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UN Committee to probe Indian caste based hate crimes and apartheid

Byoliveridley

UN committee to review India’s compliance in preventing atrocities on Dalits

A special committee of United Nations working for elimination of all forms of racial discrimination will be reviewing India’s compliance of the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (ICERD) in the light of recent incidents of atrocities on Dalits, as highlighted in the Khairlanji killings.

This is sure to elicit howls of “colonialism”, “interference in internal affairs”, and “everybody does it” kind of protests. I am sure that some effigies will be burned. But the caste/class based oppression of disadvantaged communities is still very prevalent in large parts of rural India. Will some international light on this problem fix this? Probably not. But it may force the government to appoint yet another “commission” to study the problem, I guess.

How the other half lives has a good compilation of links on this issue.

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Arabic Strains of Islam hitting Kerala?

Byoliveridley

This can’t be great for Kerala, and something to keep an eye on.

Austere version of Islam finding a home in India – Los Angeles Times

The change came several years ago for Maryam Arrakal. Her husband brought a black, all-covering abaya back to this steamy, subtropical town from the desert sands of Saudi Arabia. It contrasted starkly with the pastel saris she normally wore. But in the 12 years that her husband, Kunchava, had been running a Saudi fabric shop, he had become detached from this melting pot of Muslims, Hindus and Christians, and more drawn to the Saudis’ strict version of Islam.

In general, a well written article. The combination of all the new money, influence and free time (when you come back “home”, you’re rich, you don’t have to work for a living) could be diverted to other things, but religion always seems to win out!

Kerala’s elders often boasted that Hindus, Muslims, Christians and a smattering of smaller religious groups were Indians first. Religious identity took a back seat to class interests. The Communist Party and the conservative Indian National Congress dominated elections.

This is the first time I have ever heard the Congress party being described as conservative. The author tries too hard to fit Indian politics into American clothes, and fails. The Congress is a left leaning market socialist party, if anything. Kerala’s politics are so far to the left of American politics that there is really no frame of reference.

“Muslims themselves are worried by the rise of the militant Islamic organizations,” said Ajai Mangat, Calicut correspondent for the Malayalam Manorama, the province’s largest daily newspaper. “If they become more powerful, the Hindu nationalists become more powerful.”

This is not the first time India has faced religious challenges, it won’t be the last time. I have faith in the giant melting pot to slowly rough the edges away. There will be tension, lives will be lost, as always, but life for the majority of Indians/Keralites will go on.

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India at 60 – A Public Health Perspective

Byoliveridley

Well, at least I don’t have to take part in endless parades and listen to speeches any more. But India turned 60 today, and the head of the Indian public health foundation takes stock, and it is sobering.

The Hindu : Persisting public health challenges

Recent health indicators in India are a cause for both celebration and concern. While life expectancy at birth has risen to 63 years, infant mortality rate (IMR) and maternal mortality rate (MMR) are still at unacceptably high levels (57 per 1000 and 301 per 100,000 live births respectively). There is widespread disparity among States with Kerala being the star performer. Within States, the rural areas are way behind the urban segments. Even as our economy has grown rapidly, the nutritional status of children has remained stunted, suggesting that wide income disparities are preventing the poor from becoming the beneficiaries of growth.

Yes, I be the killjoy.

More from Amartya Sen

There is reason enough to celebrate many things happening in India right now. But there are failures as well, which need urgent attention. For example, there is still widespread undernourishment in general and child undernutrition in particular–at a shocking level. The failures include, quite notably, the astonishing neglect of elementary education in India, with a quarter of the population–and indeed half the women–still illiterate.

The average life expectancy in India is still low (below 64) and infant mortality very high (58 per 1,000 live births). It is certainly true that India has narrowed the shortfall behind China in these areas–that is, in life expectancy and infant mortality–but there is still some distance to go for the country as a whole. The problems are gigantic in some of the more “backward” states like Bihar and Uttar Pradesh. And yet there are other states in which the Indian numbers are similar to China’s.

he goes on…

If India has to overcome these failures, it has to spend much more money on expanding the social infrastructure, particularly school education and basic health care. It also needs to spend much more in building up a larger physical infrastructure, including more roads, more power supplies and more water. In some of these, the private sector can help. But a lot more has to be spent on public services themselves, in addition to improving the system of delivery of these services, with more attention paid to incentives and disciplines, and better cooperation with the unions, consumer groups and other involved parties.

Ah, basic and boring infrastructure building!

More on Terrorism in India

Byoliveridley

The trend towards the radicalisation of the Indian Muslim youth started in the late 1980s.Groups of Muslim youth from Jammu & Kashmir (J&K) started going across the Line of Control (LOC) to Pakistan and were trained and armed by Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI). After the training, some of them were taken to Afghanistan to get an exposure to jihad as practised by the Afghan Mujahideen.In December 1993, coinciding with the first anniversary of the demolition of the Babri masjid at Ayodhya, there was a number of explosions in different railway trains in North India. The interrogation of one of the suspects arrested during the investigation revealed that the SIMI had organised them.

Al Qaeda And India : outlookindia.com

Long article by B. Raman on the recent history of Islamic fundamentalist terrorism in India. It is an interesting read and makes the point that recruits are increasingly local and the organization is local as well. While the ISI (Pakistan’s most diabolical intelligence agency) set up, trained and funded these groups, they’ve not become independent. What does that mean? I don’t know. But the targeting of BJP governments is deliberate and aims to increase tensions…

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Lead in Paint, why???

Byoliveridley

1940-11_White_Lead_Paint.JPGThis makes my head explode, once again, science is helpless when faced with inertia, and greed. Lead-based paint has been banned in the US since 1978, and if this story is any indication, we’re still seeing the effects of peeling paint. But this bit of research from the University of Cincinnati suggests that not only is lead-based paint being used in more than half the world, it is actually legal.

Study Supports ‘Urgent’ Need for Worldwide Ban on Lead-Based Paint

Environmental and occupational health experts at the University of Cincinnati (UC) have found that major countries—including India, China and Malaysia—still produce and sell consumer paints with dangerously high lead levels.

Why would anyone need to use lead-based paint when alternatives have been available for the longest time, the health effects of lead, especially on children, are very well known, and there is no @#$%^&*# reason other than greed and unwillingness to change. What is the point of all these years of research if it makes no difference at all to the bulk of the world’s population? Depressing.

Guess what, even if lead-based paint was banned today, it’s still going to be on the walls forever. As the paint peels, kids will be exposed, have lowered IQ, and all other kinds of health issues for as long as that house is standing, which in India could be a 100 years.

Grassroots organizing is probably needed, and if effective, the stuff will be banned in India quickly, the government does move rapidly on these kinds of easy to legislate issues. But, enforcement will be lax, and awareness will lag, which means we are looking at (my rough guess) at least 20 years more of this issue.

Once again, the absence of a ban and its implementation affects the poor and uneducated disproportionately. The way I see it happening in India is

  1. Some grassroots awareness, media stories, etc.
  2. A furore that lasts about a week, before the next big story comes along
  3. Maybe a government action that will “ban” lead-based paint
  4. The middle class and above are now aware that they can use titania based paints, so, a quick change for them.
  5. Everyone else is still stuck with the lead-based paint.

And this does not even begin to address what the US is going through now, aging houses, peeling paint, poor people being exposed to dangerous levels of lead.

The world ain’t very fair…

Violence in North East India

Byoliveridley

ULFA attack has WB, Bihar on alert : ULFA, Assam, violence, Bengal : IBNLive.com : CNN-IBN

In a brutal backtracking, after gunning down 17 non-Assamese workers on Friday in the Tinsukia and Dibrugarh districts, the ULFA went on a rampage on Saturday gunning down migrant workers from Bihar and Bengal.

Assam is a state in North East India bordering West Bengal, and Bangladesh, and there has always been a lot of tension between the ethnic Assamese and Banglas from both sides of the border. The United Liberation Front of  Asom (ULFA)  purports to  speak for the Assamese and has been waging a violent armed struggle. Unfortunately, they are not really powerful enough to take on the Indian army and usually take their frustrations out on innocent day laborers. The Assamese feel that Banglas and Biharis are coming into their state and taking their jobs and disrupting their culture. Like any other ethnic situation in India, it is complex, messy, and with no “right” or “easy” solutions. Clearly, increased development in neighboring states would keep the Banglas and Biharis from moving.  But, thanks to its oil reserves, the jobs are in Assam. The Indian army has been active in this area as a counter insurgency force since the ’80s. Complicating the matter are the mountainous  terrain and the remoteness of most of these attacks.

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Musharraf's Wife to Run for President

Byoliveridley

If you have not been following the soap opera that is Pakistani politics in the last month, you should. Between exiling one corrupt ex-prime minister (Nawaz Sharif) while letting another equally corrupt one to return (Benazir Bhutto), it’s quite a sordid tale.

It now gets worse, with Musharraf’s wife planning to run as a “proxy” candidate, and Nawaz Sharif’s wife trying to do the same, it seems to be a battle of famous wives and mothers.

>Musharraf set to do a Lalu on Pakistan-The United States-World-The Times of India

Military ruler Pervez Musharraf is all set to do a Lalu on the hapless nation, foisting his wife Sehba as a proxy presidential candidate to get around the constitutional and judicial hurdles he faces. Under a formula hammered out under Uncle Sam’s watchful eyes, Sehba Musharraf will be a cover candidate for Musharraf in the upcoming Presidential poll, with or without Benazir Bhutto running for Prime Minister. The military government will also allow exiled prime minister Nawaz Sharief’s wife Kulsoom Nawaz to return to Pakistan and run for election if she wishes maintaining that she is not bound by the exile arrangement that has kept her husband and his brother out of the country.

The “Lalu” reference is to a rather notorious Indian politician, Lalu Prasad Yadav, while mired in corruption charges, put his rather inexperienced wife Rabri Devi in charge of the state he was governing.

I guess, this is one way for women to get to power, though not the best way, I guess. South Asia has had (to my count) 5 elected women heads of state in the last 40 years. They have all been either daughters or wives of men previously in power. More importantly, they have all proven to be their own people in the end.

Indira Gandhi – Daughter of Nehru
Benazir Bhutto – daughter of Zulfikar Bhutto
Khaleda Zia – wife of Ziaur Rehman
Hasina Wazed – Daughter of Mujibur Rehman
Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga – Daughter of Solomon Bandaranaike.

Well, while this is strange and dynastic, it is atleast refreshing that the daughters of famous men find power in South Asia. In most other countries, the monarchy is patrilineal!