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

 

Females’ Screaming Make Males to Ejaculate During Sex

December 19, 2007

Scientists have shed new light on monkeys’ sexual behaviour, by finding that female monkeys may shout during sex to help their male partners climax.

A new study by scientists at the German Primate Center in Gottingen discovered that male Barbary macaques (Macaca sylvanus) almost never ejaculated without these screams.

Female monkeys regularly give out loud, characteristic yells during or after sex. However, the exact purpose behind this behaviour has remained heavily debated.

Thus, to find an answer, the German scientists thoroughly studied Barbary macaques for two years in a nature reserve in Gibraltar.

They found that females shouted during 86 percent of all sexual encounters, reports LiveScience.

When females shouted, males ejaculated 59 percent of the time, they discovered. However, when females did not yell, males ejaculated less than 2 percent of the time.

To determine whether yelling was caused by how vigorous the sex was, the scientists counted the number of pelvic thrusts males gave and timed when they happened.

They found that when shouting occurred, thrusting increased, suggesting that hollering led to more vigorous sex.

Lead researcher Dana Pfefferle, a behavioural scientist and primatologist at the German Primate Center, said that counting monkey pelvic thrusts is ‘quite weird, but it’s science.’

Male and female Barbary macaques are promiscuous, and often have sex with many partners, meaning that sperm levels can get quite drained. The females yell when they are most fertile, so that males can make the most use of their sperm.

 

Global Hindutva in support of Gujarat’s super hindu leader

Press Trust of India

Sunday, December 2, 2007 (Patan)

A large number of Gujarati NRIs have landed in their native state to lend support to political parties they are backing in the upcoming assembly election, due on December 11 and 16.

Many are supporters of incumbent Narendra Modi, who feel the state has developed under the stewardship of the BJP leader. Opposing them are a considerable number of Congress
supporters, who say Modi has divided the state.

Although they cannot vote in the state assembly polls, the NRIs who have come from places like the UK and US are pumping in huge amounts of money in campaigning, besides trying to woo voters for the party of their choice.

”Though I can’t vote, still I would like to see to it that the right people are voted to power. Even if I can’t vote I would like to make sure that other 100 people at least go and vote. It’s very important,” says 42-year-old Rajen Patel from London, an ardent supporter of Modi.

Patel, who claims he campaigned for former US vice president Al Gore when he was in the presidential race, says about 100 like-minded NRIs in the UK have decided to come to Gujarat to support Modi as they believe he is ushering in growth and development.

”We would like to invest in Gujarat as things have improved a lot here. There is less of corruption now and action is taken on complaints made even over phones,” he says.

Rejecting the claims of development under Modi’s government are Congress supporters, who have also come together based on their political affiliation.

”What development are they talking about? Everything is a hogwash. No state can develop where people are divided. And that’s what BJP has done here,” says Deepak Amin, who has come all the way from Seattle (US) to support Congress.

”To be number one you have to be united first. When you talk about Hindu rastra, you ignore the rest of the people in the country. What about them?” Amin laments.

He says he is in touch with at least 15 other like-minded NRIs from various countries.

”We have held several rounds of meetings in Seattle, New York, New Jersey etc to discuss our agenda before coming to India. We will be reaching out to people to pass on our message,” Amin says.

He said his ‘group’ was opposed to the way BJP is bragging about development in Gujarat, adding ”It’s just like their ‘India Shining’ campaign”.

But the Modi camp would like to differ. ”There’s discipline, peace and harmony now unlike earlier,” says Patel.

On his group’s strategy, Patel says, ”We will place ourselves in different regions of the state. Like five-six people in Vadodara, 10 in Ahmedabad and four in Surat, while one of us will be travelling to meet people and help the party in the electoral process.”

He claims Modi has many fans in the UK and US who want to know what can they do to help their state.

 

India drops down 2 places in HDI, ranks 128th

India growing? It’s not showing, Country unable to break out of class of laggards in UN assessment

The world’s second highest economic growth rate has not yet helped India hoist itself away from its customary position in the global development report card.

The Human Development Report for 2007-08 released by the UNDP today ranked India 128 out of 177 countries, working it out through measures of life expectancy, education and income.

India’s human development index (HDI) of 0.619 puts it just below Equatorial Guinea (0.642) and Solomon Islands (0.602). India’s life expectancy of 63.7 years is sandwiched between Comoros (64.1) and Mauritania (63.2), while Malawi and Rwanda have higher adult literacy than India.

The report found that India’s GDP per capita (purchasing power parity) is $3,452, far below China’s $6,757.

Iceland is at the top with Norway, Australia, Canada, Ireland, Japan, France, the US, the UK, Israel, and Singapore among the top 25 nations in the development chart.

India was ranked 126 by the HDR 2006, a rung higher than the previous year’s 127. This year, it continues to be dubbed a country at medium level of human development.

An economist said he was not surprised that the country’s impressive economic growth rate — only China’s growth surpasses India’s 9 per cent — was not reflected in the human development report.

“Our growth has been lopsided, and has not yet percolated to the masses,” Shyama Prasad Gupta, an economist and a former member of the Planning Commission, said,

India’s richest 20 per cent account for about 31 per cent of the share of income or expenditure, while the poorest 20 per cent account for around 8 per cent, the report said.

“We have two countries in one,” said Abhay Shukla, senior programme coordinator with Sathi-Cehat, a non-government organisation engaged in health and development issues.

The report has ranked India 62 among 108 developing countries in its human poverty index which measures severe deprivation in health in people who are not expected to survive age 40.

“We’re witnessing something called development polarisation. About 20 per cent of the population is showing low mortality and low fertility, key features associated with development, but in the rest of the population we don’t see this change in any significant way,” Shukla said.

The UNDP report suggests that India’s commitment to education measured through public spending dropped from 12 per cent of total government expenditure in 1991 to 10 per cent in 2005.

India’s public spending on health is only 0.9 per cent of its GDP, a fraction of 8.3 per cent in Iceland, 6.9 per cent in the US, 7 per cent in the UK, and lower than China’s 1.8 per cent.

Full report is here http://hdr.undp.org/en/statistics/

 

India, Where paradoxes reign supreme

It has become a cliché to speak of India as a land of paradoxes. The old joke about our country is that anything you say about India, the opposite is also true. We like to think of ourselves as an ancient civilisation but we are also a young republic; our IT experts stride confidently into the 21st century but much of our population seems to live in each of the other 20 centuries. Quite often the opposites co-exist quite cheerfully.

One of my favourite images of India is from the last Kumbha mela, of a naked sadhu, with matted hair, ash-smeared forehead and scraggly beard, for all the world a picture of timeless other-worldliness, chatting away on a cellphone. I even suggested it to the publishers of my newest book of essays on India as a perfect cover image, but they assured me it was so well-known that it had become a cliché in itself.

And yet, clichés are clichés because they are true, and the paradoxes of India say something painfully real about our society.

How does one come to terms with a country whose population is still nearly 40% illiterate but which has educated the world’s second-largest pool of trained scientists and engineers, many of whom are making a flourishing living in Silicon Valley? How does one explain a land where peasant organisations and suspicious officials once attempted to close down Kentucky Fried Chicken as a threat to the nation, where a former prime minister bitterly criticised the sale of Pepsi-Cola since 250 million of our countrymen and women don’t have access to clean drinking water, and which yet invents more sophisticated software for the world’s computer manufacturers than any other country on the planet? A place where bullock carts are still an indispensable mode of transportation for millions, but whose rocket and satellite programmes are amongst the most advanced on earth?

The paradoxes go well beyond the nature of our entry into the 21st century. Our teeming cities overflow while two out of three Indians still scratch a living from the soil. We have been recognised, for all practical purposes, as a leading nuclear power, but 600 million Indians still have no access to electricity and there are daily power cuts even in the nation’s capital.

Ours is a culture which elevated non-violence to an effective moral principle, but whose freedom was born in blood and whose independence still soaks in it. We are the world’s leading manufacturers of generic medication for illnesses such as AIDS, but we have three million of our own citizens without access to AIDS medication, another two million with TB, and tens of millions with no health centre or clinic within 10 kilometres of their places of residence.

Bollywood makes four times as many movies as Hollywood, but 150 million Indians cannot see them, because they are blind. India holds the world record for the number of cellphones sold (8.5 million last month), but also for the number of farmer suicides (4000 in the Vidarbha district of Maharashtra alone last year).

This month, in mid-November, the prestigious Forbes magazine list of the world’s top billionaires made room for 10 new Indian names. The four richest Indians in the world are collectively worth a staggering $180 billion, greater than the GDP of a majority of member states of the United Nations. Indian papers have reported with undisguised glee that these four (Lakshmi Mittal, the two Ambani brothers, and DLF chief K P Singh) are worth more than the 40 richest Chinese combined.

We seem to find less space in our papers to note that though we have more dollar billionaires than in any country in Asia – even more than Japan, which has been richer longer – we also have 260 million people living below the poverty line. And it’s not the World Bank’s poverty line of $1 a day, but the Indian poverty line of Rs 360 a month, or 30 cents a day – in other words, a line that’s been drawn just this side of the funeral pyre.

Last month, the Bombay Stock Exchange’s Sensex crossed 20,000, just 20 months after it had first hit 10,000; but on the same day, some 25,000 landless people marched to Parliament, clamouring for land reform and justice. We have trained world-class scientists and engineers, but 400 million of our compatriots are illiterate, and we also have more children who have not seen the inside of a school than any other country in the world does.

We have a great demographic advantage in 540 million young people under 25 (which means we should have a dynamic, youthful and productive workforce for the next 40 years when the rest of the world, including China, is ageing) but we also have 60 million child labourers, and 72% of the children in our government schools drop out by the eighth standard. We celebrate India’s IT triumphs, but information technology has employed a grand total of 1 million people in the last five years, while 10 million are entering the workforce each year and we don’t have jobs for them.

Many of our urban youth rightly say with confidence that their future will be better than their parents’ past, but there are Maoist insurgencies violently disturbing the peace in 165 of India’s 602 districts, and these are largely made up of unemployed young men.

So yes, we are a land of paradoxes, and amongst those paradoxes is that so many of us speak about India as a great power of the 21st century when we are not yet able to feed, educate and employ our people. And yet, India is more than the sum of its contradictions. It may be a country rife with despair and disrepair, but it nonetheless moved a Mughal Emperor to declaim, ‘‘if on earth there be paradise of bliss, it is this, it is this, it is this…’’ We just have a lot more to do before it can be anything like paradise for the vast majority of our fellow citizens.

25 Nov 2007, 0000 hrs IST,Shashi Tharoor, Times of India

 

316 million Indian workers get below $ 0.49 (Rs. 20) a day

• 394.9 million workers (86 per cent of the working population) belong to the unorganized sector
• 316 million workers live on less than Rs. 20, or $ 0.49, a day.
• 88 per cent of the Scheduled Tribes and the Scheduled Castes, 80 per cent of the Other Backward Classes and 85 per cent of Muslims belong to this category of people living on less than Rs. 20 a day.
• 90 per cent of agricultural labor households are landless or have less than one hectare of holding*
• agriculture is getting feminized with 73 per cent women being associated with it compared to 52 per cent men.

NEW DELHI: An overwhelming 79 per cent of workers in the unorganised sector live with an income of less than Rs. 20 a day, according to the National Commission for Enterprises in the Unorganised Sector (NCEUS).

A report on “Conditions of Work and Promotion of Livelihoods in Unorganised Sector,” released by the Commission here on Thursday, says over 394.9 million workers (86 per cent of the working population) belong to the unorganised sector and work under “utterly deplorable” conditions with “extremely few livelihood options.”
“Poor, vulnerable”

The report says that 88 per cent of the Scheduled Tribes and the Scheduled Castes, 80 per cent of the Other Backward Classes and 85 per cent of Muslims belong to the category of “poor and vulnerable,” who earn less than Rs. 20 a day.

In 2004-05, a total of 836 million (77 per cent) had an income below Rs. 20 a day.

Landless

Households of the small and marginal farmers account for 84 per cent and are forced to spend more than they earn and are under debt, while 90 per cent of agricultural labour households are landless or have less than one hectare of holding.

The conditions in the non-agricultural sectors are no better with 21 to 46 per cent of men and 57 to 83 per cent of women being employed as casual workers, who get less than minimum wages.

As per the survey, the latest trends indicate that agriculture is getting feminised with 73 per cent women being associated with it compared to 52 per cent men.

The NCEUS attributes the plight of the unorganised workers to a lack of comprehensive and appropriate legislation and the absence of targeted programmes.

Inadequate

Where laws exist, the Commission finds their implementation inadequate. Also, they are seldom focussed on unorganised workers.

Releasing the report, NCEUS Chairman Arjun Sengupta said the panel had recommended a Rs. 45,000-crore action plan for the overall improvement of the unorganised sector.

Aug 10, 2007, Hindu

LEFTYPROF

 

Intersex baby worshipped as Hindu God in India

Unusual baby draws crowds, worshipped as divine

Hundreds are flocking to a house in Orissa’s Balasore district to glimpse and even worship a baby born with both male and female genitalia, being described as an incarnation of Hindu gods Shiva and Parvati.

The baby, now five-and-a-half months old, was born to Baijayanti Singh in Ayodhya Nagar Patana village in Balasore district, around 200 km from state capital Bhubaneswar.

‘When the child was born (Feb 11) we thought it is a boy. But two days later we found that it had both male and female sex organs,’ she said.

‘We feel the baby is part of both Shiva and Parvati as it was born just four days before Maha Shivratri,’ added Guru Gobinda Singh, the child’s father.

Baijayanti had a normal delivery and the baby is healthy.

Describing the phenomenon, senior gynaecologist S.N. Sahu told IANS: ‘It is called an intersex (congenital anomaly of the reproductive and sexual system) baby and such incidents may happen.’

Though such a condition does not lead to ill health or cause physical pain, it is a serious health issue that needs to be treated medically, he said.

‘Surgically correcting the appearance of intersex genitals will not change the underlying medical needs,’ Sahu said.

The couple has a son and was expecting a daughter this time.

After news of the newborn spread in the locality, hundreds started flocking to their house to see it and offer prayers to the baby.

‘We have never seen such a baby before, not even heard of one,’ said Bishnu Prasad Mohapatra, a resident of nearby Remuna village.

‘We heard that Shiva-Parvati have arrived in this village, so we came here to offer prayers to the baby,’ added Katimani Singh, a local resident.

Meanwhile, doctors in the district headquarter hospital say the baby needs proper medical examination.

‘We have to verify whether the baby has testis or uterus and ovary and which organ is fully operational. It can be a normal baby after its inactive sex organ is removed,’ Sahu said.

‘I will discuss about the baby with the chief district medical officer. If possible we will carry out medical tests and keep the baby under observation,’ he said.

Social activists working in the health sector say no one knows how many such babies are born because of the secrecy shrouding such cases.

‘It is estimated that about one in 2,000 children, or five children per day, are born in the United States as visibly intersex. This figure is yet to be calculated in India,’ according to Dilip Kumar Parida, secretary of a local non government organisation.
July 26, 2007, INDIAENEWS

 

Australia breeding ground even for HindutvaTerrorists

Australia may be a new home for fundamentalists, if the Delhi Police investigation about a threatening religious hate mail from an unknown Hindu religious group to Congress president Sonia Gandhi and member of National Integration Council John Dayal is considered.

Deputy Commissioner of Police, Economic Offences Wing, Prabhakar told Hindustan Times: “We have received the email and are trying to locate its origin. The complaint is being investigated”.

John Dayal, who received the mail recently, said, “I was shocked to see the letter in an envelope bearing Australian postage stamps and marking. There was a print from a website saying devout Hindus stop conversion in Madhya Pradesh and a page full of derogatory remarks”.

The letter asked all Christians, including Sonia Gandhi, to leave the country and mentioned that former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi was killed by a Hindu. “Keep doing this and see what we can do,” the letter said, referring to conversions of Hindus into Christians and Gandhi’s assassination.

The hate mail also contains derogatory and unparliamentary remarks against Gandhis not fit to be reproduced.

Recently, Australian Prime Minister John Howard said that his country is harbouring would-be terrorists who may want to launch attacks like those witnessed in United Kindgom last month.

A government research reported by an Australian newspaper said that in Sydney alone there may be 3,000 young Muslims, who are in a danger of being radicalized by fundamentalist groups.

Dayal says the mail received by him clearly demonstrates that even Hindu fundamentalist groups have a strong base in Australia. “It appears that Australia is emerging as a base for Indian fundamentalist groups loyal to Al Queeda or Hindutva fundamentalist organizations,” he said.

Number of Indians is growing in Australia with the country being a new education destination for Indian students. Every year about 30,000 Indian students land in Australia for education as compared to just 10,000 in 2001 and 500 in early 1990s. One of such students, Mohammad Haneef, resident of Bangalore, was detained in Australia last Monday in connection with the Glasgow explosions.

July 11, 2007, Chetan Chauhan , Hindustan Times

 

967 Cases of Atrocities against Dalits in Gujarat

Dalits in Gujarat eclipsed under Modi: Meira

Claiming that the Dalits were “eclipsed” under the present dispensation in Gujarat, Union Social Justice and Empowerment Minister Meira Kumar on Monday criticised the Narendra Modi-led government for the “atrocities” meted out against Dalits and other backward sections of the society.

“The present government in Gujarat has a poor track record in tackling crimes against the backward sections of the society,” Kumar said addressing the day-long ‘jan-mitra shibir’ (conference of party workers) organised by the scheduled caste cell of Congress.

She claimed that Dalits were “eclipsed” in Gujarat at present.

“In the year 2005, there were a total of 967 cases of atrocities against Dalits in Gujarat where many were murdered, raped, burnt and seriously injured,” Kumar told the gathering of party workers who had assembled from different parts of the state.

“This year in just six months, there were a total of 412 cases of atrocities registered against backward classes including Dalits,” she said adding the figures she was quoting were sourced from the Social Justice department of Gujarat.

“In many of these cases FIRs are yet to be registered,” Kumar added

Press Trust of India, Gandhinagar, July 3, 2006

 

Merits of Mandal report

In view of the confusion created by Mandal II, the Supreme Court has asked the government to clarify two things: One, what is the basis for determining who belongs to an OBC category; and two, the rationale behind 27 per cent reservation for OBCs. These two points need to be immediately cleared.
OBCs belong to the shudra category in the caste classification. Several people confuse shudras with Dalits (earlier known as untouchables). OBCs were supposed to be people who lived by their physical labour.

Though not treated as untouchables, they formed the largest segment of low castes and suffered from all sorts of social disabilities. That is why they qualify to be categorised as socially and educationally backward, and thus entitled to affirmative action under the Constitution.

As to their identification, the Mandal Commission undertook the biggest social survey ever attempted in this country. To begin with, an experts’ panel under the chairmanship of eminent sociologist M N Srinivas and 14 other social scientists was formed to devise schedules for identification of OBCs.

Simultaneously, Delhi University held a seminar for a thorough discussion of the terms of reference of the commission. After several meetings, the experts’ panel prepared four comprehensive schedules, two each for rural and urban areas.

All the state governments were sent these schedules for conducting the survey. Two villages and one urban block were selected at random in each and every district of the country, and all the residents of these areas were covered by the survey.

Questionnaires were also sent to all the states and 30 ministries of the central government, and notices published in national dailies and regional papers inviting public response.

The data thus collected was passed on to the National Informatics Centre, which analysed the information contained in the four pre-coded schedules.

The results of this analysis were used by the experts’ panel, which derived 11 indicators of social, educational and economic backwardness. It was by the application of these indicators that OBCs were identified.

As to the number of OBCs and their percentage, government had stopped collecting caste-wise enumeration of population after the 1931 census.

Consequently, the population of various OBCs identified by the commission were culled from this census, and extrapola-ted on the basis of population growth trends over this period.

That is how the percentage of OBCs was arrived at, and it worked out to 52 per cent. When the 11 indicators were applied to identify OBCs, 44 per cent happened to be Hindus and 8 per cent were from other religions.

That shows how authentic the indicators were as it picked up a fair number of non-Hindus who were socially and educationally backward.

Some commentators have pointed out that the National Sample Survey Organisation’s investigations show that OBCs constitute 32 per cent of the population, and National Family Health Survey places the figure at 30 per cent.

These two surveys cannot match the span and depth of Mandal Commission’s investigations, and its findings can be revised only if an exercise of the same magnitude is attempted.

It has also been pointed out that 25-50 per cent of the reserved seats remain vacant for lack of qualified OBC candidates, resulting in a colossal waste of resources. This is true, but it is the result of sloppy and unplanned implementation.

The commission had laid great emphasis on creating suitable infrastructure in institutions to enable OBC candidates to derive full advantage from reservation. This required adequate planning and financial commitment. But as in 1990, the issue is again at present being treated purely as a vote-getting ploy.

The government is now dangling the carrot of proportionately increased seats in professional institutions to obviate any shrinkage in the ‘merit’ quota, as if the additional infrastructure can be created by waving a magic wand.

The current turmoil could have been averted if educationists had been taken into confidence, a sober assessment made of available capacities and a phased scheme of implementation prepared for a smooth transition.

By S S GILL, Times of India, 13 June 2006

[The writer is a former secretary, Mandal Commission.]