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Essays tucked in this book do focus on the relevant issues of the day. In this particular essay, \u2018Criminalization of Missing Children\u2019, Khanna\u00a0 has relayed the seriousness of the issue by\u00a0 focusing on a wide range of\u00a0 factors to the\u00a0 missing children in the country.\u00a0 A book review by Humra Quraishi<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n When this book – Samajik Chintan \u2013 by Avinash Rai Khanna, arrived for review, I read through the essays and found some of them rather debateable or one could even call them controversial, to put it mildly.<\/p>\n But then stands out the basic fact that each writer or author or commentator or for that matter any citizen of this country has the democratic right and freedom to express his or her views and viewpoints as freely as possible. That I suppose is the crux of democracy.<\/p>\n However several essays tucked in this book do focus on the relevant issues of the day. In fact, his essays titled – \u2018Orphans and Society\u2019, \u2018Getting Rid of Addiction\u2019, \u2018A Ray of Hope for the\u00a0 Deaf and\u00a0 Mute\u2019, \u2018Criminalization of Missing\u00a0 Children\u2019, \u2018Road\u00a0 Accidents Can Come Down\u2019, \u2018Transforming the\u00a0 Jail\u2019s\u00a0 Environment\u2019,\u2018Accidents Will\u00a0 Not\u00a0 Stop\u00a0 Like This\u2019, \u00a0are some of those essays which do bring to the fore the realities of the day, which need our immediate focus.<\/p>\n In fact, in this particular essay, \u2018Criminalization of Missing Children\u2019, Khanna\u00a0 has relayed the seriousness of the issue by\u00a0 focusing on a wide range of\u00a0 factors to the \u00a0missing children in the country. To quote him, \u201cThe number of missing children in India continues to grow\u2026A Human Rights Commission\u2019s 2005\u00a0\u00a0 Report presented before the Supreme Court, showed that every year about 44 thousand children go missing in the country, out of which 11 thousand children are never traced. During a discussion in the Lok Sabha in August 2014, it was said that about one lakh children go missing every year. It also came to light that according to Intelligence reports about 800 criminal groups in India are actively involved in kidnapping children and they put them in the various\u00a0 criminal activities…When the Nithari serial\u00a0 killings came to light, where\u00a0 the skeletons of\u00a0 dozens of\u00a0 children were unearthed, it was found that these skeletons were of those children who were missing from the surrounding areas for almost two years.\u201d<\/p>\n Khanna\u2019s other hard hitting essay is on the jails and those sitting jailed in the interiors of those jails. To quote, \u201cThe concept of jail is basically associated with the idea of punishing the culprit. By the way, a jail sentence is a\u00a0 punishment in itself\u2026Merely tweaking some\u00a0 jail manuals or changing the system\u00a0 does not\u00a0 guarantee 100 per cent improvement in the jail environment. In fact, when the whole society will be explained about a definite direction on all aspects related to the psychology behind the crime and first it is\u00a0 implemented within the prison, then naturally\u00a0 the path of widespread changes will be\u00a0 possible\u2026Theoretically, the\u00a0 jail superintendent must be trained in psychology who should be\u00a0 entrusted to transform the inmates socially and spiritually keeping in mind their educational, mental and\u00a0 intellectual backgrounds.\u201d<\/p>\n And the essay, \u2018Accidents Will Not Stop Like This\u2019, he writes, \u201cDuring my\u00a0 Norway tour, I\u00a0 visited the Parliament there. While coming out of the\u00a0 Parliament building, during interaction one MP curiously\u00a0 asked me that if a constable in your country stops and issues challan to an MLA, MP, Minister etc, what will\u00a0 happen. Only one answer came out of my mouth, that a constable would never show such courage in India. At this he gave me the example of\u00a0 Norway\u2019s Transport Minister, who was issued a challan by the traffic\u00a0 police for\u00a0 overspeeding whilst approaching the Parliament. Even the minister\u2019s driving license was cancelled for three years as per the rules. Consequently, the\u00a0 minister was forced to come to the\u00a0 Parliament on a\u00a0 bicycle for three years. I was shocked to hear this\u00a0 incident and wondered if the same incident had\u00a0 happened in India,\u00a0 perhaps the poor\u00a0 constable\u00a0 would\u00a0 have\u00a0 lost his\u00a0 job for the simple reason that he dared to stop the minister and issued a challan to him.\u201d<\/p>\n If only we could focus on our children and the jailed population and, of course, on the not-so-jailed who are on the road, then perhaps we would be touching the basic ground realities staring in the face.<\/p>\n It\u2019s unfortunate that the most vulnerable groups and sections of the society\u00a0 seem bypassed and spend\u00a0 their years, if not their\u00a0 entire lives, trying to survive amidst heavy odds.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Essays tucked in this book do focus on the relevant issues of the day. In this particular essay, \u2018Criminalization of Missing Children\u2019, Khanna\u00a0 has relayed the seriousness of the issue by\u00a0 focusing on a wide range of\u00a0 factors to the\u00a0 missing children in the country.\u00a0 A book review by Humra Quraishi When this book – […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":336007,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[650,23,2205],"tags":[15180,15178,15179],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/posts\/336006"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=336006"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/posts\/336006\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":336008,"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/posts\/336006\/revisions\/336008"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/media\/336007"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=336006"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=336006"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=336006"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}