Mandatory Water Restrictions in California Fail to Address Abuse of Resources

A good short interview. All over the world people are thinking we have an abundance of water & hence, we can use it as we wish, for as long we wish. Ask about the lack of water from those people who don't have access to this precious commodity; water is the blue gold.

In water stressed countries, governments & the general public needs to start thinking how to conserve water. We can't stop its use but we all need to start self-auditing ourselves, in regards to water usage, & start thinking how do I save water. Governments, like when California was going through drought, need to start mandating how much water people can use. Problem is people start thinking about water conservation when it's too late. Water conservation strategies need to be thought out & implemented way before the deadline when water is expected to be finished for all.

In Pakistan, the general public & the government are thinking that building dams is going to save the country from impending water crisis. Heck, no!! Dams is one of the solutions out of many, to help a little bit in alleviating the pain of water scarcity. Dams will be able to store some water that when the water crisis hits, the public can be provided with water for a few days. But that stored water will eventually end. Then, what? Water conservation strategies still need to be implemented. But saving water at that time would be a lot harder, since the public is not used to it, then implementing those strategies right now, when water is almost scarce, & work towards postponing that water crisis deadline for as long as it's possible.

As Maude Barlow says it in the end that, "there isn’t a place in the world where we don’t have to start taking care of water in a very different way than we have."

------------------------------------------------------------------------

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lo7uA2ZN93A

PAUL JAY, SENIOR EDITOR, TRNN: Governor Brown of California’s mandatory reduction of 25%, I guess, is first of all a reflection of a broad, global problem. But let’s start first of all with California. Do you think this measure is adequate?

MAUDE BARLOW, NATIONAL CHAIRPERSON OF FOOD & WATER WATCH: Well, it’s terrible that it’s taken so long for California to actually take this kind of action. It was only last year that they brought in legislation to give some kind of control to their groundwater, which has just been a free-for-all. Everybody’s known this has been coming for 30 years. There’s no snowpack, the overextraction of water is incredible. In California, 80% of the water use goes to agriculture and much of that is for export to other states, but they produce all the almonds, 80% of the almonds for the world, for instance. I mean, they use so much water to produce almonds every year that you could take a shower for ten minutes every day for the next 86 million years. That’s how much water it takes.

So there’s no, there’s been no control. There’s been no limit. There’s been a kind of everybody can take whatever they want mentality. Move it around from one place to another through canals and aqueducts and so on. And hence the problem. And this is not only in California but around the world.

We have this notion that, what I call the myth of abundance, that we don’t have to take care of our water and we wait until the crisis hits before we take inadequate measures.

JAY: with climate change, at least to begin with. If I understand it correctly, California’s been draining water from neighboring states for decades, also affecting the water table in those states. And everyone knows this has been coming.

But how much does climate change, do scientists thing, have to do with the current drought?

BARLOW: Well, climate change, of course is a part of it. But it depends on how you define climate change. Most people think of it as greenhouse gas emission changes the climate and warms the climate, and that’s true and that impacts water. But what we’re beginning to really understand is that when we displace water from where it is put in watersheds, or we displace the vegetation that protected that watershed, we actually change the local hydrologic cycle.

What’s happened in California is not as much climate change from greenhouse gas emissions as climate change from the abuse, mismanagement, and displacement of water. Water has been put where it belongs. As you say, not only has California been borrowing from other states, it’s been borrowing from its future groundwater. They’re pumping groundwater far faster than it can be replenished by nature, and the system of water rights that gives these big industrial interests the right to do this basically says they can keep doing it till the cows come home.

Well, at some point, something’s got to give. It’s like a bunch of people around a bathtub, and they all have blindfolds, and they have straws, and they’re drinking the water as fast as they can. And they think it’s fine. And it is fine. Until one day it isn’t fine for anybody.

They have had a system of allowing basically the commodification of water, privatization of water, through these water rights. And what California needs to do is declare its groundwater to be a public trust. They need to bring in terribly strict management. They have to bring in a hierarchy of access. And frankly, they’ve got to stop making all the almonds and the, the hay for Japan, and everything. Alfalfa that they ship off to Japan. They’ve got to start taking care of their water, and put it back in the center of all policy.

JAY: But can you do that and at the same time have such a massive agribusiness in California?

BARLOW: No. You can’t have both. But you’re not going to have it, anyway. The water dries up, it’s gone. I remember being in Australia a couple of years ago when they first announcement that the rice exports were down 98%. I mean, the bottom fell out of the rice industry, which is huge in Australia, because they ran out of water. So ... it’s not like jobs versus the environment. If you don’t have water, you can’t grow crops. There isn’t any such thing as big agribusiness, or small farming, if we don’t have water.

We have to have what I call a new water ethic, where water is put in the center of our lives, and all policy, from how we grow food to how we produce energy, to how we trade with one another, asks the question about the impact on water. And until we do that, California’s just going to be one of the many crises we’re going to face around the world.

Another happening right now is Brazil. Brazil, up until recently, has been seen as the most water-rich country in the world. But greater São Paolo has about 20 million people. They don’t think they have enough water to last six months. That’s because they’ve cut down the Amazon, and that has removed the whole hydrologic cycle that produced the rain.

So, we have to stop thinking that somehow, big technology is going to fix this. We are a planet running out of clean, accessible water.

JAY: That certainly is the thinking, that somehow eventually it will become economical to spend the money for technology to save us. So for example, in California, at some point it becomes profit-making and worthwhile to bring water down from Canada. There is lots of fresh water not that far north of California agriculture.

BARLOW: There’d be an awful big fight if Americans or California or businesses think that Canada’s going to sell its water to the United States. It’s a very, very hot issue here. We need our water. We do not have that much. We have about 6.5% of the world’s available water. Most of our water is running North, in mighty rivers running north, and there is no way that we’re going to allow the re-engineering of our entire environment to, frankly, to feed a state that hasn’t looked after its own water.

I mean, I think a lot of people around the world are going to say, what did you do to protect your water? And when you run out because you haven’t heard the warnings that have been at least 30 years coming, why should other parts of the world so-called share their water, or sell their water to you when you haven’t taken care of it yourself?

We need to understand that everywhere there are maybe different water realities, but there isn’t a place in the world where we don’t have to start taking care of water in a very different way than we have.

India marital rape victims' lonely battle for justice

Let me start this post by saying that sexual assault (i.e. rape) is wrong, regardless of it's marital rape or any other kind of rape. Perpetrators should be punished to the full extent of the law.

BUT, I don't agree with campaigners in India or anywhere else that marital rape be criminalized. Why?

Problem is that marital rape will be criminalized just like any other kind of rape is in the country. But will that solve the problem? If we forget about India, a developing country, for a minute, & focus on how rape criminal laws help fight / reduce rapes in developed countries, we see that it still happens quite a lot; from marital rapes & domestic abuse to sexual harassment & assault on streets & offices. So much so, that in Canada, there's a project, started by Rogers, called Project97. It's called "Project 97" because, per the organizers of this project, 97% of sexual assaults & harassment are never reported. Please keep in mind that this is in Canada & not something happening in a developing country.

Nobody around the world is trying to resolve the root problem of sexual assaults. What is the root problem?

Media around the world, be it internet, TV, magazines, movies etc. constantly keep pushing the boundaries of female nudity. Sexualized imagery is becoming the norm. Heck, even roaming around nude in the street is now being discussed in New York & Kitchener, because women there want to go out topless or, in some cases, even completely nude. We have celebrities like Kardashian clan or Miley Cyrus who are brainwashing young minds that female nudity in public should be celebrated & not criminalized.

Due to male biology, on the other hand, heterosexual men, who are still in the majority around the world, get aroused by watching a female who is trying to flash as much flesh as she can. The only things holding them back from humping that woman, right there & then, are laws & some moral views (for example, incest is not liked in any culture or country, irrespective of the law of the land).

Now, women in the West are far more liberal. They will go to a dance club & may go home either with a man or sexually satisfy themselves before going back home. If that's not enough, then annual "young sexapalooza" or, in other words, Spring Break in Florida, is internationally famous event, where young female nudity is wholly encouraged. Young males are there to only fornicate & get drunk.

However, women in the East are stuck in between conservative Eastern & liberal Western values. For example, in India, young women want to study, have a career, live in the metropolitan cities all by themselves, & want to choose their life partners themselves. They want to enjoy the night life, just like all those girls do in the Hollywood movies. Bollywood movies are full of Indian actresses in skimpy dresses, dancing all over the place, & men are ogling them like hungry wolves.

But, Indian women also want to marry someone who is highly educated, earns enough money to keep them well pampered, & of course, not a player. They want a respectable family man to raise their children.

On top of that, female infanticide in India is common. Although, it is illegal in the country, couples are still forced by their families to have as many boys as they can have, & girls are killed as soon as the ultrasound results come around. So, in the general population, demographically, the male to female ratio is skewed towards males. So, fewer females for more males in the general society.

One more problem all this sexualized media is causing is infidelity. As you may know how Ashley Madison, the site of cheaters, was hacked recently & the data of 33 Million users was released in the public. As you may know that Ashley Madison is one of the businesses of a Canadian company. It has operations in several countries around the world, including India.

There is nothing essentially wrong with what Ashley Madison is providing to the masses around the world. Since, rape is criminalized in the West, & infidelity or adultery is grounds for divorce, men try to cheat the system by cheating on their wives through an intermediary, Ashley Madison. Men are watching sexualized imagery all around them & women in their lives are trying to control the relationship through sex. So, men just simply cheat to satisfy their sexual arousals.

Some may say at this point that "men are pigs." Male reaction to sexualized imagery is just natural. A couple in love undress in their bedroom to sexually arouse themselves & physically enjoy their love. But, what a man gotta do when he is surrounded by sexualized imagery 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year? Did he ask for Miley Cyrus or Kardashian clan to get naked on the worldwide media?

Anyway, now, a poor, young man is watching Bollywood & Hollywood movies, watching porn on Internet, watching supermodels around the world wearing skimpy dresses in fashion magazines, & then watching Indian girls dating & having sexual relations with their boyfriends & even office colleagues. He is sexually aroused on a daily basis. So, at that point, he has 4 options:

1. If he is single & not in a relationship, then find a girlfriend & satisfy his sexual need or pay a prostitute (assuming he has enough money to hire a prostitute).
2. If he is single & in a relationship, then he will try to satisfy himself with his girlfriend, & due to his education level & social upbringing, he may or may not force himself on her.
3. If he is married, then he will try to satisfy himself with his wife, & due to his education level & social upbringing, he may or may not force himself on his wife.
4. If he is married, then he may try to cheat on his wife with a girlfriend or a prostitute.

As you can see in the example above, I started the example with the word, "poor". Because, in many cases, especially in India, but it happens all around the world, poor men have a very difficult time in starting a relationship. Girls want to start a relationship with a man who can pamper them. Money is an issue. An educated, but poor, man has a hard time in getting married in South Asia. But that poor man still has sexual needs, & even more so, after watching so much sexual images all around him. He may want to get married but he can't, because girls or their families want him to be educated (education costs money, too) or be education & be rich.

So, as you can see, nobody influential in the world of media is working towards reducing female nudity in the media. Quite contrary, it is being encouraged. Men, however, are being told to 'keep it in their pants', which goes against their biological nature. Women are trying to control relationships through sex; rewarding their male partners by sex when they are good & holding it back if their male partners do something undesirable. It is similar to being a pet that desirable behaviours are rewarded & undesirable ones are punished by the owners.

Cheating or adultery or infidelity is illegal in a majority of the countries. So married men are forced to rely on their wives for sexual satisfaction. They wouldn't have so much sexual needs if they are not bombarded 24/7 by sexualized media. But that's not the case. So, he is "forced" to relieve his sexual tension through his wife, since adultery is not allowed. But the wife just doesn't "feel" like having sex. What's he supposed to do? If he forces her, then it becomes marital rape. If he finds another girl, then it becomes cheating.

Today's man, around the world, is stuck between rock & a hard place.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-32810834

...
In India, it is not a crime for a man to rape his wife. And many believe that marriage is a source of sexual satisfaction for men &, therefore, women must submit.

No equality
...
Campaigners have long demanded that marital rape be criminalised in India.

A committee formed after the December 2012 gang rape & murder of a student on a bus in Delhi to suggest criminal law reforms recommended that martial rape should invite the same punishment as any other rape. The government of the day, led by the Congress party, rejected the recommendation.

Victims of marital rape, however, refuse to give up the fight.
...

Widely prevalent

Supreme Court lawyer Karuna Nundy who specialises in human rights litigation & gender justice says Indian law provides little relief to victims of marital rape.

"At the moment, a wife can file a case under the domestic violence act which are dealt with in a civil court. It gives a woman a legal right to separate from her husband on the grounds of cruelty.

"But what is the legal provision to punish the act of crime? Any sexual act which is forced or is being done without the consent of the woman is a crime. The relationship of the victim with the perpetrator makes no difference."

A number of studies done over the years suggest that sexual violence in marriage is prevalent in India.

The last National Family Health Survey (2005-2006), conducted among 124,385 women in 29 Indian states, had 10% women reporting that their husbands had physically forced them to have sex.

Another study conducted by the International Centre for Women (ICRW) & United Nations Population Fund's (UNPFA) across 7 states in India last year covered 9,205 men & 3,158 women aged 18-49 from each state. One-third of the men interviewed admitted to having forced a sexual act on their wives.

The victims of "marital rape" say they fight a lonely battle because their suffering falls under no category of Indian legal system. Moreover, society often blames them for maligning the institution of marriage.

However, Save the Family Foundation, a men's rights group, cautions against criminalising marital rape.

"We have already seen how 498A, the anti-dowry law, has been largely misused by women in India to harass men & their family. The Central Woman Commission of India has accepted that a number of rape cases reported each year are false. How can one prove a marital rape? Taking bedrooms to court is a dangerous idea," a spokesman said.
...

Corporal punishment in India's schools

A good article on corporal punishment being used by school teachers as a form of discipline. I'm personally in favour of corporal punishment but within, some bounds.

The article does try to put it into a proper perspective that "blaming specific groups (teachers, &/or parents) will not enable progress to be made, & risks alienating teachers already under pressure because of overcrowded classrooms, poor infrastructure, & poverty situations."

Beating children because they are poor or being absent from class because they have to provide help in the family farms or not having proper school supplies due to poverty is definitely wrong.

But beating children because they are cheating on the test/exam (that is not "teamwork") or they have not done their homework or they are late to class/school are very plausible reasons to punish students. However, if those children didn't do homework because of lack of school supplies or came late because of a family emergency, then they must not be punished.

Corporal punishment make the children know that teacher is to be respected. Being of a Pakistani background, I know the experience of corporal punishment, first hand. After moving to Canada in my teens, I was aghast at watching how students in secondary school talked back to teachers. Teachers have little to no respect in the eyes of students in the West, except a few good students.

On top of that, I was reading an article a few months back (I may have even wrote a blog post on it) that how teachers, in North American elementary to secondary schools, are always afraid of their students, that when & who may allege something against them to the school authorities.

There was an example that how a elementary school substitute teacher saw a student throw away a perfectly good banana in the garbage during lunch hour. The teacher told the student to take the banana out of the garbage & eat it. The student took it out & took 1 bite of the banana, & then threw it back in the garbage. This all happened while he kept staring back at the teacher, like challenging her back. The incident didn't stop there. The student went home & told his parents that the teacher forced him to eat the fruit from the garbage. Parents, of course, stormed the principal's office. Consequently, the teacher got suspended while the matter was investigated. Although, no charge was ever laid against her for child abuse, she was never called back again to teach at that school. After all, which school administration would want to go through the whole hassle of investigation against such a teacher who was merely teaching a student the value of food & discouraging him from wasting food?

Corporal punishment is being removed from schools around the world. One of my maternal aunts in Pakistan, who is a secondary school teacher for around 20 years now & is highly respected, was decrying back in December 2013 that teachers are being banned from using corporal punishment as a form of disciplining the children. Her school is a network of private schools in Karachi & kids from middle to upper middle class attend that school (so not exactly poor kids who need to help out their families in the farms are attending that school). She was saying that school children are becoming more & more brave & talk back to teachers & don't listen to what teachers are saying because they know that teachers can't touch them now.

I fully agreed with her. Because, I have seen the effects of how much respect teachers really have in North American schools. And, it's only getting worse. Teachers aren't allowed to discipline students. So, students have a free rein to do whatever they like, however they like, in whichever way they like. If they want to smoke & deal drugs right outside the school, who is going to stop them? If they want to start a fight in / around the school, who is going to stop them? If they want to bring a gun / other weapons to school, who is going to stop them? If they want to harass / bully another student(s), who is going to stop them? Definitely, not the teachers, because their hands are tied.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

http://www.theguardian.com/global-development-professionals-network/2015/may/22/tough-boys-and-docile-girls-corporal-punishment-in-indias-schools

Despite widespread concern about the effects of corporal punishment on children, it persists in schools across the world. Its eradication in many countries is proving difficult, & India is no exception.

... more everyday forms of violence may go unnoticed or unquestioned, & limited academic attention has focused on gender differences in the way punishment is meted out to boys & girls at home, school, & society at large. For children in many parts of India, norms relating to femininity mean that girls are required to be docile & submissive, & not to be “naughty”. Ideas about masculinity may mean that boys are supposed to be able to accept physical punishment & to withstand pain.

India ratified the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child in 1992, & has many policies that ban corporal punishment in schools. But these seem out of kilter with everyday realities. The Right of Children to Free & Compulsory Education Act of 2009 guarantees school for all children between the ages of 6 & 14. Although elementary schooling has expanded, this rapid expansion has not been matched by comparable increases in the teaching workforce. There is a shortage of teachers across schools, & class sizes are very large, putting pressure on teachers to control high numbers of children.

The government of India commissioned research that included more than 3,000 children aged from 5 to 18, asking about physical abuse by teachers. In all age groups, 65% reported being beaten at school. Our own findings back up these figures. Younger children (aged 7–8) were significantly more likely to have witnessed & experienced corporal punishment than the 14- to 15-year-old cohort, with over two-thirds of the younger children having been physically punished at school in the past week, compared with one-third of the older young people. Poorer children were more likely than less poor children to be punished.

However, among children aged 14–15, we found that girls & boys alike experience routine corporal punishment, with boys experiencing particularly high levels. There was a less sharp distinction in use of corporal punishment between boys & girls in the younger cohort. This may be because corporal punishment is part of the socialisation of younger children, but when they are older it is no longer seen as an appropriate way to discipline young women, while “toughening up” young men may be normative.

It may be seen as part of boys’ socialisation & transition into adulthood. One 15-year-old boy complained about the unfairness of the beatings being meted out on boys, whom he perceived as being punished much more than girls. The violence children & young people experience in schools may not be visibly gendered but it may reinforce gender differentiation because of the ways in which it is employed by male & female teachers. Some children, for example, spoke of being particularly afraid of the male PE teachers. However, the reality is that young boys & girls alike are physically abused in schools, & it is being children that make them vulnerable, rather than their gender.

Reasons to be punished

Girls and boys spoke of a range of other reasons for punishment, including being absent from school due to work, illness or attending family celebrations, missing classes, not doing their homework, not reading well, making mistakes, receiving poor marks in exams, not wearing uniform, not having the right equipment, or not paying the teacher for extra lessons. One girl, aged 10, said:

“If we don’t study, they beat us. If we ask other children for help, they beat [us]. I went to drink water without asking sir, so he beat me that time. They said all children should come back to class by the time they count 10 after the interval. But I went home [to use the toilet]. After coming back to school, he beat me.”

Punished for poverty

Poverty at home also clearly influenced school discipline practices. Living in poverty meant that children were sometimes not in a position to follow the rules & expectations of school. Children described being punished for not having uniform or the right equipment, or money to pay fees.

...

As Young Lives data have shown, economic constraints & family circumstances mean that boys & girls in rural areas engage in seasonal agricultural work on family land, & miss school for days, weeks, or months at a time. Although the boys & girls did different gender-specific work, the impact was the same: when they did return to school, they faced punishment. Although older boys rarely spoke directly about their fears of punishment, their mothers spoke of their sons’ emotions. Ranadeep’s mother explained:

“Without him, we cannot run the family, we don’t get labourers & there is no other way for us. When he returns to school they shout at him & he is terrified ... His father goes there & informs them ... they scold us, they say ‘how will he get on if he is absent for such a long time?’... We try to pacify them by telling them about our problems at home.”

What can be done?

In global policy debates, much emphasis has been placed on the role of education as the solution not only to reducing cycles of poverty in developing countries, but also to addressing gender violence.

However, the evidence presented here suggests that we must question this, at least in the Indian context. All children, regardless of gender, experience high levels of physical violence in schools. But it is teenage boys who experience the most.

But blaming specific groups (teachers, &/or parents) will not enable progress to be made, & risks alienating teachers already under pressure because of overcrowded classrooms, poor infrastructure, & poverty situations.

Approaches need to develop not only from the top down, but from communities, families & teachers to find ways of working together to change practices.

Violence as an integral part of schooling may have consequences for boys’ & girls’ development that go beyond the here & now of childhood to social & economic factors in adulthood. In India, this needs to be understood in the context of the high expectations that parents & children have of schools. Some children dislike school for many reasons, but if they discontinue school because of their experience of corporal punishment, & if they learn that corporal punishment is the solution to behaviour that is out of line, then formal schooling may inadvertently be reinforcing both cycles of poverty & the use of violence.


Virginia Morrow is a senior research officer at Young Lives & a University of Oxford associate professor. Follow Young Lives on Twitter.

India's crackdown on 'anti-national' activism

So while governments of some countries are being maligned & protests are happening in those countries to bring democracy in those countries / regions (e.g. Pakistan, Myanmar, Turkey, Hong Kong etc.), other countries, which are supposedly considered democratic are acting like dictatorships. For example:

1. US & Canada passing laws by either hiding them from public or against national activism. US & Canada working on TPP (Trans Pacific Partnership) without any consultation with the public (heck, the general public doesn't even know at all about this). Or Canada passing Bill C-51, which many activist organizations said that it essentially outlaws protests, for instance, for the environment.

2. India, which is considered as a democratic country in South Asia, passing laws against public's pursuit of justice. You can read more in the opinion piece.

3. Spain outlawing various forms of popular protests with the help of "Citizens' Security Law".

So, while democratic countries are moving back to dictator rule, & dictatorial countries are seemingly moving forward to democratic rule, where is this "modern" world headed?
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2015/05/india-crackdown-anti-national-activism-150503051908504.html

The Ford Foundation has incurred the Indian government's wrath for funding "anti-national activities". Last week, the home ministry put the organisation under a financial surveillance regime in order to ensure that only "bona fide welfare activities" are carried out.
 
If the government is to be believed, Ford Foundation is bankrolling the disturbance of communal harmony & thereby endangering India's national security, all because it funds Teesta Setalvad. And Setalvad, claims the government, has been indulging in treason & fraud.
 
Setalvad's NGO, Citizens for Justice & Peace, has been relentlessly knocking on the doors of the courts to bring to book all the high-ranking government functionaries for their culpability in the 2002 communal carnage in Gujarat.
 
It took the Supreme Court's intervention to prevent her arrest. That many of India's educational institutions also benefit from the foundation's munificence, or that a concerned US is repeatedly seeking clarification, remains purposefully ignored.
 
Right to dissent
 
On March 12, the Delhi High Court upheld non-profit advocacy organisation Greenpeace's right to dissent & took the government to task for accusing Priya Pillai, one of its activists, of seditious libel & preventing her from testifying before an international tribunal.
 
Pillai had organised demonstrations & protests against a mega power project commissioned by the government in the central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh.
 
It was widely believed & hoped that the rap from a constitutional court would infuse some degree of tolerance in the government. But on April 16, by suspending Greenpeace's registration & freezing all its bank accounts, the government showed that it won't brook even the slightest interference or criticism of its policies.
 
Perhaps, one could have gotten an inkling from Prime Minister Narendra Modi's speech to judges, which contained a thinly veiled threat - rule in favour of "five-star activists", & face the music.
 
To be fair, the paranoia about a malicious "foreign hand" isn't peculiar to this government - its predecessor had similar apprehensions regarding anti-nuclear protesters.
 
This is why the Supreme Court's March 24 ruling assumes significance. In what has been hailed as one of the most momentous of decisions protecting & espousing the freedom of expression, the apex court struck down, in totality, Section 66A of the Information Technology (IT) Act.
 
The judgement's reach isn't confined to speech on the internet - a close reading shows how it is a bulwark against a vindictive state's crackdown on dissenters.
 
A veritable police state
 
A ready-reckoner to the provision is available here. Simply put, the police got untrammelled powers to make arrests & harass people merely because whatever they said online could be termed as offensive, annoying, intimidating, or inconvenient. Such vaguely worded terms defy the canonical rules of constitutional & reasonable interpretation.
 
And the government & its agencies used this vagueness to their advantage. A list of arrests over the years, & the very profitable use of this provision by purveyors of communal violence bore testimony to its illegal provenance.
 
It wouldn't be a stretch to contend that this verged on the border of state authoritarianism, something practised by Turkey, which forced social media giants (& millions of their users) to grovel before it.
 
No government wanted to let go of such a potent tool. True, it was brought in by the previous Congress government, but the present political dispensation - at one time one of its staunchest critics - spared no effort to vigorously defend the provision in court.
 
As recorded in the judgement, the government was even willing to hedge this provision by inserting a whole host of qualifiers, but reluctant to allow a single word to be changed.
 
It is unfortunate that state censorship isn't treated as a political issue in India. A hue & cry follows every time there is an egregious use of censorious powers, but such scattered, politicised reactions don't amount to much. The court recognised this, & refused to buy the government's unctuous pleas of reassurance - that it would not use 66A at random.
"Governments may come and go, but 66A stays forever," the judges said.
 
Advocacy is not instigation
 
The court held that merely because internet speech has a reach & speed far superior to that of other means of communication, it cannot be subjected to a regulation regime more restrictive than what the constitution permits.
 
Integrating the "clear & present danger" test (propounded by the US Supreme Court in Schenck v US) for determining the threshold for launching criminal prosecution for speech acts, the judges ruled that withering criticism & zealous advocacy, even if inflammatory, cannot be regarded as incitement to violence, disruption of public order, or acts of sedition. The state must prove a truly imminent threat, as opposed to reasonable apprehensions.
 
However, as reported, the censure from the Supreme Court doesn't seem to be a sufficient deterrent, for the government is mulling a law, on the lines of 66A, this time with more teeth for countering "anti-national propaganda" & securing convictions.
 

Saurav Datta teaches media law & jurisprudence in Mumbai & Pune.

"Global Perspectives 2015" by Paresh Nath

"Global Perspectives 2015" - Paresh Nath, India

DfID accused of heightening inequality through support for private sector

A great article highlighting how Department of International Development of UK is investing millions of aid money, in poor / developing countries, in private health & education projects. Although, the article is focused on UK's department of international development, I am very certain that Canadian, American, Australian, & other European countries' departments of international development use their aid money to invest in similar private projects in developing countries.

This way, not only, these countries show to the world & their own public that they are heavily investing aid money in developing countries. But what they don't show that that aid money is not actually helping any poor person but a few people are becoming rich with that aid money. This is evident in the end result of all these millions of aid money is still unable to fight poverty & millions of people in developing countries are further falling into poverty.

The article also confirms what I've been saying about Malala for quite a few years now. Malala is the poster child of private education industry. It's a huge industry on a worldwide scale. Education keeps getting unaffordable for the masses. But the society is being programmed to think that education is necessary if you want your descendants to do better economically (which is, in itself, is hogwash, since your network will get you a good job, not your education or qualifications).

Malala wants more & more girls to be educated in Pakistan. That, in itself, is a very noble idea. But, companies like, Pearson, has taken that noble idea & made it that more & more Pakistanis should get their kids (boys & girls) into education, which, is private education & not free & affordable public education. Private education businesses increase their businesses.

Private education is an exploitation business. When a poor family has only enough money to send a few kids to school, the sons are preferred over daughters. Is it fair? No. Is it necessary? Yes.
 
Sons in countries like India, Pakistan, China are considered bread winners for the family & will, most likely, take care of their old parents & their own families. Daughters, on the other hand, are married off to another family & will, most likely, cannot take care of their old parents.

The best way to provide affordable & quality education to ALL kids in the developing world is to provide them with FREE education; not private & fee-based, regardless of how low that fee is. If you are going to provide fee-based education, you are either going to exclude a large part of the public from ever accessing that education level or you need to uplift the economic conditions of the masses through jobs & livable wages.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

http://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2015/apr/24/dfid-private-sector-support-inequality-global-justice-now-report

The UK government is driving inequality in the world’s poorest countries by “dogmatically” funding private sector health & education projects instead of using aid money to boost public systems, a report has said.
 
Rather than addressing the needs of the world’s poorest people, the Department for International Development’s (DfID) close relationship with the private sector is filling the pockets of big corporations, according to Profiting from poverty, again, a study published on Friday by the campaigning group Global Justice Now (GJN).
 
Nick Dearden, director of GJN, said: “Aid should be used to support human needs by building up public services in countries that don’t have the same levels of economic privilege as the UK. So it’s shocking that DfID is dogmatically promoting private health & education when it’s been shown that this approach actually entrenches inequality & endangers access.”

The report also questioned DfID’s appointment of Sir Michael Barber, a senior executive at Pearson, the world’s largest maker of textbooks & academic materials, as its chief advisor for education in Pakistan, saying it presented a conflict of interest. DfID oversees an ambitious £350m health & education programme in Pakistan & has partnered with Pearson on a project in Tanzania & Zimbabwe.

“It seems highly inappropriate that executives from a company like Pearson can be acting in an official capacity at DfID, while their company provides commercial services that would directly benefit from the type of decisions being taken by DfID,” Dearden said.
 
A DfID spokesman said: “We have firm policies in place to prevent any conflict of interest in our work.”

Pearson, which operates in more than 70 countries, launched its affordable learning programme in 2012. The initiative is a for-profit venture fund that uses capital investment “to help millions of children in the world access a quality education in a cost effective, profitable & scalable manner”, according to the company.
 
On Friday, a group of US, British & South African NGOs & teachers’ groups issued an open letter to John Fallon, Pearson’s CEO. The letter read: “By supporting the expansion of low-fee private schooling & other competitive practices, Pearson is essentially ensuring that a large number of the world’s most vulnerable children have no hope of receiving a free, quality education.”

The open letter was released on Friday to coincide with the company’s annual general meeting. It was signed by the American Federation of Teachers, the UK’s National Union of Teachers, the South African Democratic Teachers’ Union, the Association of Teachers & Lecturers, Action Aid UK & the National Education Association.
 
The UK has invested more heavily in private sector projects than other rich countries, drawing criticism from the Independent Commission for Aid Impact (Icai). “DfID often seems to behave more like a hedge fund [than an aid agency], investing capital alongside banking partners like JP Morgan,” GJN said.
 
DfID is working with companies including Coca-Cola, PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) & Adam Smith International & is promoting the role of private sector partners in its biggest health & education projects, according to GJN.
 
The GJN report said DfID’s efforts to promote low-cost private schools in poor countries are “misplaced & dangerous”.

The Girls’ Education Challenge, a £355m DfID programme designed to get more girls in school, is managed by PwC & includes a partnership with Coca-Cola in Nigeria.
 
In Kenya, DfID has partnered with Adam Smith International in a £25m project that seeks to get 5,000 Kenyans enrolled in low-cost private schools.
 
DfID has also channelled millions of pounds into the harnessing non-state actors for better health for the poor (Hanshep) scheme, which promotes private sector investment in the health sectors of poor countries.
 
Kishore Singh, the UN’s special rapporteur on the right to education, is among those who have expressed reservations about private education. “I see [the growth of private education] not as progress, but as an indictment of governments that have failed to meet their obligation to provide universal, free & high-quality education for all,” said Singh.
 
A DfID spokesman said: “The UK strives to get the best possible outcomes for poor people & takes a pragmatic stance on how services should be delivered. In some circumstances (parts of India, Kenya, Nigeria & Pakistan, for example), this includes developing partnerships with low-fee private schools.

“DfID works with the private sector in situations where the public sector is not sufficiently present (the slums of Nairobi for example) or where state provision is so weak that the private sector has stepped in to fill the gap. Recognising that fees are still a major barrier to access for the poor, DfID’s support includes voucher schemes that subsidise access to low-fee private schools for the poorest.”

Breathing poison in the world's most polluted city

Whenever I come across these kinds of stories, about air pollution in major European or Asian cities, only one movie comes to my mind: Lorax.

As water is becoming a very precious commodity around the world, & companies like Nestle, are making billions from selling bottled water, there soon will be a time when clean oxygen tanks will be selling like bottled water.

First, food became unaffordable for millions around the world. Meat & meat-derived products are a luxury for millions of people who live below the poverty line (which in itself is very low). Even fruits, vegetables, & grains are becoming unaffordable now.

Next up was water. Well, be it US or Pakistan, Nigeria or Uganda, Sao Paulo (Brazil) or Peru, water is becoming the next gold or oil ... except, water is needed to live, unlike oil or gold. Bottled water is a billion-, or perhaps, trillion-$$$ business around the world.

After that, clean air is the next up to be bought & sold. Oxygen is even more precious than water or food. A human can live for days without food & a couple of days without water. Muslims fast in Ramadan around the world, during which, they don't eat or drink at all, during the day. But nobody can survive for a few minutes without oxygen.

Rich people will always find a way to survive, either by buying clean air or apparatus to clean the air in their homes & offices or moving to places with cleaner air. But what about the billions of poor around the world? They let go of their desires to have meat on their dinner tables. They are letting go of their desires to have clean water & hence, suffering terribly from drinking dirty & polluted water. But how will they let go of breathing clean air?

I am foreseeing a very bad future for the billions of poor, dying on the streets by the scores, because the rich have polluted the air. Poor didn't do anything to deserve such a painful life & death, but they will be the ones who will suffer the most.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-32352722

Saharan dust, traffic fumes & smog from Europe may be clogging up London's air at present ... but in the world's most polluted city London's air would be considered unusually refreshing. That city is Delhi, the Indian capital, where air quality reports now make essential reading for anxious residents.
 
In London last week, the most dangerous particles - PM 2.5 - hit a high of 57 - that's nearly 6 times recommended limits.
 
Here in Delhi, we can only dream of such clean air.
 
Our reading for these minute, carcinogenic particles, which penetrate the lungs, entering straight into the blood stream - is a staggering 215 - 21 times recommended limits. And that's better than it's been all winter.
 
Until a few weeks ago, PM 2.5 levels rarely dipped below 300, which some here have described as an "air-pocalypse".
 
Like the rest of the world, those of us in Delhi believed for years that Beijing was the world's most polluted city.
 
But last May, the World Health Organization announced that our own air is nearly twice as toxic.
 
The result, we're told, is permanent lung damage, & 1.3 million deaths annually. That makes air pollution, after heart disease, India's second biggest killer.
 
And yet, it's only in the past 2 months as India's newspapers & television stations have begun to report the situation in detail that we've been gripped, like many others, with a sense of acute panic.
 
At first, we simply shut all our doors & windows & sealed up numerous gaps. No more seductively cool Delhi breezes could be allowed in.
 
We began checking the air quality index obsessively.
 
Then, we rushed out to buy pollution masks, riding around in our car looking like highway robbers. But our three-year-old wouldn't allow one anywhere near her face.
 
Despite our alarm, many Delhi-ites reacted with disdain. "It's just dust from the desert," some insisted. "Nothing a little homeopathy can't solve," others said.
 
But we weren't convinced.
 
When we heard that certain potted plants improve indoor air quality, we rushed to the nursery to snap up areca palms, & a rather ugly, spiky plant with the unappealing moniker, mother-in-law's tongue.
 
But on arrival, the bemused proprietor informed us that the American embassy had already purchased every last one.
 
In any case, we calculated that to make a difference, we needed a minimum of 50 plants.
 
..., we borrowed an air pollution probe from a friend to work out what progress, if any, we'd made.
 
Switching it on, our PM 2.5 levels registered an off-the-charts 44,000.
 
My husband scratched his head, consulting the manual.
 
"This says 3,000 is hazardous."
 
"It must be broken," I said.
 
But it wasn't, so we had to call in the experts.
 
One afternoon, a young man turned up with a small, free-standing air filter, specially modified for Delhi's dust. He pressed a button, which activated something called a "plasma cluster".
 
After 20 minutes, the numbers on our air monitor began to drop... precipitously.
 
My husband & I watched, ... as the readings went down from 44,000, to 20,000, then 11,000. Eventually, the probe settled around the 1,000 mark.
 
That's still worryingly high by global standards... & that's only the air inside our home. There's nothing we can do about the air outside.
 
The government has announced that it will install more air quality monitors in Delhi & that it will ban diesel-belching vehicles more than a decade old.
 
But that's a drop in the ocean compared to India's pro-growth economic policies, which still rely heavily on subsidised, dirty diesel.
 
The trouble is on many days, you can't see the pollution.
 
Right now outside my window is an intensely blue sky filled with flocks of lime green parakeets and frangipani trees just beginning to unfurl their waxy, fragrant blossoms & I find myself wondering if it isn't perfectly OK to take my kids out to play football.
 
But in the past few months, at least a dozen families we know have moved away, either to cleaner towns & cities, or outside of India.
 
And although I'm still lulled by the reassurances of long-time residents - "Don't worry - it's nothing," they chide - I am beginning to wonder if it isn't time to think about moving too.
 
Compared to Delhi right now, London & even Beijing are looking like pretty good options.

In Mumbai, the wealthy elite's willingness to show off has reached new extremes

A great opinion piece. Although, its focus is Mumbai & the rising social inequality there, this rising social inequality is visible in almost every metropolitan city, from Los Angeles to New York to Rio de Janeiro to Lagos to Johannesburg to Dubai to London to Moscow to Beijing to Kuala Lumpur to Sydney.

Politicians & governments are only interested in how much money they can stuff in their "pockets" (i.e. bank accounts) from companies, industries, & lobbyists. They will sprinkle some money on a few projects in the development, & even then those projects need to be highly visible for elections & public.

Western countries have already gone through this large & increasing divide between the 99% & 1% of the country (remember Occupy Movements around the world about 5 years ago?) but talks of recession ending & new economic growths have only helped fuel the divide now. Western governments didn't bring any new legislation to resolve this divide. All of the countries, both developed & fast developing ones, are turning back to the medieval times.

According to a report from New York's Coalition for the Homeless, 60,000 people are sleeping in city shelters every night – almost double the amount since 2004. Let that sink in for a minute. Homeless people in NYC have DOUBLED in the past 10 years ... & there's no end to it.

Recession didn't even dent the increasing wealth of the business & political elites. While their wealth increased several folds between 2007 & 2014, the middle class is not only getting wiped out from society, the poor are barely hanging on to life.

This is all happening, & will definitely keep happening, in the so-called seemingly equal, fair, developed countries of the West. So what & how can one expect something better from developing countries like China, India, Brazil, South Africa, Turkey, Russia, Vietnam, Pakistan etc.?

BUT, what rich are not seeing, by getting blinded by their fast rising tower of wealth, that you can only push the poor down to a limit. The numbers of poor are fast increasing in the urban cities all over the world. Those human beings will try to fight back for their survival when the survival of them & their families is severely threatened.

This will become the scene from the French Revolution, except it won't be happening only France, but all over the world. Are governments & politicians ready for this Revolution? Can the rich business & political elite handle the onslaught of poor on them?
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

http://www.theguardian.com/cities/2014/nov/28/mumbai-wealthy-elite-extremes-bollywood-parties-super-rich

In Christmas 2007, I found a nightclub in London selling the most expensive cocktail in the world. I was reporting a piece on the gulf between the super-rich & the rest of society ­– and here was a liquid metaphor.

Hand the barman at Movida £35,000 & he would mix up a shot of Louis XII cognac, some Cristal Rose, a few flakes of edible gold leaf & at the bottom of the glass a diamond ring. During both mixing & drinking two security guards would keep watch.

Running around Mumbai for the past few days has sometimes felt like travelling back in time to that credit-crunch Christmas. Not because I think a banking crash is just around the corner, but because of the size of that gulf between those right at the top of this city & everyone else.

On Thursday afternoon, an events organiser for Mumbai’s wealthiest told me stories of children’s birthday parties in which a Bollywood celebrity was hired at huge expense to sing & dance ­– for a group of eight-year-olds. Of crores of rupees (hundreds of thousands of pounds) being spent on wedding dancers alone. She herself would rank among the city’s elite. For her two-year-old’s birthday, a swimming trip & family lunch was planned & yet friends would ask, “Aren’t you doing anything to celebrate?”

As India’s commercial capital, Mumbai has long been home to some of the richest people on the subcontinent. But in all my travels back & forth to India, I’ve noticed across big cities over the past decade or so a much greater willingness by the wealthy to show off. In Mumbai, that has reached extremes. On our first day here, the cabbie showed us Nariman Point, the Hanging Gardens, the Taj & the Gateway of India – then drove us over to Antilia, reportedly the most expensive home in the world. Owned by Mukesh Ambani, it is worth an estimated $1bn, is 27-storeys high & has 3 helipads.

However extreme, Antilia is hardly anomalous. A half hour away from where I am writing this, a new residential estate is up for sale, offering seaview flats alongside access to private jets & yachts. The black & gold billboards read: For Kings. For Queens. For Royalty.

The bit of this that really reminds me of London before The Fall is the way those enjoying this lifestyle assume that everyone else is getting a bit of it, too. I am thinking here of the property developer who is now in New York for 5 days’ shopping ­– his second trip there in 2 months. Just before he left, he told me that he regularly took 10 holidays a year – but then went on to talk about how his cook had also been to South Africa. Except, it turned out, his servant had gone there for work.

In the 90s, as the second great wave of globalisation got under way, policymakers thought they knew who the winners & losers would be. On the debit side were the blue-collar & manufacturing-workers of the west, whose jobs were going to move east. But that was all worth it, we were assured, as long as people in developing countries got richer. But what a visit to Mumbai shows you is the vast inequality in how those riches have been spread around. You see it in the physical infrastructure: all those new flyovers sprouting up around the city to enable the chauffeur driven classes to get about more easily, even while the commuter trains are still bursting; the crowded, chaotic public hospitals that get by while gleaming new private hospitals open up.

Unlike in Britain or America, the middle classes in urban India are still far better off than they were 10-15 years ago. But in Mumbai, you see how they also struggle to pay for their English-medium schools & non-government doctors. I am thinking here of a family I met last night who were adamant that that they were middle class & yet were also open about how much they were struggling to afford even the basics for their children.

At the end of our chat, the party planner began angsting out loud about what kind of society Mumbai was becoming. “At the top, we’re creating a generation of brats. If they have iPads & birthday extravaganzas now, what will they demand when they’re teens? And at the bottom, can you imagine how much resentment they must be carrying?”

Burma's rush for economic growth leaves its villagers homeless & jobless

Isn't it ironic that as more & more wealth is being created around the world, more & more people are suffering?

Be it Myanmar, Cuba or Iran (& one day, most likely, North Korea), there is such a hurry to open up these countries for foreign investments. As soon as these countries open up, national leaders (political & business elites) benefit greatly with the huge pouring of money from foreign lands, but poor of the country suffer the most. So what's the point of this development when the most vulnerable of the country suffer?

The most common reason is given then is providing jobs. That's a funny answer, since the jobs are the one thing, which are not created. Foreign companies are businesses, after all. They will still look for the cost & benefit. They are still responsible for one thing & one thing only; increasing their net incomes. They will still look for paying a minimum wage (as low as possible ... perhaps, nothing) to manufacture products for the worldwide markets & all the profits go into the pockets of the business elites.

As I have said in another post, money is the new "religion". It requires no ethics or morals. It requires no sense of any humanity. It requires ruthlessness & treating another human with such disdain that even pet animals are treated far better than another human.

And then, people wonder, rather foolishly or perhaps, naively, why is there so much pain & suffering in the world?

No God / Allah / Yahweh / Waheguru / Brahman created this pain & suffering. We, humans, ourselves, created this pain & suffering.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/burmas-rush-for-economic-growth-leaves-its-villagers-homeless-and-jobless-10170113.html

Less than an hour south of Rangoon, Burma’s bustling commercial capital, Aye Khin Win sits cross-legged in the middle his small, makeshift house on the edge of a vast construction site. Sipping a cup of traditional tea, the 29-year-old farmer is asking how he & hundreds of neighbours have ended up impoverished & without hope in the midst of his country’s historic economic transformation.
 
Mr Win grew up just a few kilometres from where he is sitting. But last year he was evicted in the name of development, resettled after his family’s plot became prime real estate & part of a flagship project part-financed by the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) that coordinates developmental projects for the Japanese government. The Thilawa Special Economic Zone, which has taken over the land Mr Win & his neighbours used to farm, has been billed as a key pillar of the country “big bang” economic transformation & a project that could create tens of thousands of jobs. Dozens of foreign corporations have already signed up to open factories here.
 
But for Mr Win it has been nothing short of a disaster. “All we have ever done is farming. And now we have no land,” he says. “We have no hope, only despair.”

The Burmese government has offered the farmers compensation for the loss of their land, but many are still unclear how much, & whether it will be enough.

“I can’t even sleep at night, because of the stress,” adds his neighbour, Daw Win. The 56-year-old said she used to grow fruits & raise livestock, but now lives “day to day, worrying about meals. I have a lot of stress.”

The villagers’ plight is not unique in Burma, where a clamour to reintegrate the country into the global economy has created what some call a “two-speed” transformation. While there has been a historic rush by foreign investors to set up shop in the country, increasingly in cooperation with aid agencies & NGOs, there is growing concern that Burma’s economic metamorphosis has far outpaced its transition to democracy. Local activists say it is difficult to oppose the economic programme in any respect, as many remain fearful of the government.
 
The attraction of Burma for big business is not hard to understand. The country, one of south-east Asia’s poorest, is the ultimate “frontier market”. It sits between India & China, the world’s two most populous countries, & is rich in natural resources such as oil & gas, as well as precious stones such as jade.

“Everyone wants to have an influence & get in, in terms of business. Whether it’s China or the UK or the US, I think everybody is looking at opportunities,” says Keith Win, founder of the Myanmar-British Business Association, set up to help British firms move into the country. Foreign investment in Burma reportedly rose to a record high in 2014-2015, reaching $8bn (£5.47bn).
 
The Burmese government, for its part, is rushing through dozens of new laws & programmes to make the country more “attractive” to foreign capital. Aid money & agencies have also flooded in, announcing enormous spending plans. But in a report last month, Global Witness warned that new investment flows, in the context of a repressive political system, risk “fuelling human rights abuses”.

One local aid worker, who is supporting the farmers displaced by the new Thilawa economic zone but did not want to be named, said there is a sense of fear.

“The villagers feel they cannot go against the government,” he said.
 
Some are concerned, too, about the ideology guiding the “transformation”. In addition to supporting the Burmese government’s market-based reforms, the World Bank’s private-sector arm has invested millions in luxury real-estate & hotel projects.
 
One investment is in the Shangri-La, a five-star hotel in downtown Yangon, where the buffet costs $40, more than the average Burmese citizen will earn in a week.
 
Like the farmers at Thilawa, the Shangri-La’s expansion is also displacing people who work in the area. One woman, a street hawker who also did not want to be named, said she had sold coffee in this spot for 7 years. “I can make a living here & support my family. But I will have to move when the construction is over,” she said. “I don’t have any idea of where to go.”

When questioned, the World Bank says such investment is vital for Burma. “It’s not about poverty eradication, it’s about creating jobs, it’s about shared prosperity,” said Vikram Kumar, the bank’s top investment official in the country.
 
Back at Thilawa, U Mya Hlaing believes his home will soon be bulldozed. The 69-year-old insists he is not against the Thilawa project, but says that too many locals are suffering as a result of it.

“It’s true that it is good for the development of the country,” he said, “but the people are suffering.”

Matt Kennard & Claire Provost are fellows at the Centre for Investigative Journalism. Travel funding for this article was provided by the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting. Kennard’s new book The Racket is out this week.