Sunday, December 29, 2013

"சாதி"

"சாதி"
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நான் நன்றாக படித்து இருக்கிறேன் !!!

என்னிடம் படிப்பை கேட்கவில்லை!

நான் நேர்மையானவன் !!!

என் நேர்மையை பார்க்கவில்லை !

நான் நல்ல வேலைஇல் இருக்கிறேன்!!!

என் வேலையை பற்றி கேட்கவில்லை!

மாறாக

என்னை என்ன சாதி என்று கேட்கிறான்

நானோ சக்கிலியன் !!!!
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சாமி

Monday, December 23, 2013

ஒடுக்கப்பட்ட மக்களின் கலைகளை

தோழர்களுக்கு வணக்கம்!!!
ஒடுக்கப்பட்ட மக்களின் கலைகளை கால நெடுகிலும் தீண்டதகாத கலைகளாக புறக்கணிக்கப்படுகிறது.அதிலும் நமக்கு தெரிவதெல்லாம் தப்பட்டம்தான் ,இன்று சினிமாவிலும் பார்க்கிறோம் ,ஆனால் அருந்ததியர் மக்களின் கலைகள் மறைக்கப்பட்டு உள்ளது ,அதில் கட்வுமத்ட்டம் என்பது அருந்ததியர் கோவில் திருவிழாக்களில்,எலவு வீடுகளில் அடித்து ஆடுவது வழக்கம் ,இது தவிலுக்கு முந்தின வடிவம் ,இதை பற்றிய ஆய்வுகள் இல்லை.மேற்கு மண்டலத்தில் வாழும் அருந்ததியர்கள் இதை வாசிக்கிறார்கள்.
கருப்புசாமி

Thursday, December 12, 2013

PSC Book released

Dear Friends

READ working with Arunthathiyar (Dalit) children education and Psychosocial care ,life skill education ,Student enrichment programme with collaboration with NIMHANS(National institute of mental health Nero science ) Psyhotric social work department ,READ published book on our experience ,This book received by Dr.Sekar (NIMHANS) ,Mr.William (Country Director) EveryChild India

Sunday, November 3, 2013

Sumangali scheme or sumangali thittam

http://www.youtube.com/v/z7Xxny9rR24?version=3&autohide=1&attribution_tag=oFfsJ5y51Aw0uxG6AcBT0A&autoplay=1&autohide=1&showinfo=1&feature=share

Sumangali scheme or sumangali thittam

http://www.youtube.com/v/z7Xxny9rR24?version=3&autohide=1&attribution_tag=oFfsJ5y51Aw0uxG6AcBT0A&autoplay=1&autohide=1&showinfo=1&feature=share

Saturday, October 19, 2013

Sumangali Thittam victims rescued

Dear Friends ,My continues message Erode district has 353 spinning mills ,among 172 spinning has new bonded labour system ,37000 young girls are new bonded under sumangali thittam 60% are Dalit girls ,14th Oct 2013 ,Erode dist ,Sathyamangalam, PV .Spining mill 47 sumangali /Bonded girls rescued ,They are from Assam ,Chatieshkar and Tamilnadu

Saturday, October 12, 2013

Sumangali thittam consulataion

Erode District has 353 spinning mills ,there are 37000 young girls are under sumangali scheme ,Mills not pay minimum wage per day 8 hours Rs.224,There is no proper PF,ESI and bonus .It is like jail and it is modern slavery ,Therefore TPF@READ conducted Erode dit level consulataion for this issue there are 65 participants from different civil societies and trade unions participated this consulation on 12th oct 2013 at Gobi ,Erode.dt

Wednesday, October 2, 2013

PUNITHA (+playlist)-Dalit gril rapped and murder 2008


Punitha was a Dalit gril ,She was rapped and murder at Sathyamangalam,Erode Dt.Tamilnadu ,She was 14 years old Her father is bonded labour working in agricultural farm ,But now he is leaved from farm .Parents are illiterate .She has younger sister ,2008 August 10th .She went to school ,She was late ,School teacher send back to her home ,On the way in agricultural farm ,so called upper caste youth ,rapped and murder to Punitha ...Therefore READ intervention ,our own capacity .Also we taken documentary film with support of Mr.Joe

Wednesday, September 25, 2013

Tamilselvi -She joined a nurse training -With READ support

Ms.Tamilselvi is a 19yeras girl ,Her father is scavenger ,working at Puliyampatti municipality ,He is working last 16 years .She did marriage ,But her husband was died .Due to family situation she joined spinning mill under sumangali thittam .Her working condition is so bad ,She not able to continue .Last month READ team ,we met her family ,We given counseling to her parents .Finaly she came out mill .Today READ supported her education ,she joined nursing course .Now she is now happy .Friends you can make change to many Tamilselvi lifes ...Please contact to READ AND GIVE YOUR SUPPORT AND DONATION ....Please visit our website ..www.readindia.org.in

Wednesday, September 11, 2013

Small vocational training centre for Scavengers and Sumangali victims

Dear Friends !!!
READ started small vocational training centre on 2nd Sept 2013 ,At Erode Dist for scavengers family and sumangali victims .READ provide computer skill,Tailoring,Garment making ,hand work and other ...This centre was opened by Mr.A.Jayakumar ,and Mr.Parthasarathy .

Saturday, June 29, 2013

10th and 12th Public exam passed Dalit(Arunthathiyar) students programme

Dear Friends

Greetings from READ!!!

READ conducting every year motivation programme for Dalit(Arunthathiyar) 10th @12th class passed students .

This is the good experience for us motivation ,facilitation and guidance for higher studies .We believe education will break the caste discrimination and caste exploitation.

Please give your support and solidarity and hand for most marginalized students .

Date :30th June 2013 ,PV .Hotel ,Sathyamangalam,Erode District
Contact :9842090035

Thanks

Karuppusamy

  

Monday, June 10, 2013

Stop slavery Sumangali Thittam Tamilnadu mills 2 lakhs girls exploiting"

Dear Sir/Madam


I've started the petition "Tamilnadu ,The Chief Minister: Stop slavery Sumangali Thittam Tamilnadu mills 2 lakhs girls exploiting" and need your help to get it off the ground.
Will you take 30 seconds to sign it right now? Here's the link:
http://www.change.org/en-IN/petitions/tamilnadu-the-chief-minister-stop-slavery-sumangali-thittam-tamilnadu-mills-2-lakhs-girls-exploiting
Here's why it's important:

Workers in the textile mills and garment factories in Tamil Nadu, South India, suffer exploitative working conditions. In ‘Maid in India’, a report by SOMO and ICN it is documented that more than 100,000 girls – possibly up to 300,000 – work under employment schemes, often referred to as Sumangali, that amount to bonded labour. Workers make long hours, including forced overtime, under unhealthy conditions. Wages in the spinning mills are far below the legal minimum. Sumangali Thittam (wedding scheme) is when young girls are recruited with the promise of a large payout (for their dowry) at the end of 3-5 years; however, such payouts are often empty promises. Young Dalit girls are most vulnerable – with more than 60% of the workers recruited under this scheme being Dalit
READ had research study on 2010 with 250 samples says” 28% were below the age of 14 and remaining was below 18 years. Besides 44% of the respondents’ parents were engaged as agriculture coolie and all the families having debt. The Sumangali Scheme workers were suffering from a number of health issues which so metimestopped them from employment. The respondents had poor facilities in food (23%), toilet (44%). All the respondents were forced to work for 12 hours per day. 82% faced verbal abuse and 5% attained sexual arrestment by co-workers. Only 12-14% of the respondents received bonus and provident fund from this scheme. The girls were facing numerous problems in the workplace. Those were all the girls were forced to work, having no rest at working time, very short time for lunch / tea break. Besides, they faced verbal abuse (82%), long working hours (86%), over lighting (57%), not allowing for toilet at work time (48%), over speed machinery (44%).
Workers are housed in restricted access sites in poor conditions, are paid low wages, from which housing and food costs are deducted. Girls in the age group of 12-18 are most vulnerable to be recruited. Some of the issues affecting the workers include forced labour, child labour, long working days, mandatory overtime, caste discrimination and unsafe working conditions are common.
You can sign my petition by clicking here.
Thanks!
Karuppu Samy

READ PSC Two days training

Saturday, June 8, 2013

Tuesday, June 4, 2013

An Untouchable-Caste Woman Forges Into Indian Village Politics Discrimination of caste, sex, remains in Indian politics

An Untouchable-Caste Woman Forges Into Indian Village Politics

Discrimination of caste, sex, remains in Indian politics

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SATHYAMANGALAM, India—A landless female laborer from a village in Tamil Nadu, India, has become the first woman in her marginalized community to run for presidency of her local governing body.
Kalamani, 37, won only threats from upper-caste landowners last year when she ran for president of the General Panchayat (a local governing body). She did not win in the polls, but she did inspire others in her community.
Kalamani only goes by one name, as surnames denote caste and thus make people vulnerable to discrimination. She belongs to the Arundhatiyaar community, the lowest among the lowest castes in Tamil Nadu State, known as the Untouchable caste. The age-old social practice of untouchability holds that the upper-castes should not touch any Arundhatiyaar.
In her village of Kondamathanoor, huts and tiny houses line both sides of a narrow mud lane. Dogs and hens roam. A scantily clad old man lies on a jute-knit cot. No upper-caste person ventures down the lanes of this Arundhatiyaar village.
Kalamani’s hut smells of dried fish. Her dinner cooks over a kerosene stove in the corner and her friendly dog hangs about.
“I got married at the age of 17 years. At that time, my husband worked as a bonded laborer in the fields of upper-caste landlords. I worked as an agricultural daily wager and earned 30 rupees ($0.54) a day.”

Meager Campaign Funds

Today, Kalamani does the same work but earns 200 rupees ($4) a day. Wages have increased in the past two decades, but so have expenses. She had no money to campaign in the elections; “I borrowed 50,000 rupees ($893) from my relatives and the women’s federation group,” she said.
In many villages of India, local politics are still controlled to a great extent by the wealthy landlords who are also the employers for most of the lower caste, landless laborers like Kalamani. Running in elections against them is taking a great risk.
“I came to this village 20 years ago to live with my husband after we were married. Since then, I have never seen anyone from here running for the Panchayat president’s election—everyone is afraid of upper caste landlords who hold most of the land here.”
When Kalamani ran for elections, she was mocked and threatened.
Kalamani recalled, “They said, ‘Don’t run for president; you can run for ward councilor [a low-level post in the governing council].’”

Support, Ridicule

Kalamani took strength from 2,500 women of the Sakkiyar Women Society Federation (SWSF) she leads. The Federation organizes Arundhatiyaar women in 81 villages for thrift and credit and addresses local women’s rights issues.
“When I talked with people in my community, they choose not to say much, but some said they’ll vote for me. The upper caste candidate gave food, liquor, and 300 rupees to each person of our community in the village.”
Kalamani won only 85 votes out of the 5,000 polled. The winner got 1,601 votes.
“If I would have won, it would have been good. But I lost and I lost the money I spent on campaigning. My husband asked me why I ran for elections and lost so much money.”
Kalamani’s daughter, Annakodi, is a big encouragement for her. She stands by her mother and understands the amount of courage and perseverance that goes into her mother’s decisions.
“I’m a first generation school attendee,” Annakodi said. “I became the first girl in my village to complete school, the first girl to complete college, and now the first girl to study an M.Sc. [Masters of Science] course.”
“It would not have been possible without my mother’s support,” Annakodi said. Kalamani also took a loan from SWSF to support her daughter’s education.
While sitting down on her floor with her little niece, Kalamani pesters shy Annakodi to talk in English. “I want to become a social worker and encourage more girls in my village to educate themselves. Most of the girls drop out from school after eighth or ninth grades,” Annakodi said.
Out of six candidates for president of the General Panchayat, Kalamani was the only woman and the only lower caste person.
Kalamani remains hopeful for the next elections. “In 15 wards of the Panchayat, some villages don’t know me. If I’m able to reach them and gather their support, and if my own community overcomes its fear of rich landlords and supports me, I can win.”

Friday, May 3, 2013

Summer camp for Dalit children

Dear Friends :

READ and INDP conducted summer camp for Dalit children at Anthiyur 22nd to 28th April .There was dance,songs,art ,interaction ,music and others .

Thanks

Karuppusamy

Tuesday, April 16, 2013

community training centre opned

Dear Friends !!!

READ started 2001 for Arunthathiyar(Dalit) children education ,In our journey ,we have dream for construct community training centre ,Because we want to train our community children,youth and women for community empowerment .

This dream now slowly completing with support of INDP . Therefore 14th April 2013 ,we opened one portion of training centre on Dr.Ambedkar birth day .We are happy and proud to bring the change among society on equality.

Thanks

Karuppusamy
 

Monday, March 18, 2013

Womens day celebration with franch delegates

Dear Friends

READ,INDP,SWSF,VIDIYAL had womens day celebaration on `14th March at Sathyamangalam,Erode dt ,Evening 6Pm to 10 Pm .We had traditional art forms ,such as like Dalit culture specially Arunthathiyar drum beating .

At that time same time from france Mr.Markwill group had music .

Saturday, March 9, 2013

Community farm


 Nurchary and community building

Arunthathiyar(Dalit) community farm and resource centre .Please visit us and learn about issue,farming,cooperatives ,organic farming ,green club for children and nurcharsy .Thanks

Tuesday, February 5, 2013

Consulataion for MDGs impact on rural Dalit women

We conducted consultation for MDGs impact on rural Dalit women on 5th Feb 2013 at Erode dt ,Tamilnadu

Tuesday, January 29, 2013

Manual sacvenging press news

Manual scavenging eradication petition submitted to Erode ,Press news published in Malai Malar and other media

Monday, January 28, 2013

Manual scavenging at Erode t

Today pettion submitted to erode dist collector for eradication of manual scavenging.There are till manual scavenging existing around Erode dt   

Thursday, January 24, 2013

READ works at Dharmapuri

READ started intervention at Dharmapuri district at Kailayapuram with children and youth and women ,Recently we conducted training for women ,children and youth 

Monday, January 14, 2013

Community meeting for training centre constraction

READ and our federation organize the training centre and integrated agricultural farms .We called community ,We discussed for constraction .Community will support for work with out labour fee .

Wednesday, January 9, 2013

READ award 2012

READ got best partner of the year 2012 .We thank to our donors and READ team .

By
R.Karuppusamy
Director



Monday, January 7, 2013

In parts of India, dowry schemes are used to lure girls to bonded labour (Sumangali Thittam issue)


Former bonded textile worker Vasandi, at left in blue, with a friend being trained in tailoring by a group called Rights, Education and Development in Satyamangalam. (Stephanie Nolen, The Globe and Mail) 
Breaking Caste

In parts of India, dowry schemes are used to lure girls to bonded labour


Vasandi heard the girls in her village talking: Satellite television with movies. Air conditioning. Three meals a day. Swimming pools. And after three years, a bonus of 36,000 rupees (about $650), a sum of money so huge she could barely picture what it might look like, all those rupees stacked in a heap.
It could all be hers, if she were lucky enough to work in a local textile mill, the girls said.
They had heard the news from a recruiter, who was paid 1,500 rupees ($30) for each new single girl he brought to the mill works, with its unending hunger for fit bodies to keep the machines running 24 hours a day.
To Vasandi (who, like many southern Indians, uses only one name) it sounded splendid. She was 16. Not long before, she had left school after Grade 7. She was living with her family in a stuffy one-room house in a rural village.
And so, in May, 2010, her father dropped her at the gate of JV Spinning Mill outside this small industrial town. She put her small bag of clothes in the dorm she would share with 320 other women, mostly Dalits like herself, from the “untouchable” bottom of the Hindu caste system.
Within days, she had been trained to run skeins of cotton thread on to a giant spindle, and to clean cotton fibers off the machine continuously to keep it from jamming. Her ears grew accustomed to the constant thunderous clatter in the mill, and she got used to waking at dusk for a night shift.
She was working at one of the hundreds of mills and dye operations and garment factories that dot the plains of western Tamil Nadu, spinning cotton for textile factories that supply the biggest European and North American retail chains, including many brands people found this week under their Christmas trees.
H&M, Abercrombie and Fitch, and Marks and Spencer have all sourced materials from this area over the past few years.
There were indeed movies on the dormitory TV, but she was usually too tired after a 12-hour shift to watch them. There was a pool, where she dipped her feet, but none of the girls knew how to swim.
She was desperately homesick. She had never been away from her family and village before, and it would be six months before she was allowed home for a few days’ visit. And the dormitory warden bolted the door on her building each night from the outside.
Still, she was earning $50 a month, with the promise of that bonus dangling a few years in the future. So she tried to settle in.
Her parents were earning a couple of dollars a day doing occasional agricultural labour – “coolie work,” as it is called in English and Tamil around here – on the farm of a dominant-caste landowner. But often there was no work. And no one Vasandi knew – other than the mill girls – had ever had a steady, waged job.
For a barely educated Dalit girl, it could seem a rare opportunity, marketed as Somangali Thittam, or “the marriage scheme” – an ostensible social-welfare plan provided by the textile industry, as a payoff from India’s growing participation in the global economy.
Except for just a few details.
‘Bonus’ or bondage?
It was, for one thing, illegal. As a child under 18, she was by law required to be in school. She was also underpaid, earning less than half even Tamil Nadu’s low minimum wage for apprentice textile workers, 196 rupees ($4) a day. (The mills counter that the lodging and meals they provide, which are obligatory, represent the balance of the wages.)
What’s more, unknown to Vasandi, the money for that promised three-year bonus was being deducted from her own wages – making her, technically, a bonded labourer, which has been illegal in India since 1976.
Finally, the bonus was explicitly marketed as being for her dowry – the cash and jewellery her parents would be expected to give her in-laws at her marriage. Dowry has been illegal in this country almost as long as bonded labour. But there is so little enforcement of the law that the textile mills market the scheme with images of wedding jewellery designed right into the logo.

Vasandi never found out what that many rupees look like all together. She left her job this past May, two years after she started: She was anxious because girls were getting injured or falling ill from overwork around her. She thought she would be given the portion of her bonus she had earned – but the warden informed her that in leaving before the full three years, she would get nothing.
She admits she should have seen it coming: In her two years at the mill, she had only ever seen six girls out of some 600 receive their bonuses. Others were injured and let go or wore out and quit first – almost anyone close to the three-year mark would be fired for some pretext or another, she says.
That practice was found to be widespread in an industry audit by the Centre for Research on Multinational Corporations (SOMO), a Netherlands-based independent non-profit research organization.
Asha Kowtal, general secretary of the All-India Dalit Women’s Rights Forum, says the Somangali schemes are nothing more than the caste system reinvented for an industrialized economy.
“How many Brahmin girls do you find in Somangali Thittam? How many Iyengar?” she asks, referring to the occupation-based groups that are considered to be the top of the Hindu caste system. “Only untouchable communities are making use of this. Somebody sitting in Toronto is buying a Banana Republic T-shirt or a Gap one and not thinking about reinforcing the caste structure and the patriarchy.”
The supply-chain sidestep
The Somangali Thittam scheme has been in place for about 10 years, says Karrupu Samy, who runs an organization called Rights, Education and Development (READ) that advocates for Dalits in bonded labour. In the past several years, READ has attracted the attention of international ethical-trade campaigners and thus of major clothing chains.
In a statement, H&M, for example, says it views the “schemes as absolutely unacceptable,” but because the mills are only secondary suppliers, “we do not have direct contractual influence.” So it pressures its own suppliers to pressure theirs, and lends support to the ethical-trade groups, the company says.
After 112 garment workers, most of them young women, died in a blaze in Bangladesh in November, companies whose clothes were being stitched there, including Walmart and Sears, said they had no idea that their products were being made in that factory, which had repeatedly been cited for safety violations such as locked exits and blocked stairwells.
The companies said that local middlemen had subcontracted out their work, a murky system that made the supply chain hard to follow – and which is equally common in India.
International scrutiny has prompted some of the mills in Tamil Nadu to make improvements, such as introducing health insurance, raising the minimum age of employees and increasing the contact permitted with families.
But India’s textile sector is so loosely organized – and facing such intense competition from China and Bangladesh – that mills change their names often to make checks, and in practice face little scrutiny, SOMO has found in repeated studies.

It says a majority of the mill workers are still under 18, with as many as a fifth of them younger than 14. A 2010 investigation by the Tamil Nadu State Commission for Women estimated that 37,000 young women are employed in the Somangali scheme, across 900 mills in the state.
The Globe and Mail conducted lengthy interviews with five young women who have worked in the mills in the past year under Somangali Thittam; they told near-identical stories. The JV Spinning Mill and the other factories involved all refused to answer questions or to admit a journalist. Of eight other mills contacted, six refused to talk and two said the scheme had been stopped.

SOMO says some have indeed stopped it. But READ’s Mr. Samy has a darker reading: “All the international brands know about Somangali now, so the factories call it by another name,” he says.
Staff with the Southern Indian Mills Association also refused to answer questions, but in a recent public forum on the scheme a director described it as an “opportunity for the empowerment of women.”
It is true that the mill jobs are about the only work on offer in this region for young women with limited education. Female workforce participation remains low, as few jobs are believed appropriate for women. And the caste system remains deeply entrenched: Dalit girls are considered for even fewer jobs.


“When I went to work, there was some respect,” says Vasandi. “People said, ‘Okay, these girls are earning money.’”
But Mr. Samy argues that the mills are preying on his community, and reinforcing the idea that these factory jobs are the best these girls can hope for. “Only higher education is going to change things,” he says.
Mr. Samy himself has a master’s degree in social work, but he remains a rarity in a caste group where tens of thousands of people still work in “manual scavenging” – collecting and disposing of human excrement.
“These companies interrupt the education of these girls, and exploit them,” he says. “We need work, but not for under-18-year-olds.”
‘I’m too old to go back to school’
Divya Naharaj was 14 and just past third grade (with illiterate parents and teachers who rarely showed up at school, she had struggled to get even that far) when an agent came to her two-room house in the village of Mangalapuram to talk to her.
“He told me, ‘Your uncle’s daughter is working there and you can also go and your family’s problems will be solved,’” she said. “My parents have only coolie work, so they don’t earn much, and they have three daughters” – so a hefty dowry bill loomed on their horizon.
Ms. Naharaj went to the S. M. Mill in Shakti in January, 2010, learned to operate a knitting loom, and stuck it out for 19 months, working a cycle of four days of night shifts and seven days of day shifts, with a day off in between. She described her time at the mill in a grim, flat voice.
When she left to start working, Ms. Naharaj didn’t imagine she was leaving school forever. “I had the plan to go back to school after the mill, but I haven’t. I wanted to be a teacher, but now I’m too old to go back to school and sit with all the small children.”
Some textile companies offer continuing education classes to support workers to finish high school, as Ms. Naharaj’s did – but only after a 10- or 12-hour shift. “I wanted to go to class. But it was that or sleeping. And I was so tired.” The closest she got to school was to take magazines and joke books out of the library.
These days she does housework; her two younger sisters go to school and her parents work in the fields until after dark.
Ms. Kowtal of the Dalit Women’s Rights Forum says the Somongali scheme perpetuates the idea that a woman’s worth is in her marriage, and that she is a financial burden to her family. But she isn’t surprised to see it so openly marketed, because the Tamil Nadu government does it too – offering four grams of gold and $500 of “marriage assistance” to any girl who completes high school.
The state’s chief minister, Jayalalitha, triumphantly introduced the plan a couple of years ago as part of a spate of measures she claimed would boost the status of women, openly defying the national dowry ban.
Ms. Kotwal calls this a classic Indian paradox: The country has excellent laws on paper, but zero enforcement when it comes to the interests of the poor, marginalized or out-caste.
One reason the mills like the scheme, READ’s Mr. Samy says, is that the teenage female workers can all be classed as apprentices, and thus by law can’t organize into labour unions.
READ attempts to advocate for them; for example, it is trying to help Vasandi get her withheld wages. It also tries to give young women who leave the mills job training – the state government is supposed to provide them low-interest loans to start small businesses, but the reality is that most get married when they go home, and do not do paid work again, except in landlords’ fields.
Vasandi is learning to stitch clothes, but she is also waiting for a wedding. “My parents are looking for a boy,” she says, ducking her head shyly.
And her parents will borrow money to pay her dowry – a big pile of rupees.