India sex museum makes HIV lessons fun

By Krittivas Mukherjee,Sat Feb 10, 2007

MUMBAI (Reuters Life!) - This is India's version of sex in the city

A rare sex museum in Mumbai, the country's teeming financial capital, is drawing hundreds of prostitutes and their regular clients who say they learn more about HIV/AIDS from its graphic exhibits than staid lectures on safe sex.

Antarang, which means intimate in Hindi, is a one-room exhibition of nude statues, models of the human anatomy and illustrations near a well-known red light district in Mumbai. And it is India's only sex museum, according to its management.

Devoid of the glamour of sex museums of Amsterdam or New York, Antarang greets a visitor with a "lingam", a Hindu phallic-shaped symbol worshipped as one of the representations of Lord Shiva, Kama Sutra verses and wooden and plastic models showing the act of conception, child birth as well as descriptions of various sexual diseases.

"A sex museum is a better place to learn about sex and everything related to it," M.G. Vallecha, the chief of Antarang, entry to which is free, told Reuters.

The museum is run by the state government in an effort to combat HIV and AIDS in India. There are an estimated 5.7 million people infected with HIV, more than any other country, according to U.N. figures.

Experts say that number could quadruple by 2010 as many people are still reluctant to discuss safe sex openly.

Authorities all over India try various innovative ways, including street plays and "condom parties", to spread awareness about sexual diseases.

Mumbai is not only India's biggest and most cosmopolitan city, but it is also home to millions of migrants who leave their families in villages to search for jobs.

NO CONDOM, NO SEX

Antarang, whose floor tiles are painted to look like sperm, was opened in 2003. It became popular among prostitutes and some of their clients after health workers began taking them there.

"A major bulk of our thousands of visitors every year are sex workers and health volunteers," Vallecha said.

Some sex seekers also visit. In India, many prostitutes act as mistresses for one regular client who pays for her upkeep. They can often develop close relationships and sometimes visit the museum together, officials said.

"At first, sex workers coming to the museum are shy. But slowly they discover new things about something they thought they knew all about," said Manish Pawar, a health worker who has brought hundreds of prostitutes and their clients to the museum.

Many of the sex workers say the museum has changed their lives by teaching them about the need for safe sex.

"When they told us about AIDS and all we didn't understand much, but now after visiting the museum it is much clearer to us," said Jyoti, a middle-aged prostitute who gave only one name.

"Now we tell clients no condom -- no sex."

Authorities said they have few ordinary tourists.

"The area where the museum is located is stigmatised and even if they (tourists) want to come they don't because they don't want to be seen in a red light district," said Nirupa Borges, who helps run Antarang.

"We have some school and college students, but we would like more members of the mainstream society."

Authorities are planning to open another sex museum in a northern suburb, away from the red light district, to attract a wider audience.

"This museum is serving its purpose very well. We need more sex museums like this," Borges said.

Note : There are about 27000 joginis in Andhra Pradesh state, While 95 per cent of the joginis belong to the Scheduled Castes

Visa papers in US bin, India culprit

Indo-Asian News Service, New York, February 2, 2007

Visa applications and other sensitive documents of top executives and political figures were found lying in an open yard at a San Francisco recycling centre after they were dumped there by the city's Indian consulate, according to media reports.

Security experts said that the documents were a potential treasure trove for identity thieves or terrorists.

Among the papers found lying were visa applications submitted by Byron Pollitt, chief financial officer of San Francisco's Gap Inc, and Anne Gust, wife of California Attorney General Jerry Brown, according to the San Francisco Chronicle. Also visa applications of top executives of AT&T Wireless Inc, Oracle Corp, Intel Corp, Microsoft Corp, Qualcomm Inc and Williams-Sonoma Inc were found lying.

Information on the documents includes applicants' names, addresses, phone numbers, birth dates, professions, employers, passport numbers photos and also accompanying letters detail people's travel plans and reasons for visiting India.

"This is absolutely sensitive information," said Charles Cresson Wood, an information-security consultant. "It needs to be safeguarded," he added.

When contacted, Ministry of External Affairs spokesman Navtej Sarna said "the San Fransisco consulate is taking all necessary steps to ensure that all papers are shredded before they leave the consulate in future."

BS Prakash, the Indian consul general, said: "As we see it, the documents are not confidential. We would see something as confidential if it has a social security number or a credit card number, not a passport number."

Security experts said it wouldn't be hard to obtain someone's social security number using the information available in the consular documents.

"We have a shortage of space. We keep this material for a year, and then we have to destroy it," Pratik Sircar, deputy consul-general for the Indian consulate, said.

However, the consulate didn't destroy the documents. Instead, it hired a hauling company in December to cart the boxes to the recycling centre.

IT Hub Can Handle Gigabytes, Not Dog Bites

When a pack of stray dogs tore to pieces the eight-year-old daughter of a construction worker, it showed up the social inequalities and other paradoxes of this global information technology (IT) hub.

Construction for as many as 14 traffic-easing underpasses promised by the municipality is languishing because of delays in firming up proposals, floating tenders, issuing work orders and actual execution. And only one of 11 major road projects, promised several years ago, has been completed.

Aside from the serious infrastructural woes that global IT names have been complaining about, authorities seem incapable of doing anything about packs of stray dogs, estimated to number around 71,000, marauding through the streets and inflicting at least 3,000 bites per month on a helpless public.

India already has the word's highest number of dog-bites, 17.6 million annually. It also accounts for 80 percent of the world's rabies cases according to the Association for Prevention and Control of Rabies in India (APCRI).

In Bangalore, 45 percent of dog-bite victims are slum children playing on streets in low-income areas which are a world away from the affluent or those who earn global salaries in the IT sector, says Dr. B. J. Mahendra, professor of community medicine at Bangalore's Kempegowda Medical Institute and president of APCRI.

Professionals with a few years' experience command annual pay packets of 50,000 US dollars or more in Bangalore, making it a magnet for qualified workers and yet stay competitive for global IT majors that outsource work this way. The trend has even resulted in the coinage of the term ‘Bangalored' to describe the global shift in IT and IT-enabled services away from developed countries.

But, few notice the armies of labourers, construction workers, cleaners and helpers that make it possible for this IT hub to keep turning, by making do with dirt poor wages and putting up with living conditions unimaginable in the countries that get Bangalored.

According to APCRI the municipality's estimate of 71,000 strays in the city is ‘grossly underestimated'. Either way city authorities are now facing a barrage of protests over the death of the girl who was attacked on a busy, public street while carrying her father's lunch to him.

The issue has snowballed into a crisis for Bangalore's municipal commissioner, K. Jairaj, who now faces charges in the Karnataka state high court for neglecting human life by allowing stray dogs free run in the the city.

"It is shameful that the child's death was compensated with a mere Rs 100,000 (2,252 dollars) by the authorities," says Vatsala Dhananjay of a civic group, Stray Dog Free Bangalore (SDFB). "The least the municipality can do is fix a more realistic rate of compensation."

The SDFB is now planning to petition the country's National Human Rights Commission to intervene in helping remove the city's stray dog menace.

And yet, the city's municipality is prevented from doing more than sterilise and release the dogs because of protests from animal-rights organisations, most of them run by wealthy and influential socialities that have managed to bring stray dogs under the ambit of the country's Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act of 1960.

''I feel very strongly about dogs on the roads,'' commissioner Jairaj told IPS. ''But we have legal and social problems against removing them.''

So, while the salaries and lifestyles in the city's IT industry surpass those in many developing countries, the father of the unfortunate girl, as a member of the city's unorganised but vast workforce, has little hope of adequae compensation.

Apart from petitioning the NHRC, the ‘anti-stray' group also has plans to take the municipality to court for violation of the fundamental rights of its citzens. " If the government won't see to the rights of the poor, some of us need to take responsibility," says Diana Bharucha of the SDFB.

While the IT sector enjoys enormous clout, what matters most to it is greater attention by the government to research and development and creationg of manpower needed to maintain a high growth curve. ''It's mediocrity (of workers)and complacency (of the government)that we need to address,'' says D.N. Prahlad of Surya Software Systems.

Global software giants like Wipro and Infosys have created vast modern air-conditioned campuses in which it is possible to maintain an international ambience for their carefully selected employees and complain only about the potholes on the roads that lead to the airport and the disconcerting view of slums and unfinished construction.

Many are satisfied that the government is constructing a 30 km-long dedicated expressway that will connect a spanking new airport to the city centre, bypassing the traffic jams and human misery.

''If the IT multi-national corporations (MNCs) were unhappy with Bangalore's infrastructure, they would not be in the expansion mode," says J. Parthasarathy, director of the government-owned Software Technology Park, at Whitefield in Bangalore which houses over 1,800 companies with 400,000 professionals on its sprawling premises.

But the president of the federation of Karnataka's chambers of commerce, R.C. Purohit, admits that the IT sector, which is responsible for a good deal of the city's congestion and deteriorating conditions, needs to participate more actively in urban planning and the society it works in. ''The IT sector has to understand its public responsibilities.''

''Our physical infrastructure is bad, yes,'' says Chamaraj Reddy of the Builders' Association of India. ''But being killed and menaced by stray dogs on the roads is even worse.''

http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=36202

India has killed 10 mln girls in 20 years - Renuka Chowdhury

By Palash Kumar

NEW DELHI (Reuters) - Ten million girls have been killed by their parents in India in the past 20 years, either before they were born or immediately after, a government minister said on Thursday, describing it as a "national crisis".

A UNICEF report released this week said 7,000 fewer girls are born in the country every day than the global average would suggest, largely because female foetuses are aborted after sex determination tests but also through murder of new borns.

"It's shocking figures and we are in a national crisis if you ask me," Minister for Women and Child Development Renuka Chowdhury told Reuters.

Girls are seen as liabilities by many Indians, especially because of the banned but rampant practice of dowry, where the bride's parents pay cash and goods to the groom's family.

Men are also seen as bread-winners while social prejudices deny women opportunities for education and jobs.

"Today, we have the odd distinction of having lost 10 million girl children in the past 20 years," Chowdhury told a seminar in Delhi University.

"Who has killed these girl children? Their own parents."

In some states, the minister said, newborn girls have been killed by pouring sand or tobacco juice into their nostrils.

"The minute the child is born and she opens her mouth to cry, they put sand into her mouth and her nostrils so she chokes and dies," Chowdhury said, referring to cases in the western desert state of Rajasthan.

"They bury infants into pots alive and bury the pots. They put tobacco into her mouth. They hang them upside down like a bunch of flowers to dry," she said.

"We have more passion for tigers of this country. We have people fighting for stray dogs on the road. But you have a whole society that ruthlessly hunts down girl children."

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 ratio has fallen since 1991, due to the availability of ultrasound sex-determination tests.

Although these are illegal they are still widely available and often lead to abortion of girl foetuses.

Chowdhury said the fall in the number of females had cost one percent of India's GDP and created shortages of girls in some states like Haryana, where in one case four brothers had to marry one woman.

Economic empowerment of women was key to change, she said.

"Even today when you go to a temple, you are blessed with 'May you have many sons'," she said.

"The minute you empower them to earn more or equal (to men), social prejudices vanish."

The practice of killing the girl child is more prevalent among the educated, including in upmarket districts of New Delhi, making it more challenging for the government, the minister said.

"How do we tell educated people that you must not do it? And these are people who would visit all the female deities and pray for strength but don't hesitate to kill a girl child," she said.



Hindu priests pressed on abortions

AFP,Friday, December 15, 2006

NEW DELHI: India's Hindu priests came under criticism Friday for blessings about sons, seen as leading to the number of abortions of girls and skewed sex ratios across the country.

It is common for priests to bless young women by saying, "May you be the mother of a hundred sons", and many Hindus believe the soul will not find release unless a son performs his parents' last rites.

"The problem is very serious and is part of the deep mindset in India," Renuka Chowdhury, minister for women and child development, said.

"They have to stop giving blessings about sons," Chowdhury said. "They should bless couples with healthy children."

The remarks came the same week that the United Nations children's agency UNICEF said India was losing almost 7,000 girls a day, mostly due to sex-selective abortion.

Under Indian law, tests to find out the gender of an unborn baby are illegal if not done for medical reasons, but the practice continues in what activists say is a flourishing multi-million-dollar business.

The Judiciary: Cutting Edge Of A Predator State

Author of this article, Mr. Prashant Bhushan is a senior lawyer in the Supreme Court of India.

At a time when the dominant class in India is obsessed with power and when India appears to be at the threshold of becoming an “economic and military superpower”, it is interesting that Tehelka has organized this seminar called, “The summit of the powerless”. Though one hardly sees any powerless people here, or even many who represent them, it is still important that a meeting on this theme has been organized by Tehelka.

It is this obsession with power which is the driving force behind the vision of India of the ruling elite of this country. That is why we see the frequent “power summits” being organized by major media organizations which are dominated by talk of India as an “emerging superpower”, with a booming sensex and a GDP growth poised to reach 8, 9 and even 10%. And it is this power crazed libido of the elite which have made them the cheerleaders of the government which is straining to become the Asian right hand of the United States. This single minded pursuit of a strategic relationship with the US has made us lose our moral bearings as we vote against our old friends like Iran and keep quiet on unimaginable atrocities being committed by the US in Iraq and by Israel in Palestine.

What kind of society is this “power driven” vision of India producing. While the elite celebrate the booming sensex, the consumer boom among the middle classes which the spectacular GDP growth appear to be giving them, the poor are pushed to greater and greater destitution, as the agricultural economy collapses and they are sought to be deprived of whatever little they have in terms of land and other natural resources. After all, when agriculture is not contributing to the GDP growth, why not take away the land, water and other resources from agriculture and give them to the sectors which are leading the growth-the SEZs and the IT industry for example. That (and the opportunity for a real estate killing) explains the stampede for setting up SEZs and IT parks, which will be high growth privileged enclaves, helped no doubt by the cheap compulsory acquisition of land, the absence of taxes, labour and environmental laws. They are envisioned almost as private and self governing States with their own police and courts. It makes no difference to those who hope to occupy these enclaves that India is almost at the bottom of the heap in terms of the Human Development Index, in terms of the percentage of people in the country who have access to housing, food, water, sanitation, education and healthcare.

So as the rural economy is destroyed (partly by agricultural imports) and the poor are deprived of their land, their forests, their water and indeed all their resources, to make way for mining leases, dams, SEZs and IT parks, all of which augur faster GDP growth, the poor get pushed to suicide or to urban slums. Here they struggle for existence in subhuman conditions with no sanitation, water, electricity, and always at the mercy of the weather, corrupt policemen and municipal officials. These slums often exist side by side with luxurious enclaves of the ultra rich who pass by them with barely a scornful glance and regard them as a nuisance who should be put away beyond their gaze. And if the government cannot accomplish that, there are always the courts to lend a helping hand. In the past two years about 2 lakh slum dwellers from the Yamuna Pushta and other Jhuggi colonies of Delhi have been removed on the orders of the court and thrown to the streets or dumped in the boondocks of Bawana (40 Kms from Delhi) and without any sanitation, water, electricity or even drainage. It would be surprising if many of them do not become criminals or join the ranks of naxalites who have come to control greater and greater parts of the country.

What kind of society are we creating? A society which is not only deeply divided in economic classes with a vast chasm dividing them, but also one where the preoccupations of the dominant classes are becoming increasingly crassly materialistic, narcissistic and base. If one were to examine the content of the mainstream electronic media-even news channels, particularly private channels which are the main source of information and entertainment for the middle class elite, one would find that it is characterized by an increasingly vacuous intellectual content and pandering more and more to the baser instincts of sex, violence and a morbid fascination for gossip particularly about the private lives of Bollywood stars. Stories about real people and serious public interest issues have been reduced to mere sound bytes of a few seconds. The interest of the middle classes in and their attention span for serious issues of public interest have been reduced to a vanishing point, as the culture of consumerism and self indulgence has taken over contemporary society. Even as scientific evidence piles up about how the world is headed towards environmental catastrophe due to global warming, not many among our well to do elite have even bothered to understand the issue, let alone bother about tackling the problem. They are oblivious of and unconcerned about the disaster which will certainly affect their children if not themselves during their lifetimes.

A sickness afflicts the soul of the dominant elite of India today. It is a sickness which has led to a total loss of vision and has made us lose our moral bearings. It is this sickness which is allowing us to celebrate our great GDP growth and our emerging superpower status when the majority of our countrymen sink to deeper and deeper depths of destitution and despair. It is this sickness which allows us to rejoice in our becoming the main sidekick of the global bully, while we shut our eyes to the enormous injustice being done to the oppressed people of Iraq, Palestine and other countries at the receiving end of the bully’s muscle. It is this sickness which has produced the vision of the State as the facilitator of this rapaciously exploitative model of development. A vision where the State’s role is seen as an institution which tries to facilitate the maximization of GDP growth. Which naturally requires the State to withdraw from its welfare obligations and facilitate a privatized society run on laissez faire economics. After all, private enterprise, run on the profit motive is the best bet for maximizing GDP growth. It is this model which snatches land from the farmer for the SEZs, the IT parks and the mines. That vision is producing a society which is intoxicated with a kind of development and feeling of “power” which are sowing the seeds of its own destruction in not too far a future. We have become a society of many Neros who are fiddling while the country is on fire.

It is not surprising then that the “powerless” regard the State as predator rather than protector. Even more unfortunately, the recent role of the judiciary which was mandated by the constitution to protect the rights of the people is making it appear as if it has become the cutting edge of a predator State.

There was a time, not so long ago, when the Supreme Court of India waxed eloquent about the Fundamental right to life and liberty guaranteed by Article 21 of the Constitution to include all that it takes to lead a decent and dignified life. They thus held that the right to life includes the right to Food, the right to employment and the right to shelter: in other words, the right to all the basic necessities of life. That was in the roaring 80’s when a new tool of public interest litigation was fashioned where anyone could invoke the jurisdiction of the Courts even by writing a post card on behalf of the poor and disadvantaged who were too weak to approach the courts themselves. It seemed that a new era was dawning and that the courts were emerging as a new liberal instrument within the State which the poor could access to get some respite from the various excesses and assaults of the executive.

Alas, all that seems a distant dream now, given the recent role of the courts in not just failing to protect the rights of the poor that they had themselves declared not long ago, but in fact spearheading the massive assault on the poor since the era of economic liberalization. This is happening in case after case, whether they are of the tribal oustees of the Narmada Dam, or the urban slum dwellers whose homes are being ruthlessly bulldozed without notice and without rehabilitation, on the orders of the court, or the urban hawkers and rickshaw pullers of Delhi and Mumbai who have been ordered to be removed from the streets again on the orders of the court. Public interest litigation has been turned on its head. Instead of being used to protect the rights of the poor, it is now being used by commercial interests and the upper middle classes to launch a massive assault in the poor in the drive to take over urban spaces and even rural land occupied by the poor, for commercial development. While the lands of the rural poor are being compulsorily taken over for commercial real estate development for the wealthy, the urban poor are being evicted from the public land that they have been occupying for decades for commercial development by big builders, for shopping malls and housing for the wealthy. Roadside hawkers are being evicted on the orders of the Courts (which will ensure that people will shop only in these shopping malls). All this is being done, not only in violation of the rights of the poor declared by the Courts, but also in violation of the policies for slum dwellers and hawkers which have been formulated by the governments. Usually these actions of the Court seem to have the tacit and covert approval of the government (and the court is used to do what a democratically accountable government cannot do). Let us examine a few of these cases.

In the Narmada case, the Court recently refused to restrain further construction of the Dam which would submerge thousands of families without rehabilitation even when it was clear that this was not only in violation of the Narmada Tribunal Award, but against their declared fundamental rights. The court’s behaviour in first refusing to hear the matter, then repeatedly adjourning it, then allowing the construction to be completed on the specious ground that they needed the report of the Shunglu Committee, clearly demonstrated a total lack of sensitivity to the oustees and a total subordination of their rights to the commercial interests of those industrialists led by Narendra Modi who are eyeing the Narmada waters for their industries, water parks and golf courses. The gap between the rhetoric and the actions of the Court could not be more yawning.

Meanwhile, as the Narmada oustees were being submerged without rehabilitation, a massive programme of urban displacement of slum dwellers without rehabilitation was being carried out in Delhi and Bombay, also on the orders of the High Courts. Sometimes on the applications of upper middle class colonies, sometimes on their own, the Courts have been issuing a spate of orders for clearing slums by bulldozing the jhuggis on them, on the ground that they are on public land. Some of this is being done with the tacit approval of the government, such as the slums on the banks of the Yamuna which are being cleared for making way for the constructions for the Commonwealth games. And all this, without even issuing notices to the slum dwellers, in violation of the principles of natural justice.

This was not all. The Court’s relentless assaults on the poor continued with the Supreme Court ordering the eviction of Hawkers from the streets of Bombay and Delhi. Again, turning their backs on Constitution bench judgements of the Court that Hawkers have a fundamental right to hawk on the streets, which could however be regulated, the Court now observed that streets exist primarily for traffic. They thus ordered the Municipality and the police to remove the “unlicenced hawkers” from the streets of Delhi. All this again without any notice or hearing to the hawkers. This effectively meant that almost all the more than 1.5 lakh hawkers would be placed at the mercy of the authorities, since less than 3 percent had been given licences.
More recently, the Delhi High Court has ordered the removal of rickshaws from the Chandni Chowk area, ostensively to pave the way for CNG buses. This order will not only deprive tens of thousands of rickshaw pullers of a harmless and environmentally friendly source of livelihood, it will also cause enormous inconvenience to tens of thousands of commuters who use that mode of transport.

Several recent judgements of the court have grossly diluted the various labour laws which were enacted to protect the rights of workers. The government has been wanting to dilute these laws for bringing about what they call “labour reforms”, in line with the new economic policies, but they have been unable to do so because of political opposition. The courts have thus stepped in to do what the government cannot do politically. They have not only diluted the protection afforded to workmen by various laws but have openly stated that the Court’s interpretation of the Laws must be in line with the government’s new economic policy- a fantastic proposition which means that the executive government can override parliamentary legislation by executive policy. The same proposition was enunciated by the Supreme Court in the Mauritius double taxation case, where the court said that the government can by executive notification give a tax holiday to Mauritius based companies, even though it is well settled that tax exemptions can only be given by the Finance Act which has to be passed by Parliament. Thus we find that the Courts are becoming a convenient instrument for the government to bypass Parliament and implement executive policy which is in violation of even Parliamentary legislation. This congruence of interest between the executive and the courts is most common when it comes to policies which are designed to benefit the wealthy elite.

One important reason why the court can do such things is because it is completely unaccountable. The executive government must seek reelection every 5 years which acts as a restraint on its anti poor policies. The court has no such restraint. There is no disciplinary authority over judges, with the system of impeachment having been found to be completely impractical. On top of this, the Supreme Court has by a self serving judgement removed judges from accountability from even criminal acts by declaring that no criminal investigation can be conducted against judges without the prior approval of the Chief Justice of India. This has resulted in a situation where no criminal investigation has been conducted against any judge in the last 15 years since this judgement despite common knowledge of widespread corruption in the judiciary. Even serious public criticism and scrutiny of the judiciary has been effectively barred by the threat of contempt of Court. And now, they have effectively declared themselves as exempt from even the right to information Act. Is it surprising then that they suffer from judicial arrogance which enables them to deliver such judgements.

This has bred and is continuing to breed enormous resentment among the poor and the destitute. Feeling helpless and abandoned, nay violated by every organ of the State, particularly the judiciary, many are committing suicides, but some are taking to violence. That explains the growing cadres of the Maoists who now control many districts and even States like Chhatisgarh. The government and the ruling establishment thinks that they can deal with this menace by stongarm military methods. That explains why the government relies more and more on the advice of former cops like Gill and Narayanan and why there is talk of using the Army and Air Force against the Maoists. Tribals in Chhattisgarh are being forced to join a mercenary army funded by the State by the name of Salva Judum to fight the Maoists. But all this will breed more Maoists. No insurrection bred out of desperation can be quelled by strongarm tactics. The very tactics breed more misery and desperation and will push more people to the Maoists.

Unless urgent steps are taken to correct the course that the elite establishment of this country is embarked upon, we will soon have an insurgency on our hands which will be impossible to control. Then, when the history of the country’s descent towards violence and chaos is written, the judiciary of the country can claim pride of place among those who speeded up this process.
We desperately and urgently need a new vision for the country as well as for the judiciary. We need to rediscover and perhaps reinvent the concept of the State as a welfare State. Our judiciary was created by the British who created it mainly to protect the interests of the empire. That is one of the reasons why it in inaccessible to the common people. We need to reinvent the judiciary in line with a new vision for India. A judiciary which will really be people friendly, which can be accessed without the mediation of professional lawyers and which will consider it its mission to protect the rights of the poor. Unless we can demonstrate the capacity to form that vision and translate in into action, we are headed for serious trouble.

US companies target India’s $50-billion nuke programme

Financial Express, December 01, 2006

MUMBAI, NOV 30: US companies involved in nuclear energy are bullish over the approval to the Indo-US civil nuclear deal by the Senate, and indicated that they would like to participate in India’s $50-billion programme for nuclear capacity addition of 50,000 mw by 2030.

The state-run Nuclear Power Corporation of India Ltd (NPCIL), which runs nuclear projects with the capacity of 3,900 mw, has already lined up a capacity addition of 20,000 mw by 2020.

US nuclear companies participating in the US delegation, led by under secretary for commerce Franklin Lavin, also stated that India’s skilled manpower could be of great use in building new nuclear plants in the US and other parts of the world.

The companies are involved in constructing nuclear plants and supplying nuclear fuel. They claimed that the per-unit tariff from the plants would be quite cheap. In the US, it is 2 cents a kw, while NPCIL sells it below Re 1 in India.

Companies like Westinghouse Electric, Transco products Inc, BWXT, WM Mining, Fluor and Thorium Power on Thursday said their mission to develop and nurture bonds with the Indian firms would lead to partnerships, enabling them to tap new opportunities in the sector.

Ron Somers, president of US India Business Council said these companies would also discuss the regulatory regime with the NPCIL and the Atomic Energy Commission, during their meetings slated for Friday and Saturday.

Craig S Hansen, vice-president of BWXT said the US proposed to increase its share of nuclear energy from 20% of the country's total power capacity to 30% by 2030, and it would not be possible for the American companies alone to achieve this.

“India, with experienced manpower and experts, can play a major role in the US capacity addition. Besides, US companies associated in the supply of nuclear fuel and reactors will play a key role in India’s capacity addition. On top of it, both Indian and US companies can join hands to meet the nuclear energy requirement in the underdeveloped countries,” he added.

Wallace M Mays, president of WM Mining, which is involved in uranium mining and supply, said his company has already entered into an agreement with Hyderabad-based Nuclear Fuel Centre for supply of uranium for pressurised heavy water reactors.

Wiliam E Cummins, vice-president of Westinghouse said India would not face any funding problems for the proposed capacity addition.

“Already NPCIL has announced it can add at least 1,000 mw, annually, through its internal accruals. In addition to this, NPCIL has also indicated that it will explore market options also,” he added.

Indians want to go to US and England : VS Naipaul

Indo-Asian News Service

Brussels, November 8, 2006

Nobel laureate VS Naipaul believes that India is heading for a cultural clash between the city-dwellers and the village population.

People in cities are turning their backs to Indian civilisation. They want green cards. They want to migrate. They want to go to England. They want to go to the US, Naipaul told media persons at the Centre For Fine Arts, Bozar, here.

"There is a fracture at this moment of great hope for India. A fracture in the country itself. It is possibly quite dangerous at the moment," and added that the consequences "could be a very radical kind of revolution - village against city".

However, at the same time, Naipaul said that India "is a very dynamic, moving culture."

Naipaul aired similar views during the reading and interview session for the general public as part of the ongoing India Festival at the Bozar Saturday evening.

During the press meeting, Naipaul held forth on various issues, reports INEP agency.

"There is no tradition of reading in India. There is no tradition of contemporary literature," he claimed. It was only in Bengal that there was a kind of renaissance and a literary culture, he said and added: "But in the rest of India until quite recently people had no idea what books were for."

Reading in India, he claimed, was limited to books on wise sayings.

According to him,

"Indians have no regard for museums"

He recalled that Rabindranath Tagore's house and university has been pillaged.

"They stole even his Nobel medal", he said.

"The idea of a museum is a Western idea. It's not an Indian idea. The idea is that these things are old, they are finished."

Naipaul asserted that at the end the British rule in India was "very good."

"They gave a lot back to India. All the institutions that now work in India were given by the British. So the British period was not that bad."

He dismissed Mahatma Gandhi's book "Indian home rule" published in 1909 as an "absurdity." He said:

"Its an absurdity. He knows nothing. He said he wrote it in two weeks. He is against everything that is modern in 1909."

Denouncing multiculturalism as a bad, destructive idea, he said: "Multiculturalism is a very much left-wing idea that gained currency about 20 years ago. It's very destructive about the people it is meant to defend."

He cited the example of Britain where he said there was a large immigrant population, "many of them bending the laws to be able to stay in England."

"They wish to do that but at the same time they don't wish to enter the culture. I think that is parasitic and awful."

He defended the caste system in India, arguing that "caste is a great internal series of friendly societies and in bad times it kept the country going. But people don't understand this. It has to be rethought and a new way of looking at it.

"In India it is having trouble at the moment because it rules politics. Foolish people think that the upper castes are oppressing the lower caste. It is the other way," he said noting that lower castes have reserved seats in education and employment.

Asked if he felt like a European, he replied: "No, not at all. One doesn't have to be one thing or the other. One can be many things at the same time."

Could he live in India?

Naipaul paused for a moment, but his wife Nadira replied:

"Yes, quite happily, if we didn't have a cat. Our cat is an English cat. It is hard for it to live in India, but we can."

Naipaul added: "If you would have asked me this question fifty years ago, I had to say 'out of the question' It would have been impossible. So things are moving and changing all the time."

FBI to investigate role of right wing hindu elements role in disrupting Sikh Muslim relations

By Rob Young, Marysville-Yuba City, California

Wednesday, November 01, 2006

The FBI is helping investigate a threat to destroy the Sikh temple on Tierra Buena Road, Sutter County Sheriff Jim Denney said Tuesday. Copies of the written threat were received in the mail by the sheriff, the Yuba City Police Department.

The threat came as the Sikh Temple prepares for its 27th annual festival and parade through Yuba City on Sunday, an event attended by thousands of Sikhs from around the state and country.

Ed Vasquez, spokesman for the San Jose-based Sikh Communication Council, said local Sikhs and Muslims have had a good working relationship. The council was founded after 9-11 in response to violence against Sikhs whose beards and turbans caused them to be mistaken for Muslims. Sikh leaders suspect the role of right wing hindutva elements behind the hoax letter. Most of the muslims in the area is of Pakistani origin, but do have a very cordial relation with Sikhs.

When an arson fire destroyed the Islamic Center's mosque in 1994, local Sikhs contributed money to help rebuild it, said Abdul Kabir Krambo, spokesman for the Yuba City Islamic Center. Relations between local Sikhs and Muslims are generally good, “depending on who you talk to,” said Krambo.

“Oh, great,” said ,Krambo about the letter. The center's mosque is near the Sikh Temple on Tierra Buena Road. Krambo called the threat “just awful. As if we didn't have enough problems already.”

“We hope this doesn't mean problems between Sikhs and Muslims,” he said.

Threats of violence are inconsistent with the “Sufi-oriented” Muslim religion practiced at the Yuba City mosque, he said.

Krambo said he would warn his Pakistani Muslim friends to be on the lookout for outsiders or “anyone talking crap.”

Bains, Krambo and law enforcement officials said they were unaware of any actual groups called the Muslim Union or Taliban Group or of a Taliban leader being sentenced in India.

Karen Ernst, FBI spokeswoman in Sacramento, said law enforcement agencies don't consider the threat credible but are not totally dismissing it. “We're going to be investigating if there are leads to be followed up on,” said Ernst. “The main thing is that people should feel like they can go about their business and participate without being too terribly worried.”

The letter, which purports to be from the “Muslim Union” and is signed by the “Taliban group,” also contains a threat to destroy the Golden Temple in India because “our leader in India punish by sikh ladi judge.”

The Golden Temple is the holiest Sikh site in India and Muslims and Sikhs enjoy cordial relationship. “We also know they have Sikh temple in Yuba City and they are going to be celebrate Sikh guru birthday the first day of November. We are going to destroy the sikh temple in Yuba City on that day,” the letter went on.

Didar Singh Bains, chairman of the annual Sikh event, said temple leaders were “kind of surprised” by the threat but aren't varying their plans, except for adding extra security.

Since Sept. 11, it's hard to tell which threats are credible, said Bains.

“We are alert,” he said. Denney, who met with temple leaders, said the threat is being taken seriously because it deals with international terrorism.

The largest mass migration in history is unfolding in India

Suman Guha Mozumder in New York, Rediff.COM

October 19, 2006

Wellknown journalist P Sainath told an audience in New York on Wednesday that while food courts are springing up almost everywhere in India's big city malls catering to the palates of well-off Indians, an average family in the country's rural areas has less to eat today than it had six years ago.

"The average rural family today is eating nearly 100 grams less of foodgrains than six or seven years ago and the average per capita availability of food grains has declined sharply. In 1991, when reforms began, availability of food per person was 510 grams, today it has fallen to 437 grams," Sainath said.

"At a time when people of our class are eating foods like we never had in our lives before, India's agriculture sector is in the midst of a collapse," Sainath said while speaking on 'India's Brave New World: The Agrarian Crisis, Farm Suicides and the Wages Of Inequality,' hosted by the South Asian Journalists Association in New York.

Giving snapshots of what he described was the spectacular inequality that has been growing faster in the past 15 years in India than at any time since the country was colonised by the British, Sainath said while India has eight billionaires and hundreds of millionaires, the country ranks 127th in the Human Development Report Index. Labour productivity has been 84 per cent in a period of reform during which real wages dropped to 24 per cent.

"So, on the one hand we have this incredible emerging tiger economy. . . (on the other hand) it should be remembered that the incredible tiger economy produces a very shameful kind of human development indicators," Sainath said.

"The life expectancy of average Indians is lower than people in Mongolia or Tajikistan. Per capita GDP might be booming at a growth rate which is astonishing but our per capita GDP is lower than that of Nicaragua, Vanuatu or Indonesia and the farm sector is in the midst of most incredible crisis that you can imagine," he said.

He said the Vidarbha region in Maharashtra has seen 968 suicides by farmers, including 120 on an average every month in the last three months. In March, Parliament was told by Union Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar that in the last ten years over 120,000 farmers have committed suicide in India.

"Suicides by farmers today are actually a symptom of a much wider crisis in India's farm and agricultural sector," Sainath said, adding that this was the result not of a natural calamity or some accident but a systematic and structured move to shift to corporate farming from small family farming practices as well as mindless deregulation that has ruined the farming community. "You get a picture of India in Vidarbha."

Without saying so in as many words, Sainath ripped apart the claims of the present and the previous governments that the country as a whole is making progress and reaping the benefits of development for all sections of the people.

Reeling out figures and statistics from the National Sample Survey Organisation as well as other government outfits, he said, "The claims that India is shining are true. I believe it, although it is happening for just the ten percent of the population."

"If you talk about the top section of the population, the benchmark today are the US, Western Europe, Japan and Australia, but if you look at the bottom part of the population, the benchmark is sub-Saharan Africa, even there some of the countries provide a better level of nutrition to their people than India does," he said.

Sainath -- the first reporter in the world to win Amnesty International's Global Human Rights Journalism Award in its inaugural year, 2000, and who was awarded the Judge's Prize in the Harry Chapin Media Awards in the newspaper category in 2006 -- said that for any real solution of the farmers' problems, the long-term land-related issues need to be solved.

"It is an explosive situation in India today as far as agriculture is concerned and the farmers are concerned with the employment rates in rural areas being the lowest since the late 1990s. We keep hearing about huge displacements due to dam-building or canal-digging, but let me tell you the biggest displacement is in agriculture where the largest mass migration in the history is beginning to unfold following displacement of people from their land," he said.

GDP walas misleading world : Rise of China used to make India slave of America

October 2006, Dalit Voice

Judging a country’s growth and its “economic development”, based on GDP, may give a fairly accurate picture but in this hierarchically arranged casteist “Hindu India” built on the ascending order of reverence and descending degree of contempt it will present only a misleading if not a totally false picture.

Because India’s upper castes, forming the apex of the caste pyramid (Hinduism), sucking the blood of the entire Bahujan Samaj (85%) have become stinking rich. We know that their filthy wealth triggers stock market boom, lavish lifestyle and unending demand for goods and services. True.

But, please note, those suffering from this bursting wealth are a micro-minority of 15% who are also directly causing the pauperisation of the rest of the population (Bahujans).

This is India and its reality. How then the growing wealth of its ruling class can be called the growth of entire India? The upper caste rich are no doubt galloping but the rest are shrinking — if not collapsing. This is what is happening today.

India not a “nation”: Therefore, GDP will not and cannot present a true picture of India’s growth — if we have to be sincere to ourselves. When over 85% of India’s 1,000 odd million population is in great pain how can it present a picture of health, wealth and happiness?

Our GDPwalas are deliberately misleading the world.

India is not a “nation”. It is a country of several warring “nations”. A small part of this multi-national country comprising the upper castes (Hindus) — who themselves are not a single nation — may be jumping with joy after stealing the wealth and exploiting the innocent “lower castes”.

How can the ill-gotten wealth of this tiny patch of population be taken as the growing affluence of India as a whole?

This GDP is utter humbug.

PM bluffing: There is a mania among Western writers to boast that India is tailing China in economic upsurge and the two Asian giants are rising, the balance of economic power in the world is shifting from West to Asia and the two countries are to be watched. Nonsense.

As India’s original inhabitants and partners in the country’s socio-economic-cultural struggle we don’t agree with this tendency to put India just behind China. We are not able to understand how these economic pundits can club India with China. Yes. China is galloping. And enough has been said in DV itself quoting reliable sources. But what about India?

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Finance Minister Chidambaram are bluffing the world by using India’s GDP figures. The GDP calculators, who belong to the (upper caste) Brahminical ruling class, are juggling with figures and thus misleading the world.

Brahminical people packed in the World Bank and IMF are misguiding the Western people to put India immediately behind China in GDP growth.

Can we take GDP as the real, genuine indicator of India’s growth? When over 85% of India continues to be still deprived, how can the skeleton be called a muscleman?

Bulging stomach: Those who depend upon GDP figures have not taken into account the state of the 85% of the country’s deprived population comprising its SC/ST/BCs (65%) and Muslim/Christian/Sikh (20%). Their GDP figures are based on the rising riches of the 15% upper castes whose stomachs are bulging.

Yes. They are drinking more, eating more, dancing more, sleeping more, buying more. They may also constitute a staggering 15-odd crore out of India’s 100-odd crore population. This 15 crore is no ordinary population. It has enormous purchasing capacity. In some cases each upper caste family has more than one car.

This 15% upper caste rulers hide themselves under a confusing name called the “middle class” — though in fact it is the topmost class — the ruling class of India.

The Manmohan Singh-Chidambaram-Ahluwalia ruling trio is boasting about India’s burgeoning GDP without disclosing the fact that the other 85% is sinking in debt and penury. (V.T. Rajshekar, Development Redefined, DSA-2006).

Two reasons for China’s rise: It is this ruling class economists encouraged by the trio are putting India immediately behind China to deceive the outside world that India is also fast catching up with China. There is no bigger falsehood than this.

China galloped for two basic reasons:

(1) It is a communist country which has abolished god and religion while protecting minority religions like Islam and Christianity. But India has 330 million gods and millions of godmen all busy converting “Hindus” into intoxicated monkeys.

(2) In China, there is no right to property which is owned exclusively by the state. India’s reigning Hindu religion gives the highest value to property because its ruling Brahminical castes are the biggest property owners. That is why the govt. in India can take no step towards economic advancement because the right to property blocks the passage.

These are the two basic causes that serve as a grindstone round the neck of Hindu India keeping its population under perpetual superstition, karma theory confusion, endless litigation causing frequent physical violence resulting in huge waste of time in its Hindu religiosity — the sole purpose of which is to keep Muslims and Christians as the target of violence.

How can such a country be put along with China which is a revolutionary country?

India made enemy of China: The bid to put India behind China is done consciously knowing full well that India is rotten to the core but hiding the reality under concocted GDP statistics.

The Western leaders and media know the truth but they are hiding the truth of India’s gloom and doom. (DV Edit April 1, 2006: “Defeated in anti-Islamic war, US shifts focus on China: India joins clash of civilisations?”).

The rise of China has actually helped the West to make India a slave of America and even enemy of China.

GDP-mongers in their enthusiasm to promote their jatwalas have actually harmed the country. We have to pay a heavy price for selling the country to America and converting India as enemy of China.

To repeat, GDP is not a real genuine indicator to decide a county’s health and happiness. Particularly in the case of India. India is already a failed state if social indicators are taken as the deciding factor. In the field of health, infant mortality, education, infrastructure, housing, agriculture, employment China is miles and miles ahead of India. Corruption at the top is rampant. Caste system has made India a sick country. Persecution of Muslims, Christians and Dalits has made it the world’s most violent country.

Now by jumping into the American bandwagon, India’s rulers have further harmed the country.

GDP walas are warned.

New Delhi: The New Capital of Capitalism

Thomas Bobinger, 08 Oct, 2006

The natural vegetation in New Delhi is the highway. Grey and dusty it thrives in the city despite being plagued by a myriad of potholes which cover it like a rash. When the monsoon starts in July the mega city Delhi turns into a little ocean. Delhi which harbors around 15 million inhabitants and thus outnumbers the entire population of the Netherlands becomes a vast lake of dirty, brown and stinking water in which children take a bath and play football and businessmen complain about their drenched cell phones and wet Armani-suits.

When the rain starts the streets are teeming with little yellow and green three-wheelers, the so-called “tuk-tuk”. Like bugs they swarm the city, ploughing their way through the two foot high water and only too often the engine denies its loyalty and the driver gets stuck in the middle of the water masses. As a tourist these tuk-tuks are both a blessing and a curse. On the one hand they can provide cheap transportation. On the other hand, the drivers always try to cheat and overcharge the tourist. Traveling through Delhi thus becomes a stressful adventure in which the game of negotiating about the price is repeated over and over again. Ironically, it is not only the tourists that are cheated in this society. 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. India is a culture of money-makers and the bureaucracy is driven by corruption. Yet, India is also a proud nation, aware of its 5000 year old history and cultural heritage. It is proud of its diversity and celebrates it under the motto: unity in diversity, something that we use to hear from the EU as well. American cultural imperialism had to adapt to the conditions it found in India. Mac Donald and Subway exist, but they offer a specialized range of food, that excludes beef and pork.

Foreigners often feel like celebrities in India. One cannot go three steps without being harassed by an Indian businessman who wants to sell something or who wants to show a place where he would get a commission if you buy something. Children usually awe at the sight of a white man and the thought of his comparable richness. Indeed Delhi displays like any other city a spectrum of wealth that ranges from utterly poor to amazingly rich. Whereas one runs the risk of being electrocuted in certain areas because of poor cable isolation which cause certain water-filled potholes to become death traps, other parts like the diplomatic quarter have gotten rid of the straying dogs, the unemployed who sleep on the side of the street, ameliorated their infrastructure and removed the street-roaming cows. In fact the holy female cow runs freely through the poorer parts of the city. I never imagined cows to be city-animals, but instead of fleeing to the countryside, they wander undisturbed into shops, houses, and rest on the middle of the street. Apart from being holy, they also function as the city’s waste disposal system. As dustbins have failed to make their way into the city infrastructure people continue throwing their waste on the street. It is the cows who eat not only the rotten fruits but also the plastic bags. Bessy and Berta for instance, the two white cows which love to linger in front of my hotel manage to keep the street marvelous.

And then there is of course the resurgence in national pride in India. If Russia can claim to be a great economic power with 6% of growth in GDP, then India with its 8% rightly feels on track on its way to become a major global player. Among the people this shows in their new found confidence in the English language, a legacy from the British. For decades they have suffered from an inferiority complex because they could not get their pronunciation right. Nowadays, Indians are aware that they can beat booming China and Korea in an English competition at any time. Especially proud on their IT-sector they refuse to call their country a developing one. The sexual culture has become more open towards gay people in the recent years. Despite the act of homosexuality being prohibited by law, gay parties are thriving, people become openly transgender, and one can find gay magazines at newspaper stands. The attitude towards homosexuality is basically the same as in the West: As long as it does not affect someone directly no one will care. Hence, when a prince in Rajasthan outed himself, his family was quick to dispossess him as their reputation was directly threatened. Indeed, the northern Indians form a classical macho-culture. Rickshaw drivers stop to show tourists pictures from the Kamasutra, and when you ask them why everybody is wearing a mustache you get as an answer that it is manly. Sometimes you feel like being sent back to the 80s in Europe, with people wearing tight jeans, long hair and mustaches. For Indians it is their family, their well-being and their body which they appreciate the most, all the more as the threat of violence always looms in the background. Terrorist attacks have not subsided since the India-Pakistan relationship thawed. The various separatist groups and religious fundamentalists make the people live in fear. Security guards in front of the richer peoples’ houses and at every entrance to the New Delhi Metro are a sign of the government’s awareness of their vulnerability.

All in all Delhi is a city that can teach you to become arrogant, cruel, selfish and indifferent. You can learn to ignore the herds of begging children and disabled old man just like the Indians themselves disregard them. You can learn to become callous in the way you drive and risk a smashing accident just to not let the other driver overtake you. At the same time Delhi can teach you to become compassionate and thankful for your own life, for the human rights you enjoy back home, for the clean air that you breathe and the fact that you can sue a hotel if there are mice running all over your stuff. It is all up to oneself and as a hotel boy once told me: If you don’t look out for yourself, nobody will.

Article published in "A Different View", a publication of the International Association for Political Science Students (October 2006)

India's bureaucracy is a bummer for the boom

June 26, 2006, The Age, Australia

Eric Ellis is South-East Asia correspondent for Fortune

Economic growth is yet to improve the ground-level conditions for business in India, writes Eric Ellis.

THAT India is booming is beyond dispute — 10 per cent growth last year to rival China, $200 billion in foreign reserves. Next stop, with The Bomb and a huge consumer market in hand, will be permanent membership of the UN Security Council.

You'll see its emergence as a global economic power; its start-up companies described in rapturous terms by the media. World leaders will exhort their businesses to harness its energy.

But what type of boom is it? After three weeks travelling and reporting around a country I know reasonably well and enjoy very much, I've concluded it's an uneven one, and even a dangerous one.

Let's start with flying, or using an Indian airport, as business travellers do. I write this column sitting on the floor of Indira Gandhi International Airport in Delhi, delayed four hours for a flight. The filthy airport, regarded as one of India's better ones, may be a disgrace to her legacy but I think it's a fair reflection of it.

The Indian boom is a product of overdue deregulation, kick-started in 1991 by the current Prime Minister Manmohan Singh when he was finance minister.

It was a wonderful thing after 40 years of the so-called "licence raj", the muddle-headed socialism the first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, instigated and his daughter Indira did little to reform.

Governments administering the licence raj provided permits to a few companies to produce a single product or service. It held India back for years, created monopolies, bad products, rampant corruption and woeful infrastructure.

The so-called Bombay Club of tycoons got fat, lazy and protected. The system also discouraged entrepreneurship — one reason why Indians are among the world's most numerate expatriates, seeking to make their fortunes.

To foreign tourists, Hindustan Motors' Ambassador car, one of the motor world's heaviest vehicles, is a picturesque throwback to a colonialesque 1950s Morris Oxford. But to forward-looking Indians, it's an indictment on 50 years of the Indian car industry. Yes, there have been new cars in recent years, many of them sub-standard cast-offs from exhausted Western moulds as the industry deregulated.

But would you buy a Tata Indica? Ratan Tata, lionised by India's media as the father of its modern car industry, drives a Mercedes, or rather, has one driven for him.

Now Indira and Nehru's licence raj is history, the situation has completely reversed. New car models appear weekly, and the Indian airline industry is now a private free-for-all. But the creaking Indian bureaucracy can't keep up — it's too slow and cumbersome to improve the hopelessly undermanned and overcrowded airports and roads. The Indian military is also an obstacle, refusing to release its paranoiac grip over airspace, forcing civilian flights to follow tight and increasingly crowded routes lest someone steal a glance at a base.

Some $100 billion has been slated for infrastructure improvement, but there's not much evidence of it, as start-ups arrive daily. Delhi is supposed to be getting a new airport in time for the 2010 Commonwealth Games. It is now 2006, and this is India, so don't count on it.

The reason why I'm on the floor of the airport is that after an airport-wide search, I've finally found a "live" electricity socket to plug in my laptop. The other 15 sockets tested didn't have any current.

I got here from Kathmandu last night on a state-owned Indian Airlines flight that was delayed two hours, because of security checks, Nepal being in the grip of a Maoist insurgency that's no friend of Delhi. Few travellers quibble with the post-9/11 security burdens of air travel, but if the plane is scheduled to leave at 1700, why not do the security two hours earlier? That two-hour flight was one of the most dangerous I've ever taken, but most passengers didn't know that. About halfway through the flight, over Indian airspace, I saw a blue-liveried plane streak past the right wingtip, no more than 300 metres away. The internationally accepted distance standard is about 500 metres vertically and about five kilometres horizontally. This near-miss was more horizontal than vertical. Approaching Delhi, there were two alarming, aborted attempts at landing. The pilot explained that the airport was busy, and I'm not surprised. More than a dozen new airlines have been launched in recent years, overburdening an airport infrastructure that was already mayhem when there were just Indian Airlines, its big sister Air India and the relatively new Jet Airways in the market. Now there are carriers owned by a brewer (Kingfisher), two by textile companies (Go Air and Paramount) and one by a public relations agency (Magic Air).

The one new flyer that sprang from aviation roots, Air Deccan, is regarded by Indians as the worst of the lot. But what does a brewer bring to the aviation sector? Can you imagine flying VB Airlines? Or Antz Pantz Air?

Technology also has issues. "Incredible" India's image today is one of cutting-edge innovation. One of the best products I've seen is a nifty Reliance Industries broadband laptop card from India that connects to mobile cell towers. But try logging on to the net conventionally in Bangalore, India's Silicon Valley, which advertises itself as having the world's fastest broadband — "warp speed" — or being trapped in darkness in the elevator of an average but overbooked hotel you've paid $US200 a night for. Yes, Indian engineers are performing programming miracles in the back offices of Bangalore's myriad companies at a tenth the cost — and with twice the education — of their Western counterparts, but their skills aren't being evenly spread, or perhaps they are just reserved for penny-pinching Western clients, and dollar-hungry India Inc.

This flowering of entrepreneurship has made Indians richer than they've ever been. I'm fascinated by it, I love India and I think it will muddle through. But as I fly and drive around it, I just hope its long-overdue boom doesn't kill me.

Shining India - The False Facade of A Nation

June 16, 2006

John Pilger is an award-winning journalist and documentary filmmaker and one of the truly great ones of our time. For nearly 50 years, he's courageously and brilliantly done what too few others in his profession, in fact, do - his job. John has also been a war correspondent, is the author of 10 books and is best known in his adopted country Great Britain for his investigative documentaries exposing the crimes of US and Western imperialism.

Freedom Next Time is John's newest book just published and the fifth one of his I've read. The others were magnificent, and when I learned a new one was due out, I couldn't wait to read it knowing it would be vintage Pilger and not to be missed. I wasn't disappointed and am delighted to share with readers what it's about. What else, as John himself says in his opening paragraph: "This book is about empire, its facades and the enduring struggle of people for their freedom. It offers an antidote to authorized versions of contemporary history that censor by omission and impose double standards." Indeed it does, and John devotes his book to exposing the crimes of empire in five countries. I'll cover each one in a separate section.

Chapter Three: Shining India - The False Facade of A Nation Where Over One Third of the People Live in Desperate Poverty

John explains how India is a nation of stark contrasts, and the country's richest city, Bombay, may show it best. At one extreme is a thriving business community of maritime trade, merchant banks and two stock exchanges. At the other is a city of one million humans per square mile and typified by the "rail roads" district foreigners and outsiders know nothing about. It teems with desperate people living under conditions "barely describable - a packing case for a home with sewage "ebbing and flowing in the monsoon." John asks how can a nation with memories of "great popular struggle" and democracy allow this. The answer is its leaders chose to sell its sovereignty to the neoliberal model of a global economy dominated by giant transnational corporations, especially those in the US.

The rise of the Hindu nationalist (proto fascist) BJP-led government in the 1990s accelerated the process. It removed the barriers in place to protect Indian industry and opened the country to invasion by foreign predatory corporations that took full advantage. The result is a nation that could be a poster child for how an adopted economic model got it all wrong and caused mass human misery. It's seen in an increase in "absolute poverty" to over one third of the population or about 364 million people. John explains that although India's growth rate is high, "this is about capital, not labour, about liberated profits, not people." He also exposes the myth of India being a high-tech juggernaut. While the nation has risen to "pre-eminence" in computer and other technology, the new "technocratic class" is tiny. Also, the so-called consumer boom has benefitted at most about 15% of the population.

Over two thirds of the people live in rural villages and depend on small scale agriculture for their livelihood and survival. These people have been devastated by the nation's embrace of the Western economic model. It's caused a hidden epidemic of suicides among them because they can't compete with agribusiness. Those opting for a less severe solution are forced off their land in a futile attempt to seek refuge among the teeming masses in the cities. The result is growing poverty, deprivation and extreme human misery on a massive scale. Because of its huge population of over one billion, India stands out as a warning of the kind of future people everywhere will face unless a way is found to reverse a failed economic model that enriches the few, devastates the many and is strangling the ability of the planet to continue sustaining the abuse afflicted on it.

A Summation

John has once again written a brilliant and magnificent book. Everyone should read it to learn from this great man what was and is ongoing in the five countries he chose to cover from among the many he knows well from having witnessed events around the world first-hand over his long career. He explains what few others do or would dare to help us understand how peoples' lives everywhere have been affected by the US economic model that's based on militarism and imperial expansion to control the world's markets, essential resources and cheap labor with no challengers to its dominance allowed. That's one message the book imparts. But it also breathes a special hope that the human spirit is indomitable and will find a way to overcome adversity and oppression and be able to endure. John believes a time of deliverance is ahead because committed people everywhere will never give up working for it.

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago a visit his blog site at http://sjlendman.blogspot.com

Are Hard Drugs Hitting a New High in India?

Tuesday, 13 June 2006

A lurid political family's scandal has many wondering if an upper-class drug scene is an inevitable consequence of the country's economic boom

By BENJAMIN SIEGEL/NEW DELHI

Time.COM, Monday, Jun. 12, 2006

The tabloidesque story is straight out of Hollywood: a politician's son is wheeled into the hospital after a night of partying, only a month after his father, a leading politician, was gunned down by his brother. The doctors admit that the prodigal son's blood is swimming with traces of cocaine, opiates, barbiturates and cannabis, among other substances. It's on the cover of every paper, with one daily dedicating half its front page to a graphic-novel style recreation of the fateful, bacchanalian night of partying.

But this isn't L.A. It's New Delhi, and the patient is Rahul Mahajan, son of Pramod, former leader of the opposition Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party, who was killed in a family dispute last month. In this conservative city of 14 million, corruption scandals may be routine, but designer drugs have historically seemed as easy to find as steak.

And yet, for the past week, the Indian media have been playing up the Mahajan scandal as emblematic of a hidden hard drug scourge among India's elite. Exposés detail how cocaine is purportedly all the rage among chic Delhi denizens, with posh South Delhi neighborhoods singled out as coke, acid, and ecstasy hotbeds. Journalists routinely quote anonymous socialites, designers, and models on the drug scene at clubs, raves, and even weddings. One paper went so far as to list Bollywood stars living in Bombay who are rumored to have hefty coke habits. A particularly juicy allegation making the rounds is that wealthy Indians frequently use 500 rupee notes — worth around ten dollars — to snort the stuff.

All the media attention has left a few lone voices wondering if a high-class drug scene is an inevitable consequence of India's recent economic growth and newfound wealth. It's no secret that there are drug-fueled raves on the outskirts of Delhi, and just last week, Indian authorities seized 200 kilograms of cocaine from a South African ship in a Bombay port. Authorities and journalists alike point fingers at India's Nigerian community, who they claim arrive on easily-obtainable student visas before beginning to deal cocaine and heroin to the wealthy. In the capital, four cocaine busts have been made this year — after nine busts in the whole of 2005. But the number of arrests may soon grow in the wake of the Mahajan scandal.

Soft drugs traditionally don't raise too many eyebrows in India — a vast swath of the population, from government ministers to saffron-clad Hindu holy men, occasionally consume bhang, a potent and popular cannabis tincture. But India's wealthy have hitherto frowned upon hard drugs, looking upon them as the purvey of the country's poor. For years, India has grappled with "brown sugar" —low-grade heroin produced locally or imported from Afghanistan or Burma — that has left a trail of overdoses and HIV infections in its wake.

While scandal-watching in India can often seem like a national pastime, this recent, rather breathless coverage of the party drug scene conveys a naivete that is almost endearing. Journalists are reporting that heroin is usually snorted, and while it's strange that papers are printing cocaine's street price, what's stranger still is that their estimates are all over the place. One paper reported matter-of-factly that cocaine "makes one euphoric and enhances sexual prowess on consumption," and boasted that "one can dance all night long after consuming it."

Last year, after a cocaine bust in a swanky Delhi restaurant, a Narcotics Control Bureau officer confidently declared that most of the cocaine users in the capital are fashion designers and hairdressers. But in a country of a billion, with more and more money to spend, it's becoming very clear just how much bigger and more diverse the market for hard drugs really is.

Education barrier for India's poor

Tuesday, 09 May 2006

By Jill McGivering, BBC News, Delhi

It was a glamorous evening in one of Delhi's most exclusive venues.As the music played, the rich and fashionable gossiped and waiters moved through the crowd with silver trays of drinks and canapés.

Before dinner was served, the main lights dimmed and the master of ceremonies announced the star of the show, businessman Lovy Khosla.
Standing in a cascade of glitter, he launched his latest venture, Elvy - described as India's first lifestyle catalogue.

After the presentation, I asked Mr Khosla what kind of people he hoped would buy the bone china, platinum-stemmed wine glasses and other luxury catalogue items.

"Aspiring Indians", he said, "the new emerging middle-class".

He admitted the divide at the moment between rich and poor was huge - but eventually, he said, everyone in India would prosper.

'Brain industry'

At times, optimism like Mr Khosla's does seem justified.

More and more people nowadays have the means to buy the international goods now available in India's cities.

The IT shops I visited in Delhi, for example, were buzzing with all the latest technology.

The IT sector itself is still small but clearly booming, a key part of India's new wealth.

But there's a clear mismatch between the hinterland of rural unemployed and the IT sector's demand for educated workers.

Kiran Karnik, the President of India's National Association of Software and Service Companies, told me one of their biggest problems is finding enough suitable recruits, people with the right education and skills.

"You have a lot of people with minimal or sometimes no education," he said.

"And the industry we work in requires at least a certain minimum level of knowledge. It's not a brawn industry, it's a brain industry. That means we're looking for people who are by and large graduates."

But why, in a country of more than a billion people, are graduates relatively hard to find?

Why do about some 93% of Indians never progress beyond secondary school?

Poor education

I travelled by train into rural Uttar Pradesh, one of India's biggest and poorest states to see the education available for children in villages there.

I was taken to a small village by Sandeep Pandey, one of the founders of the educational charity Asha (Hope).

There I came across about 50 children, of all ages from about three to 15 years, sitting under the trees chanting their lessons.

They have to learn together like this because there is only one teacher.

There was also a government school nearby but some parents in the village complained that they did not send their children there because the standard was so low.

When I asked the children what they would like to do as adults, they crowded round, faces beaming.

"Teacher!" cried one. "Doctor," said another. They were full of enthusiasm. But privately Sandeep was pessimistic about their chances.

"The children saying they want to be doctors or teachers or engineers, they'd never be able to make it," he said. "In the end they'd end up being unemployed or underemployed."

Most of the children, he said, dropped out before they finished primary school.

Their parents knew they would eventually work on the land so more than a basic education seemed a waste of resources.

"The only hope," he said, "is that by learning to read or write, they will check corruption. We don't have any hope beyond that."

'Living hell'

Those who do leave the countryside without higher education, in the hope of finding greater opportunities in the cities, often end up living in slums.
I visited Banwal Nagar, a sprawling slum on the outskirts of Delhi, a labyrinth of narrow lanes with no running water, stinking open drains and massive overcrowding.

There I met Babloo, a shy 18-year-old who came here from a village in Uttar Pradesh a year ago.

He told me he came with his brother who is earning just enough as a tailor to feed them both.

Babloo said they were always hungry in the village, there was no work there. Now Babloo is helping out - unpaid - in a mechanic's shop, trying to learn the trade.

Sitting with us, listening to Babloo's hesitant story, was an old-timer in Banwal Nagar, Anrud Mandel, who came here 25 years ago.

I asked him if he thought Babloo and his brother had done the right thing in coming to Delhi.

His answer was emphatic: "No. Like all of us, he had to leave his village because there wasn't work there."

"But we'd all be better off in our villages if we could earn enough there to feed and clothe our children and ourselves."

He gestured to the conditions all around us, the air thick with flies. "This place is a living hell."

There is no doubt India's impressive economic growth is providing new opportunities.

But the challenge is finding ways to put them within the reach of the children in India's poorest villages.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/4916946.stm

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.

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."

Untouchability’ does not spare IAS officer

Wednesday, 15 March 2006

From Anand V Yamnur DH News Service Gulbarga:

Even when the news of Dalits being denied water from a community tank in a village of Koppal district looms in the minds of the people, a similar case has come to light in a village of Surpur taluk of Gulbarga district.

Even when the news of Dalits being denied water from a community tank in a village of Koppal district looms in the minds of the people, a similar case has come to light in a village of Surpur taluk of Gulbarga district.

A Dalit IAS officer has been denied permission by the forward castes to conduct the marriage of his kin in the community hall of a temple.

Amidst complaints that Dalits are still facing untouchability in their own villages, the latest victim of this practice is none other than Pre-University Examination Board Director Gonal Bheemappa.

Untouchability is apparently still in vogue in Devar Gonal village in Surpur taluk of the district, the native of Mr Gonal Bheemappa. The Mouneshwar temple in the village is a symbol of communal amity with both Hindus and Muslims converging to pray.

However, the managing committee of the temple denied permission to Mr Bheemappa to hold the marriage of his younger brother’s son in the community hall attached to the temple, just because he is a Dalit.

Common practice

When Mr Bheemappa's younger brother Kenchappa Gonal sought his help for conducting his son Hanumantha’s wedding in the temple community hall, the former telephoned temple managing committee members Basavalingayya and Basavanthrai, both teachers by profession, for permission.

It is a common practice in the village to hold marriages in the temple and the feast in the community hall.

However, permission was flatly refused and the marriage was held at Gopalaswami temple at Surpur.

This in spite of Mr Gonal Bheemappa being a donor of the temple, said his brother Kenchappa. Bheemappa is even denied entry into the temple and has to be content praying from outside.

Apart from Dalits being denied entry inside the Mouneshwar temple, separate cups and utensils are kept for Dalits at hotels in the village.

The same practice prevails in about 40 other villages in Surpur taluk.

Kenchappa told Deccan Herald that as he did not wish to make an issue, he did not repeat his request to the temple management or complain to Surpur Tahsildar, who is the Chairman of the temple managing committee. The temple comes under Muzrai department.