25 | May | 2012 | kracktivist

Immediate Release–Externment orders should be given to the District administration not to Madhuri bhen

May 25, Badwani, Madhya pradesh

We as tribals and as members of Jagrut Adivasi Dalit Sangathan strongly condemn the externment(zilla badar) notice given to Madhuri bai, a senior activist of our Sangathan.

The extermnent orders should be given not to Madhuri Bai, but to the corrupt administration that is functioning under the leadership of the Collector, SP, CEO of the Zillapanchayat, which is sucking the blood of us adivasis and usurping our rights by siphoning of crores of rupees that have been alloted for our development.

The notice issued points out many criminal cases against Madhuri Bai. But the fact remains that she has been exonerated and acquitted by the court in all the mentioned cases. This notice also mentions 5 cases, which the police has been investigating for the past 2 to 6 years. All these cases are baseless and false and are an obvious and clear attempt to crush the voices that we have been raising against the corrupt practices and the dereliction of duty on part of the district administration in order to get our health rights, forest rights and just labour wages.

It is written in Madhuri bai’s extermnent notice that we have been “obstructing” the development work of the administration. But far from obstructing, our struggle has always been to make government schemes work properly and weed out corruption and dereliction of duty. Our entire movement has been for ensuring that the benefits of these schemes reach the adivasis who are the rightful beneficiaries. The Sangathan has been working towards making people aware of their rights and ensuring that there is no corruption in the implementation of schemes meant for us.

The notice also states that there is an atmosphere of fear among the government functionaries because of the Sangathan and Madhuri Bai. We would like to ask: our demand has always been that the law and government schemes be properly implemented – why then are they afraid of us? In fact they are scared because neither do they want to follow the law and properly implement schemes, nor do they want an aware and alert public who can keep a vigilant eye on their work and demand answers for corrupt practices. If they are scared of and unable to answer valid questions of the people they serve, then they should give in their resignation

What kind of democratic government is this, which is scared to face the people.? To organize and agitate for our rights is a right given to us by the Constitution, it cannot be taken away by the collector.

We know that there are many political leaders who are involved in this conspiracy to repress our sanghatan. They have publicly voiced the demand of “ Zillabadar” of Madhuri bai several times in the past. Now they should come together with us and demand that this Zillabadr notice is revoked or else they will have to pay a heavy price in the coming elections.

We are never given our wages on time, neither are we given our due ration or forest rights certificates. There is regular violation of our gram shaba resolutions. Illegal liquor and gambling has been going openly and unchecked. But when we campaign on these basic issues and demand that the law should be followed it is us who are labeled as criminals. What have we adivasis seen in the past 60 years: only loot, violence, hunger and fear. When we have got together to fight for our legal rights against the misrule and corruption , there has been a constant effort of the corrupt vested interests to crush us by slapping false cases on us. In this situation we have to ask- Is our country really independent and what is this freedom that we talk about?

This attack is not on Madhuri Bai but on the whole adivasi and laboring community. The BJP and the Congress elected representatives have never supported the peoples demands or raised the problems of the people. Instead they have always gone against those who have demanded a solution to the problems of the people. Madhuri bai has stood by us and given us the support that should have been given to us by our elected representatives.

If Madhuri bai is an antisocial criminal then the many thousands of adivisis of our sanghatan and their families are also anti social criminals. Thousands of us along our families should also be given “ Zillabadar” notices. She is not alone in this struggle.

This kind of mis treatment of people who are fighting for up holding the constitution and law of the country , makes it clear that our country is not free and we are now fighting for true independence. Our movement is a part of the second struggle of independence.

In the past adivasi freedom fighters like Khaja Nayak, Bheema Nayak and Nimjya Nayak were hanged by the British. In the same way all of us adivasis who are fighting for our freedom from corruption and against the marginalization of our rights, should also be hanged. Then you can peacefully loot the country and sell it to thecompanies.

Har singh Jamre Bilatibai Sulya Layabai Jamre Valsingh Sastia

PLEASE SIGN ONLIEN PETITION HERE AND SHARE WIDELY

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10-year-old’s RTI posers stump PMO, Government

NEW DELHI, May 25, 2012

Gaurav Vivek Bhatnagar, The Hindu

Girl questions father of nation status for Gandhi

When some simple questions came to the mind of Aishwarya Parashar, a
Class-VI student of the City Montessori School, Lucknow, she did not
let them languish unasked. She went seeking out answers through the
Right to Information (RTI) Act. Aishwarya’s inquisitiveness and
willingness to pursue the source of information has yielded, till
date, the establishment of a public library on the site of a garbage
dump and the nation being better enlightened about the Father of the
Nation, Mahatma Gandhi.

All of just 10 years, Aishwarya is a confident little girl, who
herself answers a mobile phone and urges those wanting some written
information from her to send her an SMS giving their e-mail ID and
even forwards e-mail and communicates about her work on her own.

“I have so far filed three RTIs with the Prime Minister’s Office,”
she says, adding that “the first one was [a query] about who gave the
order for printing Mahatma Gandhi’s image on currency notes. I was
told in a reply that it was in 1993 following a meeting of the Reserve
Bank of India.”

But it was her subsequent RTI asking the PMO to tell her who conferred
the title of Father of the Nation on Mahatma Gandhi, which confounded
the government. From the PMO, the query went to the Ministry of Home
Affairs and to the National Archives of India, before Aishwarya was
told that “there are no specific documents on the information sought”
by her.

‘Surprising’
“That was really surprising because I never thought it was such a
difficult question since even our history books taught us that Mahatma
Gandhi was the Father of the Nation.”

The first reference to Mahatma Gandhi as Father of the Nation goes
back nearly 70 years when Subhas Chandra Bose referred to Gandhi thus
in a radio address from Singapore in 1944.

Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru too had, in his address to the nation
upon Mahatma Gandhi’s death, referred to him as Father of the Nation:
“Friends and comrades, the light has gone out of our lives, and there
is darkness everywhere, and I do not quite know what to tell you or
how to say it. Our beloved leader, Bapu as we called him, the Father
of the Nation, is no more.”

After getting an unsatisfactory answer to her query on this issue in
March this year, Aishwarya on April 24 asked the PMO who had declared
Mahatma Gandhi’s birth anniversary on October 2 as also Republic Day
and Independent Day national holidays. To her surprise, she got a
reply dated May 17 that such orders were never issued.

Favourite query
The question most dear to Aishwarya’s heart was posed by her in 2009.
“That was the time when Lucknow was in the grip of swine flu. There
was a big garbage dump near my school, but I only got to see it one
day when my mother came to pick me up as my cycle-rickshaw had not
come. For the parents there was a separate entrance, and on the way
back home I spotted this dump.”

With the help of her mother, Urvashi Sharma, who is a social worker
and RTI activist, Aishwarya penned an application in her own
handwriting. “I had marked that query on the garbage dump to the Chief
Minister and thereafter the Uttar Pradesh government got the dump
removed, and our school constructed a public library on the site.”

Her father, Sanjay Sharma, is a lecturer.
Ambition

Aishwarya wants to become a doctor. Asked why, she quips: “Whenever I
go to a hospital, I see that the poor patients have to first shell out
money in order to get treated. I will, on becoming a doctor, go to the
slums at least once every week and provide free treatment to such poor
people.”