Indian Holocaust My Father`s Life and Time - THREE HUNDRED Twenty SEVEN
Palash Biswas
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Harriet Harman, minister for women and equality, said: "I'm pleased that the equality bill has completed its third reading in the House of Lords and I want to thank our ministers in the Upper Chamber, Jan Royall and Glenys Thornton, for their hard work and commitment in steering it through to this stage. This is a historic piece of legislation that contains a range of new rights, powers and obligations to help the drive towards equality,... more by Harriet Harman - Mar 24, 2010 - People Management Magazine Online (11 occurrences) |
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Equality bill passed in House of Lords!
Equality bill under fire from business groups!
Certain elements of the Equality Bill could undermine equality rather than enhance it, a joint lobby group of four business organisations has claimed.HR professionals are questioning whether the equality bill, currently going through Parliament and not due to become law until 2010, will really make a difference.Stephen Moir, corporate director for people, policy and law at Cambridgeshire County Council, chaired the CIPD's annual employment law conference and asked a panel of experts whether the bill would actually make it to the statute book before the next election.Caste System is RACIAL Apartheid as UK Bill Links caste to RACE. India Implements MANUSMRITI Afresh with Knowledge Economy Enacted as Right to Education!UK close to banning caste-based discrimination!India rejects bid to include caste in U.N. norms for racial bias!
The equality bill has passed its third reading in the House of Lords, the final stage at which it can be amended before it becomes law.Amendment will allow caste discrimination to be outlawed!
A provision has been added to the Equality Bill enabling the Government to amend the definition of "race" to include "caste" in the future.
The Government has commissioned further research to establish the extent of caste discrimination. The research will be wide-ranging and will examine caste-based prejudice and discrimination more broadly. It will explore the nature, extent and severity of caste prejudice and discrimination in Britain, and its associated implications for future government policy. The research is due to be available in July or August this year
The Equality Bill has completed the report stage in the House of Lords, resulting in the Government accepting an amendment allowing for the introduction, in the future, of measures to make caste discrimination unlawful. At the same time, the EHRC published a provisional timeline outlining when the different parts of the Equality Bill will have legal effect.
During the Equality Bill's Report Stage in the House of Lords, the Government accepted an amendment to Clause 9, which defines what is meant by 'race', creating a power to add caste discrimination to the list of prohibited grounds. The caste system relates to the social stratification and social restrictions in the Indian subcontinent, in which social classes are defined by thousands of hereditary groups, often termed as jātis or castes.
As the Bill completed its report stage, the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) published an Equality Bill Timeline for the different parts of the Equality Bill to have legal effect, provided it passes all its Parliamentary stages before the general election. The Bill still needs to complete its third reading, followed by consideration of amendments, before gaining Royal Assent. The main employment and equal pay provisions will come into force in October 2010. Government guidance will be published in July 2010, along with an EHRC Code of Practice. Dates are subject to change where detailed regulations are awaited
The (UK's) House of Lords has adopted an amendment paving the way for caste discrimination to be made illegal. The move took place after a cross party consensus was achieved on 2 March 2010 during a debate on the UK's new Equality Bill which is primarily consolidating a miscellany of equality measures adopted over recent decades.
The NSS decided to lobby for legal protection from discrimination on the grounds of caste following the first international conference on untouchability hosted by our international umbrella group IHEU held in London last summer. The large Indian diaspora in the UK results from historic imperial links with the subcontinent and unfortunately this problem has travelled with some of the migrants to the UK.
Most of the legwork was done by Lord Avebury and Keith Porteous Wood of the National Secular Society, both of whom spoke at the conference. Keith commented: "This victory is historic; the UK is the first Western country to pass such legislation. I hope it will encourage other states where caste discrimination is practised to do likewise, or — in the case of India — enforce the legislation it already has. We are particularly jubilant, because until very recently the chances of success seemed remote. We are privileged, and indeed proud, to have been party to one of those all-too-rare occasions when Parliament was visibly moved by the quality of debate to change its mind."
The Equality Bill has not quite finished its passage through Parliament, but it is almost certain that the amendment will survive unopposed. The Government has commissioned a survey into caste discrimination which will report in summer or autumn 2010. It is anticipated that, following this, the anti-caste discrimination measure will be activated.
Also active in bringing about this success have been NSS Honorary Associates Dr Evan Harris MP, Lord Desai (who also spoke at the London Conference) and Lady Flather and also Lord Lester of Herne Hill, QC. We thank them all. The victory was reported by the BBC.
The bill, which unites the various strands of diversity legislation, outlaws age discrimination and requires businesses to report on the gender pay gap, will now face final consideration by the House of Commons prior to receiving royal assent. It is expected to become law before the general election.
Amendments made by the Lords included a power to outlaw discrimination on the basis of caste; a ban on asking for health and disability information prior to making a job offer; and removing the ban on civil partnership ceremonies taking place in religious premises.
Harriet Harman, minister for women and equality, said: "I'm pleased that the equality bill has completed its third reading in the House of Lords and I want to thank our ministers in the Upper Chamber, Jan Royall and Glenys Thornton, for their hard work and commitment in steering it through to this stage. This is a historic piece of legislation that contains a range of new rights, powers and obligations to help the drive towards equality, including tackling the overarching inequality caused by where you are born and what your parents do for a living."
Darren Sherborne, head of employment at law firm Rickerbys, commented: "The equality bill is a real mixed bag. I believe everybody would agree that the various discrimination legislation requires some consolidation and this will be a welcome step for HR professionals who currently have to jump between one set of rules and another depending on the particular characteristics of an employee.
"The requirement for employers to report on the gender pay gap in their organisation will not only be incredibly onerous in some circumstances, but I suspect it may highlight previously unnoted inequality that may have a big impact for business in terms of cost at a time when those businesses need support."
And he continued: "The ban on pre-employment health questionnaires seems to me to be re-dressing and to a certain extent undoing the ruling in the case of Cheltenham Borough Council v Laird. In that case the Court explicity stated that they saw nothing in the Disability Discrimination Act that prevented pre-employment questioning and sweep up questions in health questionnaires. In this respect the bill brings some welcome clarity, even if what the bill is actually saying may not in itself be welcomed by employers."
The ability for same sex couples to marry in church - even though churches will not be forced to hold ceremonies if they do not want to – appears to run contrary to the recent case of Ladele v Islington Borough Council and is unlikely to resolve the matter for good, Sherborne added.
Slideshow
The Hindu reports:
India has rejected appeals by civil society activists and Parliamentarians not to oppose the inclusion of caste in a new set of standards on equality and non-discrimination being considered by a United Nations organisation.
"Inclusion of caste in the definition of racial discrimination is completely unacceptable. We reject the notion that caste falls under the rubric of racial discrimination," said a senior official. India's stand would dishearten activists campaigning for inclusion of caste in the "2009 Draft principles and Guidelines for the Effective Elimination of Discrimination based on Work and Descent" when the U.N. Human Rights Council reconvenes in June. In the last session, the issue did not even make it to the agenda due to behind the scenes activity by Indian diplomats.
Officials admit social activist Paul Diwakar's contention that it was an Indian who proposed the inclusion of descent in the definition of racial discrimination in the U.N. Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (CERD) when it was first being drafted in the mid-sixties. But they say Mr. Paul's argument that India should now again take the lead in including caste based discrimination is misplaced.
"Descent was used by an Indian delegate in 1965 in a completely different context. It referred to nationality of origin or the nationality of parents. It was not at all the intention to include caste in the definition. It would be legally, politically and historically incorrect to do that,'' contend officials.
"Besides how can anyone seriously suggest that India's fight against caste based discrimination will be helped by international attention on the issue? Are we a closed country where debates do not take place and correctives not applied?'' they asked.
The officials appreciated the stand taken by Parliamentarian Praveen Rashtrapal in a letter to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in which he said, the National Commission for Scheduled Castes was inadequate in addressing caste based discrimination as it lacked resources, staff and teeth. However, they pointed to a scenario where a delegate from a foreign country berated India for caste based crimes if the U.N. body adopted caste as one of the elements of racial discrimination. "It will just muddy the waters instead of helping us remove this evil. Imagine the reaction when U.N. bodies begin accusing India of being intolerant to the weaker castes. Progressive people who are working to end this will become sidelined if there is uproar against foreign advice," added the officials.
As for the claim by civil society activists that the government's opposition reflected a lack of awareness of the trajectory of the global human rights movement, officials claim the issue was reopened in 2006 to address newer forms of discrimination that had come up. These include racial profiling, Islamophobia etc. While the Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC) is keen to include these issues, Europe is not ready to do so. "Our task right now is to find ways to address these opposing viewpoints. While we sympathise with the OIC and the African nations, we must avoid confrontation on the issue,'' they observed while wondering why some European nations were keen on pushing for inclusion of caste when other new types of discrimination must be addressed.
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Caste system is racial discrimination: UN rights panel
March 31, 2007 by Cyber Gandhi
GENEVA: UN Human Rights Committee for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) has controverted India's stand at its recent Geneva hearings that the caste system is not racial discrimination based on descent.
In its concluding observations, CERD, which consists of reputed international experts in international law, academics, sociologists and diplomacy, arrived at the conclusion that India's denial is not correct, and that there is alarming discrimination in practice against Dalits and Scheduled Tribes, as well as minorities who have converted from Hinduism to Christianity or Islam to avoid discrimination.
CERD, however, complimented the Union government for its legislation and constitution to counter whatever discrimination there is, and the efforts made by the Indian delegation to explain its stand in its 35-page report on racial discrimination, submitted after a 7-year wait.
India's stand in the report is that its caste discrimination falls within the scope of article 1 of the convention on racial discrimination. Indian laws ban discrimination of any kind. Despite the exchange of views with the Indian delegation, CERD maintained that "discrimination based on 'descent' includes discrimination against members of communities based on forms of social stratification such as caste and analogous systems of inherited status which nullify or impair their equal enjoyment of human rights." Discrimination based on the ground of caste is therefore fully covered by the convention.
Some comments to the Indian delegation by experts was one by Prof Sicilianos the India rapporteur: "The reason why we are talking about caste all the time is that it is difficult to know why India refuses to discuss this." He questioned: "If India is really committed to social cohesion is it not conceivable that you may use every single instrument at your disposal to assist you?
Why see the convention as a threat instead of assisting you in achieving social cohesion?" The committee pointed out with appreciation the declaration of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, where he likened the practice of untouchability to apartheid in South Africa, at the Dalit minority international conference in December 2006.
The observations were made after detailed perusal of India's report, and a two-day interaction with the members of the Indian delegation, which were mostly cordial and illuminatory, but unfortunately marred by word-sparring and confusing statements by a member of the Indian delegation on customs in the caste system — that the Indian society is not constructed around and does not function on the basis of caste and that poverty and other social problems affected many castes; that those who are born in a caste are proud to be part of that caste; and that children of inter-caste marriages are casteless "unlike race when black marries white."
CERD has observed that there is de facto discrimination against the Dalits and Scheduled Tribes, who cannot defend themselves, and who are disadvantaged in practice in jobs, education, affirmative action (despite legislation), elections, political participation and compensation. Their lands tend to be appropriated by upper caste neighbours, while they don't get any protection from the police, and they are even sexually exploited, some CERD observers felt.
CERD says that there is "social acceptance of caste-based discrimination and racial and ethnic prejudice" particularly in rural areas. CERD calls for its eradication by intensifying public education and awareness-raising campaigns, incorporating educational objectives of inter-caste tolerance and respect for other ethnicities, as well as instruction of the culture of scheduled castes and scheduled and other tribes, in the National Curriculum framework, and ensuring adequate media representation of issues concerning scheduled castes, tribes and ethnic minorities, with a view to achieving true social cohesion among all ethnic groups, castes and tribes of India.
SHEILA MATHRANI, TIMES NEWS NETWORK MARCH 30, 2007
India clashes with Britain over Equality Bill racism law
India is set to clash with Britain over Westminster's new Equality Bill which outlaws caste discrimination as a form of racism.
The bill, which has been passed in the House of Lords, has been welcomed by campaigners for India's "dalits" or "untouchables", a caste which suffers extreme violence and persecution, but has been rejected by their government.
There are more than 250 million dalits in India, many of whom are denied water, access to schools, and in some cases the right to pass through villages by upper caste Hindus who believe their presence, or even their shadow, pollutes them. Some dalits in India still work as "night soil carriers" – transporting human waste from latrines.
One prominent dalit campaigner had his arms and legs amputated because he refused to withdraw a police complaint against higher caste men who had raped his daughter.
Ministers in London have become increasingly concerned about discrimination and persecution against lower caste Indians in Britain following a report last year which claimed thousands had been ill-treated because of their caste.
The report, by the Anti-Caste Discrimination Alliance, surveyed 300 British Asians and cited cases of children being bullied at school, bus inspectors refusing to work with lower caste drivers, and employees being sacked after their bosses discovered their caste status.
Until now victims of caste discrimination in Britain have had no recourse to law. India also has legislation outlawing caste discrimination but is fiercely opposed to any comparison with racism.
The Indian government has made its views known to British delegations at the UN's Human Rights Council in Geneva and at a European Union-India Human Rights Dialogue last month.
"India's position on this issue has been clear and consistent. Caste and race discrimination are two separate issues and there is no case to equate the two. We are opposed to attempts at international fora to equate the issues," said an official source.
Until the mid-1990s India had back moves to include all discrimination based on descent as a feature of racism in the International Convention on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination. But it changed its position in 1996 when it is understood to have become concerned at onerous reporting obligations under the convention.
India's leading campaigner for dalit rights, Dr Udit Raj, last night welcomed the Equality Bill and said it would increase pressure for the UN to recognise caste as a form of racism.
"The United Kingdom has done the right thing. The new law will give moral boost to the people discriminated on the basis of their caste and will force the UN to include caste as a tool of discrimination. The government of India has been adopting dual standards. At world forums they accept Indians are victims of caste but when it comes to local politics and policies they cash in on caste politics," he told The Daily Telegraph.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/india/7541598/India-clashes-with-Britain-over-Equality-Bill-racism-law.htmlCaste System is RACIAL Apartheid as UK Bill Links caste to RACE. India Implements MANUSMRITI Afresh with Knowledge Economy Enacted as Right to Education!
UK bill links caste to race, India red-faced as India begins census 2011, Prez Patil listed first!New fiscal will pinch common man harder! Meanwhile,Right to Education as a fundamental right formally came into effect with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh urging all stakeholders to make it a success by empowering people through education as KNOWLEDGE Economy deals EDUCATION as COMMODITY or INFRASTRUCTURE only to expand Market for larger Consumer base.Lack of EQUITY and Quality Education the RIGHT seems to undermine the Empowerment and Enlightenment of the Masses!In a "historic" step, British Parliament has moved closer to amending equality laws to declare as illegal caste-based discrimination, which is also perceived to be prevalent in India, after the House of Lords cleared the measure.
The Equality Bill -- which unites the various strands of diversity legislation, outlaws age discrimination and requires businesses to report on the gender pay gap -- will now face final consideration by the House of Commons prior to receiving royal assent.
It is expected to become law before the general election expected in early May.
The House of Commons will consider the amendments suggested by the House of Lords on April 6.
India needs the civil nuclear liability bill and it should be re-introduced in Parliament, said former chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission Anil Kakodkar here on Tuesday.
On then other hand,For the common man already battling high inflation, the new fiscal will be tougher as virtually everything will be dearer in 13 big cities, where petrol and diesel will be costlier, while in the national capital they have to shell out Rs 30 more for cooking gas. Besides, interest earners without PAN card will find their banks deducting tax at source (TDS) at double the rate at of up to 20 per cent.So,India on Thursday kicked off what it says will be the world's biggest census that it hopes will help plug wastage in government welfare schemes, boost tax revenue and define consumers more clearly.I have clarified how the Statics had been created and used for the task to exclude aboriginal Indigenous Majority Masses so that EONOMIC Ethnic Cleansing may continue to sustain Manusmriti apartheid Rule under Zionsit Brahaminical Global Order.
This morning I had to accompany my wife Sabita in her daily morning walk. I go to bed lat in night around Three AM. It is rather painstaking but I have to bear with as I am also DIABETIC and my doctor has already suggested Insulin intake and I am on virtual parole.Returning home with some green vegetables, bread, fish and milk, I just went through Morning papers and updated my information bank. Then, I set for the laborious manual Work as I have completed my thesis on the Destiny of Ideology for reputed Hindi Mag AKAAR, edited by Girirraj kishore. The Matter is all about eighty two pages and I have to update and revise and it is proving to be uphill task as I may not run with the Developments daily as the Ruling hegemony does Kill the Republic, Constitution, Democracy and Ideology daily Afresh with enactment of newer Antipeople Legislation. The back Log is amazing. However, I worked for two hours and finalised another Ten Pages. Then I left for the Telephone Exchange as I had to deposit the Telephone Bill as I skip the havoc Que in the Post office. It was very HOT a Morning under scorching Sun. Originally belonging to the Himalayas, it is feeling like DUMPED in the Hell!
My Friend , the Marichjhanpi Film director lives Two Hundred Metres away from the Exchange. suddenly I decided to meet the man as We did not interact for the last month. There I met a Bengali Little mag Editor D Bhattacharya. We did engage in a discussion dealing with missing links of History. We did connect Mr Kishanchandra Bhagat in Lalgola who is an Expert.
We were amidst very Hot interactions with Ideological Postmortem Mode as Professor Vilash Kharat, editor of Mulnivasi Nayak called on. He was agitated as Great Britain has ensured Constitutional safeguards for Mulnivasi Indians residing in UK. house of Lords DESCRIBED INDIAN CASTE SYSTEM as racial APARTHEID, what we use to do.
Returning Home was around Two PM and I just took bath and Lunch as my GIC Teacher Tara Chandra Tripathi called me and asked to send a copy of GEETANJALI to his Haldwani residence in Nainital. We were discussing VANDEMATARAM and the Creation of Indian Nationalism and the Myth of Vedic Civilisation in India which in fact was limited into Magadha Empire only, Thus, Gautama Buddha appeared to Revolt against this. Bengal remained BUDDHIST until Karnataki SEN Dynasty took over from Palas after a chain of at least THIRTEEN rulers. Even after Brahaminical system Introduced , it was active until Thirteenth century as Muslim Rulers took over. Until POWER Transfer and Partition holocaust, Bengal was Ruled by Indigenous Aboriginal Black Untouchables. It was the same , more or less in South, West, North east, East India all over including the Aboriginal CENTAL India. Rabindra Nath Tagore was the man who Modified Bengali Brahaminical nationalism of Bankim into India Nationality. Bengalies turned Rebel against the Colonial Rule which they ENDORSED for Two hundred year only after the Demise of Zamindari under the Effect of industrial Development in Europe around 1920, when Dr Ambedkar and MK Gandhi emerged as National Leader. Tripathi call proved to be major STIMULUS for me.
As soon as I went to my routine nap, COLONEL Barves waked me up as he had interactions with the President of SBI Emplyees` Association based in Hyderabad and met the Grand Son In Law of Dr AMBEDKAR, Mr Anand. It was a discussion in depth dealing with global Economic Infrastructure, Ideology, Leadership, hegemony, Empowerment, Knowledge Economy and Manusmriti, Gandhi, Ambedkar, Marx, Mao, Mandela, Martin Luther King and Barack Obama. We discussed the destiny of SBI and LIC. We also analysed GLOBALISATION with its Economic Structure Global and the Economic Ethnic Cleansing. I would share the Experience in deatails time to time!
In the first such legislative move anywhere in the world, and much to the embarrassment of India's official position, the British House of Lords has passed a law that treats caste as "an aspect of race".
On March 24, the House of Lords passed the Equality Bill empowering the British government to include "caste" within the definition of "race". This threatens India's much-touted success in keeping caste out of the resolution adopted at the 2001 Durban conference on racism. The provision to outlaw caste discrimination in Britain came in the form of an amendment made by the Lords as a result of intensive lobbying by dalit groups, including followers of Ravidass sect who had suffered a violent attack last year in Austria.
The bill will become a law after the House of Commons passes it. The legislation draws its legitimacy from a recommendation made in 2002 by the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) that all member states of the International Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Racial Discrimination (ICERD), including India and the UK, should enact domestic legislation declaring that descent-based discrimination encompassed caste and "analogous systems of inherited status".
This development comes at a time when the Manmohan Singh government is already under pressure before the UN Human Rights Council as the draft principles and guidelines issued by it last year on discrimination based on work and descent recognized caste as a factor. The British legislation may provide impetus for the adoption of those draft principles and guidelines.
Though the bill originally contained no reference to caste, the Gordon Brown government agreed to its inclusion even as it commissioned a research on the nature of the problem that is believed to have come into Britain through the Indian diaspora. A parliamentary committee, while recommending last year that caste be considered as a subset of race, cited specific instances of caste discrimination in Britain.
In one such case, a qualified dalit working in the National Health Service suddenly suffered discrimination at the hands of his supervisor soon after the latter discovered his "low caste" status. The dalit employee was reportedly harassed and suspended from work for a whole year. While a trade union managed to obtain compensation for him, the case highlighted a lacuna in the law to deal with caste discrimination. The Gordon Brown government accepted the amendment tabled by Liberal Democrats subject to the outcome of the research ordered by it on caste discrimination. Baroness Thornton, speaking for the government, told the peers, "We have looked for evidence of caste discrimination and we now think that evidence may exist, which is why we have now commissioned the research."
Lord Avebury, who had tabled the amendment, said he believed that the research would "conclusively prove that caste discrimination does occur in the fields covered by the bill". India's opposition to the linking of caste with race began in 1996, when it tried to free itself of "reporting obligation" under CERD, saying that caste, though perpetuated through descent, was "not based on race".
This is a drastic departure from the position originally taken by India in 1965 while proposing the historic amendment to introduce descent in CERD. It had actually cited its experience with caste as an argument for recognizing all forms of descent-based discrimination.
"Today our government comes before you to pledge all our children elementary education. The Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act enacted by parliament in August, 2009 comes into force today (Thursday)," the prime minister said in his early morning address to the nation delivered both in Hindi and English.
"The fundamental right to education as incorporated in our constitution through Article 21 (A) has also become operative from today. This demonstrates our national commitment to the education of our children and to the future of India. We are a nation of young people. Education will determine the well being of our nation. Education is the key to progress. It empowers the individuals. If we nurture our children through right to education then India's future is secured," he said.
According to this landmark Act, every child in India, between 6 and 14, will have the right to education.
The manusmriti apartheid Prime Minister of India Incs Colonial Government said that education can be a success only when citizens work together in harmony and use creativity to make it happen.
This is also the first time a PM is speaking to the country regarding a Law.
Important pointers:
Quality of education to be bettered
Rs 15,000 crore is being released to make this happen
Within 1 km of residence, there will be a school
All these changes to be implemented in a span of 5 years
Special focus on girls, dalits, and adivaasis
Massive recruitment of teachers
Manmohan Singh added, "We are a nation of young people. Education will determine the wellbeing and future of the people of our country. India's future as a strong and prosperous country is secure. All children should have access to education."
"Our government, in partnership with state governments, will ensure that financial constraints do not hamper the implementation of the Right to Education Act" he said.
Implementation of right to education is crucial with the partnership of all teachers and educationists. Parents and guardians too have a critical role to play.
Speaking on a personal level, he said, "I was born into a "sadhaaran" (modest means) family. In my childhood I had to walk a long distance to school I had to study under a dim kerosene lamp. I am what I am today because of education."
"I want every Indian child, girl and boy, to be so touched by the light of education. I want every Indian to dream of a better future and live that dream", he concluded.
India on Thursday began one of the largest census exercises ever, with President Pratibha Devisingh Patil being the first person to be listed.The 2011 Census of India will be the fifteenth census in the country and the seventh after its independence.
The first census in India was held in 1872.The 2011 Census will see the engagement of 2.5 million enumerators,who will ensure that every single citizen is counted.
The estimated cost of the Census is 22 billion rupees.The President appealed to Indian nationals to cooperate to make the Census a success.
Citizens will in the southern and western regions will pay more for their cement bags too. Cooking gas (LPG) cylinder in the national capital would cost Rs 310 instead of Rs 281.20 earlier as the result of the Delhi government''s decision to partly withdraw subsidy on it.
Incidentally, on the first day of the the new financial year, the government data showed that higher milk and pulses prices drove food inflation up to 16.35 per cent for the week ended March 20, indicating that the overall inflation would touch double digits soon. Petrol and diesel prices, which went up by Rs 2.67 a litre and Rs 2.58 a litre, following levies in Budget, further rose by 50 paise in 13 cities on account of shifting to cleaner Bhart IV fuel, which will have a cascading effect on prices.
Petrol prices in Delhi have gone up by 50 paise to Rs 47.93 per litre and diesel by 26 paise to Rs 38.10 a litre. The cities using environment friendly fuel are Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, Chennai, Hyderabad, Bangalore, Lucknow, Kanpur, Agra, Surat, Ahmedabad, Pune and Sholapur.
The car manufacturers, including Hyundai Motor India, Toyota and General Motors, have hiked the prices by up to Rs 30,000, depending on the model. According to sources in the Cement Manufacturers Association, prices have gone up by Rs 20-40 per bag of 50 kg in south India, whereas in the western region they have been moved up by Rs 2-5 per bag.
However, in the northern and eastern region cement prices remained stable. On top of these increases, the possibility of interest and cost hikes loom large for home buyers.
Service tax proposed in the Budget on housing complexes under construction would be imposed with passing of the Finance Bill 2010. With the RBI tightening the money policy, the interest rates are expected to harden too.
"From the second quarter of this financial year.
situation of very comfortable liquidity that we are living in today may not be there," ICICI Bank MD and CEO Chanda Kochhar said.
The RBI is set to review monetary policy on April 20. Steel makers, which had raised prices immediately after the Budget by Rs 600 a tonne, are expected to increase rates further due to higher input cost, industry sources said.
You are being counted... for your benefit
Over the next six months when officials visit you and seek details of your family, do cooperate. That is the message for the 120 crore (1.2 billion) people of India who are being enumerated on the basis of their socio-economic indicators to help the government scheme its developmental plans.
The once-in-a-decade exercise that kicked off Thursday - 15th since the national census was started in 1872 - in the world's second most populous nation after China becomes more challenging and important this time. The last census was held in 2001.
Census takers will also take fingerprint and facial identification to collect biometric data of every person. This information will be used by Nandan Nilekani's Unique Identification Authority of India in National Population Register (NPR) to ensure that every Indian above the age of 15 gets a single identity number.
Over the years, each individual will be given an identity card with the unique number that can be utilized for a variety of identification purposes to help end duplicity of documentation.
The unique ID will establish an easy identity of Indian citizens while accessing a variety of governmental and private-sector services. And in the times of global terrorism, it will also help identify Indian citizens from illegal immigrants and terrorists.
The census operation would cost around Rs.2,209 crore while the approved cost of the scheme for creation of NPR is Rs.3,539.24 crore (750 million USD).
So apart from the census form that is more statistical in nature, people will be asked to fill up a questionnaire seeking individual details like name, father's name, mother's name, educational qualification, date of birth and sex.
The census and NPR have statutory backing of legislations - the Census Act 1948 and The Citizenship (Registration of Citizens and Issue of National Identity Cards) Rules , 2003. Hence cooperating with census takers and sharing details with them is legally bound as the government promises full confidentiality of data.
India has been conducting census once-in-a-decade non-stop since 1872 'even through the wars, floods, droughts, earthquakes and national calamities,' Registrar General and Census Commissioner of India C. Chandramouli told IANS about the gigantic task of profiling and counting the huge population of India.
Over 25-lakh (2.5 million) government officials - to act as enumerators - have been fanned out out across the country to conduct the 'the world's largest administrative exercise', he said.
Over the next six months, the enumerators, as census takers are called, will travel across more than 630,000 villages and over 5,000 cities in the country to visit every nook and corner and will put together a national data base. They also intend to count people who sleep on roadsides.
Home Minister P. Chidambaram, who led the delegation of census officials to take details from President Pratibha Patil to be enumerated as the first citizen of India, said it was the first time in 'human history that 1.2 billion people are being provided I-cards after being identified, counted and enumerated'.
'This exercise must succeed and will succeed. We will leave no stone unturned to visit every village, every habitation in the country,' Chidambaram said, appealing to the civil society, teachers, parents and authorities to take part in this exercise.
Education mission is decades away from making a meaningful impact
Almost a decade after the launch of Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA), the achievement on universalising elementary education is best described as
On a given day, the average attendance rate seems to be around 74% at the all-India level. The numbers, quite naturally, vary from state to state. In Kerala, for instance, only 0.1% of the children in this age group are out of school whereas in states such as Andhra Pradesh, it is 6.2%. But that's the happier part of the story.
The desired objectives of providing quality elementary education for all children in a mission mode by 2010 — the objective of SSA — cannot be met in any case. Worse, the quality of learning not only lags that of the urban counterparts but, in many instances, is poor. What this means is that spending of crores of taxpayer money, with the objective of creating an educated, employable workforce, for most part may remain a fruitless exercise. And that would prove disastrous for a young country that hopes to gain from the demographic advantage in a fast-greying world.
Clearly, the government needs to do more than just throw money at the programme; it needs to ensure programmes — particularly those that are aimed at creating social capital — are sharply focused on outcomes.
In this context, the findings of Pratham throw up some disturbing facts. Nearly 50% of children in class V cannot read the text for class II without making a mistake. Significantly, students attending private schools in rural areas do not always display superior abilities, and if they do, it has less to do with the quality of teaching in the schools but more with host of factors that are external to the school such as the socio-economic environment in which the child grows up.
Haryana, Punjab, Jharkhand and Gujarat are some of the few states where private school pupils displayed better skills in reading their own language. Inability to read correctly at younger age essentially means poor learning outcomes. These children would possibly grow up with impaired ability to read and comprehend text, as the foundation of a child's learning are built in the primary classes.
http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/opinion/columnists/tina-edwin/Education-mission-is-decades-away-from-making-a-meaningful-impact/articleshow/5737404.cms
With economy humming, Time to focus on FISC
Extraordinary circumstacnces demanded extraordinary measures. When the crisis in the world financial sector began to hurt the real economy,
The impact is all there to see. Demand did revive in the months ahead and industrial activity began to hum once again — but the fisc paid the price. How horrible will the fiscal deficit as a percentage of GDP look at the end of this year can only be left to conjecture at this stage. Successful completion of spectrum auction for 3G services by March-end would definitely make the number look prettier — read contain the fiscal deficit below 6.8% — and so would some big-ticket divestment of shares by the government in public sector enterprises.
The cut in excise duties by four percentage points across the board meant collections on account of this levy declined sharply. Between December 2008 and March 2009, excise collections declined 31%, and the full-year fall was 20%. Collections of Customs duty too plunged after the government scrapped duty on crude petroleum imports when oil price rose to $147 a barrel in July. Slowing corporate activity and the consequent impact on jobs as well as cut in salaries took their toll on incometax collections, both corporate and personal.
The economic conditions have improved in the country and across the world. Although industry has made a case for continuing with the fiscal stimulus, and no doubt the growth momentum needs to be supported, the Centre cannot really afford to keep the tax rate at that level. It has to restart the process of fiscal consolidation in 2010-11.
Disinvestment would raise revenues for various expenditure programmes and, thus, reduce dependence on borrowing. Cutting subsidies too will help bring down deficits. But improving tax revenues should be a key measure — India's tax-GDP ratio compares very poorly with most advanced nations. There are two ways to boost tax collections: improve compliance and raise rates. Options on raising rates are limited — there is little scope to increase direct tax rates. A higher rate could cost compliance as individuals are already experiencing a fall in their real income with inflation reigning high.
The government will have to focus its attention on indirect taxes, and specifically on excise duty and service tax. Given that the country would hopefully migrate to goods and services tax (GST) in 2011 — 2010 looks completely unrealistic — there would be a case to hold the rates steady. But we don't have a consensus yet on GST rates. So, in the interim, it would make sense to marginally increase excise duties, up to two percentage points. The Centre could also consider expanding the list of services that are covered by service tax, with the objective of moving towards a negative list of services exempted . Service tax revenue trends show collections have increased every time the government has expanded the list or raised the rate.
A small increase in excise duty need not dampen demand as consumer sentiment has improved. However, there is a danger that it would put upward pressure on core inflation.
http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/opinion/columnists/tina-edwin/With-economy-humming-Time-to-focus-on-FISC/articleshow/5685924.cms
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Editorial A big leap for Bharti Zain's success as a division of Bharti matters not just to Bharti shareholders. Time to act tough The Andhra Pradesh govt must quickly to quell the rioting. The French connection Hindi has failed to find substitutes for English workplace words. | |||
Columnists | |||
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All hope day - Right to school but halfway | ||
| CHARU SUDAN KASTURI | ||
New Delhi, March 31: Demand education — it is finally a fundamental right. The Centre is launching tomorrow the landmark right to education law that will entitle all children between six and 14 to schooling, wrapped in a publicity blitz unparalleled for education plans in the country. But behind the hype, an anxious human resource development ministry is trying to put in place a mechanism to implement the law on the ground, aware that tomorrow's launch is largely symbolic. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh will address the nation on television in the morning, and the government is putting out large advertisements announcing the launch. HRD minister Kapil Sibal has spoken to heads of some private television channels, which have agreed to publicise the launch of the law for free over the next few days, sources said. "From tomorrow, every child between six and 14 will have the right to demand schooling. This was the UPA's promise... the dream of the Congress party leadership under Sonia Gandhi and the PM, and we have delivered," Sibal told reporters today. Under the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act passed by Parliament last year, schools can no longer conduct any selection scrutiny in admitting students. School administrators and teachers who seek donations or beat students can be punished. All schools will have to undergo a quality scrutiny in order to continue. No child can be failed till Class VIII or denied admission because of the absence of any age proof. Private schools will have to admit 25 per cent students from economically disadvantaged backgrounds for free, for which they will be reimbursed by the government. Schools, many of which are run now as private firms, will be scrutinised by school management committees with 75 per cent members from the neighbourhood community, including parents of students. But the Centre and states still have to put in place the architecture to implement on the ground these provisions of the law. Under the law, students and their parents need to complain about most violations to a local authority that can then decide to seek prosecution. Parents and children cannot directly seek prosecution for most offences. However, neither any state nor the Centre has identified and notified the designated local authorities yet. The HRD ministry has circulated model rules for the law to all states. Each state and the Centre will need to notify rules independently to lay down detailed norms for the implementation of the act. The rules of a particular state will, for instance, define what constitutes a neighbourhood under the act. The law requires the central and state governments to ensure schools in every neighbourhood within three years. The central rules will apply to Union territories and central schools while state rules will apply to their territory. But no state is in any position to notify the rules any time soon, HRD ministry sources admitted. The Centre hopes to notify its rules by early next week. "We are hoping that the notification of the central rules will pressure states into finalising and notifying their rules early," a ministry official said. The biggest challenge staring at the central and state governments in the implementation of the law, however, is the funding for the mechanisms and structures the act demands. The government has arrived at a figure of Rs 1,71,000 crore over the next five years — an amount that states have to share with the Centre. The HRD ministry plans to approach the cabinet with a proposal for a 65:35 funds sharing ratio between the Centre and the states. The Centre will bear 90 per cent of the financial burden for the northeastern states. States have objected to this fund-sharing proposal. Most states are refusing to shell out more than 10 per cent of the expenditure. OTHER CHANGES FROM ALL FOOLS' DAY Drive dearer but cleaner: Car prices to go up between 1 and 3 per cent across models in 13 cities, including Calcutta, as they switch over to BS-IV emission norms. The rest of the country will adopt BS-III norms between April and October. For the rest of Bengal, BS-III will come into play in July. The revised standards will apply only to new vehicles manufactured from today. Maruti Suzuki will stop selling the Maruti 800 in the 13 cities where new emission standards come into effect Clean fuel: Petrol prices will rise marginally in 13 cities, including Calcutta, as pumps officially start selling Euro-IV-compliant fuel. In Calcutta, petrol price is expected to go up by 52 paise a litre and diesel by 26 paise Submit that PAN: From April 1, everyone will have to submit PAN card details to avoid TDS deduction at the highest rate. The rule applies to bank interest income as well. A two-page income-tax return form, Saral-2, comes into effect for individual salaried assessees Savings account: Banks will have to calculate the interest on a daily basis. You will earn more by way of interest on your savings bank accounts. Income-tax relief in the budget will also kick in from today Be counted: The census will start today in some states, including Bengal. An enumerator, mostly a primary schoolteacher, will visit your house any time of the day. If the person finds the house locked, neighbours will be asked when you are likely to be home and repeated visits will be made. An enumerator has 45 days to cover a particular block. Residents can approach the district magistrate or the district census officer if the enumerator skips a house. A toll-free number will be advertised soon. The law makes it mandatory for residents to co-operate with census officials. Failure to do so can invite fines and punishments, though they are rarely invoked Be protected: Gen. V.K. Singh has taken over as the army chief, probably the last boss to have been through a full-fledged war. A third-generation soldier, he trained Bangladesh "mukti joddhas" in the war with Pakistan and had undergone a gruelling special operations course in the US |
THE ECONOMY OF KNOWLEDGE - India is treating knowledge as a commodity, not infrastructure | |
| Sukanta Chaudhuri | |
In our 63rd year of Independence, the Right to Education Act comes into effect on April 1. On the eve of its launch, the Union education minister has balanced our perspective by another resolve. India's enrolment rate for higher education is around 12 per cent. He would increase this to 30 per cent, in line with the advanced nations. There is only one snag. Unlike in advanced countries, one Indian in three is illiterate. Ten million Indian children have never entered school. Among those who have, the dropout rate is appalling. Only 5-6 per cent of our school population (not the total population of the relevant age group) is enrolled in Classes XI and XII — in other words, can even think of higher education. The last-announced deadline for full enrolment up to Class VIII was 2020. (How does this square with the Right to Education Act?) Higher enrolment at the tertiary level seems a matter of more urgency. The general seats balancing the other backward classes quota have swollen the intake at all Central institutions. Eight new Indian institutes of technology, seven new Indian institutes of management and 16 new Central universities are coming up. Foreign institutions are being wooed. There is heady talk of 14 'innovation universities'. The sums allocated are beyond the wildest dreams of education budgets in the past. Thanks to the education cess, the Union government is sitting on a cash mountain earmarked for education. How will it spend that money? There is gross disproportion between the government's plans for higher and 'lower' education. Let us eschew ideals and sentiment. In dispassionate terms, what does the mismatch mean for the nation's hard welfare? By an optimistic tally, only two-thirds of our population is literate. Hence a 30 per cent enrolment in higher education translates into 45 per cent of the actual base. It is an unreal goal for India to set itself. Seen against India's record of school enrolment, this is utterly warped. It signals that the nation is only committed to a proper education for a fraction of its people. The Right to Education Act might make a difference, or it might not. Responsibility for the poor child is being partly diverted to private schools: a perfectly fair bid for social cross-subsidy, but likely to be scuttled through the recalcitrance of those schools. Some have gone to court, with arguments dripping concern for poor children — manipulated to ensure that no such child enters their gates. At the same time, the inadequacies of government schools have been newly exposed in the build-up to the Rashtriya Madhyamik Shiksha Abhiyan. Illustrating the chasm between ideology and performance, the inadequacy reaches a unique extent in West Bengal, calling for special measures here alone. Leftist teachers' unions have demonstrated in Calcutta against the Right to Education Act. They feel it will threaten their jobs. Their leaders' comments on television indicate they are uninformed about the provisions of the act. At the other end of the spectrum, the mismatch between school and tertiary education is leading to a piquant outcome. At present, the most prized schools are almost all private and increasingly expensive. They reach their acme in a topping of 'world-class' outfits which essentially offer to adapt children to gift-wrapped lives abroad by making them unfit to live in India. If the present plans take shape, we will have a tier of colleges and universities to match these schools in price and image. The two will flourish symbiotically, in happy exclusion from the soil they grow in. Or will they? However India's super-middle class might prosper, there is a limit to its size. From matching Canada's population, it can at most double to overtake Britain's. Hence the clientele for such institutions will soon peak, having first diluted standards through over-intake from a narrow base of entrants chosen by affluence rather than merit. Of Indians who have enjoyed tertiary education, only 30 per cent are judged to have the skills demanded of a knowledge economy. Clearly, the first need is to improve the existing system radically. Further enrolment without strengthening the catchment area in school education would mean admitting more and more of weaker and weaker students — that is, lowering the already low real output of our colleges and universities. The proportion of effectively trained graduates might fall to 15 per cent or less. From where will the extra students come? The new institutions are likely to be still costlier than the already costly ones accounting for the most recent expansion. Higher education for the poor will be relegated to the janata system inherited from an age of innocence. Even that may often be priced upward: the Union government is drastically reducing the revenue budgets of Central universities, to be compensated for by the institution's own earnings (read fees). Yet the Union is showering other grants on them, whereby they are developing disproportionately to the fund-starved state universities. Centrally funded institutions are forming a privileged 'creamy layer' as they did not do even 10 years ago. We are now looking for a privileged class of students to patronize them. Only a very short-sighted forecast could see such a policy as maximizing India's knowledge resources for a growing economy. The children of a lesser Saraswati will lack access to that knowledge, hence to that economy. (Let us have no cant about education loans. Such loans ease middle-class cash flow problems; they are barred to persons who have no surety to offer.) They will not be empowered to contribute to India's economic growth: that is to say, India will deny itself the greater part of its potential skilled workforce. Simultaneously, this group's meagre skills and income will cap its purchasing power at or below subsistence level: its members will not generate the consumer demand needed to boost production. We are planning a short-term spurt in our knowledge resources to feed the high-profile, high-yielding sectors of the economy and gratify the career-hunger of middle-class individuals. In the process, we are blocking the development of a human resource base to harness knowledge for long-term economic growth. We are treating knowledge as a commodity and not as infrastructure, as buying a car rather than building a road. The 'knowledge as commodity' charge has been discredited by fatuous defenders of 10-rupee fees on derelict campuses. Infrastructure also carries a price: we pay electricity bills and road tolls. But the real return from a road or a power plant is not the gain to the holding company: it is the enabling of other productive activities. So with education. The direct return it yields is less important than the returns it ensures in other ways. An institution set up as a business is unlikely to offer quality education towards the nation's growth. At best, it may train its students to participate in that growth for their private gain. Conversely, an institution that does not pay its way might be making an immense economic contribution to society. In fact, the two educational sectors most crucial to the economy are, at their opposite poles, precisely the two that need to absorb huge funds with no direct return: basic school education and fundamental research. For a nation so entranced with the United States of America, it has strangely escaped us that these are two areas where, respectively, the American State and American business sink large sums of money. Not for nothing is the US the world's undisputed knowledge hub. That fact should disturb us and make us think of an alternative hub on our own soil that might even attract other nations. Bollywood has done more for India's prestige and prosperity in this way than our knowledge establishment. Instead, like magpies, we are littering our classrooms with the shiny bric-a-brac of the Western academic order. We might focus instead on its basic structure and rationale. We need not clone it, but the exercise will help us create a structure and rationale of our own. Indian education deserves no less. Nor does the Indian economy. | |
Fresh impetus to revert to 9 pc growth: FM
Expressing confidence over India's economic recovery, finance minister Pranab Mukherjee on Tuesday stressed on the need to for 'fresh momentum' to meet the challenge of reverting to the 9 per cent growth that slipped to lower levels after the global financial turmoil.Indian Express reports.
Mukherjee said India is faced with the challenge of reverting to the 9 per cent growth trajectory and even cross the 10 per cent mark but this "calls for imparting fresh momentum to the impressive recovery gained in the past few months".
The minister was addressing a convocation of the Hamdard University in the capital.
Having grown by over 9 per cent in the three years till 2007-08, India's economic growth slipped to 6.7 per cent in 2008-09 on account of global financial crisis. "First challenge before us is to quickly revert to high gross domestic product (GDP) growth of 9 per cent ... and then to cross the double-digit growth barrier," Mukherjee said.
He added that although India's growth story is going through 'exciting phase', the country has challenges like education and infrastructure which need to be addressed.
Mukherjee's optimism for robust economic recovery comes from high industrial growth rate of 16.7 per cent during January. However, the low growth rate of 4.5 per cent recorded by core sector industries during February could be a cause of concern.
In the current fiscal ending March 31, the economy is expected to expand by 7.2 per cent.
According to the recent estimates of the Planning Commission, the economy could grow by 8.5 per cent in 2010-11 and 9 per cent a year after that. Ever since the economic crisis, the government rolled out stimulus measures to support manufacturing sector and announced incentives for exports to new markets.
'N-liability bill should be re-introduced in Parliament'
India needs the civil nuclear liability bill and it should be re-introduced in Parliament, said former chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission Anil Kakodkar here on Tuesday.Indian Express Reports.
Addressing reporters after inaugurating the technology centre of Walchandnagar Industries Ltd, Kakodkar said the Indo-US agreement on reprocessing of nuclear fuel, which was reached on Monday, would help in overcoming the uranium shortage in the country. "The bill should be re-introduced in Parliament. Its deferment will not have any impact on the Indo-US dialogue at the nuclear summit in Washington next month," he said.
"We have limited uranium capacity, of 10,000 MW on processed heavy water reactors. This can be increased by 20 times on fast breeder reactors. Thus, the reprocessing agreement will help in meeting the energy shortage," Kakodkar said. India can import light water reactors from US and its nuclear power capability may increase significantly as the country is quite capable of facilitating the setting up of fast breeder reactors, he added.
"The Indo-US nuclear deal will provide autonomy in achieving nuclear capability and help in importing nuclear items under IAEA safeguards," he said. The N-deal would help the country in meeting the huge demand for energy. "If you consider all the energy sources and put everything to use, we are still short of resources," he said when asked why hydel sources of energy remain largely untapped.
As of now, there is a provision for negotiation of the process and discussions would conclude in one year. "What has been done is the finalisation of that agreement, which will help in giving the go-ahead to the finalisation of negotiations for power reactors," Kakodkar clarified.
DCNS France to extend ties with Walchand IndustriesDCNS France, a ship building company that assists India in building 'Scorpene' submarines for the Indian Navy, is planning to extend its ties with WalchandNagar Industries for supplying critical components for its international submarine projects, said Patrick Boissier, chairman, DCNS, after the inaguration of 'Vinod Doshi Technology Centre'.
Antony sees ''hot summer'' for security forces
Defence Minister A K Antony today said the security forces will be experiencing a "hot summer" this year as those hostile to India''s interest are trying to infiltrate more and more terrorists into the country. "Those inimical to India''s interest are sending more and more terrorists across the border and the summer is going to be a hot summer as far as security is concerned," Antony told reporters after the launch of third destroyer under project 15 A, built by Mazgaon Docks for the Indian Navy.
The army is ready to face attempts to sneak in more and more terrorists across the border this summer, the minister said. The Army, Navy and Airforce needs to modernise "and the government is very clear that we need to modernise our armed forces very fast," he said.
After 26/11 Mumbai terror attacks, everybody realised that coastal security is becoming very important, he said. Earlier, speaking at the launch ceremony, Antony said, "we want to build naval ships indigenously and we must involve private shipyards.
We cannot go back to the old days of depending on foreign shipyards to fulfill our needs." Naval aircraft carrier Gorshkov, acquired from Russia would be commissioned in the Indian Navy in 2010, he said.
Also, the indigenous aircraft carrier being built at Kochi would be commissioned in 2014, Antony said.
79,924 panchayats have broadband connections
As many as 79,924 panchayats (village councils) in India had broadband connectivity by February this year, says the Department of Telecommunications (DoT).
Data on the DoT website shows the numbers have been achieved against the target of providing all 242,279 panchayats with broadband connectivity by May 2012.
With 182.88 million rural subscribers in January, the rural tele-density stood at 22.18 percent.
As many as 564,225 villages had public telephones by January and the number for rural broadband connections stood at 462,168 in February.
India had 601.02 million telecom subscribers in February and the tele-density for the month stood at 51.08 percent, according to the DoT.
HCL re-launches ''Beanstalk'' desktop range
HCL Infosystems today announced the re-launch of its desktop range ''Beanstalk'' with three new high-end models priced Rs 40,000 onwards. The announcement comes at a time when most PC makers are focussing on notebooks and other mobile devices to drive growth in the Indian market.
"Though the desktop sales growth in India is low, it is not de-growing. The consumer still prefers to buy desktops for home use instead of a laptop, which is more personal.
So, we decided to re-launch our Beanstalk range to target the new urban household," HCL Infosystems Executive Vice-President George Paul told reporters here. The desktops are powered with Intel i3 and i7 processors, Windows 7 operating system, NVIDIA graphics cards and built-in Bose speakers.
"We are targetting the metros and tier-I cities with these products," he said. The desktop market in India is dominated by the unbranded sector.
HCL has a 21 per cent share in the branded desktop market in the country. The three models -- Beanstalk Classic, Beanstalk Ultima and Beanstalk Xtreme -- are priced between Rs 39,990 and Rs 85,000.
It also includes three-year comprehensive warranty and three years subscription to McAfee security software. HCL will bundle Lifebox, a value-add pack of various content and applications, Beanstalk Ultima and Beanstalk Xtreme.
When asked about the potential market size, Paul said, "The offerings in the high-end segment are priced on an average at Rs 50,000. The industry sells about one lakh such units.
" He, however, declined to comment on the sales target of the company with the launch of the new range. About 12.7 lakh desktops units were sold in the Oct-Dec quarter of 2009 as against 14.58 lakh units in the previous quarter, a decline of 12.8 per cent.
However, this was 14.6 per cent higher compared to 11.09 lakh units sold in Oct-Dec 2008. Notebooks sales, however, witnessed a 52.8 per cent year-on-year growth at 6.93 lakh in Oct-Dec 2009 from 4.54 lakh units in the same period in 2008.
Paul said desktop sales in India is expected to grow to 2.2 million units per year by 2012, from 1.8 million units currently.
Bharat Electronics posts 13 percent sales growth
Bharat Electronics Ltd. (BEL) posted a turnover of Rs.5,235 crore for fiscal 2009-10, registering a growth of 13.2 percent over the previous fiscal at Rs.4,624 crore, the state-run defence behemoth said Thursday.
According to the provisional estimates released here, profit before tax dipped marginally to Rs.1,086 crore from Rs.1,096 crore.
The company will disclose net profit for the last fiscal when accounts are audited.
'Exports increased to $23.65 million last fiscal from $17.77 million in 2008-09, posting a growth of 33 percent year-on-year,' the company said in a statement here.
The order book for the new fiscal (2010-11) is Rs.11,350 crore.
During the fiscal (FY 2010) under review, the company executed a number of orders to its customers in defence and civilian sectors.
Among the products supplied were communication sets, surveillance radar element, thermal imager based integrated observation equipment, 3D central acquisition radar (Rohini), ship-borne & airborne electronic warfare systems, night vision binoculars, low flying detection radars (Indra II), L band surveillance radar (Mk III), Doppler weather radar and upgraded electronic voting machines (EVMs).
New products introduced were advanced naval fun fire control system for P28 class of ships, perimeter security jammer, frequency hopping VHF transceivers for paramilitary forces and data facility kit for VHF radios.
State and society must root out 'honour killings'
India Today
There is every reason to hail the verdict of a Haryana court sentencing to death five people who killed a young couple, Manoj and Babli, for their marrying each other despite belonging to the same gotra (kin group). The judgment ought to send out a stern message to khap (caste) panchayats of northwest India that their medieval ideas have no place in modern society. As needs no iteration, 'honour killings' have become a monstrous social evil in states like Haryana. So, even as we hail the latest verdict, we have a report that another young couple, who had married against the wishes of their family members, have been gunned down near Amritsar. Nearly a 100 young men and women are estimated to lose their lives this way every year.
The Union government must quickly pass a law against such 'honour killings'. The idea of holding the entire panchayat responsible for any heinous crime arising out of its verdict should act as a deterrent, as should the proposal to put the onus of proving themselves innocent on the accused, as is the case in the anti- dowry law.
But just as the anti- dowry law has not eradicated the evil of dowry deaths, legislation alone will not suffice here. As the nomenclature makes clear, 'honour killings' constitute a peculiar category of crime where the murderers are driven by a perverted sense of righteousness.
It is for this reason that the guilty individuals are generally related to the boy or the girl, as happened in the case before us.
This makes 'honour killings' a reflection of the atavism that still afflicts rural communities in large swathes of northern India. Eradication of these practices requires the combined efforts of the political and intellectual leaders of the community, as well as of its religious leaders.
The politicians will do a lot if they can get the police to take a tough line with the khap panchayats' unlawful activities. Otherwise we will continue to face the ugly spectacle of the very policemen charged with protecting a couple turning them in to their murderous kin, as happened with the hapless Manoj and Babli in 2007.
Put a stop to this plunder
THE state and Union governments need to take urgent action against the illegal activities of miners in Bellary. A three- part MAIL TODAY expose has revealed the high price that the state and the environment are paying for the actions of the Reddy brothersâ€" Janardhana, Karunakara and Somshekaraâ€" of whom two are key ministers in the Bharatiya Janata Party- led ministry in Karnataka. The Reddys operate a number of licensed mines in the district, but these also provide cover for a large number of illegal mining operations. Alarmingly, these are often carried out in the reserve forests, some on the Andhra Pradesh- Karnataka border.
The Supreme Court's order to curb the Obalapuram Mining Company's activities in this area has made little dent in the business run by the powerful Reddy brothers.
The Karnataka state government run by B. S. Yeddyurppa has proved to be ineffective in checking the power of the brothers who have powerful connections with the party's high command in New Delhi. As a result, the entire state machinery has been subverted to enable the mining of iron ore and its export from the Karwar and Mangalore ports.
Recently government officials found that the trucks carrying the ore had forged government documents and no objection certificates to get through the check posts of the forest and transportation departments.
As it is, the palms of the officials are well greased and they are not inclined to stand in the way of the mining mafia. The racket is obviously well organised as evidenced by the coded slips that enable the thousands of trucks to go past the check posts without any hassle.
The consequences of this large scale racket are baleful: First, the environment is severely degraded, leading to the loss of invaluable flora and fauna. Second, the state loses revenue through the illegal movement of the illegally mined ore. Third, the wealth generated by the mining activity undermines democracy and the rule of law in the state. The price of these actions will be paid by the future generations of the people of the state and the country.
Reproduced From Mail Today. Copyright 2010. MTNPL. All rights reserved.
Mainstream, Vol XLVIII, No 14, March 27, 2010
Political Economy of Judicial Precedent—Delay and Unaccountability
Saturday 27 March 2010, by
Law courts in Britain, their Jonathan Brother America and some Eastern countries, believing White is right, are being overwhelmed by the weight of pending cases and the people despair over the despicable delay in the administration of justice. In accordance with the increase in population, they enhanced the number of prodigal courts, but when the number of courts was increasing in arithmetical progression, the number of pending cases increased in geometric progression. Now Western judges are groping for out-of-court remedies like bargaining and conciliation, the traditional duty of clergies and rural grandsires. While constituting pacificatory bodies for that purpose, they are admitting that the dictatorial system commanded by them failed to properly provide justice to the taxpayers and are declaring ironically that the body of principles recognised by the state in the administration of justice cannot be enforced in due course. Instead of conducting a mathe-matically rational probing into the reasons for such crumbling, they are compelling the political executive to have a separate head of account in budget allocation for the extravagance of extra-judicial bodies. In this context, it would be interesting to analyse the historical reasons generated by productive forces that caused the delay in the disposal of cases legally and such analysis may reveal that delayed justice is an ultimate product of the judicial precedent adopted by those countries in judicial adminis-tration.
The spiritual source of judicial precedent that evolved in Britain was Themis, the goddess of law and justice, a social fantasy of bucolic Greece, ignorant to declare one minus one is equal to zero and oblivious of iron and steel. They believed, their kings, head shepherds, while deciding an issue, had been possessed by Themis and the delirious speeches of kings were divine judgments; to dispose of a similar case later, the earlier judgment made by Themis was adopted as the yardstick for justice without conducting a new incantation for Themis. It was done on the ground that Themis was the goddess of justice as well as law, and her judgments were law as well. The material development of judicial precedent in Britain, like any other social phenomenon in any other society, was the resultant of productive forces, wars, religious coercions, goads of tradition and such other lively forces which acted on the society from various directions from time to time.
Britain, the exilic island for criminals in the Roman Empire till its waning in the 4th century AD, deported criminals mingled with autochthons and primitive societies were formed. In the 5th century, various Germanic tribes, Angle of South Denmark, Saxon of the Shelswig-Holstein territory and Jute of Juteland colonised Britain and it was the declining period of the slave-owning mode of production in Europe. All tribes and societies in Britain fought for generations to establish monopoly on land and the inspirited feud enabled the victorious to feudalise land tracts sufficient for their needs. The internal management of every feudal society was done by the gangster, and the most mighty among them became the feudal lord, the less mighty became vassals and the least became serfs. Thus might is right, established by the uncivilised feudal societies of Britain, became the motto of capitalism and its final form, imperialism. Thus the Anglo-Saxon civilisation of Angle and Saxon tribes was boisterous of gladiatorial combats, gang murder, and amputation, for which each feudal lord had enough armed serfs under knights.
In the meantime, a mission headed by St. Andrew deputed by Bishop Gregory of Rome, roamed, preached, baptised and organised churches in the early 7th century Britain. Churches became the biggest feudal lords with the highest income; in addition every family was bound to pay tithe, a compulsory levy to the church at the rate of one-tenth of the income, and that enriched churches immensely. They maintained the military to fortify the duchy and conduct inquisition, excommunication and heresy burning festivals. They sermonised to the working class under servile subjugation loquaciously that the privilege and power of the elite were the manifestations of divine decree, and any protest against that will be heresy, the gravest sin condemnable to hell. To establish this, they quoted the biblical authority in the First Epistle of Peter (2-18,19). This was the religious and psychological substratum of feudalism, that 'opium' identified by Karl Marx, and for the working class it was worst than the caste system in ancient non-feudal India.
In the feudal mode of production, both mundane and spiritual lords were holding a vast area of land with a large number of subjected population. Feudal lords were stocky kings, capable of conducting judicial management of the manor by themselves. They acted as supreme judges for criminal cases and civil disputes arising within the fief, and enforced the judgment using their own armed militia. Their judgment was not based on judicious findings derived from any codified law or procedure, for there was no such thing—every judicial decision was an uttering on the spur of a moment. Feudal lordship was hereditary, sometimes the son applied the logic in the father's judgment to decide similar cases; in the case of spiritual lords, the successor used his predecessor's decision as the guideline for adjudging similar cases, and the continuance of this process for generations gave birth to judicial precedent, the only law of feudal Britain.
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In the 11th century, England was invaded by a William, the military commander of Normandy in north-west France, and his colonisation is known as the Norman conquest; thereafter a nominal kingdom was formed, but the sovereignty of the king was limited by incursive feudalists, and churches were also contumacies. Being kings, as a status symbol, Normans wanted the king's court, however easy; but the difficulty was the enforcement of the kingly commanded laws as they were unable to withstand feudal onslaughts, possible to arise on the issue. So they decided to work out an arithmetic sum of all feudal laws practised by various lords, amounting to the law of the land, but the disintegrable anarchy of feudal propensity made conflicts between those law units. To bridge over that strait, kings deputed travelling judges to discover existing laws in feudatories, get the discrepancies rectified and reconciled all. For that purpose judges visited all feudal courts, heard cases and syncretised everything they witnessed, and that compiled mass of law is called Common Law. It was also called judge-made law; here the word 'Judge' did not indicate those judges who compiled common law, they were only discovers of existing laws, but the word 'Judge' represented feudal lords acting as judges who made laws out of emptiness. Both common law and case law are judge-made laws, but the difference is that the judges who made common law were feudal lords, but those who made case law were capitalistic judges.
In 1214, King John levied a scutage for his military campaign; then the feudal lords, war- lords also, organised and turned against the king for civil war, a usual practice in feudal Europe. At last the cornered king, to avoid a literal surrender, entered into an agreement with those lords, that he should not tax without their consent thenceforth. This perpetual agreement, sanctified by Bishop Stephen Langton, is known as Magna Carta, the foundation of the unwritten British Constitution. That document is also called the Great Charter, which transmuted British sovereignty on a partnership firm of monarchy, hierocracy and aristocracy with the transigent king as the managing partner. The most misunderstood, misinterpreted words 'Magna Carta' restricted financial management of the government by terrestrial and spiritual lords and thereby that peerage could control the whole government business. The British king, the executive head of the country, became the feudalist-in-chief among equals; however they were fierce totalitarians over colonial nations. In obedience to the bondage of Magna Carta, King Henry in 1256 summoned up a council of feudalists of both sectors to discuss the financial crisis due to crop failure. In pursuance of that council, King Edward in 1295 conducted a 'Parliamentum', meant talking together, of the peers to discus the business of the realm and thus the parliament emerged in Britain. Subsequently, a list of demands prepared by the bigoted puritans and approved by King William of Orange in 1689, called the Bill of Rights, mono-polised the right of the Crown for the Protestants; however it accepted the freedom of speech for knights and property owners in parliament—in the House of Commons it was meant only for those then.
In the endless material changes betided in society, common law courts representing a comparatively ancient society, became unable to solve the ever-new problems arising regularly and the aggrieved parties approached the king for redress. He, in consultation with the Lord Chancellor, his conscience-keeper, issued writes and thus equity laws evolved as the disposition of the kingly disposals.
Time went ahead sowing new socio-legal problems, especially with the socialised poverty and total criminality created by Black Death in 1348, together with the concentration of trade and commerce. Common law and equity law courts failed to solve everything and the parliament, leading the country from feudal anarchy to centralised governance, undertook the authority to fill the gaps in existing laws. Lords in the parlia-mentary House had borne judicial authority and legislative capacity simultaneously like Themis. They were the Supreme Judges for their feudatory individually, and the Apex Court for the kingdom collectively on the one hand; on the other, they were individual law-makers for their feudatory and as a collectivised body they became the ultimate legislature of the country. Hence the laws made by the parliament were not conflicting with the feudal precedents, but acted as supplementary or gap-fillers for those needed in changing circumstances and thus judgments made by the House of Lords continued to be law in the parliamentary period too. In this context, parliamentary enactments assented by the king, the decision of the British Sovereign, has no individual entity, apart from feudal precedents because a substance used to fill a gap in an object cannot have any use without that object and parliamentary statutes are not law for Britons but only a source of law. Under these circumstances 'law' defined by Austian as the 'Command of Sovereign' had been modified by Salmond adding judicial precedent to it. Anyhow, it is reasonable to continue the authority of judicial precedent over statutory law, till both temporal lords and spiritual lords, the ambassoders of feudal darkness, and the king, the representative of Middle Age pettiness, are continuing to decide the parliamentary wisdom of undemocratic Britain.
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Another reactionary principle, independent judiciary, was also a contribution of feudal Britain, where lords were haughty to deliver any sort of judgment and mighty to enforce it within their territorial jurisdiction; kings were depending upon the lords for money-material-military, till they could plunder Sonar Bangla in 1757. It may be remembered, Queen Elizabeth, who propelled English Renaissance, was selling her private property and utilising the service of buccaneers like John Hawkins and Francis Drake for subsistence, and such Crown weavers could not have any control over feudal mammonists—money is might and might is right for the West. Feudal judges, pony kings were independent of the Crown in the administration of justice and they were capable of keeping their wealth out of reach of the state. Those countries like America transplanted the shadow judiciary of feudal Britain together with judicial precedent and independent judiciary, cherished up an undemocratic judiciary, like a thread-free kite. There, judges placed themselves above nations, theorised they are privileged Mammons to keep their pelf unrevealed before the society feeding them, like the British feudalists.
In the British system, lawyers are the most advantageous group of judicial precedent and the independent judiciary, who produce tome bundles in the court-hall to show the number of precedents to establish their case and the impugning lawyer pushes tome trolley to refute it. In prolonged arguments quoting conflicting laws on the same point, lawyers do not apply the logic of sorites and syllogism at least, but everything is a blaring of defiance and retortion; at last the confused Judge, usually less intelligent than the lawyers, tosses secretly to give justice. In the British system, there is no legal criterion for justice, it varied from judge in accordance with individual susceptibility; so justice got reversed and reversed on appeals, while people suffered and suffered everything. For establishing and reversing the justice, lawyers at various levels conduct exhaustive talkathon, they determine fees at the rate of load of books produced before the lords and the number hours spending for vociferant ding-dong. The pilgrimage of lawyers through controversial case laws afforesting in voluminous books and journals is time-consuming and delay-making. Moreover, regular creation of expensive courts in the same station on the misconcept that increase in number of courts would alleviate the number of pending cases, compelled same efficient lawyers to appear in many courts at the same time; such lawyers applied for adjournment without relinquishing their engagement, to maintain reliability and income, but such adjournments increased the number of pending cases in all courts. Now judges, salary lords, declare their bureaucratic judiciary is inefficient for the purpose for which it was constituted, and they are coercing wearier litigants to approach waged intercessors, more unaccountable than them, for out-of-court judicial settlement. America has travelled much distance in that direction and formulated a 'rent-a-judge' scheme parallel to their 'rent-a-girl' culture and finally it would be an additional judiciary creating another burden for taxpayers—a medicine more dangerous than the disease.
It may be realised, the malignant growth of pending cases and inevitable delay is the curse of only those countries that admitted the feudal precedent of Britain in their unaccountable judicial system. Disintegrated mode of manual production is the characteristic of feudalism. In the absence of written law, precedent was the rule for administration of disintegrated feudal holdings and the despotic judiciary executed by the will of a single individual. Under capitalism, an advanced form of economy, where the mode of production is centralised as well as mechanised, smaller states were integrated and centralised to bigger nations. Hence the separated administration and judiciary are governed by statutory laws enacted by people's sovereignty. The present judicial chaos is an outcome of assaults being made by the feudal precedent on statutory laws, that is, attacks made by feudal might on people's will.
As history cannot be retraced, judicial precedent, an approved source of law, may be eradicated, statutory laws may be recognised and enforced as the only and ultimate law of the land; and concurrently the judicial system may be adapted and made accountable to the reconstituted people's machinery. Otherwise no panacea can cure the aggravating judicial maladies, although this may not be acceptable to the intellectual detenues of feudal Briticism.
Education is a fundamental right now
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PHOTOS
On Thursday — April 1 — India will join a group of few countries in the world, with a historic law making education a fundamental right of every child coming into force.
Making elementary education an entitlement for children in the 6-14 age group, the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act, 2009 will directly benefit close to one crore children who do not go to school at present.
In an unprecedented move, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Thursday will address the nation, announcing the operationalisation of the Act.
"Tomorrow [Thursday] is a historic day as the Right to Education Act comes into effect. For the first time, education will become a constitutional right. It is a tryst with destiny in the area of education," Union Human Resource Development Minister Kapil Sibal told reporters. He said it was the responsibility of all stakeholders to enforce it.
"But to think that we have passed a law and all children will get educated is not right. What we have done is preparing a framework to get quality education. It is for the entire community to contribute and participate in this national endeavour," he said.
Nearly 92 lakh children, who had either dropped out of schools or never been to any educational institution, will get elementary education as it will be binding on the part of the local and State governments to ensure that all children in the 6-14 age group get schooling.
As per the Act, private educational institutions should reserve 25 per cent seats for children from the weaker sections of society.
The Centre and the States have agreed to share the financial burden in the ratio of 55:45, while the Finance Commission has given Rs. 25,000 crore to the States for implementing the Act. The Centre has approved an outlay of Rs.15,000 crore for 2010-2011.
The school management committee or the local authority will identify the drop-outs or out-of-school children aged above six and admit them in classes appropriate to their age after giving special training. As per the Act, the schools need to have minimum facilities such as adequate teachers, playground and infrastructure.
Keywords: Fundamental right, RTE Act, child labour, Kapil Sibal
Dominating the diaspora April 2010
By: Priyamvada Gopal |
| Stacked in a box: A caste exhibit at Horniman Museum, South London |
| Doilum |
Often seen within a liberal multicultural and human-rights framework as homogeneously victimised by racism and anti-immigrant sentiments, Southasian communities in Britain often escape nuanced critical scrutiny (the unbalanced denunciations by anti-immigration campaigners and racists being a separate matter). In the current climate of a national preoccupation with Islam in the context of the US-led 'war on terror', British Hindu and Sikh communities have become even less accountable for some of the more unsavoury features of their collective existence. This has been particularly so as some of their high-profile spokespeople have made concerted attempts to distance both communities from Muslims, arguing that they are better assimilated and make a more positive contribution to the 'host' community.
Gender-related crimes in minority communities in Britain have received a degree of attention through the invariably sensationalised nature of such phenomena as the so-called 'honour killings' and forced marriages, and have registered on the political radar through the activism of groups such as the Southall Black Sisters. Yet the more insidious and invisible nature of caste hostility and discrimination has meant that it has been a struggle to get the issue recognised as one that adversely affects tens of thousands of Southasian Britons. Over the last several years, however, organisations such as the ACDA, as well as CasteWatchUK and the Dalit Solidarity Network, have been working to bring attention to the issue of caste discrimination. CasteWatch's work had already drawn attention to some of the concerns reported in ADCA's 2009 report. Slowly but surely, the issue is beginning to push at the edges of the larger debate about the nature and diversity of discrimination and hate crimes.
It should be noted that the horrific anti-Dalit violence and atrocities of the sort that routinely erupt in India and elsewhere are not duplicated in Britain. At the same time, what the ACDA report makes clear is that within British Southasian communities, already fragmented into religious groupings, caste still determines patterns of social interaction. It is also clear that those perceived to be from 'lower' castes, particularly Dalits, are routinely subjected to hostile behaviour ranging from intrusive and unwelcome questioning about caste status, unspoken disapproval and verbal insults (including deploying chamar and chuhra as pejoratives), to forms of social exclusion and outright discrimination in schools, workplaces, places of worship and within the eldercare and hospital systems. A pub in Bedford, in the east of England, is apparently known as the 'Chamar Pub' due to perceptions about its clientele. The former mayor of Coventry, a person of Dalit origin, felt it necessary to shift his campaign from a mostly Indian ward to a non-Southasian constituency in order to get elected to that post. There are accounts of workers being demoted at work once his or her caste is 'found out'. Others are not allowed to work shifts with high-caste colleagues; nurses have refused to bathe low-caste patients; and children report being teased at school for being Chamar.
Meanwhile, complaints to non-Southasian supervisors about name-calling are often met with incomprehension. If there was any doubt about the existence of the phenomenon, an angry hate mail sent to CasteWatch UK for its involvement in equality campaigning speaks volumes: "Chhoti jaat chhoti hi rahegi. Kauve ko tilak lane se vo hans nahin banta…kutte the, kutte ho, kutte hi rahoge" (Low castes will remain low. Putting a tilak on a crow does not turn him into a swan … You were dogs, you are dogs, you will remain dogs).
Wilful avoidance
If they dealt with other forms of identity – gender, race, sexuality or religion – such behaviour would generally be enough to be taken seriously, possibly even inviting legal action. Many such incidents are, after all, clear violations of British 'Dignity at Work' and anti-bullying policies. But there is concern among British Dalits that were they to report a hate crime as motivated by caste hostility, they would not be understood by the police. Caste as a concept and category is poorly understood in England, and there has been a real and not entirely accidental reluctance to acknowledge its persistence and pernicious actuality on the part of officials.
Two important factors have contributed to this willed looking-away on the part of the British government. The first is the vehement lobbying by groups such as the Hindu Council UK and the Hindu Forum of Britain – both of which share historical links to chauvinist groups such as the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), and the memberships of which are heavily dominated by upper-caste Hindus. The second is the insistence of the Indian government in high-profile forums such as the UN Racism Conference, where activists have tried to raise the issue, that caste discrimination cannot be equated with racial discrimination. Therefore, despite the claims by some, it is not clear that caste discrimination in Britain will be redressed without challenge under existing race-discrimination legislation.
The result of this political avoidance is that no quantifiable research has been carried out on the question of caste discrimination. In turn, this lack of 'hard' data enables claims that there is no 'strong evidence' of it. Until now, such discrimination has therefore not been explicitly prohibited by UK law; and despite the sustained work of a handful of parliamentarians (such as Jeremy Corbyn, Anthony Lester and Rob Marris), until very recently it had appeared that caste would not be covered by the Equality Bill currently going through Parliament, which would bring disability, sex, race and other grounds of discrimination under one piece of legislation.
The demand made by activists was fairly simple and, on the face of it, unexceptionable: that 'caste' be added to a list that already includes ethnicity and race as categories protected from discrimination. It is hard to see why this would be a problem, however minor the presence of this form of discrimination is perceived to be. At worst, there would be no need to invoke the new legislation; at best, it would afford protection to those at the receiving end of caste discrimination. There has now been something of a victory for campaigners: while 'caste' will not be included directly in the language of the new Equality Bill as a separate category, provision has been made for ministers to amend Clause 9 (on Race) "so as to provide for caste to be an aspect of race".
While dismissing the issue of caste discrimination as non-existent, groups such as the Hindu Forum and Hindu Council, which have perfected the art of putting themselves forward as representative of the entire British Indian community, have protested loudly at caste being included in any anti-discrimination legislation. The same liberal multiculturalism that has allowed for stratification within communities to be overlooked also facilitates the undue prominence of their self-interested view – as articulated by the minister for communities and local government, Dorothea Glenys Thornton, "legislation is the wrong option to cure what they primarily see as a cultural matter." While such so-called community organisations are happy to benefit from diversity and multicultural policies when it suits them – their own misdemeanours often sheltered under legislation that protects minorities and their religious beliefs – they seem unwilling to have those protections extended to minorities among them.
Unwelcome interference
If caste is, indeed, not an issue for Southasian Britons and British Hindus in particular, then it is remarkable that the Hindu Council UK (HCUK) thought it necessary to issue a 30-page report underlining how unimportant and irrelevant it is. In a 2008 document, the Hindu Council utilised a great deal of ink to show precisely how 'irrelevant' caste is. In the style of magisterial ignorance long cultivated by the HCUK general-secretary, Anil Bhanot, the foreword stated, "the caste-system in the last millennia did develop an over-protectionist streak, mostly due to the oppressions of foreign rule" but that "the caste phenomenon [in the UK] has evolved into more of a 'clan' system, where people draw support from each other as if in a club." Moreover, there is evidently a risk of "an unwelcome interference by the host community" and a danger that Hindu society would lose "its respect for the Hindu priest … as people develop misguided contempt for the Brahmin and attempt to do away with the core and beautiful values under which Adi-Manu, the first man to civilise the world, created the original caste system." Thus, in the HCUK's incoherent view, the caste system no longer exists except as a club activity, its core "beautiful" values must nevertheless be shored up. Such are the organisations that the British government thinks it must consult before deciding whether to include caste as a category for protection from discrimination.
Another specious argument that has reared its head is the idea that caste is somehow more fluid than other protected categories. British politicians have argued against attempts to define caste in terms of "hereditary, ascribed and permanent … social stratification" (as noted by in the British Parliament on 11 January), by suggesting that the fact that a woman might change her caste upon marriage shows that "caste is not always permanent." However, race is not a biologically fixed category either, but likewise a historically constructed and shaped construct, even if characteristics such as skin colour and hair texture figure in its definition. At the same time, it is rightly seen as a category to be protected from discrimination. To argue that because a woman's caste can change upon marriage renders the category somehow less recognisable than others is to suggest that people do not, for instance, change their sexual preferences and behaviour. Second, the International Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Racial Discrimination, to which the UK is a party, does now include discrimination based on 'descent', which as an inherited social status must surely apply to caste. At the same time, though, insisting that it is a domestic concern, the Indian government has repeatedly refused to allow the issue of caste to be considered within an international legal framework – domestic legislation and its own constitutional obligations notwithstanding.
The decision to allow the Equality Bill's clause on race to be amended to allow for a Minister of the Crown to "provide for caste to be an aspect of race" is a significant step forward. At the same time, it is one that will only be meaningful only if there is wider acknowledgement and awareness of the problem. It is time to salute the sustained lobbying of campaigners and sympathetic parliamentarians, while at the same time needing to further investigate the issue and remain vigilant. In this matter, as in others, it is essential that organisations such as the Hindu Council and Hindu Forum are shown to be operating with self-interested agendas and skewed perspectives, which deny the persistence of historical wrongs and structural social inequalities. To this end, all progressive Southasians and Britons alike must throw their weight behind legislation that will unambiguously outlaw caste discrimination, along with all other forms of hatred.
Priyamvada Gopal is an academic and writer based in Cambridge, UK.
UK Law: India's Hindu Caste-slavery is racism
The worlds worst violation of human rights are going on in India. World conscience has been asleep. Indians hide the status of the Dalit and delve into tokenism to justify Caste discrimination. Half the population of India is shackled in slavery and hidden from plain view. This has to be exposed.
- The vehement arguments of some high-profile fanatic Hindu Mahasabah groups notwithstanding, the UK's new Equality Bill will include references to caste.
- n November 2009, a report on caste in the United Kingdom was issued by a Derby-based group called the Anti-Caste Discrimination Alliance (ACDA). It showed that caste discrimination, far from having been eliminated through migration and resettlement, was alive and thriving in the large Indian communities of the UK.
- Despite their disturbing nature, the revelations are not surprising: immigrant communities often carry with them the most vicious dispositions and hierarchies of the societies they travel away from geographically.
- Indeed, such communities often entrench such biases further as they settle into other (at times hostile) cultures, and as they carve out new political niches for themselves. Himal Magazine
Every human being on this planet must write about and speak up against institutionalized slavery in India.
Why I am not a Hindu: Kancha Ilaiah
"2009 Draft principles and Guidelines for the Effective Elimination of Discrimination based on Work and Descent" when the U.N. Human Rights Council reconvenes in June….Officials admit social activist Paul Diwakar's contention that it was an Indian who proposed the inclusion of descent in the definition of racial discrimination in the U.N. Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (CERD) when it was first being drafted in the mid-sixties. The Hindu
India's Dalit slaves Page
The world is not listening to the excuses from Delhi. The UN has asked all countries to ban Hindu Caste system–essentially banning Hinduism. The UK has started the world revolution to liberate the Dalit slaves of Bharat.
Indians themselves do not have a single term for describing the Caste system as a whole, but have a variety of words referring to different aspects of it, the two main ones being varna and jati.
The varna consists of four categories, each ranked differently in terms of social honour. Below these groupings are the so-called 'untouchables'- those in the lowest position of all. The Jati are locally defined groups within which the caste ranks are organised. Jati is coupled with one's occupation and the meaning of varna in Sanskrit is 'colour' that signify a social category or a social classification. It is used to enforce a social stratification but does not mean colour of skin.
According to those who practice and promote it, Caste is determined by birth and cannot be changed. In a class based system there is 'vertical mobility' but this is denied in a Caste based system. In India, Social Stratification, historically, gave rise to 'Untouchables'. Although, practice of Untouchability is legally prohibited in India but 'Untouchables' continue to be shunned socially and economically. Each Caste continues in a state of social paralysis antagonistic and hostile towards each other's interests. http://www.castewatchuk.org/
However there is a ray of hope–ignited by a new law in the United Kingdom. Once this law finds a way into the world media, it may spread like wildfire through the European Union–and eventually to America. Once that happens, India will have to buckle under international pressure and be forced to end the slavery of 450 million souls who are fighting for the right to be considered a human being.
Why do India's Dalits hate Mohandas Gandhi?
Dalit leader Dr. Ambedkar struggled to emancipate the "untouchables" from the shackles of Hindu prescribed slavery– the caste system.
Ambeekar wanted to free the Dalits & to allow them to regain their inalienable rights as human beings–highlighting the servitude, humiliation, trials & tribulations of being born in a low caste family and struggled to uplift the "untouchables", the indigenous people, women & other disadvantaged sections of society. Dr. Ambedkar on Pakistan
- Following intensive lobbying by the National Secular Society (NSS, an IHEU member organization), the UK's House of Lords on 2 March 2010 adopted an amendment to the new UK Equality Bill, paving the way for caste discrimination to be made illegal. Lobbying by the NSS was given a new focus by the first international conference on untouchability hosted by the IHEU and held in London last summer.
- Keith Porteous Wood of the National Secular Society commented: "This victory is historic; the UK is the first Western country to pass such legislation. I hope it will encourage other states where caste discrimination is practised to do likewise, or – in the case of India – enforce the legislation it already has."
- http://www.iheu.org/uk-house-lords-adopts-measure-against-caste-discrimination
- http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/8546661.stm
- Parliamentarian Praveen Rashtrapal in a letter to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in which he said, the National Commission for Scheduled Castes was inadequate in addressing caste based discrimination as it lacked resources, staff and teeth. The Hindu
- However, they pointed to a scenario where a delegate from a foreign country berated India for caste based crimes if the U.N. body adopted caste as one of the elements of racial discrimination. The Hindu
- With particular focus on the Hindu caste system, this book (Caste-based Discrimination in International Human Rights Law) represents a comprehensive analysis of the elimination of all forms of racial discrimination in international law. It evaluates the strategies that have informed the work of the United Nations in this area, mapping a new path that moves from standard-setting to implementation. Combining legal analysis with the meaning and origin of caste, it explores the remedies human rights law can propose towards the prohibition of caste-based discrimination, and the abolition of the caste system itself.
- The decision to allow the Equality Bill's clause on race to be amended to allow for a Minister of the Crown to "provide for caste to be an aspect of race" is a significant step forward. At the same time, it is one that will only be meaningful only if there is wider acknowledgement and awareness of the problem.
- It is time to salute the sustained lobbying of campaigners and sympathetic parliamentarians, while at the same time needing to further investigate the issue and remain vigilant. In this matter, as in others, it is essential that organisations such as the Hindu Council and Hindu Forum are shown to be operating with self-interested agendas and skewed perspectives, which deny the persistence of historical wrongs and structural social inequalities.
- To this end, all progressive Southasians and Britons alike must throw their weight behind legislation that will unambiguously outlaw caste discrimination, along with all other forms of hatred.Priyamvada Gopal is an academic and writer based in Cambridge, UK.
Bharat (aka India) has tried to keep Caste discrimination under the radar. Now a new law in the United Kingdom equates the horrendous practice of caste slavery as racism. Mr. Mohandas Gandhi had the opportunity to end Caste discrimination and liberate the Dalits. He however defended the Hindu Caste system and said that he would defend it with the last breath of life in him. Gandhi forced Dr. Ambadekar into abandoning the separate electorate for the Dalits. Separate electorates would have liberated the Dalits from Brahamin enslavement. Dr. Ambadekar considered the abandonment of separate electorate as the biggest blunder of his life.
- Delhi: 3500-yrs of massacres of Dalit-Sudra Blacks by Arya-Brahmins
- Who are the Untouchables? by Dr. Ambedkar
- Sudra Holocaust:Ongoing Genocide of millions of Dalits in India
It should be noted that the horrific anti-Dalit violence and atrocities of the sort that routinely erupt in India and elsewhere are not duplicated in Britain. At the same time, what the ACDA report makes clear is that within British Southasian communities, already fragmented into religious groupings, caste still determines patterns of social interaction. It is also clear that those perceived to be from 'lower' castes, particularly Dalits, are routinely subjected to hostile behaviour ranging from intrusive and unwelcome questioning about caste status, unspoken disapproval and verbal insults (including deploying chamar and chuhra as pejoratives), to forms of social exclusion and outright discrimination in schools, workplaces, places of worship and within the eldercare and hospital systems. A pub in Bedford, in the east of England, is apparently known as the 'Chamar Pub' due to perceptions about its clientele. The former mayor of Coventry, a person of Dalit origin, felt it necessary to shift his campaign from a mostly Indian ward to a non-Southasian constituency in order to get elected to that post. There are accounts of workers being demoted at work once his or her caste is 'found out'. Others are not allowed to work shifts with high-caste colleagues; nurses have refused to bathe low-caste patients; and children report being teased at school for being Chamar.
Meanwhile, complaints to non-Southasian supervisors about name-calling are often met with incomprehension. If there was any doubt about the existence of the phenomenon, an angry hate mail sent to CasteWatch UK for its involvement in equality campaigning speaks volumes: "Chhoti jaat chhoti hi rahegi. Kauve ko tilak lane se vo hans nahin banta…kutte the, kutte ho, kutte hi rahoge" (Low castes will remain low. Putting a tilak on a crow does not turn him into a swan … You were dogs, you are dogs, you will remain dogs). Himal Magazine
- Plight of 450 million Indian enslaved Untouchables. More than 60 per cent of Dalits are landless. Over 40 million of them are bonded labourers. Dalits are the worst victims of labour coercion
- "The 1991 Government survey of India states that on an average day, two Dalits are killed, three Dalit women are raped, two Dalits' houses are burned and fifty Dalits are assaulted by people of a higher caste."
- " High-caste Brahmins formed a private army, the Ranvir Sena, to stop communists from encouraging Dalit field workers to demand higher wages
Dr. Kancha of the Dalit Freedom Network predicts the "Post Hindu India" where 450 million Dalits, Untouchables and Scheduled classes will leave the shackles of Hinduism and convert to Christianity Islam and Buddhism.
NEW DELHI: In the first such legislative move anywhere in the world, and much to the embarrassment of India's official position, the British House of Lords has passed a law that treats caste as "an aspect of race".
On March 24, the House of Lords passed the Equality Bill empowering the British government to include "caste" within the definition of "race". This threatens India's much-touted success in keeping caste out of the resolution adopted at the 2001 Durban conference on racism. The provision to outlaw caste discrimination in Britain came in the form of an amendment made by the Lords as a result of intensive lobbying by dalit groups, including followers of Ravidass sect who had suffered a violent attack last year in Austria.
The bill will become a law after the House of Commons passes it. The legislation draws its legitimacy from a recommendation made in 2002 by the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) that all member states of the International Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Racial Discrimination (ICERD), including India and the UK, should enact domestic legislation declaring that descent-based discrimination encompassed caste and "analogous systems of inherited status".
This development comes at a time when the Manmohan Singh government is already under pressure before the UN Human Rights Council as the draft principles and guidelines issued by it last year on discrimination based on work and descent recognized caste as a factor. The British legislation may provide impetus for the adoption of those draft principles and guidelines.
Though the bill originally contained no reference to caste, the Gordon Brown government agreed to its inclusion even as it commissioned a research on the nature of the problem that is believed to have come into Britain through the Indian diaspora. A parliamentary committee, while recommending last year that caste be considered as a subset of race, cited specific instances of caste discrimination in Britain. UK bill links caste to race, India red-faced, Manoj Mitta, TNN, Mar 31, 2010, 04.17am IST
- Today Dr. Kancha Iiaiah carries on the struggle of the Dalits.
- Civil Rights Activist Dr. Kancha Ilaiah
- Why I am not a Hindu and other Dalit articles
- Muslims must work AMONG Dalits & liberate them: Dr. Ilaiah
- INDIA: Dr. Ilaiah, persecuted Dalit author of "I am not a Hindu"
In one such case, a qualified dalit working in the National Health Service suddenly suffered discrimination at the hands of his supervisor soon after the latter discovered his "low caste" status. The dalit employee was reportedly harassed and suspended from work for a whole year. While a trade union managed to obtain compensation for him, the case highlighted a lacuna in the law to deal with caste discrimination. The Gordon Brown government accepted the amendment tabled by Liberal Democrats subject to the outcome of the research ordered by it on caste discrimination. Baroness Thornton, speaking for the government, told the peers, "We have looked for evidence of caste discrimination and we now think that evidence may exist, which is why we have now commissioned the research."
Lord Avebury, who had tabled the amendment, said he believed that the research would "conclusively prove that caste discrimination does occur in the fields covered by the bill". India's opposition to the linking of caste with race began in 1996, when it tried to free itself of "reporting obligation" under CERD, saying that caste, though perpetuated through descent, was "not based on race".
This is a drastic departure from the position originally taken by India in 1965 while proposing the historic amendment to introduce descent in CERD. It had actually cited its experience with caste as an argument for recognizing all forms of descent-based discrimination. UK bill links caste to race, India red-faced, Manoj Mitta, TNN, Mar 31, 2010, 04.17am IST
The UK law is be part of the United Nations Resolutions. India should face the same type of international isolation, sanctions and approbation 'till it ends Caste discrimination and makes real laws that actually make it illegal to discriminate on the basis of birth. The current laws on the book in Bharat (aka India) are a joke.
The Hindu community is in total denial and will not accept the truth.
…it is remarkable that the Hindu Council UK (HCUK) thought it necessary to issue a 30-page report underlining how unimportant and irrelevant it is. In a 2008 document, the Hindu Council utilised a great deal of ink to show precisely how 'irrelevant' caste is. In the style of magisterial ignorance long cultivated by the HCUK general-secretary, Anil Bhanot, the foreword stated, "the caste-system in the last millennia did develop an over-protectionist streak, mostly due to the oppressions of foreign rule" but that "the caste phenomenon [in the UK] has evolved into more of a 'clan' system, where people draw support from each other as if in a club." Moreover, there is evidently a risk of "an unwelcome interference by the host community" and a danger that Hindu society would lose "its respect for the Hindu priest … as people develop misguided contempt for the Brahmin and attempt to do away with the core and beautiful values under which Adi-Manu, the first man to civilise the world, created the original caste system." Thus, in the HCUK's incoherent view, the caste system no longer exists except as a club activity, its core "beautiful" values must nevertheless be shored up. Such are the organisations that the British government thinks it must consult before deciding whether to include caste as a category for protection from discrimination.
Another specious argument that has reared its head is the idea that caste is somehow more fluid than other protected categories. British politicians have argued against attempts to define caste in terms of "hereditary, ascribed and permanent … social stratification" (as noted by in the British Parliament on 11 January), by suggesting that the fact that a woman might change her caste upon marriage shows that "caste is not always permanent." However, race is not a biologically fixed category either, but likewise a historically constructed and shaped construct, even if characteristics such as skin colour and hair texture figure in its definition. At the same time, it is rightly seen as a category to be protected from discrimination. To argue that because a woman's caste can change upon marriage renders the category somehow less recognisable than others is to suggest that people do not, for instance, change their sexual preferences and behaviour. Second, the International Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Racial Discrimination, to which the UK is a party, does now include discrimination based on 'descent', which as an inherited social status must surely apply to caste. At the same time, though, insisting that it is a domestic concern, the Indian government has repeatedly refused to allow the issue of caste to be considered within an international legal framework – domestic legislation and its own constitutional obligations notwithstanding. Himal Magazine
The only way to end Dalit slavery is to allow them to them to have separate electorates so that they can elect their own representatives proportional to their population. These Dalits who make it to parliament must make up about half of the Lok and Rajgha Sabah. that is the only way to liberate them.
The day the House of Common passes the law on Caste-slavery will be a great day for freedom loving people everywhere. From that day onward, the Dalits can see a ray of hope.
Inequitable development
The tragedy about data collection in India is that by the time primary data is converted into useable information, it may be too late to aid
One of the criticisms of Human Development in India: Challenges for a Society in Transition — a report put together by NCAER and Institute of Maryland, US — is that it is based on data collected in 2004-05, and it does not capture the impact of the changes of the past few years when the economy grew at more than 8% on an average every year.
That, however, should not mean that the report should be dismissed. It brings out various dimensions of human development to understand social inequalities, based on survey of 41,554 households in 1,503 villages and 971 urban blocks across 33 states and Union territories. Many of its findings are an eye-opener, while some others a reaffirmation of conclusion of other independent studies.
Consider social inequities and income disparity. Conventional belief holds that growth has percolated to the lowest denominator. But this was not so, at least five years ago, when the survey was conducted. The disadvantaged continued to suffer. This was seen in the disparities based on caste, ethnicity and religion. It was found that Dalits and adivasis continued to be at the bottom of most indicators of well being, Muslims and other backward classes (OBCs) in the middle, and forward caste Hindus and other minority religions at the top.
Indicators used to measure development were household incomes and poverty rates, land ownership and agriculture incomes, health and education. In terms of household incomes, adivasis and Dalits were the worst off with annual incomes of Rs 20,000 and Rs 22,800 respectively. OBCs and Muslim households were slightly better off, while forward castes and other minorities (Jains, Sikhs and Christians) had median incomes of Rs 48,000 and Rs 52,000, respectively.
Disparities between social groups can be attributed mostly to historical reasons, as also to difference in access to livelihood. Salaried jobs traditionally pay better than casual labour or farming. But permanent jobs elude the disadvantaged classes for reasons ranging from living in rural areas, lower education and fewer connections for job search.
Affirmative actions such as reservation in colleges have not helped the disadvantaged to join the mainstream due to inequities at the primary school level.
So, it is not surprising that forward castes dominate salaried jobs. The report illustrates this: more than three out of 10 men from forward caste and minority religions (other than Muslims) have salaried jobs against about two out of 10 Muslims, OBCs and Dalit men. The disadvantages classes — Dalits, adivasis and Muslims — have fewer social network ties, and this gets translated into lower access to education and jobs.
Efforts at inclusive growth had not really paid off, seen from the continuing regional and gender inequalities. Women earned less than men for the same job, and the inequality was more accentuated in rural areas. For instance, a woman in rural areas earned 54 paise for every rupee earned by a man and in urban areas, a woman earned 68 paise.
Many indicators would have improved by now, particularly as GDP and per-capita income have almost doubled since the survey. But disparity is unlikely to have narrowed much. Policymakers could draw inference from the findings to improve targeting of programmes aimed at inclusive growth.
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Posted: 1 Apr, 2010, 2027 hrs IST
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Posted: 1 Apr, 2010, 1922 hrs IST
http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/opinion/columnists/tina-edwin/Inequitable-development/articleshow/5749202.cms
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