Bangalore: “When I was small, I thought you were simply great. And when I grew up, I knew I was always right as a puppy!” says a dalmation looking up at its dad. This was on a card a teenager finally bought for Father’s Day. He is one of the many sons who belong to the new creed that does not say ‘I don’t need a special day to honour my dad’.

The Western trend has surely caught up with Namma Bengaluru. While sending flowers and cakes home is the trend among outstation sons and daughters, the ones at home prefer to go out for a dinner and surprise their father with gifts. Online booking centres and gift shops in the city have witnessed heightened activity the past couple of days.

“We get orders from abroad and other Indian states. Usually the price range of gifts we sell is from Rs 500 to Rs 800,” said Ravi Tiwari of Orchidsnroses. They have special Fathers’ Day kits, comprising laptops as well as gulab jamuns. Customized packages are also available.

Many Bangalore men who are separated from their wives but pine for their children are set to mark Father's Day by taking out a rally here. Kids should get the love of both parents, they stress, even as divorce cases are going up in India.

Along with others, Saturday's rally will see these men asserting their right to be in touch with their children. June 21 is Father's Day.

It is the brainchild of Children's Rights Initiative For Shared Parenting (CRISP), a city-based NGO, fighting for shared parenting rights, in association with Save the Indian Family Foundation (SIFF).

'Not every child is lucky enough to have the love and care of both father and mother, even when both the parents are alive during their growing up days. Due to a rise in divorce cases in the country, most children of separated parents are deprived of both their parents' affection,' Kumar Jahgirdar, president of CRISP, told IANS.

Your identity follows a standard format in India: son or daughter of Mr X. That is how you know one Sunita or Ram is different from another. But what if you don't want to put in your father's name or be identified solely by your family name? Should you be denied all official documents? Shouldn't your mother's name be sufficient to establish your identity?

Unfortunately, that is not the case, as illustrated by the recent case of a 19-year-old Mumbai girl, who was denied a passport because she refused to write her biological father's name on the application form. The man had not communicated with his daughter since the day she was born and the girl thought it justified to leave his name out. Read More Even though her mother raised her and the girl still lives with her, the courts have said she can be granted a passport if she lists her foster father as her father and fills in the application form accordingly.

Mothers in India clearly have a long way to go to achieve legal gender equality.

CRISP takes up cause of fathers' plight

 Hyderabad, May 30 : With two out of five marriages ending in divorce in the country, the Child Rights Initiative for Shared Parenting (CRISP), first of its kind non-governmental organisation, has taken up the cause of men who were denied access to their children

Higlighting the plight of over five lakh such parents, especially fathers, CRISP Founder President Kumar V Jahgirdhar here today told reporters, ''In many cases despite court orders, fathers are not allowed to see their children. Children should have equal access to both parents for them to lead a normal life. We must make shared parenting mandatory.'' Mr Kumar, himself was fighting a legal battle for equal access to his daughter from his wife Chethana, who has now married to Indian Cricket legspinner Anil Kumble.

 He pressed for setting up of special courts for disposal of child custody cases in a maximum of three months and enactment of laws to make shared parenting mandatory

Noting that misuse of anti-dowry laws and other woman-protection laws were a serious problem in the country, he said increasing number of aged parents, sisters and children in husband's family were implicated in ''false cases''.

''The mothers in order to take revenge on their husbands, don't allow them to see the child. Courts and Governments should understand that fathers too have love and affection for their children,'' he contended.

CRISP presented the case of a Non-Resident Indian pharmaceutical scientist V Ravichandran in Florida, who has been denied access to his six-year-old son Aditya for over 670 days with his mother moving their son from one place to another.

The CRISP would hold roadshows all over the country to mobilise public opnion on the plight of fathers, he added.

--- UNI

PANJIM, MAY 18: This Christmas,  10-year-old Rico will have lunch with his mother and dinner with his father. But the lunch arrangement on Christmas day will be altered every subsequent year.

On his mother’s birthday, he will be with her and on his  father’s birthday, he’ll stay with his father.

Likewise, his birthday will be celebrated alternately by the mother and the father every alternate year.

On school days he will be with his mother from Monday to Friday and be with his father every alternate weekend.

The programme for Ryan has been chalked  out  by the Bombay High Court  at Goa while settling the issue of his custody between warring parents.

Chandigarh: Child custody case pending in the subordinate courts of Punjab, Haryana and Chandigarh for over six months will now be decided within three months.

Taking cognizance of long delays, the Punjab and Haryana High Court has also empowered the district judges to deal with dereliction, if any, on part of the judicial officer in doing so. The registrar (vigilance), Punjab and Haryana, have been appointed nodal officer for supervising the entire exercise.

Though the exact number of such cases is not immediately known, some of the cases have been pending for over a decade. Among the oldest is a case pending since 1998 in the guardian court in Amritsar.

New Delhi: Indian American scientist Ravi Chandran has been searching desperately for his son Aditya in India for more than a year - after his ex-wife “abducted” the child, now six years old, and brought him to India in 2007.

“After the divorce, I was given full custody of Aditya by the New York Court on Sep 14, 2007, but she (wife Vijayasree Voora) adducted the child and came to India, and now she is moving from one place to another to avoid arrest,” Chandran said at a press meet organised by NGOs here.

Chandran left his job with a pharma company in the US to look for his son in India. He has shifted to Hyderabad.

A contentious access battle playing out in family court made news last week when a B.C. Supreme Court judge made the highly unusual decision of barring a mother from seeing her daughter for one year.

The ruling, which the father’s lawyer called “historic,” was made after the mother, known only as Ms. A, alleged that the father had subjected the teenager to severe emotional abuse which she said endangered the child’s safety.

Citing Ms. A’s extreme parental alienation toward the father, Justice Donna Martinson said she was satisfied that Ms. A’s allegations were unfounded and that the mother “continued to undermine the relationship between M and her father and has acted in ways that are detrimental to M’s psychological healing.”

Child custody and balance of parenting power post-divorce have been in the news around the world lately. Everywhere it is messy, and everywhere parents seem certain that the other gender is getting the better deal.

In Great Britain, the Institute for Social and Economic Research released a study last month called “Marital Splits and Income Changes Over the Longer Term.” The first of its kind in the country, it showed what similar studies in the U.S. have concluded over the years — that men improve their standard of living after a divorce while women sacrifice theirs. This is true in all divorces, but particularly striking when the couple has children, because the children are more likely to live with their mothers, who earn less than their ex-husbands and pay more child care expenses.