OPINION

This sad story which may have been reported with bare facts that a four-year-old child was raped by a 40 year-old-man. The English newspaper reading class is seldom known to look at such reports beyond the headline, often dismissing it as one such another incident in one of those debased jhuggi-jhopri colonies.

But here I met a father last Sunday tending his four-year-old daughter at a government hospital. The child has just been medically examined in the presence of a woman constable by a lady doctor and she found her hymen to be ruptured. She was raped a few hours ago and the doctors did their best to gather medical evidence of the vile incident, which meant a lot of pain for the poor child. 

She cried of pain as the father that sultry evening waved a magazine to soothe her with some air inside the car, where she tried resting having undergone the ordeal of medical examination. The mother, meanwhile, stood witness to the process of the various samples being pasted on the slides and sealed for examination by the forensic laboratory. She had to suffer the ignominy of affirming on each sample that she was the rape victim’s mother.

We are now in the second week of September and Delhi University is still to finish with the admissions for the academic session 2023-24. The Delhi University (DU) last week announced that second spot admission rounds for undergraduate (UG) and BTech programmes for the 2023 academic session would now take place. At the earliest, it would be another week before this round is completed. The completion of the round is no guarantee that all the seats would filled.

Though the university never announced it officially, last year the university had 6000 seats vacant in the under-graduate programmes. In the percentage terms, almost 10 per cent of the seats allocated to Delhi University remained vacant. Where are the students going, obviously to the private universities in Delhi NCR? The other government universities offering under-graduate programme, Guru Govind Singh Indraprastha University (GGSIPU) and Ambedkar University of Delhi (AUD), complement the Delhi University with their equally laggard admission process.

This is surprising as the results of the qualifying examinations came out in June and we are now into September, three months but end of process nowhere in the sight. On the other hand, the private universities in Delhi-NCR completed their admission process long time back and have started their session too.

The organisation of G20 summit is just two weeks away. The city is getting ready for an event of such nature after a long time. Having been a resident of the national Capital for almost four decades now, one has been witness other such mega events in the past.

In 1982, the Asian Games were held, its organisation left behind a legacy infrastructure. Asiad gave us – Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium, Talkatora Swimming Pool, IG stadium, Yamuna Velodrome and the refurbishment of whole lot of the existing sports infrastructure. But more importantly it gave the Games Village and the Siri Fort auditorium complex, which added to the cultural life of the city.

In the times to come, the posh area of New Delhi grew up around this nerve centre. Delhi went to grow beyond the ‘Sarkari’ yellow coloured government quarter lining up the Ring Road. The Outer Ring is an Asiad legacy.

The Asian Games were soon after followed by the Non Aligned Movement (NAM) summit. In the Cold War era, non-aligned countries formed the major third bloc other than those who followed the United States and the Soviet Union. Before that was held CHOGM, the summit of the former colonies of the British Empire, which again was a large number.

Delhi after a very long time faced floods, though the Yamuna River routinely crosses the danger mark every year. The floods were largely on account of laxity on the part of people responsible for preventing the entry of water in the city. When there is human error, there always is scope for blame games.

So one can say, first there was flood in the river and now there is a flood of accusations floating around. Lieutenant Governor VK Saxena in a letter to the Chief Minister has said that a hydrographic profile of how far the Yamuna’s width, depth and the height can reach when excess water is released in it should be done. Excess water up to approximately 10 lakh cusec can be released from Hathni Kund in Haryana in future.

In the same letter the L-G has called the recent flood a ‘manageable exigency’ which could not be contained as sustainable desilting/dredging has been pending for the last 10 years. Delhi Water Minister Saurabh Bhardwaj immediately countered the letter saying that Saxena was responsible for the floods as the latter had directed an “innovative method called partial gravitational desilting” of drains which caused huge quantities of silt to be deposited in the Yamuna riverbed.

Opposition unity and catchy acronyms seems to have become the flavour of the season. First it was at the national level that major political parties came together to form an alliance and named it Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance that is I.N.D.I.A, creating quite a stir by the name itself.

The model has now been replicated by the teachers groups aligned to political parties which are part of the aforementioned alliance, for the upcoming polls of Delhi University Teachers Association (DUTA). The elections are due in end-September, however, with the announcement of candidates, campaign for all the practical purposes have begun.

Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-affiliated National Democratic Teachers front (NDTF) was first of the block announcing its panel, repeating the sitting DUTA president A K Bhagi as it presidential candidate. The scattered teachers’ groups opposed ideologically to the BJP have now sprung a surprise by launching Democratic United Teachers Alliance (D.U.TA). They have fielded a veteran of many battles and a popular face on the campus Aditya Narayan Misra as their candidate.