About one in six Indian city residents lives in an urban slum with unsanitary conditions that are "unfit for human habitation," according to the first complete census of India's vast slum population. 40 percent of households in Mumbai, India's financial capital and largest city with 19 million people, are located in overcrowded shantytowns where most residents are squatting illegally and many have little access to basic sanitation. The census report identified 13.8 million households – about 64 million people – located in city slums nationwide. That's 17.4 percent of all urban households, which account for roughly one-third of India's 1.2 billion people. One-third of slum homes surveyed had no indoor toilets and 64 percent were not connected to sewerage systems. About half of the households lived in only one room or shared with another family.
Meanwhile in nearby Indonesia the class struggle continues with increased intensity. Protests with workers demanding a higher minimum wage are now a regular occurrence in the bigger cities, taking place on an almost weekly basis. In Jakarta, the minimum wage is now 2.2 million Indonesian rupiah a month ($226; £150) but in West Java it is only 1.25 million rupiah, up from 850,000 rupiah last year. Workers want a bigger piece of the pie.
Said Iqbal, the head of Indonesia's confederation of trade unions said "What I don't understand is how an Indonesian worker can work for decades and still be poor, while the rich keep getting richer," he says. "We won't stop protesting until there's justice and prosperity for everybody."
The capitalists complain that there is not enough to go around. "The problem is we are competing not just against ourselves - Indonesian companies - we are competing with Vietnam, China, and the new emerging markets like Cambodia - and soon even Burma will open up and compete with us," Mr Harijanto, the chairman of the Footwear Association in the Indonesian Chamber of Commerce remarked.
Clothes factory owner Ratih Andrianti says: "We've lost 40% of our profit since we started paying the higher wages. But we haven't seen any increase in productivity. If this continues, it doesn't make sense for me to do this business. Where's the benefit in it for me?"
The prospects look bleak for the number of millionaires that are expected to triple to 99,000 by 2015, according to wealth management firm Julius Baer, the quickest pace of any Asian country.
To see more on Indonesian inequality see this SOYMB post
Is there much difference in the neighbouring country of Malaysia?
Sarawak - one of the richest Malaysian states - has become one of the largest exporters of tropical timber. Despite its wealth, profits have failed to trickle down, and the people here are some of the poorest in the country.
Long Napir villagers lay the blame for their plight squarely on one man: the state's powerful chief minister, Abdul Mahmud Taib, who is in charge of all land classification and the allocation of lucrative forestry and plantation licenses.
"He lives, the rest of us suffer," Tamin Sepuluh Ribu, a former village headman, told Al Jazeera. "We have no land to farm, our rivers have become muddy, there's hardly any fish left anymore."
A farmer Vincent Balingau told Al Jazeera. “We let them take timber in the past, but we had no idea they were planning to take our land."
Under the Sarawak Land Law, indigenous people have rights over areas as long as they can prove they have lived in or used the lands prior to January 1, 1958. In 1994, the Sarawak government gave the minister in charge of land the power to extinguish Native Customary Rights to land. Two years later, it was legislated that land dispute cases were automatically to presume the land belongs to the state, and the burden of proof was shifted to the claimant. In 2011, the definition of "native" was amended to include "any party entering into a joint-venture plantation deal with the Land Custody and Development Authority".
The indigenous areas are being sold by companies with close personal or political ties to the chief minister. Taib has held the post since 1981, and has been repeatedly accused of corruption during his nearly 32-year rule.
The US Embassy in Kuala Lumpur noted in one cable released by WikiLeaks: "Chief Minister Taib Mahmud … doles out timber-cutting permits while patrolling the underdeveloped state using 14 helicopters, and his family's companies control much of the economy...All major contracts and a significant portion of land to be converted to palm oil plantations [including on indigenous 'customary land rights' that the state government has refused to recognize] are given to these three companies."
In 2011, Taib gave his cousins 5,000 hectares of land for about $300,000 dollars, according to leaked land registry documents. Having secured agriculture and timber licences, they were trying to sell it a year later for more than $16mn.
Taib's family control about 200,000 hectares of land in Sarawak - an area twice the size of Hong Kong. Global Witness estimates it has a market value of $500mn. An ex-wife to one of Taib’s sons claimed he had an estimated $233 million deposited in more than 100 bank accounts. around the world.
Meanwhile in nearby Indonesia the class struggle continues with increased intensity. Protests with workers demanding a higher minimum wage are now a regular occurrence in the bigger cities, taking place on an almost weekly basis. In Jakarta, the minimum wage is now 2.2 million Indonesian rupiah a month ($226; £150) but in West Java it is only 1.25 million rupiah, up from 850,000 rupiah last year. Workers want a bigger piece of the pie.
Said Iqbal, the head of Indonesia's confederation of trade unions said "What I don't understand is how an Indonesian worker can work for decades and still be poor, while the rich keep getting richer," he says. "We won't stop protesting until there's justice and prosperity for everybody."
The capitalists complain that there is not enough to go around. "The problem is we are competing not just against ourselves - Indonesian companies - we are competing with Vietnam, China, and the new emerging markets like Cambodia - and soon even Burma will open up and compete with us," Mr Harijanto, the chairman of the Footwear Association in the Indonesian Chamber of Commerce remarked.
Clothes factory owner Ratih Andrianti says: "We've lost 40% of our profit since we started paying the higher wages. But we haven't seen any increase in productivity. If this continues, it doesn't make sense for me to do this business. Where's the benefit in it for me?"
The prospects look bleak for the number of millionaires that are expected to triple to 99,000 by 2015, according to wealth management firm Julius Baer, the quickest pace of any Asian country.
To see more on Indonesian inequality see this SOYMB post
Is there much difference in the neighbouring country of Malaysia?
Sarawak - one of the richest Malaysian states - has become one of the largest exporters of tropical timber. Despite its wealth, profits have failed to trickle down, and the people here are some of the poorest in the country.
Long Napir villagers lay the blame for their plight squarely on one man: the state's powerful chief minister, Abdul Mahmud Taib, who is in charge of all land classification and the allocation of lucrative forestry and plantation licenses.
"He lives, the rest of us suffer," Tamin Sepuluh Ribu, a former village headman, told Al Jazeera. "We have no land to farm, our rivers have become muddy, there's hardly any fish left anymore."
A farmer Vincent Balingau told Al Jazeera. “We let them take timber in the past, but we had no idea they were planning to take our land."
Under the Sarawak Land Law, indigenous people have rights over areas as long as they can prove they have lived in or used the lands prior to January 1, 1958. In 1994, the Sarawak government gave the minister in charge of land the power to extinguish Native Customary Rights to land. Two years later, it was legislated that land dispute cases were automatically to presume the land belongs to the state, and the burden of proof was shifted to the claimant. In 2011, the definition of "native" was amended to include "any party entering into a joint-venture plantation deal with the Land Custody and Development Authority".
The indigenous areas are being sold by companies with close personal or political ties to the chief minister. Taib has held the post since 1981, and has been repeatedly accused of corruption during his nearly 32-year rule.
The US Embassy in Kuala Lumpur noted in one cable released by WikiLeaks: "Chief Minister Taib Mahmud … doles out timber-cutting permits while patrolling the underdeveloped state using 14 helicopters, and his family's companies control much of the economy...All major contracts and a significant portion of land to be converted to palm oil plantations [including on indigenous 'customary land rights' that the state government has refused to recognize] are given to these three companies."
In 2011, Taib gave his cousins 5,000 hectares of land for about $300,000 dollars, according to leaked land registry documents. Having secured agriculture and timber licences, they were trying to sell it a year later for more than $16mn.
Taib's family control about 200,000 hectares of land in Sarawak - an area twice the size of Hong Kong. Global Witness estimates it has a market value of $500mn. An ex-wife to one of Taib’s sons claimed he had an estimated $233 million deposited in more than 100 bank accounts. around the world.
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