Personal Thought: The negative & positive on Women's Day 

Recently, the Women's Day was celebrated all over the world, throughout India and all across Madhya Pradesh, but still some things are left to be reverberated and elaborated. Celebrating Women's Day with our first women President in appointment is sure a pleasant thing. But, at the same time, hosting the Bangalore Open Tennis tournament with India's only women talent in tennis- `Sania Mirza' not participating due to fear of fresh controversies is a matter of disappointment and shame. The Gujarat riots victim- Bilkis Bano, getting justice, although delayed, is a thing to boast about on the Women's Day, but the thousands of women who are victimised everyday at the hands of dirty-minded men, going unheard and unnoticed is a thing of pity. Till this point, the balance was somewhat equal on both the sides, but thinking into the depths of the matter we get drowned into the negative side of it.

The recent rise, in fact the alarming rise in chain-snatching and looting of women across the State and the culprits getting away without being caught has made women to fear going outside alone. The recent burning of two dalit women, in return for their protest, their brave resistance to save their dignity, shows that probably in these villages also, the dirty-minded men are more powerful than the law and judiciary. And our state Madhya Pradesh was brought to the fore, when newspapers flashed that MP had the maximum number of rape and molestation cases, which obviously don't include those cases, for which, even the FIRs were not registered. The same newspapers also flashed the various schemes and programmes launched by the government on the Women's Day. Was this day used by dirty politicians to increase their political support or did they really have the upliftment and welfare of women at the back of their minds, is a question to which I find an obvious answer. An answer that overloads the segment of the balance that weighs negative things in it.

Lijo Joseph