Wednesday, February 05, 2014

India's Servitude

India is estimated to have more child labourers than anywhere else in the world. The law is vague on when they can legally work. Child labour law does not allow children under the age of 14 to be employed, but anyone under 18 is legally considered a child.

The government body in charge of children's rights admits they are helpless:
"Unfortunately our child labour prohibition and regulation act is totally outdated," says Kushal Singh, head of the National Commission for Protection of Child Rights. "It says children below the age of 14 cannot be employed in hazardous occupations. Does that mean in non-hazardous occupations a two-year-old child can be employed? So obviously it's a very regressive act. This issue has been raised and now an amendment is pending in the parliament. However, it has been pending for a very long time."

“A few weeks ago, Abdul had seen a boy’s hand cut clean off when he was putting plastic into one of the shredders. The boy’s eyes were filled with tears but he hadn’t screamed. Instead he’d stood there with his blood-spurting stump, his ability to earn a living ended, and started apologizing to the owner of the plant. ‘Sa’ab, I’m sorry’, he’d said to the man in white. ‘I won’t cause you any problems by reporting this. You will have no trouble from me.’ ” Katherine Boo relates in her  Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death and Hope in a Mumbai Slum.  Boo also writes:
“In my reporting, I am continually struck by the ethical imaginations of young people, even those in circumstances so desperate that selfishness would be an asset. Children have little power to act on those imaginations, and by the time they grow up, they may have become the adults who keep walking as a bleeding waste-picker slowly dies on the roadside, who turn away when a burned woman writhes, whose first reaction when a vibrant teenager drinks rat poison is a shrug.”

We read, India, not only has over one-third of the poorest people in the world it also happens to have the world’s largest number of children suffering from malnutrition. The prevalence of underweight children in India is also among the highest in the world, and is nearly double that of Sub-Saharan Africa. The 2011 Global Hunger Index (GHI) Report, which measures progress and failures in the global fight against hunger, found India ranked 69th in the world, well below China, Sri Lanka and even Pakistan. When it comes to education the situation is equally bad with UNESCO just recently estimating that 37 percent of the world’s illiterate adults, over 287 million people, live in India.

 India, which is also a nuclear power and possesses a space programme, has become the world’s 3rd largest military force and the 7th largest spender on defence. In 2013 the Indian defence budget, at US$37.4 billion formed over 10 percent of the total government expenditure in contrast to just 2 percent for health and 4 percent for education. India is also, for many years, the world’s largest market for imported arms. According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute from 2008-12 India’s arms imports, accounted for 12 per cent of global imports and were 109 per cent higher than those of China, the second biggest arms importer. While in 2000 India spent an estimated US$ 911 million on arms imports by 2013 this had risen to US$4.6 billion. The latest deal being the purchase of 15 Japanese-made amphibious aircraft, priced at about $110 million each. Later this year India is also expected to sign a US $10 billion contract for 126 French Rafale fighters.

Today, India’s top ten billionaires alone account for over 12 percent of the country’s GDP while 7,850 Ultra High Net Worth individuals account for a phenomenal US$935 billion, which is half of India’s GDP! A majority of them have made their money in areas such as real estate, construction mining and infrastructure where collusion with politicians and government officials is the key to success.

Giant corporations, billionaire industrial magnates and feudal landlordism, in collusion with the Indian military and police, with family political dynasties at the reins of power, hold the billion plus people of this country in thralldom.

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