CHILD LABOUR AND INDIA

According to the ILO, involves more than 120 million children between the ages of five and 14 around the world.  

 Despite being a vibrant economic zone, Asia Pacific is the region with the largest incidents of child labour, with a reported 18.8 percent of the 650 million working children around the world.  

 Children around the region are found to be working in a broad range of economic sectors, from garment factories in Bangladesh, to sugarcane plantations in Cambodia, and fishing boats in the Philippines. Other sectors include seafood processing, entertainment, mining, scavenging and domestic labour.  

 Many factors influence the prevalence of child labour, with poverty being the root cause of children having to work.

In a bid to overhaul the country’s child labour laws, the Indian government has banned the employment of children below 14 years of age in various commercial ventures, while permitting them to work in family enterprises and on farmlands after school hours and during vacations. The Act defines 64 industries as hazardous, deeming it a criminal offence for children to employed in any of them. While parents or guardians will not face any punishment for the first offence, a maximum fine of about 150 dollars will be levied for the second and subsequent offences. The new amendment will, however, permit kids to work in “non-hazardous” businesses, the entertainment industry (including films, advertisements and TV serials) and sporting events from the 18 occupations and 65 processes specified under the 1986 law.

Indian Nobel laureate Kailash Satyarthi, who helms the child rights non-profit organisation Bachpan Bachao Andolan, has been calling for a ban on every form of child labour in India for kids up to 14 years of age. Activists fear that the provision allowing children to help out in domestic or family-based occupations will enable families to flout or skirt the new law.

“The new amendment will push millions of innocent children into forced labour and deprive them of education and a normal childhood,” Rakesh Slenger of Bachpan Bachao Andolan told IPS. “The girl child will be particularly disadvantaged as she will be denied education while being stuck with all the household work.” Experts also fear this loophole violates the spirit of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, which India signed and ratified in 1992. The worst off will be kids from marginalized backgrounds who need to equip themselves with an education and job skills in Asia’s third largest economy to brighten their employment prospects. Experts also allege the government is overlooking the fact that even in household enterprises, children still remain vulnerable to exploitation and health hazards, which impacts their education.

The 2011 census puts the number at 4.35 million working children in the 5-14 age bracket. One in every 100 full-time workers in India is under the age of 14, and a third of those child workers are under the age of nine. This augurs ill for a country of 1.25 billion people, 42 percent of whom are children. Already, many kids are at risk of languishing in an endless cycle of poverty – an estimated 23 percent of the population survives on less than 1.25 dollars a day – particularly since the government slashed the budget allocation for the ministry of women and child development by 1.5 billion dollars this year. Activists say this move could deprive millions of marginalised Indian kids the chance to turn their lives around.

Kids in the agriculture sector are made to carry heavy loads and sprinkle harmful pesticides on crops. So-called “family enterprises” are no better, say experts. This includes such industries as matchbox making, carpet weaving and gem polishing. In these sectors, where child labour is in high demand, police raids have highlighted inhumane conditions in which children are made to work for no pay, with scant food and no access to toilets.

India’s beedi (cigarette)-making industry is particularly notorious for employing kids as young as seven years old. While government figures put the total number of workers engaged in this informal industry at 4.4 million, activists claim the real number is nearly double that, totaling roughly 10 million labourers.

According to the social activist, Amod Kanth, founder of Prayaas, a non-profit working for children’s welfare, relaxing legislation on child labour as a means of alleviating poverty is a deeply flawed strategy. “The move will nullify whatever progress the country has made in getting children out of forced labour and into school. As it is government surveys are known to under-report child labour. If child labour is legalised, the situation will spiral out of control.”

Rather than going in for piecemeal amendments to current laws, activists say the government should revamp the flagship 1986 Act itself, which has failed to curb child labour effectively. A new beginning will also pave way for the rehabilitation of millions of children rescued from exploitative industries or households, they say.

The Parliamentary Standing Committee On the Child Labour Amendment Act underscores the fallacy of the government proposing to keep a check on children working in their homes.

“The Ministry is itself providing loopholes by inserting this proviso since it would be very difficult to make out whether children are merely helping their parents or are working to supplement the family income. Further, allowing children to work after school is detrimental to their health, as rest and recreation is important for fullest physical and mental development in the formative years, besides adversely affecting their studies,” states the report.

India's Militarism

India is the world's largest importer of defense equipment, spending $40 billion annually on military purchases. An IHS Jane's report notes that Asia's third-largest economy is poised to become the fourth-largest military spender in the world by 2020, surpassed only by the U.S., Russia and China.

The right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party, which assumed power last May, promised in its election manifesto to beef up the country's defense industrial base. India's dependence on imports will be whittled down by Modi's "Make in India" campaign. India imports nearly 60 percent of its defense needs, accounting for 15 percent of the world's weapon imports. Eventually, Modi hopes that India will also become an exporter of defense equipment. It has also allocated 12% more of its budget to the military compared with the interim budget tabled by the previous government in February 2014. Though the industry started to change and modernize under the previous Congress-led government, the bulk of the country's military equipment is still imported. On Apr. 10 India announced it would buy 36 fighter jets from France's Dassault Aviation for an estimated $4.3 billion. Sweden's Saab is set to re-pitch their Gripen planes, eliminated in the Rafale tender, as the kind of lighter, single-engine aircraft that Defense Minister Manohar Parrikar said on Monday the air force needed to rebuild its fleet. "We are here and we are ready," said a source close to Saab, which is proposing to establish "fully-fledged production" of the Gripen in India alongside a local partner.  Modi’s government earlier shortlisted Larsen & Toubro and Pipavav Defence for a $10 billion contract to build six submarines. U.S.-based Lockheed Martin, the world's largest weapons manufacturer, formed a joint venture with India's Tata Advanced Systems to produce parts for the C-130J Super Hercules plane.

To facilitate foreign and private participation, the Modi administration last year said it would allow foreign investors to own up to 49% of the equity in Indian defense companies. Other regulatory changes include removal of restrictions on the issuance of annual industrial licences, and those on the sale of controlled products by publicly owned companies to private ones, as well as the decision for the military to order $250 billion of equipment. The Confederation of Indian Industry and Boston Consulting Group states that if India is to achieve its target of lifting its manufacturing sector to account for 25% of gross domestic product, the defense sector has to take the lead.

On March 5, tycoon Anil Ambani’s Reliance Infrastructure paid $132 million for an initial stake of 18% in Pipavav Defence and Offshore Engineering, the country's largest shipbuilding and heavy industry company. It wants to increase its share to at least 25.1% in order to take control, with the intention of becoming "the country's biggest defense manufacturer." The Reliance group subsidiary is also in talks with Eurocopter of France, Kamov of Russia, and Sikorsky of the U.S. about technological tie-ups. Company sources said that the company plans to bid for upcoming tenders to make hundreds of military helicopters valued at about $4 billion. If it wins the contracts, the helicopters will likely be made in a proposed 5,000-acre defense and aerospace infrastructure facility called Dhirubhai Ambani Defence Park -- named after the billionaire's father.

His rival and older brother, Mukesh, who helms Reliance Aerospace Technologies and has a tie-up with France's Dassault Aviation, harbors ambitions to become one of the country's largest manufacturers of combat jets. Tata group, Mahindra & Mahindra, Larsen & Toubro, Punj Lloyd and Bharat Forge are also fighting for a bigger slice of an industry expected to generate $100 billion in revenue over the next decade.

A nice cup of tea?

India's tea industry directly employs more than a million people with many millions more dependent on it for their livelihoods. It brings in about $3bn a year, with up to a quarter of that coming from exports. India became a major tea producer after the British set up plantations in the 19th Century to break China's monopoly. The huge estates have traditionally provided for all their workers' needs - but if owners shut them down, thousands can be left without jobs, health care or enough to eat. Bijiita's Ekka’s ancestors worked as forced labour for British tea merchants, who set up India's north-eastern tea-growing belt in the 19th Century, and imported workers from central regions of the country.

Technically tea workers have been free for decades, but the 1951 Plantation Labour Act, introduced four years after India became independent, remains based on the colonial system. It outlines a duty of care owed by plantation owners to their employees, but at the same time it preserves a system of cradle-to-grave dependency. And even now, although the minimum wage is 169 rupees ($2.68) a day, tea workers typically only receive 96 rupees ($1.52), the companies arguing that the rest is made up by their welfare package.

In 2007 the UN Children's fund, Unicef, found that hunger, disease and child exploitation were a problem even on apparently successful plantations that sell tea to high-end customers. Now India's tea industry is being scrutinised by the World Bank, the National Human Rights Commission, the UN and other institutions.

"They are cocooned communities," says Unicef's Caroline den Dulk. "They have all their own services, nurseries, schools, health provision - but they are run from a private sector point of view, and the people there are among the most marginalised in India. They have fallen off the radar."

The sprawling Bundapani Tea Garden in West Bengal, in the foothills of the Himalayas is a vast, 3,000-acre (1,214-hectare) property which had its own hospital, schools and shops and more than 1,000 families were involved in the growing and processing of tea. Then, in July 2013, the tea garden was shut down. No-one told the workers why - they assume it was not making enough money. In the first 18 months, 10 people died from malnutrition-related illnesses according to Partha Pratim Sarkar, who runs a tea-worker charity, G-Nesep. Today Bundapani has an atmosphere of part post-apocalyptic ghost town and part faded colonial glory. The once blooming deep green tea bushes are overgrown with weeds. A post office, a factory and a school are all boarded up and abandoned. The hospital is derelict with broken windows and posters about health care strewn on the floor.

Bijiita Ekka, was a young teenager enjoying school “We had no money and we had to get money from somewhere," she says. "So my mother took me on a train to Delhi." There they went to see a labour contractor. the pair were separated, and the 14-year-old was taken by train north to Chandigarh, more than 1,000 miles (1,600km) from her home.

"I was terrified because I realised that something really bad was about to happen to me and I didn't know what I could do. I had never felt so scared and lonely," she says, her eyes filling with tears. What followed was a life of servitude in a military family that treated her like dirt. "I worked all day and everything I did was wrong. They used to scold me and hit me. Even the children would hit me." She speaks about being constantly hungry, working all the time and being beaten on a daily basis. One day her mother appeared in Chandigarh, and managed to take her away. She doesn't know exactly how long she spent there, but she knows it was months - and that she was paid nothing. "I can't go back to that life. Please. Never."

http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-32017529

The Indian Land Grab

Land is India's scarcest resource and the source of livelihood for over half its population. There is not a homogenous Indian farmer, nor is there a single land market. The average size of land owned by a farmer was a mere three acres a decade ago; it's even less now. In states like Kerala, Bihar, West Bengal, Uttar Pradesh and Tamil Nadu, the average holding is between half an acre and two acres. To put this in context: the average landholding is 110 acres in France, 450 acres in the US, and even higher in Brazil and Argentina.

Farming is the least productive sector of the economy - agriculture accounts for 15% of India's GDP, while employing more than half of its workforce. There are two basic ways to increase productivity. One, make agriculture more efficient, and two, change land use from agriculture to something else. The development process of independent India followed exactly that prescription. A large scale, state-led effort to irrigate and modernise agriculture was combined with a massive state-led drive to industrialise and urbanise. Both led to land acquisition on a very large scale.

The instrument used was a land acquisition law from colonial 1894 India that the government of independent India found convenient to deal with fragmentation of land holdings - with one blow it removed the twin problems of "holdouts" (or unwilling sellers) and unclear or disputed titles. Since India's independence in 1947, it is estimated that more than 50 million acres of land - about 6% of India's total land - were acquired or converted, and more than 50 million people affected. Most affected landowners were paid little. Many were never paid. Non-owners who were dependent on land for livelihoods were routinely not paid. Very little resettlement or rehabilitation was done, and what was done was shoddy. Tribals and dalits (formerly known as untouchables) were the worst sufferers. It was a severely unjust system that ruined millions of families and in the process produced modern India - its infrastructure, irrigation and energy systems, industrialisation, and urbanisation.

The turning point came in 2006-7 with the setting up of tax-free special economic zones to attract foreign investment. Many civil society groups argued that special economic zones were an official way for Indian businesses to grab farmland and protests against land acquisition became a nationwide phenomenon.

In December, the Narendra Modi-led BJP government passed an ordinance or an executive order removing the "informed consent" and "social impact assessment" requirements for a range of projects, including those relating to defence and national security, rural infrastructure, affordable housing, industrial corridors, and infrastructure. There is nothing in the new land bill which protects the most vulnerable populations like tribespeople from the machinations of land acquisition.

They are prey to a range of corrupt practices involving politically-connected insider information and local land mafias leading to the possibility of much-reduced payoffs and contrived consent.

Indian Women and Domestic Violence

A 2006 government survey, the last time the state collected comprehensive household data, stated that 40 percent of Indian women faced domestic violence. Considering that women comprise over 48 percent of India’s population of 1.2 billion people, this means that hundreds of millions of people are living a nightmare in what is considered the world’s largest democracy.

However many experts believe that a 2003 survey conducted by a non-profit and supported by the Planning Commission of India that threw up a figure of 84 percent paints a more accurate picture.

“It tells us that many cases are going unreported,” says Rashmi Anand, a domestic violence survivor who runs a free legal aid and counseling service for victims in the capital, New Delhi, in collaboration with the police. Interestingly, figures for domestic violence reported in crime statistics in many states are significantly higher than those that find their way into national-level databases.

In a 2013 study by the New Delhi-based think tank National Council for Applied Economic Research, over half of the married women surveyed said that they would be beaten up for going out of the house without permission (54 percent); not cooking properly (35 percent) and inadequate dowry payments (36 percent). Indian law bans dowry, but the practice remains widespread.

A 2014 report in Population and Development Review, a peer reviewed journal, shows that women who are more educated than their husbands are at higher risk of domestic violence as men see in it a way to re-assert their power and control over their wives.

The last government study done in 2006, the National Family Health Survey (NFHS), revealed that over 51 percent of Indian men didn’t think it wrong to assault their wives. More shockingly, 54 percent of the women themselves felt such violence was justified on certain grounds.

http://www.ipsnews.net/2015/02/from-the-police-station-back-to-the-hellhole-system-failing-indias-domestic-violence-survivors/

Fact of the Day

Air pollution in India has affected a huge number of its citizens, shortening the lives of around 660 million people by about three years. The lives of 54.5 percent of the Indian people who reside in areas heavily polluted by fine particles are shortened by 3.2 years on average.

New Delhi is  the most polluted in the world, according to the estimates by the World Health Organization. The list of 20 polluted cities in the world in 2014 included 12 other cities from India.

http://www.presstv.ir/Detail/2015/02/21/398579/Indias-pollution-affects-660-million

Trusting in God-men

A fine article on health-care and religion on the Countercurrents website.

Millions of rural people in India succumb to deaths due to diseases such as malaria, tuberculosis, kala azar and Japanese Encephalitis that could have been avoided with basic medication or treatment. Most of these preventable deaths in villages are due to infections of communicable, parasitic and respiratory diseases. Deaths in villages from conditions like nutritional deficiencies or perinatal deaths are also avoidable if they could have accessed some kind of affordable, basic health care at the right time. Around 40% of the rural morbidity in India is thanks to water born infectious diseases. These diseases are (1) of the gastrointestinal tract - such as diarrhoea, amoebiasis, typhoid fever, infectious hepatitis, worm infestations and poliomyelitis, (2) carried in the air through coughing, sneezing or even breathing -such as measles, tuberculosis, whooping cough and pneumonia, or (3) the difficult ones - like malaria, filariasis and kala-azar. About 100 million people get diarrhoea and cholera every year. There are 12 million tuberculosis cases currently in India with 1.2 million cases added every year. Around 37, 000 cases of measles are reported every year. About 2.3 million episodes and over 1000 malarial deaths occur every year in India. An estimated 45 million people are carriers of microfilaria. Around 1.2 million cases of leprosy exist in India with 500, 000 cases being added every year. More than 85% of rural children are undernourished and around 150, 000 of them die every year.

Many primary causes of ill health are based on factors such as poverty, deprivation and environmental abuse. The health support systems of the poor are clean water, air, forests and land. Threat to these resources is the root cause of their ill health.

Most who flock to the god-men for miracle cures in India are from the groups of poor women, dalits and backward communities. They work as small farmers, agricultural labourers and artisans. They struggle hard at their work places under adverse weather conditions to produce food and other commodities for their urban counterparts. When they get sick, they have no one else to turn to except their God and these god-men who claim to have miracle cures for their ailments. They look for solutions in quacks, sorcerers and god-men. India has many such individuals, families and trusts (which are managed like modern corporations) who claim to have miracle cures for all kind of ailments. They often have a very huge fan following in the rural heartland of India. They are omnipresent and they travel to many places to conduct mass healing sessions in emotionally charged gatherings. These god-men like the shamans of yester years play multiple roles as a magician, medicine person, miracle-worker, healer, priest, mystic and master of all spiritual energies and enjoy the company of powerful business tycoons and politicians.

Such healing individuals who claim shamanic powers are not limited to Hinduism only, they present in all other religions including Islam and Christianity. Thousands of people from Kerala rush to ‘divine healing centres’ set up around the clout of healing Christian priests who are believed to have the ability to perform miracles, exorcise demons and heal afflictions.

It does not matter even if the evidence of healing offered by these God-men does not stand up to scientific scrutiny. Their followers continue to believe in the testimony of those who got healed, though their healing is only a subjective experience. Critics of faith healers are usually dealt with personal attacks and they are blamed of not having enough faith. They gather support from members of their mother religion by crying ‘attack on their holy faith by nonbelieving outsiders’. They survive as medical science too does not have answers to all the questions about health, diseases and the multiple ways through which healing takes place.

In theory, the government provides some kind of health services - a three tier structure of health care consisting of Community Health Centres, Primary Health Centres and Subcentres is set up for the rural areas. But whatever limited services exist in the rural areas are either nonfunctional, dysfunctional, or are with extremely ‘poor quality’. Most often the service providers, especially doctors are not present in the rural facilities. India has just six doctors and nine hospital beds for every 10,000 of its people, compared to 14 doctors and 30 hospital beds in China. About 75% of health infrastructure, medical manpower, and other health resources are concentrated in urban areas where 28% of the populations live in villages. A recent survey of 15,000 households across 12 states noted that about half the people in India and over three-fifths of those who live in rural areas have to travel beyond 5 km to reach a healthcare centre. The survey further points out that the availability of healthcare services is skewed towards urban centers with these residents, who make up only 28% of the country's population, enjoying access to 66% of India's available hospital beds, while the remaining 72%, who live in rural areas, have access to just one-third of the bed.

Villages in the heartland of India are inhabited by poor landless laborers, small holders, and artisans. They spent their money mostly on food and some money on clothing and housing. Considering their ‘subsistence existence’, spending money on health care is indeed a luxury to them. Most of them could not afford to buy health care from the urban centers just because they are poor. Therefore in case of extreme illnesses, the rural masses turn to the private providers for which they have to borrow money from the money lenders. Many studies  have shown that medical treatment is the most important cause of rural indebtedness, next only to dowry in the rural India. Those who are indebted and those who are unable to afford a loan finally turn to quacks, sorcerers and god-men. Not only in remote rural and tribal areas but also in urban slums, the phenomenon of god-men is rampant and these god-men meet a felt need of these ailing masses.

The problem of poor access to health care by the masses is well documented by researchers umpteen times. The policy and program measures to deal with this issue are also known to experts. What we lack is the political will and guts to implement certain drastic measures. Today we are left with two options in front of us. We can either continue to leave the health care of the masses to shamans, sorcerers and godmen; and when they rally behind their miracle cures, we can blame them for their ignorance and superstitious habits and plan media campaigns to educate them! Or we can take bold steps to ensure universal access to health care.

The full article by Kandathil Sebastian, a DevelopmentConsultant and Public Health Researcher, can be read here.

Calling India

SPRING SCHOOL & TWENTIETH ANNUAL CONFERENCE 2014 of the
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The Naxalite Uprising

Seven hundred and fifty million Indians, about 75% of the country’s population, live in poverty while the top 5% of Indian families hold 38% of total assets. India has the third highest number of billionaires in the world, after the U.S. and China.

The Naxalite  insurgency has spread  over 40% of India’s land area, encompassing 20 of the country’s 28 states, including 223 districts (up from 55 in 2003) out of a total of 640. The seven most affected Indian states in terms of fatalities are Chattisgarh, Jharkhand, West Bengal, Maharashtra, Orissa, Bihar, and Andhra Pradesh, in that order.  These regions comprise the “Red Corridor.” About 10,000 people have been killed in the expanding civil war since 1980. The Maoists wield about 20,000 armed fighters and another 50,000 supporters.

The long-term objective of the  Communist Party of India (Maoist) is the armed overthrow of the Indian state and the creation of a “socialist-communist” government. The Maoists term this a “democratic revolution, which would remain directed against imperialism, feudalism, and comprador bureaucratic capitalism.” The insurgents do not consider the Indian electoral system and governments to be democratic, but rather tools that benefit the landlord and capitalist classes.
The Indian state’s response to the Maoist challenge has been to send 81,000 paramilitary troops into the affected areas in “Operation Greenhunt,” which, by attacking Adivasis, has only driven them further into the arms of the Maoists. In addition to paramilitary troops, the state has also used death squads known as Salwa Judum (SJ), meaning Purification Hunt, to spread a reign of terror and drive out Adivasis from villages for the benefit of companies. The Salwa Judum was responsible for displacing 300,000 Adivasis, killing, raping, and looting them and burning down their villages. Five hundred charges of murder, 103 of arson, and 99 of rape have been levelled by citizens against the Salwa Judum, but the Chattisgarh government has not investigated or processed a single case. According to Human Rights Watch,
“Since mid-2005, government security forces and members of the Salwa Judum have attacked villages, killed and raped villagers, and burned down huts to force people into government camps… The conflict has given rise to one of the largest internal displacement crises in India.”
. The Indian Supreme Court declared the SJ illegal in 2011 and ordered the Chattisgarh government to disband it.

The state of Jharkhand in eastern India is a main focus of the insurgency. According to one observer, corruption is rampant in Jharkhand, which is turning away from electoral politics and “slipping into the hands of the Maoists.” During the last 12 years, not a single provincial government in Jharkhand has completed its term, and there have been eight of these during this period. India’s electricity generation is mainly dependent on coal, and Jharkhand, along with four other states in which the insurgency is strongest, accounts for 85% of India’s coal deposits. Jharkhand also contains the world’s biggest iron ore deposit.  The corrupt Jharkhand government has signed 42 Memorandums of Understanding (MOUs) with various large iron and steel companies, including Tata, Jindal, Mittal, and Essar. The Central Bureau of Investigations (CBI), India’s top official investigating agency, has launched a probe into the giving of coal mines by the state to Jindal Steel and Power and other companies. Jindal has benefited greatly from a policy that gave away coal mines without auctions – a policy that may have cost the government $30 billion, according to the state auditor’s 2012 report.

 The Adivasis, the original people of India, were among the poorest people in the country to begin with, being denied basic services by the Indian state with their land being stolen by New Delhi since 1947 when the country became independent. This thievery violates the Indian Constitution itself, which protects the land rights of Adivasis. Adivasis make up 26% of Jharkhand’s population, and many depend on forests for their livelihood. These kinds of industrial projects have already ravaged the forests, and their increase will expand such damage. Jharkhand contains the Saranda forest, Asia’s largest sal tree sanctuary, for which the government has granted 19 mining licenses. Saranda is where the world’s biggest iron ore deposit is located. At present, there is one state-owned mine operating in Saranda.

According to Indian journalist Sayantan Bera:
“Saranda is to eastern India what the Amazon rainforests are to the world. Its springs feed rivers like the Karo, the Baitarani, and the Sanjay. Extensive mining operations are killing these perennial streams. Wastewater from washaries of iron ore mines on the periphery has already contaminated the groundwater aquifers. Mine workers and residents in the periphery of Saranda are dying from liver disease caused by contaminated groundwater.”

Says Indigenous activist Gladson Dungdung, convener of the Jharkhand Indigenous Peoples’ Forum: “The government has been helping in securing land, water, and minerals for the corporate giants through military operations. In Saranda in June, July, and August 2011, there were three massive operations: Operation Monsoon, Operation Bravo Boy, and Operation Anaconda. The security forces killed two Adivasis, raped several women, and tortured more than 500 Adivasis. They also disrupted the Adivasis food grain supply, destroyed the harvest, ate livestock, and destroyed all official identification papers of the Adivasis (ration cards, voter ID, land titles). The Adivasis were forced to leave their villages and they only returned after our intervention. The end result is that the the government gave mining leases to 19 mining companies in the region including Tata, Jindal, Mittal, Rungta Mines and others.” Dungdung explains, “Today, we live in the corporate Indian state, not in a welfare state. The government makes all the laws and policies in favour of the corporate houses. For example, the Jharkhand government introduced the Industrial Policy of 2012, which clearly says that 25 kilometers of both sides of the four-lane road from Kodarma to Bahragora [towns in Jharkhand] will be handed over to the corporations as a Special Economic Zone. Where can people go from here? The state is simply not bothered about its people. See the example of the state of Chattisgarh, where 644 villages were forcibly vacated by Salwa Judum and handed over to corporations.”

“It’s the genocide of the Adivasis,” says Xavier Dias about the opening of Saranda to mining companies. Dias is spokesperson for the Jharkhand Mines Area Coordination Committee “Today Jharkhand is a fully militarized zone. There are over a hundred bases with a total of 50,000 official paramilitary troops involved in military action. There are Indian Army bases, too, but these are not involved in direct action yet. Aside from government paramilitary forces here, we also have the mining corporations’ security forces. The government claims that its troops are there to counter the Maoists, but in actuality it is the democratic movements such as people resisting land grabs or fighting police repression that are intimidated into silence. By creating this drastic panic among the people, the corporations are free to suck out the minerals and forest resources.”

 According to Dias, in Jharkhand, the insurgents also attack Adivasi villages, extort money from mining companies, and protect the ones that are grabbing land from Adivasis. He says:
“No corporate boss has so far been killed by the Maoists. When the Maoists call a general strike, those companies that pay levies to them are allowed to function and the rest are attacked. I do not believe that a mining company can function here without paying levies to the Maoists. Jharkhand is the place from where Maoists finance their operations in other states, too.” Xavier Dias, however, admits that “there are places where the Maoists are providing some good services to the Adivasis, such as Bastar [a town] in the state of Chattisgarh. He also does not think that the Maoists are corrupt, but considers them “misguided.” Dias does not see armed struggle as the way to solve India’s class and Adivasi problems.

Gladson Dungdung is critical of the Maoists, too, saying that, “As far my knowledge and experience is concerned, they are not fighting for the Adivasis [in Jharkhand]. Instead, they have created more problems for the democratic people’s movement.  It’s very easy for the government to call these democratic struggles Maoist and suppress them. I think the Maoists are part of the problem, not the solution.”

Dayamani Barla, an Adivasi activist also based in Jharkhand, says that Adivasis support the Maoists. She points out that “New Delhi’s failure to protect the interests of the tribals has led them to lend their support to the Maoists, whom they believe are fighting for their basic rights.”

According to  Al Jazeera in many of these places the insurgents have organized the Adivasis and taken up community projects to provide services the government doesn’t. In  one such village, Tholkobad in Jharkhand state, where, under the name of the ‘agrarian revolution,’ the Maoists were providing support to the villagers to improve farming methods. One village leader told Al Jazeera that the Maoists frequently visited their villages, and treated everyone equally.”

 Indian novelist Arundhati Roy referring to the Adivasis’ and Maoists’ fight against the Indian Forest Department in the Dandakaranya area, states: “Emboldened by the people’s participation in these struggles, the party decided to confront the forest department. It encouraged people to take over forest land and cultivate it. The forest department retaliated by burning new villages that came up in forest areas. In 1986, it announced a National Park in Bijapur, which meant the eviction of 60 villages. More than half of them had already been moved out, and construction of national park infrastructure had begun when the party moved in. It demolished the construction and stopped the eviction of the remaining villages. It prevented the forest department from entering the area. On a few occasions, officials were captured, tied to trees, and beaten by villagers. It was cathartic revenge for generations of exploitation. Eventually, the forest department fled. Between 1986 and 2000, the party redistributed 300,000 acres of forest land. Today, Comrade Venu says, there are no landless peasants in Dandakaranya.”

Taken from this article

cheap drugs for sale

India - the ‘pharmacy of the world's poor’


Glivec is produced by Novartis in the treatment of chronic myeloid leukaemia (CML). Glivec as a life-saving, breakthrough drug for certain forms of cancer, The treatment cost is 130,000 rupees ($2400) a month. An Indian generic alternative is priced at cheaper 8000 to 12000 rupees a month.

The Indian Supreme court just granted a victory to the sick all over the planet when it refused the Swiss pharmaceutical giant a new patent for the tinkering it did with its anti-leukemia drug Glivec.

Novartis’ website declares: “We are committed to provide access to medicine for patients worldwide.” But how is this possible where the sick find their drugs prohibitively expensive?

It was only when Indian firms began to make cheap copies of HIV drugs that it became possible more than a decade ago to contemplate the treatment of millions of people in impoverished countries of Africa, where the AIDS epidemic was at its worst

“This is a huge relief for the millions of patients and doctors in developing countries who depend on affordable medicines from India, and for treatment providers like MSF,” Dr. Unni Karunakara, the head of the Nobel Peace Prize-winning Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders)

class war

India’s biggest car-maker Maruti Suzuki has shut down a plant  following labor unrest which has left one man dead and at least 40 others injured. The company said the dispute began when a shop floor employee beat up a supervisor due to "objectionable remarks" made by the supervisor. The workers' union then prevented management from taking disciplinary action and blocked managers from leaving the factory after work. Over 1,000 policemen have now been deployed at the factory and work has been suspended indefinitely.

The Manesar plant, in Haryana state, around 50 kilometers (30 miles) from New Delhi, employs 2,000 people. There was no pending union demand or dispute that triggered the event in which a senior human resource manager has been killed. But the details showed discontent and a tinderbox situation. The 'Maruti belt', as the area around Gurgaon's industrial zone is called, has seen labour disputes involving companies such as Honda Motorcycles, Ricoh and Sunbeam in the past few years, indicating a broader influence of labour militancy. Last year was bad for Maruti, as its refusal to recognise an independent trade union in June led to a 12-day strike before an uneasy truce. Another two-week strike erupted over other demands in October. The union has accused India's biggest car manufacturer of anti-worker and anti-union activities. A number of union officials were paid to resign from the company. Slowly, but surely, Maruti has started plans to open another plant in Gujarat, with the probable intent of diversifying its labour risk. The state government of Haryana has been industry-friendly irrespective of which party is in power.

“We will de-recognise this union completely,” said S.Y. Siddiqui, Maruti’s Chief Operating Officer, in an interview on Friday. “There will be no compromise on violence.”
Union leaders elsewhere in Gurgaon say that the violence in Maruti is symptomatic of industry-wide unrest. “Today, it isn’t as if every plant in Gurgaon is violent, but no plant is totally peaceful,” said Raj Kumar, president of the Autoworkers Union at Rico Auto Industries. “The problem is that the management is unwilling to listen to workers. Today, there are no negotiations… There are only fights.” 

http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/article3663050.ece

Sacred Cows

An interesting read 

The construction of today’s India as a vegetarian-loving and cow-praying country is an outright lie and a false cultural-propaganda by right-wing upper caste forces to oppress Dalits, lower-castes and Muslims. Culinary politics and contact with animals play a huge role in establishing purity-pollution rules to discriminate people in the caste system. In today’s independent India, the beef-hating Brahmanical vegetarianism made cow slaughtering and beef-eating not only a taboo, but also illegal in many states of India. It has even secured a supportive-protection in the Indian constitution: Article 48 of the Indian constitution directs the State to take necessary steps for prohibiting the slaughter of cows and calves. Many Indian states have banned cow-slaughtering and selling beef is not permitted in public. Beef sellers and buyers in those states have to conduct their trade like drug-dealers. In Delhi, the cow protection enforcement team visits supermarkets to ensure beef is off the shelves.

 Despite all these forceful bans go to prove that India has a significant beef-eating population. In fact, that consumption of beef and buffalo meat together top the list of highest meat consumption in India. Annually, India produces an estimated 1.5 million tonnes of buffalo meat, of which only 24% is exported. This year India will also overtake the United States as the world’s third largest beef exporter. The vegetarian image is also now part of India Inc. and exported to the world. It is a false-representation of millions of people’s every day politics and food practices.

 Cow was neither sacred nor unconsumable by Brahmans according to D.N.Jha who has studied Rigveda in detail. This vedic scripture – written roughly between 1100 and 1700 BC – has frequent references to the cooking of ox meat for every day consumption and offering to gods. Jha’s The myth of the holy cow, offers detailed evidence that ox, bull and cow were both killed in public sacrifices and domestically slaughtered to be consumed in every-day life. Later, Buddhism and Jainism became critical of ritual and public sacrifices of animals and introduced ahimsa (non-violence). According to Ambedkar – Dalit leader, architect of Indian constitution and a strong critique of Gandhi’s ideals – ‘the clue to the worship of the cow is to be found in the struggle between Buddhism and Brahmanism’, a strategy to establish its Brahmanical supremacy over Buddhism.This explains why Ambedkar advocated Dalits to convert to Buddhism.

The historian D.D. Kosambi pointed out in his work The culture and civilisation of Ancient Indian (1964), “A modern orthodox Hindu would place beef-eating on the same level as cannibalism, whereas Vedic Brahmins had fattened upon a steady diet of sacrificed beef.”

The Human Zoo

The Jarawa tribe is 403-strong. Its members are trusting, innocent and hugely vulnerable to exploitation, living in a jungle reserve on South Andaman, islands in the Bay of Bengal belonging to India. Anthropologists think the Jarawa are descendants of some of the first humans to move out of Africa. Theirs is a simple life. Men hunt pigs and turtles with bows and arrows; women gather fruit and honey. They have no gods and when people die they are left under a tree until only the skeleton remains. Then the tribe tie the bones to their bodies to bring luck during the hunt. It was only in 1998 that they started to venture out of the jungle in any numbers. Like many previously uncontacted tribes, the Jarawa are vulnerable to unfamiliar diseases. They started succumbing to measles and mumps and even malaria, to which they previously appeared to have some sort of immunity. Some have also adopted the vices of the outsiders: tobacco, alcohol and betel nuts.

"Dance," the policeman instructed. The girls in front of him, naked from the waist up, obeyed. A tourist's camera panned round to another young woman, also naked and awkwardly holding a bag of grain in front of her. "Dance for me," the policeman commanded. The role of the police is to protect tribespeople from unwelcome and intrusive outsiders. But on this occasion the officer had accepted a £200 bribe to get the girls to perform. "I gave you food," he reminded them. Tourists threw bananas and biscuits to the tribespeople at the roadside, as they would to animals in a safari park.

In 2007 the government established a buffer zone around the reserve, hoping to protect the tribe from further interaction with the outside world, in particular a luxury resort being constructed on the very edge of the reserve by the Barefoot India tour company. The company hired lawyers to fight the zone and the case is currently with India's supreme court. In an attempt to reduce contact, the authorities have cut the number of tourist convoys to eight a day.

Those responsible for the tribe's welfare think the only solution is to keep them apart from outsiders for as long as possible. "Forced coexistence would be total genocide for them," says Dr Anstice Justin, head of the Anthropological Survey of India in Port Blair.

"The Jarawa could easily be decimated or reduced to a state of dependency, as has happened to so many other tribes worldwide," says spokeswoman for Survival International Sophie Grig. Survival argues that closing the road would at least allow the tribe to decide whether it has contact.

everyone wants to avoid is the Jarawa going the way of the Great Andamanese, who once lived around Port Blair. From 10,000 in the late 18th century, their numbers have now fallen to about 50 and the tribe is drifting out of history. "They lost the will to live," says Denis Giles, editor of the islands' Andaman Chronicle newspaper. "The government gave them all facilities, it gave them jobs, but they started drinking and begging. They lost their self-respect and their language and their culture. It is easy for politicians to say integrate, but it is not simple to put it into practice."

Giles added it was principally the young Jarawa who had come out of the jungle, fascinated by outsiders and what they have to offer. As they grow older, they lose interest, realising that the outside world is not for them.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/jan/07/andaman-islands-tribe-tourism-threat

THE PRICE OF RICE

The Indian government proposed a Food Security Act that will provide subsidised grains only to those who earn less than Rs 20 a day (if you live in a city and less than Rs 15 a day if you live in a village) - the BPL - below poverty line. The reason the poverty line matters so much is because it determines how many Indian can claim welfare, which, in turn, determines the fiscal burden the State will have to bear. The government says it can’t afford to feed everyone – hence the manipulations with the BPL. But for the poor, the BPL is not some statistical term: it is a lifeline. Rs 20 a day is somehow supposed to feed whole families. Ferrari dealerships and Louis Vuitton stores spring upto cater to the new urban rich but leave hundreds of millions of others struggling without access to adequate food and clean water.

Economists Pravin Jha and Nilachal Acharya have estimated that if rice/wheat were made available to 200 million households in India at Rs 3 a kilo, it would add Rs 84,399 crore to the Budget, just the price of two Commonwealth Games.

The World Bank global poverty line, at $1.25 a day or about $38 per month, is three times higher than India's urban level.

Himmat pedals his bicycle rickshaw through New Delhi's crowded streets, earning barely enough to feed his family. The 5,000 rupees ($110) he earns a month pays for a tiny room with a single light bulb and no running water for his family of four. After buying just enough food to keep his family from starving, there is nothing left for medicine, new clothes for his children or savings. Himmat is way above India's poverty line. "My existence doesn't matter to the government. They don't care if people like me live or die," he said.

The country currently spends just 2 percent of its GDP — about 29 billion — in social protection, and half of that goes to the Public Distribution System, which provides the poor with subsidized food. Even with the low poverty line, the system — riddled with corruption and mismanagement — caters to over 440 million people, more than the entire population of the United States. The World Bank poverty line would add about 60 million more people to that category.

Being poor makes you a criminal

The beggars' home, and facilities run by the state of Karnataka for the detention of beggars, is essentially a jail meant for those convicted of begging.

Section 2 of the Karnataka Prohibition of Beggary Act (KPBA), 1975 defines beggar as a person “having no visible means of subsistence, wanders about or remains in any public place in such a condition or manner as makes it likely that he exists by soliciting or receiving alms”. This provision alone indicates that shabbily dressed persons, persons who may not “appear” to have gainful employment can be assumed to be beggars. Aged persons who are destitute can easily be presumed to be beggars. In fact, the section does not even require that a person is found begging for her to be considered a beggar. A bare reading of this provision alone indicates the wide latitude given to the police to make an arrest, setting it up for gross misuse and arbitrary enforcement. This is evidently a statute whose main purpose is to make poverty invisible and cleanse public places of sights of destitution. In effect, it is to criminalise poverty.

Despite being a criminal statute nowhere does the Act provide for a person accused of begging to be adequately represented .The Act assumes that if one is arrested, then one must be guilty. It is the responsibility of the state to ensure that he/she is provided with free legal aid. The Act does not even make a mention of representation of alleged beggars in the judicial enquiry before the magistrate. Those accused of non-cognisable offences under Indian Penal Code that are punishable with imprisonment for one year are accorded several rights, including a presumption of innocence, legal representation, bail etc. Alleged beggars under KPBA are not even given this fundamental right of a just and fair hearing.

Taken from here

The rise of the richer worker in Asia

Although "middle class" is more a subjective sociological term rather than an objective economic definition many socialists would prefer to describe such people as simply higher paid members of the working class, as they are just as often to be associated collectively in trade unions and recognise their class unity against the real true wealthy elite.

The Asian Development Bank define India’s middle class as those who spend anywhere between $2 and $20 (Rs 93 to Rs 930) a day on purchasing power. Broken down, the lower-middle class falls between US$2 and US$4 per day, the middle-middle class spends between US$4 and US$10 per day and is able to save and consume non-essential goods, and the upper-middle class consumes between US$10 and US$20 per day.

However, more than three-fourths of India’s 274 million-strong middle class face the risk of slipping back into poverty in the event of a major economic shock as they are in the lowest spending bracket of $2-4 (Rs 93-186) a day.Another financial crisis, wars or large natural disasters can reverse people’s move into higher income categories."Asia's rapidly-growing middle class remains vulnerable ... A major shock can easily send them back into poverty," said Jong-Wha Lee, chief economist at the ADB.

Over the next two decades, the Indian middle class population is expected to touch one billion. And 55% of the world’s middle class will be in Asia by 2030, up from 25% now.China had 817 million people, or 63% of its population, in the middle class bracket in 2008.

Diabetes, heart disease and cancer on the rise among Asian middle class and that people are adopting Western eating habits that may lead to obesity. The rise in obesity in China and India is cause for concern, especially when much of emerging Asia’s population is still living in poverty. China has almost 11 percent of its population living below the minimal level of dietary consumption while over 20 percent of Indians are dealing with the same problem.
“All indications are that in the next 20-30 years, Asia will be faced with an increasing number of chronic diseases on a scale previously unseen,”

Slumdogs return to the slums

According to CNN
On Sunday night, Azharuddin Ismail and Rubina Ali were in Hollywood, California, getting celebrity treatment as eight Oscars were awarded to the movie they starred in, "Slumdog Millionaire."
On Thursday night, the two children were sleeping at home in Mumbai, India. Azharuddin sleeps under a plastic sheet in a shantytown beside a railway track, where the smell of urine and cow dung lingers in the air. Rubina sleeps with her parents and siblings in a tiny shack beside an open drain.

slumdogs and millionaires

According to here
Out of India's population, 76% live below the poverty limit of $2 a day, compared to 73% in Sub-Saharan Africa. That is 800 million people living in abject poverty - in one country.

One third of all the world's ultra poor are Indians. 40% of all malnourished children are Indian.

but then there is this
Four of the top eight billionaires in the world are from India. Topping the ranks is steel tycoon Lakshmi Mittal, whose worth Forbes puts at $45 billion. Next up are the Ambani brothers, Mukesh and Anil, with $43 billion and $42 billion repsectively, largely from petrochemicals. Rounding out the list is KP Singh, the real-estate magnate, at $30 billion. All four of the Indian billionaires inherited substantial fortunes, suggesting that in India, wealth is still determined more by your parents than by your career or your ideas.

man kills 2 day old baby

Kolkata , Ratan Santra , a balloon seller , choked his two day year old daughter to death in West Bengal and surrendered to the police .

"I hardly earn Rs30 [ 40 pence ] a day and have a mother , wife and two more daughters to feed . So I killed her to save her . as well as ourselves , from poverty and hunger "

Calling time on the call centres

Having talked to a few Indian's about their experiences of working in the call-centres it seems my personal anecdotal evidence appears very true from this story .

Young men and women in call and contact centres across India are over-worked and stressed out. Many are leaving the industry.Call centres hold no attraction for these people anymore. They are changing professions.

Shabana Pavaskar, a senior staff at a reputable call centre in Mumbai, feels it is not a career, just a job.
"I have been working here for many years but there's no promotion, no motivation and the hours are extremely demanding," she says. "Over-time is not an option but a compulsion. A government job with a fairly less salary will be more feasible than working here."
She says it loud, she says it clear. And so do many others. The industry has tried hard to make it lucrative for young people by creating cool recreational facilities and improving infrastructure, but that has failed to stop them from leaving for greener pastures.
"Where's the time to use their damn gym or cafeteria or other facilities?" says Ms Pavaskar.

Shameela Zaidi was among the first to join the fledgling BPO industry at the beginning of the decade. She found little time to spend with her growing son and the shifts were at odd hours [ due to varying time zones ].
"I didn't get time to spend with my son and my health completely deteriorated," she says. "The other important thing is that there is no growth in terms of salary and career."

There was a time when our office was cluttered with 500 to 600 people who came for recruitment in one day," Abhishek Tiwari, with many years behind him as a call centre man, left the industry recently despite being promoted to senior manager and recruiting youngsters for his call centre says. "Today, even after lowering our standards, getting 40-50 people a day was a struggle."