Well, about a third of my library is bare, now

Thanks to one of our doctors, I was put in contact with the founder of a local organisation [We Serve Foundation] that takes books and sends them to India. Dr. Viji came last week and then today he brought boxes and I boxed the unbound journals up and he put the boxes in his car and took them over to the International Book Project's warehouse (they're a partner organisation that is also based here in Lexington). It took four trips, about thirty boxes. I packed about 780 bound journals. Tomorrow we do the unbound ones. All told we're talking about 84 three-foot shelves, so about 252 linear feet of materials. We did 108 linear feet today, so I'm a little sore and will no doubt be stiff tomorrow. But at least they'll be used and appreciated, and not recycled or trashed. 

I'm glad that he's going to be able to take them and put them to good use. But I have to admit, I'm a bit sore from all that packing and the little bit of lifting I did. 

I won't include the picture of us shaking hands or standing next together, because I don't really have his permission to publish the picture here, and I think our PR person will take care of that on social media, but this shows about a third to a half of the journals taken away. The rest are bare now, over past that book truck on the right.

It's a little sad, of course. Soon I'll be in a (virtually) empty room. I'm still working on the books, trying to get them to the departments, and his organisation may get whatever's not taken. But as of tomorrow, I'll just have books in the library, no journals, except for a few the staff wanted.

So now I'm home. I had thought to go to the library, but I'm relaxed, in my nightshirt, have eaten, and I am listening to music. Maybe I'll just relax, and maybe take a long bath later, so that I don't stiffen up. I'll keep you posted.

So sad

Indian gang-rape victim cremated, was due to marry

She was to wed in February. According to the article, her fiancé and she were lured onto a bus by six men on December 15th. They thought the bus would take them home. Instead they endured a 40-minute attack by the drunken men before being stripped and thrown off the bus. The young woman is said to have been attacked with an iron bar, which did horrible internal damage, from which she died. The alleged attackers have been arrested and are facing the death penalty, which is rarely used in India except in particularly heinous crimes. I think this one counts.

I've been following this story

although I haven't blogged about it. The whole thing is horrendous.

Indian gang-rape victim's condition deteriorates

However, the gang-rape of the 23-year-old student on a moving bus in the capital two weeks ago has brought new focus on police and community attitudes toward woman in India. Demonstrators in New Delhi have demanded stronger protections for women and stronger punishment for rapists.

After 10 days at a New Delhi hospital, the victim was flown to Singapore on Thursday for treatment at the Mount Elizabeth hospital, which specializes in multi-organ transplant. Media reports have said that her assailants beat her and inserted an iron rod into her body during the assault, resulting in severe organ damage.

Indian Rape Case Ignites National Debate On Abuse Of Women

Praveen Swami, editor of the The Hindu newspaper, says, "The real battle is to change the way in which men relate to women: to create a culture of masculinity that does not involve subjugation."

UPDATE: Delhi gang-rape victim dies in hospital in Singapore

So awful.

Interesting series on the loss of literature and history as collections crumble or are sold for scrap in India

In India, History Literally Rots Away
Repairing the Damage at India’s National Archives
India’s Archives: How Did Things Get This Bad?
The Parsis, Once India’s Curators, Now Shrug as History Rots
...all by Dinyar Patel, a historian and Harvard doctoral candidate who is also Parsi.

If you care anything at all about preserving history, documents, and literature, some of this will break your heart. But some people are trying to change things, although it sounds like the problem is so large, the bureaucracy so great, that it's a bit like tilting at windmills. But if even a tenth of what out there gets preserved through greater awareness, that's a step in the right direction.

Horrific rapes and murders perpetrated against girls and women in India

Rape and murder in Uttar Pradesh

SR Darapuri, vice-president of the People's Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL) in Uttar Pradesh, says most of the rape victims are poor women and girls in remote villages. Many, he says, are low-caste Dalits (formerly known as "untouchables").

"I analysed the rape figures for 2007 and I found that 90% of victims were Dalits and 85% of Dalit rape victims were underage girls," he says.

"It is well known that until not very long ago, in certain areas of the state's southern Bundelkhand region, new brides of Dalit farmhands had to sleep with their rich, high-caste landowners on their wedding night."

Mr Darapuri says the practice no longer exists - but Dalit women and girls remain vulnerable to predators.

Despite caste discrimination being illegal, it is still rampant in many areas of India, and girls themselves are considered social liabilities in some as well, regardless of caste. Dalits of both genders have endured terrible crimes such as acid being thrown upon them. So this violence against Dalit girls is not surprising, but very sad. I hope that Indians can fight this sort of violence, both legally and socially. Until attitudes change, men will continue to get away with these crimes, and women and girls will continue to die or live with terrifying memories and horrible scars.

This was sad

Girl, 12, kills herself to donate organs to family: But she is cremated before family finds suicide note detailing her wishes
Her father was losing his eyesight; her brother had kidney issues. They could not afford medical care. The young girl poisoned herself with a pesticide, trying to give them a second chance for life.

Of course, the pesticide would probably have rendered the organs unusable, the costs of transplants and immunosuppression are high, but she was 12, and most likely didn't understand that. What she did understand is that her loved ones were hurting. But her death may not be totally in vain; a politician stated that they would help her brother and father financially so that they could have the operations she wanted for them.

How do you change an entire culture's view on women?

Perhaps one day they'll realise there will be no wives for sons, nor children for the family, unless daughters are valued as well.

India's unwanted girls

Kulwant has three daughters aged 24, 23 and 20 and a son who is 16.

In the years between the birth of her third daughter and her son, Kulwant became pregnant three times. "My mother-in-law said if I had a daughter, my husband would leave me. Thankfully, I had a son."

Deepali Sah Health worker

Each time, she says, she was forced to abort the foetus by her family after ultrasound tests confirmed that they were girls.

"My mother-in-law taunted me for giving birth to girls. She said her son would divorce me if I didn't bear a son."

Kulwant still has vivid memories of the first abortion. "The baby was nearly five months old. She was beautiful. I miss her, and the others we killed," she says, breaking down, wiping away her tears.

Until her son was born, Kulwant's daily life consisted of beatings and abuse from her husband, mother-in-law and brother-in-law. Once, she says, they even attempted to set her on fire.

"They were angry. They didn't want girls in the family. They wanted boys so they could get fat dowries," she says.

The use of abortions to select for gender is illegal in India. So, for that matter, are dowries, but the practice is still popular and great lengths are taken to weight children in favour of boys. This is fundamentally wrong. I suspect things will only get worse for a time. But eventually families will find their sons left out in the cold without wives, and therefore no children. Perhaps that will change things a bit. Both India and China will reap what they sow in terms of female abortion and infanticide, if they do not take action now.

'We are a tiny, miniscule community, but what keeps us together is a special bond. We are one family, we meet, we talk, we share with each other'

Delhi's last 10 Jewish families guard an ancient heritage

In the capital of one of the world's most religiously-diverse countries, a r[a]bbi who has never been ordained bends ancient customs, ensuring New Delhi's ten Jewish families a place to worship.

Unlike most synagogues, there is no separation of men and women as Jewish-born worshippers, converts and followers of other faiths chant Psalms in perfect Hebrew, with doors thrown open to all. The service leader never asks attendees what religion they follow, and envisions his daughter becoming India's first female rabbi.

"Being a small community, we cannot be so rigid, so orthodox," says Ezekiel Isaac Malekar, honorary secretary of the synagogue whose unpaid job of thirty years has overlooked religious convention to keep this tiny group together.

"Our openness, our liberal approach is what allows us to survive. For reading the Torah, you must require ten men, a minyan. But I made radical changes, because why should we discriminate between women and men? I count the women."

Jews have been in India for 2,000 years, but represent merely about 5,000 people, whereas the general population of the country is about 1.2 billion people.

Sad

Despite rapid growth, India lets its girls die: Discrimination happens through abortions of female fetuses and sheer neglect of young girls, despite years of campaigns to address the issue

The room is large and airy, the stone floors clean and cool — a welcome respite from the afternoon sun. Until your eyes take in the horror that it holds. Ten severely malnourished children — nine of them girls.

The starving girls in this hospital ward include a 21-month-old with arms and legs the size of twigs and an emaciated 1-year-old with huge, vacant eyes. Without urgent medical care, most will not live to see their next birthday.

They point to a painful reality revealed in India's most recent census: Despite a booming economy and big cities full of luxury cars and glittering malls, the country is failing its girls.

What a beautiful place

I hadn't watched this in my subscriptions until YKWIA pointed it out to me. It would be a lovely place to visit in spring.

More backwards idiocy

Village 'witches' beaten in India

Five women were paraded naked, beaten and forced to eat human excrement by villagers after being branded as witches in India's Jharkhand state.

Local police said the victims were Muslim widows who had been labelled as witches by a local cleric.

I know there are real witches out there, and not just the happy-bunny-Wiccans who call themselves such. But I also know that historically, the majority of people labelled witches are often blameless and are simply those on the fringe of society (such, for example, older women or widows, as seen during the Early Modern Age in Europe, where they were targeted for their property, which was forfeit, due to their lack of male protection).

These punishments are apparently not uncommon in India, but there was footage shot in this case (there is a video embedded in the article), which of course takes the act out of a small village and into a global world where there's no doubt plenty of outrage, or at least there should be.

The women who were beaten and degraded by the mob are under police protection. Others, including female witch finders, are under arrest.

I really don't see how India can attain first world status so long as this sort of thing happens. All countries have their backwaters, and all have poverty (trust me, I live very close to Appalachia, which is one of our most impoverished areas), but India--despite great technological know-how and the atom bomb--has endemic cultural hurdles to surmount. I hope it will, actually--and sooner than later, but it will take a great deal of work.

Tackling poverty and environmental issues

Meeting India's tree planting guru

An Indian civil servant, SM Raju, has come up with a novel way of providing employment to millions of poor in the eastern state of Bihar.

His campaign to encourage people to plant trees effectively addresses two burning issues of the world: global warming and shrinking job opportunities.

Evidence of Mr Raju's success could clearly be seen on 30 August, when he organised 300,000 villagers from over 7,500 villages in northern Bihar to engage in a mass tree planting ceremony.

In doing so the agriculture graduate from Bangalore has provided "sustainable employment" to people living below the poverty line in Bihar.

Oh, how awful

Plight of India's mentally ill

Jaikrishna, like everyone here, was fettered round the ankles by heavy iron chains. Another chain trailed across the floor, coupling him permanently with another man, convict style.

"I'm a graduate," Jaikrishna told me. "And divorced. I'm also a schizophrenic." His English was confident if imperfect. "When I'm on medication," he said, "it's under control but then I start forgetting to take the tablets and the problems come back."

This bothers me

Outsourcing Pregnancies to India

On the one hand, the women are compensated and cared for during their pregnancy. But outsourcing babies is just, well, weird and disturbing, especially once you get into competition between clinics and the possibility of Westerners who don't want to lose their figures or endure labour doing it, as opposed to severe infertility issues like they're doing now. But there doesn't seem to be much regulation to guide the industry. That's troubling.