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."

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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.

Only those who never knew it could be 'proud' of colonialism

A good opinion piece describing the feelings when someone from the colonized land hears about the colonizer boasting about their cultures & development over centuries. Although, the piece is about an British-Indian-African speaking against the British rule in African countries, this can be easily expanded to include America, & other European countries (Germany, France, Belgium, Spain etc.)

British boast that at one point in history their empire was so big that sun never set in that empire, & they are proud of the legacy of their empire. But those British also forget to mention what British did in those colonized lands, in Australia, SouthEast Asia, South Asia, Middle East, several African countries, & of course, even in US. British policies colonized, humiliated, & subjugated the native people of these lands. They looted & transferred billions of treasures (if we value those treasures in current money) to UK. Even after exiting their colonies, they still interfere with the domestic policies of their colonies, because they still think that these regions are their colonies.

Let's talk about Americans. They proudly say that America is the most powerful country in the world, they have the best "democracy" in the world, & other regions, & their residents, should learn from America that how a country & its people should live, so these people can also develop. Americans don't stop to think how did their country become so "powerful"? By constantly interfering with the domestic & foreign policies of those countries, & if someone doesn't listen to the dictated terms of America, then they are forced to change their thinking or get punished severely. This is what political scientists have named, "imperialism."

If we look this international, diplomatic relationship on a micro level, it's very similar to a school yard bully forcing another student to do what the bully wants him / her to do. If that another student refuses to do such act, he / she is severely punished. When this happens on the school grounds, all of us, including Americans, call it bullying & condemn it, wholeheartedly. But these same Americans conveniently forget what America does on the international level is exactly same; "do what I say or you won't like the consequences for disobeying."

After all, an Iraqi, a Panamanian, a Colombian, a Yemeni, an Afghani, & the list goes on & on, won't feel such affection for America. They have felt, & are still feeling & living, the death & destruction of what America did to them. They don't feel happy or proud that America is such a powerful country, because that power is achieved by spreading terror, violence, misery, suffering, death & destruction. All that knowledge, scientific or otherwise, is useless if it is not backed by work, which doesn't harm anyone else. All that philanthropic work of Americans around the world is no good if those same Americans' tax dollars & moral support is for that same American army, which spreads misery, death & destruction in the poor villages of Afghanistan, Iraq, & Yemen.

After all, as the author of this piece pointed out, all empires, old & new, are "motivated by greed & cultural disrespect," & when one country wants to forcibly rule another country, it will always spread more misery & destruction than create anything valuable.

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https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/only-those-who-never-knew-it-could-be-proud-of-colonialism-a6831196.html

Way back in 1973, when I was a postgraduate student at Oxford, I fell out with my new best friend, Samantha. She was the daughter of a South African businessman and I had been exiled from Uganda. Africa bonded us for a while, then things fell apart. She couldn’t understand why I went on and on about colonialism and its impact on the subjugated. And I couldn’t forgive her for not understanding. ...

A new survey found nearly 43% of Britons are proud of the British Empire. They hang on to these feelings because this nation has never gone through an honest assessment of that past. Though British rule did deliver some good, like all empires it was motivated by greed and cultural disrespect. The 18th-century historian Edward Gibbon observed, “The history of empires is the history of human misery.” They who have assiduously painted over dark episodes in British history should know that whitewash is unreliable and temporary. Truths will out.
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Ah, the many lessons we subjugated natives had to suffer through, amid the daily micro-humiliations of Western supremacy. The British banned home languages from playgrounds and spicy food in lunchboxes at our school; money spent on educating black children was a fraction of the funds made available for white kids in occupied lands. Just like in the UK, when the poor stole food, they were punished with extreme harshness. Resistance movements, like the Mau Mau in Kenya, had members tortured, imprisoned or killed.

Around 85 million Indian people died in famines between the years of 1760 and 1943, partly because of ruthless grain control policies. Churchill was unmoved when millions were perishing in Bengal. Indians, he thought, were “beastly people with a beastly religion.” They had no food because they bred like rabbits. There has not been a single deadly famine in India since independence. The Great Hedge of India (2001) by Roy Moxham described a vast hedge that was built by Victorian administrators so they could collect salt tax. Impoverished Indians were no longer able to afford this essential. Many suffered illnesses as a result or died.

What Rhodesians did to black people during this period remains hidden from British people. All they hear about is Mugabe, a monstrous product of colonialism, as was Idi Amin.

My last book, Exotic England, is both a critique of and a paean to my nation. I am here because they, imperialists, were there, in our lands. Though never equal, the relationship was not black and white. We learnt things, changed, fell in love sometimes. All of us have a responsibility to look honestly at this history, because so much of it lives on.

... Our education syllabus focuses on imperial vanities not realities. The media and arts do not yet reflect modern, global Britain.

So too, our foreign policies remain colonial. Blair was proud of the empire, so too Brown. The British still own the Chagos archipelago. In the Seventies, inhabitants were forcibly removed from the islands by our government and the largest atoll, Diego Garcia, turned into a US military base. A report quietly published last week suggests 98% of the dispossessed Chagossians want to go back. They do not matter. ...

That is not to mention the unconsciously colonialist British culture. A travel supplement on South Africa in a Sunday paper featured happy pictures almost all of European travellers and commentators, plus two local ladies selling fruit and a vineyard worker ... .

How Pakistani-Americans are entering interfaith & interracial marriages — & making them work

In this story, published in a Pakistani newspaper, there were 3 stories of Pakistanis marrying someone non-Pakistani or even non-Muslims. I am ok with Pakistanis marrying someone other than Pakistanis. Here, I will take up the issue with one of those 3 stories. I also have an issue with a Pakistani newspaper glorifying the married lives of a Muslim woman with a Jewish man.

Firstly, Islam prefers people of the same religion marrying within the same religion. It is emphasized so much so in the Quran that "even a female Muslim slave girl is better [to become a wife of a Muslim man] than a beautiful rich non-Muslim girl." The reason is that the off-springs of that marriage, their children, will grow up to be completely confused in their religious views & may end up following no religion at all or some kind of a neo-religion, which is a mix of their parents' religions & coming up with something completely new.

This we can see in the case in the story below that the daughter of Chaudhry and Kravitz think of herself as "a quarter Muslim, quarter Jewish, & half Christian." So, the Islam is already relegated to 25% & eventually, it will be very likely completely lost when she grows & ends up marrying someone for love from another religion. They are also raising their daughter by introducing her to their respective faith traditions and "observe all holidays" including "Passover, the Jewish High Holidays ... the Eid services." Top it all of, the family also "celebrate Christmas each year" & "there’s a tree & ... presents.” The young girl is learning that that's what a Muslim is all about; celebrate Eid, Passover, Christmas, Easter. Prophet Mohammad (Peace be upon him) said that Muslims who will follow other non-Muslims will end up being raised on the Judgement Day with those non-Muslims.

Secondly, Islam prohibits a Muslim woman marrying a non-Muslim man. The reason for this is that, regardless of ethnicity, religion, or race, the woman / wife usually ends up acquiescing to man / husband's wishes in major decision related to the family & household matters. So, children born in that family will end up with either the father's religion or no religion at all, since they will never know what being a Muslim is really about.

Thirdly, I have an issue with a Pakistani newspaper glorifying this marriage union in a Pakistani newspaper. I don't have an issue people, regardless of their religion or race, marrying whoever they want. I don't have an issue when self-proclaimed Muslims marry whoever they want, however they want, but I do have an issue when that marriage union is being publicized, by a newspaper in an Islamic country, to give legitimacy to such unreligious unions. We Pakistanis have an obsession with anything non-Pakistani & a majority of the Pakistani youths (in Pakistan & abroad) are being influenced with the neo-liberal narrative of Islam that Islam is so backward & undeveloped religion that they are willing to marry anyone, but a Pakistani & a Muslim, & some specifically reject such marriage proposals from Muslim Pakistanis.

Since, the skin colour cannot be changed, young Pakistanis are willing to do anything in their power they can do to change the circumstances to not look like Pakistani or Muslim. This thought that as long as a person is a good human, he / she is a good Muslim is a wrong thought in itself. Nobody knows the definition of "a good human". Islam teaches that whoever follows its teachings is a good human. Christians think they are good humans. Jews, Hindus, Buddhist; they all believe that they are good humans & better than the other.

If young Muslims think that Islam is a backward religion & it should be more like Christianity or Judaism, then Islam is not going to change, but yes, those young Muslims are more than welcome to become an ex-Muslim. There is no compulsion in the religion. Believe in it or don't. But don't be a hypocrite. Don't cherry-pick things from the religion & believe in something & reject the other. If you are so ashamed being a Muslim, then better to get out of it. If you want to marry a non-Muslim & celebrate every holiday of every non-Muslim & Muslim, then so be it, but better to get out of Islam & follow whatever you want to believe in. As I quoted Prophet Mohammad (P.B.U.H.) earlier that people who will follow others, will be resurrected on the Judgement Day, with those people. So, those "Muslims" won't be resurrected with other Muslims, but with Christians & Jews. After all, Christians & Jews are not celebrating Eids like Muslims, or Hindus are not celebrating Eid to return the actions of Muslims celebrating Holi, Christmas, Easter, Passover etc. Remember, when we try to copy others, we forget ourselves in the process & usually end up neither here nor there.

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https://www.dawn.com/news/1334329/how-pakistani-americans-are-entering-interfaith-and-interracial-marriages-and-making-them-work

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A Muslim-Jewish marriage

When Amara Chaudhry’s parents emigrated from Lahore over four decades ago, they settled in a small American town in Appalachian Virginia. This is where Chaudhry was born and brought up.

“There were very few South Asian immigrants in town; they mostly came later in the 80s,” she says. Being different she, “experienced and witnessed a lot of discrimination from childhood through adulthood”.

She believes these experiences have informed her career choice. “That’s why I became a civil rights lawyer, and even within that I focused on criminal justice for so long, because I think that’s how racism is perpetrated primarily in the United States,” the Philadelphia-based attorney says.

She met her husband, John Kravitz when she initially came to Pennsylvania to interview for a legal job. Like many cinematic meet cutes, Kravitz and Chaudhry’s first interaction was on an elevator.

“It’s funny because I’m actually claustrophobic,” she says. But to avoid getting lost in the maze-like office building she avoided taking the stairs and met her future husband on her way up.

This was back in 2003, the couple finally tied the knot in 2013.

We ask Chaudhry if the differences in their cultures and religions was ever a concern for her parents.

“It was not something that my family ever mentioned to me,” she says. She adds that, “I have always felt as though John's extended family had a harder time with it.”

Chaudhry says that some in Kravitz’s family still seems “somewhat uncomfortable” with her and with their daughter, Laila.

She also feels that the South Asian Muslim community has been more accepting of Kravitz than the Jewish community is of her.

“John has accompanied me to several social events in the Muslim community, and I have done the same with him. My perception is that the Muslim community is very open and engaging towards John in these settings, but when I'm at a Jewish event, I feel like a get strange looks and people generally try to keep their distance. Of course, that could just be my perception.”

Chaudhry believes that even though America today is more diverse than the America she grew up in, it is still far from “post-racial”.

She sees this in her daughter’s interactions with some classmates. “My child actually attends a school that is incredibly diverse. Yet, there are still issues… She still gets teased for being darker than other Americans,” she says. This is despite Laila being “extremely light-skinned”.

Chaudhry and Kravitz are raising their daughter by introducing her to their respective faith traditions and more. “We try to observe all holidays. We observe Passover, the Jewish High Holidays... and Laila also attends the Eid services in our local mosque. But then since Christianity sort of permeates culture in the United States… we celebrate Christmas each year at my parents house; we stay overnight, there’s a tree, in the morning Laila opens presents.”

By introducing Laila to different schools of thought, Chaudhry and Kravitz have given their daughter the liberty to actively choose how she identifies. “Laila has boldly declared each holiday season that she’s a quarter Muslim, quarter Jewish and half Christian. Now mathematically that doesn’t work... But I think that’s an interesting thing because she wants to have Christmas and she wants to have Easter, so that’s how she declared it.”
...

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.
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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
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.

France to force big supermarkets to give unsold food to charities

That's a very sensible law. It was not very surprising to read that "the average French person throws out 20kg-30kg of food a year – 7kg of which is still in its wrapping. The combined national cost of this is up to €20 billion. Of the 7.1 million tonnes of food wasted in France each year, 67% is binned by consumers, 15% by restaurants & 11% by shops. Each year 1.3 billion tonnes of food are wasted worldwide."

There was also a Maclean's article from May, in which, it was stated that a staggering 40% of the food produced in the developed world (& 30% worldwide) is never consumed. It’s food that’s discarded from farm to fork, tossed in the field because it’s not the right size or shape, cycled through stores & restaurants, & chucked out of every single family’s home refrigerator. In fact, half of the estimated US$1 trillion worth of food the UN says is discarded each year is the wilted lettuce & expired milk that’s dumped by consumers, with another 20% tossed by grocery stores & restaurants. Dana Gunders, a scientist at the US National Resource Defense Council (NRDC), found $150 billion worth of edible food ends up rotting in American landfills & producing methane, a greenhouse gas 20 times more damaging than CO2. Meanwhile, food production uses 80% of all fresh water consumed in the US. If food waste were a country, it would be the third-largest emitter of greenhouse gases in the world, after China & the US, & a major contributor to global warming.

It goes on to say that "according to the Ontario-based consulting firm Value Chain Management International (VCMI), Canadians waste $31 billion in food each year." Out of this $31 billion of food wastage, almost 47% is by consumers at home; that's almost $14.5 billion of food wastage by Canadians at home.

Ironically, unlike France & UK, Canada doesn't have a national food wastage policy where it might be mandatory for non-consumer establishments (shops, restaurants, hotels etc.) to not waste food by donating it to charities or animal farms for animal feed. Even if the government comes up with such a policy / law that will help in saving some $13 Billion in food wastage in Canada, which is in itself huge savings, the biggest chunk of food wastage would still not be resolved; food wastage by consumers at home. In France, 67% of food is being wasted by consumers at home, too.

I often see myself people wasting food in North America & Europe. They don't think twice before throwing away good food because it has passed the arbitrary expiration dates or the bread has gone a little stale or simply, a kid just doesn't want to his/her fruit & toss his/her apple/banana/peach etc. in the garbage bin.

It would be very unfair of me to only blame the people of the developed West for wasting their food. I have also seen how economic well-off people in the developing world also waste food. For instance, Pakistanis waste food by the tonnes in weddings & in restaurants. And they are followers of such a religion (Islam), in which wasting food is strictly discouraged. People in weddings will fill their dinner plates full & will eat not even half of it, & then throw the rest in the garbage, whereas, there are families sleeping hungry not even half a kilometer away from that event. Pakistanis, the purported followers of Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) who never wasted food in his life, don't even think twice before wasting very good quality food.

Nobody is teaching the general public that there are billions of people around the world who would literally kill someone for that fruit or vegetable or that stale bread or that milk or yogurt or pizza etc. People need to be shown how they themselves are throwing away their money when they throw out the food.

People in the West need to see how there are hundreds of thousands of people in their own backyard who go hungry every day because they don't have enough income to buy healthy & nutritious food for themselves & for their families. They should be shown how their food wastage is affecting their own pockets & preventing someone else from not having that food. Food donation is a huge thing in the West & hundreds of people donate food, on a regular basis or on special occasions, to charities, but that pales in comparison to how much those same people throw away food from their fridges.

There should be some kind of national advertising blitz, similar to the one showing dangers of cigarette smoking, so people can realize what & how they are contributing in this national & worldwide food wastage. Children in their schools need to be shown how other kids in their own country & abroad are going hungry while they are throwing away food, just because, they don't like the taste or look of that given food. Children could be rewarded, by their parents or school, for not throwing away their food.

As I always say, the world has enough resources to easily sustain our world population. Problem is that those resources are distributed not equally. On macro level, some countries are famine stricken while others are wasting billions in food wastage, on a micro level, economic well-off public has too much food, while their poor neighbours are sleeping hungry at night. If the whole food supply chain is made efficient to minimize food wastage, we are not only going to save enormously on critical world resources of air & water, & consequently, positively help climate change, but we will also produce only enough food which will be used by consumers.
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http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/may/22/france-to-force-big-supermarkets-to-give-away-unsold-food-to-charity

French supermarkets will be banned from throwing away or destroying unsold food & must instead donate it to charities or for animal feed, under a law set to crack down on food waste.

The French national assembly voted unanimously to pass the legislation as France battles an epidemic of wasted food that has highlighted the divide between giant food firms & people who are struggling to eat.

...

Supermarkets will be barred from deliberately spoiling unsold food so it cannot be eaten. Those with a footprint of 4,305 sq ft (400 sq m) or more will have to sign contracts with charities by July next year or face penalties including fines of up to €75,000 (£53,000) or 2 years in jail.

“It’s scandalous to see bleach being poured into supermarket dustbins along with edible foods,” said the Socialist deputy Guillaume Garot, a former food minister who proposed the bill.

In recent years, French media have highlighted how poor families, students, unemployed or homeless people often stealthily forage in supermarket bins at night to feed themselves, able to survive on edible products which had been thrown out just as their best-before dates approached.

But some supermarkets doused binned food in bleach to prevent potential food-poisoning by eating food from bins. Other supermarkets deliberately binned food in locked warehouses for collection by refuse trucks to stop scavengers.

The practice of foraging in supermarket bins is not without risk – some people picking through rotten fruit & rubbish to reach yoghurts, cheese platters or readymade pizzas have been stopped by police & faced criminal action for theft. In 2011, a 59-year-old father of six working for the minimum wage at a Monoprix supermarket in Marseille almost lost his job after a colleague called security when they saw him pick 6 melons & 2 lettuces out of a bin.

Pressure groups, recycling commandos & direct action foraging movements have been highlighting the issue of waste in France. Members of the Gars’pilleurs, an action group founded in Lyon, don gardening gloves to remove food from supermarket bins at night & redistribute it on the streets the next morning to raise awareness about waste, poverty & food distribution.

The group & four others issued a statement earlier this year warning that simply obliging supermarket giants to pass unsold food to charities could give a “false & dangerous idea of a magic solution” to food waste. They said it would create an illusion that supermarkets had done their bit, while failing to address the wider issue of overproduction in the food industry as well as the wastage in food distribution chains.

The law will also introduce an education programme about food waste in schools and businesses. It follows a measure in February to remove the best-before dates on fresh foods.

The measures are part of wider drive to halve the amount of food waste in France by 2025. According to official estimates, the average French person throws out 20kg-30kg of food a year – 7kg of which is still in its wrapping. The combined national cost of this is up to €20 billion.

Of the 7.1 million tonnes of food wasted in France each year, 67% is binned by consumers, 15% by restaurants & 11% by shops. Each year 1.3 billion tonnes of food are wasted worldwide.

The Fédération du Commerce et de la Distribution, which represents big supermarkets, criticised the plan. “The law is wrong in both target & intent, given the big stores represent only 5% of food waste but have these new obligations,” said Jacques Creyssel, head of the organisation. “They are already the pre-eminent food donors, with more than 4,500 stores having signed agreements with aid groups.”

The logistics of the law must also not put an unfair burden on charities, with the unsold food given to them in a way that is ready to use, a parliamentary report has stipulated. It must not be up to charities to have to sift through the waste to set aside squashed fruit or food that had gone off. Supermarkets have said that charities must now also be properly equipped with fridges & trucks to be able to handle the food donations.

The French law goes further than the UK, where the government has a voluntary agreement with the grocery & retail sector to cut both food & packaging waste in the supply chain, but does not believe in mandatory targets.

A report earlier this year showed that in the UK, households threw away 7 million tonnes of food in 2012, enough to fill London’s Wembley stadium 9 times over. Avoidable household food waste in the UK is associated with 17 million tonnes of CO2 emissions annually.