26/11 From Tragedy to farce?

A top cop accuses 3 other top cops of not being on the scene of action on 26/11/08

He then retracts his statements. In the meantime media has gone to town, and 3 cops come under a public shadow. Net result, we waste the time of 3 critical cops, the time of an under-staffed and poorly budgeted department…and distract them from their duty; keeping us safe.

We are busy arguing about faulty bullet proof vests. Isn't the best test to make politicians wear them and start firing at them? :)
A strange photograph in the newspaper showed us a diagram revealing that all terrorist bullets magically missed the vest and entered Karkare's body through the unprotected areas, thus saving the guys who bought the vests. I remembered the magic bullet from JFK...the one that traveled all over kennedy:)

Two ‘Force One’ commandos....trained to combat terrorism, and engage in urban warfare against them, FAINT during a demonstration to our politicians. I guess they can shock the enemy by fainting on them or in curious formations.

Our S.R.P.F. lie for days on the road. The State Reserve Police Force, the guys who are supposed to protect our STATE, the commercial capital of India, has no place to sleep. Why would these guys give their lives for us? But, they still do.

RR Patil is back, the very minister who was asked to resign after 26/11. His resignation was meaningless, and his coming back is meaningless. He could not have been blamed for the attacks because a state home minister in India is in really no position to fight terrorism. He is just ill-informed and mostly impotent against urban terrorism.

In a hugely expensive trial, we are still entertaining Kasab, the one live terrorist. His trial is now a comic book story in India…kids talk about his theatrics and the drama that surrounds him. We spend millions on keeping the trial going, because we have to SHOW the world we are civilized. Can we wrap this trial up sooner please, it costs us tax money???

Pakistan has disintegrated into chaos, China has started pissing on our feet and the USA plays volley ball with our foreign policy. The only real geo-political consensus is on the arms race and how everyone can make money by creating more and more chaos. India Inc has jumped into the defense business and this will be the next sunrise industry of the region.

Is India safer? Has the underworld been even dented? Has ONE terrorist group been shut down? Is the Indo-Pak issue anywhere closer to being resolved? Somehow the smartest politicians in India can’t fix the Kashmir issue for over 60 years. Somebody must be making shit loads of money? Who?

At the central level we are forming ONE MORE intelligence agency…what about strengthening the IB and RAW forces….either you build a homeland security model or you don’t…no half-ways work. Can we learn from the USA?

Rahul Gandhi, in a moment of rare moral courage, raised the issue of wastage of police forces/security forces. In India, each politician and his relatives are apparently threatened all the time and need Z level security, if not less. This means that security forces waste precious man-power protecting our rich and fat politicians while they should be protecting us! Needless to say, he was shouted down in parliament, even from within his party:)

In the midst of a farcical year, two brave police wives have been showing us the light….Mrs. karkare and Mrs. Kamte…both have been asking tricky questions regarding the circumstances surrounding the death of their husbands, both of them straight cops with great reputations. Mrs. Kamte had to get the post-mortem report of her husband through the RTI. Isn’t that a shame?

In the last year, we have learnt NOTHING. Our politicians have made merry, making strange sounds with no sense, our media has screamed and whimpered its way through every issue…migrated from activism to passive resignation to empty theatrics. There is no real security anywhere. No public security. The only thing that binds us Indians together is our own local bonds, in families, housing societies, small towns and mohallas. The real Indian lives at a local, small level, untouched by the sound and fury, waiting for the next disaster, scurrying around making money and trying to keep his/her family afloat.

If there is any fight-back, it is at this local level, the only real level….where we fight for our humanity, security and keep hoping for a better tomorrow. True secularism, democracy, local governance and accountability are our tools. The state has failed; the fourth estate has lost its way. Every citizen needs to stand up, right now.

Jai Hind!

Zubin Driver
Founder, Fight-Back

The next Music For Equality event - December 8th

Let the rythym change the course of thought, the beat unviel a new beginning and Music make the difference.

You're all cordially invited :)

We're going to rock... tonight :) (At Bluefrog, Mumbai!)

There's a sense of excitement and a little anxiety amongst Fight Back members today, as our first 'Music for Equality' concert kicks off!!

An awesome (if we may say so ourselves) concept that integrates social messaging and music, organically.

So, tonight at Bluefrog (the perfect place for a performance in Mumbai, where some great contemporary music acts from all over the world have performed recently)a bunch of talented home-grown musicians will perform to communicate the message of gender equality.

UPDATE: The September 9 Evening was fantastic, with original music from Adrian, Nikhil and the others lighting up the evening. An impromptu spoken-word performance from artist and spirited Bohemian - Sapna Bhavnani had the Audience enthralled.
Will try and upload the video of the performances very soon!

An ode to the common man - Happy Independence Day from the Fight Back Team

Want to see film, click here

Salute the extraordinary common man this Independence Day! Jai Hind :)

Some of our supporters...

Dolly Thakore, Ranvijay & Raghu, Soli Sorabjee (who helped fine tune our petition that has just reached the law commission btw), Smriti Irani are some well-known faces who have helped take our message - to respect women, fight Gender Violence - to lakhs of people across India. Here are some videos from the past....

Our Petition has reached the Law Commission...

And why this is important

A 17-year-old girl in Surat was raped on her way to early morning tuitions.
An 18-year-old British volunteer on an exchange programme was raped in Himachal. A young married woman was gang-raped in Bhopal in a moving car while her husband was held at gunpoint. Five young man raped a young girl in Mira Road and circulated the MMS clip.

What's even more shocking is all these incidents have occured in the last two weeks. It's shocking and appalling how lightly the crime is being taken. At Fight Back, we're determined to do something about this.

After getting support from various quarters and hundreds of signatures, our petition – which demands life imprisonments for all rapists – has been sent to the Law Commission by Fight Back core member Kirti Jaykumar. The petition got a big push after Mr. Soli Sorabjee, the former attorney general of India helped us fine tune, modify and generally gave the idea a big THUMBS UP! As mentioned in the posts below....

Seems like every offender does it thinking he can simply get away with it. Consistent sensitization, that we're attempting to do through various initiatives can stop the proliferation of negative attitude towards women. And tougher laws will get the message out loud and clear that RAPE is not to be taken lightly.

The Petition has been modified + SOLI SORABJEE will be our guiding light! :)

As a sign of respect to many, many of our members who felt the death sentence for rape was not justified - no matter what the crime - we do not have the right to take lives.

Agreed! So we modified our petition - calling for a radical change in Indian rape laws that included death sentence for rapists.

BUT we've got to make ANY man in this country think a HUNDRED times before raping anybody. So folks we've settled for "LIFE IMPRISONMENT" and NO, we're not going below that! No matter what your argument.

Now, here's a better part of this blog post - Soli Sorabjee, the former attorney general of India will be our guiding light. Helping us fine tune our anti-rape petition, and make our case stronger before presenting it to the law commission.

It's an honour to have Mr.Sorabjee aboard. Click on the link to know more about his work and position and you'll understand why.

While we're not there yet, we can't stop celebrating our first flush of success in our call for a radical change of India's rape laws.