MyVoice: Views of our readers 10th August 2021

Kerala HC means well

The Kerala High Court said all the right things on last Friday when it observed that 'the marriage law in India needs to be revamped, and that there should not be any difficulty in having a common code of law for all communities, at least for marriage and divorce'. Spouses, especially women in broken marriages are left high and dry to fend for herself, and often her children. Their husbands, given to substance abuse, debauchery and licentiousness have a jolly good time remarrying and continuing to 'have their ways' with women of their liking.

This atrocious scenario so common in the country is brought about by highly orthodox and one-sided patriarchal scheme-of-things. Ideally, marriages must offer parity among genders. Skewed religious 'beliefs' and convenient misinterpretations of holy texts ought not to come in the way of such parity. The state must be able to ensure that by overriding mechanisations by various faiths existing within the country.

Dr George Jacob, Kochi

Cops need to mend their ways

The observation made by Chief Justice of India N V Ramana that police atrocities and custodial torture are continuing in the lock up; and the even the so called privileged are not being spared from this predicament. The need for the National Legal Services Authority (NALSA) to carry out a nationwide awareness and sensitisation of officers is a practical way in this direction.

But, there are other two or more vital factors that are overlooked in this regard, the blame for which goes to the police, rather undeservedly. The first issue is there are habitual offenders who graduate to bigger crimes, with whom the police find it difficult to elicit information as they prove hard nuts to crack. In such cases, it is inevitable that some amount of police methods are applied. But, sadly enough, the police often forget the physical and mental parameters that the accused can take - as a result some unfortunate incidents of custodial death and suicide by alleged victims, who cannot endure and put up with the shame of police handling them.

Another vital aspect to be guarded from the police perspective is not to allow their personal problems and ego issues to get manifested during the interrogation of alleged criminals; and arrested individuals. The station in charge is responsible for the level-headed behaviour of the police, in the interrogation of the arrested ; without any sense of a super cop or trigger happy crime buster mentality. An attitudinal change in this regard will definitely pave the way for a positive way, in preventing custodial and lock up torture in the country.

K V Raghuram, Wayanad

Pitfalls of online learning

During the pandemic, online schooling came as a boon as the students could complete their academic schedule. The schools also did their best to shore up their capacities. A sustained online schooling has created a large number of issues which have telling effects on the students, teachers and the parents Many children are not in a position to get into the stream and suffer from understanding the concepts. The online classes on far and few and results in incomplete coverage of the syllabus. The teachers are not sufficiently conversant with the methodology and are not able to handle technology effectively. The school management falls short of expectation and dumps the issues on the students and parents. It is time for the stake holders to sit together and apply their minds in order to resolve the issues and make the children's lives worth its while.

J Kannan, Hyderabad