Oct 19, 2013

This map shows where the world’s 30 million slaves live and What India’s Contribution.


After reading the washingtonpost and other few articles about the modern slavery in World, I felt to share those information to you. 

We think of slavery as a practice of the past, but the practice of enslaving human beings as property still exists. There are 29.8 million people living as slaves right now, according to a comprehensive new report  issued by the Australia-based Walk Free Foundation.


This is not some softened, by-modern-standards definition of slavery. These 30 million people are living as forced laborers, forced prostitutes, child soldiers, child brides in forced marriages and, in all ways that matter, as pieces of property, chattel in the servitude of absolute ownership. Walk Free investigated 162 countries and found slaves in every single one. But the practice is far worse in some countries than others.



The map shows above shows most of the county in the world colored according to the share of its population that is enslaved. The rate of slavery is alarmingly high in Haiti, in Pakistan and in India, the world's second-most populous country. The report says that effective government policies, rule of law, political stability and development levels all make slavery less likely.




Then there are the worst-affected regions. Sub-Saharan Africa is a swath of red, with many countries having roughly 0.7 percent of the population enslaved -- or one in every 140 people. Slavery is also driven by extreme poverty, high levels of corruption and toleration of child "marriages" of young girls to adult men who pay their parents a "dowry."




Two other bright red regions are Southeast Asia and Eastern Europe. Both are blighted particularly by sex trafficking, a practice that bears little resemblance to popular Western conceptions of prostitution. Women and men are coerced into participating, often starting at a very young age, and are completely reliant on their traffickers for not just their daily survival but basic life choices; they have no say in where they go or what they do and are physically prevented from leaving. International sex traffickers have long targeted these two regions, whose women and men are prized for their skin tones and appearance by Western patrons.

Here, to give you a different perspective of slavery's scope, is a map of the world showing the number of slaves living in each country:

 

 India has half the world’s modern slaves


The country that is most marked by slavery, though, is clearly India. There are an estimated 14 million slaves in India. The country suffers deeply from all major forms of slavery, according to the report. Forced labor is common, due in part to a system of hereditary debt bondage; many Indian children are born "owing" sums they could never possibly pay to masters who control them as chattel their entire lives. Others fall into forced labor when they move to a different region looking for work, and turn to an unlicensed "broker" who promises work but delivers them into servitude. The country's caste system and widespread discrimination abet social norms that make it easier to turn a blind eye to the problem. Women and girls from underprivileged classes are particularly vulnerable to sexual slavery, whether under the guise of "child marriages" or not, although men and boys often fall victim as well.
Sixty-six years after independence, India has the dubious distinction of being home to half the number of modern day slaves in the world. The first Global Slavery Index has estimated that 13.3 to 14.7 million people live like slaves in the country — roughly equal to the population of Kolkata.
India leads the world, followed by China, Pakistan, Nigeria, Ethiopia, Russia, Thailand, Democratic Republic of Congo, Myanmar and Bangladesh. These 10 countries account for 76% of the world's modern slaves.


Rich – Poor Gap in India

India has always witnessed a wide gap between the rich and the poor. This disparity has only increased over the years. The rich have become richer and the poor, well, poorer.
Despite the proportion of the poor declining between 2004-05 and 2011-12, their gap with the rich has risen for the first time in rural areas in about 35 years and to an all-time high in urban areas.
The serious issue that India currently facing is skyrocketing inflation. Congress led has been rolled by a serious of corruption scandals, a faltering economy, and inflation. Though its size makes India a significant force in world trade, the economy continues to operate far below its potential.


Major Scam in 2000s



So for the better tomorrows, we need a corruption free, transparent Governance in India which should contribute the service to lower class community to bring them up. Currently we have number schemas, subsidiaries and allocations for the people who may really do not need it. So the reservation system in the country must be restructured and need to focus on who really need this. That reservation should not be based on any religion or cast; but should be based on their living standard. 

Ref Links:-

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/India-has-half-the-worlds-modern-slaves-Study/articleshow/24313244.cms


Oct 16, 2013

India's stand in Child marriage

India - the highest absolute number of child brides- refused to sign the first global resolution on early and forced marriage of Child led by UN which was a wretch stand.  The resolution was passed with 107 countries support. The breaking truth is that 40% of global child brides are from India which is almost 24 million in number. Even though the facts are like this, why Indian Government took the stand against this resolution?  Do the upcoming parliament election influence on this? Government is trying to please few Muslim organizations that are having request for reducing women’s marriage age to below 18? Recently bunch of such organizations from Kerala are planned to move to Supreme Court with this request.

Whatever the reason, our stand in UN was a pathetic and disappointing one. 

Forty-six per cent of women (between the ages of 18 and 29) in India were married before the age of 18, according to the National Family Health Survey-3.

According to the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), if the trends continue between 2011 and 2020, more than 140 million girls will become child brides, of which at least 18.5 million will be under the age of 15.

So react against this stupid stand… and protect our child by providing better education and food.

Oct 12, 2013

No legal basis for charges against Pinarayi: CBI court (Ref: TOI, October12, 2013, Page no: 1)


The CBI special court on Friday questioned the legal validity of a major charge raised by the CBI against CPM state secretary and former power minister Pinarayi Vijayan in the SNC-Lavalin case. The charge was that Vijayan failed to convert the MoU on a promise by the Canadian company to grant Rs 98.3 crore for setting up Malabar Cancer Centre in return for a contract for renovation of Panniyar, Senkulam and Pallivasal power projects into a legally binding agreement which eventually led the company to back out from the project.

Special judge R Reghu also asked the CBI prosecutor why G Karthikeyan, who preceded Pinarayi Vijayan as the minister for power and signed the memorandum of understanding with SNC Lavalin, was excluded from the charge sheet. The CBI was grilled by the judge on the final day of the hearing of the discharge petition filed by Vijayan, the seventh accused in the case. On November 5, the court will deliver its verdict on the petition.

The judge read out from the charge sheet where CBI states that two Canadian agencies, Canadian International Development Agency (CEDA) and Export Development Canada (EDC), had made promises on behalf of SNC Lavalin to grant the fund. According to section 41 of Indian Contract Law, when a promisee accepts a promise from a third party, he or she cannot later enforce the same from the original promisor. In this case, the two Canadian agencies are third parties as CBI has not enlisted them as accuse and therefore even if the MoU was made into a legal agreement it would not have had legal validity, the court explained..

Given this situation, the judge asked the CBI prosecutor whether a person can be charged for not executing a promise that cannot be made into a legally binding agreement, to which the CBI prosecutor failed to give a convincing reply. Pinarayi's counsel M K Damodaran, however, said had there been a Memorandum of Agreement, it would have been enforceable. The judge was not convinced.

Ref Link: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/kochi/No-legal-basis-for-charges-against-Pinarayi-CBI-court/articleshow/23993574.cms