Excelsior... Nation

Shah hospitalised;
Court allows home
food, calls for report

MUMBAI, June 21: A special court today directed the dean of Government-owned J J Hospital to submit a report by....more

TMC dissolves
organisational
structure of party

CHENNAI, June 21: The executive committee of the Tamil Maanila Congress (TMC) today dissolved the entire organisational structure of the party, except . ...more

Musharraf’s background
is not helpful: Gujral

NEW DELHI, June 21: Former Prime Minister I K Gujral does not expect much from next month’s visit to India by the Pakistan....more

Maternity rights
elude 120 mln women
in unorganised sector

NEW DELHI, June 21: More than a year after the Supreme Court in a landmark judgment upheld the right to maternity ....more

Stress on social agenda for development of Rajasthan

JAIPUR, June 21: Greater importance should be given to social agenda over the economic reforms for substantial growth in the desert state of Rajasthan, ...more

Siddha medicine holds promise in AIDS care — WHO consultant

CHENNAI, June 21: Siddha medicine has emerged as an effective way to control, if not cure, the HIV-AIDS virus when...more

Despite effective governance women’s representation still inadequate

PHITSANULOK (THAILAND), June 21: Campaigners for fifty-fifty participation of women in Government by 2005, today.more

NHRC asks UP to pay
Rs 50,000 to victim of
custodial torture

NEW DELHI, June 20: The National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) has....more

Shah hospitalised; Court allows home food, calls for report

MUMBAI, June 21: A special court today directed the dean of Government-owned J J Hospital to submit a report by June 25 on the condition of film financier Bharat Shah, who is booked in a case of alleged nexus with the underworld.

Shah was admitted to hospital yesterday after he complained of uneasiness. The Hospital Dean Dr V R Bhutada said ‘Shah is under observation and fully conscious’. In keeping with court orders, he was brought from Thane jail to the hospital for medical check up.

On a plea made by Shah’s counsel, the designated judge A P Bhangale also allowed him to take home food after the approval of the doctors and permitted his family physician Mahendra Thakar to visit him for consultation.

Shah moved a petition through his lawyers alleging he was not given food yesterday and was made to wait for over two hours in the hospital corridor without medical help resulting in deterioration of his health. He urged for home food and permission to meet relatives.

Special public prosecutor Rohini Salian denied Shah’s allegations. She said Shah was examined by a panel of doctors formed essentially to examine him. Tests like X-ray, ECG, MRI and echo were performed on him. He still has to undergo tests.

The prosecutor informed that Shah was given food by the hospital. He was also given tea and bread in the evening. She opposed his prayer for home food and meeting of relatives.

She also alleged that Shah’s relatives had abused policemen when he was being taken from one ward to another for a test. They had even given interviews to mediapersons in hospital premises thereby spoiling the transquility. (PTI)

TMC dissolves organisational structure of party

CHENNAI, June 21: The executive committee of the Tamil Maanila Congress (TMC) today dissolved the entire organisational structure of the party, except the post of president G K Moopanar, to revamp and restructure it.

TMC general secretary Peter Alphonse MP told reporters after the Executive, attended by senior leaders, MLAs, MPs, representatives of local bodies and special invitees, that the dissolution of the party structure was meant to revamp the party and to face the coming local body elections in Tamil Nadu with confidence.

Tmc sources said new office-bearers would be nominated by Mr Moopanar in about ten days.

To a question whether the alliance with the AIADMK would continue for the coming local body elections also, Mr Alphonse evaded a direct reply.

When asked whether the abolition of the posts of office-bearers was a prelude to the eventual merger of the TMC with the Congress (I) as speculated in the media, Mr Alphonse answered in negative and said the exercise was meant to revamp the organisation and to face the local body polls with confidence.

The executive, the first after the recent elections, which saw the secular front headed by the AIADMK bounce back to power, congratulated the AIADMK and its leader J Jayalalitha for leading the front to victory.

Mr Alphonse said the TMC wanted all secular parties at the national level to unite to face the challenge posed by the communal forces’.

Asked whether the MDMK, a ‘secular party’, which had severed its connections with the DMK, was also welcome to join the secular forces in the state, Mr Alphonse said his party’s call was only to those outside the BJP fold.

The executive congratulated the Tamil Nadu Government for waiving interest and penal interest on loans obtained by farmers from the cooperative banks. It urged the Chief Minister to extend similar benefits to those who had taken loans from the land development banks and also weavers who had borrowed from cooperative banks. (UNI)

Musharraf’s background is not helpful: Gujral

NEW DELHI, June 21: Former Prime Minister I K Gujral does not expect much from next month’s visit to India by the Pakistan President, but says the Vajpayee-Musharraf summit by itself could hold out a lot of promise if the two leaders agreed on sustained dialogue on contentious issues.

"Gen Pervez Musharraf’s background is not very helpful ... There is no need to be euphoric about the summit. If the two leaders hold out a promise to meet again, the summit would be a success," Mr Gujral told UNI in an interview.

The July 14-16 summit between Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee and Gen Musharraf will be the first meeting of leaders from the two neighbours in more than two years after bilateral relations went sour in the wake of the Kargil conflict of 1999, perceived to be the brainchild of the Pakistani military ruler.

"One should not expect the meeting to tackle contentious issues like Kashmir with a magic wand. It can only provide an opportunity to the two leaders to develop a personal chemistry and start a process of detente," Mr Gujral said.

He said Gen Musharraf’s elevation to president from the Chief executive will not add any legitimacy to the talks. "It can only serve for purposes of protocol."

"The core issue is India-Pakistan relations and not Kashmir. And nothing can proceed without the two sides taking each other into confidence that suffered a jolt in Kargil," the former Prime Minister said adding that he did not expect any significant agreements during the three-day visit of the Pakistani ruler.

Mr Gujral, who was twice External Affairs Minister before taking over as Prime Minister in 1997, cited steps taken by New Delhi and Beijing for tranquillity on the border and promotion of trade before addressing the border problems.

Mr Gujral said India’s post kargil diplomacy has been ‘’quite successful’’. ``In diplomacy, no position is permanent. We have been able to unmask the face of Pakistan and its support to terrorism for the international community to take cognisance of ... There has been no shift in the basic elements of our foreign policy,’’ he said.

The former Prime Minister views Mr Vajpayee’s invitation to Gen Musharraf for talks in the larger context of his now widely acclaimed "Gujral doctrine" whose vision for India’s neighbourhood seeks to go beyond notions of mechanical reciprocity to enlightened self-interest for a stable and peace region. "As a big neighbour we should be ready for unilateral concessions."

He said there had been movement prior to the invitation in the form of the Government’s unilateral ceasefire against the militant outfits in Jammu and Kashmir, but regretted lack of initiatives in the initial phase of the ceasefire that lasted six months. "The delay in appointment of Planning Commission Deputy Chairman K C Pant as the Centre’s interlocutor for the dialogue process with Kashmiri groups was ill-advised," he said.

"Pant should identify a broader platform and the autonomy resolution adopted by the State Assembly some time back could also be a basis for talks ... Status quo is not possible in Kashmir. There have to be some internal adjustments."

Mr Gujral also dismissed the demand of Hurriyat to be included in the dialogue process during the summit. "I do not give any credence to Hurriyat. None of their leaders has been elected to even panchayats. In talks between two sovereign nations, they have no role to play."

Mr Gujral recalled his four meetings with the then Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif on the sidelines of international summits followed by three rounds of Vajpayee-Sharif talks during 1997-99 as having achieved considerable progress in terms of Confidence-Building Measures (CBMs) before "everyhting was undone by Kargil".

The last Indo-Pak summit took place in February 1999 in Lahore during Mr Vajpayee historic bus ride to Pakistan. "There is need now to go beyond Kargil and consolidate the Lahore process," he added. (UNI)

Maternity rights elude 120 mln women in unorganised sector

NEW DELHI, June 21: More than a year after the Supreme Court in a landmark judgment upheld the right to maternity entitlements for muster roll workers of the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD), maternity leave and benefits continue to elude the approximately 120 million women working in the unorganised sector.

While regarding as a welcome step the Supreme Court’s judgment delivered on International Women’s Day on March 8 last year, women activists are apprehensive of its impact on women’s employment when such obligations are placed upon the employer.

Ms Brinda Karat of the All India Democratic Women’s Association (AIDWA) charges that the Government is withdrawing from its commitment towards providing social security benefits in the wake of the economic reforms. Of the available services, there are about 15,000 Government-funded creches (under the working and ailing mothers scheme and the national creche fund) in the country catering to 300,000 children whereas the need is to reach 60 million children under 6 years of age.

The Government is well aware of gaps in the outreach of such schemes and recognises it in its own annual reports but shies away from taking any concrete steps to bridge the gaps, claims Vandana Prasad of the Forum for Creche and Child Care Services (FORCES), a Delhi-based NGO.

The Government, though agreeing with the text of the proposed International Labour Organisation (ILO) convention No.183 and recommendations on maternity protection, has denied its ratification on the pretext of inability to implement the provisions of the proposed convention. The convention seeks to improve the maternity entitlement provisions and enlarge its coverage to the unreached needy population.

Denial of any such improvement in the maternity entitlement provisions on the pretext of limited resources is not justified and requires a reconsideration of the stand taken by the Government, demands Ms Prasad. "It is a well known fact that leave and other maternity benefits can only be accessed by women working in the organised sector, which is only seven per cent of all working women", she points out.

According to Ms Jyoti Tuladhar of ILO, the principles of maternity protection remain the same since the first convention was passed in 1919 and include paid leave, health protection, employment security and non-discrimination.

What seems to have changed through the years is how these protections have been determined and the implications they have for women in the unorganised sector, she observes.

The scope of maternity entitlement has broadened, making the convention more complex. It is not women’s biology or babies’ needs for best attainable nutrition and health care protection that is different today. What has changed is women’s economic and political position in business and industry.

"More women nowadays are spending their child-bearing years in paid employment and the need for adequate maternity protection legislation has increased", Ms Tuladhar underlines.

The new convention, maternity protection convention 2000, applies to all women "including those in atypical forms of dependent work" including the informal sector. It also contains a provision for protection of the health of the mother and child, not included in the previous convention.

The new convention extends the length of maternity leave from 12 to 14 weeks while "cash benefits shall be provided, in accordance with national laws and regulations or in any other manner consistent with national practice, to women who are absent from work on leave". The cash benefits should be provided "at a level which ensures that the woman can maintain herself and her child in proper conditions of health and with a suitable standard of living", it adds.

The importance of maternity entitlement has been well accepted in the ninth five-year plan document, but sadly it is not reflected in the actions of the Government, regret activists. According to them, the Maternity Benefits Act, 1961 and the employees’ State Insurance Act, 1948 are not only inadequate but are impossible to apply to the unorganised sector for lack of implementation mechanisms.

The proposal for a maternity and childcare code was first put forward in 1986 in "Shramshakti", the report of the national committee on women in the unorganised sector. This was the first official recognition that the needs of women and young children are inter-linked and need to be considered together since women, especially poor women, perform multiple roles as workers, home-makers and child caregivers.

It was felt that childcare services were not only important from the point of view of the health, welfare and development of the young child, but were equally an essential support service for mothers in the unorganised sector.

The report suggested that a holistic review be undertaken of existing laws, schemes and programmes and that these be integrated with necessary changes and amendments into a single comprehensive maternity and childcare code.

It has also been well recognised through long years of experience and research, that apart from involving the rights of the very young child and the working woman, the issue of child care also involves older siblings directly. In particular, the older girl child directly participates in the parenting role at the cost of her own childhood and rights, Ms Prasad points out.

Creches on worksites are an important way in which mothers can breast-feed and parents can continue to contribute to the care of their young children while earning their livelihood. However, few establishments make provisions for creches and women and young children are put to great difficulty, regrets the forces activist. One of the hurdles in enumerating women as workers is the all-pervasive Patriarchal attitude that assumes that women do not work at all or that they do not work outside the home. "One of the main problems in quantifying women’s participation in the economy, and therefore, planning for and supporting it, has been the inadequacy of the census process itself", says Ms Prasad.

Forces has drawn up a list of recommendations which it will press for incorporation in policy frameworks and programmes. These include enactment of a central act for manual workers with various sectors of labour in its schedule or separate central laws for different unorganised sectors like agricultural workers, home-based workers, handloom workers, vendors and hawkers and domestic and construction workers.

The NGO also recommends amendments in the construction workers act to include workers in quarries, brick kilns and lime kilns and the provision of creches in these workplaces. Forces has also called for amendments to the Shops and Establishments Act and Contract Labour Act to include entitlements to childcare services.

Ms Prasad observes that though some state statutes have now provided 15 days paternity leave, this concept hardly exists in reality. Only if society provides the circumstances and systems by which a family can stay out of the market will the function of caring for children be given the recognition due to it, she says. (UNI)

Stress on social agenda for development of Rajasthan

JAIPUR, June 21: Greater importance should be given to social agenda over the economic reforms for substantial growth in the desert state of Rajasthan, an official document has said.

If we wish to usher in a non-exploitative, participatory, and forward looking social order, our social agenda should be more important than economic agenda, the ‘Vision document’, prepared by noted economist V S Vyas to recommend strategies for development of the state in the new millennium, says.

Noting that the desert state was characterized by its feudal culture and hierarchical society that discriminated against certain sections, specially women, the document described as ‘unfortunate’ the disappearance of the spirit of social reform in recent years.

The typical social order in Rajasthan had embraced a degree of fatalism militating against a sense of enquiry and inhibiting protest against injustice, vyas, former advisor to the World Bank, says in the document.

Suggesting the Government to chalk out development strategies that redresses deterioration of quality of land and water resources, the document specifies that they should be in harmony with the physical environment of the state.

‘We have to design strategies to overcome, or adapt to,the handicaps imposed ny the nature and the history’, it added.

The ‘vision document’ envisaged stabilisation of the state’s population and providing food security to every household by year 2020.

Identifying major areas of economic reforms the document asked the state to desist from micro managing economic activities. Instead, it said, the state should provide an environment in which private initiative flourished in a social lly acceptable manner. Provision of physical and social infrastructure will play an important role in achieving this objective, it added.

It stressed the need for making human resource development as the corner stone of the strategy to change the society, the economy and the polity by changing mindeset and raising general level of education particularly for women.

Warning against overdependence on market institutions for growth, it said both the state and the civil society had a regulatory and supportive role in correcting market failures. Also there are areas where markets cannot function and the Government and the civil society institutions will have to step in. (PTI)

Siddha medicine holds promise in AIDS care — WHO consultant

CHENNAI, June 21: Siddha medicine has emerged as an effective way to control, if not cure, the HIV-AIDS virus when prescribed with allopathy drugs, World Health Organisation (WHO) national consultant for AIDS, C N Deivanayagam says.

Denying claims of a miracle cure for the disease by Siddha and ayurvedic practitioners, he told UNI that pilot tests using a combination of Siddha and allopathy drugs on HIV patients at the tb sanatorium in Tambaram in the early 90’s showed promising and consistent results in fighting the virus. But, a cure still eludes.

Three cost-effective Siddha preparations — "Rasa Gandi Melagu" (processed mercury and sulphur), "Amukkara Churanam" (withanea somniferum) and "Amla Legiyam" — administered along with opportunistic infection controlling drugs to patients in the hospital, Asia’s largest AIDS care centre, showed considerable reduction in the viral load and increase in "CD4" and "CD8" count. Besides, they showed signs of clinical improvement like control of symptoms, fever, diarrohea and gaining weight.

However, 35 per cent of the patients died due to complicated brain infections caused by tuberculosis crypto coccus and neo-formans and complicated pneumonia. "I have asked siddha practitioners to suggest more potent drugs that can overcome brain infections and improve body weight of patients," he added.

The experiment was the initiative of the Tamil Nadu Government, which wanted to establish the efficacy of siddha medicines in treatment of HIV cases, following claims from various individual siddha "doctors" to have cured the disease. Initial experiments using herbal preparations like "Thadi Sadhi Vadakam" proved a failure, he pointed out.

While there was good response to his paper from among a section of the delegates, a majority of them wanted more tests to be carried out over a period of time, he said.

Stating that he plans to establish a hospital especially to care for aids patients under the auspices of the health India foundation, an NGO headed by him, Dr Deivanayagam said the centre would be open for everyone afflicted with the disease.

The combination drug, which costs only around Rs 60 per day as against Rs 300 per day for the imported anti-retroviral drugs, could extend the life of a patient, but no cure was possible as claimed by a few traditional practitioners, he said and added that the claim of a practitioner in Ernakulam in Kerala to have cured AIDS was false.

"That particular practitioner gives his patients some ayurvedic powder which gives immediate, but only temporary relief," Dr Deivanayagam says. (UNI)

Despite effective governance women’s representation still inadequate

PHITSANULOK (THAILAND), June 21: Campaigners for fifty-fifty participation of women in Government by 2005, today warned if the six percent annual rate of increase in women’s representation worldwide did not improve, it would take 75 years for women to attain equality in governance.

The first ever summit of women mayors and councillors here sought to allay apprehensions that women representatives in Government were ineffective in comparison to men and laced their claim with facts and figures.

The fifty-fifty concept refers to gender balance in political representation- it is about getting a critical minority of 30 or 40 per cent women in positions of power and decision making at all levels - in executive departments or cabinet ministries, in juduicial posts, in legislatures and international, regional and local bodies towards attaining de-facto gender equality and justice.

A study paper based on India’s experience in increasing women’s presence in rural local councils or panchayats sparked off a debate at the summit.

Participants discussed the issue threadbare and noted that despite opposition from powerful political bodies dominated by men, participation of women at Government level was increasing and the "goal to have ’50-50 by 2005: Women in Government getting the balance right’, could be accomplished."

Some reticent delegates admitted in confidence that if the "queen bee syndrome, which has bugged some powerful women politicians, is eschewed, the task would be more facile and any objective could be accomplished".

The campaign specifically demands that Governments work for a provisional minimum target of thirty per cent representation for women in cabinet ministries and legislatures as well as local bodies by 2003, and equal representation by 2005.

According to a paper presented by Sheila Espine Villaluz of the Centre for Legislative Development (CLD), Philippines women are making their way into politics, yet the increase is very minimal.

In legislative bodies, women accounted for ten per cent of members in 1995. In 1999, the figure rose to 12.8 per cent of national Parliaments. Today, it is 13.7 per cent of Parliaments worldwide.

According to data collected by the Inter-Parliamentary Union, this represents a mere average increase of 0.6 per cent annually. Since the late 1950s, there have only been 17 women presidents and 32 women Prime Ministers.

The study paper said today women constitute 14 per cent of heads of states, a steady increase from 6.8 per cent in 1996 and 3.4 per cent in 1987.

The statistics at the local level largely reflect those at the national level, with both being far short of reaching the critical mass of 30 to 40 per cent .

The data collected from the international union of local authorities showed that only Sweden, Denmark and Finland have attained a critical minority of thirty to forty per cent in local Governments.

The paper noted that quota system proved to be an effective and efficient tool. It said, in India, where thirty three per cent of posts in villages and district councils or panchayats were reserved for women, the quota system had steadily improved rural life.

Panchayats headed by women have prioritised issues of health, education and access to basic services and are effective in raising revenues for community projects.

Ms Nirmala Buch of Centre for Women’s Development Studies (CWDS), who read the paper on India’s experience, said the study had exploded the myth that women who entered panchayats were only proxy or namesake members and did not participate in panchayats.

The study also demolished the general impression about women’s passivity and disinterest in politics. The general impression was that there were not enough women to contest elections and only the well to do, upper class women would benefit through reservation. (UNI)