Over 25,000 child marriages on one day of MP Hindu festival, "Akshay Trityaa"

Superstition fuels child marriages in MP

Kumar Shakti Shekhar, NDTV.COM Sunday, April 30, 2006

(Bhopal):

Atleast 24 under aged couples about to get married in a mass wedding ceremony at Shivpuri in Madhya Pradesh, have been detained by the police.

These mass weddings are organised to mark 'Akshay trityaa' or akha teej.

The day is considered by Hindus as auspicious for weddings, but it has come to be associated more with the illegal practice of child marriage that still prevails in various parts of India.

But many among those detained are now refuting the allegation of being a minor.

One boy Madho Singh, allegedly a minor, has been detained in Rajgarh police station. He was to be married on May 3.

"I am a resident of Sanghi village. I was being taken to Bana village when the police came and arrested us. No, it was not my wedding today but I was supposed to get married in another 2-3 days. I have not done anything wrong as I am 22-years-old," he said.

Long-standing faith

Akshay Trityaa falls on the third day of the second half of the Hindi month of Vaishakh every year.

It is people's long-standing faith that couples live a long and happy life if they enter into wedlock on the occasion.

Thousands of marriages, including child marriages, are thus taking place in Madhya Pradesh at this time.

As a result of this, the infant and female mortality rates are high in the state. While the national average of female mortality is 407 per lakh, it is 498 in Madhya Pradesh.

Govt apathy

As against the infant mortality national average of 60 per 1,000, Madhya Pradesh has recorded 85 per 1,000.

Despite this the state government has shirked off all responsibility and has failed to launch a yearlong campaign with people's participation. As a result, the evil tradition continues.

State government advertisements on child marriages are considered illegal but the warning has hardly had any impact.

Child marriages take place on a large scale in Madhya Pradesh on Akshay Trityaa and the state government's writ goes only as far as the advertisements.

"I feel that no child marriage will take place this year. We will not let it happen. We are committed to totally checking child marriages in the state," said Kusum Singh Mehdele, Women and Child Development Minister, MP.

But anyone who dares to challenge the tradition is threatened with brutality. Last year a woman's hands were chopped off for trying to stop child marriage.

Sad reality

Madhya Pradesh leads the country in infant and female mortality rates and social workers blame child marriages for the sad reality.

"Whatever the claims of the government and official circulars may be, over 25,000 child marriages on one day cannot stop without political will and the fixing of accountability on ministers and officials," said Sachin Jain, social worker, Bhopal.

The state government's campaign to check child marriage will hardly have an impact since it was launched merely a few days before the Akshay Trityaa. It can prove useful only if run throughout the year.

India : the Suicide Fields

28 Apr 2006

In India, government policies lead to terrible toll in rural suicides, spurred by market reforms
Summary:

You will be surprised in the budgetary provision, not more than 2 percent has been allocated for agriculture, where more than 65 percent of the population works… In the last few years, the average budgetary provision from the Indian government for irrigation is less than 0.35 percent.” This neglect of irrigation, he said, forced 60 percent of agricultural areas to “depend totally on the erratic monsoon

Is India the worst governed country in the world? The dominance of the cities, the hi-tech industry, transnationals and the IMF have concentrated investment in tiny pockets of the subcontinent. Interest rates for farmers have rocketed, government supports for farmers have disappeared. The result, a death toll from suicides amongst farmers that is almost certainly greater than 25,000 in the past ten years.

M.Kailash, Republished from World Socialist Website

Indebtedness, crop failure and the inability to pay back loans due to high rates of interest have led as many as 25,000 peasants in India to commit suicide since the 1990s, according to official figures. The systematic neglect of India’s multi-million peasantry, combined with the free market policies implemented by successive governments, are responsible.

On February 19, Alladi Rajkumar, a senior parliamentarian from the opposition Telugu Desam Party (TDP) in the southern state of Andhra Pradesh, reported in India’s upper house of parliament that over 3,000 farmers had taken their lives during the past 22 months under the Congress-led state government. The deteriorating conditions of the peasantry were a significant factor in the defeat of the previous TDP administration.

Andhra Pradesh has become one of India’s leading areas for investment by global transnational corporations. Under both Congress and TDP governments, the state has been largely run under budgetary guidelines formulated by the US firm McKinsey, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank. While the state has been flung open to the activities of transnationals, the rural poor have been ignored. Andhra Pradesh has recorded among the highest number of peasant suicides in the country. From 1997 to January 2006, over 9,000 peasants took their lives due to the failure of cotton crops. In 2000, 22 peasants in the Kundoor district sold their kidneys to settle their debts.

The Punjab has also recorded a high rate of farmer suicides. According to state government claims, there were 2,116 cases between 1998 and 2005. Non-government organisations argue that this figure is a gross underestimate. Inderjit Jayjee of the Movement Against State Repression told the Indian Tribune on April 2: “Andana and Lehra blocks of Moonak subdivision in Sangrur alone have reported 1,360 farmer suicides between 1998 and 2005. If all of Punjab’s 138 blocks show roughly the same level of suicides, the number would exceed 40,000 for the given period.”

The suicide toll is by no means confined to these two states. The western state of Maharashtra witnessed over 250 farmer suicides in Vidarbha district during the six-month period from June 2005 to January 2006. The agriculture minister in the national Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government, Sharad Pawar, told parliament last month that cases of suicide have also been reported from Karnataka, Kerala, Gujarat and Orissa.

In an interview on November 15, 2005, with the Indian Express, Pawar stated: “The farming community has been ignored in this country and especially so over the last eight to 10 years. The total investment in the agriculture sector is going down… You will be surprised in the budgetary provision, not more than 2 percent has been allocated for agriculture, where more than 65 percent of the population works… In the last few years, the average budgetary provision from the Indian government for irrigation is less than 0.35 percent.” This neglect of irrigation, he said, forced 60 percent of agricultural areas to “depend totally on the erratic monsoon.”

During the campaign for the 2004 national elections, Congress leaders such as party president Sonia Gandhi and Manmohan Singh, who became prime minister, shed a few crocodile tears over farmer suicides. The Congress election manifesto promised to “liberate the country from poverty, hunger and unemployment”. In practice, however, the UPA government has proven that its attitude toward the peasants is no different from its predecessor. The allocation for the agriculture in its February 28 budget was just 1 percent.

The UPA’s main policy in rural areas is the cosmetic National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS). The government has pledged that one member of every rural household will be provided with 100 days of work per year, paid just 60 rupees ($US1.33) per day. Although the scheme was part of the UPA’s so-called Common Minimum Program (CMP) during the 2004 election, its inauguration was delayed until February 2006. Moreover, while the initial estimate for the scheme was 400 billion rupees ($US9 billion) a year, the allocation in the national budget delivered on February 28 was just 117 billion rupees.

Rising debts

In 1928, a Royal Commission report on the plight of farmers under British colonial rule in India stated that the peasant lives and dies in debt. The same basic rule holds for most Indian farmers today.

The indebtedness of Indian farmers rose markedly in the 1990s following the turn by successive Indian governments to market reforms and the opening up of the Indian economy to foreign investors. Prior to 1991, 25 percent of Indian peasants were indebted. Now, according to figures provided in January by P. Sainath, the rural affairs editor of the Hindu, 70 percent of farmers in the state of Andhra Pradesh are in debt. In Punjab the figure is 65 percent, Karnataka 61 percent, and Maharashtra 60 percent.

Government actions have directly triggered the rise. According to a Reserve Bank of India report in 2003, World Bank dictates resulted in a steady decline of rural credit to small and middle peasants from government banks and cooperative societies. Lending declined from 15.9 percent in June 1990 to 9.8 percent in March 2003. This shift in government policy compelled small and middle farmers to turn to private moneylenders for loans—at exorbitant interest rates of 40 percent or more per annum—to purchase seeds, fertiliser and other agricultural inputs.

“The banks have given no loans in the past seven years,” Malla Reddy, the general secretary of the Andhra Pradesh Ryuthu Sangham (APRS), explained. “So many farmers are forced to depend on sources like these for credit. The same man advises them on what to buy and then sets the rates for the purchase.” More and more farmers have failed to earn enough to pay back their loans and so have fallen deeper and deeper into debt.

Across India, over 43.4 million Indian peasant families are deeply indebted. Small and medium peasants are the worst affected. The number of rural landless families increased to 35 percent between 1987 and 1998 and soared to 45 percent between 1999 and 2000. Between 2003 and 2005, the figure jumped dramatically to 55 percent.

At the same time, farmers have faced declining incomes. According to a Ministry of Agriculture report, the income for West Bengal paddy farmers has fallen by 28 percent since 1996-97. During the same period, the income of sugar cane growers in Uttar Pradesh had dropped 32 percent, while in Maharashtra, cane growers have lost 40 percent.

A steady decline in infrastructure investment and cuts to state subsidies, together with droughts, floods and insect infestations have contributed to the growth of rural social misery.

According to New Delhi-based agriculture economist Rahul Sharma, the cost of rural production has gone up by 300 percent since the 1990s, in large part due to government policies. In Andra Pradesh, the power tariff was increased five times between 1998 and 2003. As governments have withdrawn support for rural farmers, prices for farming equipment have skyrocketed.

Due to deregulation, the quality of seeds has declined. In the past, the Indian government regulated that the minimum germination rate for seeds had to be at least 85 percent. Following corporate pressure, the minimum rate was reduced to 60 percent.

Indian peasants have faced greater global competition due to the deregulation of agricultural markets. In 1999, the Bharatiya Janatha Party (BJP)-led Indian federal government signed a pact with the United States to grant US producers import permission for 1,429 agricultural products that were previously prevented from entering the local market.

The UPA government of Prime Minister Singh is continuing the free market restructuring of the economy. During US President George Bush’s visit to India in early March, Singh signed an agreement that further opens the agriculture sector to firms such as Monsanto.

These measures will further exacerbate the already intolerable conditions of Indian farmers.

Indian-origin woman is Opposition leader in Trinidad

Thursday, 27 April 2006

Port of Spain (Trinidad), April 26 (PTI): A woman of Indian origin has become the first woman Leader of Opposition in the Trinidad and Tobago parliament.

Kamla Persad Bissessar, a former Attorney General, was appointed Tuesday by the country's President George Maxwell Richards following incumbent Basdeo Panday's incarceration.

The President has also declared Panday's Couva North constituency seat vacant. According to the country's law, Panday automatically vacated his post after his conviction.

Meanwhile, his lawyers tried to get Panday released on bail, but the High Court has requested more documents and the hearing will now resume today.

Panday, a former Prime Minister and chairman of the Opposition United National Congress, was on Monday sentenced to six years in jail on three counts for failing to declare his assets in a London bank account.

He was ordered to serve two years in jail for each charge but the sentences will run concurrently, which means Panday will effectively serve two years in prison.

Panday will also be paying fines of USD 10,000 and has been asked to reimburse USD 250,000 to the state.

Trinidad and Tobago Prime Minister, Patrick Manning, said he was sorry to learn of the ruling against his predecessor, but asserted that it sent a clear warning to politicians that none of them were above the law.

US Judge reimposes 97-month term on Lakireddy Bali Reddy

Wednesday, 24 May 2006

Reddy sought reduction of sentence for illegally bringing girls and women into U.S.

By Josh Richman, insidebayarea.com

OAKLAND — A federal judge resentenced a Berkeley businessman Monday to the 97-month prison term he had drawn in 2001 for bringing girls and women from India to the Bay Area for cheap labor and sexual favors.

Despite statements in court Monday from five of Lakireddy Bali Reddy's seven living victims that they supported an earlier release, U.S. District Judge Claudia Wilken said the two other victims' unrebutted testimony of extreme emotional distress from Reddy's crimes was sufficient basis for her to reimpose the sentence term.

Reddy, 69, is in the federal prison at Lompoc; his projected release date, unchanged by Monday's hearing, remains April 2, 2008.

He and his son, Vijay Lakireddy, first were indicted in 2000, accused of having had an Indian man pose as the father of two sisters to bring them into the country on fraudulent temporary work visas. The elder sister died in November 1999 of carbon monoxide poisoning after a heater in her Berkeley apartment malfunctioned.

Prosecutors said these girls and others brought here by similar means were used by Reddy as workers at his and his family's businesses, and for his own sexual gratification.

Reddy pleaded guilty in 2001 to two counts of importing minors for immoral sexual purposes and one count each of tax fraud and conspiracy to commit immigration fraud.

Defense attorneys Cristina Arguedas and Ted Cassman in recent years had convinced Wilken to reexamine his sentence — imposed by Judge Saundra Brown Armstrong, who since has recused herself from the case for unknown reasons — due to problems that came to light soon after his 2001 plea bargain. Several victims claimed Telegu-speaking interpreter Uma Rao of Berkeley had urged them to exaggerate or embellish their testimony, or had misrepresented their testimony in translation.

At issue was whether victims' statements to a probation officer for a preresentencing report were reliable and detailed enough. The defense argued for a maximum of 78 months.

"Judge Armstrong was reading lies" when she relied on the probation report to demand a tough sentence for Reddy, Arguedas said Monday, adding Rao's damage to the case "is something that affected everything that happened here. ... She should be prosecuted for what she did."

Eight victims figured in the case. One is the person who died in 1999; five of the others were in court to describe the case's impact on them. Some praised Reddy's role in bringing them to the United States and some actually urged his early release; none objected to reducing his sentence.

But Wilken said she was convinced to stick by the same 97-month term by the earlier testimony of two victims who've stuck by their original accounts, and who weren't present in court Monday. Reddy long since has paid the $2 million in restitution imposed with his original sentence.

Vijay Lakireddy pleaded guilty in 2002 to one count of conspiracy to commit visa fraud and was sentenced to two years in prison, which he has served. Prasad Lakireddy pleaded guilty in 2003 to one count of conspiracy to employ unauthorized aliens and was sentenced to one year of home detention, a $20,000 fine and 300 hours of community service.

Reddy's brother and sister-in-law, Jayaprakash and Annapurna Lakireddy, each pleaded guilty to one count of immigration fraud in 2001; he was sentenced to a year and a day in federal prison and was released last June, while she served six months of home detention and paid a $2,000 fine. Venkateswara Vemireddy, who'd posed as the girls' father, was given probation and deported to India.

Judgements can be read from
http://www.oig.dol.gov/public/media/lbreddy.html

Outsourcing pregnancies to India

Rising numbers of infertile couples from U.S. and Europe are coming to India to hire surrogate mothers.

By Henry Chu, LOS ANGELES TIMES, Saturday, April 22, 2006


ANAND, India — As temp jobs go, Saroj Mehli has landed what she feels is a pretty sweet deal. It's a nine-month gig, no special skills needed, and the only real labor comes at the end — when she gives birth.

If everything goes according to plan, Mehli, 32, will deliver a healthy baby early next year. But rather than join her other three children, the newborn will be handed over to a U.S. couple who are unable to bear a child on their own and are hiring Mehli to do it for them.
She'll be paid about $5,000 for acting as a surrogate mother, a bonanza that would take her more than six years to earn on her schoolteacher's salary. "I might renovate or add to the house, or spend it on my kids' education or my daughter's wedding," Mehli said.

Beyond the money, she added, there is the reward of bringing happiness to a childless couple from the United States, where such a service would cost them thousands of dollars more.

Driven by many of the same factors that have led Western businesses to outsource some of their operations to India in recent years, an increasing number of infertile couples from abroad are coming in search of women willing, in effect, to rent out their wombs.

Two of Mehli's sisters have already served as surrogates — one of them for foreigners — and so has a sister-in-law. Mehli finally decided to join in, with the enthusiastic consent of her husband, a barber, and the guidance of a local physician who has become a minor celebrity after arranging more than a dozen surrogacies in the past two years, for both Indian and non-Indian couples.

For some, the practice is a logical outgrowth of of supply and demand in a globalized marketplace.

"It's win-win," said S.K. Nanda, a former health secretary in Gujarat state. "It's a completely capitalistic enterprise. There is nothing unethical about it. If you launched it somewhere like West Bengal or Assam" — both poverty-stricken states — "you'd have a lot of takers."

Others are unsure of the moral implications, and worry about the exploitation of poor women and the risks in a land where 100,000 women die every year as a result of pregnancy and childbirth. Rich couples from the West paying Indian women for the use of their bodies, they say, is distasteful at best, unconscionable at worst.

"You're subjecting the life of that woman who will be a surrogate to some amount of risk," said C.P. Puri, director of the National Institute for Research in Reproductive Health in Mumbai. "That is where I personally feel it should not become a trade."

The Indian Council of Medical Research estimates that surrogacy could bloom into a nearly $6 billion-a-year industry in India.

In the vanguard of the nascent industry is the small city of Anand, where gynecologist Nayna Patel is presiding over a mini baby boom. But eight of her recent and imminent arrivals won't be adding to Anand's population of 100,000: Three of the infants are destined for the United States, two for Britain and three for other parts of India.

Anand now has about 20 women who have volunteered to be implanted with embryos at Patel's clinic. A few have already gone through the process once and are eager for a second try.

Prospective foreign clients hear of Patel through word of mouth or Web sites dealing with infertility issues. By the time they contact her, and spend the time, energy and money to get to India, they are usually desperate for children and often emotionally battered from long years of trying and failing.

Patel has set some criteria for those she'll help: only couples for whom the baby would be their first and where the wife is either infertile or can't physically carry her own child to term.

Her potential surrogates must be between ages 18 and 45, in good health and already mothers, for physical and psychological reasons — physical, so they know what awaits their bodies, and psychological, so they feel less troubled about giving up a new baby because they already have children at home. The egg that contributes to the embryo is never one of their own, coming instead from an anonymous donor or the intended mother, and usually fertilized in vitro.

Both parties sign a contract under which the intended parents pay for medical care and the surrogate renounces rights to the baby.

In Anand, volunteers are repeatedly reminded by Patel and her staff that the fetuses in their wombs aren't theirs. Patel said no problems have arisen yet with too strong a bond forming between surrogate and child.

She acknowledges that money is the primary reason women have lined up to be surrogates; without it, the list would be short, if not nonexistent. Payment usually ranges from about $2,800 to $5,600, a fortune in a country where annual per-capita income hovers around $500.

But Patel cites cultural components as well — an empathy with the childless in a society that views producing progeny as an almost sacred obligation, along with Hindu teachings about being rewarded for good deeds in the next life.

"Those couples who don't have kids long for them, and I can understand their feelings," said Smita Pandy, 27, who has two children of her own and was about to give birth on behalf of another Indian couple. "I'll be happy because they'll be blessed with a child."

Fake Caste Certificates By 30% Candidates For Govt Jobs: CBI

17th April 2006

A CBI investigation has found 30 per cent people belonging to Scheduled Caste and scheduled Tribes have produced fake caste certificates to acquire government jobs.

This was stated by K N Singh, Chief of National Scheduled Caste/Tribe Commission, today at the inauguration of the three-day national workshop on reservation policy being held here.

The CBI conducted the investigation on the orders of Supreme Court. Singh said action would be taken against the defaulting government officers and employees.

He said Social Welfare Ministry will soon bring a bill to stop such a practice and all states have been requested to send in their suggestions.

(UNI)