A shocking suicide in Bengaluru: time to introspect

 Newskarntaka Link

A shocking suicide in Bengaluru: time to introspect

Bengaluru: Salarpuria Greenage apartments on Hosur Road in Bommana halli, in Bengaluru, is a peaceful, upmarket residential complex that houses senior professionals and several prominent businessmen. On Monday however,  this aura of peace was shattered, when Monali Mahala, a 15-year-old girl, plunged to her death from the French windows of her 10th floor home.

Monali was a 10th standard student of National Public school in HSR Layout, a coed school, with a reputation for focus on academics. The family are natives of Orissa, and Monali was her parents' only child. Her mother is a manager with a nationalized bank. 

Reports say that though the incident took place around 3pm, the body was reportedly untouched for over 30 minutes as the complex’s security refused to allow anyone near the girl. They first informed the police, and then called an ambulance.  The girl was first rushed to Narayana Hrudayalaya, where her father, Dr Bijoy Kumar Mahala, is a reputed cardiologist. But she was already dead on arrival and all they could do was shift her to St. John’s hospital for the mandatory post mortem.

Dr Bijoy Mahala was accompanied to the mortuary by relatives and a few authorities from Salarpuria Greenage apartments, but his wife reportedly stayed at home. However, on Tuesday, both, Dr Bijoy Kumar Mahala, and his wife, accompanied by other relatives went to Srirangapatna and conducted Monali’s last rites.

This extreme step… Why?

Rumors abound, but several sources in the know, say that she took the extreme step following a heated argument with her mother after she was allegedly suspended from school for one and half day over her friendship with a boy student. Apparently  the principal called her mother and asked her to pick her up from school  soon after he had spotted Monali with the boy. Reports say that she had been warned earlier too for the same reason. Sources say that the families of the boy and Monali are friends.

Reports indicate that the girl's mother brought her back home by 3pm, and advised her to concentrate on her studies. The two had an argument, and a distressed Monali ran into the master bedroom, locking it from the inside. She then opened the French windows and leapt to her death.

However there are different versions emanating from different sources. One source says that, when the mother and child went to the principals chamber, she was given a lecture and humiliated in front of Monali over the latter's alleged friendship with a male student. She was then handed two official letters and the two left for home. 

One of the letters, it seems, was an order of suspension for`serious disciplinary misdemeanor'. It stated: "Monali Mahala, a student of class X, is hereby suspended for a day and a half on disciplinary grounds over objectionable behavior with a male classmate inside the school premises," while the other, was reportedly an undertaking for the student and her mother to sign, and it stated “Monali promises to display good behavior” and “concentrate on her academics”.

Strangely, Monali was, according to sources, one of the top five students in her class, and was also very active in extracurricular activities.

These sources say that, on reaching home the duo decided to go to Narayana Hrudalaya to discuss the issue with her father, Dr. Bijoy Mahala. The mother left the letters on the table, as she went to change for the visit to the reputed hospital, when the girl, who had apparently not seen these letters earlier, read them. According the sources, there was no argument and it was these letters that prompted her extreme act.

The police view

The  Police say that at the moment they do not suspect foul play, but they have yet to talk to the parents as they are very upset. They say that have registered a case of suicide and will investigate further.

The school authorities including the principal Chitra Rao and chairman and founder principal of National Public School, Dr K P Gopalakrishna, did not comment.

Gone and forgotten?

On Tuesday, less than 24 hours after Monali’s alleged suicide, the in the school appeared calm and normal, but it was the calm of the grave – eerie.

No holiday was declared to mourn the loss of a student, and reports indicate that neither was a prayer service held. It was normal school day.

Some parents say that NPS is a pressure cooker for students. The main focus is academics and preparing students for competitive exams.

Inter sex mingling in coed schools – permitted or not?

What’s the rule? What’s the norm for inter sex mingling in coed schools? This question has arisen after Monali’s death. 

Bangalore University had, a few years ago, come out with a rule  to stop boys and girls sitting next to each other and asked them to  have only necessary interaction with each other. This rule fell into disuse due to widespread opposition to it from both within and outside the student community.

However, our information is that many co-ed schools do enforce it informally, and do not allow boys and girls to sit together in the higher classes. They even go so far as to regulate their movements and curtail dialogue between specific individuals if they suspect a growing closeness between them within the campus. The male teaching staff keep an eye on the boys and the female staff on the girls. First course of action is a warning, then counseling, next, the parents are informed and finally they are summoned and the child suspended. The use of CCTVs' to monitor their activities on campus are not uncommon.

Schools both feel and are held responsible by parents and public for such untoward events.

Counseling, necessary but absent?

Counselors ‘believe that sensitization, openness and expertise are needed from the school's end. They say “reprimand with love” for which the primary requirement is unconditional support by the school. Answering questions of students with openness, providing them with relationship advise through individual and group interactions are the key, counselors say.

"Earlier, it used to be in high school, now even students in fifth and sixth standards are coming up with questions. We need to give appropriate answers instead of shunning them away. If the school has a counsellor, they should be approachable and willing to answer,"  a counselor said. 

Counselors also advise parents to handle their kids, with… literally kid’s gloves. They say they must be sensitive to the child’s needs and feelings in such cases, and the reprimand must be reasoned out with the child rather than a straight reprimand, as they may then seek refuge in friends, in substance abuse and in some the cases, in an extreme step.

Kasturirangan report: Bio-diversity or livelihood? Which holds the ace?

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Mangaluru: The central government has withdrawn its two previous notifications issued to the state government on the implementation of the Kasturirangan report and has decided to reissue the draft notification,  after the state government files its objections, for which it has extended the deadline upto  April 15th.  This gives another three months to the state government to formulate its views.

Ramanath Rai after the centre's move said,” the government has given us 3 more months to decide our stand on the project. We will collect people's opinion and inform the Central government. The cabinet committee has started collecting opinions from the people in the western ghat region”.

Earlier the state government had been given the deadline of December 26, to file its objections.  For this purpose, the state government had formed a cabinet sub-committee to study the pros and cons of Kasturirangan report in ecologically sensitive areas (ESA). This committee had sought two additional months to decide and had not sent the objection letter.

People, whose livelihood was likely to be affected by the implementation of the Kasturirangan report recommendations, have heaved a sigh of relief. 

The subcommittee as a part of its deliberations will be holding a public meeting in Mangaluru on January 27. The Dakshina Kannada District Deputy Commissioner A B Ibrahim said this in an official communiqué. The communiqué informed that the meeting will delve into all the aspects of Kasturirangan report. Discussions will be held with environmentalists, people's representatives and non-governmental organizations. Those interested in being part of the public meeting can do so by registering their names with their respective tahsildars before the meet.

Minister for Forest and Environment and Dakshina Kannada District in-charge B Ramanath Rai, Minister for Urban Development and Udupi District in-charge Vinay Kumar Sorake and Minister for Law T B Jayachandra are expected to participate in the meeting. As per the communiqué elected representatives will speak first, followed by those who have registered for the meet.

Implementation of Kasturirangan report stalled

A fierce, outright and almost unanimous rejection of the Kasturirangan report outlining a conservation strategy for the Western Ghats had virtually stalled the implementation. 

District committees have been “under pressure” from local communities and political parties opposing the idea of Ecologically Sensitive Areas (ESAs), and have been unable to complete their socio-economic survey.

The report of the Western Ghats Ecology Expert Panel (WGEEP), popularly known as the Madhav Gadgil report, and that of the High Level Working Group (HLWG), known as Kasturirangan report, have evoked opposition from all sections of the people. Both the reports were commissioned by the Ministry of Environment and Forest (MoEF) of the government of India during the tenure of the previous government.  The MoEF under pressure from the Supreme Court and the National Green Tribunal accepted the HLWG report. However its implementation is stuck in opposition from the affected people and their local representatives and there are valid reasons for the same.

The Western Ghats – a bio-diversity hotspot

The Western Ghats is one of the eight bio-diversity hotspots in the world. It’s not just the flora and the fauna that flourish there that make it important, but many water lifelines such as the Godavari, Nethravathi, Krishna, Vaigai, Kaveri, Kunthi and numerous other water bodies originate from the Western Ghats. 

Gadgil’s studies indicate that in the southern states of Karnataka, Kerala and Tamil Nadu, 40% of the original green cover has already been lost. This over a period of seventy years from 1920 to 1990 mainly in the latter half of the last decade, when Corporates mercilessly degraded and denuded the  hotspot for pecuniary gain, often encouraged by populist oriented governments across the spectrum. 

Environment consciousness rose in first decade of the current millennium, forcing the stoppage of mining of iron ore by the Kudremukh Iron ore Company Ltd, a public sector company, through a Supreme Court directive, and compelling the central government through the MOEF, to constitute the WGEEP through an order dated March 4, 2010. The committee consisted of 14 members with renowned environmentalist Prof Madhav Gadgil as chairman. 

Its terms of reference were to assess the current status of ecology of the Western Ghats region; demarcate the areas within the region which need to be notified as ecologically sensitive; make recommendations for the conservation, protection and rejuvenation of the region; suggest measures for effective implementation of the notification declaring specific areas in the region as eco-sensitive; to recommend the modalities for establishment of Western Ghats Ecology Authority; and to deal with any other relevant issues. 

The Gadgil committee held 14 meetings over one and a half years and submitted its final report on August 31, 2011to the MoEF. Sadly they did not consult the local population, people’s representatives and political parties and subsequently this omission, became the reason for its skewed recommendations.

The report was made public in March 2012 and it woke up a lot of local organizations to its impact on their people, forest wealth, and land use rights, prompting all the six state governments to criticize the report especially on the grounds that conservation methodologies suggested in the report would affect the livelihood and fundamental rights of the local residents.

Opposition does make a difference, especially if it’s concerted, persistent and all inclusive. Concerted opposition forced the MoEF to form the HLWG on August 17, 2012 under the chairmanship of famous space scientist and planning commission member Dr Kasturirangan to revisit the WGEEP report. The HLWG had 10 meetings and four field visits before it submitted its report on April 15, 2013.  They partially addressed the original lacunae of lack of local consultation, and after its submission, there was a lot of pressure from the Supreme Court and the National Green Tribunal to implement its recommendations, despite doubts over whether it had addressed the concerns of the local residents.

The MoEF initiated steps to implement the HLWG recommendations and declared 4,156 villages in six States (99 in Goa, 64 in Gujarat, 1576 in Karnataka, 123 in Kerala, 2159 in Maharashtra and 135 in Tamilnadu) as Ecologically Sensitive Areas (ESA). The idea was to impose the Indian Environment (Protection) Act on all these villages. This bureaucratic step invited widespread resistance and protest actions from the local population, which are still continuing.

Failure of the HLWG

The responsibilities given to HLWG were mainly to examine the WGEEP report in a holistic manner and to submit an action plan for effective implementation of this report. However, this time the MoEF asked the committee to approach the issue from a human point of view, and not just a conservatory approach. This would include ensuring the rights, needs and developmental aspirations of local and indigenous people, tribes, forest dwellers and other most disadvantaged sections of the local communities while balancing equitable economic and social growth with sustainable development and environmental integrity.

But the HLWG did not completely address local concerns. It made several amendments that only diluted the WGEEP recommendations, but nothing else. It also recommended whole villages as eco-sensitive areas and retained the anti-people guidelines of the WGEEP report.

The controversial recommendations that are the bone of contention:

• Land use: The most crucial recommendation creating anxiety among the local population is the following guideline in WGEEP report (vol 1, pp 41-42): “change in land use not permitted from forest to non-forest uses or agricultural to non-agricultural, except agricultural to forest (or tree crops)” except when an extension of existing settlements is needed to accommodate an increase in the local population. This means an absolute ban on developmental and construction activities, except housing. The HLWG report made no amendment to this clause. It is quite natural that people denied basic socio-economic development will be compelled to evacuate in future.  Also, no red industry will be allowed in the ESZs, while this is fine, even milk processing, meat processing, extraction of vegetable oil and hospitals also come in this category. 
• Ban on converting public land to private land: The guidelines of the WGEEP report (vol 1, p 41) say that public land cannot be converted to private land.  What of the thousands of people who have been farming and surviving since decades? These are small and marginal farmers and tribal families, who have migrated to the high ranges. They will not be able to get land rights, will not pay land tax and will never see development. 
• Ban on using forest land for non-forest purposes: The 2006 act on the rights of tribals and traditional forest dwellers allows them to cultivate the forest land on which they have depended for livelihood for generations. But a clause in the WGEEP report says: “forest land should not be used for non-forest purpose.” The preservation of paddy fields and water bodies in the entire Western Ghats area is also not addressed by either of the reports. 
• Phasing out of the use of chemical fertilizers: The WGEEP report recommends phasing out of the use of chemical fertilizers, pesticides and weedicides within a certain period. The HLWG is silent on this. While organic cultivation is the best way forward, prohibition will negatively affect agricultural production and the income of small and marginal families. 
• No monoculture plantations: This recommendation of the WGEEP report, says “no monoculture plantation of exotics like eucalyptus; existing plantations of such exotics should be replaced by planting endemic species or allowing area to revert to grassland where it was originally grassland.” This essentially has an impact on Tea coffee and rubber plantations and this is a serious worry for tens of thousands of plantation workers apart from the plantation owners. 
• Identification and demarcation of eco-sensitive areas: The identification and demarcation of ESAs in HLWG report is unscientific, and no survey was conducted to identify such areas. Village borders have been taken ESA boundaries. Aerial surveys have mistakenly marked plantation areas as forests. HLWG has declared numerous heavily populated habitats as ESAs though the suggested criterion is a population density below 100 persons per sq km. 
• Lack of an action plan: The action plan enumerated in the HLWG has no specific recommendations for allocation of a special fund for promoting organic cultivation. It only has a fund for forest and environment conservation. It indicates a lack of concern for the local residents and farmers and a mechanical approach to conservation.    Both the reports are also silent on the human animal conflict. Segregation of Human and Animal habitats is the way forward. 
• Local reviewing authority: According to the WGEEP, the Gram Sabha is the local decision making authority in respect of implementation of the conservation guidelines, but has conferred no statutory authority on them. They are also subject to the pressures of the land owning class in the gram sabhas.

Most development reports in India are written by bureaucrats in a bureaucratic manner – with internal consultations rather than external. Further they often conform to the appointing authorities’ agenda. These two reports follow the same pattern and need deeper consultations with the affected persons, if a balance between protection of the people’s livelihood and conservation of the environment is to be found.  This is the need of the hour, or both the bio diversity and livelihoods that we seek to preserve will become extinct.