How about actively saving more Falaks from happening?

The good news about last week was that two-year-old Falak survived and continued to battle with death despite septicaemia, cardiac arrests, water in the lungs, brain surgeries and broken to pulp limb bones. The bad news, actually the alarmingly bad news, is that we in India live in a society which allows such nasty and inhuman things to happen to a defenceless baby, more so a girl child.

Falak’s case is not about a stray incident in an otherwise circumspect society. It is rather shameful that very many babies like Falak are stolen, beaten, bruised, raped and even dumped into bins where dogs can tear them apart as the police and the other authorities act only on the hindsight. Is it not a matter of extreme concern that baby stealing and illegal adoption rackets prosper right under the nose of our law enforcers?

People in the midst of child saving campaigns swear that Falak is not a stray case. It is only that she has been brought into the headlines and, thus, become the cynosure of all eyes, political, social or of the NGO variety. In fact, childless couples have often complained that adoption laws are so user unfriendly and severe that many such couples unwillingly become a part of the unholy adoption racket wherein cases like that of Falak surface once in a while.

As one wishes a speedy and wholesome recovery to Falak, fact is that if at all she survives and if she makes it out of her crippling brain injuries unscathed, she will go to a child home and be without her biological parents, who now turn out to be possible victims of a baby stealing racket. If, at all, that is true there is a lot that the local police needs to answer for.

Policing is a constant process that is most effective when it works in curbing a whole lot of social crimes. To come into action after a heinous crime like the one perpetrated on Falak occurs is only counter-productive, more so when the cops come a cropper in arresting the key link to the entire saga. Not just that, they apparently lose him after two days of talking to him on the phone!

Why a well-oiled adoption-sex-minor-trafficking racket was not detected and busted in the Capital is a question Delhi Police officials will become quite touchy about. Staff constraint will be their major excuse in inadvertently allowing the Falak issue to happen.

In all the media focus on Falak, one forgets that there is another very fragile victim in this case — and that’s the 14-year-old teenager who has apparently done all this to the two-year-old baby. Though nothing can take away from what she has done to Falak, but fact remains that she too is a tortured teenager who has emotional and physical abuse issues. Just think about it. She is only 14, in the age group of probably your daughter going to Class VIII. It is a vulnerable age and certainly not one where the girl could have been entrusted with taking care of a cranky baby.

The teenager has been beaten up, thrashed, raped and put forcibly into prostitution. There is no doubt, she was emotionally disturbed. She now languishes in a juvenile justice home from where her future looks bleak and full of question marks.

As we go through a barrage of emotions for Falak and her yeomen struggle to stay alive, we forget that mere vacillating does not help her at all. How many among us would actually get out of our outpourings and really do something for babies like Falak? Not many  I guess, but constant media pressure and not going away from the story of Falak will help in at least keeping the cops on the case and cracking it with the eventual arrest of Dilshad (Raj Kumar). It is a sad commentary on our collective ethics department that many believe that if Falak loses the battle for life, she will also lose the battle for justice as then the immediate trigger for the case being brought to justice will no longer exist. That’s really a sad commentary on our sustainability of such moving issues.

BCCI’s new hunt

Other than Falak, the other story of the week was about Sahara India pulling out of the sponsorship of all forms of cricket. That will be quite a problem for the BCCI who, despite all the bravado it has shown in letting Sahara go, will have to go for a frenetic hunt for a sponsor for the Indian team. Yes, it will be easier to sell the Pune team to some other moneybag but sponsoring the Indian team needs a really deep pocket which in these days of recession is a tad difficult to find. Groups like Videocon, LG, and even Reliance have so far preferred to stick to time-bound cricket projects and tournaments, staying away from the hugely expensive all-time sponsorship of the team.

One will just have to wait and see where BCCI goes and what it gets and on what terms, but till the time that happens, it is heartening to hear from Sahara that it has decided to use up all the cricket sponsorship money to fund infrastructural sporting projects which will include not just talent hunt and nurturing but also academies, medical and educational healthcare and other such useful projects which the billion-plus nation of India is always in need of.

Published in The Sunday Pioneer, 5 February, 2012