Why Bengal was kept out of the Republic Day parade

All day several friends have called to ask why the West Bengal tableau was missing from the Republic Day parade in Delhi. The absence has particularly disappointed and hurt a lot of us because West Bengal had won the award for the best tableau in 2014.

There is a back-story to the missing tableau. Kanyashree is the flagship programme for the girl child in our state, and with good reason. Some 17.5 million people in West Bengal are adolescents aged between 10 and 19. Forty-eight per cent of these are girls. Many are poorly educated and in rural, poverty-stricken families seen as an economic burden and an extra mouth to feed. As a consequence, they are married off early, leading to teenage pregnancy and motherhood, and giving rise to a subsequent generation – the children of these adolescent mothers – who perpetuate the cycle of socio-economic challenges, including infant mortality and maternal ill-health.

Under Mamata Banerjee, the Trinamool Congress government has been determined to rectify this. That is why we launched the Kanyashree scheme to support and incentivise girls’ education and the postponement of marriage and thereby pregnancy. We also sought to empower girls, who could get educated up to an advanced level and then become economic contributors and earners.

Kanyashree not only supports families with girl children, it actually pushes them into educating their daughters and keeping them in school, without forcing them to drop out. For each year a girl spends in school her family is given Rs. 500. If a girl is still studying at the age of 18, whether in high school or college, her family is given Rs. 25,000, transferred straight to a bank account. This money can be used for higher education or can help at the time of the girl’s wedding, since weddings can be expensive in our society and can inconvenience ordinary parents. (It doesn’t give me much happiness making that last point, but it is a reality).

Kanyashree has progressed extremely well since its inauguration in October 2013. So far 900,000 girls have started receiving benefits and in 2015 another 700,000 girls are expected to be added. The programme has been appreciated by national and international agencies as a model for developing societies. UNICEF partners the West Bengal government in the roll-out of Kanyashree and the Union Ministry of Women and Child Development has acknowledged the programme’s achievements.

We had planned to make Kanyashree and the girl child the theme of the West Bengal tableau at the Republic Day. It would have fitted well with the overall national message of encouraging and empowering women. The proposal was sent to the relevant Ministries and Departments in Delhi but was rejected. Many submissions were made, formal and informal, but it was to no avail.

Finally, we were resigned to missing out. It hurt and still hurts, but life has to go on. Only, I am left with a niggling question: were some people worried the focus on Kanyashree would have overshadowed another girl child related programme launched a few days ago… Never mind. There’s always next year.

Derek O’Brien
Member of Parliament
Chief Whip in the Rajya Sabha and National Spokesperson, Trinamool Congress

Respite for 4000 soldiers... happy to have played a very small role.

It was a weekend in early August and I found myself watching an NDTV programme anchored by Barkha Dutt. One of the studio guests was an articulate young lawyer called Navdeep Singh. He spoke about how pension claims of disabled soldiers, those who had lost limb or suffered injury in the service of India, were often contested by the Ministry of Defence. In fact 90 per cent of the legal cases being fought by the Ministry related to disabled soldiers and their pension claims.

I was left stunned by the figures and by the sheer insensitivity of our bureaucracy. The following morning I phoned Barkha and got Navdeep’s number. After a series of chats with him, I decided on a Special Mention on the issue in the Rajya Sabha on August 11, 2014. In the Mention, I criticised the “shallow pretexts” being used to deny disabled soldiers pensions.

In many cases, the timing of injuries was questioned.“Military Boards have also been rejecting diseases such as neurosis and schizophrenia for being ‘constitutional’ in nature,” I said, “and not aggravated by service conditions. In contrast, pension claims for such diseases are routinely allowed by medical boards of the Central Armed Police Forces under the Home Ministry. Even though the Supreme Court has rendered a series of judgments in favour of the soldiers’ claims, the Ministry of Defence has continued to file appeals against claims at all stages.”

The Income Tax Department does not go to the Supreme Court unless the claim amount exceeds Rs 25 lakh. In contrast, the Ministry of Defence hires top lawyers and takes its old soldiers to court for even a few thousand rupees. It is an unequal and unfair battle: “Most soldiers cannot afford the costs of protracted litigation and are forced to abandon their claims.”

I requested the defence minister to direct his civil servants to stop filing such frivolous cases. My Special Mention was appreciated by fellow MPs. As I realised, I was not the first to bring the subject to the notice of the House. A parliamentary colleague, Smriti Irani of the BJP, had already done so.

Over the next few months I continued to stay in touch with Navdeep and to be exercised by the cause of our disabled veterans. Unfortunately, the government took no action. On December 10, 2014, the Supreme Court dismissed en masse appeals filed by the Defence Ministry in pension-related matters. After this, Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar issued a statement that the Ministry would not be taking forward appeals against old and disabled soldiers in 4,000 separate cases.

Frankly, the Supreme Court has left the Ministry with no choice. This is not a time for point scoring but I do wish the defence minister had made his statement before the court order. I also hope a precedent has been set and in future disabled soldiers, and old soldiers generally, will not have to go from courtroom to courtroom to get due pensions from a government, a system and a country they risked their lives protecting.

Derek O’Brien
Member of Parliament
Chief Whip in the Rajya Sabha and National Spokesperson, Trinamool Congress