WE THE STATE 30th ISSUE

12 BHOPALApril 22 to April 28, 2013
BHOPAL
Dubbed as the 'Pride of Gujarat', Asiatic lions
hitherto found only at the Gir reserve in
Gujarat would get a second home at Palpur
Kuno sanctuary in Madhya Pradesh. Chief
minister Shivraj Singh Chauhan welcomed
the Supreme Court order allowing the transfer
of Asiatic lions from Gir in Gujarat to
Kuno Palpur in Madhya Pradesh's Sheopur
district. The matter had been lingering for
the past 20 years and the judicial pronouncement
on Monday would put an end to the
years of resistance by Gujarat in 'sharing' lions
with MP. However, in a setback, the Cheetah
reintroduction also proposed at Palpur
Kuno will not take place as the apex court has
ruled it out.
The chief minister said that adequate
arrangements have been made at Palpur
Kuno sanctuary to accommodate the lions
when they arrive there. He said wildlife is
safe in the state and hoped that the lions
would flourish once they are here.
The Supreme Court allowed the transfer on
the grounds that Gir presently is the only
habitat in the country for Asiatic lions, and
that they face the risk of extinction. A second
home for the lions is necessary, the court
said. Gir has about 400 lions presently. A total
of 92 lions have died at Gir, including 83 of
natural causes, in the last two years.
Additional Principal Chief Conservator of
Forests (Wildlife) Dharmendra Shukla said
that he would be in a position to comment on
the court order once he sees it. "The habitat
at Palpur Kuno is ready to accommodate the
lions and we will wait for the modalities of
the transfer to be worked out. Many aspects
of the transfer are still to be worked out by
the government of India," said Shukla.
"While the necessary arrangements for the
lions are in place, some minor preparations
at the field level that need to be made will be
done once the details of the transfer are
worked out," said Sudhir Kumar, chief conservator,
Lion Project, Gwalior.
The state, however, received a setback on
Nation
the cheetah reintroduction case. The reintroduction
of the cheetah from Namibia to the
Palpur Kuno sanctuary that had been stayed
by the Supreme Court was cancelled on Monday.
The court felt that projects dedicated to
saving Indian species should get precedence.
WE THE STATE
Palpar Kuno is waiting for lions: Chauhan
NEW DELHI
India’s Supreme Court took up a new and
highly contentious topic last week —
whether pornography leads to sexual assault
and should, therefore, be completely
banned in India.
The Supreme Court’s interest in the issue
comes in response to a petition that asks the
government to enact a law that would make
even viewing pornographic materials a nonbailable
offense. Distributing pornographic
materials is already illegal in India, but the related
laws are vague and rarely enforced.
“I believe that watching porn corrupts people,
and many of the crimes that happen to
women, girls and children, such as sex-trafficking,
are mostly related to pornography,”
said Kamlesh Vaswani, the author of the petition
and an intellectual property rights
lawyer who said he became interested in the
issue after seeing the impact of pornography
in his hometown of Indore.
India has been reeling from reports of rape
and sexual violence directed at women and
girls. The fatal gang rape of a young woman in
Delhi on Dec. 16 prompted the government to
pass strict new laws about sexual crimes, but
reported rapes have risen sharply this year
and many say the police response remains inadequate.
Last weekend, Delhi again erupted
in protests after the parents of a five-year old
girl said that the police refused to register a
complaint that their daughter was raped and
a police officer was filmed slapping a female
protestor.
The Supreme Court has asked the Ministry
of Information and Technology, the Ministry
of Information and Broadcasting and the Ministry
of Home Affairs to respond by April 29 to
the petition’s allegations that existing laws
are not protecting women from the negative
fallout of pornography.
As Internet penetration grows in India with
the availability of high-speed data services
and the spread of smartphones, pornography
is spreading rapidly here, even though publishing
or distributing it, in print or on the
Web, is illegal under the Indian Penal Code
and the Information Technology Act of 2000.
There is some evidence that Indians are
more actively seeking pornography on the Internet
than citizens of many other countries:
Google searches for the word “porn,” as a
proportion of total Google searches, have increased
five times between 2004 and 2013 in India,
according to Google Trends. Over that period,
India ranked fourth worldwide, after
Papua New Guinea, Trinidad and Tobago, and
Pakistan.
New Delhi, population 16 million, was the
city with the highest-worldwide percentage of
searches for “porn” in 2012. Dallas was the
second highest.
One of every five mobile users in India
wants adult content on his 3G-enabled phone,
one 2011 study by IMRB concludes, and
pornography Web sites rank among the most
popular in India. Sunny Leone, an Indian-origin
Canadian porn star, became a popular in
An expert committee headed by retired IAS
officer MK Ranjitsinh identified Kuno as an
ideal habitat for re-introduction of Cheetahs,
which had got extinct from India in 1952.
Kuno had a cheetah population, till they were
hunted down in the early 1900s.
Will India Ban
Pornography as Reported
Sexual Assault Rises ?
India after appearing on the “Bigg Boss”
house here in 2011.
It’s a far cry from just a decade or so ago,
when the sight of a naked woman on a movie
screen, much less at home on the television,
was rare here, outside of a few seedy cinemas
and the occasional, much-circulated video.
“Pornography corrupts the mind and causes
sexual excitement to grow,” said Vijay Panjwani,
the lawyer who argued the petition on
behalf on Mr. Vaswani in front of the
Supreme Court last week. “When a release is
not found it leads to acts of sexual violence
against women.”
Whether viewing pornography can be directly
tied to sexual violence or rape is highly
debatable. A common criticism of pornography
is that it has a lasting effect on the minds
of regular viewers by shaping the way they
think about sex and encouraging aggressive
behavior.
“What happens when a culture is saturated
with sexually explicit images eroticizing male
domination and female subordination?” asked
Gail Dines, a sociology professor, and Robert
Jensen, a journalism professor. They argue
that most pornography contains images of
physical and verbal abuse of female performers
and skews the viewers’ attitudes towards
sex.
Some sociologists say that in India, the negative
effects of viewing pornography are exacerbated
because of a social environment
that discourages regular interaction between
young men and women.
“India is a society in a phase of transition
that is based on a high segregation of men and
women,” said Ranjana Kumari, the director
of the Center for Social Research in New Del-
hi. “In this environment viewing pornography
creates heightened sexual desire and aggression
in young men who have no normal
interaction with women and that can often
lead to violent behavior.”
The porn industry also has many defenders.
The incidence of rape in the United States has
declined 85 percent over a period of 25 years
while access to pornography has increased,
according to research by Anthony D’Amato
and Glenn Reynolds, both law professors.
David Loftus, an actor and author of “Watching
Sex: How Men Really Respond to Pornography,”
argues that the effect of watching
pornography depends on the viewer and not
on the content. “The men who have difficulties
with pornography, much like many who
cannot relate well to others and turn to crime,
tend to come from dysfunctional backgrounds,
where stringent rules, hypocrisy, unhappiness
and even violence abounded,” he
wrote. As a growing number of Indians watch
pornography, the government has tried heavyhanded
attempts to suppress popular Web
sites. In June of 2009, for example, the government
asked all Internet service providers to
block a cartoon Web site called Savita Bhabhi,
about a bored housewife on the grounds that it
was obscene.
But some government ministers are among
the growing audience: In February 2012, three
ministers resigned because they were caught
on camera watching porn on a mobile phone
during a session of the Karnataka state assembly.
Do you think making it illegal to watch
pornography could curb sexual assault in India,
or make the problem worse? Please send
your thoughts at editor@wethestate.com
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