Gunman Arrested Near Campus of Texas A&M

By J. DAVID GOODMAN and MICHAEL SCHWIRTZ

Texas A&M University said that a gunman who opened fire near its campus had been taken into custody by police.

The university issued a series of warnings on its Web site, beginning at about 12:30 p.m. local time, when residents near the campus football stadium were urged to remain indoors.

“Active shooter in the area immediately southeast of the intersection of Welborn Rd and George Bush Drive,” the university said on its site, later updating to include a portion of nearby Fidelity Drive in College Station, Texas, about 90 miles northwest of Houston.

The police said the gunman was in custody, the university said fifteen minutes later, but urged people to continuing avoiding the area.

The police told CNN that several people had been wounded. KBTX News in College Station reported that more than one law enforcement officer has been shot, and that the gunman was firing f rom a house with automatic weapons. The local police had not confirmed any deaths, KBTX reported.

Barbara Murphy, 84, who lives near Fidelity Drive, said she heard about six or eight gunshots at around 12:30. About ten to 15 minutes later, she said, she heard another round of gunshots.

“We're doing a lot of remodeling around here, but then I realized it couldn't just be a hammer,” she said. “About that time a neighbor called and don't go outside.”

Image of the Day: August 13

August 13, 2012, 11:30 am

By THE NEW YORK TIMES

India\'s Olympic Program Under Spotlight Again

August 13, 2012, 10:00 am

By NIKHILESH BHATTACHARYA

Six medals. That is all that India â€" the world's second most populous country â€" managed to win at the London Olympics. While six is a record, it is still a pitiful showing for a country with ambitions to become a great power.

Mexico, Georgia and Ethiopia won more medals at the London Olympics than India. The nation has only ever won 26 medals in its entire history â€" only four more than the swimmer Michael Phelps has won by himself. In field hockey, a national sport, India fared miserably. In badminton, a sport invented in Pune, India won only one medal â€" and that came in part because of a default by a Chinese woman.

What gives?

There are likely mul tiple reasons for India's relatively poor showing. One is clearly cultural. School-age children are encouraged to study hard, and parents often see sports as an unwanted intrusion on academics. But there is also the issue of money, and how world-class athletes can pay for all the training expenses and time they must devote to their sports.

India's sports ministry recently promised that all 81 Olympians in India's contingent this year would receive permanent government jobs. It is understood that these will be midlevel coaching jobs with a salary of 40,000 rupees ($715) a month at India's premier sporting institution, the Sports Authority of India. The athletes can continue with their sporting careers and then get a diploma in coaching before they start working as coaches.

The cabinet has also approved giving three promotions, in addition to the usual seniority-based promotions, to medal winners in any international sporting event who already have central governme nt jobs.

Clearly, India is looking beyond the London Olympics, but its focus may be on the wrong things. Instead of thinking of ways to groom future champions, it is concerned with rewarding established athletes.

And the reward itself may even be counterproductive to the government's goal of cultivating champions. “A lot of athletes in India give up their sporting careers the moment they get jobs,” said Kamalesh Chatterjee, the honorary general secretary of the Bengal Olympic Association, the West Bengal chapter of the Indian Olympic Association.

A retired civil servant, Mr. Chatterjee has been in sports administration for 35 years. He said he wants the sports ministry to install a few safeguards to ensure the new decision to give government jobs works for the improvement of sports in the country.

“There has to be a system to monitor the athletes who take up these jobs,” he said. “If they continue as active sportspersons, then they must keep performing at the same level they were. And if they straightaway take up coaching assignments, they have to be held accountable for how their wards perform over the next five years.”

Even with such safeguards, should the central government be providing more incentives to do well at the Olympics? It has already spent a lot of taxpayer money in preparing India's top athletes for the London Games. In comparison, the Olympic efforts of the United States, which topped the medal tally in London, and Great Britain, which came third, are not backed by the government, relying instead on private donations from corporates, individuals and communities. India, for all its armchair fans and experts, cannot bank on similar involvement from its people when it comes to preparing athletes for Olympics.

According to the Web site of the Indian Ministry of Youth Affairs and Sports, the central government spent upwards of 1.35 billion rupees to train experienced athletes in 16 disc iplines at home and abroad under its program, Operation Excellence-London 2012, shortened to Opex-London 2012.

The program started with 705 elite athletes who were seen as likely to qualify for the 2012 Olympics in archery, athletics, badminton, boxing, gymnastics, hockey, judo, rowing, sailing, shooting, swimming, table tennis, taekwondo, tennis, weightlifting and wrestling. Some athletes were dropped from the program and new ones added before the final pool was whittled down to 585. Of them, 81 represented India in the 2012 Games.

While this is indeed India's largest contingent at any Olympics, Opex-London 2012 failed in certain disciplines. More than 70 million rupees was spent on 40 gymnasts, and not one of them qualified for the Games. Taekwondo (more than 26 million rupees) and sailing (more than 30 million rupees) also did not yield a single Olympian.

The program had another shortcoming in that it covered a period of only 220 to 250 days and was conc eptualized only after India's good performances at the 2010 Delhi Commonwealth Games and at the Asian Games held in Guangzhou, China, the same year. “It ran for just a year,” Mr. Chatterjee said.

However, the central government has had other programs for elite athletes for more than a decade. Since 2001-02, it has provided financial assistance to many athletes from its National Sports Development Fund, and one name that has featured frequently on the list of beneficiaries is the 10-meter air-rifle shooter Abhinav Bindra, the only Indian to have won an Olympic gold in an individual event, which he did in 2008.

The fund spent 70 million rupees in 2009-10 and 64 million rupees in 2010-11. In 2011-12, the money from the fund was routed through Opex-London 2012.

“Elite athletes in India do get a lot of funds nowadays, but money is not enough,” said Abhijit Kunte, a chess grandmaster who is a founder-member of the Pune nonprofit organization, Lakshya, whi ch aims to plug gaps in government planning for athletes. “You also need to get them the right people, such as mentors, physiotherapists and mental coaches.”

The real problem lies in the feeder lines. One big obstacle is the lack of funds for cultivating young athletes with talent. “I have seen in the U.S. and other European countries, the schools and colleges and other educational institutions groom athletes. That is the model we must follow,” said Mr. Kunte.

Yet in the two most recent budgets available on the sports ministry's Web site, for 2009-10 and 2010-11, the central government did not spend a rupee on promotion of sports in schools, colleges and universities.

Mr. Kunte is also not happy with lack of financial support from the state governments, which have the primary responsibility of overseeing sports, rather than the central government. “They must support players at the local levels. A lot of people need to play competitive sports for I ndia to be able to unearth top athletes,” he said.

In India, there are organizations looking after sports at different levels. Apart from the Youth Affairs and Sports Ministry and state governments, there is the Indian Olympic Association, with chapters in different states. In addition, each sport has a national federation and associations in every state. Sometimes two or three such associations in a state are competing for an affiliation with the national federation.

As might be expected, there is a lack of coordination among the different organizations, but more importantly, most of their funds come from a single source: the central government.

“Apart from cricket, no other sport in India is strong enough to survive without government support,” said Viren Rasquinha, a former Olympic field hockey player who is part of Olympic Gold Quest, a not-for-profit organization that supports some of India's top athletes. “But private partnership has to be enc ouraged. The national federations need to become more professional and work towards attracting commercial interest.”

The Olympic Gold Quest has a number of corporate partners, but Mr. Rasquinha said that raising funds for Olympic sports in India is the “toughest thing” because these sports don't have a mass following. “We currently support 33 athletes, but by the next Olympics in 2016, we want to expand and have around 100 athletes with us. For that, we have to work really hard.”

Corporate sponsorship will also bring in accountability, said Mr. Rasquinha. “The three things that corporates want to see are credibility, accountability and impact,” he said.

India can only hope that the impact is visible sooner rather than later.

What do you think of India's performance at the Olympics? Write to us in the comments section below.

A Conversation With: Social Scientist Anandi Mani

By SRUTHI GOTTIPATI

Anandi Mani, an associate professor at the University of Warwick in Britain, is one of the authors of a study on women's political representation and its effect on crime in India. As the government reserves for women a third of all seats in local government institutions like the village council, the researchers sought to find out whether having female political leaders at the local level would have a positive effect on women. Instead, they found that the reported number of crimes against women rose. Ms. Mani explained in an e-mail interview with India Ink why that's not bad news.

Could you tell me a little bit about your study? Why did you want to do this study?

The Panchayati Raj [village council] reform law was passed officially in 1993 for local government. There has been a lot of resistance to repeated attempts to have similar reservation for women leaders at other levels of government. Some of the arguments aga inst such reservation have been that women who lack experience will not be competent leaders. There is also a perception that women political representatives may be just fronts for the political agenda of their husbands or other powerful males in their area.

One motivation for such a reservation is to improve outcomes for women directly. So we thought it would be interesting to examine specifically how having women political representatives has affected a very core outcome for women - safety and security.

Could you take me through the process and what you found?

When we looked at how crime outcomes against women changed before and after political representation, we found that crimes against women had increased overall, as well as in specific categories such as kidnapping and rape. This was very disturbing at first pass. It suggested that either there was a lot of resentment and retaliation against women leaders or that women lea ders were quite incompetent.

But we found that it was not explained by the incompetence of women political representatives, because there were no increases in crimes unrelated to women, such as economic crimes or kidnapping of men.

As researchers, we were also aware that official crime records data may not fully capture ground reality. Especially in developing countries, it could be fraught with problems in documenting crime. Typically, this would mean that crimes against women would be underreported. This could be either due to the prejudiced attitudes towards them from the police who may not record crimes against them. Or women themselves may be reluctant to report crimes because of shame or fear of retaliation.

In our particular context, we wondered whether this increase in crimes against women may actually be good news because women leaders may actually be encouraging more reporting of crimes against women. If we did not account for this, we could be ju mping to the wrong conclusions. Here is a recent example of how crime data can lead people to wrong interpretations/conclusions.

One way to check this could have been to match up official records with victimization surveys of individuals, which could tell us if official statistics are widely off from what individuals report when interviewed. Unfortunately, in the Indian context, the handicap is that no such nationwide surveys exist, unlike in other countries such as the U.S. So we decided to address this challenge by looking at different pieces of related evidence. Specifically, we looked at how responsive the police were to crimes against women and also women's perceptions of their interaction with law enforcement authorities.

What did you find?

We found that firstly women were more satisfied in their interaction with the police in areas where local government leaders were women. Secondly, not only the number of recorded crimes but also the number of arres ts for crimes against women was higher under women leaders. Both facts suggested that the police were being more responsive to crimes against women.

Based on nationwide surveys, we found that people do think that having influential people, such as their local government leader, on their side makes the police more responsive to their concerns when they go to the police station. All of this led us to conclude that the observed increase in official crime data was in fact good news, driven by greater reporting and recording of crimes rather than an actual increase in crimes against women.

The magazine Tehelka reported that many police officers have insensitive attitudes toward rape victims. What does your report say about this?

I am not surprised by this finding. In fact, this is consistent with the findings of a study on the police force in Rajasthan, which we cite in our paper. Only about half the cases of rape were documented by the police, whereas over 90 percent of crimes such as burglary were likely to be reported.

Anything else you found interesting in the study?

It was interesting to us that women political representatives had more of an effect on crime outcomes at the lowest rungs of government, where women victims have the greatest proximity or access to them. And this is despite the fact that women political representatives have no official authority over the police. Law and order falls under the control of state governments, not the local government. All this suggests that women leaders and representatives have an effect because women find in them someone who is sympathetic to their concerns and able to get the police to be more responsive.

I took a look at the latest crime bureau statistics and found that states, like Kerala, typically considered better places for women to live in, reported the highest crime rates against women. Does your study explain some of that phenomenon?

Again, this is c onsistent with our findings. We do find that in districts with higher literacy, having a woman leader increases the documented crimes against women. It is quite plausible that educated women are better equipped or empowered to report crimes committed against them. And that law enforcement officials take them more seriously.

What benefits in the long term can women expect from quotas?

Over the long term, political representatives could give women a better platform to have their voice heard in terms of what they expect from the governance process. We do find that over the long term, places that have had longer exposure to women leaders more often see a downturn in crime rates. Women leaders could be creating a virtuous cycle on crime outcomes because greater responsiveness of the police would encourage more women victims to come forth and hence deter crime over the long term.

Other related research has found that women tend to attend meetings more often and s peak up during them when there are women leaders. Political representatives could also encourage more women to stand for public office and participate in politics. Women leaders could be role models for the younger generation.

(Interview has been lightly edited and condensed.)

Bangalore Couples Turn to Cops for Counseling

By SARITHA RAI

As the three stars with a red-and-blue ribbon on his shoulder strap will tell you, M.L. Purushotham is a police inspector. But here's his unofficial job description: redeemer of relationships and savior of marriages.

The description fits not just the inspector at the Yeshwantpur police station in west Bangalore but many of his fellow police officers in the city.

Meet a couple whose liaison the police inspector tried to salvage. She is from the eastern state of Orissa, and he from southern Tamil Nadu, both in their 20s, well-educated and working for different multinationals. The woman walked into the police station first.

They fell madly in love and moved in together, she said. After nine months of cohabiting, they were breaking up on the insistence of the man's traditional parents. She wished to marry, but he was resisting. The woman asked to file a criminal complaint against him for ch eating her by using marriage as a ruse.

As tumultuous societal changes transform Bangalore, many young, middle-class Indians are struggling to cope. They arrive in the city for work and live away from their families. Unmoored and besieged, many are taking their problems to the only symbol of authority that is accessible 24/7: the police.

In the good old days, a police officer's job was to solve crimes and maintain law and order in the neighborhood, said BNS Reddy, a joint commissioner of police in Bangalore. No longer. An incessant rush of confused youngsters, squabbling lovers and bickering spouses at the 100-odd police stations in Bangalore has unwittingly turned officers into relationship advisers and marriage mediators.

“There is material for many, many Ph.D theses in these complaints that come to our police stations,” said Mr. Reddy.

Mr. Reddy enumerated the reasons for this surge: urban life is transforming and young people want to assert th eir independence. Women are financially stable and marital equations are changing. Partners' expectations of each other are sky-high.

A working woman in her early 30s recently walked into his office to complain that her husband was abusive and cruel. Her husband came later and complained that she smoked, drank and partied. He insisted that she be a “traditional wife.” A few conversations later, Mr. Reddy got the couple to see that they had been smoking, drinking and partying together for many months before marrying. “They needed to adjust to the marriage and to each other,” he said.

The deluge at the police stations could stem from the woeful lack of counseling and mediation services in Bangalore.

It could also be ignorance. Of the many youngsters with issues, only a fraction seeks professional support, said Deepa Dasgupta, a counselor. “Some don't know they can get help; others don't know who to turn to,” said Ms. Dasgupta, who works with compa nies and counsels their stressed-out employees.

There is also the stigma attached to counseling, especially among the lower socio-economic strata, said Sridhar Ramanujam, a branding professional who is also a part-time volunteer at Vishwas, a free counseling service based in Bangalore. “If you say you are seeing a counselor, some immediately conclude that you must be mentally ill,” said Mr. Ramanujam.

The more serious abuse and domestic violence cases that arrive at the police are routed, as per protocol, to Vishwas and others for counseling.

Still, a steady line of the young and unhappy stream in with seemingly frivolous cases that are clearly outside police ambit, said officers. One man complained that his wife spent a lot of time in the toilet with her cellphone. Was she having an extra-marital affair, he wanted to know. A woman came to the police station saying her workaholic husband returned from office and switched on the TV. She wanted the police to get him to have a conversation with her.

Another griped that her husband invited friends over all the time and she was expected to put food on the table. A newly-wed man said his wife's mother was constantly calling her daughter and interfering in the relationship.

“Our training teaches us how to put up cases, how to find evidence, how to set the law in motion, but no police academy can prepare you for this,” said S. Badarinath, an inspector at the Cubbon Park police station in downtown Bangalore.

To add to the stress, the young and restless generation expects instant, dramatic results when they walk into police stations. “They think we can create magic, police magic,” said Mr. Reddy, the senior police official.

Often, registering a complaint could be the easy way out. “But we constantly educate young people that a complaint and an ensuing arrest could ruin any chance of a patch-up,” he said. “The relationship would be as good as fin ished right there.”

In the case of the live-in Orissa-Tamil Nadu couple, however, the police could not cajole the man to marry his girlfriend. It took the woman many weeks to realize that a marriage held under the threat of a criminal complaint would not work anyway.

But when issues do get resolved, there is enormous job satisfaction in helping sort young people's lives, said Anjumala Nayak, an inspector at an all-women police station in central Bangalore. “People waylay me in public events sometimes,” she said. “I may not even remember them, and they thank me for saving their marriages.”

Saritha Rai sometimes feels she is the only person living in Bangalore who was actually raised here. There's never a dull moment in her mercurial metropolis. Reach her on Twitter @SarithaRai.