Palestinian children need to be protected
Infant Protection Day is observed every year on November 7 worldwide to create awareness about the importance of protecting, promoting, and developing infants with the intent to safeguard the world’s future.
With this in mind, this day also calls for our direct attention towards the new borns that are dying at an alarming rate in Gaza. Israel’s absolute siege on the region has keeled over the healthcare system entirely, putting the expecting mothers and their unborn babies lives at stake. On field, doctors are grappling with fear as the patients, including new borns, are being treated without the use of anaesthesia.
The lives of the little ones are hanging by a thread in incubators after Israel cuts fuel. The situation in Gaza has escalated due to the blockage of water and electricity that is majorly contributing towards the critical cases of the infants. Lives of premature babies are hinging on this catastrophic condition and the risk of maternal and infant mortality has also aggravated.
Today when we speak about the protection of infants and care they need after birth, let the world also know about the misery of these innocent souls, who are deprived of the basic medical assistance and are exposed to life-threatening challenges. Palestinian babies do have equal
importance. They too are the future of the world. So let’s not abstain ourselves to insist on safeguarding their lives.
Simran Shaikh, Ponda
Courts are for dispensing justice
A miffed CJI has rightly said that lawyers must not reduce the Supreme Court to a ‘tarikh pe tarikh’ court by requesting at the slightest pretext, adjournment of cases listed for hearing. The highest court in the land is meant for dispensing definitive justice not delaying it. There are already a staggering 4.38 crore cases pending before various courts in India, and the 25 High Courts alone account for @ 61 lakhs of them, the less said about pendency in the Supreme Court the better. The HCs don’t have the concept of adjournment slips but the Supreme Court is still continuing with the practice for reasons best known to it. This leads to a pattern of stubborn, wealthy and well connected clients seeking adjournment of cases they are a party to and very often the court grants the request in the blink of an eye. Powerful legal eagles representing influential clients make matters worse by using the instrument of adjournment as a strategic tool to wear down the plaintiffs and win cases.
Court proceedings in the country usually turn out to be never ending affairs, many defendants die during the course of the trial while others waste time and humungous amounts of money in pursuit of justice. It is also to be noted that there are @ 5,55,000 prisoners in Indian jails of which @ 77% ie. 4,28,000 are undertrials. Most of their applications for bail fail to be listed by the courts owing to adjournment motions filed by the opposing parties and the government, all they can hope for is another tarikh; if this is not gross injustice then I don’t know what is. As the adage goes, ‘justice delayed is justice denied’, structural reforms in the Indian judicial system are the need of the hour if an average citizen is to hope for equity and fairness.
Vinay Divedi, Benaulim
Seatbelts cans ave lives
Almost all modern cars come with inbuilt safety mechanism. Still, precious lives are lost in ghastly road mishaps because of the failure to wear seatbelts.
A report has said that not wearing the seat belt was attributable to more than 16000 casualties last year in India. Over speeding cars, of course, are the direct causes of many accidents, but seat belts can prove to be life savers in such accidents.
Seat belts help in minimising secondary impact and maintaining passenger position. What the seatbelt does is to increase the time of the forward falling process of a passenger thereby drastically lessening possibilities of grievous injury that may have occurred by collision of the body in the car with steering wheel, dashboard and so on without the preventive action of the seatbelt.
Nowadays, every occupant in the car—–upto the maximum capacity of the vehicle— can use the seatbelt. Rear seat belts can minimise injury by about 75 percent and death by approximately 25 percent. The problem lies in the blatant disregard of rules by passengers.
Ganapathi Bhat, Akola
Hibernating sports associations of Goa
The ongoing 37th National Games in Goa has revealed the hibernating nature of many sports associations in Goa along with the negligence of the Sports Authority of Goa. Goa has hired athletes from other states to represent the State in many sports disciplines inorder to get good results in the ongoing national games.
This exposes the hibernating nature of many sports associations who failed to promote their respective sports disciplines and to train their athletes well in advance to represent the state of Goa at the national level. It’s not that the Goan athletes don’t have the potential to perform at the highest level. It’s just that those who are given the responsibilities to look after the training and development of the sports and the various athletes are irresponsible.
The national games were announced long back as a matter of fact it has been postponed too many times and despite so much of time at hand, still these associations could not prepare their teams on time, giving importance to the sons and daughters of the Goan soil. There are no issues with regards to the migrants who are born and brought up in Goa and have represented Goa, that’s fine. But, the problem arises when we have a government body like SAG – Sports Authority of Goa and it’s affiliated sports bodies headed by mostly state government ministers and their other family members, fail to promote sports and athletes in Goa and then hunt for talent from other states to hide their inefficiency. By hiring athletes from other states even if we get medals it’s of no good for Goa since it’s the outcome of the hard work put in by other states and other associations. How can we as Goans feel proud of such laurels brought by athletes from other states who doesn’t belong to us? Off course, they are still Indians, but then these are National Games, where states are against each other and athletes from various states compete with each other to bring name for their own respective states. Will the Sports Authority of Goa and the various sports associations own their mistakes and the failures? Will the state associations of various sports disciplines ever wake up from the hibernation?
Gustavo Stephen Godinho, Nagoa
Well begun is half done
Karnataka has done well to step up surveillance after detecting the Zika virus in a mosquito pool in Chickballapur. Aedes mosquitoes, the same vector that causes dengue and chikungunya, spread the Zika virus. Health authorities discovered virus-carrying mosquitoes in Chickballapur during routine surveillance. Fortunately, the state has reported no cases of Zika virus disease.
N J Ravi Chander, Bengaluru
