A law against children

The amended act legalises the bulk of child labour while claiming to do the opposite.

Of the many injustices that have scarred India, the most unconscionable are those of unequal childhoods. The law in the country has permitted children to be confined to work instead of being in schools and at carefree play. India’s child labour law, until the recent amendments passed by Parliament, barred child work until 14 years only in officially designated hazardous employment. There was no bar on the employment of children between 14 and 18 years.

On the face of it, two major amendments to India’s child labour law seem welcome. These amendments prohibit all work, hazardous or otherwise, for children under 14, who now also enjoy the constitutional right to free and compulsory education. And for adolescents between 14 and 18 years, whose labour was entirely lawful until now, the law prohibits their employment in work scheduled as hazardous.

Yet on closer scrutiny, we discover the same pattern as many other pronouncements of this government vis a vis the poor: The reality of what is being offered is the reverse of what appears on paper. The ban on hazardous adolescent work is accompanied by changes in the schedule of hazardous work in the statute, bringing these down from 83 prohibited activities to only three. Apart from mining and explosives, the law only prohibits processes deemed hazardous under the Factories Act 1948. In other words, the amended law prohibits only that child work which is considered hazardous for adult workers, without recognising the specific vulnerabilities of children.

More damaging is the caveat in the amended law that permits even children under 14 years to now work in non-hazardous “family enterprises” after school hours and during vacations. The family is defined to include not just the child’s parents and siblings, but also siblings of the child’s parents. And a family enterprise includes any work, profession or business in which any family member works along with other persons.

In effect, this proviso accomplishes the very opposite of what it claims to do. Instead of ending child labour, it actually makes lawful once again a large part of child work that was earlier unlawful. It is estimated that around 80 per cent of child labour is in work with family members. This is in farms, forests, home-based work such as bidi rolling, carpet weaving, making of bangles and handicrafts, home-based assembly tasks, domestic work, eateries, roadside garages, and street vending. Child rights activists had fought long and hard to compel governments to include many of these occupations in the statutory list of hazardous occupations. But by the double whammy of legalising child participation in non-hazardous “family enterprise” work and drastically trimming the list of hazardous occupations, in effect the government has again legalised the bulk of child work.

Reopening the flood gates for child labour by these amendments is part of a larger package of weakening labour protections for enhancing labour market flexibility to facilitate higher corporate investments. The quarter century of economic reforms has witnessed the steady dismantling of factory floor manufacture by organised adult workers into a preference for unorganised migrant, adolescent and child workers and contractual and home-based production systems.

Home-based work absolves the owners and managers of global supply chains from any legal obligations of fair wages, healthy work conditions and social protection to the actual end-line workers who labour in isolated home-based units. Economist Archana Prasad points to the surge of home based work from 23.3 million (1999-2000) to 37.4 million workers in 2011-2012. Of this, 16 million were women home-based workers. Nearly 32 per cent of total women workers outside agriculture are home-based workers. Around 73 per cent of these women engage in home-based manufacture, in sectors such as apparel, tobacco products and textiles. Once work is undertaken within the four walls of a home, children routinely (but up to now unlawfully) assist their mothers for long hours to complete and maximise their “piece-work” orders. What these amendments accomplish is to render this child labour lawful.

The argument that has long held sway is that child labour, however unfortunate, is inevitable as long as households remained poor. Only after parents escape poverty will their children be able to enter school. What these claims ignore is that the reverse is far more true. That child labour is indeed a major cause of persisting poverty. That if a child is trapped in labour instead of being able to attend fully to her schooling, she will never be able to escape the poverty of her parents. The child of a sanitation worker, rag-picker, domestic worker or casual labourer is likely to be trapped in the professions of her parents unless she is able to access quality education. And also, for every child in work is an adult denied the same work, an adult who could have ensured that her children could be in school. We may argue that working with one’s hands is integral to a full education. But in that case, the opportunities and the obligation to work must surely lie with children of privilege as much as it does with children of disadvantage?

Children enrolled in schools but rising from disadvantage face many barriers. They may be poorly nourished; be first-generation learners; have no place for study in their homes; and be unable to afford tutors. It is they who would be further disadvantaged by this amendment.

Those who defend this amendment applaud the opportunity it would provide for children to learn the trades of their parents. This argument is a thinly disguised defence of caste, because it is only the caste system that envisages the “natural” transition of children into the professions of their parents. Why should the child of a potter learn to be a potter, and not a poet; the child of a sanitation worker not a doctor; and the child of a leather tanner not a philosopher? These amendments are one more spur to India’s ancient tradition of unequal childhoods.

Mander is a human rights worker and writer

Source: Indian Express, 29-07-2016

Mahasweta Devi: The goddess of the downtrodden

Mahasweta Devi, one of the greatest littérateurs who fought for the downtrodden, believed in Marxist ideology and yet lent her undying spirit to the ouster of a 34-year-old Left regime from Bengal. On Thursday, she left a legacy that none can match.

South Asia’s most decorated author and social activist, Mahasweta Devi always felt embarrassed to talk about her Sahitya Akademi Award, Jnanpith Award, Ramon Magasasay Award, Padma Shri and Padma Vibhushan. “It is not money or award but sincerity towards one’s mission, honesty and self-reliance that makes the difference,” she told HT in an interview a few years ago, as she looked out of her study window from the second floor of her modest three-storey house on Kasba Connector off EM Bypass.

Mahasweta Devi graduated from Visva Bharati, where she came in touch with Rabindranath Tagore. She said it was Tagore who taught her to be self-reliant, developed a taste for art and inspired her to write. She used to do a lot of homework before starting a novel. “For Jhansi Ki Rani, I consulted history books and several eminent historians. I did similar groundwork while writing Adhar Manik and Rudali. I believe in homework,” said the writer. A small, cluttered table with a precariously placed telephone, a bookrack and the divan comprised her study.

Associated with communist movement in her early life, Marxist thoughts influenced her writings and activism. Her father, Manish Ghatak, was a well-known poet and writer of Kallol Yug. Her paternal uncle was famous film director Ritwik Ghatak. Her maternal uncles were noted sculptor Sankha Chowdhury and Sachin Chowdhury, the founder-editor of Economic and Political Weekly of India.

Mahasweta Devi married well-known playwright Bijon Bhattacharya, who was a founder-father of the IPTA movement and writer of the historic play ‘Nabanna’ which presented a shocking picture of the Great Bengal Famine. Her son, famous writer Nabarun Bhattacharya, died on July 31, 2014 and left behind “I was influenced by Marxism but I am not into politics. I have never minced words to criticize the misdoings of the Left or the Right. I have struggled all my life and lived in rented houses, I built this house last year,” she told HT in 2012.a rich volume of work and a band of students and followers.

The devastating Bengal Famine of 1943 brought out the activist in Mahasweta Devi. Subsequently, the plight of tribals in Bengal, Bihar, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh drew her closer to them. Soon, she became a champion for the cause of the Lodha and the Sabar tribes. “I was in tears to see the debt-bonded labour system imposed on tribals by the Palmau zamindars. My book `Dust on the Road’ tells the sad tale,” she said.

The writer was shocked to find people killing the Lodhas of Midnapore, Kheria Sabars of Purulia and Dhikaros of Birbhum just because the British Raj had declared them “criminal tribes.” The ghastly practice made Mahasweta Devi launch a relentless campaign to protect the tribes.

“My doors are always open for the tribals. We collect donations to work among them in Purulia. I believe one doesn’t need crores of rupees to do good work. Ford Foundation had offered funds but I refused. Today, with our meagre resources, we run 11 schools in Purulia,” said the writer.

Mahasweta Devi criticised the Left Front government for ignoring the tribals and forcibly acquiring farmland for corporate houses. “I criticised former chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee. The Left had left us with a poor health and education system, bad urban and rural infrastructure, water crisis, inadequate irrigation and rampant deforestation.”

Mamata Banerjee, too, did not respond to her demand for welfare of the tribals, said Mahasweta, who at one point was very close to the chief minister.

As chairperson of the Bangla Academy, she refused to accept government interference in choosing candidates for the Vidyasagar Purashkar in 2012 and resigned. But this was not the only reason for her resignation. She said the Academy could have done useful work by promoting rich literature and encourage talents from districts and tribal areas. “Mamata misunderstood me. I am keen to work with her and help her,” she told HT.

Defending Mamata Banerjee, the author said she had great hopes for poriborton (change). “But one cannot not expect change overnight. It is not magic. I know Mamata is sincere and not corrupt. But she needs to take correct decisions and have good advisers,” said the writer.

Age could not rob Mahasweta Devi of her spirit and sense of humour. Feeble but alert, tottering in her room and speaking in a hushed voice, the writer, who in the last 44 years churned out 114 novels and 20 collection of short stories, told HT: “I will be writing another novel. Do you know, I conceived and finished writing Hazar Chaurasi Ki Maa in 60 hours.”

She said when Govind Nihalani was making Hazar Chaurasi Ki Maa, based on Naxalism, Jaya Bachchan came to meet her. And the author was astonished to know that someone was a complete vegetarian. “I can’t believe how can one eat bhindi for the whole life,” Mahasweta Devi said, mischievously hinting at Amitabh Bachchan.

A true incident in a Rajput zamindar family in Palmau, Bihar, inspired her to write Rudali. She could not believe when she saw the family of a local zamindar hiring wailers to mourn after his death. Rudali was made into a Bollywood film with Dimple Kapadia in the lead.

Age might had slowed down the prolific, grand old dame. But as long as she had a clear, thinking mind and a beating heart, she planned to keep on writing just like Nobel Laureate Gabriel Garcia Marquez.

“I am in search of that man who is in the crowd. I am unable to catch him. But the day I do, I will complete my new novel.” Mahasweta Devi had said.

Source: Hindustan Times, 29-07-2016

Towards a Healthier Office Environment?

An hourly stroll can also update one on office gossip faster than social media

Research showing that sitting glued to a desk for eight hours at a stretch is as harmful for health and longevity as smoking should be music to the ears of those hankering for less intense workdays. That it is actually healthier to take hourly five-minute breaks -whether to the water cooler, coffee machine or round the corner -should, however, be communicated first to supervisors as they may otherwise take a dim view of such apparently health-related excursions by staff.The fact that researchers have so far not been able to pinpoint why specifically sitting rather than other sedentary postures are hazardous to health rather weakens the case for frequent perambulations. However, as earlier studies have also shown that standing is no healthier than sitting, sit-stand workstations are not the answer either.Since current thinking on tackling the problem envisages doubling the usual amount of recommended daily exercise, the suggested options are not likely to give much joy to workplace couch (or chair) potatoes. Neither spacing bus stops further apart so that people walk more nor closing major streets on weekends to cars so that people are encouraged to turn to sports or exercise rather than rides to the mall, are likely to find widespread approval. Coolers and coffee machines in far corners could be an acceptable compromise.





Source: Economic Times, 29-07-2016

Why Passion And Compassion Go Together

A M A Samy





Let me begin with a story: There was an old woman in China who had supported a monk for over twenty years. She had built a little hut for him and fed him while he spent his time meditating.Finally she wondered just what progress he had made in 20 years.To find out, she obtained the help of a girl rich in desire. “Go and embrace him,“ she told her, and then directed her to ask him suddenly: “What now?“ The girl called upon the monk and without much ado caressed him, asking him what he was going to do about it. “An old tree grows on a cold rock in winter,“ replied the monk somewhat poetically. “Nowhere is there any warmth.“ The girl returned and related what he had said to the woman who had sent her to the monk.
“To think I fed that fellow for twenty years!“ exclaimed the old woman in anger: “He showed no consideration for your need, no disposition to explain your condition.He need not have responded to passion, but at least he could have shown some compassion.“ She at once went to the hut of the monk and burnt it down. How advanced do you think this monk was in his spiritual life? He had been in meditation for 20 years and when a young woman comes and unexpectedly embraces him he responds poetically ­ An old tree (an old man) grows on a cold rock in winter (has no emotions is as cold as in winter). Nowhere is there any warmth (everything is gone, I am totally dispassionate). Is this a spiritual goal? The old woman remarks thus: “To think I fed that good for nothing fellow for twenty years.“ And exposes his pretension: “You need not have responded to passion, but you should have shown compassion.“
Passion and compassion ­ they go together, you cannot separate them.
If you do not have passion, you do not have compassion. The young girl comes to the monk and he talks to her about his own attainment. “I have become dispassionate, I have become free, I have no more desires, I have no more emotional needs, nothing!“ He is not listening to the young woman; does not acknowledge her or her needs. He does not respond to her at all.This is why the old woman considers that he has not grown spiritually in all his meditating. years of meditating.
You are practising meditation and trying to live a spiritual life, so ask yourself: what is the goal of spending your time this way? Why do you do it?
The goal should be in Zen terms: enlightenment and compassion. Put in more general terms and it would be: Fullness of life.
Jesus said: “I came so that they may have life and have it more abundantly.“
Life in this sense does not mean just a biological life; it means fullness of life.It means love, freedom, joy, peace, and justice. Meditation should lead there, to fullness, and not simply to a destruction of your passions and emotions. It is emotions that we need to understand and address in order to help us and others. But one major problem with some of the Buddhist meditations is that they discard, ignore and even deny emotions and the body.
(The writer, a Jesuit priest, runs a Zen retreat near Kodaikanal.)

Assured on tribal rights, RS OKs afforestation funds bill

New Delhi: TIMES NEWS NETWORK





A much-awaited bill to unlock an over Rs bill to unlock an over Rs 42,000 crore fund for compensatory afforestation and wildlife protection has been passed by Parliament, with the Rajya Sabha finally approving it on Thursday after the government's assurance that the rules to be framed would safeguard the interests of forest dwellers and tribals.The Lok Sabha had passed the Compensatory Afforestation Fund (CAF) Bill during the Budget session. The bill, once it gets the President's assent, will also create an institutional mechanism for use of fresh accrual of an estimated Rs 6,000 crore per annum (over the Rs 42,000 crore lying unspent till now) that would be collected for diversion of forest land for non-forest use.
Environment minister Anil Dave assured opposition MPs in the Rajya Sabha that the government would take care of their concerns, and not compromise the rights of tribals, with their consent be ing taken for afforestation and related works under the existing law. “The provisions of the Panchayati Raj Act are also powerful enough to ensure that forest rights and consent of gram panchayats are respected,“ said Dave, adding that deficiencies that emerge in future would be addressed after a year.
On Wednesday , Congress MP and former environment minister Jairam Ramesh had raised concerns on behalf of his party with the apprehension that the legislation would ignore the rights of forest dwellers under the Forest Rights Act of 2006.
But disputing this, BJP MP Bhupendra Yadav on Thursday said: “This government wants to ensure that the country's green cover grows and the rights of those living in forests are protected. This fund will be spent in a transparent manner.“
Among the states, Odisha will get the highest amount of Rs 5,996 crore from the Rs 42,000 crore fund, which means that the state has seen the maximum diversion of forest land for non-forest use.
Any user agency that diverts forest land for a nonforest purpose is, at present, required to deposit prescribed amount to an ad-hoc central government body .This amount is supposed to be utilised to mitigate the impact of diversion of forest land. The ad-hoc body , the Compensatory Afforestation Fund Management and Planning Authority (CAMPA), is the custodian of the accumulated amount of Rs 42,000 crore as of now.
The bill is also aimed at setting up the National Compensatory Afforestation Fund at the Centre and the State Compensatory Afforestation Funds. About 90% of the collected fund will be spent by the states for afforestation and other related work, including forest regeneration and wildlife protection. It also provides for setting up a national authority at Centre and state-level authority in respective states to monitor the utilisation of the funds.

Source: Times of India, 29-07-2016

QUESTIONING MILTON FRIEDMAN’S BIGGEST IDEA

One

of the core pieces of modern macroeconomic theory, handed down to us by the great Milton Friedman, probably missed the mark. And now it might be on the way out. And this shift has big implications for how we think about economic policy and finance.

The idea is called the permanent income hypothesis (PIH). Friedman first put it on paper in 1957, and it still holds enormous sway in the economics profession. The PIH says that people’s consumption doesn’t depend on how much they earn today, but on how much they expect to earn over their lifetime.

If a one-time windfall of money drops into your lap, says Friedman’s theory, you won’t rush out and spend it all—you’ll stick it in the bank, because you know the episode won’t be repeated. But if you get a raise, you might start spending more every month, because the raise was a signal that your earning power has increased for the long term.

That assumption about human behaviour has huge implications for policy. If true, the PIH means that the effectiveness of a fiscal stimulus is likely to be a lot lower than economists thought in the 1960s. If the government tries to goose spending by mailing people checks, people will just deposit the money in the bank, instead of going out and consuming.

It’s also important for finance. Lots of academic theories are based on the PIH. Friedman’s idea says that consumers want to smooth out their consumption—they don’t like dips. So in theory people will spend a lot for financial assets that pay off during recessions, allowing them to avoid tightening their belts.

PIH is so dominant that almost all modern macroeconomic theories are based on it. They enshrine the idea with a formula called a “consumption Euler equation”, which has appeared in the vast majority of academic macro models during the past few decades. Those are the models many central bankers use to set interest rates.

So it’s not much of an exaggeration to say that Friedman’s PIH is the cornerstone of modern macroeconomic theory. Unfortunately, there’s just one small problem—it’s almost certainly wrong.

Not completely wrong, mind you, just somewhat wrong. There probably are a lot of consumers out there who do behave just the way that Friedman imagined. But the problem is, there are a lot of others who act very differently. Slowly, economists have been building up evidence that the latter group is important and sizeable.

Early tests showed support for the PIH. But in 1990, economists John Campbell and Greg Mankiw estimated that only about half of consumers obeyed Friedman’s principle. The rest, they said, probably consume hand-tomouth—if they get a bonus at work, or a big tax refund, or a government stimulus check, they go out and eat at nice restaurants, or buy more home furnishings, or just spend more.

A blow to the mathematical version of the theory came in 2006, when Georgetown economists Matthew Canzoneri, Robert Cumby and Behzad Diba wrote a paper testing the consumption Euler equation directly against real financial data—something that, for reasons that escape me, no economist seems to have actually tried before. The equation says that when interest rates are high, people save more and consume less—this is the way they smooth their consumption, as Friedman predicted. But Canzoneri et al. found that the opposite is true— for whatever reason, the fact is that people tend to consume more when interest rates are high. Oops. Anyway, research continues to come out that’s at odds with the PIH. A recent study by Northwestern University’s Luenz Kueng found that when Alaskans got a sudden payout of money from the Alaska Permanent Fund (the state’s wealth fund, which collects money from natural resource industries), they went and consumed the windfall immediately instead of sticking it in the bank like Friedman would predict. That kind of random natural experiment, which is becoming more and more popular in the econ profession, is powerful and simple evidence.

The mounting evidence against the PIH—the papers I cited are only a small sampling—is causing economists to cast around for an alternative. My Bloomberg View colleague Narayana Kocherlakota recently blogged that “The choices made 25-40 years ago—made then for a number of excellent reasons—should not be treated as written in stone or even in pen. By doing so, we are choking off paths for understanding the macroeconomy.”

Kocherlakota thinks macroeconomists should set aside their big, complex formal models of the economy, since these elaborate constructions are built on a foundation that probably doesn’t describe reality all that well. He recommends that economists go back to the drawing board, and look around for new, more accurate kernels of insight with which to build the theories of tomorrow.

In the meantime, we should all recognize that Friedman’s ideas might have been too influential. His impact on economics was deep and lasting, but this theory, at least, has not stood the test of time.

Source: Mintepaper, 28-07-2016

U.P., Bihar lead in crimes against Dalits

Data from Gujarat show such atrocities impossibly make up 163% of the total number of crimes.

Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan and Bihar lead the country in the number of cases registered of crimes against the Scheduled Castes, official data pertaining to 2013, 2014 and 2015 show.

The National Commission for Scheduled Castes (NCSC) counts these States among those deserving special attention.

While U.P. has witnessed a political war of words over an expelled BJP leader's insulting remarks on BSP leader Mayawati, it is Rajasthan that leads in number of crimes against Dalits.

Fifty-two to 65 per cent of all crimes in Rajasthan have a Dalit as the victim. This is despite the fact that the State's SC (Dalit) population is just 17.8 per cent of its total population. With six per cent of India's Dalit population, the State accounts for up to 17 per cent of the crimes against them across India.

With 20 per cent of India's Dalit population, U.P. accounts for 17 per cent of the crimes against them. The numbers — ranging from 7078 to 8946 from 2013 to 2015 — are high, but so is the population of Dalits in the State.

Bihar too has a poor track record, with 6721 to 7893 cases of atrocities in the same period, contributing 16-17 per cent of the all India crimes against Dalits with just eight per cent of the country's SC population. While Dalits form 15.9 per cent of the State’s population, 40-47 per cent of all crimes registered there are against Dalits.

Gujarat corrects figures

Gujarat on its part has shared corrected figures of crimes against Dalits with the NCSC after an abnormal increase in the figures pertaining to crimes against Dalits in the State.

“The anamoly and sudden increase in respect to Gujarat and Chhattisgarh are abnormal and are being highlighted so that these States can provide actual data in case there was a mistake in reporting,” said the agenda note for the NCSC review meeting with the States last week.

Gujarat's numbers of crimes against Dalits had jumped to 6655 in 2015 from 1130 in 2014, which made NCSC officials suspicious. There was also a statistical impossibility in the data — the crimes against Dalits were 163 per cent of the total number of crimes reported.

“Gujarat officials corrected the data in the meeting, and these are like previous years,” an official present at the meet said. “Chhattisgarh officials have done the same.”

Gujarat's officials, sources said, were worried that “inflated” data would further damage the State's record on Dalit atrocities when at a time it is in the eye of storm over the Una incident of public beating of Dalits and the subsequent suicide attempts by Dalits in the state.

In an attempt at damage control, the Gujarat government has also released figures claiming crimes against Dalits in the State have “gone down” under the BJP. The corrected figure for 2015 in this data set is 1052, which is lower than figure for 2014.

The data also claim that while there were on an average 1669 crimes against Dalits per year in the State from 1991 to 2000, the number declined to 1098 between 2011 and 2015.

Atrocities

So far as the atrocities reported to the NCSC by Dalits who feel the authorities are not giving them justice are concerned, U.P. accounts for the highest number at 2024 cases and Tamil Nadu comes next at 999 cases.

“This could mean both laxity of the authorities and greater consciousness of rights among Dalits,” an NCSC official said. (With inputs from Nistula Hebbar)

Source: The Hindu, 25-07-2016