In search for a national terrorism policy

ZoneAsia-Pk

A country can never be fully prepared to meet the challenges that terrorism, be it of any kind or in any shape, brings. In the Information Age, methods and techniques of terrorism are continuously evolving and the danger keeps escalating. Pakistan faces a unique challenge, for it is the battlefield for fighting terrorists which have caused great human losses across the globe. Since 9/11 it has had to deal great pressure from western powers to curb militants who have targeted foreign nationalities and even Pakistanis. With an economy in distress and meager welfare facilities, all of which are plagued with corruption, insecurity and cases of terrorism have stretched thin the allocation of resources. However, policy makers and analysts feel some of this stress can be relieved if Pakistan deals with security crisis in a systemic and organized manner. Twelve years into the War on Terror and Pakistan still lacks a universal narrative on terrorism. The attack on 14 year old Malala Yousafzai on October 9th uncovered the political rifts in the Pakistani government over counter terrorism.

The world hurled its condemnation on the Taliban militants who targeted Malala, an act that symbolizes the existence of an oppressive mindset that violates basic human rights. Pakistani politicians reacted strongly, some calling for the immediate enactment of the North Waziristan Operation to eliminate the militants. MQM expressed great disapproval with Altaf Hussain urging the army to immediately begin the Waziristan operation. Repeated failure of dialogue with the Taliban has convinced him of the need for a military response. Although ANP and MQM do not see eye to eye on all matters, the former’s failure against Taliban in Peshawar caused it to support a military response. The ruling party, PPP, was not far behind in denouncing the attack. Its senior leaders including the PM vowed to root out extremism but they were hoping the Army or the parliament would take the initiate by approving of an operation. However, the Army threw the ball in the government’s court by necessitating its approval for any such action while resistance from opposition parties thwarted a parliamentary endorsement. The government finally decided to play safe by promising that such a decision will be taken if the need arises with the backing of the political and military leadership.

Even though all political parties criticized the attack to some degree or another, some parties chose to disagree with a military reaction against terrorists. The JI and JUI, for instance, urged the government not to misuse this incident to gain some political advantages and support for a military operation. At the same time, various conspiracy theories regarding the role of Malala as a spy and the wider interest of America in exploiting Pakistan sprung up. Significant opposition also came forth from Imran Khan, leader of PTI and the savior of Pakistan according to its rapidly growing supporters. He believed a military action to be premature which if carried out would aggravate the security crisis. Khan suggested a three point strategy: detachment from the American War on Terror, dialogue with the militants and as a last resort, military action. He particularly stressed on the participation of the locals in these decisions so that they did not feel alienated.

PML-N is a step ahead of many parties as they not only differ with other parties but their own members also have conflicting viewpoints. Although they have opposed the government’s plan for a military operation in Waziristan, their leaders haven’t explicitly favored dialogue either. PML-N members claim this to be a political trick to delay elections. Still we have Marvi Memon propagating a forceful response while Zafar Ali Shah, Khurram Dastgir and Saad Rafiq have been open to the option of cooperation as part of a multidimensional approach.

If this wasn’t enough, the matter of a terrorism policy was muddled with pro-Malala and anti-Malala discourses. Phrases like “You are either with the Taliban or against the Taliban” were being used to determines one’s loyalty to the state or the militants. A national terrorism policy cannot be simplified to just the Taliban, the drones or US intervention in Pakistani affairs. In fact they are the constituents of that policy.

A difference in opinion over the Waziristan operation should guide debate and discussion over other issues to eventually reach a state policy against terrorism. This is however only the first part of the process; the policy must then be implemented. Malala’s attack was most unfortunate but when seen in the context of the upcoming elections and worldwide outrage, it may be just the right amount of push needed to ensure that political parties come up with policy agreeable to all and sundry.

A cynical electoral game at Indian Muslims’ expense

AIJAZ Z. SYED

Why India’s largest minority should treat Congress overtures with reservations

The more things change for India’s Muslims, the more they remain the same. Come elections and political parties invent ever new ways of wooing, using and exploiting them to reap their periodic harvest while the condition of Muslims worsens by the day.

Being the oldest and most experienced of them all, the Congress party has obviously mastered this art of fooling all the people all the time at the expense of some. But it’s not just the Congress; in this public bath, no one has a stitch on. With the crucial battle for five states heating up, the Muslims once again find themselves in the middle of a dirty, cynical game of one-upmanship with every political party using them as a football and a punching bag.

Uttar Pradesh is the big prize. Stakes couldn’t have been higher. Everyone from Mulayam’s Smajwadi to Mayawati’s Bahujan Samaj Party, which first proposed a Muslim quota stealing the Congress’ thunder, is hungering after the pie. The main opposition BJP is in the big game hunt too and is sharpening its knives for the sacrificial lamb.

Adding to the fun is the new breed of party- and channel-hopping “Muslim leaders” parroting their newest party’s latest pitch swearing it to be God’s gift to the community. It gets so gross and nauseating at times you feel like throwing the TV remote at them!

The farce never seems to end. First, the Congress sends up the balloon of 4.5 percent quota for Muslims, rather conveniently, just before the poll dates were unveiled. It’s followed by the joke of a “minority quota” in the still-born Lokpal, the corruption watchdog.

Law and Minority Affairs Minister Salman Khurshid then takes the game to a new level by promising to double the quota to 9 percent. Interestingly, it came at his wife’s poll rally in Farrukhabad, raising a political storm and provoking the poll panel to freeze the quota. The Congress stands to lose nothing though. It could always demand the Muslim vote claiming it was committed to helping the community but its efforts were thwarted by the parties like the BJP and others.

The grand ol’ party has played this cynical game for so long that it knows too well how it’s all going to unfold and how the opposition and media would respond to it. All you have to do is throw those perfect promises and dazzling dreams at Muslims and the rest will follow.

Even if the Congress were serious and sincere about implementing the quota, even the paltry 4.5 percent, it makes little difference to the community in real terms if it is carved out of the existing 27 percent quota marked for the Other Backward Communities. Some Muslim groups like Ansaris (weavers) and Qureshis (butchers) are already covered under the 27 percent quota. It’s the economically struggling sections of the community that badly need hand holding.

And now with the EC staying the quota with courts likely to follow suit as happened in Andhra Pradesh, the Muslims have ended up once again with nothing while earning themselves a lot of ill will and resentment of the rest of the country, especially the OBCs. The cruel joke by a government fighting for its survival hasn’t just further isolated the community; it has ended up pitting it against communities that were once their allies and fellow travelers. But then we have been here before. This is how the Congress has always paid Muslims for their blind, unquestioning support since Independence. Muslims have received nothing but such clever-by-half and often dangerous tokenism from the party. We thought things would be different under Sonia Gandhi and Manmohan Singh because they came from a different background and could transcend the cynical, forever calculating Congress mindset.

Only the blind could have missed the fact that the Muslim vote played a critical role in bringing the party to power in 2004 after long years of wilderness. The feat was repeated in 2009, riding on all the talk of change although the government didn’t lift a finger to implement the bold recommendations of Justice Sachar Committee and Ranganath Mishra Commission.

Both reports, especially the one by the Mishra Commission, make for disturbing reading as they turn the spotlight on the shocking state of a 200-million strong community. This is no time and place to go over them but in short both panels conclude that Muslims are right now at the lowest rung of the hierarchy in every respect. Lowest of the low, they are today stacked even below the Dalits, the long discriminated castes. Only 4.5 percent Muslims are to be found in government jobs. Their representation in other areas is even more pathetic. The credit for this state of affairs goes to the party that has been in power for the longest period of time since Independence. This is why you thought, if not for the wholehearted support it received in 2004 and 2009, this government would have implemented the recommendations of the two commissions it had formed in its wisdom.

If it had been serious about the minority welfare, it wouldn’t have slept on the recommendations of Justice Sachar and Justice Mishra for five years, only to remember the Muslims days ahead of the assembly elections. Personally, I have nothing but respect for Salman Khurshid. He comes from an illustrious family (grandson of the late President Dr. Zakir Hussain) and obviously means well but is condemned by the company he keeps. The mindset of his party being what it is – others are fast catching up – it just cannot help itself to look beyond its petty electoral calculations and permutations and combinations of caste and religion.

I am not most comfortable with this whole quota business offering special treatment, or affirmative action as the Americans call it, for a particular group or community. Ideally, it should be equal opportunity for all. But we are not in an ideal situation. At times, extraordinary solutions are needed for extraordinary situations. Affirmative action has transformed the lives of millions of the long oppressed Dalits and African Americans, helping them break free of the centuries old cycle of inhumane abuse and exploitation. It could make a difference to Muslims too, if political parties allowed it and stopped looking at the issue from a religious prism. The Muslim empowerment could actually mean lifting of a huge chunk of India’s population out of misery. But even if a quota for the politically and economically dispossessed Muslims becomes a reality, it might end up doing more harm than good thanks to the cut-throat nature of Indian politics, not to mention our Hindutva friends.

Perhaps it’s about time Muslims gave up their fond, innocent hopes of political action to end their political and economic deprivation. Instead of waiting for those crumbs and doles from politicians, they must take charge of their destiny. In the end if anyone is going to help them, it’s themselves.

Aijaz Zaka Syed is a Dubai-based journalist and commentator. Write him at aijaz.syed@hotmail.com

India’s Cry Wolf App?

By Deepika Jaitley
Area 14/8

‘Rape Capital’ Delhi, sprawling metropolis and epicenter of the Government of India, is also victim to elements of endemic sexual violence. Earlier this year an English local newspaper published statistics under the headline: Shame on Delhi Men. “The dazzling streets of Delhi hide a dark truth,” it said, publishing the results of a poll revealing that 66% of the capital’s women were molested between two and five times last year and that 70% of men “looked the other way” when it happened. What happens when they don’t was amply demonstrated earlier this year when a 55-year-old rickshaw driver in West Delhi was beaten to death for “defending his daughter’s modesty” from a group of drunks.

Cracking down on sexual predators, in what is the most dangerous city for women in India, hasn’t borne much fruit considering Delhi’s stereotypical policeman is a figure of legend, renowned for sloth, corruption, brutality and casual misogyny. To counter pandemic violence charities of all sorts have come to the fore one of which is Whypoll a local charity which has devised a smart phone app “Fight Back” that is to be launched in November this year. Whypoll will function as an SOS alert device — sending out a text message with a GPS location to up to five people, including police, and as a post on Facebook and Twitter. This app will be available to download from the Whypoll website for a small fee and will be supported by a range of smart phones such as Nokia and BlackBerry.

This project has received widespread attention and media coverage lauding this attempt to provide a platform where ‘women can remain anonymous yet the incident will still be recorded and reflected on a map on their website’ creating a tracking device of all sex offences that occur in the city, and securing areas that are most affected. Noble as this initiative is there are some glaring problems here that seem to have been over looked.

Delhi is one of the few states with a Poverty Index rating below India’s average 55%, it is 45% however the agglomerate of which resides in the peripheral slums where the crime rate incidentally is also highest. Chances that women targeted in these areas even own Smartphones are as unlikely as finding a Delhi Policeman who cares. Women who use public transport or have to walk to work are the ones most commonly victimized as well, to assume these women are wealthy and tech savvy enough to purchase Smartphones and the latest apps is going a bit too far.

However wealthier women living in posh localities, the ones getting chauffeured or who drive their own vehicles needn’t worry because they can probably buy their safety and that of other wealthier women like them through this app. This is not taking into consideration that these women are least likely to get raped anyway but oh well good for them.

There is a significant number of people who blindly support their charities and donate generously creating a large influx of money with almost no checks on feasibility and accountability of these Charity based organizations , Whypoll may have tried to reach out to the poor helpless women one of which gets raped every eighteen hours in the city. It’s just that if most of these victims cannot even afford this kind of help and will continue getting victimized because they can’t afford Smartphones.

Secondly this app is just asking to be misused and manipulated. The anonymity clause is too big a glitch in an already flawed design. If God forbid Whypoll’s home page is aspiring to become a database for rape occurrences in the city, the statistics will be skewed depending on the aggregation of smart phone users. Law enforcing authorities cannot use such flawed statistics, especially if the app can be used to simply ‘cry wolf’ without any repercussions or having someone to correct that. Prank alerts and malicious alerts could simply discredit the validity and genuineness of these alerts, completely defeating the purpose.

Good intentions aside, this app in my opinion will soon become redundant and it’s usage scant. Instead of a pseudo alarm system that requires you to have paid your Smartphone bill in advance, provisions for a concentrated crackdown must be made as soon as possible and the Government must get involved. Rooting out crime given the resources police has at its command, shouldn’t be that much of a problem if the federal government which rests its head in the same city decides to take interest in this issue. Reporting crimes, like this app plans to do, will not help as much as preventing them and rooting them out will.

India takes pride in being the tech-support call-centre and Silicone Valley of the world and portrays a pretty bejeweled face to those outside its borders. However hidden behind the thick layers of copious makeup and priceless jewels lies a forlorn India that cries for attention when countless women are abducted violated and thrown away everyday and there’s no one to hear their pleas. Initiatives geared towards the tech savvy may sound very clever and reinforce India’s neophilliac gadget craze but reality runs deeper and is grim. The endemic must be taken seriously and scoured head on by the Government without stopping to cheer and applaud NGOs who in their own capacity try and do their best in their own small way.

The Appalling Probe on The Guardian

Alex Massie

Britain’s cops have threatened to arrest dogged journalists if they don’t reveal their sources in the phone-hacking scandal. Alex Massie says the embarrassed police force has gone too far.

A sensible person tasked with drawing up a list of people likely to be arrested in connection with the phone-hacking saga that has disgraced Rupert Murdoch’s British media empire this summer probably wouldn’t think to include the journalists who have broken more stories about the scandal than anyone else. A sensible person, therefore, would have no role at the Metropolitan Police.

Extraordinarily, London’s finest have requested court orders to compel Nick Davies and Amelia Hill, reporters at The Guardian, to reveal their sources-sources inside the Metropolitan Police itself. The sources have perhaps been shamefaced by the manner in which the police have persistently bungled their operations despite ample opportunity to correct their mistakes. They have been instrumental in keeping the story alive.

Those stories have revealed that Britain’s rapacious tabloid newspapers were essentially running private intelligence networks spying on celebrities and “ordinary” citizens alike, and that these networks functioned more efficiently thanks to the collusion and corruption of many police officers. Therefore, the police have ample motive to silence the journalists who have uncovered their disgrace.

That helps explain why Davies and Hill risk being prosecuted under the terms of the Official Secrets Act if they refuse to cooperate with this extraordinary demand. Since the OSA is generally invoked when national security is at stake, one might think it strange that it’s being used to justify harassing reporters for the “crime” of reporting that journalists from Murdoch’s News of the World tabloid had “hacked” into a cell phone belonging to missing and subsequently murdered schoolgirl Milly Dowler. Some of Milly’s voicemail messages were deleted, freeing up room for more messages on her phone but also, dreadfully, giving her family hope she might still be alive.

Despite the apparent lack of any threat to national security, Davies and Hill are being investigated under Section 5 of the OSA, which makes it illegal to pass on “damaging” information leaked to journalists by government employees. This includes anything that is “likely to impede … the prosecution of suspected offenders.” In other words: newspapers are always fair game.

Stewart Stanley / Getty Images

Such is the controversy surrounding the OSA, however, that it is rarely used. The last attempt to invoke it against a journalist collapsed in 2000 after much public indignation. Even when the facts have been clear, juries have tended to side with whistleblowers: in 1985 Clive Ponting, a civil servant, was acquitted despite having leaked information about the sinking of the Argentine battleship Belgrano during the Falklands war.

In this instance, the police are notionally attempting to prevent further leaks that, they fear, may make it harder to secure convictions once their investigations into phone hacking are completed. Perhaps this is the case, but there’s more to it than that.

The scandal, complete with all its allegations that the police enjoyed a troublingly cozy relationship with the Murdoch press, has already forced the commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, Sir Paul Stephenson, to resign. Assistant Commissioner John Yates, the officer in charge of the lethargic phone-hacking investigation, was also forced to step down.

This is a startling reaction from a police force embarrassed by The Guardian’s dogged, determined reporting of a scandal that has tarnished the already-tattered reputation of Britain’s most prominent police force.

Even so, this is a startling reaction from a police force embarrassed by The Guardian’s dogged, determined reporting of a scandal that has tarnished the already-tattered reputation of Britain’s most prominent police force. It is hard to avoid the suspicion that the police have targeted Guardian reporters because they can, not because they should.

If this is truly the case, then the investigation-already a questionable use of police resources-is another example of an out-of-control police force hellbent on fighting political battles against its foes, and more than happy to threaten the privileges and freedoms of the press.

The police have ample reason to hate The Guardian, mind you. Earlier this summer, the paper reported that police officers routinely received cash payments from private detectives working on behalf of News of the World. The Guardian is adamant that neither Davies nor Hill has paid any police officer for any information.

Even if they had, there is a clear and important difference between conniving in police wrongdoing-as the tabloids are alleged to have done-and exposing it, as The Guardian has done. Should the paper’s journalists ever face trial, one imagines they will enjoy an excellent “public interest” defense.

Nevertheless, the prospect that it might come to that is shameful and a stain on both the Metropolitan Police and Britain’s reputation as a free and civilized country. It is another reminder that whatever may be said about the more eccentric corners of the American Constitution, many Britons would dearly love to have, hold, and cherish the protections of the First Amendment.

This heavy-handed, disproportionate police action is, then, but the latest piece of cynicism in a scandal already filled with devious tabloid journalists, corrupt police officers, and much, much else. In other words, like the newspaper culture it has exposed, it stinks.

Disclosure: Hill and Massie were once colleagues at Edinburgh’s Scotland on Sunday.

Anna upsurge and the social movements

By Ram Puniyani

Anna Hazare’s second fast (August 2011) in Delhi, demanding the acceptance of his teams’ draft for Janlokpal bill has raised many different debates about the nature of this upsurge and how the social action groups, engaged in the process of struggle for Human rights of different sections of society, should relate to such movements.

Just to recall the first such fast was taken by Hazare was undertaken in April 2011, on the issue of Jan Lokpal Bill. Around that time there was a competing movement by Baba Ramdev for getting back illegitimate money stashed abroad. While Hazare withstood the pressures of state to resurface again, Baba Ramdev collapsed soon enough and tried to run away wearing women’s clothes. Hazare’s, ‘Team Anna’ has diverse people, engaged with different social issues, including reforms in judiciary, bonded labor, communal amity etc.

Many of them have been rubbing shoulders with grassroots level social activists working for social change. This time around other social activists of repute of Medha Patkar have come forward more openly and joined hands with Hazare upsurge. Lot of sympathy for Hazare movement has also been elicited in amongst other activists seriously committed to the issues of human rights. While others like Shabnam Hashmi, Mahesh Bhatt, Anand Teltumde and the noted writer Arundhati Roy have come out with heavy criticism of this Anna movement. Aruna Roy’s group has come out with alternative draft for Lokpal Bill. The dilemma for activists is what do we do? Do we be part of Anna upsurge and fight for getting his draft of Jan Lokpal Bill accepted or should we stand aloof from this movement. Surely Anna movement has at one level caught the imagination of a large section of people.

The Lokpal Bill idea was floated decades ago and many different parties have come to power during this time, but this bill remained unattended to. Janata Party, VP Singh, BJP-led NDA all had put the proposal of a Lokpal bill in the cold storage. Anna’s fast has made it come to the fore. Anna movement came suddenly and soon was converted into a spectacle by the mobilization done by RSS-BJP-VHP combine. The same was hugely overblown by media which pitched in to give it the exalted status. Live coverage, hype reserved for a cricket match, all was on display. Most TV anchors were screaming and exhorting the people to be part of the Anna upsurge. The RSS mechanism, visible- invisible both, which is capable of making the Ganesh idol drink milk, came into action and candle holding middle class, the ‘Shining India’ class was there at Jantar Mantar in good strength. Bharat mata was in the backdrop and cry of Vande Mtram was in the air. RSS functionaries and associated Godmen were around to mix overt faith with a particular type of politics. This politics, which earlier had by a different type of mobilization to demolish the Babri Masjid.

This time around (August), when Anna went on fast again, this ‘shining India’ group was joined in by other sections in larger numbers. Many sections who are part of this mobilization are hardly aware of what the real debate is about. Team Anna succeeded in projecting that they are against Corruption and those who are not with them are supporting corruption. The real issue that Anna wants only his draft to be made in to a bill within a stipulated time, went to the background in popular perception.

Some other points related to the issue are worth giving an attention. One of these is as to how come the issue has been raised both by Anna and Ramdev around the time when some corporate executives were arrested for corruption and there was a fear that big honchos may also have to be behind bars. And secondly, is it a mere coincidence that it is around this time also that many a cases against the crimes of Modi are coming to a stage where he may be pinned down.

The Anna movement has two components. One is the core one, the one which has been called by political scientists as ‘Shining India’ or ‘the MBA type generation’. This class is receiving good packages and is showing its concern about social issues mainly by opposing state affirmative action like NREGA or reservation for dalits. This is the class, large sections of which called for need to attack Pakistan in the aftermath of July 2011 Mumbai blasts. Second group, smaller and less assertive around this core of middle class is constituted by those deprived sections that are looking for a platform to express their anguish with the rising prices and problems of daily life, which is worsening by the day.

While the ‘Anna protest’ is valid, the pressurizing of state-government to bring in a suitable law for Lokpal, one does not understand why the insistence by Anna, that the Bill must be passed in the stipulated time, and only his draft should be accepted. Anna’s group is not the only civil society group, there are other options also, which have come out with probably better alternatives and have tried to overcome the authoritarian nature of the Governments draft Bill and Team Anna’s draft bill. One means by this the draft by Aruna Roy group, which has been quietly working on it. Why is there this attempt to bypass the parliamentary norms, to rush through them? One knows the bills like RTI, took years to become the law. One knows the necessary bills like those against communal violence and for Right to Food are in the pipeline, and taking good gestation period. The haste can be understood only from the angle that this Anna’s attempt is an attempt to undermine Parliamentary system of democracy.

Many sincere social activists feel that the present system has failed and needs to be replaced. Good enough. There are severe fallacies in the present system. Lots of lacunas, lots of inertia! So what is the solution? To change the government, as Anna is demanding, Lao ya Jao, (bring my Lokpal Bill or Quit)! This is a political call to bring in the party whose affiliates are mobilizing the middle and other classes and is distributing t-shirts and caps “I am Anna Hazare”, whose volunteers have going door to door to whip up support for Anna. The other interpretation is that the parliamentary system will give way to a revolution, a better system. Many sincere social activists believe this. This is a sign of frustration with present state of things and also the lack of deeper understanding of logic of ‘democratic system in evolution’. Democratic systems can always give way to other systems, but surely those systems coming in place of democratic ones’ can only be authoritarian.

Comparing this upsurge with the one in many Muslim countries is misplaced again. In countries like Egypt, Tunisia the authoritarian regimes are being replaced towards democratic ones’, with all their teething troubles. As such every mass movement does not bring in democracy. We have witnessed that in Germany Hitler’s also built up a mass movement, Hitler’s movement crushed democracy. Every mass movement is not for better values, Ramjnambhoomi movement was one such, which created Hate Politics and paved the way for massive violence. One welcomes mass movements as far as they are inclusive and within the democratic norms for the values of Liberty, Equality and Fraternity. The one being orchestrated around Anna Hazare, smacks of intolerance for other’s views and has lack of patience. There is a need to nurture the norms of Parliamentary democracy, which should be non-negotiable. The hidden/overt hand of divisive forces and the core composition of ‘shining India’ class raises lots of doubts about the democratic credentials of this current Ram Lila ground upsurge.

Social movements and their campaigns must give direction to the democratic system, the government, the parliament. The space of democratic society is currently being usurped to do away with parliamentary democracy; it is a danger signal of sorts. In the core of this movement, what dominates is the superficial attitude to the widespread cancer of corruption. Corruption is being seen in isolation. The point to remember is that corruption is a mere symptom of a disease, and not the disease by itself. The deeper disease, which is the system based on inequality lack of transparency and lack of accountability are the issues which need to be addressed by and by, that’s where we need to pay our serious attention to. Creating another unaccountable all powerful institution may be something worse that the disease the society is suffering from.

Why 1 Million Indians Escape From India Every Year

Any crackdown on illegal immigrants abroad or restricting quotas to Indians are a major concern to India’s politicians. The latest statistics from US Department of Homeland Security shows that the numbers of Indian illegal migrants jumped 125% since 2000! Ever wondered why Indians migrate to another countries but no one comes to India for a living? Here are some Indian facts:

Poverty Graph

According to WFP, India accounts around 50% of the world’s hungry. (more than in the whole of Africa) and its fiscal deficit is one of the highest in the world. India’s Global Hunger Index (GHI) score is 23.7, a rank of 66th out of 88 countries. India’s rating is slightly above Bangladesh but below all other South Asian nations and India is listed under “ALARMING” category. Ref: IFPRI Country Report on India

Around six out of 10 Indians live in the countryside, where abject poverty is widespread. 34.7 % of the Indian population lives with an income below $ 1 a day and 79.9 % below $ 2 a day. According to the India’s planning commission report 26.1 % of the population live below the poverty line. [World Bank’s poverty line of $1 a day, but the Indian poverty line of Rs 360 a month, or 30 cents a day].

The Current Account Balance of India

“A major area of vulnerability for us is the high consolidated public-debt to GDP ratio of over 70 percent … (and) consolidated fiscal deficit,” says the Governor of Reserve Bank of India (RBI), Mr. Yaga Venugopal Reddy.

According to CIA world fact book, the Current account balance of India is -37,510,000,000 (minus) while China is the wealthiest country in the world with $ 426,100,000,000 (Plus) . India listed as 182 and China as no.1 [CIA: The world fact book]

Human Development vs GDP growth

The Human Development Report for 2009 released by the UNDP ranked India 134 out of 182 countries, working it out through measures of life expectancy, education and income. India has an emigration rate of 0.8%. The major continent of destination for migrants from India is Asia with 72.0% of emigrants living there. The report found that India’s GDP per capita (purchasing power parity) is $2,753, far below Malaysia’s $13,518. China listed as 92 with PPP of $5383. Read the statistics from UNDP website.

Population:

According to the Indian census of 2001, the total population was 1.028 billion. Hindus numbered 827 million or 80.5 %. About 25 per cent (24 million) of those Hindus are belonging to Scheduled Castes and Tribes. About 40 per cent (400 million) are “Other Backward Castes”.

15 per cent Hindu upper castes inherited majority of India’s civil service, economy and active politics from British colonial masters. And thus the caste system virtually leaves lower caste Hindus in to an oppressed majority in India’s power structure .Going by figures quoted by the Backward Classes Commission, Brahmins alone account for 37.17 per cent of the bureaucracy. [Who is Really Ruling India?]

The 2004 World Development Report mentions that more than 25% of India’s primary school teachers and 43% of primary health care workers are absent on any given day!

Living conditions of Indians

89 percent of rural households do not own telephones; 52 percent do not have any domestic power connection. There are daily power cuts even in the nation’s capital. The average brownout in India is three hours per day during non-monsoon months, 17 hours daily during the monsoon. The average village is 2 kilometers away from an all-weather road, and 20 percent of rural habitations have partial or no access to a safe drinking-water supply. [ Tarun Khanna, Yale Center for the Study of Globalization]

According to the National Family Health Survey data (2005-06), only 45 per cent of households in the country had access to improved sanitation.

Education

India has over 35 per cent of the world’s total illiterate population. [UNESCO Education for All Report 2008] Only 66 per cent people are literate in India (76 per cent men and 54 per cent women)

About 40 million primary school-age children in India are not in school. More than 92 % children cannot progress beyond secondary school. According to reports, 35 per cent schools don’t have infrastructure such as blackboards and furniture. And close to 90 per cent have no functional toilets. Half of India’s schools still have leaking roofs or no water supply.

Japan has 4,000 universities for its 127 million people and the US has 3,650 universities for its 301 million, India has only 348 universities for its 1.2 billion people. In the prestigious Academic Ranking of World Universities by Institute of Higher Education, Shanghai Jiao Tong, only two Indian Universities are included. Even those two IITs in India found only a lower slot (203-304) in 2007 report. Although Indian universities churn out three million graduates a year, only 15% of them are suitable employees for blue-chip companies. Only 1 million among them are IT professionals.

Health

India today allocates lower than one per cent gross domestic product (GDP) to health. According to United Nations calculations, India’s spending on public health as a share of GDP is the 18th lowest in the world. 150 million Indians are blind. 2.13 per cent of the total population (21.9 million) live with disabilities in India. Yet, only 34 per cent of the disabled are employed [Census 2001] India has the single highest share of neonatal deaths in the world, 2.1 million.

107,000 Leprosy patients live in India. 15.3 % of the population do not survive to the age of forty. Serpent attacks kill as many as 50,000 Indians while the cobra occupies a hallowed place in the Hindu religion. Heart disease, strokes and diabetes cost India an estimated $9 billion in lost productivity in 2005. The losses could grow to a staggering $200 billion over the next 10 years if corrective action is not taken quickly, says a study by the New Delhi-based Indian Council for Research on International Economic Relations.

There are only 585 rural hospitals compared to 985 urban hospitals in the country. Out of the 6,39,729 doctors registered in India, only 67,576 are in the public sector and the rest either in private sectors or abroad, pointing towards the severity of the problem. According to a survey by NSSO (National Sample Survey Organisation), 40 per cent of the people hospitalised have either had to borrow money or sell assets to cover their medical expenses. Over 85 per cent of the Indian population does not have any form of health coverage.

Tuberculosis (TB) is a major public health problem in India. India accounts for one-fifth of the global TB incident cases. Each year about 1.8 million people in India develop TB, of which 0.8 million are infectious cases. It is estimated that annually around 330,000 Indians die due to TB. [WHO India]

Economy under the siege of Elite Hindus

In India, wealth of 36 families amounts to $ 191 billion, which is one-fourth of India’s GDP. In other words, 35 elite Hindu families own quarter of India’s GDP by leaving 85 % ordinary Hindus as poor!

The dominant group of Hindu nationalists come from the three upper castes ( Brahmins, Kshatriyas, and Vaishyas ) that constitute only 10 per cent of the total Indian population. But, they claim perhaps 80 % of the jobs in the new economy, in sectors such as software, biotechnology, and hotel management.

India is also one of the most under-banked major markets in the world with only 6 bank branches per 1,000 sq kms, according to the World Bank, and less than 31% of the population has access to a bank account. According to India’s national agency, (NABARD), around 60 per cent people are not having access to financial institutions in India. This figure is less than 15 per cent in developed countries.

Corruption

According to TI, 25 % of Indians paid bribe to obtain a service. 68 % believe that governmental efforts to stop the corruption as ineffective. More than 90 % consider police and political parties as the worst corrupt institutions. 90 % of Indians believe that corruption will increase within the next 3 years. “Corruption is a large tax on Indian growth, It delays execution, raises costs and destroys the moral fiber.” says Prof. Rama Murthi. Transparency International estimates that Indian truckers pay something in the neighborhood of $5 billion annually in bribes to keep freight flowing. According to Rahul Gandhi, only 5 per cent of development funds reached their intended recipients due to hierarchical corruption in the country! [Financial Times]

Discrimination against Dalits

Crime against Dalits occur every 20 minutes in India. Every day 3 Dalit women are raped, 2 Dalits are murdered and 2 Dalit houses are burnt down! These figures represent only a fraction of actual incidents since many Dalits do not register cases for fear of retaliation by the police and upper-caste Hindu individuals. Official figures show that there are still 0.343 million manual scavengers in India from Dalit community. More than 165 million Dalits in India are simply abused by their Hindu upper castes for their birth! . [HRW Report2007]

Human Rights

When it comes to Human Rights issues in India, it is not ratified the UN Convention against Torture, its citizens do not have the opportunity to find recourse in remedies that are available under international law. The victims are trapped with the local Hindu caste system, which in every aspect militates against their rights.

India has a very poor record of protecting the privacy of its citizens, according to the latest report from Privacy International (PI). India scored 1.9 points, which makes it an ‘extensive surveillance society’. A score between 4.1 and 5.0 (the highest score) would mean a country “consistently upholds human rights standards”. PI is a watchdog on surveillance and privacy invasions by governments and corporations. [ Fake encounter killings are rampant in India. This extra judicial killings are inspired by theological texts of Brahmins like Artha Shastra and Manusmritiwhich teaches espionage and torture methods. Every such killing of an innocent person, branded a terrorist, has encouraged the killer cops to target socially excluded communities like dalits, tribals and minorities.

India’s intelligence agencies like IB,RAW, etc seems to be thoroughly infiltrated by foreign secret services which support powerful weapon producing nations. Formed in 1947, IB is engaged in wiretapping, spy on political opponents and sometimes indicting on false criminal charges. The IB also has numerous authors, bloggers and media persons.

According to the National Human Rights Commission, as on 30th June 2004, there were 3,32,112 prisoners in Indian jails out of which 2,39,146 were under trial prisoners. That’s more than 70 %. India’s jails hold a disproportionate number of the country’s minority Muslims, a sign of discrimination and alienation from the Hindu majority. The bar association in India’s largest state, Uttar Pradesh, has refused to represent 13 Muslim suspects accused bombing courthouses in 2005 . A large part of police officers, Indian attorneys and judges appear regularly on the events organized by notorious Hindu militant groups. Prison statistics of Indian Jails can be seen from National Crime Record Bureau,here

India is a parliamentary democracy, but rather less than a fully free society. The human rights group Freedom House ranks India as a 2 (on a scale of 1 to 7, with 1 the highest) for political rights and 3 for civil liberties. Elections are generally free but, notes Freedom House, “Government effectiveness and accountability are also undermined by pervasive criminality in politics, decrepit state institutions, and widespread corruption.” The State Department observes: “There were numerous reports that the government and its agents committed arbitrary or unlawful killings, including extrajudicial killings of suspected criminals and insurgents, or staged encounter deaths.” Read Freedom House Report fromhere.

Minorities

About 20 %, or 200 million, are religious minorities. Muslims constitutes 138 million or 13.4 5, Christians 24 million or 2.3 %, Sikhs 19 million or 2 %, Buddhists 8 million or 0.8 % and Jains 4 million or 0.4 %. “Others” numbered 6.6 million or 0.6 %. According to Mr. Tahir Mahmood, an Indian Muslim journalist, “The 2.3 % Christians in the Indian population cater to 20 % of all primary education in India, 10 % of all the literacy and community health care, 25 % of all existing care of destitute and orphans, 30 % of all the handicapped, lepers and AIDS patients etc”.

Discrimination against Minority Muslims

Recently,Justice Rajinder Sachar Committee report admitted that 138 Million Muslims across India are severely under-represented in government employment, including Public Sector Units. Ironically, West Bengal, a communist ruled state reported 0 (zero) percent of Muslims in higher positions in its PSUs! It has found that the share of Muslims in government jobs and in the lower judiciary in any state simply does not come anywhere close to their population share. The only place where Muslims can claim a share in proportion to their population is in prison! (Muslims convicts in India is 19.1%, while the number of under trials is 22.5%, which exceed their population ratio) . A note sent on January 9 by the army to the defence ministry in 2004 says that only 29,093 Muslims among a total of 1.1 million personnel – a ratio of 2.6 %, which compares poorly with the Muslims’ 13.8 % share in the Indian population. Officially, Indian Army don’t allow head count based on religion.

A Muslim child attends school for three years and four months, compared to the national average of four years. Less than two percent of the students at the elite Indian Institutes of Technology comprise of the Muslim community. According to the National Knowledge Commission member Jayathi Ghosh, ‘there is a need to re-orient official strategies for ensuring better access of Muslim children to schooling outside the madrasas which cater to only four per cent of children from the community.’

Discrimination in Media

Hindu upper caste men, who constitute just eight per cent of the total population of India, hold over 70 % of the key posts across newsrooms in the country. The so-called twice-born Hindu castes dominate 85 % key posts despite constituting just 16 % of the total population, while the intermediary castes represent a meager 3%.

The Hindu Other Backward Class groups, who are 34 % of the total population, have a share of just 4% in the Indian newsrooms. Muslims, who constitute about 13 % of the population, control just 4 % top posts while Christians and Sikhs have a slightly better representation. But the worst scenario emerges in the case of Scheduled Castes (SCs) and Scheduled Tribes /Aborgines (STs): Based on CSDS study, 2006. Ref: The Hindu, June 05, 2006

Discrimination in Judiciary

India’s subordinate courts have a backlog of over 22 million cases while the 21 high courts and the Supreme Court have 3.5 million and 32,000 pending cases (2006). In subordinate courts, over 15 million cases are filed and an equal number disposed of annually by about 14,000 judges! Every year a million or more cases are added to the arrears. At the current speed, the lower courts may take 124 years for clearing the backlog. There were only 13 judges for every million people.

Recently a parliamentary committee blamed the judiciary for keeping out competent persons of downtrodden communities from “through a shrewd process of manipulation”. Between 1950 to 2000, 47% of Chief Justices and 40% of Judges were of Brahmin origin!. Dalits and Indian aborigines are lesser than 20 out of 610 judges working in Supreme Court and state high Courts. “This nexus and manipulative judicial appointments have to be broken, it urged”. [Parliamentary standing committee report on Constitutional Review,Sudarshan Nachiappan]. Among 12 states with high-Muslim population, Muslim representation in judicial sector is limited to 7.8%. (Justice Sachar Report).

According to the National Crime Records Bureau, only 31 per cent criminal trials are completed in less than a year. Some take even more than 10 years. According to its study, Crime in India 2002, nearly 220,000 cases took more than 3 years to reach court, and about 25,600 exhausted 10 years before they were completed. The term of the Liberhan Commission, formed 14 years ago to probe the demolition of the Babri mosque in Ayodhya and originally given a mandate of three months, has been extended again!

Discrimination against Children

According to the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, India has the highest number of street children in the world. There are no exact numbers, but conservative estimates suggest that about 18 million children live and labor in the streets of India’s urban centers. Mumbai, Delhi and Calcutta each have an estimated street-children population of over 100,000. The total number of Child labor in India is estimated to be 60 million.

The level of child malnutrition in India is among the highest in the world, higher even than some countries in sub-Saharan Africa, says the report ‘Extent of Chronic Hunger and Malnutrition in India’ by the UN’s special rapporteur on the right to food. While around 25 percent children globally were underweight, in India the number was 43 percent. A quarter of all neo-natal deaths in the world, (2.1 million) occurred in India, says UNICEF Report 2007. More than one in five children who die within four weeks of birth is an Indian. Nearly fifty percent of Indian children who die before the age of five do not survive beyond the first 28 days.

Discrimination against Women

According to the 2001 census, female literacy in India is 54.16 % against male literacy of 75.85 %. Most of the working women remain outside the organized sector: A mere 2.3 % women are administrators and managers, and 20.5 % professional and technical workers.

There are an estimated 40 million Hindu widows in India, the least fortunate of them shunned and stripped of the life they lived when they were married. It’s believed that 15,000 widows live on the streets of Vrindavan, a Hindu holy city of about 55,000 population in northern India. Many widows – at least 40per cent are said to be under 50 – are dumped by their relatives in religious towns and left to live off charity or beg on the streets. Their plight was highlighted in Deepa Mehta’s award-winning film Water, which had to be shot mainly outside India because of Hindu extremist opposition to the production.

Nearly 9 out of 10 pregnant women aged between 15 and 49 years suffer from malnutrition and about half of all children (47%) under-five suffer from underweight and 21 % of the populations are undernourished. India alone has more undernourished people (204 million) than all of sub-Saharan Africa combined. Nearly 20 % of women dying in childbirth around the globe are Indians. Six out of every 10 births take place at home and untrained people attend more than half of them. 44 % of the Indian girls were married before they reached the age of 18. It added, 16 % of girls in the age group 15-19 years were already mothers or expecting their first child and that pregnancy is the leading cause of mortality in this age group.

On an average one Indian woman commits suicide every four hours over a dowry dispute. During Indian marriage, women should bring jewellery, cash and even consumer durables as part of dowry to the in-laws. If they fail, the victims are burnt to death – they are doused in kerosene and set fire to. Routinely the in-laws claim that the death happened simply due to an accident.

Rape is the fastest growing crime in India. Every hour Indian women face two rapes, two kidnappings, four molestations and seven incidents of cruelty from husbands and relatives [National Crime Records Bureau Report 2006]

Fetus Killing

Women to men ratio were feared to reach 20:80 by the year 2020 as female fetus killing is rampant. Ten million girls have been killed by their parents in India in the past 20 years, either before they were born or immediately after, told Indian Minister for Women and Child Development Renuka Chowdhury to Reuters. According to the 2001 census, the national sex ratio was 933 girls to 1,000 boys, while in the worst-affected northern state of Punjab, it was 798 girls to 1,000 boys. The availability of ultrasound sex-determination tests leads to such mass killings in India.

Around 11 million abortions are carried out in India every year and nearly 80,000 women die during the process, says a report from Federation of Obstetrics and Gynecological Societies of India (FOGSI)

Human Trafficking

Out of the 593 districts in India, 378 or 62.5 % are affected by human trafficking. In 2006, United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) sponsored study conducted by Shakti Vahini, found that domestic violence, illiteracy, unemployment, poverty; unsafe migration and child marriage are the major reasons for the increasing rate of illegal human trafficking.

95 % of the women in Madhya Pradesh in commercial sex are due to family traditions. So are 51.79 % in Bihar,’ said the study. While 43 % of the total women trafficked are minors, 44 percent of the women are into flesh trade due to poverty. Of the total women who are into sex work in the country, 60 % are from the lower and backward class, which indicates the pathetic living condition of the communities. In Madhya Pradesh, a political bastion of Hindu right wing party, 96.7 % of the women sex workers are from the scheduled castes and scheduled tribes.

India has 4 million prostitutes nationwide and 60% of the prostitutes are from the Scheduled Castes and Tribes or other backward caste. UNAIDS says over 38% of those living with HIV in India are women.

High Crime Rate and Communal Riots

India reported 32,481 murders, 19,348 rapes, 7,618 dowry deaths and 36,617 molestation cases in 2006. As far as states are concerned, NCRB has found that Madhya Pradesh recorded the highest number of crimes (1,94,711) followed by Maharashtra (1,91,788), Andhra Pradesh (1,73,909), Tamil Nadu (1,48,972) and Rajasthan (1,41,992) during 2006. According to National Crime Records Bureau, there was 1822602 riots in 2005 alone. [ Incidence Of Cognizable Crimes (IPC) Under Different Crime Heads, concluded, Page 2] NCRB website

On average there are more than 2000 cases of kidnappings per year in India. Under India’s notorious caste system, upper caste Hindus inherited key positions and controls all the governmental branches. Violence against victims largely goes unpunished due to the support of upper caste crooks.

Economic Crimes

Economic Crime continues to be pervasive threat for Indian Companies, with 35 % of the organizations reporting having experienced fraud in the past two years according to PwC Global Economic Crime Survey 2007. Many incidents of fraud are going unreported. According to PricewaterhouseCoopers’ India findings:

* Corruption and Bribery continues to be the most common type of fraud reported by 20 % of the respondents;
* The average direct financial loss to companies was INR 60 Million (US $ 1.5 million) during the two year period. In addition the average cost to manage economic crime in India was INR 40 Million (US $ 1 Million) which is close to double that of the global and Asia Pacific average;
* In 36% of cases companies took no action against the perpetrators of fraud;
* In 50% of the cases frauds were detected by chance. [PWC Report 2007]

Armed Conflicts in India

Almost every state has separatist movements, many of them armed. A large number of Muslims were killed in the past few years across the country and the numbers are on a steady rise. On top of that India has become a paraya for its neighbours. None of its neighbours appreciate their closeness to India and they all blame it for meddling in their affairs.

63 per cent of India’s new budget will go to the military, police, administration and debt service (2008-09). The military might of centric Hindu elites in Delhi isolated people of Jammu & Kashmir and the northeastern states. It is difficult for any community to feel part of a larger country when the armed forces of the country are deployed to silence them.

According to an Indian official report , 165 of India’s 602 districts – mostly in states like Chhattisgarh, Andhra Pradesh, Jharkhand, Bihar, Orissa, West Bengal, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh – are “badly affected” by tribal and dalit violence, which government termed as “Maoist terror”. India’s military spending was recorded at US $21.7 billion in 2006 and it planned to spend $26.5 billion during 2008/09 financial year. 85 percent of the Army’s budget is spent on the enormous manpower of 1,316,000, which is the fourth largest in the world.

India experienced a rapid increase in demand for security in the period following the Mumbai attacks. Thanks to terrorism imports by world’s weapon industry! India is now one of the world’s most terror-prone countries, with a death toll second only to Iraq, says a report from the National Counter terrorism Center in Washington. India’s crime rates, already some of the highest in the world, are also rising, as is the incidence of corporate espionage. Approximately 5.5 million private security guards employed by about 15,000 security companies in India. As an industry,it is now the country’s largest corporate taxpayer. (CAPSI report)

In 2005, Business Week reported that India became Israel’s largest importer of weapons, accounting for about half of the $3.6 billion worth of weapons exported by the Jewish state.

“Do remember that 34 years ago, NSG was created by Americans. Hence it has been their onus to convince the group to grant the waiver to India to carry out the multi-billion dollar business as India is a large market,” says former Atomic Energy Commission chairman, Mr P K Iyengar.

Booming industry of Terrorism Experts and Security Research Institutes in India

With the emergence of Hindutvafascist forces and their alliance with Neo consand Zionists, India witnessed a sharp increase in the number of research institutes, media houses and lobbying groups. According to a study byThink Tanks & Civil Societies Program at the University of Pennsylvania, India has 422 think tanks, second only to the US, which has over 2,000 such institutions.

Out of 422 recognized Indian think tanks, around 63 are engaged in security research and foreign policy matters, which are heavily funded by global weapon industry. India’s Retired spies, Police officers, Military personals, Diplomats and Journalists are hired by such national security & foreign policy research institutes which gets enormous fund from global weapon industry. These dreaded institutions are in fact has a hidden agenda. Behind the veil, they work as the public relations arm of weapon industry. They create fake terror stories with the help of media and intelligence wing, manipulate explosions through criminals in areas of tribals, dalits or minorities in order to get public acceptance for weapon contracts.

By creating conflicts in this poor country, Brahmin spin masters get huge commission from the sale of weapons to government forces. To this corrupt bureaucrats, India’s ‘National Interest‘ simply means ‘their self Interest‘. Their lobbying power bring more wealth to their families as lucrative jobs, citizenship of rich countries and educational opportunities abroad.

Mentionable that India is one of the world’s largest weapons importers. Between 2000 and 2007 India ranked world’s second largest arms importer accounting for 7.5 % of all major weapons transfers. It stood fourth among the largest military spender in terms of purchasing power in 2007 followed by US, China and Russia.

Over 1,130 companies in 98 countries manufacture arms, ammunitions and components. 90 % of Conventional arms exports in the world are from the permanent five members of the United Nations Security Council namely USA, UK, Russia, China & France. The countries of Africa, Latin America, Asia, and the Middle East hold 51 per cent of the world’s heavy weapons.

The Defence Offset Facilitation Agency estimating the expenditure on the sector at USD 100 billion for next five years. At least 38 court cases relating to arms agreements are still pending against bureaucrats and military officers. Hindu fascist forces currently enjoy upper hand in media, civil service, judiciary, defence and educational streams of Indian society. Sooner or later, 25,000 strong democratic institutions in India will be collapsed and the country will be transformed to a limited democracy under the rule of security regime like Turkey or Israel. Hindutva’s security centric nationalism never was capable of bringing peace and protection to the life of our ordinary citizens.

According to Global Peace Index, India currently ranked on bottom, ( 122 with 2.422 score). Interestingly, our favourite arms supplier, Israel is among the worst performer when it comes to peace ranking. (141). It reminds a simple fact that the peace cannot be attained by sophisticated security apparatus.

Further more, India topped on Asian Risk Prospects -2009, with the highest political and social risk, scoring 6.87, mainly because of internal and external instability (PERC)

Suicides of Farmers and collapse of Agricultural sector

In the last two years, more than 218,000 people across India committed suicide mainly due to poverty, family feud, strained relationship with loved ones, dowry harassment and health problems. In a research by the Indian National Crime Records Bureau, it was noted that suicide cases in the country were registered at 118,112 and over 100,000, in 2005 and 2006, respectively.

Most of those who committed suicide were farmers, and the victims took their lives either by hanging or consuming poison. Aside from farmers, women also topped the list of people in India with suicidal tendencies. Since 1998 about 25 000 Indian farmers have committed suicide because they could not repay their debts. These debts, however, have largely accumulated because these farmers were severely overcharged by their money-lenders asking for up to 32% of interest.

76 per cent of the nation’s land is belonging to 23 per cent of population. More than 15 million rural households in India are landless. Another 45 million rural families own some land, less than 0.10 acre each, which is hardly enough to make them self- sufficient, let alone generate a profit. 340 million people in India are dependent largely on agricultural wage labour, $1 or less a day.[Rural Development Institute (RDI), Washington]

70 per cent of the Indian population still directly depends on agriculture, but growth in this sector declined from a lackluster 3.8 per cent to an even more anaemic 2.6 per cent last year.

Unemployment

Recently, a national report on the employment situation in India has warned that nearly 30 percent of the country’s 716 million-strong workforce will be without jobs by 2020. Government of India doesn’t have the resources or political will to find jobs for such a large population.

Retail trade employs 8 percent of India’s population, the largest employer after agriculture. There are more than 12 million small retailers in India, 96 percent of whom are small mom-and-pop stores, each occupying less than 500 square feet, creating the highest retail-outlet density per capita in the world. [ Tarun Khanna, Yale]

Call centers and other outsourced businesses – such as software writing, medical transcription and back-office tasks – employ more than 1.6 million people in India, mostly in their 20s and 30s. Heart disease is projected to account for 35% of deaths among India’s working-age population between 2000 and 2030 says World Health Organization study. That number is about 12% for the United States, 22% for China and 25% for Russia.

Internal Migration and influx to the cities

Mumbai, the commercial capital of India is projected to grow into a city of about 21.9 million by the year 2015 and currently is plagued by vast poverty due to influx from villages. There are 5 million living on the street every night, covered only in newspaper, ” says Dr. Werner Fornos, president of the Global Population Education think tank and the former head of the Population Institute in Washington, D.C.

India is spending more than $400 million (£200m) to polish Delhi’s image as a first-rate capital, a difficult task for a city that seems to exist between the first and third worlds. A third of the capital’s 14 million-plus people live in teeming slums. According to crime statistics of 2006, Delhi continues to be the undisputed ‘crime capital’ of the country for the past 5 years in a row. 35 mega cities in India collectively reported a total of 3,26,363 cognizable crimes in 2006, an increase of 3.7% over 2005. Delhi, Mumbai and Bangalore together accounted for more than one-third of all crimes reported in Indian cities having a population of over a million people, for the second year in a row.

India, a closed country

India’s share in world tourism map, was hovering between 0.38% to 0.39% for number of years. Irrespective of its huge area and beautiful nature, the foreign exchange earned from tourism was merely $2.61 billion (2006). India, scored only 4.14 out of seven in The WEF’s recently released Travel and Tourism Competitive Index (TTCI2007). Among 124 countries listed, Switzerland ranked highest while India was placed at 65th rank, which is far below of Malaysia (ranked 31). India was also listed at the bottom of ‘developing and threshold countries’, which listed Tunisia at 34th place.

Indian immigration doesn’t welcome foreigners to visit India . [VISA requirements, T&T index, India ranked 106, while Malaysia ranked 15 . VOA facilities are not available to anyone. The easier entry to India virtually limited to countries with considerable Hindu population like Mauritius or Nepal. The Hindu elite leaders of the country always concerned about India’s physical boundaries and its holy cows rather than the life of its 85 % poor people. To them, the national interest means their own economical or political interests.

Indian Embassies are rated as the worst service providers around the globe. They are notorious for ‘red tapes’ and ‘ corruption friendly service’ a complaint repeatedly quoted by Non Resident Indians itself. 90 % of Indian businessman believes that India has yet to emerge as a “hospitable country”. ASSOCHAM

Global Warming effects in India

Water tables are dropping where farmers are lucky enough to have wells, and rainfall has become increasingly unpredictable. Economic loss due to global warming in India is estimated between 9-25%. GDP loss may be to the tune of 0.67%. Prediction of loss of wheat is more. Rabi crops will be worse hit which threatens food security. Drought and flood intensity will increase.100-cm sea level rise can lead to welfare loss of $1259 million in India equivalent to 0.36% of GNP. Frequencies and intensities of tropical cyclones in Bay of Bengal will increase. Malaria will be accelerated to an endemic in many more sates. 20% rise in summer monsoon rainfall. Extreme temperatures and precipitations are expected to increase. [Sir Nicholas Stern Report] India got the most foreign aid for natural disaster relief in two decades obtaining 43 such loans of $8,257 million from World Bank alone beating down even Bangladesh and has the 2nd highest loan in the world.

Transportation

Despite the much touted economic boom, only 0.8 percent of Indians own a carmost are on foot, motorbikes, or carts. And of all the vehicles sold in India from April to November of last year, 77 percent were two-wheelers – motorcycles, mopeds, or scooters. China has built over 34,000 km of expressways, compared to less than 8,000 km in India. According to Associated Chambers of Commerce and Industry (ASSOCHAM), nearly 42o million man hours are lost every month by the 7 million -odd working population of Delhi and NCR who take the public transport to travel to work because of traffic congestion during the peak morning and evening hours. India is having only less than 1% of the world’s vehicle population.

Road Safety

India accounts for about 10 percent of road accident fatalities worldwide and the figures are the highest in the world. Indian roads are poorly constructed, traffic signals, pedestrian pavements and proper signage almost nonexistent. The other reasons are encroachments, lack of parking facility and ill-equipped and untrained traffic police, corruption and poor traffic culture. An estimated 1,275,000 persons are grievously injured on the road every year. Social cost of annual accidents in India has been estimated at $ 11,000. The Government of India’s Planning Commission has estimated there to be 15 hospitalised injuries and 70 minor injuries for every road death.

According to NATPAC, The number of accidents for 1000 vehicles in India is as high as 35 while the figure ranges from 4 to 10 in developed countries. An estimated 270 people die each day from road accidents, and specialists predict that will increase by roughly 5 percent a year. Accidents also cause an estimated loss of Rs 8000 million to the country’s economy. About 80 per cent of the fatal and severe injury occurred due to driving faults. According to World Bank forecasts India’s death rate is expected to rise until 2042 if no remedial action being taken. The number of road accidents in China dropped by an annual average 10.8 per cent for four consecutive years from 2003, despite continuous growth in the number of privately owned cars.

Doing Business in India

It takes 50 days to register a property as compared to less than 30 days in China, and less than 10 days in the United States and Thailand. Average cost of a business start-up is over 60 percent of per capita income, much higher than any of the comparator countries.

India has the highest cost of electricity among major industrialised and emerging economies ($0.8 per kwh for industry as against $0.1 kwh in China), result of the highest transmission and distribution losses in the world, or in other words a quarter of the gross electricity output. Transport costs are very high in India. It accounts for 25% of total import costs as against only 10% in comparator countries. [World Bank Report on India]

Foreign remittance from Non Resident Indians

In 2006, India received the highest amount of remittance globally from migrants, 27 $Billion. Around 20$ billion of this came from the Gulf expatriate workforce. Together, GCC countries are the largest trading partner of India and home of 5 million of Indian workforce. Indian government expects overseas Indians to pump in about US$500 billion into the FOREX reserves of the country in the next 10 years, making them the single largest source of foreign receipts.

Nearly three million people in Africa are of Indian ancestry, and the top three countries having the largest population of Indians are South Africa, Mauritius and the Reunion islands. They also have sizeable presence in Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania in the east and Nigeria in the west.

Foreigners Living in India

Historically, about 72 % of the current Indian population is originated from Aryanrace. Prominent historians and Dravidians considerAryans as foreign invaders to India. The Aryan Invasion Theory (AIT) was postulated by eminent Oxford scholar Max Muller in 1882 and later advanced by several western and Indian historans.

Under the current scenario, potential migrants or ‘invaders’ to India include few ‘hired or weird’ Pakistani bombers, villagers around India’s border with Bangladesh, Tamil refugees from Sri Lanka and Indian import of Nepali prostitutes. 92 year old, Indian PainterMaqbool Fida Hussain lives in Dubai after death threats from Hindu militants. According to Hindu extremists Bangladeshi story teller Taslima Nasrin passed all the tests for an Indian citizenship. Italian born Sonia Gandhi , the Christian widow of Rajiv Gandhi is still considered as a foreigner by Hindu elites while Pakistan born Hindu, Lal Krishna Advani is ‘legally and morally fit’ to become India’s next Prime Minister.

Quit India!

Sixty years ago Indians asked the British to quit India. Now they are doing it themselves. To live with dignity and enjoy relative freedom, one has to quit India! With this massive exodus, what will be left behind will be a violently charged and polarized society.

Hindutva’s fake National Pride on India

A 2006 opinion poll by Outlook-AC Nielsen shows that 46 % of India’s urban class wants to settle down in US. Interestingly, in the Hindutva heart land of Gujarat, 54 % of people want to move to US.

Even Parliament members of the Hindutva party are involved in human trafficking from India. Recently police arrested, Babubhai Katara, a Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) MP, who was part of such a racket. He received 20,000 US $ per personfor US migration from victims.

When Indians are fleeing around the world to find a job, how can this hindutvaidiots can claim on “National Pride of India”?

India is the World Bank’s largest borrower, In June 2007 it provided $3.7bn in new loans to India. Due to the fake ‘India Shining’ propaganda launched byHindutva idiots, foreign donors are reluctant to help the poor people in this country. According to figures provided by Britain’s aid agency, the total aid to India, from all sources, is only $1.50 a head, compared with an average of $17 per head for low-income countries. [Financial Times]

Gridlocked in corruption, greed, inhumanity and absolute inequality – of class, caste, wealth, religion – this is the Real INDIA. Hindutva Idiots, Your false pride and actions make our life miserable.

No knowledge of vote buying: Manmohan Singh

Reuters

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said on Friday that he had no knowledge of vote buying to win a crucial confidence vote in his government in 2008, a day after the oppostion called for his resignation over the issue.

A file photo shows Prime Minister Manmohan Singh at a news conference in Washington November November 25, 2009. India needs to deal with the malice of corruption and improve governance in Asia’s third-largest economy, Singh said on Friday.

The opposition forced parliament to adjourn on Thursday and demanded Singh resign over a WikiLeaks report that his ruling Congress party paid bribes to win a confidence vote in 2008, in a fresh blow to the scandal-tainted coalition.

“I am not at all involved in any of these transactions … I have no knowledge of any such purchases,” Singh told a conference in New Delhi, adding there were serious doubts about the veracity of the diplomatic cables written by the U.S. Embassy in New Delhi and released by WikiLeaks.

India needs to deal with the malice of corruption and improve governance in Asia’s third-largest economy, Singh said.

The WikiLeaks report adds to a long list of government scandals, led by charges the former telecoms minister took bribes to dole out lucrative phone licences at rock bottom prices. That cost the state coffers as much as $39 billion in lost revenue, the Comptroller and Auditor General has estimated.

(Reporting by C.J.Kuncheria; Editing by Alistair Scrutton)

Eight nations accuse India over unpaid Games bills

AFP

Eight countries have lodged an official complaint with the Indian government over $74 million of unpaid bills after the Commonwealth Games, saying the delays could affect future investment.

Senior diplomats from seven European countries and Australia signed a letter demanding action over broken contracts and valuable equipment that is still stuck in Indian customs since the Games were held in October last year.

The Games were hit by poor preparations and shoddily-finished stadiums despite an estimated budget of $6 billion. A number of senior figures have since been arrested in a widening police probe into corruption.

“The long delay in settling these matters is damaging India?s national reputation, denting the confidence of foreign business and raising doubts about the enforcement of contracts,” the envoys wrote.

Australia, Belgium, Britain, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and Switzerland all signed the letter, which was delivered to Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee last month.

Diplomats confirmed the letter after it was printed in the Hindustan Times on Monday.

Australian companies have also complained bitterly about unpaid fees for organising the opening and closing ceremonies, while British firm SIS Live is in a legal battle to be paid in full for broadcasting services.

Indian police have arrested the Delhi 2010 organising committee’s director general, V. K. Verma, and its secretary general, Lalit Bhanot, over alleged financial irregularities.

The national anti-corruption watchdog, the Central Vigilance Commission (CVC), received complaints alleging up to $1.8 billion of Games money was misappropriated.

Swiss Timing, which has worked at many recent Olympic Games, recently took out full-page advertisements in the Indian press to deny allegations of kickbacks after police accused it of over-charging.

Israel’s secret hotline to the man tipped to replace Mubarak

By Tim Ross, Christopher Hope, Steven Swinford and Adrian Blomfield

Omar Suleiman, left, was Israel’s preferred candidate to replace President Mubarak according to secret cables released to The Daily Telegraph by WikiLeaks

The new vice-president of Egypt, Omar Suleiman, is a long-standing favourite of Israel’s who spoke daily to the Tel Aviv government via a secret “hotline” to Cairo, leaked documents disclose.

Mr Suleiman, who is widely tipped to take over from Hosni Mubarak as president, was named as Israel’s preferred candidate for the job after discussions with American officials in 2008.

As a key figure working for Middle East peace, he once suggested that Israeli troops would be “welcome” to invade Egypt to stop weapons being smuggled to Hamas terrorists in neighbouring Gaza.

The details, which emerged in secret files obtained by WikiLeaks and passed to The Daily Telegraph, come after Mr Suleiman began talks with opposition groups on the future for Egypt’s government.

On Saturday, Mr Suleiman won the backing of Hillary Clinton, the US Secretary of State, to lead the “transition” to democracy after two weeks of demonstrations calling for President Mubarak to resign.

David Cameron, the Prime Minister, spoke to Mr Suleiman yesterday and urged him to take “bold and credible steps” to show the world that Egypt is embarking on an “irreversible, urgent and real” transition.

Leaked cables from American embassies in Cairo and Tel Aviv disclose the close co-operation between Mr Suleiman and the US and Israeli governments as well as diplomats’ intense interest in likely successors to the ageing President Mubarak, 83.

The documents highlight the delicate position which the Egyptian government seeks to maintain in Middle East politics, as a leading Arab nation with a strong relationship with the US and Israel. By 2008, Mr Suleiman, who was head of the foreign intelligence service, had become Israel’s main point of contact in the Egyptian government.

David Hacham, a senior adviser from the Israeli Ministry of Defence, told the American embassy in Tel Aviv that a delegation led by Israel’s defence minister, Ehud Barak had been impressed by Mr Suleiman, whose name is spelled “Soliman” in some cables.

But Mr Hacham was “shocked” by President Mubarak’s “aged appearance and slurred speech”.

The cable, from August 2008, said: “Hacham was full of praise for Soliman, however, and noted that a ‘hot line’ set up between the MOD and Egyptian General Intelligence Service is now in daily use.

“Hacham noted that the Israelis believe Soliman is likely to serve as at least an interim President if Mubarak dies or is incapacitated.” The Tel Aviv diplomats added: “We defer to Embassy Cairo for analysis of Egyptian succession scenarios, but there is no question that Israel is most comfortable with the prospect of Omar Soliman.”

Elsewhere the documents disclose that Mr Suleiman was stung by Israeli criticism of Egypt’s inability to stop arms smugglers transporting weapons to Palestinian militants in Gaza. At one point he suggested that Israel send troops into the Egyptian border region of Philadelphi to “stop the smuggling”.

“In their moments of greatest frustration, [Egyptian Defence Minister] Tantawi and Soliman each have claimed that the IDF [Israel Defence Forces] would be ‘welcome’ to re-invade Philadelphi, if the IDF thought that would stop the smuggling,” the cable said.

The files suggest that Mr Suleiman wanted Hamas “isolated”, and thought Gaza should “go hungry but not starve”.

“We have a short time to reach peace,” he told US diplomats. “We need to wake up in the morning with no news of terrorism, no explosions, and no news of more deaths.”

Yesterday, Hosni Mubarak’s control of Egypt’s state media, a vital lynchpin of his 30-year presidency, started to slip as the country’s largest-circulation newspaper declared its support for the uprising.

Hoping to sap the momentum from street protests demanding his overthrow, the president has instructed his deputy to launch potentially protracted negotiations with secular and Islamist opposition parties. The talks continued for a second day yesterday without yielding a significant breakthrough.

But Mr Mubarak was dealt a significant setback as the state-controlled Al-Ahram, Egypt’s second oldest newspaper and one of the most famous publications in the Middle East, abandoned its long-standing slavish support for the regime.

In a front-page leading article, the newspaper hailed the “nobility” of the “revolution” and demanded the government embark on irreversible constitutional and legislative changes.

Police target top official in Delhi Games probe

NEW DELHI – Indian police said Thursday they had registered a case against the director-general of the Delhi Commonwealth Games, the most senior organiser of the tainted event named in a widening graft probe.

The Games were marred by venue delays and chaotic organisation

Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) spokeswoman Vineeta Thakur told AFP that police had registered a first information report against V.K. Verma, the first step in criminal proceedings against an accused.

Verma was director-general in the organising committee of the October 3-14 Games, headed by its chairman, Suresh Kalmadi, who was quizzed by federal CBI detectives for eight hours on Wednesday.

“Verma is named as the key accused in the case which we have registered against him and four companies,” she said, adding that the four Delhi-based firms were searched on Thursday.

Police said the case against Verma related to contracts, reportedly worth six billion rupees (133.3 million dollars), awarded for the refurbishing of various stadiums of the scandal-hit Games.

Verma and the companies are suspected of cheating, criminal conspiracy and violating India’s tough anti-corruption laws.

In addition to searches at the four companies named in the case, CBI detectives carried out searches at another 10 premises in New Delhi and its suburbs on Thursday, a CBI source told AFP.

Police have so far charged three lower-ranking officials who are now in jail awaiting trial, but attention is turning to top managers, including Kalmadi, for their role.

The Games, which were marred by venue delays and chaotic organisation, were also hit by claims of massive financial irregularities as the budget ballooned three times to an estimated six billion dollars.

The national anti-corruption watchdog, the Central Vigilance Commission (CVC), received complaints alleging up to 1.8 billion dollars of Games money was misappropriated.

A initial report by the CVC into the Games confirmed the use of sub-standard construction materials in a host of Games-related building contracts and deliberate cost overruns.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, seen as “Mr Clean” in his corruption-ridden administration, set up a panel after the Games ended to investigate graft claims. It is expected to deliver its preliminary report later this month.

The Games brought together 6,000 athletes and officials from 71 countries and territories, mostly from the former British empire.