It would be disastrous for India to sign the Hague convention on child abduction

 

The Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction is an international treaty that establishes procedures that provide for the prompt return of children wrongfully retained or removed from their habitual residence. Although the minister for women and children, Maneka Gandhi, took a decision not to have India sign the treaty for good reasons, there is now some reported rethinking.
It would be disastrous for many reasons for India to sing the Convention. The Convention deals with what has come to be known as “international child abduction”. The Law Commission of India has recently addressed the issue, and the first and most important point made by the Commission is that the word “abduction” when used by a parent is misplaced as no parent can ‘abduct’ her own child. The Commission recommends the passing of a domestic law and the signing of the Convention. The recommendation is surprising since the report itself notes that it is mainly women who are compelled to return to a foreign country to fight lonely battles for custody with no support.
Although the discussion whether or not to sign the Convention is taking place in gender-neutral terms, the fact is that as the Commission itself notes, 68% of the taking parents were mothers; 85% of these respondent mothers were primary caregivers of their children and 54% had gone home to a country in which they held citizenship.
So the first point to note is that this is a gendered issue, which concerns women who live in what has come to be known as NRI marriages. Often a male Indian migrant who is a green card holder comes to India to marry an Indian woman, not a green card holder, who he takes back on a dependent visa. They settle for example in the US and have children.
Trouble erupts between them, the matter is taken to a US court and decisions in relation to child custody are made there, or perhaps ex-party decisions when she has had to leave the country with her children. It is here the Hague Convention will enter the picture and require that if there was a court order in a foreign jurisdiction, and woman has returned to her country of origin with the child, her husband can apply to an executive authority for the return of the child based only on an order of a freight court which could be an ex-parti order or if the husband is “entitled “ to custody under a foreign law.
The mother, will be a “child abductor” and an application can be made to the authority in India for the return of the child to the place of: “habitual residence”, that is the US or any other reciprocal country who has signed the convention.
I have seen cases without number where women fleeing a violent marriage have returned to India with the children, with no desire to return or any chance of going back for want of a green card.
To compel such a child to return to the foreign country, who would obviously go with her mother, would be compounding the original problem.
It is argued that the mother can go to the foreign court and convince that court that she should be allowed to take the child back. To deny a woman to apply in a foreign court for a variation of a custody order in favour of the husband means returning to a foreign land with no support structure in place, with no independent right to reside in that country and would virtually mean a separation between mother and child.
Often such litigation is carried only by husbands with a view to compel a woman to give up her claims to alimony and any separation settlement. It is a known fact that when faced with such a choice, custody of children or alimony, women choose to exit a bad marriage with custody of the children with no alimony.
It is in this context that the issue whether or not to sign the Hague Convention must be seen.
The solution lies in a reverse law on protection of children found in the jurisdiction of the Indian courts. Our courts exercise parens patriae jurisdiction over children, in other words they are the ultimate guardians of children in their jurisdiction.
When faced with a claim from a father who says that the child has been removed from his custody in the face of a court order granting him custody, the court must decide whether it is in the best interest of the child to be sent back to a foreign land.
Indian law does not automatically recognise foreign judgments. Now by signing the Hague Convention, we will be compelled to recognise a foreign judgment regardless of the justness of the decision on custody under Indian law or whether was delivered ex-parte.
We have moved from the father being the sole guardian of the child to joint guardianship, we must now recognise that there is a rational way of resolving the problems of children when a cross-country marriage breaks. It is not my suggestion that the father must have no contact with the children; there are ways in which the non-custodial parent can develop a genuine caring relationship with the child, through access orders, and through sharing vacations, provided there is trust between the separated or divorces spouses.
It is here that the law must focus its attention rather than on its authoritarian and coercive role in punishing mothers who flee bad marriages.

Indira Jaising is a senior advocate, Supreme Court
The views expressed are personal 

Source: Hindustan Times, 30-01-2017

Don't be a Worrier





Worry causes fear, anxiety , tension and stress. These emotions deplete energy and weaken the immune system.Worriers become sick and this is manifested in poor health, because of all the problems that are eating into their vitals. And worry is certainly not the same as constructive thinking. If it were, we would have found solutions to most of our problems. Worry usually occurs when we find ourselves faced with a likely outcome we feel is beyond the scope of our control -an outcome we think will be wholly damaging and detrimental to us. But how can we be so certain? Maybe some good comes out of it as well. So why despair and agonise over something that may actually turn out well, or if it does not now, it might be okay in the long term?
It would be sensible to look at life as a long chain of surprises and new revelations. So live it sportingly . The goal of life is not to achieve some mythical point of perfect materialism. No such apex exists. The goal of life is simply to work hard at becoming better than you were yesterday .
In life, there are no wars to be won, only battles to be fought -personal, physical social, psychological and spiritual.In our efforts to live life sensibly , God plays the role of the eternal comrade, the invisible companion, the universal friend.

NEC and Ministry of Textiles sign MoU to harness the hidden potential of Cane &Bamboo of NER

Shillong: TheNorth Eastern Council (NEC) and the Development Commissioner (Handicrafts), Ministry of Textiles signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU)in Shillong today, to harness the hidden potential of Cane and Bamboo of North Eastern Region. The MoU was signedby the Secretary,NEC Shri Ram Muivah and Development Commissioner(Handicrafts) Shri Alok Kumar. The Union Minister of Textiles Smt Smriti Zubin Irani, Chief Minister of Meghalaya Dr Mukul Sangma, Chairman, NEC &MoS (IC) for Development of North Eastern Region Dr. Jitendra Singh, MoS for Home Affairs,Shri Kiren Rijiju, MoS for Textiles Shri Ajay Tamta and Vice Chairman, NITI Aayog, Dr ArvindPanagriya were also present on the occasion. 

The MoU provides a push for the integrated and inclusive development of Cane & Bamboo Sector of North East Region by way of skilled manpower, technology dissemination, marketing support and institutional support required for the holistic development of Bamboo which can coordinate a mission to mobilise masses and promote Bamboo sector as a whole throughout the country.  

The NEC and the Development Commissioner (Handicrafts) will promote Cane and Bamboo Technology Centre (CBTC), Assam and the Bamboo & Cane Development Institute (BCDI), Tripura, as the Centres of Excellence not only in the North East Region, but also in South East Asia. 

As per the MoU, the CBTC will be transformed into a Regional Centre of Excellence and the BCDI will be converted as a separate entity under the name Indian Institute of Bamboo Technology (IIBT). CBTC and BCDI will collaborate for Institutional support for bamboo sector and will generate awareness and cultivating knowledge base among the masses about possibilities of sustainable utilisation of the raw materials cultivated by the sector.  

CBTC and BCDIwill serve as a platform for generating and exchanging the knowledge base on the product development in Cane and Bamboo through the Discipline of Product Design and Innovation. The collective knowledge base of the sector would be documented and made

available through library resources, multimedia, publications and online resources. The Discipline of Bamboo and Cane product Innovation will help in defining the criteria for Industry standards and certification in terms of Quality and protecting the geographical rights for traditional innovations.  

To establish the presence of bamboo and cane as an economically strong industry, education will be imparted at various levels; to Craftsmen and Entrepreneurs, Designers, Farmers, Technologists and Marketing and Management professionals. Training programmes on subjects such as Entrepreneurship development among the artisan community with inputs in product innovation and design will also be provided in order to contribute in the up gradation of the socio economic status of the cane and bamboo industry in the region and at a national level. Inputs in business management and entrepreneurship development will also be a part of the curriculum. The knowledge base developed from such exercises will be fed into the educational programmes like

a)         PG Diploma in Bamboo Cultivation & Resource Utilization

b)         B.Tech Course in Cane & Bamboo Technology

c)         Ph.D/Research Program

d)         Establishing satellite Centres in the other NER states

 

 

Source: indiaeducationdiary, 30-01-2017

For a house to become a home

The poor often spurn government housing programmes because they do not want to risk losing their social networks.

Today, a majority of the world’s population lives in cities, and the global urban population is on track to double by 2050.
In much of the developing world, the first residence for a migrant in the city is in the slum. Life here is often fraught with significant health risks. The illegal nature of housing makes slum dwellers susceptible to extortion by slumlords on the one hand and government officers on the other. The fact that slums are often located on prime real estate compounds the problem: Governments lose significant revenues they could otherwise redistribute to the poor.
Reflecting these realities, the agenda of “Make cities inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable”, which was enshrined in the UN’s Sustainable Development Goal 11, was complemented in the October 2016 Habitat III summit in Quito, Ecuador by a “New Urban Agenda” of giving slum dwellers upgraded housing with basic services by 2030. How to accomplish such ambitious goals? A common approach is to build higher quality, affordable housing for the poor on the city’s periphery. This is a central pillar of the Indian government’s housing initiative, the Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana (PMAY), which aims to achieve “Housing for all by 2022”.
But a report in May last year put the vacancy in urban housing built under the PMAY at 23 per cent. Why are slum dwellers and new urban migrants rejecting this housing? One possibility is the lack of affordable housing finance. In his New Year Eve address to the nation, the prime minister announced two new interest-subsidy schemes under the PMAY; some anticipate further breaks in the upcoming budget. But reality is more complex. In my research with Sharon Barnhardt of Flame University and Erica Field of Duke University, we tracked female beedi workers drawn from Ahmedabad’s slums who had entered a lottery to receive improved housing at far below market cost, 12 km from the city centre. In 2007, 14 years after the lottery winners received their houses, we conducted detailed surveys with lottery participants. Winning the lottery represented a financial windfall and a chance for home ownership in cleaner, safer environs. The monthly mortgage payments, which were guaranteed for 20 years, were roughly half the monthly rent that the lottery participants paid for their slum dwellings. Yet, 34 per cent of the winners chose not to move to the colony. A further 32 per cent returned to the slums within 10 years.
Poor people were turning down an apparent golden opportunity, and it wasn’t because of high interest rates. What’s more, this group represented a best-case scenario, compared to typical PMAY participants: Beedi work is done at home, so one of the family’s earners didn’t face a long commute. In another housing complex in Ahmedabad — where houses were also assigned by lottery — we found only 46 per cent of the winners were living in the units two and a half years after winning the lottery.
Research pointed to the importance of social networks in the housing decisions of the participants. Relative to lottery losers, the winners lived farther from their adult children and saw them less often. They reported feeling isolated, and were six to nine percentage points less likely to know someone they could rely on for borrowing needs. Lottery losers, but not winners, reported receiving money through their social networks during hard times.
Slum dwellers give each other material and psychological support along with informal insurance in ways that, for now, the state cannot provide. Low take-up of PMAY housing suggests that the programme, in its current form, risks some of the same failures as the one we studied. Studies of “Moving to Opportunity” — a programme in the US in the 1990s that gave lottery winners vouchers to move fromhigh- to low-poverty neighbourhoods — provide another useful benchmark. These studies found no financial or employment benefits for participants or their adult children. In our study, we found that lottery winners were not better off on a variety of socio-economic measures, including income, labour force participation, household health outcomes. It may be that such benefits only materialise among those relocated at an early age. A new study on “Moving to Opportunities” uses tax data to show that while those who moved in adolescence showed negative effects, those who moved as children were more likely to attend university and less likely to end up a single parent.
This suggests a need to be more aware of what individuals stand to gain or lose through relocation, and how they will behave, given those tradeoffs. Policies can be designed and tested to allow people to preserve their social networks even as they are relocated. One approach is to move entire communities to new developments. Another is to focus less on relocation and more on giving slum dwellers rights,
investing in the development of slums.

However, such approaches will require greater upfront investment by the government, not in interest-rate subsidies, but in collecting data on the preferences of poor migrants and targetting a smart programme at those who need and want it. The broad strokes the government is making — subsidies directed imprecisely towards the poor and even middle-income recipients — may well lead to more unoccupied units in undesirable locales.
In some cases, local authorities have demolished slums and provided residents with rental subsidies until PMAY housing can be built.
Governments should be aware these are not just rickety structures falling under bulldozers, but also strong and deeply beneficial social networks.

The writer, a professor of public policy at Harvard Kennedy School, co-directs the Evidence for Policy Design Initiative

 

Source: Indian Express, 30-01-2017

 

The idea of Gandhi is universal and immortal

When an unwritten truth confronts us in an extraordinary moment, it leaves us awestruck. Oh I knew this! Why didn’t I realise this till today, we think.
I had a similar experience many years ago at Uganda’s Lake Victoria. We had reached there from Kampala. On the way, someone had told us that Mahatma Gandhi’s ashes were immersed here. I was captivated. In those days, Lake Victoria hadn’t yet become a tourist attraction. If the lake was a human being, people would have been left mesmerised by its natural beauty. A little eddy was forming noiselessly at the place where the Nile emerges from the lake’s womb. I imagined that the Mahatma’s ashes would have dissolved into a similar whirl. At that moment I realised for the first time how deeply people from my generation — who have grown up listening to all sorts of lofty statements for and against Gandhi — are connected to the Mahatma.
Even Gopal Godse’s flawed logic made us revere the Mahatma even more. Nathuram Godse’s younger brother was an accused in Gandhi’s assassination. After completing his prison term, he went around the country justifying why they had carried out Gandh’s ‘vadh’ (murder). During this time he offered some laughable examples. At one time he claimed they had killed the Mahatma the way Krishna had slayed Jarasangh. I replied by asking him whether he put himself in the same category as Lord Krishna? How does it matter, he argued, our feelings were similar. At Lake Victoria I had discovered a connection with the Mahatma along with a growing feeling of sadness. During my conversation with Gopal Godse, the sentiment was turning into a seething anger, but there were people in Agra who had hosted him. They listened to him with a lot of respect. On that day I realised Gandhi’s biggest strength are his detractors. The more they resist him, the more his ideas will keep inspiring people.
It has happened with every great man.
That is why, when the Father of the Nation’s picture was missing from the All India Khadi Gram Udyog calendar this year, I wasn’t upset. Power attracts sycophancy and that is how sycophants damage the image of politicians in power. The prime minister’s office didn’t just offer a clarification, but also tightened the screws, but the Opposition had sensed an opportunity by then. One result of this illogical debate over Gandhi was that the Mahatma’s magic was again before the world in all its glory. According to Google News statistics, the number of people searching for the Mahatma grew by 50% in India and 62% worldwide in this period.Clearly, those in this generation who were not familiar with him got to know the Mahatma. This inquisitive quality in the younger generation is its biggest elixir.
 
I am fortunate that I have visited Gandhi memorials in various corners of the globe. Surprisingly, even after so many years, how does the Mahatma manage to elicit such a mix of curiosity and respect, that too in alien lands? In October 1997, when I met Nelson Mandela face to face along with former Prime Minister IK Gujral, at the residence of South African president Mahlamba Ndlopfu, I wanted to ask him the same question, but could not get an opportunity.
Later, the secret of Gandhi’s popularity was revealed while speaking with anti-apartheid activist Ahmed Kathrada. Kathrada told him that when Mandela was imprisoned at Robben Island, he had many charges of violent crimes against him. The prison was the South African equivalent of our Kala Pani (Cellular Jail). It was a tried and tested method of white colonialists. They confined people to such uninhabited islands. Mandela realised this tactic. He told his colleagues they would protest against the white regime staying within prison regulations. Mandela was imprisoned there for 28 years, but pursuing his unique policy, he evolved from a person to an idea. It is the only instance in the history of humanity that a man could lead a freedom movement for so long from within the prison. And when he was released, he saved his country by adopting the policy of forgive and forget.
According to Kathrada, Mandela had learnt this lesson from the Mahatma. Perhaps, Kathrada said this as a mark of respect to his guests, but not just Mandela, four other Nobel laureates of the 20th century — Martin Luther King Jr, the Dalai Lama, Aung San Suu Kyi and Adolfo Pérez Esquivel — have admitted that Gandhi’s philosophy influenced them. If we take out these evolved human beings from the last century, we’ll be left with nothing more than two World Wars and injuries from innumerable other wars. Gandhi and his ideological disciples have played a big role in keeping the earth worth living for human beings.
Today is January 30. Do you remember this was the day Nathuram Godse pumped bullets into the Mahatma’s body. But could he kill Gandhi?
He certainly couldn’t. Gandhi is alive in the minds of innumerable admirers and will continue to live there.
Shashi Shekhar is editor in chief, Hindustan

Source: Hindustan Times, 30-01-2017

Service Before Self





The ideals and motto of the Divine Life Society -“Serve, love, give, purify , meditate and realise“ -are reflected in the life and work of Swami Chidananda Saraswati. His spiritual journey began on a Buddha Purnima day in 1943 inspired by his mentor Swami Sivananda. Chidananda's fervour to serve found the perfect outlet in the welfare work he undertook at Rishikesh. He believes that service alone can purify and prepare the soul for deep contemplation A story is often recounted of how Chidananda found a leprosy-afflicted person on the Hardwar-Rishikesh road. He carried him all the way to the ashram on his shoulders. He served him through the day , as a mother would care for a child Eventually , he established a colony for similar patients in Rishikesh, as a means of preserving the self-respect and dignity of the suffering. The spirit of seva has become the core of his own teachings on sadhana. When he was asked what was necessary to obtain the Guru's grace, Chidananda immediately pointed out that the path of selfless service, seva, is what should be valued as the perfect sadhana.
According to Chidananda love is the law of life and to love is to fulfil the adage: “To live is to love“. You live that you may learn to love, you love so that you may learn to live. True religion is not about ritualistic observances, baths or pilgrimages, so the Swami asks us to heed the universal psychological law: Hatred breeds hatred, love begets love, and fear breeds fear.

Seminar: January 2017

• COMING UP: A CRUCIAL DECADE
  T.N. Ninan, Chairman, Business Standard Private Limited, Delhi
• A QUARTER CENTURY ON
  Omkar Goswami, economist; founder and Chairperson, Corporate and Economic Research Group Advisory, Delhi
• GROWTH IN 2017 AND BEYOND
  Mihir Swarup Sharma, Senior Fellow, Observer Research Foundation, Delhi
• LABOUR IN NEO-LIBERAL INDIA
  Praveen Jha, Centre for Economic Studies and Planning, Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi
• INDIA'S TROUBLED NORTH WESTERN MARCHES
  C. Raja Mohan, Director, Carnegie India, Delhi
• NAVIGATING UNCHARTED TERRITORY
  Srinath Raghavan, Senior Fellow, Centre for Policy Research, Delhi
• TRAPPED IN PAST PARADIGMS
  Ajai Sahni, Executive Director, Institute for Conflict Management, Delhi
• THE MARATHA 'UPRISING'
  Kumar Ketkar, journalist and political commentator, Mumbai
• A FAILURE OF IMAGINATION
  Barkha Dutt, author and television journalist, Delhi 
• DILUTING POLITICAL EQUALITY
  Suhas Palshikar, Professor (retd.), Savitribai Phule Pune University, Pune

• HUMAN-WILDLIFE CONFLICT: CULL THE CAUSE, NOT THE SYMPTOMS
  Tiasa Adhya, Shivona Bhojwani, Postgraduate Programme in Wildlife Biology and Conservation, WCS-India Programme, National Centre for Biological Sciences, Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Mumbai; and Nandini Velho, Earth Institute Fellow, Columbia University, New York
• THE BURKINI BANS
  Mira Kamdar, Paris based author
• OF LAW, RESURRECTION AND A FUTURE
  Kalpana Kannabiran, Professor and Regional Director, Council for Social Development, Hyderabad
• THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING MAHASWETA
  Anjum Katyal, writer, editor and translator; Co-Director, Apeejay Kolkata Literary Festival and Consultant, Publications, Maulana Abul Kalam Azad Institute of Asian Studies, Kolkata
• A LIGHT UNTO HERSELF
  Deepti Priya Mehrotra, independent author, political scientist, teacher; Fellow, Nehru Memorial Museum and Library (NMML), Delhi
• INDIA VERSUS INDIA 
  Gopalkrishna Gandhi, civil servant and diplomat; Governor of West Bengal (2004-2009), Chennai
  
  
  all published issues from 1959 to 2015 and interactive index of all articles and issues of 2016