MB Lal Book -12

MB Lal Book-12

154.     U.N. Special Rapporteur visits Manipur, weeps

155.     Veteran journalist focuses on paid news

156.     North Lakhimpur          
157. Over 2,000 fewer farmers every day
158. Fall in intake of calorie, foodgrains availability
159. “Rape law changes welcome, yet an opportunity lost”
160. First ever ‘printed’ gun fired
161. ‘Licensed’ gun printing covered under 2nd Amendment
162. Trafficked, confined and raped in the heart of Delhi
163. Paid news pandemic undermines democracy

164. China’s first ‘blue book’ on India sees a government in ‘serious crisis’
165. China drops Arunachal to create ‘positive’ vibes before Li Keqiang’s India visit
166. Millennials: The Next Greatest Generation?

167. India’s demographic challenge
168. Kin of Indian languishing in Russian jail seek government intervention

169.Four walls and the cry for help














IMPHAL, April 29, 2013

U.N. Special Rapporteur visits Manipur, weeps

IBOYAIMA LAITHANGBAM

Rashida Manjoo, U.N. Special Rapporteur on violence against women, its causes and consequences, broke down and wept for a few minutes uncontrollably on Sunday during a consultative meeting here. It was attended by about 200 human rights defenders, families of victims and civil society organisations. The frail mother of Manorama Thangjam, who was arrested, raped and shot dead allegedly by some personnel of 17 Assam Rifles on July 11, 2004, was telling Ms. Manjoo about the tragic death of the girl. She fervently appealed to her for justice.

Ms. Manjoo arrived in Imphal on Saturday. During the consultative meeting on Sunday, 40 separate depositions were made. Speaking about her mandate and the purpose of her current visit to India, Ms. Manjoo said, “The death of a woman is not a new act but the ultimate act in the continuation of violence in the life of the woman.” In her closing remarks, she said that it was not her mandate to comment on the depositions made before her and that her report would be based on facts. She also said that her opinions and conclusions as an independent expert were hers alone and that these would not be changed or shaped by any influence whether from the government or any other organisation.

Irom Sharmila, the woman who has been on more than 12 years of fast unto death demanding repeal of the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act, 1958, also sent a hand-written terse letter to Ms. Manjoo. The letter thanked her for visiting the conflict area. A “justice lover like [her] from a remote hilly state” expected a positive outcome. “Like a viewer of fish in an aquarium, by now you must know the cause and effect of the utter lawlessness in Manipur.” She also wrote that Ms. Manjoo could not change the mindset of the people here.

She says that the government has been spending lakhs of the tax payers' money in nasal feeding her all these years. She wonders why the people are not saying anything about the misuse of the public money in this manner. The government is doing these things to “suppress my voice of truth forcibly.”

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NEW DELHI, April 29, 2013

Veteran journalist focuses on paid news

STAFF REPORTER

At a time when the media’s credibility is in question and the controversial paid news phenomenon is being debated in various public forums, veteran journalist Satish Jacob has made a documentary titled Is the Indian Media in a Self Destruct Mode .

The seasoned journalist, who has had a long association with the BBC, has raised relevant questions about the media’s role in the country.

For Mr. Jacob, who has directed and produced this bi-lingual documentary, it was important to make this film because the media’s impartiality in a democratic country like ours has to be maintained at all costs.

Through this project, he has raised two pertinent questions concerning the media in order to find out whether its credibility has taken a beating.

Noting that his documentary is not a commercial venture, Mr. Jacob said since this issue has been debated in print and electronic media, it was important to make a documentary.

“Firstly, is the public losing its faith in the media? Secondly, should there be a mechanism through which journalists voluntarily check themselves from paid news? This issue was first debated in The Hindu and P. Sainath had exposed this paid news phenomenon. Press Council of India Chairman Justice Markandey Katju has for good measure referred to the wide-spread upshot of the diabolical existence of paid-news,” Mr. Jacob said.

The recent and rather shocking episode in Guwahati, where a television journalist “paid money to some youths indulging in eve-teasing to record the event more elaborately” has been mentioned in the documentary.

The documentary also highlights the case of television news staffers allegedly demanding up to Rs.100 crore from a corporate house to cover up the group’s involvement in the coal block allotment scandal which was hitting the headlines during that period, Mr. Jacob said.

The documentary, which was screened at the India International Centre here on Thursday, will also be aired by the national broadcaster.

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NL Diary

AMIT BARUAH

Going Back

You can’t miss it. A white, boat-shaped temple marks the gateway to North Lakhimpur town, on the north bank of the Bra­hmaputra river. As our Bolero, which has nearly completed its 360-odd km Guwahati-NL run, chugs along, one can spy first a Maruti showroom and then a Hyundai one. We have hit town.

It has been 34 years since I set foot in North Lakhimpur, my father’s hometown in Assam. My last trip, at age 14, with my parents, was in 1979. We had taken the Tinsukia Mail to New Bongaigaon (where the broad gauge line ended at the time) and then the Murkongselek-bound Arunachal Express to land in NL. I still remember the delightful omelette we would have for breakfast at the New Bongaigaon station as we waited for the Arunachal Express.

This time, an Indigo flight from Delhi takes me to Guwahati (North Lakhimpur is not connected by air from anywhere), which destination I reach by 8 am. Amiyo, who is to drive the Bolero, is waiting for me. We leave for NL straightaway, stopping only to pick up Samudra Gupta Kashyap, a long-standing Guwahati-based correspondent, who is to be my co-passenger.

The road isn’t bad, but it’s like a work in progress. My gaze seldom veers from on the countryside, a sight for my sore, Delhi eyes. Three hours down the line, seeing Amiyo wobbling a bit, we stop for tea. It’s around 11 am, the dhaba is half-full. A stocky patka-sporting Sikh, going by the handle Bahadur Singh, is the dhaba sanchalak. I try my Punjabi on him, only to get an answer in Asomiya. Given that my basic Asomiya is rusty, I switch to Hindi. He tells me his dad was born in Assam.

Tea over, we set off again, only to make a couple of more pit stops, including one for a super rice-and-fish thali, but the journey otherwise is mostly about reaching NL by evening.

---

Peepal vs Peepal

I have been invited to inaugurate the new building of the North Lakhimpur Press Club the next morning. When they got in touch with me, the organisers weren’t quite sure about my Assamese. So they requested Samudra to contact me and convey their invitation. I accepted immediately. My late father would have been happy that his son had been invited to do the honours in the town he had left in the 1930s for college in Guwahati and Calcutta.

The ribbon-cutting over, yours truly is brave enough to speak a few words in Asomiya and then hastily switch to English. Later, I release three or four books, fumbling with their elaborate covers. I talk of the change I see in NL and the fact that 34 years after I made it by metre gauge rail, the broad gauge line is in an “advanced” stage of completion. Confronting the rise of the ‘other India’ in my journalism, my thoughts stray to the success of my father, U.L. Baruah, who in a 38-year career with All India Radio rose to become its director-general after having studied in a village school in North Lakhimpur all those years ago. Given that aspiration is alive and kicking, and Guwahati and Delhi the obvious goals, it’s a success story the audience can identify with. Samudra, who speaks after me, refers to the conversation he overheard between my wife and me on the phone en route to NL. He quotes me as telling her, “The peepal trees in Assam are so large and majestic. By contrast, the peepal in north India looks stunted.” The audience is amused by the reference.

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Pocketed Cash Transfer

There are many cars on the roads. Gone are the cobwebs on the power lines from 1979. NL is a bustling town compared to the sleepy place I remember coming to as a teenager. Wondering where all the wealth is coming from, I ask it of people around me, including my niece and her lecturer husband. The general consensus seems to be that funds allotted under government schemes are leaking, with cash transfers going directly into people’s pockets, no bank accounts needed here. You get the drift of the argument. Also, the many teachers and the better payscales for them are adding to the wealth of society. Given that there are few jobs in other sectors, the sales of cars is still surprising.

Surprisingly, I hear few complaints about rap­acious Delhi oppressing the people of Assam, something one heard regularly in the ’80s. The ULFA and the AGP-AASU are definitely yesterday’s story. Boys and girls from other parts of the country are coming to study at the IIT in Guwahati, but Assamese boys and girls are still making a beeline for Delhi, Pune and anywhere else that they think might give them a decent education. As a friend in Guwahati explains, “If Calcutta was the destination for your father’s generation, it’s Delhi today.” The links, one could argue, are becoming stronger.

---

At a Gohpur restaurant

Where we stop for fish and rice, there are two large photographs: one of a Hindu deity, the other of Bhupen Hazarika. Their placement? Bard Bhupen above the lord. His place in the pantheon is, clearly, assured.

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Amit Baruah is an independent, Delhi-based journalist; Amit Baruah tweets at @abaruah64

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 May 2, 2013 03:06 IST

Over 2,000 fewer farmers every day


P. Sainath

The mistaken notion that the 53 per cent of India's population dependent on agriculture are all farmers lead many to dismiss the country’s massive farmers’ suicides as trivial. Photo: AP
The HinduThe mistaken notion that the 53 per cent of India’s population ‘dependent on agriculture’ are all ‘farmers’ leads many to dismiss the massive farmers’ suicides as trivial

There are nearly 15 million farmers (‘Main’ cultivators) fewer than there were in 1991. Over 7.7 million less since 2001, as the latest Census data show. On average, that’s about 2,035 farmers losing ‘Main Cultivator’ status every single day for the last 20 years. And in a time of jobless growth, they’ve had few places to go beyond the lowest, menial ends of the service sector.

A December 2012 report of the Institute of Applied Manpower Research (IAMR) — a part of the Planning Commission — puts it this way: “employment in total and in non-agricultural sectors has not been growing. This jobless growth in recent years has been accompanied by growth in casualization and informalization.” It speaks of an “an absolute shift in workers from agriculture of 15 million to services and industry.” But many within the sector also likely moved from farmer to agricultural labourer status. Swelling the agrarian underclass.

So how many farmers do we have?

Census 2011 tells us we now have 95.8 million cultivators for whom farming is their main occupation. That’s less than 8 per cent of the population. (Down from 103 million in 2001 and 110 million in 1991). Include all marginal cultivators (22.8 million) and that is still less than 10 per cent of the population.

Even if you count together all cultivators and agricultural labourers, the number would be around 263 million or 22 per cent of the population. (Interestingly, this reduced figure comes after a few big states have actually reported a rise in the total number of cultivators. Since 85 per cent of all marginal workers reported more than a 100 days work, this could possibly reflect the reverse pull of MNREGA, among other factors).

Between 1981 and 1991, the number of cultivators (main workers), actually went up from 92 million to 110 million. So the huge decline comes post-1991.

Hold on: aren’t 53 per cent of the population farmers?

No. That’s a common fallacy. The over 600 million Indians dependent on agriculture are not all farmers. They are deployed in an array of related activities — including fisheries. This confusion is widespread and innocent.

Yet, there are also a few whose colossal ignorance leads them to dismiss the country’s massive farmers’ suicides as trivial. For instance: “at least half of the Indian workforce is engaged in farming. This fact points to a much lower suicide rate per 100,000 individuals for farmers than in the general population.” Note how easily those ‘engaged in farming’ become ‘farmers!’

As a notion it borders on the whacko. It goes: After all, 53 out of every 100 Indians are farmers. So our 270,940 farm suicides since 1995 are a low number on a population base of over 600 million. So low that we should be agitated over how the suicide rate in the general population can be brought “down to the levels prevailing amongst farmers.”

Never mind for now the appalling moral position that a quarter of a million human beings taking their lives is hardly alarming. The Bhopal gas tragedy, the worst industrial disaster in human terms, claimed over 20,000 lives. But in this perverse logic, since that was less than 0.003 per cent of the then population, it is rendered meaningless. That position says more about its authors than about the suicides. It shows they are clueless about who a farmer is — and about what the data show.

It shows even greater ignorance of who defines and counts a ‘farmer suicide.’ The Census records cultivators. The police count suicides. The police do not read the Census. Not for definitions, anyway.

The Census groups the population into workers and non-workers. The latter would be infants, children, students, housewives, unemployed, aged and retired people. Farmers, or cultivators come under ‘Workers’ — a huge category covering many varied groups. Now rural workers account for close to 70 per cent of all workers. And rural workers consist of farmers, agricultural labourers and non-farm workers.

Cultivators (main workers) in the Census are barely eight per cent of the population as a whole. (That’s after a two-decade secular decline in this group). The ongoing farm suicides — 184,169 of them since 2001 according to the National Crime Records Bureau — are taking place on a smaller and shrinking base. Their intensity has hardly diminished. In most of the States accounting for two-thirds of all farm suicides, the intensity has likely risen.

Of course distress affects a much wider population dependent on agriculture. (Farmer bankruptcies crush the village carpenter, and even play a role in weaver suicides). The sufferings of others are as real. It is not as if the agricultural labourer or non-farm worker is having a great time. Both sections have seen distress migrations — and suicides. (For that matter the owner of a small industrial unit in an urban city could be distress-hit). Their suicides are no less tragic. But it is vital to know who officially gets counted as a farmer. And who gets listed in the ‘farmers’ suicides. For that tells us more about the ongoing tragedy and gives us a sense of its awful scale.

Everybody who works in the film industry is not an actor. Everyone in the educational system is not a student. And all those in the 53 per cent of the population related to the farming sector are not farmers. Even among those who are, only a limited group gets counted as such when police and governments make farmers’ suicide lists. Cultivators are counted by the Census. Suicides are recorded by police stations across the country. The numbers collated by State governments. Very different approaches are involved.

The Census considers someone a cultivator if he or she operates a piece of land — which they may or may not own; State governments and police count only those with a title to land as farmers. The Census records two kinds of cultivators: ‘Main workers’ and ‘marginal workers.’ The latter are more like agricultural labourers or non-farm workers since farming is not their main activity. A ‘Main worker’ in cultivation is someone for whom that is the major occupation forat least half the year. That group makes barely eight per cent of the population as a whole.

Suicides among the others in the agrarian world (within that “53 per cent”) won’t be recorded as ‘farmer suicides.’ Try getting State governments and their police to do that! Even within the ‘recognised’ eight per cent, those whose title to land is not clear will not be listed as farmers’ suicides, should they take their own lives. For instance, women and tenant farmers are routinely excluded. Even eldest sons running the farms — with the land still in the names of their aged fathers — would also be omitted.

Police and State governments run the suicide lists, not the Census. Nor does the NCRB, which has neither the vested interest nor the ability to fiddle that data. It merely collates what the State Crime Record Bureaus submit to it. Hence, the Chhattisgarh government could brazenly declare a ‘zero farm suicides’ figure in 2011. That after the State saw over 7,500 of them (by its own admission) between 2006-10. With all the fiddles in the data, the numbers and intensity remain appalling.

Maharashtra revels in such fraud. With close to 54,000 since 1995, the State has been the worst in farm suicides for over a decade. And even those numbers conceal major exclusions. They’ve invented categories like ‘Farmer’s relatives suicides,’ or “non-genuine” suicides, in order to further trim the numbers. So the State governments and their police, have immense power in re-defining who a farmer is. Watch out for more and more States doing ‘a Chhattisgarh’ and declaring ‘zero’ farm suicides in coming months and years.

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NEW DELHI, May 2, 2013

Fall in intake of calorie, foodgrains availability

SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT

Country has to import pulses, edible oil, says Thomas

Despite surplus food stocks in the central pool, the per capita per day intake of calorie and protein has declined in the country between 2004-05 and 2009-10.

The per capital net availability of foodgrains including rice, wheat, other cereals and pulses too declined every year between 2006 and 2010, and, while 42.5 per cent children under five years are under-weight, 69.5 per cent are anaemic.

The country is surplus in wheat and rice but has to import pulses and edible oil to bridge the shortfall in availability, Food Minister K.V. Thomas told Parliament on Tuesday while giving data on per capita caloric intake and availability of foodgrains.

Although calorie intake is higher in the rural areas compared to urban areas, it has declined in both populations. Calorie intake in 2004-05 was 2,047 Kcal and protein intake was 57 grams in rural populations.

It declined to 2020 Kcal and 55 grams in 2009-10. In urban populations, the Calorie intake of 2020 Kcal and protein intake of 57 gram in 2004-05, fell to 1946 Kcal and 53.5 grams respectively in 2009-10.

The per capita availability of foodgrains per year in 2006 was 162.5 kg. This has come down to 160.1 kg in 2010, the Minister said.

Answering a question on availability of foodgrains and per capita consumption, Mr. Thomas said that as on April 1, the rice and wheat stock s in the country were 59.6 million tonnes as against the buffer norm of 21.2 million tonnes.

He said that while the estimated production of pulses was 17.5 million tonnes in 2012-13, the demand was 20.4 million tonnes and the gap of around 3 million tonnes is met by imports.

In edible oils, the total consumption during 2011-12 was 18.9 million tonnes against which domestic availability was around 8.9 million tonnes and 9.9 million tonnes was imported.

The government has not conducted any survey to assess the foodgrains requirement in the country. The total foodgrains allocation in the targetted Public Distribution System and for welfare schemes was 62.7 million tonnes in 2012-13.

“While the National Food Security Bill that provides for mandatory distribution of subsidised foodgrains to 67 per cent of the population is in the offing, the government has no immediate plan to introduce direct cash benefit in the Public Distribution System nor will it give foodgrains in lieu of wages under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act,” the Minister said.

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May 2, 2013 01:42 IST

“Rape law changes welcome, yet an opportunity lost”

Aarti Dhar

The HinduUN Special Rapporteur on Violence against Women Rashida Manjoo, addressing the media in New Delhi on Wednesday. Photo: S. Subramanium

The United Nations Special Rapporteur on Violence Again Women, Rashida Manjoo, on Wednesday regretted that the amendments made to the rape laws in India did not fully reflect the recommendations of the Justice J.S. Verma Committee, set up in the aftermath of the December 16 gang rape that led to the death of a young girl in the national capital.

Addressing reporters at the conclusion of her visit to India, Ms. Manjoo welcomed the Centre’s speedy response after the rape and the legislative reforms based on the Verma Committee recommendations but said it was “an opportunity lost. The Verma Committee was a golden moment to examine whether legislative measures in India were sufficient.” India had an amazing Constitution that granted equality to all but the challenge was to enforce the provisions.

Hoping that India would bring in further legislative measures to address issues such as marital rape, age of consent and rights of transgender people and vulnerable groups, Ms. Manjoo said it was “unfortunate that the opportunity to establish a substantive and specific equality and non-discrimination rights legislative framework for women, to address de facto inequality and discrimination, and to prevent all forms of violence against women, was lost.’’

“Death penalty not a deterrent”

She said the speedy developments and also the adoption of a law and order approach to sexual wrongs, now included the death penalty for certain crimes against women. “This development foreclosed the opportunity to establish a holistic and remedial framework. The new approach fails to address the structural and root causes and consequences of violence against women, she added.

The Special Rapporteur said there was no proof that death penalty was a deterrent. “One needs to look at what purpose it [death penalty] would serve. The need is transformation of society and empowerment of women.’’

Despite the numerous positive developments, the unfortunate reality was that the rights of many women in India continued to be violated with impunity. Ms. Manjoo said she had received numerous submissions to suggest this, and also testimonies to say that mediation and compensation measures were often used as redress mechanisms to address cases of violence against women, thus “eroding accountability imperatives, and further fostering norms of impunity.”

Sexual violence and harassment in India were widespread, and perpetuated in public spaces, in the family and in the workplace.

Armed Forces Act

On the issue of conflict-related sexual violence, Ms. Manjoo said it was crucial to acknowledge that these violations occurred at the hands of both state and non-state actors.

The Special Rapporteur’s report would be officially submitted to the United Nation’s Human Rights Council in June 2014.

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TODAY'S PAPER

WASHINGTON, May 7, 2013

First ever ‘printed’ gun fired

NARAYAN LAKSHMAN

Is it the weapon-equivalent of Napster, the music industry’s greatest regulatory paradigm-buster?

This week, Cody Wilson, a 25-year-old law student at the University of Texas, successfully test-fired a gun “printed” from an $8,000-3D printer, in theory heralding an era where individuals may be able to obtain guns in the comfort of their living rooms and escape onerous regulatory requirements.

Mr. Wilson, a self-described “crypto-anarchist,” told BBC news channel that his plans to make the design available were “about liberty,” and there was a undeniable demand of guns, despite there being “states all over the world that say you can’t own firearms.”

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May 7, 2013 00:13 IST

‘Licensed’ gun printing covered under 2nd Amendment

Narayan Lakshman

Three-dimensional printers, available in the industrial manufacturing sector since the early 1980s, returned to the limelight this week after Cody Wilson (25) of Texas fired a “printed gun” prototype. While 3D printing has been used extensively in the past for rapid prototyping and research, this development could lead to a shake-up of the traditional manufacturing industry, bringing topics such as firearms regulation and copyright issues into the spotlight.

Talking to media, Donna Sellers of the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, said the 3D-printed gun was legal, the Second Amendment protecting the citizens’ gun ownership rights. She said that under the present laws “A person can manufacture a firearm for their own use. However, if they engage in the business of manufacture to sell a gun, they need a licence.”

Though this is a nation where guns outnumber people and the influential National Rifle Association (NRA) has deep connections within the federal government, there may be a few legal barriers to uncontrolled proliferation of homemade weapons. In particular, Mr. Wilson and his associates appear concerned about his gun blueprint contravening the U.S.’ 1988 Undetectable Firearms Act, which effectively bans the production of plastic guns capable of passing through metal detectors without being spotted.

Incidentally, the law expires this year, it being unclear if it will be revived by the U.S. Congress. As it stands, however, the law says that it is illegal for anyone to “manufacture, import, sell, ship, deliver, possess, transfer or receive” a firearm that cannot be detected once its grips, stocks and magazines are removed. Mr. Wilson sought to avoid this issue by inserting 175-gram chunk of steel within his prototype.

He issued a warning on the Defcad.Org forum that if people printed guns, “Because of the public profile and interest over this kind of activity at the moment, you WILL be made an example of. You WILL go to federal prison, and you WILL never be able to own a firearm again”.

This did not appear to assuage the fears of gun-control proponents and some such as Leah Gunn Barrett, from New Yorkers Against Gun Violence were quoted as saying: “These guns could fall into the hands of people who should not have guns — criminals, people who are seriously mentally ill, people who are convicted of domestic violence, even children.”

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May 11, 2013 04:04 IST

Trafficked, confined and raped in the heart of Delhi

Shubhomoy Sikdar

As Delhi debated and discussed the issue of women’s rights and safety during the past three months, barely four kilometres from Parliament, the seat of Indian democracy, a 19-year-old girl was kept confined within a small cavity in the walls of a brothel at G.B. Road. During this period she was continuously raped – usually by over a dozen men from morning to night.

But even after she was rescued on Thursday, the Delhi Police did not deem it fit to register a gang-rape case. Rather, it even allowed her rapists, abductors and brothel owners to intimidate her during her court presence. And while her father has come from South 24 Parganas district of West Bengal to take his youngest daughter back, she was on Friday sent to Nari Niketan instead.

The tragic tale began this February when the girl was preparing for her Class X Board exams.

Based on the limited conversation that he had with his sister post her rescue, the girl’s brother, who accompanied his father to Delhi, told The Hindu that one evening when she came out of her village house in West Bengal, a drug-laced cloth was pressed against her face which made her unconscious.

“When she came back to her senses, she found herself at the Howrah railway station accompanied by the abductor and few others who told her that they were waiting for a train to Delhi. As she protested, they made her consume some more sedatives and she then regained consciousness only on reaching Delhi,” said Imran (name changed), whose earlier visit to Kotla Mubarakpur and other colonies of Delhi in search of his youngest sister was reported by The Hindu.

Back then, the girl’s brother had contacted NGO Shakti Vahini seeking help.

The same NGO along with the police conducted a raid at the brothel on May 9 and rescued the girl who was found confined in a “cave-like structure” cut into one of the walls.

But the girl’s trauma did not end there. When she was produced before a Duty Magistrate on Friday, the brothel owners were also present in the court room in strength and during the course of hearing, they even showed the gumption to coerce and threaten the girl sitting in the court room to bring her back into the business.

The girl’s father, a man with a white beard, was ready with all the related papers to take his daughter in his custody, but the court said he could get his daughter back only from a regular court.

The girl was then sent to Nari Niketan on technical grounds.

‘Victim of an organised racket’

According to Rishi Kant of NGO Shakti Vahini that helped in the girl’s rescue, she was a victim of an organised racket. The gang members abduct teenaged girls and push them into the flesh trade.

The racket involving Delhi’s brothel owners and traffickers in the hinterland functions so professionally that girls are kidnapped and forced into the trade without being detected because the police response is lukewarm to this crime against women.

An example of this apathy is the three-month delay that was witnessed in registering the missing report by the West Bengal Police into the disappearance of the girl.

The State police only fulfilled this mandatory formality after she was rescued here on May 9.

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May 10, 2013 01:27 IST

Paid news pandemic undermines democracy

P. Sainath

Top civil society bodies are challenging the government’s ‘counter-affidavit’ in the Paid News case which seeks to gut the Election Commission’s powers

In a major twist to the Ashok Chavan vs. Madhav Kinhalkar legal battle (more notorious as the “Paid News” scandal), leading civil society organisations and eminent individuals have approached the Supreme Court to implead themselves into the case.

Their intervention application, moved by advocate Prashant Bhushan, minces no words on their reasons for doing so. They are disturbed by “the stranglehold of money power on our electoral politics.” And by a recent move of the Union Law Ministry which could destroy the Election Commission of India’s power to disqualify candidates filing incorrect or false accounts.

The applicants for intervention hope to defeat “the nefarious design” of the Union government which seeks to “undo all the good work done by the Election Commission of India.” And which further seeks, to “unsettle the law already settled” by the Supreme Court of India. They wish to ensure that the ECI “retains the plenitude of its power and authority to safeguard the purity and integrity of the electoral process.” Which includes holding candidates to account on poll expenses.

This action follows the Union Law Ministry filing a counter-affidavit on behalf of the Government in the Ashok Chavan case. That affidavit, first reported by The Hindu on March 20, asserts that “the power of the Election Commission to disqualify a person arises only in the event of failure to lodge an account of expenses and not for any other reason, including the correctness or otherwise of such accounts.” Simply put: the government claims the ECI has no right to disqualify a candidate even if his accounts are found to be improper or fraudulent. If accepted, this would virtually gut the powers of that Constitutional body. (However, the Court is yet to give any ruling on the matter.)

Those seeking to intervene include Common Cause, a public interest body. Its legal activism on electoral matters had a role in the Supreme Court’s ordering that political parties had to file regular returns of income or invite possible penal action. Also in the line-up is the Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR), a group at the forefront of many battles for electoral and political reforms. Vital among those, a public interest litigation (PIL) of ADR in 1999, which later saw the Supreme Court order candidates to disclose their criminal, financial and educational background prior to the polls.

That is, by filing an affidavit with the ECI. Common Cause and ADR are joined by five other civil society bodies in this application.

The line-up of distinguished individuals includes veteran journalist and editor B.G. Verghese, former Chief Election Commissioners of India (CEC) N. Gopalaswami and J.M. Lyngdoh, and former adviser to the ECI, K.J. Rao.

The immediate beneficiary of the UPA government’s attack on the ECI’s powers is the disgraced ex-chief Minister of Maharashtra, Ashok Chavan. As former Chief Election Commissioner N. Gopalaswami has pointed out: “The government has joined Mr. Chavan in challenging the Election Commission’s power to disqualify a candidate under Section 10A of the Act for his failure to submit a correct and true rendering of his election expenditure” (The Hindu, April 17, 2013). The former CEC clearly sums up the impulse for civil society action: “The case before the Supreme Court is no longer one of Dr. Kinhalkar and others vs Ashok Chavan. It concerns every individual and institution that is uneasy about and opposed to the sway of money power in elections.” — See “Doublespeak on electoral reforms, April 17, 2013, The Hindu, thne.ws/gopalaswami

Mr. Chavan not only lost his post in the fallout of the Adarsh scam, but also earned notoriety in the “Paid News scandal,” a story broken by The Hindu (See: “Is the ‘Era of Ashok’ a new era for ‘news’”, thne.ws/era-of-ashok, November 29, 2009).

Destructive

The applicants for intervention in the case note there is “a growing concern that the pandemic of Paid News is eating into the vitals of our democratic polity by compromising the purity of the elections and destroying the credibility of the print/electronic media.” They cite the case of Umlesh Yadav, MLA from Uttar Pradesh, who was disqualified by the ECI for three years. Ms Yadav had failed “to account for an expenditure of Rs. 21,250 on an advertisement that had appeared in the disguise of a news item in the Dainik Jagran,” of April 17, 2007.

They note that “Umlesh Yadav pales into insignificance in comparison to the media blitzkrieg” launched in support of Ashok Chavan’s 2009 Assembly election campaign. And that the Government of India which had ostensibly taken a strong public position on Paid News and praised the ECI’s efforts to curb it, “has filed a counter affidavit which reveals its true colours.”

The Election Commission is also likely to file an affidavit opposing the government’s pro-Chavan counter-affidavit.

_______________________________

May 13, 2013 02:08 IST

China’s first ‘blue book’ on India sees a government in ‘serious crisis’

Ananth Krishnan

But expresses belief that New Delhi will likely emerge stronger by overcoming obstacles

The first ever ‘blue book’ on India released in China by a prominent official Beijing publisher has portrayed a government in “serious crisis,” but expressed the belief that India would likely emerge as a stronger country by conquering its current obstacles.

Chinese think tanks release ‘blue books’ every year on a number of issues. While not representing the government’s view, the books are put together by official think tanks and the projects are understood to be given tacit backing by the government.

The first ever blue book on India was released here on Friday by the Social Sciences Academy Press, detailing political, economic, foreign policy and defence issues for the year 2011-12. The book runs into more than 300 pages, and was compiled by Yunnan University, which has one of China’s biggest South Asia programmes.

According to a brief summary, the book sees India as weighed down by a number of crises — particularly corruption scandals — but also details India’s rising military strength, which it sees as being partly directed at China.

It ultimately expresses the optimistic view that India would emerge stronger from the current period of difficulty. “The Chinese saying which says ‘many difficulties can make a country prosperous’ reflects India’s problems and hope,” the book concludes.

The book, however, sees India today as a country beset with numerous challenges, saying the current Congress-led United Progressive Alliance government was facing its most serious crisis since it came to power in 2009.

It pointed to frequent corruption scandals, divisions within the UPA and public anger at the economic situation as leaving Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s government with a tarnished image amid declining public trust. It saw the year 2011-12, which the report covers, as among the worst since India’s “remarkable achievements” after reforms in 1991. The book estimates that by 2030, India’s population will exceed that of China’s.

On the foreign policy front, the blue book notes that India has focused on boosting relations with its neighbours in South Asia, pushed forward peace with Pakistan and developed strategic relations with Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Nepal — countries with which China has also recently deepened economic ties.

It sees the United States “pivot” to Asia and strengthening of alliances in the region — viewed by most analysts in China as being directed to “contain” Beijing — as accelerating India’s “Look East” policy, observing that India’s defence cooperation with the U.S., Japan, Vietnam and Australia has warmed.

Dual focus

On military strategy, it argues that India’s defence policy has undergone an adjustment from focusing on Pakistan to a dual focus on China and Pakistan, including a consideration of the possibility of a limited two-front war.

To this end, the book says, India has expanded military forces on the border with China and also expanded its naval power towards the east.

Keywords: China think tanks, China blue book, Chinese diplomacy, Sino-Indian relation, China's India policy, India economic growth

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China drops Arunachal to create ‘positive’ vibes before Li Keqiang’s India visit

Saibal Dasgupta, TNN | May 14, 2013, 12.42 AM IST

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BEIJING: China has dropped its aggressive stance on Arunachal Pradesh and other contentious issues in the first ever Blue book on India. The book has been carefully crafted to avoid expressing grouse on issues like the border dispute and the presence of the Dalai Lama in India.

"The purpose of the Blue book is to inform ordinary Chinese people about the rise of India as a fast developing and powerful country. The tone is positive throughout the book," Ma Jiali, one of the book's contributors and a researcher at the Communist Party School, told TOI.

"Only basic details are given about controversial issues like the border dispute. There's no attempt to instigate negative feelings about India," Ma said. "The South Tibet (Arunachal) issue is discussed as part of the border problem. But not in much detail," Ma added.

The purpose is to make available an official view of India, and avoid anti-India hysteria over the Chinese Internet during the forthcoming visit of premier Li Keqiang from May 19, sources said. Chinese scholars, journalists and blog writers, who have millions of followers on Twitter-like websites, are expected to take the cue from the official document and create a positive atmosphere during Li's visit, sources said.

The Blue book says that the Congress-led coalition government in New Delhi is facing its worst crisis because of internal differences and a string of corruption scandals. It also discusses the BJP and other political parties in India besides talking about widespread discontent and agitations in India.

The book, mostly written by scholars in Yunnan University and published in Chinese, was released in an official ceremony on May 10 during the recent visit of minister for external affairsSalman Khurshid to Beijing.

India's relationship with China and Pakistan are covered in a chapter on the country's foreign policy since 1947. Issues covered in the book include India's economy, educational system, the technology industry and rural development.

Although Beijing continuously complains about the United States creating an Asian front to contain China, the book does not suggest that India would become part of the US-led front.

"Issues like Kashmir and India's fears about China building dams on upstream Brahmaputra have also been discussed. But the main focus is to introduce the reader to the issues instead of instigating negative emotion," Ma said.

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Millennials: The Next Greatest Generation?

By Josh SanburnMay 09, 2013

Those aren’t just unfounded negative stereotypes about 80 million Americans born roughly between 1980 and 2000. They’re backed up by a decade of sociological research. The National Institutes of Health found that for people in their 20s, Narcissistic Personality Disorder is three times as high than the generation that’s 65 or older. In 1992, 80 percent of people under 23 wanted to one day have a job with greater responsibility; ten years later, 60 percent did. Millennials received so many participation trophies growing up that 40 percent of them think they should be promoted every two years – regardless of performance. They’re so hopeful about the future you might think they hadn’t heard of something called the Great Recession.

But that’s merely one way of looking at the largest and most important generation since the Baby Boomers. In this week’s cover story, TIME’s Joel Stein — who has a few Millennial traits himself — examines the overwhelming negative data about Millennials and argues that rather than being inherently self-centered or overconfident, millennials are just adapting quickly to a world undergoing rapid technological change. They’re optimistic, they’re confident and they’re pragmatic at a time when it can be difficult just to get by. Those aren’t bad qualities to have, even if it means they spend too much time on their phones.

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India’s demographic challenge

Wasting time

India will soon have a fifth of the world’s working-age population. It urgently needs to provide them with better jobs

May 11th 2013 | PATNA, BIHAR |From the print edition

ONE of India’s bigger private-sector employers can be found in Patna, the capital of Bihar, a poor, populous state in the east of the country. Narendra Kumar Singh, the boss, has three gold rings on his right hand and arms big enough to crush rocks. His firm, Frontline, has 86,000 people on its books. They are mostly unskilled men from rural areas in poor states like Bihar; thanks to Mr Singh they have jobs in cities all over India.

There is lots to celebrate about this. Mr Singh’s business has sales of $185m and its employee base has grown by 1,600% since 2000. He is looking for a Western partner and wants to expand to Sri Lanka and Bangladesh. He is providing paid work for part of the large cohort of young people now entering the workforce. And by shifting people from farms to cities he is helping urbanisation of the sort that underpinned startling progress elsewhere in Asia.

Yet Frontline is also a symptom of a colossal failure. For it is not supplying labour for a manufacturing boom of the kind that helped so many in China, South Korea and Taiwan out of poverty, or for the IT services at which India has excelled. Instead it offers relatively unproductive service-sector jobs—in particular, security guards. It has become de rigueur for every ATM, office, shop and apartment building to have guards. Across India millions of young men now sit all day on plastic seats in badly fitting uniforms with braids and epaulettes, unshaven and catatonically bored as the economic miracle passes by. This isn’t how East Asia got rich.

From a bomb to a boom and back

During the boom of the 1990s and 2000s, it became fashionable to talk of India’s forthcoming “demographic dividend”. This was quite a turnaround. In the 1960s and 1970s, the booming populations of states like Bihar were seen as a curse. “The Population Bomb”, a Malthusian bestseller by two American environmentalists, Paul and Anne Ehrlich, began by describing “one stinking hot night in Delhi”, and its horrifying number of “people, people, people, people”. In the 1970s there was a forced sterilisation programme. Sanjay Gandhi, a thuggish scion of the ruling dynasty, organised vasectomy camps near Delhi—one doctor boasted he could perform 40 sterilisations an hour.

In the 1990s, though, economic liberalisers evoked the experiences of East Asia and the demographic dividend it benefited from when previously high fertility rates began to decline. Working-age populations rose at the same time as the ratio of dependants to workers fell. An associated rise in the rate of saving allowed more investment, helping pay for the vast expansion in manufacturing that employed those workers and lifted hundreds of millions of people out of poverty. In the mid2000s the prospect of a similar dividend in India, where the fertility rate had dropped a lot in the 1980s and 1990s, was a key reason for investors’ optimism. The timing was particularly encouraging: India’s labour force was due to soar as China’s began to decline (see chart 1).

Now many are worried that India is squandering this demographic opportunity. This is partly because the economy is in a funk. Growth is at 4.5%, half the rate at the peak in the mid-2000s. Industry is 27% of output, compared with 40-47% in other big developing Asian economies. High inflation has prompted households to store ever more of their savings in physical assets rather than the financial system (see chart 2). The costs are clear. With few manufacturing exports, India has a chronic balance-of-payments problem. And India has created too few formal jobs in the past decade.

India’s leaders have long said they are committed to employment, but have shown little stomach for the economic upheaval rapid job creation entails. China’s policymakers accepted that the process of adding jobs overall often destroyed jobs in particular industries and places. For years India’s politicians have preferred economic palliatives such as NREGA, a giant scheme that guarantees work for the rural poor, and subsidies for the needy.

Now India’s borrowing has soared to queasy levels and welfare spending is being squeezed. There are worries that joblessness could be feeding the spasmodic unrest seen in some cities since 2011. Not all protesters were young. And their motivation varied from support for the anti-corruption guru Anna Hazare to disgust at a series of rapes in Delhi. But the protests added to a sense of youthful volatility.

An official report into the public finances in 2012 warned that a combination of slower growth and the demographic bulge could be “politically destabilising”. Rahul Gandhi, who is poised to lead the ruling Congress party in the general election due by 2014, speaks of the “angry” young and their “urgent demand for jobs”. The government’s economic adviser, Raghuram Rajan, says jobs are the biggest priority. Some in the elite seem to be waking up. But is it too late?

Quantity and quality

To see the scale of the challenge, consider that the working-age population, aged between 15 and 64, will rise by 125m over the coming decade, and by a further 103m over the following decade. On current trends a third of the growth will come from poorer and less literate states in the north, notably Uttar Pradesh and Bihar.

Not everyone of working age will be in the job market. More people aged 15-24 will remain in education—26% do today. Some adult women will stay at home; presently only about a third work, a low level by Asian standards. But India probably needs to create about 100m net new jobs in the next decade.

China’s boom created 130m net jobs in services and industry between 2002 and 2012. But India is no China. The most recent survey showed no net new jobs were created between 2004-05 and 2009-10, a dramatic slowdown on the previous five years, when 60m jobs were created.

These figures may not be as shocking as they seem. Fewer jobs were created partly because some folk voluntarily withdrew from the workforce. More women in rural areas decided not to look for jobs—perhaps because several fairly good years for farmers meant they did not need the cash. Wages for the unskilled have been rising, and though this is partly because of the NREGA guaranteed-work scheme, it suggests there has not been a collapse in the jobs market. For all these caveats, though, the headline data remain disquieting. Even during a boom few jobs were created. Now that the economy is growing more slowly things have got harder.

The rural poor seem likely to be frustrated, which will add to the number of migrants headed for the cities. The better-educated will suffer, too. By some estimates India produces twice as many new graduates each year as it can absorb. In a half-built private-run campus in Patna most students have modest expectations of their future salaries—typically $500 a month. Even so, their professor worries they won’t all get job offers.

The problem lies not just in the quantity of jobs, though; quality matters too. Statistics verify what the naked eye can see in any Indian city. They all have their armies of guards, peons, delivery boys, ear-dewaxers and men who sit on stools in lifts pressing the buttons. About 85% of India’s jobs are with “informal” enterprises—those organisations with fewer than ten staff which are not incorporated. Another 11% are casual jobs with formal companies. Only 16% of Indians say they get a regular wage. People with informal jobs are usually very poor. An official study of 2004-05 data concludes that 80% of informal workers got less than the then national minimum wage of $1.46 a day. There are some good jobs. But India’s IT firms, for example, account for only a few million jobs out of a total of half a billion.

All this seems to be closely linked to the lack of manufacturing. Although some 23% of Indian workers are categorised as working in “industry”, compared to nearly 30% in China and 22% in Indonesia, half of India’s “industrial” workers are in construction whereas the figure is just a quarter in Indonesia. Of the remainder almost all are in the “manufacturing” subcategory. But these are not jobs that involve exposure to modern machinery, techniques and training (crucial for unskilled labour let down by the country’s education system). More than half of Indians in the manufacturing sector work in facilities without electricity.

The obvious problem is a “missing middle”. Most of the jobs are in tiny operations. Most of the value added is in a few big, sophisticated firms that prefer using machines to humans. Some, such as Tata Sons and Mahindra, are well-known. Most of those seem keener on expanding globally than on building factories at home. For every dollar of foreign direct investment (FDI) made by outsiders in Indian manufacturing in the five years to March 2012, local firms invested 65 cents in manufacturing abroad. The number of jobs in factories (excluding the very smallest) has increased since 2005; but only by 2.8m.

What manufacturing FDI India does attract tends to be high-end—Volkswagen has a smart €570m plant full of robots. Meanwhile investment is pouring into Vietnam and Indonesia (see chart 3) as costs in China rise. Li & Fung, a big trading firm based in Hong Kong which buys goods in Asia and sells them in the West to retailers including Walmart, gets some 5% of its goods from India, compared with about 20% from South-East Asia.

Death on the shop floor

India’s missed opportunity is most evident in textiles and clothing, a labour-intensive industry that has been dominated by China. In 2011 McKinsey, a consultancy, found that purchasing managers at global clothing firms wanted to shift their sourcing from China; their favoured new destinations included Bangladesh, Vietnam, Indonesia and Cambodia—but not India. India’s textile exports have grown, but those from Vietnam and Bangladesh, combined, easily outstrip them.

Why don’t more people want to make things in India? Indian migrant workers are sought across the world, not least in the Gulf. But at home tricky labour relations are a problem.

In a dusty lawyers’ room in the industrial belt near Delhi, five workers explain how they were fired by Maruti Suzuki, a carmaker controlled by Suzuki of Japan, after simmering tensions on the shop floor led to a riot at a nearby plant in July 2012. A manager was burned to death. The men are in their 20s and from rural families. They have a strong sense of injustice. “We have told our families that they should consider us as behind bars and that they should make other plans for their lives. We are ready for a long fight.” The Maruti violence has so far been a one-off. But the episode unnerved businesspeople.

Economists have long identified arcane labour laws as the key to India’s manufacturing problem. Scholars have gleefully dissected India’s 51 central and 170 state labour statutes, some of which pre-date independence, to demonstrate how they make it hard for firms with more than a handful of staff to fire people and allow disputes to become legal endurance tests. Studies have shown how tighter rules impede growth in labour-intensive industries and prompt firms to remain small.

Two-tier world

Yet the industrial belt in which Maruti’s factory sits shows times have changed. Big firms can bypass labour law by using “contract” workers, technically employed by third-party agents. In the past decade they have used—or, workers say, abused—this kink in the rules a lot more. At three car and motorbike plants, based on discussions with workers, about 70% of 14,500 staff work on a contract basis. Their average wage is $5-6 per working day, a quarter of what permanent, unionised staff get. The minimum wage in Guangzhou, a Chinese industrial hub, is $10.5 per working day.

That might appear to be good news. If lots of factory workers can be hired at globally competitive rates, on flexible terms, manufacturing firms should pile into India. In practice the situation is unstable. As the Maruti riot showed, the two-tier workforce has caused anger—the five men in the lawyers’ room were permanent employees who say they were disgusted by the treatment of their contract colleagues. Maruti is abandoning the distinction. And from a financial perspective the contract system is not as good as it looks for employers. They must still hire unionised permanent staff, and though these may be in a minority they can account for the majority of a plant’s wage bill, lifting the average pay across all workers to Chinese levels.

The labour situation is a long way from the strikes and militancy of the 1970s, but it is unpredictable. That puts off potential manufacturers. And there are lots of other deterrents, too, from red tape to erratic electricity (see, for example, the monumental blackout across north and east India in 2012), a lack of land, bad roads and busy ports. One shipping boss thinks logistics add 20% to the cost of making something in India, compared with 6-8% in China. The Middle Kingdom hardly excelled on such metrics 20 years ago, but India does seem to be especially intimidating for industrial firms. Where non-labour problems have been tackled, notably in Gujarat, manufacturing does better. But Gujarat—population 60m—is not a big state by Indian standards.

Since 2000 India has tried carving out special economic zones (SEZs) to create islands with lower taxes and access to infrastructure, where manufacturers can feel at home. But these have been a limited success, with many dominated by IT firms. A new twist is a proposed industrial corridor between Delhi and Mumbai, inspired by the expressway between Seoul and Busan in South Korea. The project has Japanese support, but basic things such as access to land and water have yet to be settled.

In its frustration India is flirting with a more overt industrial policy. A new rule says that government offices must now buy computers with a chunk of components made locally. This is designed to improve the balance of payments and promote an indigenous industry. The government is also now offering subsidies that could be worth billions of dollars to attract a microchip foundry. There is a push to indigenise the defence industry.

The legislation on offer to try to change the situation more generally may not enthuse industry. There are noises about labour-law reform, but rather than liberalise the regime for permanent workers it may merely tighten the one for contract employees. A bill that is supposed to make it easier to buy land could make the process even more expensive and protracted, argue many businesspeople.

For robust jobs growth there must be a change of mindset among officials, judges and politicians. Although Mr Gandhi and others are talking about the challenge, not everyone is, partly due to the electoral system’s skew towards the countryside. Only 10% of legislators in the lower house have urban constituencies in which 75% or more of the population is urban, reckons the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS), a think-tank. Jobs in factories in cities are not a priority for most politicians.

Failing gently

Could the voices of the young change this? There is a rising level of political involvement. A recent survey by CSDS and the Konrad Adenauer Stiftung, a German think-tank, found that nearly twice as many of today’s 18- to 33-year-olds say they are interested in politics as did in 1996. Some 20% of young rural men say they participate in protests, as do 22% of college-educated young men. Those with exposure to the media, from talk shows to social media, are most politically active. One of India’s big mobile-messaging sites, Nimbuzz, with 25m mostly young users, says traffic doubled in the aftermath of the rape scandal in Delhi in December and during the Anna Hazare anti-graft protests. But the young have little independent political identity; their party allegiance is much like that of their parents. Nor do they have any obvious muscle.

The lack of political resolve and of a clear signal from voters mean India is unlikely to summon up the single-minded dedication with which South Korea, Taiwan and China created industrial jobs. Its demographic dividend will yield only a fraction of what it could, and the problem of low-quality employment will fester. That would be an immense waste. Most policymakers and well-off people would deny that it is a deep threat, though. The country’s religions, its distinctive mix of hierarchical culture and populist politics and its durable family structures will ensure social stability, they say.

They are probably right. They might want to pay their security guards a little more, though. Just in case.

______________________________

FARIDABAD, May 17, 2013

Kin of Indian languishing in Russian jail seek government intervention

ASHOK KUMAR

“Italy did so much for its marines, can we expect the same from our government?”

Jitender Kumar Singla seen during happier times.— Photo : Special Arrangement

Languishing in a jail in Russia for over a year now, 41-year-old Jitender Kumar Singla, who once ran a successful business in Moscow as general director of J.K. Group of Companies, would not have imagined even in his wildest dreams that his business empire would one day fall like a pack of cards and life would turn topsy-turvy in a flash.

Mr. Singla, a resident of Greenfield Colony in Faridabad, had gone to Moscow in 1990 to study computer engineering, but soon took up odd jobs to earn pocket money like fellow compatriots. Gradually, he got acquainted with the city and its ways. Soon he set up his own business. He began with renting business and gradually diversified into real estate, mini hotels and restaurants. His business soon grew into an empire and there was a time when he employed more than 300 people, mostly Indians.

But then life took a dramatic turn for Mr. Singla on March 28, 2012, when the local police arrested him under Section 165 (II-A&B) of the Russian Constitution for allegedly harming the business interests of others.

“A die-hard nationalist, Mr. Singla never accepted Russian citizenship despite running a successful business there, and his wife and two children also stayed in Faridabad. He took lead in arranging programmes for the Indian dignitaries visiting Moscow and never shied away from helping fellow Indians. Envious of his success and Indian origin, some locals conspired with the local police to harass him and eventually got him arrested on false charges,” said family friend Vijay Kaushik, who is also leading the campaign for his release.

But this was just the beginning. “Not just that he was arrested on fabricated charges, he is being made to languish in jail in violation of all laws and rules of the land. As per the Russian law, an undertrial is entitled to bail if a charge sheet in not filed against him within six months of arrest, but Mr. Singla is being denied his right to secure bail even after a year inside the jail. Also, he has served more than one-third of the maximum punishment awarded in such cases and is entitled to be freed as per the local laws,” argued Mr. Kaushik.

Initially, the family made several visits to Moscow and met him in jail, but lacking the means and resources to travel to a foreign country so often, they also gave up.

“His children are minors and his wife Preeti a homemaker. His father, an elderly man, does not have the physical strength to carry on the fight and seems to have given up hope. We met local politicians, senior leaders and bureaucrats and even held a demonstration at Jantar Mantar, but to no avail,” rued Mr. Kaushik.

Running from pillar to post, the family of the businessman is outraged at the apathetic attitude of the government to their ordeal.

“It is shocking that the Indian Government has made no efforts to protect the rights of its own citizen languishing in a foreign jail. We have the example of Sarabjit before us, but still the government seems least bothered. We have friendly relations with Russia unlike Pakistan, and I am sure if the government takes up the matter in right earnest my son can get a bail, which is anyway his right. Italy did so much for its marines, can we expect the same from our government?” said Mr. Singla’s father Khushal Chand.

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May 22, 2013 01:17 IST

Four walls and the cry for help

Vani S. Kulkarni

Manoj K. Pandey

Raghav Gaiha

Forms
Political factor
In the metros
Empowerment

Every hour 25 women fall victim to crimes; 11 suffer cruelty by husbands and other relatives; three are raped; and there is one dowry death.

Horrific crimes against women have, in fact, continued unabated. What is worse is that there has been an acceleration of such crimes in recent years, with the annual rate rising from 5.9 per cent in 2006 to 7.8 per cent during 2006-2011. Cases of domestic violence against women by their husbands and other relatives comprised over 43 per cent of all crimes against women in 2011. Domestic violence also accelerated, with the annual rate rising from 8.25 per cent in 2006 to 11.41 per cent between 2006-2011 despite a landmark legislation in 2006 declaring “wife-beating” a crime (National Crime Bureau Report).

Violence is rooted in dowry issues — women are beaten, threatened, burned and even killed to extract gifts of money, jewellery and consumer durables (e.g. a television set, fridge) from their families. Such cruelty is not confined to cases around dowry, however. Negligence of domestic duties, poorly prepared food and going out alone without permission, a sign of independence, are often dealt with just as cruelly.

Our analysis, based on the India Human Development Survey 2004-05, throws new light on the perceptions of patterns of domestic violence as well as some correlates. Since perceptions may not accurately reflect actual cases of domestic violence, the margins of error are difficult to assess. By contrast, actual cases are likely to be underestimates for fear of provoking further violence. Therefore, neither the National Crime Bureau nor the National Family Health Survey data on actual cases can be taken at face value. Another issue is the overlap between seemingly distinct forms of violence (e.g. marital rape, dowry-related, stemming from neglect of domestic duties). Hence, occurrence of multiple forms of domestic violence is typically more likely (e.g. dowry-related violence and that associated with the neglect of domestic duties) than any specific form alone (e.g. dowry-related). To circumvent this difficulty, we have constructed, for example, categories such as whether dowry-related violence was perceived as occurring with any other form of violence (e.g. associated with going out alone, neglect of domestic duties). This allows us to compare the incidence of a few dominant forms of domestic violence but without an unambiguous and mutually exclusive classification.

Out of the four categories considered, the highest incidence of violence was associated with going out alone without permission (about 39 per cent), followed by neglect of household duties (about 35 per cent), badly cooked meals (about 29.50 per cent), and dowry-related (about 29 per cent).

If we classify States by the party in power, i.e., Congress-ruled, BJP-ruled, a coalition of either with other parties, and regional/State parties, the variation in domestic violence reveals a mixed pattern. Dowry-beating was highest in Congress-ruled States, and lowest in regional party-ruled States while violence resulting from going out alone was highest in BJP-ruled States and lowest in regional party-ruled States.

Locational differences are striking. Slums show the highest incidence of all forms of violence, followed by rural and urban areas. Violence associated with neglect of domestic duties was over 44 per cent in slums, over 37 per cent in rural areas and about 27.50 per cent in urban areas. A similar pattern is observed for bad cooking, with the highest violence in slums (over 33 per cent, 32 per cent in rural areas and about 21.50 per cent in urban). Dowry-related violence was also highest in slums (about 33 per cent), followed by rural areas (31.50 per cent) and then urban (22 per cent).

A disaggregation into six major metros (Mumbai, Delhi, Kolkata, Chennai, Bangalore and Hyderabad) does not corroborate the north-south divide that has been the staple of demographers. Dowry-related violence was highest in Bangalore (48.55 per cent), followed by Chennai (about 33.50 per cent) and lowest in Delhi (about 18 per cent). Violence associated with neglect of household duties follows a slightly different pattern, with the highest incidence in Chennai (53 per cent), followed by Bangalore (over 47 per cent) and lowest in Delhi (about 11 per cent). While Bangalore overtakes Chennai in violence associated with bad cooking (about 47 per cent and over 35 per cent, respectively), Delhi exhibits the lowest incidence (6.20 per cent).

As these are perceptions, associations with economic conditions, household endowments including educational achievements, employment and earnings, and cultural characteristics (whether affiliated to SCs/ STs, OBCs and others) unravel a few key correlates but are not necessarily causal inferences.

At the State level, in all four types of violence, there are strong negative correlations between State GDP per capita and the incidence of such violence. The higher the State GDP per capita, for example, the lower was the incidence of dowry-related violence. A comparison of incidence of this between the lowest and highest (physical) asset groups suggests that dowry-related violence in the latter was 67 per cent of that in the lowest group. Similar findings are obtained for other forms of violence — neglect of domestic duties (72 per cent), bad cooking (66 per cent), and going out alone without permission (67 per cent). So States with larger shares of highest asset group exhibit lower domestic violence. That (relative) affluence has a dampening effect on domestic violence is plausible.

Educational achievements of women make a significant difference too — the higher the proportion of women with 10 years or more of education, the lower is the incidence of violence. Comparison of dowry-beating between this group and another with lower education reveals a large difference — 10 percentage points. Differences in other forms of violence are large too — neglect of domestic duties (9.50 percentage points), and going out alone (16 percentage points). Higher education expands the fallback options for women outside the home and thus lowers domestic violence.

Women’s empowerment is often measured in terms of outside wage employment and earnings relative to those of men. Our analysis confirms these links but in a nuanced way. At low ratios of female wage employment to male wage employment, the incidence of dowry-beating rises slightly but falls thereafter quite sharply. A similar relationship is observed between the ratio of female earnings to male earnings and such violence, pointing to thresholds below which neither ratio lowers domestic violence. Rather, at low values, it rises. So high levels of female employment and earnings are critical to lowering domestic violence against women.

Whether domestic violence is cultural too is examined in terms of variation across SCs/STs, OBCs and Others. As these groups also imply a ranking in terms of economic status, with SCs/STs as the most disadvantaged, OBCs as less disadvantaged and Others as least disadvantaged, any association between domestic violence and these groups is likely to reflect both differences in cultural practices and economic conditions. Subject to this caveat, the higher the proportions of SCs/STs and OBCs, the higher is the frequency of domestic violence in its multiple forms.

In conclusion, while judicial activism has a limited role in curbing domestic violence, expansion of economic opportunities for women, higher education facilities, asset accumulation, and curbing of gender-related discriminatory practices in the labour market hold promise.

(Vani S. Kulkarni is a research associate, Department of Sociology, Yale University; Manoj K. Pandey, a doctoral candidate in Economics, Australian National University, and Raghav Gaiha, a visiting scientist, Department of Global Health and Population, Harvard School of Public Health.)