Citizen group grades government 'F' on women and slum dwellers' rights

Citizen group Bahutva Karnataka has graded the state government ‘F’ in terms of rights of women as well as slum dwellers.

The report card on women’s rights, released on Tuesday, says that crimes against women rose to an all-time high of 14,468 in 2021, as per data from the National Crime Records Bureau. The government also shut down 71 Santwana Kendras that support domestic and sexual violence survivors.

Despite the nationwide ‘Beti Bachao Beti Padhao’ campaign, the state government’s position on the Hijab issue led to 17,000 Muslim women being deprived of education, the report says. Also, the government has not fulfilled its promises to women workers in the informal sector, for example, of regularising pourakarmikas.

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The report adds that cases of moral policing has worsened under the current regime, along with patriarchal politics through measures like the anti-conversion law. Releasing the report, Bahutva Karnataka and Naveddu Nilladiddare also released a charter of demands for ensuring justice in cases of sexual violence.

The report on slum residents’ rights prominently raised issues of land ownership and housing.

Unlike previous governments, the current government has not given land ownership to slum dwellers, or implemented its own 2020 order of distributing title deeds. It did not fulfill its legal obligation of acquiring privately owned slum land and handing it over to residents, the report says.

The report also alleges that the government had announced house construction for 97,000 slum residents under the Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana (PMAY) scheme, but allocated only Rs 1,500 crore for the Rs 6,500 crore project. As a result, house construction of 38,000 people have stopped midway, it says.

Besides, residents evicted from Bellandur and Kariammana Agrahara slums in 2020, and from Bhubaneswarinagar slum in Uttarahalli in 2022, are left on the streets. Residents of slums in Lingarajpuram and Pulakeshinagar live under threat of eviction.

The report also slammed the government for not creating opportunities for slum dwellers to participate in forums like ward committees, and for poor quality of healthcare in primary health centres.