‘Gramvani’ – a radio-over-phone platform in rural hinterland of Bihar and Jharkhand aims to set a perfect example of technology leading to social change, more specifically eliminate the social evil of child marriage.

Breakthrough, a global human rights organisation came up with the project as part of its ‘Nation Against Child Marriage’ campaign in August 2013.

Encouraged by the response during its pilot stage running, the organisation has reintroduced the popular radio-tie up in Jharkhand and Bihar from January to March this year.

Built on an interactive voice response system, ‘Gramvani’ allows people to call into a number and leave a message about their community or listen to messages left by others.

Shobha S V, the project’s multimedia manager says the project is aimed at involving the people in a dialogue that is crucial for bringing in any social change.

“In tune with how technology can be used to bring about social change by reaching wide sections of people, we have designed the mobile radio Gramvani that caters to the rural populace of Jharkhand, Bihar and other areas.

“It is important to engage people to bring about any real change. Through this start up, they listen to the various audio interviews, radio drama and discussion programs related to child marriage. They can also record their suggestions and queries and get back to us, thus making the conversation two-way and more effective,” she explains.

Such a program comes in the wake of a recent report by Unicef stating that in South Asia, nearly half the number of girls who married early belonged to India. The figures claim that twenty-three million girls in India face the imminent threat of child marriage.

Child marriage in the country has been estimated to be decreasing at less than one per cent a year.

Working on a range of issues like health, infant mortality agriculture, domestic violence and gender issue, ‘Jharkhand Mobile Vani’ or ‘Gramvani’ aims to expand its ambit of broadcast and is currently working on a mechanism that allows the system to report cases of child marriage to the authority.

Meghna Rao, Campaign Manager of the project says they aim to make the radio project more robust.

“Till now, the people shared their experiences of child marriage with us and we tried to make them aware about the ill effects of the practice. We are designing the next step of this project, i.e.- The reporting mechanism where we can figure out a way of registering such cases to the officials and prevent such dastardly acts to take place,” she says.

Talking about the statistics and the findings during the research for the project since the past four years, Meghna says they found out that people practice child marriage out of the extreme fear for the safety of their girl child.
“While most of the women who called us believed that child marriage should not exist, around 80 per cent of the men say that they fear for the safety of their daughters. They prefer to marry off the girls at quite a young age than risking their lives,” she says.

A court here is on Thursday expected to hear the case of Puneet Kumar, who has been accused of fleeing to India in 2009 after being involved in a hit and run car mishap that resulted in the death of an Australian student and an injury to another.

Kumar was charged by Victoria Police for causing the death of 19-year-old Dean Hofstee and seriously injuring 20-year-old Clancy Coker in a road accident that happened in 2008. Both victims were students from Queensland.

Police then said alcohol levels in Kumar’s blood showed he was inebriated at the time of the accident.

Last year, in December, Kumar was produced before a court in Rajpura district in northern Punjab state, where he said he wanted the trial to continue in India as his life was under threat in Australia.

After being arrested in India, following a widespread manhunt by the Victorian and Indian federal police, Interpol plans to push for his extradition to Australia in the Delhi court, according to a police statement.

Puneet was arrested on November 29 after a five-year-long manhunt.

Puneet was pursuing a course in hospitality in Australia. He fled the country in 2009 using a friend’s passport after he was found guilty of negligent driving, according to media reports.

India has its ears to the ground on the developments in Afghanistan ahead of the 2014 drawdown of international forces and is “more than prepared” to face any challenges, said Spain’s Ambassador Gustavo Manuel de Aristegui y San Roman here.

In a talk at the India Habitat Centre here on Wednesday evening, Aristegui said in Afghanistan the Afghan troops and forces are readying to take over after the international forces’ drawdown with the Taliban presence looming in the background.

There would, however, be some international experts and some international troops remaining to assist the Afghan forces, he said.

On India and its role in Afghanistan, the Spanish Ambassador said: “I think India has some of the finest officers and armed forces in the world, and an extremely efficient security services, and intelligence services in the world.”

The 2014 drawdown “will be a challenge, but I think India is more than prepared for it,” he said at the talk organised by think tank Society for Policy Studies as part of its Ambassador-Lecture Series.

“I think that India is one of the countries that have one of the best analyses of what is going on in that part of the world, and having the best analyses allows you to anticipate, and successfully face risks that you are going to inevitably face,” he said.

Speaking on the topic ‘The New Geo-political Challenges of the early 21st century’, Aristegui outlined terrorism and fanaticism as among the major challenges in the world.

He said there cannot be any justification for terrorism or the ideology of fanaticism.

“Those that think that terrorism has any kind of justification or that fanatical ideologies are grounded on some kind of oppression, if we think that, then we have already lost the battle of reason.”

Referring to the Mumbai terror attacks of 2008, he said it was the portrayal of a new face of terror.

“We have seen the horrible face of a new kind of terrorism in Mumbai, which was not seen before.”

Aristegui said the ten terrorists who on November 26, 2008 held India’s commercial capital hostage for three days, were “fanatical terrorists” and the fact that they held ground for over three days showed “they were extremely well trained assassins, they knew exactly what they were doing… That is another kind of terrorism we will have to suffer more and more.”

He said the “fight against terrorism cannot be the fight of a single nation”.

“Spain had to suffer terrorism for over 50 years… Spain has developed channels to cooperate intensively and effectively with Indian authorities and different security services and agencies in the fight against organised crime and terrorism,” he said.

He also outlined manipulation of the financial markets by vested interests as another major challenge for the world. He said there are some elements who influence markets and attack the currencies of some countries to fatten their purses.

According to the envoy, the downturn in the rupee was due to speculation by “ruthless persons”.

India has been ranked below its two nuclear-armed neighbours – Pakistan and China – in the list of countries with a weak nuclear material security in the world, according to a US-based think-tank.

In the 2014 Nuclear Threat Initiative’s Nuclear Materials Security Index released on Thursday, India has been ranked 23rd out of 25 countries with weapons-usable nuclear materials.

India received 41 out of 100 points, which is improvement by one point from the 2012 score.

For comparison, China received 64 points and has been ranked at 20th spot, while Pakistan with 46 points stands at 22nd place.

India and these countries are included in the list of 25 countries with one kilogram or more of these materials, which also includes all other nuclear-armed states.

The Nuclear Threat Initiative (NTI) said this improvement reflects India’s first contribution to the IAEA Nuclear Security Fund. “Overall, however, India’s score remains low.”

This is due to a number of factors, including weak regulations that are written as guidance rather than as requirements; increasing quantities of weapons-usable nuclear materials for both civilian and military use and gaps in its regulatory structure such as a lack of an independent regulatory agency.

External risk factors, such as high levels of corruption, which undermine confidence in implementation or enforcement of security measures and also increase the risk that officials may contribute (even unwittingly) to the theft of nuclear material are also among the factors, it added.

Both India and China improved their scores since 2012 by one point by contributing to the IAEA Nuclear Security Fund, which supports the implementation of nuclear security activities, the report said.

In comparing both countries, India scored higher than China on the implementation of UN Security Council Resolution 1540 related to nuclear security issues.

China, however, scored higher in a number of areas, including: the existence of an independent regulatory agency; having invited a peer review of its nuclear security arrangements; and having strong regulations for control and accounting of materials.

Pakistan received 46 out of 100 possible points compared to India’s 41, the report said, adding that both countries improved their scores since 2012. Pakistan improved its score by publishing new regulations for the physical protection of nuclear facilities.

In comparing both countries, India scored higher than Pakistan on international legal commitments because India has adopted all of the relevant treaties whereas Pakistan has not.

Pakistan, however, scored higher in a number of areas, including: the existence of an independent regulatory agency; having invited peer review of its nuclear security arrangements; and having security and other personnel with access to nuclear materials subjected to additional vetting.

In addition, Pakistan has an operational Center of Excellence (COE), whereas the foundation stone for India’s COE, the Global Center for Nuclear Energy Partnership, was laid on January 3, 2014, it said.

In its report, NTI said India was briefed on the Index, along with other countries.

“Unfortunately, India did not use the opportunity to review and confirm the data, a process through which governments can choose to provide responses to one, some, or all questions depending on their sensitivities and help ensure the accuracy of the data,” it said.

“Out of the 25 countries with weapons usable nuclear materials, 17 (more than two-thirds) responded to the data review and confirmation request (including nuclear-weapons states such as France, the UK, and the US),” the report said.