YEH MERA INDIA

Story of a sweeper- B.com, MA, M. Phil

Mumbai: Beating all odds, a street sweeper employed with the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) swept his way to success by securing an MPhil degree.

After being awarded the degree from Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS), 36-year-old Sunil Yadav, who is deployed at Nana Chowk in Central Mumbai for the cleaning job, now aims to pursue a PhD degree to understand the problems plaguing the sweeper class and wants to find solutions to it. "I am elated on securing my MPhil. By doing PhD, I want to deeply study the social system that has marginalised our (sweeper) class in the society," Yadav, who secured seventh rank in his post masters' degree with 'Globalisation and Labour' as the subject, said.

Even after securing a good rank, Yadav wants to continue with his job as a sweeper.

Chronicling his arduous journey, Yadav said, "I got sweeper's job on compensatory grounds as my father, a BMC employee, was declared medically unfit for the job. I was 10th fail and my family was struggling to make ends meet. I then realised there was a hunger inside me to pursue my education. I lived in a slum in Mahalaxmi where gangsters were common place. That played havoc on my studies but I did not budge and continued," said Yadav, a father of two school-going daughters.

Yadav, who has now settled in Chembur said that after passing SSC and HSC, he did his B Com and followed it up with a bachelors degree in journalism and masters in social work simultaneously in 2011.

But all this was not a cakewalk as he had to face departmental hurdles when he decided to go for higher education.

"My seniors denied me any sort of leave that I was eligible to get for higher education. When I had to visit South Africa as part of my course, I was refused to go without an appropriate reason. Thankfully, TISS authorities intervened and brought my case to their notice and then only I was granted leave," said Yadav, adding nothing has changed in the society as far as behaviour towards down-trodden was concerned.

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382 Indians die every day in accidents on road

New  Delhi: The viral video of a 32-year-old man, Siddharth Sharma, being mowed down by a Mercedes car driven by a teenager in Delhi has generated a lot of outrage, but Sharma is one of 71 Indians who, on an average, die every day in accidents involving cars, jeeps and taxis, according to an IndiaSpend analysis of government data.

As many as 139,671 people lost their lives on India’s roads during 2014, which means 382 died every day, IndiaSpend had reported. The data reveal that Delhi is India’s deadliest city: 1,671 died in road accidents that year.  Sharma’s death sparked questions about growing lawlessness on Delhi’s roads, which have witnessed a 24 percent rise in road accidents over three years.

In December 2015, the Delhi Traffic Police complied with the Supreme Court’s recommendations of enforcing stricter traffic rules, such as suspending the driving licences of violators for three months.

“Seizing and suspension of driving licences, even for the first offenders, will take place for jumping red light, drunken driving, over-speeding, using mobile phone while driving, and carrying passengers in goods vehicles,” Muktesh Chander, Special Commissioner (Traffic) told the DNA. As the incident video shows, Sharma was a pedestrian trying to cross the road when he was mowed down: 12,330 pedestrians were killed in 2014, accounting for 8.8 percent of the total deaths.

The car was being driven by a 17-year-old, who was with seven friends, according to a Times of India report, which means he did not have a driving license.

The minimum age to get one is 18.  Further, the accident happened around 8:45 pm, during an accident-prone period: 17 percent of accidents occur between 6 pm and 9 pm.As many as eight percent of road accidents involved drivers without a license.

The juvenile was a repeat offender, the police found.

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Civic problems: BMC & Corporators are disconnected

Mumbai:  There is a “total disconnect” between the people’s representatives, municipal administration and the citizens over Mumbai’s civic problems, a city-based NGO claimed.

Praja Foundation, which works on civic issues, released a report on the complaints filed by the citizens and corporations’ evaluations in all the 17 ward committees, during the period of March 2012 and December 2015.

“On the basis of figures that we obtained through RTI queries in the departments concerned of the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC), we found that there is complete disengagement between the people’s representatives, civic authorities and citizens and this is because representatives don’t care for commom man,” said Nitai Mehta, Managing Trustee of Praja Foundation, said.

“This report card reveals that there is a missing link between the work of the elected representatives and the quality of governance in Mumbai. The recent Deonar dumping ground fire is a live example of what is going on in our city,” he said.

The report also said that the number of complaints regarding roads and potholes were maximum during this period, followed by those pertaining to drainage and water supply. The report, however, showed that there was improvement in some areas of civic administration as the average days taken by the BMC to resolve the complaints came down to 13 days in 2015 from 17 days in 2014. “This is not bad at all and the civic body is definitely improving in many ways,” Mehta said.

On the ‘point of order’ questions asked by the corporators, he said, “The average number of days taken to answer such questions have been 128 days in the last 4 years.

While 91 per cent of the corporators asked less than 10 questions in ward committee meetings in the last four years.” Seeking a proper channel for people to raise their civic issues, another senior associate of the Foundation, Milind Mhaske said, “Functioning of ward committees needs to be seriously improved. Councillors need to study civic issues pertaining to their constituency, then prepare agendas and push these in the committee meetings in a planned manner.”

The administration also needs to start taking point of order questions seriously, and answer them prominently, he said adding, “For there to be some concrete change, the administration needs to change from within, which can only happen when it becomes pro-active and embrace good governance practices.” 

'RTIs, PILs a ‘big problem’ for the country': MP

New Delhi: Members in Rajya Sabha termed RTIs and PILs as a ‘big problem’ for the country; with Samajwadi Party member Naresh Agrawal alleging that the Right to Information (RTI) Act was passed “under US pressure”.

As some other members also joined in expressing concern during the Question Hour over the misuse of RTI, Government expressed readiness to look into the issue of “misuse” of RTI. Calling it a law “passed in a hurry”, Praful Patel (NCP) said that there is no locus of people seeking answers under RTI. “Some ‘panwadi’ (betel leaf seller) or ‘chaiwala’ (tea vendor) can also ask who made a missile programme or anything on international relations,” he said. Seated in the treasury benches, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who has frequently referred to his modest origins as a tea seller, began laughing at Patel’s reference to tea vendors. Leader of the House Arun Jaitley, who was seated next to Modi, also smiled.

Patel soon sought to make amends by saying he did not make this remark keeping Modi’s origin in mind. “There is no disrespect to the Prime Minister. Rather it is an honour,” he said. Under this law, anybody can pay Rs 10 and seek information about missiles, he said and asked “is the government willing to consider amendments in this Act.”-PTI

I.T assessees just 1%

New Delhi: The number of effective income tax assessees has risen to nearly 5.17 crore in 2014-15, from 4.72 crore in 2012-13, a year in which only 1 per cent of India’s population filed I-T returns, according to official data.

Income Tax department had over 4.72 crore “effective assessees”, including people who filed ITRs, and who paid TDS but did not file returns, in 2012-13. However, individuals who filed return of income for tax paid accounted for 1 per cent of population that year.

In 2012-13, as much as Rs 2.10 lakh crore was garnered from TDS, as against total income tax collection of Rs 6.36 lakh crore.

The total number of effective assessees has risen from 4.72 crore in 2012-13 to 5.20 crore in 2013-14. In 2014-15, the provisional data stood at nearly 5.17 crore.

As regards filing income tax returns, a total of 2.87 crore individuals filed income tax returns for 2012-13, but 1.62 crore of them did not pay any tax. This left the number of taxpayers who filed ITR at just about 1.25 crore which was close to one per cent of the country’s total population of about 123 crore at that time.

The tax outgo was less than Rs 1.5 lakh for a vast majority of nearly 89 per cent taxpayers (over 1.11 crore). Their average tax payable was just about Rs 21,000, while the collective amount stood at over Rs 23,000 crore. The three individuals in the top-bracket of Rs 100-500 crore paid a total tax of Rs 437 crore — resulting in an average tax outgo of Rs 145.80 crore.

As part of a transparency drive, the government has made public direct tax data for last 15 years. Data for individuals has been published only for 2012-13 assessment year, which shows taxes for income in financial year ended March 31, 2012.

As many as 5,430 individuals paid income tax of over Rs 1 crore. Out of this, the tax range was Rs 1-5 crore for more than 5,000 individuals, resulting in a total outgo of Rs 8,907 crore.

As per the overall data, total income tax collections rose nine-fold to Rs 2.86 lakh crore in 2015-16, from Rs 31,764 crore in 2000-01. The data further showed that the bulk of individuals who filed returns for the assessment year 2012-13 earned an annual salary between Rs 5.5 lakh and Rs 9.5 lakh.

Six individuals fell in the high-end earning bracket of Rs 50-100 crore of salary income. In the salary range of Rs 1-5 crore, there were as many as 17,515 individuals.

School bags distributed, but no school to go to

Mumbai: Children and adults alike stood with small boards in their hands which mentioned their full names, number of members in their family, the village they came from and their tent number. The queue was for rice, dal, clothes, medical kits, school bags and whatever anyone was ready to give them.

There are over 1200 people living in the Marathwada Dushkalgrashtha Camp which is spread over a small area adjoining a local playground in Barve Nagar area of Ghatkopar.

Over 300 families from drought-affected regions of the state have set up camp here this year. “Usually some 50 families come during summer, but this time due to the drought the numbers are huge,” said Sudhir Rane of the BJP who was distributing these basic necessities to the people on behalf of MP Kirit Somaiya. The MP has been taking care of their food and water needs for a month now, Sudhir says.

A van arrives with bedsheets, soaps, pencils and notebooks and half the people from the long queue run to the van. The van is from an Andheri-based jewellery company which read about the camp in a newspaper. While their benefactors shout that only children should stand in the queue, adults jostle with each other and push children out of the queue.

“These people won’t change, how much ever they get, they want more,” says one of the organisers to his friend.

There are over 150 children in the camp, over 450 women and not a single toilet or bathroom. Many of the families have been residing in the camp since February. They are living among pigs and filth. Pigs can be seen merrily running around and napping alongside their tents.

The BJP is claiming credit for ensuring that these people are not forced to move out of the ‘camp’. “We gave a clean place for them to live, they don’t know how to keep it clean,” said another organiser of the distribution drive.

100 bags collected from college students were also distributed to the children. The irony was that they had neither a school to go nor a proper roof over their head.