'Life is hell for every sex worker'

PATNA: Four years ago, when the self-proclaimed unit in-charge of a polio eradication wing promised Seema (name changed) a job and asked her to accompany him to the district collectorate, the Muzaffarpur girl trusted him and did his bidding. Little did she know she would end up not as a polio drop administration agent but as a sex worker.


The self-styled government babu - his name was elusive to Seema as well - took her to Bohatola in Sitamarhi, an infamous red light area, and forced her into the flesh trade. Seema, a matriculate, is now 18, and knows no other world than this.


"Seema comes from a poor background and her family members could not afford litigation. Today, Bohatola is her home and she is disconnected from any person known to her parents," said Jahara Khatun, a representative of sex workers from the area.


Khatun told TOI Seema's story on the sidelines of a two-day state-level workshop on the welfare of sex workers, organized by the Mahila Development Center (MDC), which began on Tuesday. The programme was inaugurated by MDC director Paramhans Prasad Singh, Child's Rights Protection Commission (CRPC) chairperson Nisha Jha and other guests.


There are many girls like Seema across the state who are being lured with promises of jobs and forced into the flesh trade. " Life is hell for every girl who has got trapped in this trade. The lives of women in Chaturbhuj Sthan - a red light area in Muzaffarpur - are especially hellish," said Shabana Begum, a sex workers' representative from the area.


She elaborated on her comment and said everyone looks down upon the sex worker from Chaturbhuj Sthan and its adjoining areas. "No one respects us. Rickshaw-pullers demand we produce the fare even before allowing us to get onto their rickshaws. Some sex workers have cheated them earlier and made off without paying the fare, because of which they do not trust us," Shabana added.


"Once you are into the flesh trade, it' better to remain in it. No one will give you respect outside," said a sex workers' representative attending the workshop, not wanting to be named.


Ranju Begum, another representative, recounted what happened to a girl who managed to escape from the clutches of pimps. "Once I found an underage girl crying for help and stopped her and asked what was wrong. She said she had escaped from the clutches of some men who were forcing her into the flesh trade," said Ranju.


But worse fate awaited the poor girl - her family members refused to accept her because she was no longer 'pure. "She went through severe mental torture at home before she was finally married off by her parents," added Ranju.


Minki Khatoon, a representative from another red light area, complained of severe discrimination by civil society against sex workers and their children. "Several sex workers have complained to me that school teachers refuse to give admission to their children," Khatoon told TOI. The discrimination runs deep down that police raid red light areas looking for suspects after every incident of dacoity in town. They think the touts and pimps in red light areas are miscreants as well, she added.


All the representatives attending the workshop stressed upon the need for serious government intervention to save girls from being forced to become sex workers and to stop the flesh trade that is on in full swing in Sitamarhi, Saharsa, Purnia and other districts.


"Most of the women involved in this trade want to give it up but cannot do so as there is no alternative way for them to earn their living," said MDC director Singh. Dozens of social representatives from across the state, including NGOs working for the welfare of such vulnerable groups, are participating in the convention.


CRPC chairperson Nisha Jha assured all possible help for the welfare of sex workers' children. "We will make sure all government child welfare programmes reach these children," Jha said, asking the representatives to submit a detailed survey report on such children.
alokknmishra@gmail.com

2 IITians turn down lucrative job offers, tread new path in farming

PATNA: Treading a path less travelled, two IITians have taken to agriculture after turning down lucrative job offers by MNCs and made a mark for themselves within a few months. Beginning their offbeat initiative in October 2010 in Vaishali district, their activities now span six districts in Bihar.

Meet Shashank Kumar, an IIT-Delhi graduate (2004-2008 batch), and Manish Kumar, an IIT-Kharagpur postgraduate (2005-10 batch), who have embarked on their mission to improve the lot of farmers in the backwaters of Bihar with the aim to empower them, much to the chagrin of their parents.

The two techies were old friends, having prepared together for engineering entrance tests, a couple of years back. In October 2010, they persuaded a group of 14 farmers in Vaishali district, 30km from here, to do scientific agriculture.

"We suggested to farmers to cultivate 'rajma' instead of the conventional crop of wheat. But they ignored our suggestions outright," said Manish. "We were at our wits' end," Manish recalled adding, "but we somehow persuaded 18 farmers to experiment on six acres of land. Luckily, it was a huge success."

"The farmers earned Rs 1000 per kattha with an investment of Rs 400. For wheat, they used to invest Rs 350 and reap 50kg produce per kattha, earning Rs 400 to 500," said Manish, son of a retired clerk.

In February 2011, they founded an NGO, 'Farms n Farmers (FnF)', which does everything from soil testing to providing a market to farmers. Its activities have now expanded to adjoining districts including Muzaffarpur, Sitamarhi, Banka and Purnia.

"Our focus is on maximizing returns from land through natural farming," said Shashank.

In Purnia district, where corn and potato are predominantly grown, farmers usually leave their land unused from June to September. "We advised farmers to sow baby corn. As baby corn is reaped within 50 to 60 days, farmers had a bumper harvest just before raising another crop," said Manish, who hails from Chakdariya village in Vaishali district.

Several Purnia farmers harvested 25kg baby corn per kattha of land and sold it for an average amount of Rs 750, earning more than Rs 300, he said.

In Buxar, the farmers, facing water shortage, were advised to grow medicinal herbs, which need negligible irrigation.

"We sell directly to food processing companies. It helps farmers earn more," said Shashank. The FnF charges a nominal 10% of total sale value from farmers. The techies plan to lower this figure in future as more farmers join their initiative.

"We want to create a large network of small and marginal but happy and prosperous farmers," Shashank and Manish told TOI.

Though they are currently not using organic methods of farming, they said "organic is best." "Now that we have gained farmers' faith, we have started to work on organic farming. We are advising farmers to avoid using chemical fertilizer," they said.

FnF, which has more than 150 farmers associated with it, has an eight-member advisory team which includes Prof P K Sinha from IIM-Ahmedabad, Prof R Singh and P B S Bhadoria from IIT-Kharagpur, and Dr Bimla Rai from RAU, Pusa. Manish and Shashank hold regular training programmes in different parts of Bihar.

alokknmishra@gmail.com

Chapter on Super-30 in Japan book

PATNA: Bihar's maths wizard Anand Kumar of Super-30 fame has made it to a book in Japan that revolves around the development story of India.

Published by 'Bhushan' publishers, the book 'Indo No Shougeki', or Impact of India, has one chapter exclusively on Kumar's struggle and his Super-30 initiative under which 30 poor students are coached free to crack the prestigious IIT-JEE (Indian Institute of Technology-Joint Entrance Examination) every year. The chapter, in Japanese language, has been written by a senior journalist of a TV channel of Japan.

Priced at 1800 yen, the book describes Kumar as a 'wind of change' that has been contributing to India's rapid progress. It says that education is at the root of India's progress march and people like Kumar are providing strength to it. It further says that Kumar, who himself could not go to Cambridge for higher studies for want to money, has groomed more than 200 talented students from underprivileged families to make it to IITs.

"The book is quite popular among the students of management schools in Japan," Takyuki Doi, a Tokyo student who was recently in Patna, told Kumar. Several other students of management schools in Japan have planned to visit Kumar's Super-30 school in Patna and see how it runs, Doi said.

The story in the book comes after several newspapers and TV channels, including Discovery, have featured Kumar's Super-30 in write-ups and programmes. Recently, Japan's Kansai Telecasting Corporation crew shot a documentary on Kumar in Patna. Prior to that, Japan's STB Research Institute shot an hourlong film on Super-30 for NHK channel.

Asked about the book, Kumar said he is delighted. "Super-30 was started to help talented students from poor families, who would have otherwise found it difficult to continue studies," Kumar said and added the credit for each and every recognition to Super-30 goes to its successful students who burned midnight oil to realize their dream.

Flights' operation at weather god's mercy

PATNA: Safe landing of flights at the state capital's Jayaprakash Narayan International airport is completely dependent on favourable weather conditions, at least for now.

The airport has been left without navigational, visual and instrumental aids for about two months now. Due to the absence of such aids, landing of flights could be impossible if heavy rain lashes the city.

Patna airport is equipped with Instrument Landing System, ILS CAT-1, which helps planes land safely during poor weather conditions, when visibility is reduced to below 1,600 metres.

As monsoon has reached the state capital and rain consistently lashes the city, visibility at the airport is likely to go down in the days to come, sources at Patna Meterological Office told TOI.

"As heavy to very heavy rain is expected, visibility could go down to 500 metres during monsoon season. Clouds formation also has an impact on visibility reduction," Met officials said.

Currently, planes need a minimum visibility of 2800 metres to land at the city airport. This criterion is easily met in summer and planes do not have any visibility problem in landing. Such a visibility is not generally found during rainy season when visibility drops to as low as 500 metres to 1500 metres.

Unlike Delhi airport which is equipped with advanced ILS-3, the Patna airport's ILS CAT-1 is inadequate to deal with air traffic operations when weather is very poor, sources said.

According to sources, even this ILS CAT-1 system is undergoing some calibration (fine tuning) work to adjust its precision and effectiveness. Even though it has not been working for the past two months, it has not been set right. It is anybody's guess when this will be fully functional once again.

Using a combination of radio signals and high-intensity lighting, an ILS system provides precision guidance to aircrafts approaching and landing on a runway to enable safe landing during reduced visibility due to fog or rain.

"A team of technical experts, who have come from Delhi, are on the job and the ILS CAT-1 system would be functional soon," the airport officials concerned told TOI.

Patna airport has a runway length of 7,500 feet, which is below the ideal 8,000 feet required for the landing of big aircrafts such as Boeing 737 and Airbus A320. Due to obstacles in the approach funnel, planes use just about 5,600 feet during landing from either side.

As the airport has railway line on the northeastern side and Patna zoo on the southern side, there is no room for error or emergency. It was last year declared one of the most critical airports in the country.

Girls outclass boys in IA results

PATNA: Girls have once again stolen the thunder from boys in the Intermediate Arts and Vocational Courses examination, results of which were declared by Bihar School Examination Board (BSEB) here on Sunday.

The Intermediate Arts has seen an overwhelming pass percentage of 88.15%, while the Vocational Courses witnessed a 93.79% pass percentage.

The top 11 positions in the merit list have gone to girls. In the next 33 positions, there are only four boys at 12, 14, 18 and 39 positions. Thus, of the top 44 positions, as many as 40 have gone to girls!

Pranita Sareen of Sur Tulshi College, Katihar, has topped the examination scoring 85 %. Sareen got 425 marks out of the total of 500. Khushbu Kumari and Noida Khatoon of Samastipur and Sheohar are at second and third positions, securing 421 and 417 marks respectively.

While a total of 89.70% girls passed the Intermediate Arts examination, only 86.02% boys cleared it. In vocational courses, 93.79% students passed the examination.

A total of 3,59,287 students from 38 districts had taken the Intermediate Arts examination, of which 3,16,738 candidates cleared it. Among successful candidates, 31.12% passed in first class, 50.87% in second class and 5.81% in third division.

In vocational courses, 2,417 students had taken the examination, of which 2,267 were successful. Among them, 78.81% secured first division, 14.89% second division and 0.08% third division.

Announcing the results, BSEB chairman Rajmani Prasad Singh congratulated the successful candidates.

"Different ambitious educational programmes of the government have led to increased awareness among students for education. The awareness level has been increasing among the girls. They are even leaving boys way behind in performance," Singh told TOI.

BSEB had already announced the results of Intermediate Science and Commerce on June 6. "The Arts faculty results were delayed a little due to some unavoidable reasons," Singh said.

Patna airport to improve parking facilities

PATNA: The state capital's Jayaprakash Narayan International (JPNI) airport is likely to go in for comprehensive improvement of its parking facilities and its entry/exit paths.

As more and more Biharis are opting for air travel, congestion has grown considerably at the city airport in the past few years. Hence, JPNI authorities are keen on improving parking facilities and traffic flow.

BIT-Patna techies, who studied the complexities in traffic flow and parking facilities for flyers' vehicles over the past one year at Patna airport, recently submitted their recommendations to the airport director.

The eight civil engineering students led by S K Sinha have recommended a completely new layout to improve the existing arrangements. "I have recommended a complete overhaul to make things smoother," said S K Sinha.

The number of flyers at JPNI airport has been increasing at the rate of over 50% per annum for the past two years.

"If air traffic continues to grow at this rate here, there will be no option other than providing a multi-level parking as only limited space is available for the purpose," Sinha added.

Presently there are two passages connecting the airport to the city. It has been recommended that the eastern passage should be used exclusively for entrance and western passage for exit. As enough space is available, the width of the proposed entry and exit roads has been proposed to be increased from six metres to 8.2 metres.

It has been suggested that toll collection point be at the exit of the parking lot as it will not disturb the traffic flow outside the parking area. To make it smooth and fast, an electronic ticketing system can be put in use for automatic collection of toll, the report suggests.

The techies, who were asked to study the issue like the study of Delhi airport (parking) taken up by IIT-Delhi years ago, have suggested stationing security personnel at entry and exit points, which will work as a deterrent for vehicles moving in wrong directions and will also increase security. It has also recommended positioning of CCTV cameras at these points.

As Airports Authority of India (AAI) is waiting for land from the state government to build a new airport, it is eager to provide all possible facilities to flyers at the Patna airport.

"BIT-Patna has provided us the detailed study very recently. It has also been explained to us. The recommendations are presently being studied, after which we will take concrete steps to implement them," airport director Arvind Dubey said.

The study was taken up in May 2010 and the report was submitted to the authorities concerned on June 3, 2011.

Nasa acclaim for BIT-Patna techies

PATNA: Budding techies from Birla Institute of Technology (BIT), Patna, have shown their mettle at Lunabotics Mining Competition organized by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (Nasa), USA at Kennedy Space Center in Florida recently.

The 80-kg robot, indigenously developed by a nine-member team of BIT-Patna, was the only entry from India. Its robot tracking system, Caterpillar Track, was adjudged the best among 36 participants from 13 countries across the globe.

"Our robot had to excavate an artificial lunar surface which was created by Nasa scientists. It was a very tough job to excavate, as the moon's atmosphere was simulated by the scientists," said M A Hassan, in charge of the Nasa project of BIT-Patna.

"But even in that condition, our robot, which was sturdily built, worked well and our robot tracking system was adjudged the best among all the participants," Hassan, who has received an appreciation letter from director (external relations), Kennedy Space Center, told TOI.

A total of 36 engineering institutes had participated in the event held between May 23 and 28. Through remote commands, all participating teams had to make their robots excavate (artificial) lunar surface and collect maximum 'soil' within 15 minutes.

"It was so challenging that a total of 18 robots just could not work under that condition," Hassan said. The BIT-Patna robot could not only work well but also excavated and collected a total of 30kg lunar surface.

For its splendid performance, BIT-Patna team has been directly reinvited to the next year's competition at Florida. "We do not need to go through all the procedure to participate in the prestigious Nasa competition next year. We have got a direct invitation," said Hassan, who along with nine techies played a significant role in fabrication of the robot.

The techies who come from diverse engineering disciplines are third year students-Anmol Sharma, Rajat Tyagi, Vishwa Teja, Anuraj Reddy, Arup Sen, Saurav Morarka-and second year students Pitak Mitra and Shuvmay Ghosh.

The entire project cost the team around Rs 10 lakh, which was provided by companies and public sector undertakings.

Three engineering institutes from India were invited to take part in the prestigious annual competition. But along with BIT-Patna only one institute from South India had participated. The robot of the other participant failed to perform at the demonstration.

Reacting to the feat, BIT-Patna director B N Giri told TOI: "I am more than happy. My students have made us all proud. In the wake of this appreciation, we will set up a full-fledged robotic lab on our campus to provide the students an opportunity to excel in the field."

Patna airport No. 1 in country

Patna: Biharis’ craze for air travel has seen an unprecedented upswing. Once again, city’s Jayaprakash Narayan International airport has topped in terms of maximum air passenger percentage growth among all airports in India this year.

Handling 51.8 % more flyers in the year 2010-2011 than what it had handled last year, JPNI airport has left behind the international airports at Delhi , Mumbai, Chennai and Kolkata which handled 14.6%, 13.3%, 14.4% and 19.7% more flyers than last year respectively. All other 46 airports across the country were also left far behind.

According to official figures, Patna airport handled 8,38,509 passengers in 2010-11. It had handled a total of 5,52,440 passengers in the year 2009-10. The airport had registered a growth of 42.2 per cent in terms of passengers’ flow in 2009-10, which was also highest in the country.

JPNI airport which was at 25^th among all 46 airports in India in terms of total passenger flow during 2009-2010, has gone up three notches this year. While in the year 2008-09, JPNI airport was on 34^th position it arrowed up to 22^nd rank this year, leaving behind posh airports like Amritsar, Trichy and Vishakhapatnam.

During its super-show last year, Patna airport had moved ahead of Bagdogra, Jammu, Raipur, Varanasi, Agartala, Chandigarh, Madurai, Vadodara and Port Blair airports in terms of passenger flow leaving them way behind.

Its excellent show is indeed surprising in the sense that JPNI airport was declared as the most critical airports by the director general of civil aviation in 2010.

Pilots consider landing strips at Patna airport as nightmarish as the runway here is shorter than normal, with no room for error or emergency. DGCA had expressed fears in its reports after Mangalore air crash that a skidding of plane could mean the plane breaching the boundary wall and ramming a train as a railway line is just beyond the 6,000ft runway.

The aircraft movement has also consistently grown over the past years. While, the number of both domestic and international aircraft movement stood at 5,230 in 2008-09, it went up to 7,464 in 2009-10 and next year to 9,547.

On this growth front too, Patna airport has left Delhi, Chennai, Kolkata, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Mumbai and other airports way behind. Bihar has second position on this front following Chandigarh with 36.5% growth.

“This remarkable growth has been achieved in the face of severe constraints. Patna airport will attract even more flyers if the state government gives a serious consideration to airport’s expansion and removes the existing obstacles from the approach path,” said JPNI director Arvind Dubey adding unfortunately, the government never shows equivalent eagerness.

“We will install necessary infrastructure, pursuant to the provision of necessary land by the government, to sustain this extraordinary show,” Dubey added.

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Close shave for 95 as bird hits JetLite flight

PATNA: A JetLite flight from Mumbai to Patna via Ranchi with 95 passengers on board had a close call as it suffered a bird hit while landing at the Jayaprakash Narayan International Airport here on Wednesday morning.

The S2-721 flight took off from Mumbai at 5.40am and landed at Ranchi at 7:55am from where it took off for Patna at 8:35am. As the Boeing-737 approached the Patna airport around 9.20am, its nose hit an eagle at an altitude of 1,000 metres.

Though the commander landed the plane safely, he asked for a thorough technical inspection of the aircraft before flying it to Mumbai. While JetLite's three Patna-based engineers detected few snags, sources said, another technical team reached Patna from Delhi by the JetLite's afternoon flight to help them remove the snags.

Some of the stranded flyers, scheduled to take connecting flights from Mumbai, were flown to Delhi by JetLite's Patna-Delhi flight, S2-287, around 1.30pm en route to Mumbai.

The Mumbai flight was given clearance at 3.30pm, but the captain decided against taking off with all the passengers aboard due to high air temperature. As the airline's move to offload ten flyers met with stiff resistance, the plane finally took off at 5:30pm when the temperature fell.

A JetLite statement later attributed the grounding of the plane to an inspection by its engineering team. It did not talk about any bird hit.

The incident also delayed a GoAir Patna-Delhi flight by 50 minutes as its pilot spotted an eagle's cadaver on the runway.

Crows and eagles in the sky over the Patna airport are not an uncommon sight as there are quite a few slaughterhouses nearby, in the northwest of the airport.