‘India has 50% of world’s modern slaves’

Largest Proportion Of Victims Made Up Of Indians Exploited By Indians: Study

TIMES NEWS NETWORK 

    Sixty-six years after independence, India has the dubious distinction of being home to half of the world’s modern day slaves. The first Global Slavery Index has estimated that 13.3 million to 14.7 million people — roughly equal to the population of Kolkata — live like slaves in the country. 
    The index, published by the Australia-based Walk Free Foundation, ranked 162 countries based on three factors that include estimated prevalence of modern slavery, a measure of child marriage and a measure of human trafficking in and out of a country. Modern slavery includes slavery, practices such as debt bondage, forced marriage and sale or exploitation of children as well as human trafficking and forced labour. 
    According to the index, there are 29.6 million people in modern slavery globally. India leads the world, followed by China, Pakistan, Nigeria, Ethiopia, Russia, Thailand, Democratic Republic of Congo, Myanmar and Bangladesh. 
    These 10 countries account for 76% of the world’s modern slaves. India ranks fourth in terms of modern-day slaves as a percentage of the population, just after Mauritania, Haiti and Pakistan. In Mauritania, 4% of people are regarded as slaves largely because they inherit the status from their ancestors. 
    The study says that in India there’s some exploitation of foreign nationals, but by far the largest proportion of slaves are Indians exploited by other Indians within the country, particularly through debt bondage and bonded labour. India is one of the few countries that has not ratified the Worst Forms of Child Labour Convention. 
    The country with the second highest number of enslaved is China, with an estimated 2.8 to 3.1 million in modern slavery. This includes forced labour in many parts of the economy, including domestic servitude and forced begging, commercial sexual exploitation and forced marriage, says the study. Pakistan is estimated to have 2 to 2.2 million in slavery. 
    Iceland, Ireland and the United Kingdom are tied with the lowest rankings in the index. These countries are not slavery-free, with the UK alone estimated to have 4,200-4,600 such people. Iceland has the lowest numbers — less than 100. While Asia and Africa are home to the vast majority of modern slaves, no continent is free from modern slavery. 
    “It would be comforting to think that slavery is a relic of history, but it remains a scar on humanity on every continent. This is the first slavery index but it can already shape national and global efforts to root out modern slavery across the world,” said Nick Grono, CEO of Walk Free Foundation. 
    The index was created in consultation with an international panel of experts and has been endorsed by former US secretary of state Hillary Clinton, former British prime ministers Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, former Australian PM Julia Gillard, and philanthropists Bill Gates, Sir Richard Branson and Mo Ibrahim. WFF was founded by Andrew Forrest, the chairman of Fortescue Metals Group, and his wife Nicola in May this year.

Source:::: The Times of India, 18-10-2013, .p.15,  http://epaper.timesofindia.com/Default/Scripting/ArticleWin.asp?From=Archive&Source=Page&Skin=TOINEW&BaseHref=TOIM/2013/10/18&PageLabel=16&EntityId=Ar01501&ViewMode=HTML 

Internal migrants make up 1/3rd of India’s population

50% Of Global Figure, Twice That Of China

TIMES INSIGHT GROUP 

    Internal migrants in India are expected to touch 400 million in the 2011 census, over half the global figure of 740 million and almost twice as much as China’s estimated 221 million. These migrants, comprising a third of the population in India, are estimated to account for remittances anywhere between Rs70,000 crore and Rs120,000 crore. 
    The estimate of 400 million internal migrants, of course, far exceeds the total estimated Indian migrants to other countries, which is estimated at just 11.4 million. While there is more attention and policies for emigrants, internal migrants are accorded very low priority by the government whose existing policies have failed to provide legal or social protection to them. 

‘Half of world’s 30 million slaves in India’ Some 30 million people are enslaved worldwide—trafficked into brothels, forced into manual labour, victims of debt bondage or even born into servitude—and India accounts for almost half of them, a global index on modern slavery showed on Thursday. In India, slavery takes the form of forced labour in quarries and kilns, besides trafficking for prostitution. After India, China has the most slaves, at 2.9 million. 

‘80% of all migrants in India are women’ 
    The UNESCO report —“Social Inclusion of Internal Migrants in India” — was released by rural development minister Jairam Ramesh on Thursday. 
    According toNSSO2007-08 women constitute 80% of total internal migrants. “There isn’t enough data on women migrant labour because of the assumption that most women migrate because of marriage. This assumption blocks further analysis of the women migrants engaged in paid labour and an understanding of how their vulnerabilities are being compounded by contemporary economic practices and not just because of historicalor culturalbaggage.Thisleads to the “invisibilisation” and undermining of women in policies too,” said Indu Agnihotri of the Centre for Women’s Development Studies. 
    The report estimated that about 30% of the migrants are youth aged 15-29 years and another 15 million are children. The intensity of migration is likely to increase in future. 
    Internal migrants constitute a floating population, which is put at anywhere at 15-100 million by different estimates. These migrants often lose social protection benefits as most benefits are linked to the place of residence, pointed out the report. 
    The report says internal migrants faced discrimination as ‘outsiders’, which excluded them from access to legal rights, public services and social protection programmes accorded to residents. This is despite the migrants providing cheap labour and typically doing the mostdirty,dangerous and degrading jobs that locals do not want to do. Far from being a burden on society, migrants’ cheap labour contributes to the national GDP, stated the report. 
    Jairam Ramesh, who provided the estimates of remittances, pointed out that migrants constitute a significant share of a state’s gross domestic product, about 10% in the case of Bihar and 3-4% in the case of Uttar Pradesh. “Portability of legal entitlements could make a huge difference to the lives of internal migrants. The UID number could be the single most important intervention which could ensure portability of legal entitlements as well as financial inclusion. Legal entitlements should not be location specific,only individualor household specific and UID number could make this possible,” said Ramesh. 
    Financial inclusion, he said, was important also because barely 30% of the remittances currently flow throughformalchannels,the remaining 70% being dependent on informal channels.

Source:::: The Times of India, 18-10-2013, .p.01,  http://epaper.timesofindia.com/Default/Scripting/ArticleWin.asp?From=Archive&Source=Page&Skin=TOINEW&BaseHref=TOIM/2013/10/18&PageLabel=3&EntityId=Ar00302&ViewMode=HTML

PROUD MOMENT

Booker crowns youngest-ever winner

28-Yr-Old New Zealander Eleanor Catton’s 832-Page Novel Longest To Be Honoured

Kounteya Sinha TNN 

London: Eleanor Catton has become the youngest writer to ever win a Man Booker prize. The 28-year-old New Zealander’s book ‘The Luminaries’ — an 832-page murder mystery based on the gold rush in the 19th-century is also the longest novel to ever win the coveted literary prize. 
    Catton, who started writing the book when she was 25, was given the £50,000 award by the Duchess of Cornwall at London’s Guildhall on Tuesday evening. The judges picked Catton’s audacious take on an old form, the Victorian ‘sensation novel’. 
    The youngest-ever winner before Catton was Ben Okri who was 32 when his work ‘The Famished Road’ won the Booker prize in 1991. 
    ‘The Luminaries’ is Catton’s second novel after ‘The Rehearsal’, which was shortlisted for the 2009 Guardian first book award. Catton is just the second New Zealander to win the prize, the first being Keri Hulme with ‘The Bone People’ in 1985. 
    ‘The Luminaries’, set in 1866, contains a group of 12 men gathered for a meeting in a hotel and a traveller who stumbles into their midst; the story involves a missing rich man, a dead hermit, a huge amount in gold, and a beatenup whore. The multiple voices take turns to tell their own stories and gradually what happened in the small town of Hokitika on New Zealand’s South Island is revealed. 
    The novel was up against Indian-American writer Jhumpa Lahiri’s ‘The Lowland’— a story of a young man’s tryst with the Naxalite movement at the cost of his family. Set in Kolkata, ‘The Lowland’ was among six books shortlisted for the prize. 
    One of the favourites to win was the shortest work ever to be shortlisted—Colm Toibin’s 30,000 word ‘The Last Testament of Mary’. 
    The chair of judges Robert Macfarlane described ‘The Luminaries’ as a “dazzling work, luminous, vast”. It is, he said, “a book you sometimes feel lost in, fearing it to be “a big baggy monster”, but it “turns out to be as tightly structured as an Orrery”. 
    Macfarlane and his fellow judges were impressed by Catton’s technique but it was her “extraordinarily gripping” narrative that enthralled them. “We read it three times and each time we dug into it the yields were extraordinary, its dividends astronomical.” ‘The Luminaries’ is, said Macfarlane, a novel with a heart. 
    “The characters are in New Zealand to make and to gain — the one thing that disrupts them is love.” 
    So will readers be put off by the book’s bulk? “No”, was Macfarlane’s emphatic response. “Length never poses a problem if it’s a great novel. ‘The Luminaries’ is a novel you pan, as if for gold, and the returns are huge.” 
    What impressed the judges almost as much as the book itself was that it could have been the work of someone so young. Catton was just 25 when she started work on it yet, he said. “Maturity is evident in every sentence, in the rhythms and balances. It is a novel of astonishing control.” In the end Macfarlane neatly summed up the book and Catton’s achievement: “awesome”, he said. 

Jhumpa Lahiri among finalists for US award 
    Indian-American author Jhumpa Lahiri has been named finalist for the US National Book Award 2013 in the fiction category for her new book ‘The Lowland’. The National Book Foundation announced the lists of five finalists each for the 2013 National Book Award in the fiction, non-fiction, poetry and young people’s literature categories in New York on Wednesday. PTI

Source:::: The Times of India, 17-10-2013, p.20,  http://epaper.timesofindia.com/Default/Scripting/ArticleWin.asp?From=Archive&Source=Page&Skin=TOINEW&BaseHref=TOIM/2013/10/17&PageLabel=20&EntityId=Ar02001&ViewMode=HTML 

Green tag to keep 40% W Ghats pristine

Mumbai: Almost 40% of the Western Ghats or 60,000 sq km of the green belt that runs across six states is set to become an Ecologically Sensitive Area (ESA), a tag that will keep mining, quarrying, thermal power plants or any polluting industries out of the zone. 
    But hydro-electricity projects will be allowed there though consent from gram sabhas will have to be taken. 
    The decision for the new tag is taken following recommendations from the Dr K Kasturirangan Committee that was set up to review the Madhav Gadgil Western Ghats Ecology Expert Panel Report, which had suggested that the entire Western Ghats be declared an ESA for its bio-diversity. But after a review, the Kasturirangan Committee divided the Western Ghats into natural (no development) and cultural (agriculture, plantations etc) landscapes. It said development activities can be carried out in nearly 60% of the Ghats. 
    Happy that the Centre has accepted the new report, Sunita Narain of the Dr K Kasturirangan High Level Working Group, said, “It’s time we moved ahead.” The group had suggested that all mines in the ESA be phased out over five years and constructions on areas of 2lakh sq-m and above be banned.


Source:::: The Times of India, 17-10-2013, p.10,  http://epaper.timesofindia.com/Default/Scripting/ArticleWin.asp?From=Archive&Source=Page&Skin=TOINEW&BaseHref=TOIM/2013/10/17&PageLabel=10&EntityId=Ar01002&ViewMode=HTML

With 210m, India home to a quarter of the world’s hungry

Record High Cereal Production & Global Hunger Puzzle Govts

Subodh Varma TIG 

    In a striking paradox, the number of hungry people in the world was estimated at 842 million in 2011-13 by the Global Hunger Index (GHI) report released on Monday even as world cereal production was estimated at a near record level of 2,489 million metric tonnes a few days ago. About a quarter of the world’s hungry, or 210 million, are in India alone. 
    The number of hungry people appears to have declined slightly from the 870 million estimated in 2010-12, but the current GHI report says this is due to a recalculation of how undernourishment is measured by the UN-linked Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). Since 2006, the absolute number of undernourished people has remained unchanged but their proportion to total world population is declining because the latter is growing. 
    The 2013 GHI is calculated for 120 countries for which data on its three component indicators are available and where measuring hunger is considered most relevant. The three indicators used are: the proportion of undernourished people, the proportion of children under five who are underweight, and the mortality (death) rate of children younger than age five. The report has been brought out by the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), and two international charities Welthungerhilfe and Concern Worldwide. 
    Where is India in all this? The 2013 GHI says that in India the proportion of the undernourished declined from about 21% of the population to 17.5%, the proportion of underweight children declined from 43.5% to about 40% and under-five mortality declined from 7.5% to about 6%. All this put together means that the hunger index for India declined from 24 to 21 between 2003-07 and 2008-12. 
    The proportion of underweight children is an estimate done by IFPRI as the last survey was done in 2004-05. 
    In other words, the proportions and the index for India are at best an approximation. Other surveys done more recently have shown trends that indicate that the nutritive value of food consumed per person is dipping. A recent survey of consumer expenditure said that nutritional intake measured in terms of calories declined from 2,153 kilocalories (Kcal) per person per day in 1993-94 to 2,020 in 2009-10 in rural areas and from 2,071 to 1,946 Kcal in urban areas. These shocking results are according to a report of the 66th round of survey done by the National Sample Survey Organisation. Even between 2004-05 and 2009-10, the calorie intake per person per day dipped from 2,047 to 2,020 in rural areas and from 2,020 to 1,946 in urban areas. 
    Despite these caveats regarding the GHI data, India still remnains in the “Alarming” category of countries classified by the severity of hunger. That puts it in the category where the hunger index is between 20 and 29.9. Others in this category are Ethiopia, Sudan, Congo, Chad, Niger, and other African countries. These are places ravaged by resource wars and extreme poverty, and they make up the bottom-most bunch in the human development index rankings. 
    Meanwhile, an October report on food prospects issued by the FAO forecast a record cereal harvest for 2013, powered by a 7% rise in production over 2012. Wheat output is estimated at 705 million tonnes (MT), a record. Coarse grains output is put at 1,288MT, another record. And rice output is estimated at 496MT, yet another record. Wheat prices have declined in international markets by 16% over the past year, rice prices are down 23% and those of maize by 35%, according to FAO’s price monitor in October. With good production and declining prices worldwide, why the world’s hungry are not getting enough food is a conundrum that policy makers and experts are struggling to answer.

Source:::: The Times of India, 15-10-2013, p.10,   http://epaper.timesofindia.com/Default/Scripting/ArticleWin.asp?From=Archive&Source=Page&Skin=TOINEW&BaseHref=TOIM/2013/10/15&PageLabel=10&EntityId=Ar01000&ViewMode=HTML

Govt plan helps 35 kidney patients get free transplants

TIMES NEWS NETWORK 

Mumbai: Mulund resident Ashok Jaiswal is working after a gap of four years. Between bouts of weakness and thricea-week dialysis, the 32-year-old could never dream of financing a kidney transplant for himself. But the Rajiv Gandhi Jeevandayee Arogya Yojana (RGAY), the state government’s free surgical treatment for families earning less than Rs 1 lakh per annum, came to his rescue eight months ago. 
    “My mother donated one of her kidneys to me. Our operations were done for free at Sion Hospital,” said Jaiswal, who works at a lottery stall in Ghatkopar. 
    Thirty-four other kidneyfailure patients have benefitted similarly since the scheme came into being 15 months ago. “We plan to increase this number by a lot more in the future,” said RGAY CEO Dr K Venkatesam. While the insurance plan allows coverage of Rs 1.5 lakh per year for a family, the limit is Rs 2.5 lakh for kidney treatment, including immunosuppressive drug therapy for a year. Seven city hospitals are empanelled by RGAY to perform kidney transplants. 
    Some problems remain. Take the case of Geeta Pednekar, a Parel resident who underwent a transplant on July 3. “My sister’s dialysis sessions before her transplant were funded by RGAY,” said her brother Kedar. 
    She got a call from Sion Hospital at 3am asking whether she would be willing for a cadaveric (deceased donor) transplant. The family did not realize they could contact the RGAY helpline to register the operation. “We had some money and borrowed the rest from friends to pay for the operation,” Kedar said. As prior permission is needed to avail of RGAY funding, the Pednekars cannot get reimbursed. 
    Sachin Shipai (29) from Alibaug got only partial benefit from the scheme when he underwent a transplant at a private hospital in the city three months ago. 
    “I had to pay Rs 80,000 of my own to the hospital because it charged for the operation of my donor—my mother,” he said. 
    Dr Venkatesam said, “There are some grievances and we are looking into them.”

Source:::: The Times of India, 15-10-2013, p.09,   http://epaper.timesofindia.com/Default/Scripting/ArticleWin.asp?From=Archive&Source=Page&Skin=TOINEW&BaseHref=TOIM/2013/10/15&PageLabel=9&EntityId=Ar00903&ViewMode=HTML

World’s first data storage system’ discovered

New York: Prehistoric CDs! Scientists have discovered the world's "very first data storage system" - 5,500-year-old clay balls unearthed in Iran that were used for record-keeping in Mesopotamia.

The clay balls, often called "envelopes", excavated in the 1960s, were made about 200 years before writing was invented.

The balls were sealed and contain tokens in a variety of geometric shapes, varying from golf ball-size to baseball-size.

Researchers used high-resolution CT scans and 3D modelling to look inside more than 20 examples that were excavated at the site of Choga Mish, in western Iran, in the late 1960s, 'LiveScience' reported.

The clay balls were created about 5,500 years ago at a time when early cities were flourishing in Mesopotamia.

The clay balls may represent the world's "very first data storage system," said Christopher Woods, a professor at the University of Chicago's Oriental Institute, in a lecture at Toronto's Royal Ontario Museum.

Researchers have long believed these clay balls were used to record economic transactions.

That interpretation is based on an analysis of a 3,300-year-old clay ball found at a site in Mesopotamia named Nuzi that had 49 pebbles and a cuneiform text containing a contract commanding a shepherd to care for 49 sheep and goats.

But, how these devices would have worked in prehistoric times, before the invention of writing, remains a mystery.

How people recorded the number and type of a commodity being exchanged without the help of writing is also not known.

Researchers have found that the tokens within the balls are in 14 different shapes, including spheres, pyramids, ovoids, lenses and cones, the report said.

These shapes, instead of representing the whole words, would have conveyed numbers connected to a variety of metrological systems used in counting different types of commodities, Woods said.

For instance, one ovoid could mean a certain unit, say 10, which was used while counting a certain type of commodity.

Source::::  http://www.ndtv.com

PHAILIN SIZZLED IN, THEN FIZZLED OUT

Source::: The Times of India, 14-10-2013, p.08

India lets down child brides again

Refuses To Sign UN-Led Global Resolution On Forced Underage Marriages

Kounteya Sinha TNN 

London: India, the world’s child marriage capital, has once again failed its underage brides. The country has refused to sign the first-ever UN-led global resolution on early and forced marriage of children. 
    The resolution was supported by a cross-regional group of over 107 countries, including almost all countries with high rates of child marriage — Ethiopia, South Sudan, Sierra Leone, Chad, Guatemala, Honduras and Yemen. 
    The resolution floated by the UN Human Rights Council stressed on the need to include child, early and forced marriage in post-2015 international development agenda and acknowledged the multi-faceted impact of early marriage on the ‘economic, legal, health and social status of women and girls’ as well as ‘the development of the community as a whole’. 
    India has the record of having the highest absolute number of child brides: about 24 million. This represents 40% of the world’s 60 million child marriages. The percentage of women between the ages of 20 and 24, who were married before 18 years of age, has decreased from 54% in 1992-93 to 43% in 2007-08, thus showing a reduction of 11% in 15 years. The improvement though is far too little, experts say. 
    Lakshmi Sundaram — the global coordinator of Girls Not Brides, who was at the UN General Assembly last week told TOI, “India refusing to sign the resolution is highly disappointing. Though India is putting in place a national plan to combat child marriages, it was strange why it did not stand up against the social ill in the international stage. India would have given out a positive signal that it is willing to find a solution by signing the resolution.” 
    Sundaram added, “Child marriage is a social ill across south Asian countries. However, Nepal probably is the only country that signed the resolution. Both India and Bangladesh, which have high rates of child marriages, didn’t sign in. It is a setback globally to the cause that India didn’t speak out”. 
    The Centre for Reproductive Rights says governments in the south Asian region have failed to enact and enforce adequate laws that prohibit child marriage. “The practice persists with impunity. In south Asia, 46% of women between ages 20-24 report having been married before 18 in 2010. This translated to 24.4 millionwomen in the region. Estimates project that from 2010 to 2030, 130 million more girls in the region will be married... Child marriage does not constitute a single rights violation — rather, every instance of child marriage triggers a continuum of violations that continues throughout a girl’s life,” the centre said. 
    Child marriage endangers the survival and wellbeing of women and girls by exposing them to forced initiation into sex and sexual violence and to early, unplanned and frequent pregnancies, it said. 
    “Further, women and girls married as children are often denied educational opportunities, are isolated from society and face a lifetime of economic dependence,” the centre said. The UN estimates that by 2020, over 140 million girls will have become child brides if current rates continue. 

ILLEGAL ALLIANCE 
    First-ever UN resolution 
against early and forced marriage of children was supported by a cross-regional group of over 107 countries. Resolution stressed the need to include child, early and forced marriage in post-2015 international development agenda. 
    India has record of having highest absolute number of child brides: 24 million. This represents 40% of the world’s 60% million child marriages.The per cent of wome between the ages of 20 & 24 who were marrie before 18 years of age has decreased from 54% in 1992-93 to 43% in 2007-08


Source::: The Times of India, 14-10-2013, p.08, http://epaper.timesofindia.com/Default/Scripting/ArticleWin.asp?From=Archive&Source=Page&Skin=TOINEW&BaseHref=TOIM/2013/10/14&PageLabel=8&EntityId=Ar00800&ViewMode=HTML

Estranged husband must pay home EMIs

Rebecca Samervel TNN 

Mumbai: Acity court has held that by not paying EMIs on a home loan, a man was denying his wife the right to reside in her house. The court ruled in favour of the woman whose estranged husband refused to pay the equated monthly instalments for a Sion flat on the grounds that she had thrown him out of the house and forced him to stay in his office. 
    “In this case, the petitioner is a housewife, the respondent (husband) is the sole breadwinner. By not paying EMIs, he has tightened the noose of the money purse. As he is the sole breadwinner, it is his primary responsibility to clear the loan,” the court said. 
    The court held that the right to reside in a matrimonial house is protected under section 17 of the Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act. It observed that the deprivation of an economic asset also amounted to economic abuse under the Act. 
    “The provisions ensure that every woman in a domestic relationship shall have a right to reside in the shared household whether or not she has any right, title, interest or beneficial interest in the same. It also provides that the aggrieved person shall not be evicted or excluded from the shared household or any part of it by the respondent,” the court said. 

Wife feared flat would be attached 
Mumbai: A city court has directed a man estranged from his wife to pay the overdue amount of Rs 2.83 lakh on his home loan and continue to pay the monthly EMI of Rs 27,000. The estranged couple have four children. The flat stood in the joint names of the couple. 
    In her application, the wife alleged that the bank had threatened to take harsh measures to recover the loan amount. In court, she also produced a notice which showed the status of the flat as a non-performing asset. Looking at the other contents of the notice, the court said that it confirmed the apprehensions of the woman that the property may be attached and sold for the recovery of the loanamount of Rs 25 lakh. 


Source::: The Times of India, 14-10-2013, p.01,  http://epaper.timesofindia.com/Default/Scripting/ArticleWin.asp?From=Archive&Source=Page&Skin=TOINEW&BaseHref=TOIM/2013/10/14&PageLabel=1&EntityId=Ar00105&ViewMode=HTML

Poverty dropped faster in villages than cities

Maninder Dabas @ManDabas

A new report by the rural development ministry says that poverty in rural Maharashtra has reduced more than in urban centres in the state in the five years to 2009-10. According to data, poverty in rural Maharashtra has reduced faster than that in rural parts of Gujarat and Haryana. This is being attributed to growth in industrial and non-farm activities, perhaps even migration of people to urban areas in search of better opportunities. The Rural Development Report 2012-13 states that the poverty ratio that was 47.9% in rural Maharashtra in 2005-06 dropped to 29.5% in 2009-10, as compared with urban Maharashtra where the poverty ratio reduced from 25.6% in 2005-06 to 18.3% in 2009-10. Poverty reduced a lot quicker in Maharashtra than in Gujarat where the poverty ratio was 39.1% in 2004-05 and 26.7% in 2009-10. In Haryana, the poverty ratio reduced from 24.8% to 18.6% in the same period. “There could be various reasons for the pace of reduction of poverty,” said an official in the Ministry of Rural Development. “One is rapid industrialisation in rural areas of states like Maharastra which has reduced the dependency on agriculture as a source of employment. Non-farm activities, like poultry, have also given people other options. The migration from rural areas to urban centres might be another reason for the decline in the poverty ratio,” he said. In the decade to 2005-06 the pace of reduction was slower. In 1993-94, the poverty ratio in rural Maharastra was 59.3% which came down to 47.9% by 2005-06. According to the report, the percentage of severely poor people in rural Maharashtra has also declined considerably. In 2005-06, the percentage of severely poor was 22.5 and this came down to just 8.6 in 2009-10. The severely poor constitute nearly 30% of the poor. Interestingly, this reduction is again better than Gujarat where the percentage of severely poor dropped from 17.3 in 2005-06 to 5.7 in 2009-10. However, the severely poor comprise about 20% of the poor people in Gujarat. A majority of the poor are still from the lower castes. But the report states that there has been a substantial decline in the these numbers too. In 1993-94 the poverty ratio among scheduled tribes and scheduled castes was 74.1% and 73.9% respectively and this went down to 51.7% and 37.6% respectively in 2009-10. The reported noted that rural poverty is becoming increasingly concentrated in states like Jharkhand, Bihar, Assam, Odisha, Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh where about 65% of the country’s poor live. This was about 50% in 1993. Source::: DNA, 07-10-2013, p.07, http://epaper.dnaindia.com/story.aspx?id=53017&boxid=31635&ed_date=2013-10-07&ed_code=820009&ed_page=7

Woman can be booked for domestic violence: HC

Shibu Thomas TNN 

Mumbai: Woman relatives can be charged under the anti-domestic violence legislation,the Bombay high court has ruled. 
    Hearing the plea of a 28-year-old Nanded resident who had charged her inlaws, including her sistersin-law, for harassment, Justice A M Thipsay struck down the order of a sessions court judge who had dropped the charges against the female relatives. 
    “The view taken by the sessions judge that women will not be covered by the definition of the term ‘respondent’, as given in the Domestic Violence Act, is clearly contrary to law,” said Justice Thipsay. 
    The court cited a Supreme Court judgment, which stated that the 2005 law brought in to protect women from violence in the house was maintainable against female relatives too. 
    Sadhna Mhatre, a homemaker, had lodged a complaint of harassment against her husband’s relatives. A magistrate court refused to delete the names of Sadhna’s female relatives. However, a sessions judge quashed the proceedings against the female relatives and also said that there were not enough grounds to proceed against them. 
    Sadhna challenged the order before the HC. Justice Thipsay said the provisions of the anti-domestic violence law could not be equated with a criminal trial and were akin to civil proceedings. “The considerations, whether or not there were sufficient grounds for proceedings in a given case, ought not arise in such proceedings,” said the judge. “The sessions judge has misdirected himself in applying the principles.” The court added that, “Even otherwise, whether the allegations levelled by the petitioner would ultimately be proved, could have been decided only after the evidence would be recorded.”

Source:::: The Times of India, 04-10-2013, p.07,  http://epaper.timesofindia.com/Default/Client.asp?Daily=TOIM&showST=true&login=default&pub=TOI&Enter=true&Skin=TOINEW&AW=1380876857660

Marginal rise in child sex ratio in slums

Rema Nagarajan TIG 

    India’s slums have a far better child sex ratio of 922 girls per 1,000 boys than the non-slum urban population, for which the figure is 902. Also, this figure has shown a marginal improvement in the last decade for the slum population from 921 in 2001, but has worsened slightly for the non-slum urban population from 903. 
    Even in terms of the overall sex ratio, India’s slum population has seen a dramatic improvement compared to the rest of the urban population. The slum population sex ratio jumped from 887 women for every 1,000 men in 2001 to 928 in 2011 — a significant improvement compared to the jump in sex ratio for the rest of the urban population sex ratio from 904 in 2001 to 929 in 2011. 
    The available data does not make it clear whether this sudden increase in the sex ratio of the slum population is because of a change in the ground situation or because several new areas have been included under the category of “identified slums”. These are areas with a population of at least 300 people not officially notified or recognised as slums by the state or local governments. In fact, this “identified slum” population is higher than the population of either “recognised slums” or “notified slums” in the country. 
    It is well known that it is the better off communities and populations with access to sex determination technologies and reproductive services who have the worst sex ratios in India. This pattern holds up even within the slum population, with the scheduled tribes having the best sex ratio of 985, followed by the scheduled castes with a sex ratio of 959, way better than the rest of the population with a sex ratio of 918. This reflects the all-India pattern of STs having the best sex ratio followed by the SCs.


Source:::: The Times of India, 03-10-2013, p.13,  http://epaper.timesofindia.com/Default/Client.asp?Daily=TOIM&showST=true&login=default&pub=TOI&Enter=true&Skin=TOINEW

33% of slum population lives without basic facilities

No. Of Towns With Shanties Went Up From 1,743 In 2001 To 2,613 In 2011

Rema Nagarajan TIG 

    Over a third of the slum population in India lives without any basic facility being provided by the state as the slums are not recognized. In case of states like Rajasthan, Gujarat and Bihar, the entire slum population of several lakhs remains unrecognized by the state governments. 
    For the first time, the census data on slums identified slum dwellers as the people living in compact areas with a population of at least 300, in unhygienic environment with inadequate infrastructure and lacking proper sanitary and drinking water facilities. Earlier, only people in areas notified or recognized as slums by state or local authorities were counted. 
    With the new method, several states — Haryana, Delhi, Assam, Jammu and Kashmir and Jharkhand — have identified more slum dwellers in such areas than in the notified or recognized slums. 
    In fact, the number of towns having slums has gone up from 1,743 in 2001 to 2,613 in 2011, out of a total of 4,041 towns in India. 
    The proportion of slum population to urban population has fallen slightly with the slum population growing at a slower pace than urban areas as a whole. There alsoisn’t any difference in the household size of urban areas and slums any more — about 4.7 — with slums showing a higher reduction in family size. 
    The literacy rate in slums too has gone up to 78% compared to the overall urban literacy of over 84%. The jump in female literacy in slums (from 63% to 72%) is higher than that in male literacy from 80% to 84%. However, the literacy rate is lower than 70% in slums in Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Rajasthan, Arunachal Pradesh and Jammu & Kashmir. 
    About one in five persons in a slum is from the scheduled caste, a share that has increased in the last one decade. However, the proportion of SCs in the overall urban population is just 12.6% or about one in eight persons. The share of scheduled tribes in urban population has increased to about 3% just as it has in slums, where it is a little higher than 3%. 
    However, interestingly, the work participation rate in slums is just slightly higher (36%) compared to the urban rate of 35%. However, the work participation of women in slums is almost 2% higher than in the urban population. 
    But more than two out of five women workers living in slums are marginal workers, who do not have employment throughout the year. 
    The southern states of Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and Goa have among the highest work participation rates, about 40%, while Bihar, Uttar Pradesh and Haryana are among the worst. 
    Among the states, Maharashtra has the highest slum population of 1.18 crore followed by Andhra Pradesh (one crore plus), West Bengal, Uttar Pradesh and Tamil Nadu (58 lakh). 
    However, as a proportion, the slum population in Maharashtra has shown the biggest reduction from 23% to 18%. A few states like Uttar Pradesh, Haryana, Punjab and Gujarat, too, have shown a marginal reduction in the proportion of slum population, though in most states the proportion has increased.

Source:::: The Times of India, 03-10-2013, p.13,  http://epaper.timesofindia.com/Default/Client.asp?Daily=TOIM&showST=true&login=default&pub=TOI&Enter=true&Skin=TOINEW

Panjab Univ beats IITs in global rankings

Manash Pratim Gohain | TNN 

New Delhi:Although no Indian institution of higher learning has made it to the top 200 in the Times Higher Education’s (THE) World University Rankings list 2013-14, one new entrant — Panjab University — is close to that elite group. Panjab University is the highest ranked Indian institution, featuring in the group of universities ranked between 226 and 250. 
    According to THE, this is India’s best performance so far with five institutes making it to the top 400. The other Indian institutes featuring in the list are four Indian Institutes of Technology from Delhi, Kanpur, Kharagpur and Roorkee, all clubbed in the group of institutions ranked between 351 and 400. 
    The California Institute of Technology has retained its place at the top of the rankings for the third consecutive year, while Harvard University has regained the second place (up from fourth in 2012-13), a position shared with the UK’s University of Oxford. Stanford University has slipped from joint second to fourth. 
    According to THE, the improved engagement by India in the world-renowned rankings has seen it add three new entrants to the list. The increased representation for India follows a two-day National Policy Dialogue in May on international rankings, when THE representatives were invited to meet senior university leaders by the HRD ministry and Planning Commission. 
    At the meeting in New Delhi, Ashok Thakur, secretary of the department of higher education, said that Indian institutions must no longer hide behind the “excuse” that the global rankings metrics and indicators are not well suited for India’s institutions. “We must play the same game as the rest of the world is playing,” he said. 
    Of the five Indian institutions in the top 400, three — Punjab University, IIT-Delhi and IIT-Kanpur — are new entrants. They join IIT-Kharagpur, which has slipped from the 226-250 group to the 351-400 group and IIT-Roorkee, which remains in the 351-400 group. Phil Baty, editor of the THE World University Rankings, said: “These results should be encouraging for India. While no Indian institution makes the top 200, one player is close in the 226-250 group. Moreover, India now has five representatives in the top 400.” 
    While the US remained the dominant force in the rankings with 77 institutions in the top 200, UK is second with 31. At five, Japan has the highest number of universities in the list among Asian countries.

Source:::: The Times of India, 03-10-2013, p.09,  http://epaper.timesofindia.com/Default/Client.asp?Daily=TOIM&showST=true&login=default&pub=TOI&Enter=true&Skin=TOINEW

Number portability for LPG, 5-kg refill sale from Sat

TIMES NEWS NETWORK 

New Delhi:Fed up with the service of your cooking gas dealer? From Saturday, you can switch to another nearby dealership — even if it belongs to another company — in 30 cities. Along with this scheme, which is similar to number portability for mobiles, oil minister M Veerappa Moily will, on October 5, also launch sale of 5-kg cooking gas cylinders in select company-owned petrol pumps that are open till late at night in Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, Chennai and Bengaluru. 
    TOI had first reported the ministry’s plans to launch the initiatives on November 4 and January 12, respectively. Consumers can apply for changing their present dealer through the website of the supplier’s company. The service ratings of each dealer would also be available to help consumers make a choice. 
    Applications would be tracked online to ensure quicker action. The ministry is also planning to implement a system of incentive or penalty on dealers depending on how well they serve their customers. It is not clear yet whether consumers would have to physically surrender their present cylinder if they choose a dealer of another company. 
    The five-kg gas cylinders would be sold at market rate and are likely to cost around Rs 400. The paperwork for acquiring a connection for a small cylinder has been kept to a bare minimum. These cylinders are expected to help students, young professionals and labourers.


Source:::: The Times of India, 03-10-2013, p.09,  http://epaper.timesofindia.com/Default/Client.asp?Daily=TOIM&showST=true&login=default&pub=TOI&Enter=true&Skin=TOINEW

SC clears 100 medical seats, gives 2 weeks for admission

Prafulla Marpakwar TNN 

Mumbai: The Supreme Court has granted permission to the Maharashtra government to increase seats in two medical colleges—Indira Gandhi Medical College in Nagpur and the Government Medical College in Akola—from 100 to 150. The development comes a day after the apex court dismissed a special leave petition filed by the Medical Council of India. The MCI had turned down the proposal to increase seats in these two colleges due to some technical issues. 
    “We found no grounds to entertain the special leave petition. It is dismissed leaving open the questions raised in the matter to be decided in appropriate case. However, considering the peculiar facts of the case, we are inclined to give a direction in respect of all colleges in Maharashtra to complete admission formalities within a period of two weeks from today….we make it clear that this order shall not be treated as a precedent,” Justices K S Radhakrishnan and A K Sikri observed in a brief order. 
    In the wake of the Centre’s proposal to enhance seats in medical colleges across India to tackle shortage of doctors, the state had submitted a proposal to increase seats in IGMC and the Akola medical college to the MCI. Then it was submitted that intake capacity of both the colleges should be increased from 100 to 150. But the MCI rejected the proposal, citing deficiencies in IGMC and that the Akola medical college had not completed 10 years. 
    Subsequently, when a PIL was filed before the high court, it asked the MCI to consider the applications submitted by the state government. The MCI did not consider the applications sympathetically and instead filed a special leave petition, which was dismissed. 
    In view of the apex court order, while 11 medical colleges will have an intake capacity of 150 each, the remaining three have an intake capacity of 200 each. “We will complete admissions within two weeks,” a senior medical education department official told.


Source:::: The Times of India, 03-10-2013, p.05,  http://epaper.timesofindia.com/Default/Client.asp?Daily=TOIM&showST=true&login=default&pub=TOI&Enter=true&Skin=TOINEW

15.7 million undernourished people live in developed countries: U.N.

About 842 million people, or roughly one in eight, suffered from chronic hunger in 2011-13, down from 868 million people reported for the 2010-12 period, according to the new State of Food Insecurity in the World, 2013 report released on Tuesday by United Nations food agencies.

Interestingly, the agencies observed that while a vast majority of hungry people lived in developing regions, 15.7 million lived in developed countries.

This does not surprise Supreme Court-appointed Food Commissioner and National Advisory Council (NAC) member N.C. Saxena who told The Hindu that although hunger has reduced in China and South-east Asia, there always has been some hunger even in the U.S. and some European countries. “It is not as if everything is hunky-dory in developed countries. I was reading a report that said that 16 per cent people in the U.S. are below poverty line.”

At the same time, he said that “the record of reducing hunger in India and South Asia is not so good. If you look at the cereal consumption of the poor in India, it has remained stagnant or even gone down because they tend to spend their incremental income on health, transport or even tobacco. It is not just high prices of food but lack of demand. It is very unfortunate.”

The report, published every year by the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), the International Fund for Agriculture Development and the World Food Programme, defined chronic hunger as “not getting enough food to lead active and healthy life.”

Continued economic growth in developing countries improved incomes and access to food. Higher farm productivity growth, supported by increased public investment and renewed interest of private investors in agriculture improved food availability.

In addition, in some countries, remittances from migrants were playing a role in poverty reduction, leading to better diets and food security, the report noted.

Calling for nutrition-sensitive interventions in agriculture and food systems as a whole as well as in public health and education, the report said policies aimed at enhancing farm productivity and food availability could achieve hunger reduction even where poverty was widespread.

Substantial reductions in both, the number of hungry and prevalence of undernourishment, have occurred in most countries of East Asia, Southeastern Asia and in Latin America. Sub-Saharan Africa has made only modest progress in recent years and has the highest prevalence of undernourishment with one in four people (24.8 per cent) estimated to be hungry.

The developing regions, the report says, have made a significant progress towards reaching the Millennium Development Goals (MDG) target of halving the proportion of hungry people by 2015. It says that if the average decline since 1990 continues till 2015, then the prevalence of undernourishment will reach a level close to the MDG hunger target.

The report underscored that “economic growth is the key for progress in hunger reduction,” but added that growth may not lead to more and better jobs and incomes for all, unless policies specifically target the poor, especially those in rural areas.

“In poor countries, hunger and poverty reduction will only be achieved with growth that is not only sustained but also broadly shared,” the report observed.

The findings and recommendations of the report will be discussed by representatives of governments, civil society and private sector next week at a meeting of the Committee of Food Security at the FAO headquarters in Rome.

Source:::: The Hindu, 02-10-2013, p.22,  http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/other-states/157-million-undernourished-people-live-in-developed-countries-un/article5190697.ece

Pre-medical, pre-dental entrance exam on May 4

T he CBSE will conduct an all-India pre-medical/pre-dental entrance test for admission to MBBS/BDS courses for 2014-15 for 15% seats in government medical/dental colleges nationwide, with the exception of two states. The test will be held on May 4, 2014, in selected cities across the nation and abroad. The syllabus for the exam is available at www.mciindia.org.


Source:::: The Times of India, 02-10-2013, p.11,  http://epaper.timesofindia.com/Default/Client.asp?Daily=TOIM&showST=true&login=default&pub=TOI&Enter=true&Skin=TOINEW

Women’s panel sits on over 1,500 cases

‘No Members Inducted Since 2009’

Prafulla Marpakwar TNN 

Mumbai: A record 1,589 cases for a period ranging between one and four years are pending before the state women’s commission due to the Democratic Front (DF) government’s failure to constitute the panel. 
    “We were expecting that the commission would be set up soon, so that there will be time bound disposal of pending cases. But so far no decision has been taken. There is discontent among activists owing to the increasing number of pending 
cases,” a senior Congress minister. In the aftermath of the Delhi gangrape incident, chief minister Prithviraj Chavan had assured that the commission would be set up soon. “There is no commission since August 31, 2009. Currently, a senior bureaucrat is holding additional charge. The acting chairman is attending to only urgent matters. We will take it up with Chavan,” the minister said. 
    The national women’s commission was set up in 1963 it was followed by a state-level panel. Initially, apart from the chairperson, there were six other members and the panel enjoyed the powers of a civil court. 
    “The commission has the powers to inspect documents, summon an individual for deposing before the commission or appoint a senior official to probe into a specific case. The commission’s activities have come to a halt owing to the government’s inability to set up a commission,” he said. 
    According to a senior bureaucrat, a proposal to set up the commission was submitted to the CM’s office. However, owing to differences between the Congress and the NCP and due to disagreements in the Congress, a chairperson was not appointed and the charge was entrusted to the women and child welfare secretary Ujwal Uke, who stepped in to tackle certain sensitive cases. “He is holding additional charge and as such can’t do justice to his job,” he said.

Source:::: The Times of India, 02-10-2013, p.11,  http://epaper.timesofindia.com/Default/Client.asp?Daily=TOIM&showST=true&login=default&pub=TOI&Enter=true&Skin=TOINEW