residents” of these states.

Since illegal influx of foreign nationals poses a threat to the demographic structure of the state, the chief minister had informed that an anti-infiltration directorate had been set up with 117 posts sanctioned in the first phase.

Another 206 posts would be sanctioned in the second phase in due course, he said.

Recently, Sangma had stressed the importance of the National Population Register (NPR) biometric enrolment, which is presently suspended in Meghalaya, to enable the state to detect and segregate non-citizens from genuine Indian citizens.

The chief minister had informed the Assembly last year that over 12,000 infiltrators had been detected between 2008 and July 2012 (See chart).

However, the popular demand, as spearheaded by more than a dozen pressure groups in the state, is the implementation of the inner-line permit (ILP) system to check influx and illegal immigration.

The ILP regulates visit of Indians to states where ILP regime is prevalent under the Bengal Eastern Frontier Regulation, 1873.

In terms of Section 2 of Regulation, the system is prevalent in the three northeastern states of Arunachal Pradesh, Mizoram and Nagaland. Citizens of other states require a permit to visit these three states.

The main aim of the ILP is to prevent settling of other Indian nationals in states where ILP regime is prevalent to protect the indigenous/tribal population.

RSS Chief Calls For Introspection on Northeast Policy

New Delhi, Sep 2 : Calling for introspection on the "neglect" of Northeast region, Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) chief Mohan Bhagwat on Sunday said the nation knows that the region exists, but fails to realise that it's a part of the country.

"The problem exists within us. We know that Northeast exists, but we fail to realise that it's a part of Indian territory. The Northeasterns have not forgotten that they belong to India and are its integral part. It's upon us to realise that the land and the people belong to us," Bhagwat said.

He was speaking at an award function here of an RSS affiliated NGO, working in Northeast.

He said there should be change in the attitude towards the people of Northeast India. He also stressed that the behaviour towards Northeastern students studying in different parts of the country should be more comforting and cordial.=

"The Northeast students leave their land on the assumption that at least the country and the countrymen are known to them. To help them adjust in a better way and make them feel at home, they should be treated in a way that comforts them," Bhagwat said.

Taking the onus on the development in the Northeast he said, "The condition of the rest of India is better than the Northeast. And it's our duty to work for the development of the Northeast. The Northeast has been neglected, and it's futile to find out why Northeast was neglected, the onus is on us to find a solution and work on it."

Later, when asked about the arrest of self-styled godman Asaram Bapu, Bhagwat refused to comment.

IIBM to Start One Year Post graduate diploma course in banking

Guwahati, Sep 1 : What is expected to bring large pool of students from Northeast to the banking industry, the Indian Institute of Bank Management (IIBM) will soon roll out a one year post graduate diploma course in Banking and finance to equip the students of the region for making inroads in the banking industry.

According to IIBM in next few years banking industry will have a whooping manpower requirement of 10 lakh.

This is due to the aggressive expansion plan of the banks and large number of employees due to retire.

RBI has set a target of opening open at least 200 branches in this fiscal year in Northeast India. Following which several banks are in massive expansion mode the region.

Malay Mukerjee, Executive director of Central Bank of India (CBI) who was in Guwahati recently told ET, "Managerial staff in Northeast generally comes from outside the region. They stay here for two or three and get posted elsewhere. This hampers the continuity."

So it is decided to train the people here. He said banks are on expansion spree in the region. "The Central bank is planning to add another 30 branches by end of this fiscal year. Presently we have 170 branches spread across the seven states of the region. By 2014, we will also have 200 onsite ATMs."

B. B. Sangma, Director, IIBM Guwahati added, "We are working on mechanism where pass out from this course could be directly recruited in the banks. The intake of students in the course would be around 40."

Sangma said, "We are also in talks so that students get loan facility form the bank for studying the course. The course will include two month internship in a bank. Presently the number of Northeasters in managerial level staff of the bank is very less."

Canara Bank is planning to add another 33 branches by end of this fiscal year. Executive director of the bank, P.S Rawat who was in Guwahati recently said, "From 67 branches we want to have 100. We are looking to participate in government sponsored programmes in a big way in Northeast India and aggressively looking for bankable schemes in big industry, MSME sectors. The bank is focused on expansion in the Northeast India."

United bank of Bank of India is planning to set up at least 500 outlets by November this year. This will include 200 ultra small branches, 200 ATMS and 100 branches. Together with its Regional rural banks, UBI's business mix in Northeast India is around Rs 15000 Crore. The bank is targeting business mix of Rs 20, 000 Crore by the end of this fiscal year.

Similarly Central Bank's business mix till July this year stands at Rs 6500 Crore. The year on year (y-o-y) for the same period in comparison to last fiscal year is 35 percent. The bank has added 21 branches in last five month.

Mizoram Poll Candidate Can Spend Rs.8 Lakh

Aizawl, Sep 1 : The Election Commission of India (ECI) has informed all political parties that their candidates for the upcoming Mizoram assembly elections can spend a maximum of Rs.8 lakh each to meet poll-related expenditure.

"The ECI would appoint expenditure observers besides general and security observers to scrutinise the expenses of all candidates and political parties during the elections," an official of the Mizoram election department told reporters here Saturday.

He said the ECI has issued special guidelines to all poll-related officials, including sub-divisional and district magistrates, to record the expenditure of the candidates and political parties.

Elections to the 40-seat Mizoram assembly is expected to be held at the end of this year.

The churches of different Christian communities always supervise the elections in Mizoram on their own to prevent malpractices during elections.

Madhya Pradesh, Delhi, Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh will also go to polls in November or December along with Mizoram.

During the last assembly elections in December 2008, the Congress won 32 seats, Mizo National Front (MNF) three and Maraland Democratic Front one.

The United Democratic Alliance's constituents - Mizoram People's Conference and Zoram Nationalist Party - got two seats each.

The MNF, which ruled the state for 10 years until 2008, is the principal opposition party.