Indian Casanovas fall in love with SMSing

Mumbai: In this romantically corseted society, Ashish Chettri is as close as you get to a Don Juan.
He is an irrepressible flirt: a skirt chaser who claims to pursue three women at a time, a ceaseless seeker of dates.
And that’s just with his thumbs.

Like millions of Indians today, Chettri is a cellular Casanova: a suitor who flirts by text message. Text messages have invaded courtships everywhere. But the short messaging service (SMS) is proving particularly revolutionary in India, where it is paving a secret passageway for the young around deep-rooted barriers to premarital mingling.

 

India men are quickies in orgasm, Nearly 75% had one night escapades

‘Men’s Health’, a mega lifestyle magazine for men with a tall worldwide readership of over 20 million, has published the findings of a survey that queried almost 40,000 men from 43 countries regarding their private lives, and sexual habits. An exclusive feature titled “World’s Best Sex Right Here in India” is out on the stands, with the highlights of the survey.

Nearly 75% of the Indian men surveyed were open about having indulged in one night escapades. All the same, Indian men seemed to hold a record for ‘quickies’, and shorter times between foreplay and orgasm! Apparently, they couldn’t hold on and climaxed in record time!

South Korean men were fixated about having sex many times in the week, scoring an average of 4.50 times a week. Indian Men preferred to be slow and steady at 3.27, yet leaving the world average behind at 2.08 times a week. Variety on the Indian man’s psyche reflected in switching mates 4.53 times in a lifetime , but Brazilian men were content with a world high of 11.37 times change in partners in a lifetime.

Polish men scored very high on fidelity with 63% of them sticking to a single partner. Nearly 48% of Indians were loyal and faithful, close to the worldwide average of 50 percent.

 

Nearly half of young wives in Gujarat experience unwanted sex

Coerced Sex Among Young Wives in India

A recent survey confirms general perceptions of the way sex is practiced in most Indian families. Nearly half of young wives in the Indian states of Gujarat (in the west) and West Bengal (in the east) experience unwanted sex: 12% frequently and another 32% occasionally, according to “Consent and Coercion: Examining Unwanted Sex Among Married Young Women in India,” which appeared in the September 2007 issue of International Family Planning Perspectives.

Using survey data and in-depth interviews with 1,644 young married women, authors K.G. Santhya of the Population Council and others identify factors that predict a woman’s likelihood of experiencing unwanted sex with her husband. They find that wealthier women, women who knew their husbands before they got married and women whose husbands support them during family conflicts are less likely than their peers to experience unwanted sex.

Frequent coerced sex is more likely to occur among recently married young women than among pregnant women or new mothers, suggesting that the pressure to have a first child leaves some young married women especially vulnerable to sexual coercion. In addition, the more circumstances in which a woman believes it is justifiable for a husband to beat his wife, the more likely she is to experience unwanted sex. Young women with lower levels of education are also at greater risk than their more educated peers, the survey says.

Attitudinal change necessary to put an end to coerced Sex- Dr.Reddy

Reacting to the findings, Dr.D.Narayana Reddy, a renowned sexologist based in Chennai, said that while he had not come across the survey himself and hence could not comment on the reliability of the findings, coerced sex was almost inevitable given the patriarchal culture widely prevalent in India.

“The male is made to believe that he is somehow a prized being right through. He has the first claim on all good things of life, good food, good dress and good education. So pampered is he that when he steps into the bedroom, he thinks he has the right of passage! He never waits to find out whether his spouse wants sex, whether she is in a mood for that or what her physical condition is. He needs sex and he must get it. And when it is denied, he flies into a rage,” Dr.Reddy told Medindia.

And worse most women tend to internalize the male attitude to sex. ‘When they want it, we can’t hold back. We have to co-operate, whatever our own problems.’ That is how women in an average Indian household seem to behave, and the legacy was passed on from generation to generation.

Dr.Reddy feels such a me-first attitude on the part of males cuts across education, caste and wealth.

However the silver lining in the cloud is that increasingly women have begun to challenge such traditional values.

Going for jobs, contributing to the family kitty and exposure to the outside world have all helped Indian women assert themselves, though this is happening on a small scale, perhaps an essentially urban phenomenon.

Still such a change is coming about, and it is heartening. The male can no more take his partner for granted and should be ready to face resistance. He may have to lay off too, if necessary.

And he has to be concerned with fulfilling the sexual needs of his spouse too and realize sex cannot be a one way traffic. Dr.Reddy also agrees that there should be programmes aimed at counseling newly wed young males against seeking to coerce their spouses into sex.

But he is skeptical whether such programmes by themselves would yield desired results. “A wholesale attitudinal change is called for if Indian women are to enjoy sex and not view it as some fealty owed. Man has to stop strutting around as if he is the master of everything he surveys, even if within the household. ‘She’s my wife, she’s my chattel, she’s my anything’ – that kind of attitude should go. But that’s easier said than done. Ours being a society still steeped in patriarchal traditions, targeted programmes here or there will not work. A massive educational campaign is required for the purpose. The media has a very big role to play in this. But having said that, let me also repeat that such changes are brought about only over a period of time, consequent on far-reaching socio-economic transformation,” Dr.Reddy said.

A couple of days ago a condom-manufacturing firm had claimed that according to a survey conducted by it, Indians were among the most satisfied lot in the world when it came to sex.

Asked about the claims, the Chennai expert shot back – “Do you know that a similar survey conducted by the very same firm last year said Indians fared very badly? How come such a dramatic change in the space of a year? It’s absolute rubbish. Their methodology is all deficient and their findings should be discarded as used condoms are …”

 

India’s Male sex workers earn 1,000 rupees ($25) for an hour

Gigolos speak out in conservative India

Male sex workers or gigolos comprise a shadowy group of people in India. The BBC’s Soutik Biswas meets a group of gigolos in the eastern city of Calcutta.

What is common between a draughtsman, an accounting clerk, a shop assistant and a school dropout?

Nothing much apart from the fact that the four men come from middle-class families in India and – barring the drop out – quit humdrum jobs to start selling sex to women in the crowded eastern city of Calcutta.

Dibakar, Samrat, Pallab and Goutam have also come together to bond in a group called Anandam that includes gays, lesbians, transgender groups and bisexuals to push HIV prevention programmes.

They are also stepping out of their shadowy world to talk about their lives and problems in a society where very little is known about them, talking about sex remains a taboo, and homosexuality and soliciting sex is outlawed.

High risk

Most female sex workers in India walk the streets or work out of thriving, grubby red light districts. Male sex workers usually cruise downtown streets in main cities, work in shady massage parlours and trawl internet chatrooms for clients.

There are several thousand of them in the big cities and their numbers are growing as the mobile phone and the internet have made business easier for them.

They are hardly spoken about in HIV prevention programmes, though they comprise one of the most high-risk groups in the country.

“Nobody really has any idea of what we do, and the problems we face. In India, the gigolo is usually made fun of. Some of my friends tell me, ‘what an enviable life you live!’,” says Samrat, a earnest looking thirty something man and a science graduate.

Most of gigolos in India tell stories of hailing from middle or lower middle-class backgrounds and getting introduced to the world of selling sex through friends, parties, and working in seedy massage parlours that have sprung up all over the country.

They have now begun putting adverts in newspaper classified columns and ‘penpal’ magazines, hawking themselves openly as male escorts and ‘friends’.

They say that they not only meet their clients for paid sex charging upwards for 1,000 rupees ($25) for an hour, but also get their clients to top up their prepaid mobile phone cards and pay for their internet connections for phone and cyber sex.

They also offer some insight into the changing sexual mores of a growing number of Indian women who are ready to spend money on buying sex in a traditionally conservative society.

It is hardly a easy job to do – in the absence of male brothels, gigolos like Samrat cruise after dusk for prospective clients, mainly upper or middle-class and rich women who usually drive in their cars with dark tinted windows.

“It is not all fun and games as people think. Just as female sex workers face violence and get cheated, we face such situations from time to time too,” says the son of a bank worker, who joined the sex trade after a short stint as an employee with a multi-national pharmaceutical firm in the capital, Delhi.

“I have often not been paid by clients, and when I have protested, they have threatened me with telling the police that I tried to rape them. And there are clients who love to stub out burning cigarettes on our bodies. These days I have begun to charge for a cigarette burn – 500 rupees ($11) per stub,” he says.

Over the years, the profile of women buying sex in India has also changed, Samrat and his friends say.

“Even four years ago, my clientele was what you would call ‘high class’ – wives of businessmen, executives, bureaucrats, traders. Now there are middle-class women calling us,” says Samrat.

Also, says Sudeep Chakraborty, 31, an accountancy graduate, it is no longer difficult to get in touch with clients.

“Women who seek us out are no longer bashful. They are as professional as men seeking female sex workers,” he says.

Sudeep says he met his first client at a friend’s party. The lonely wife of a businessman, “as she described herself”, took him aside and poured out her heart to him. Then, the two began going out for dates.

‘Not thriving’

“She used to pay for my company, and later for the sex. She would give me pocket money. With her, I was making 800 rupees every time we met, so I thought why don’t I join the trade,” he says.

Younger men like Goutam, Pallab and Aditya, who all dropped out of school and began working in massage parlours before picking up the trade, say the clientele is not as thriving as some make it out to be.

And for that reason, they say, many of them have to sleep with men to keep their home fires burning.

“Women can be very demanding. Sometimes they shock my middle-class upbringing with their demands. When we don’t get women, we have to sleep with men. It’s not fun and games at all,” says Pallab.

Some names in the article have been changed to protect identities

Story from BBC NEWS:

 

Eight fold increase in rape behaviour of Indians, quarter of victims were minors

6 Jan 2008,TNN

NEW DELHI: There has been a phenomenal eight-fold increase in the number of rapes committed in India since 1971, the year from which data for rape cases has been collected by the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB).

This stands in marked contrast to other serious and violent crimes like murder, robbery, dacoity, kidnapping and rioting. Overall, violent crimes under the Indian Penal Code (IPC) have actually declined.

According to the latest report by NCRB, between 1971 and 2006 murder incidents just about doubled, kidnapping and abduction cases went up by 149%, while cases of dacoity and rioting declined. In general, violent crimes showed a decline of 16% during the period. In this context, the 678% increase in rape cases stands out as a shocker.

While data on other crimes is available from 1953, statistics on the number of rape cases is available only since 1971.

The NCRB report does not provide any explanation as to why data for rape cases has not been collated prior to 1971 although legal provisions are contained in the same statute, the IPC, as other crimes.

The NCRB data also clearly points to the profile of the average rapist – over 75% were known to the victims. In fact, nearly 10% were relatives. Another disturbing aspect was that about a quarter of the rape victims were minors.

TNN

 

3 billion condom sold in India, Sales in Hindi belt declined

India’s contraceptive makers lust after December 31, when condom sales reach the highest for any single day in the year. This year, too, sales figures ballooned for condoms, but their market share might have got a hole from the morning-after pills. There was a decline in condom use and sales in eight states in northern India — Delhi, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, Uttaranchal, Madhya Pradesh, Chattisgarh, Bihar and Jharkhand — that together comprise 45 per cent of the national condom market.

Emergency contraception was all the rage this year, given renewed awareness, thanks to Cipla’s advertisement blitzkrieg for i-Pill.

The burgeoning sale of contraception-related products is sure to shock some who might see it as a rise in promiscuity, while others will see it as enhanced sexual safety. For condoms, the week between Christmas and New Year is the busiest.

A good portion of the 3 billion pieces sold each year comes from this week, and a very good portion of that from the last day of the year. “This time, the sale in December went up by about 12%-13%, especially in the last week, when we saw a steep growth. Advertisements used for condom sale include “Bindas Bol Condom” and “Sambhog keval patni sangh, agar gair ke sang to condom ke sang” (Have sex only with wife, but if you are having another woman use condom).

Though I cannot quote the exact number of pieces that we sold (on December 31), it was definitely much more than any other day in the whole year,” said TT Raghunathan, executive vice-chairman of TTK Healthcare, which makes brands such as Durex, Kohinoor and Fiesta and sells 1.5 billion pieces annually.

 

Many respecetable women in Gujarat regularly go to see Male strippers

Kama, Time To Out The God We Love

PAVAN K. VARMA, Author-Diplomat

EVERY YEAR IDON’T THINK Indians are more obsessed with sex than other people. Let’s not be that self indulgent. I think Indians are taking longer to accept, or come to grips with, the fact that sex need not be consigned to furtive dark corners. And because this process is not yet complete, there is the fact of repression. But repression always increases the energy with which a particular goal is pursued. In fact, repression leads to obsession. In India part of the obsession with sex is that it is not yet out in the sunlight and, therefore, it needs to sort of explode out of the subterranean depths into which it is often pushed.

India was once an extremely liberal society where – instead of sex I would rather use the word desire – the role of desire in our lives was something that had a fair degree of incontrovertible philosophical validity. That can be seen from the tenets of the essential Hindu world view – the four highest goals, the purushartas – dharma, artha, kama, moksha. Such a balanced and pragmatic world view was not a license to hedonism which is what many people mistakenly interpret it to be. In fact Vatsyayan in the Kama Sutra explicitly says that when dharma, artha, and kama are pursued in proportion and none in exclusion, they automatically lead to the fourth, moksha. In an anthology of erotic literature in ancient and medieval India, you can see the pervasive nature of the erotic, as against the pornographic. One must make that distinction because here we are talking about a philosophical worldview, not a peepshow.

People have to take sex or desire as something for which they need not feel guilty, provided it is not license or hedonism. But to associate desire and its pursuit with guilt is wrong. It creates neurosis and neurosis leads to obsession and obsession leads to all kind of distortions in public behaviour, in public response, the exploitation of women, and the general coarseness of the gender discourse. For most women, sex has been associated with shame, and for men, with guilt. Today, images from the west are beamed across to bedrooms in rural households, and the role models and the expectations that this generates creates its own pressures, especially in the absence of authentic and widely accepted indigenous role models. There is provocation in terms of that imagery but there is the absence of opportunity to express it within your own social framework. And it all leads to curious distortions. And that is something that we all need to introspect about.

When something like sex is not allowed to be taught or discussed with a degree of transparency and wisdom, it becomes the subject of ignorance. A great deal of India’s obsession with sex is wrapped in the cloak of ignorance, or stereotypes: stereotypes about women, about performance, about the inability to perform, and so on. Once again it’s not that the obsession is reduced, it’s just shrouded in ignorance. The thing we have to understand is that because sex is not talked about, and because it is often part of a false value system which looks upon it is as wrong, or associates it with guilt or with prurience, it doesn’t mean that the sexual urge has been sublimated. The old Freudian principle states that the degree to which something is forbidden is the key to the degree to which it is desired.

Victorian morality was unyielding in its relentless criticism of the Indian tradition which gave to desire its due place in a balanced life. For the British, India was a dark, heathen mass of carnality. There is even a story of a Britisher having filed a case against Krishna for debauchery. The case was never decided for lack of witnesses. But many Indians, educated and otherwise receptive to the best in the portfolio of western ideas, internalised that criticism. Mahatma Gandhi admitted to having a great sense of guilt about the whole notion of desire, and he voluntarily announced celibacy at the age of 33, without consulting his wife. The internalising of this Victorian critique has distorted our own value systems and the heritage of our own past. And we are not yet at the kind of balance that we should have.

Today, if you pick up the largest circulating dailies, there are several columns on massage services offering women from several nationalities in a hotel or at your home with all your wishes granted! But the words ‘hygienic and decent’ are inserted in small print, possibly to avoid prosecution. These are the kinds of hypocrisies that we have to deal with, and some of them are laughable. Till very recently, and mostly even now, in the land of the Kama Sutra and Khajuraho, you could not show kissing on screen, but you could, as a substitute, show birds pecking, while running around trees was the normal form of sexual expression. As long as you keep finding artificial ways of not being normal, you add to that an entire spectrum of neurosis. But society is changing in spite of the misguided vandalism of a few, who go about separating couples in public even if they are just holding hands. The paradox is that these goons think they are the upholders of some pristine puritanism, whereas our past is replete with not only the sanction for, but also the philosophical acceptance of, the role of desire. Fortunately, such hoodlums are largely on the fringes of society. Much more is tolerated today in terms of the interaction between men and women, and television and films are becoming progressively less conservative. In any case, with the explosion of the cyber world, anything you want to see is there at the click of your mouse.

India does have its crimes of passion, but I don’t want to exaggerate them, because in any society where human emotions and relationships are involved, there are bound to be a few excesses. We are a billion people but it’s not as if everyone is committing suicide for love. But outside the metropolises, there are fewer avenues for men and women to meet on an equal playing field. Hysteria is more likely to develop in situations where desire is not reduced but the opportunities to give it expression are.

INDIAN MEN think they are good lovers, and sex is greatly on their mind, but they have never really been put to the test. For them, women are either merely objects for their own gratification, or stereotyped as repositories of unbridled sexuality just waiting to be tapped. Such distortions too are a result of repression and ignorance, but things are changing because of the progressive empowerment of women. Women now, at least in the larger cities, are not willing to be taken so much for granted. A lot of them are increasingly aware of their own persona as women and are fighting for their own sexuality. The situation is still fragile, because of the reactions of the self-professed upholders of morality, but the first stirrings are there and they are bound to grow. This presents both an opportunity and a challenge to men in male-dominated societies, who have so far seen sex as largely a one way street to their own pleasure. And that is one of the crossroads the Indian male and Indian society has to navigate.

For example, the hysterical cheering that Shah Rukh receives from women, with or without his shirt, is something new. Women were supposed to keep their feelings to themselves, or to be appropriately coy about them.

I was recently told by a leading TV actress that many ‘respectable’ women in Gujarat regularly go to see male strippers.

One does not know where in the crevices of this otherwise staid and conservative society this kind of change is coming about. Women, as they become more aware of their sexuality, are becoming more adventurous and demanding about their needs. Many of them are willing to be the abhisarika nayika, one of the eight nayikas in Indian aesthetics, the one who is willing to go out on a tryst to meet her lover, unafraid of the world and the impediments put in her way.

Each society has its own contradictions. For instance, more is spent in the United States on the pornographic industry than the national budgets of many countries, but it is a conservative society at another level. Every society has its own context, and I don’t want India to become America. I want it to become a place where we don’t sublimate desire, we don’t drive it underground, but we learn to accept it in enlightened ways which may push against some of the antiquated asphyxiations of the past, but which don’t necessarily break down the social consensus on the pace of change. It’s very important how you proceed. There are certain known limits of decency which societies will not allow to be transgressed. You can push for more freedoms but you cannot discard completely every form of social restraint. Sex will remain a very important pursuit in our country but the challenge is to find the right balance and maturity, in consonance with our own traditions, and societal compulsions.

From Tehelka Magazine, Vol 5, Issue 1, Dated Jan 12 , 2008

 

94 % Indians are sex starved says CNN IBN Poll

Are Indians sex starved or is it lawlessness?

CNN-IBN, Thu, Jan 03, 2008

It was India’s new year shame: two women molested by over 60 men in the heart of Mumbai, a 15-year-old Swedish tourist groped in Kochi and girl students inside a Patna hostel not spared either.

From North to west to South, are women safe in our country? Are Indians sex starved? That was the question discussed on Face The Nation on CNN-IBN, hosted by Bhupendra Chaubey.

On the panel to debate the issue was ad guru Alyque Padamsee, along with Assistant Inspector-General with Punjab Police Amrit Brar and corporate MC and television anchor Geetika Ganjoo.

So how does this maddening behaviour reflect on our society? “It is absolutely disgraceful. When I was in college this kind of thing was unheard of. It was Bombay then, and Bombay had a certain civic sense. People queued up for buses. Today, due to the influx into Mumbai, the whole cultural ethos of good manners, good breeding has totally broken down. People coming in from across the country, particularly from the north, have the idea of treating women like property. Given that 48 per cent of marriages have wife beating, you can imagine at what level men treat women. I’m disgusted that the Mumbai police did not even file a suo motu case,” said Alyque Padamsee.

Molesters on the prowl

But the case in Mumbai is not in isolation. It seems to be happening across the country. Where is such behaviour coming from? Is it just a group of rowdy men getting carried away in what we could call mob frenzy?

“This is the complete failure of the police and judiciary because men seem to think they can get away with it. They need to come down very severely on such elements,” insisted Geetika Ganjoo.

On the part of the police, Commissioner D N Jadhav on Wednesday accused the media of making “mountain out of molehill” in the case, completely downplaying the issue and dismissing it as a “minor issue”. So is the protection of women at all a priority for the police? “The police cannot be looked at in isolation. There were 60 people at the spot. What were the rest of them doing? The police cannot reach out to every single citizen. The police is supposed to respond to certain things but this is not terrorism we are talking about,” said Amrit Brar.

Who’s to blame

But have women now lost the freedom to be out on their own and have a good time? “If you go back in history, a 1000 years ago, it was all marvelous and there was sexual emancipation. Now sex is a taboo like in the Victorian era. We don’t even allow sex education in schools. How many schools have co-education? When men do not have the cultural background about respecting women, when they are in a mob, after a few drinks, they get rowdy and they think women are an amusement. I think the people to blame are the politicians,” said Alyque Padamsee.

If there was a comparison to be made, we see moral police coming out in full force the moment a couple is holding or kissing and in the same country, there are cases of such molestation. Is there not a sense of hypocrisy in our attitude towards sex?

“The politicians allow goonda elements to do anything they like,” put in Alyque Padamsee.

But a lot of people, at the end of the day, put the blame squarely on the women and say they were dressed provocatively. “The world doesn’t belong to men. If they can wear what they want so can the women. I don’t believe this is so much a problem about sex-starvation, I think it’s more about lawlessness. Hang 10-15 of these men or cut them off and we’ll see how many of them have the guts to do it again,” said Geetika Ganjoo.

Taking off from her point, Alyque Padamsee said that it was disgraceful for any man to think any women is pray. “The rapes in this country happen to lots of women wearing saris or those covered from head to toe. There is basically no sex education to treat women equal to men,” he said.

Challenging Alyque Padamsee’s argument, Geetika Ganjoo said that men tend to target women in western attire because they were still not used to it. “But the point is the cops not coming down heavily on such men. Nab them and punish them,” she said.

So has the time now come for our law enforcement agencies to think of with exemplary punishments?

“The law enforcement agency is not the punishing authority. There are courts involved. Has the media said one positive thing about the police the whole day? It’s the courts that are responsible for punishment, not the police,” said Amrit Brar.

Concluding the debate, Alyque Padamsee said if people could be locked up for one to three days for drunk driving why could the police not take similar action for molestation?

SMS Poll

Are Indians sex starved?

Yes: 94 per cent

No: 6 per cent

IBLIVE

 

Google search results: Indians are best at sex and sleaze

Tuesday, 25 December 2007

CHANDIGARH; Indian are more prone to sex or at least to sex talk, to be more precise say dirty talk, if one believes the search data of Google search. Egypt and Turkey follow India in sex searches.

However in “Homosexual”, top position is acquired by Philippines followed by Chile and Venezuela. Chile also made it to the top spot by searching for the word ‘gay’ and weer followed by Mexico and Colombia.

It seemed Love exists only in Philippines, Australia and United States. India which is considered land of Lord Krishna didn’t fine place any place in search for love. As far as “Viagra” is concerned, Italy has the top position followed by United Kingdom, Germany. Indian still seemed surviving on natural herbs.

The goddess of beauty and love and hollywood actress “Britney Spears” has highest following in Mexico, Venezuela, Canada.33 year old “Kate Moss”, the England born super model is top choice among serachers in Ireland followed by United Kingdom and Sweden. She is also top model at askmen.com.

The most interesting fact is that ‘Iraq’ is searched by majority of Americans followed by Australians and Canadians. Australia is interestingly among the three top countries, others Pakistan and Philippines which search most for terrorism. ‘Taliban’ is top search in Pakistan, Australia and Canada. Jihad (meaning holy war) seemed to be the most often typed key word in countries like Pakistan, Indonesia and Morocco.The concept of “Car bomb” is most popular in Australia followed by United States and Canada.

Internet users from Germany, Mexico and Austria were the world’s top three searchers of the word “Hitler”, while “Nazi” got most hits in Chile, Australia and the UK.

If you understand the meaning of ‘Hangover’ then it is Ireland, United Kingdom, United States which are most effected by it.

The most users deadly drug “Marijuana”, appeared to be in Canada, USA and Austrailia. “Marijuana” is the common name for a crude drug made from the plant Cannabis sativa.

“Burrito”, a Mexican food is most popular in United States followed by Argentina, Canada. In USA it is also known as Sanfransisco Burrito.

American Actor and Film producer “Tom Cruise” is most popular in Canada followed by United States and Australia.

An anti-aging injection “Botox” is most searched in Australia, United States and United Kingdom. Of late this product is becoming popular in India.

“David Beckham”, the world famous football player is most loved in Venezuela followed by United Kingdom and Mexico.

International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) gets most visitors from Austria followed by Pakistan and Iran, all Muslim countries.

Punjab Newsline Network

 

More than 15 million rural household in India are landless

NEW DELHI: More than 15 million rural households in India are landless. Another 45 million rural families own some land, less than 0.10 acre each, which is hardly enough to make them self- sufficient, let alone generate a profit.

To benefit landless farm workers and small farmers, most States either prohibit or restrict renting of farmland. Where the law prohibits tenancy, the practice continues informally with the illegal tenants receiving no recognition or protection under the law.

In a research done by the Washington-based Rural Development Institute (RDI), it has been found that rental restrictions have backfired and are preventing poor families from accessing land.
Livelihood benefits

Plots larger than 1,300 square feet generally provide the most economic and social benefits per square foot. Functionally landless, agricultural labourer families which own a plot typically derive important livelihood benefits such as improved nutrition (microfield plots averaging 0.18 acre and ranging from 0.07 to 0.38 acre provided approximately 18 to 91 per cent of the families’ grain requirements), income, place for residence, enhanced social status and access to credit, and bargaining leverage in labour markets.

The survey suggests that 340 million people in India are dependent largely on agricultural wage labour, $1 or less a day.

Global research shows that landlessness is the best predicator of poverty in India — a much better predicator than either illiteracy or membership of a traditionally “untouchable” caste.

Obtaining property rights can positively impact women’s lives, including increasing physical and economic security, and enhancing wellbeing and status in marriage and community.
Domestic violence

A cessation of domestic violence can be traced (at least in part) to the receipt of property rights in some cases, says the survey.

The RDI is working with non-governmental organisations and government partners for changing policy and legislation to require that land be granted jointly to husbands and wives or independently to women.
Women empowered

Owning land, women are empowered and income is more likely to improve the welfare of the family.

West Bengal, Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh recently budgeted over $11 million to provide landless families with microplots, on which they can build shelter and cultivate a home garden for family diet and income.

http://www.rdiland.org/