Lifestyle in Indian democracy
Amjed Jaaved

India is the world’s biggest democracy. But, it has over 350 million people living below the poverty line (one dollar a day). Democracy means government of the people. So, in theory, Indian government could not ignore such a vast chunk of its poor population. Practically, what is happening? The Time magazine (The poor who vote, March 14, 2005) points out that, in India, there are poor people ‘scavenging along side vultures’. The magazine has displayed a picture wherein an Indian citizen and a vulture benefit from the same heap of left-overs.
Widespread poverty is driving more and more young Indian women and children into the flesh trade. Police claims that ‘flesh trade’ is a thriving business in India. Annual turnover of the flesh trade in New Delhi alone is overt Rs 5 billion ($114 million). Most of the girls or children involved in the flesh business are teenagers.
An undercover investigation conducted by Tehelka has revealed that hundreds of Europeans — British, Germans, Dutch, French, Swiss and Swedish — visit Goa to seek children for sexual gratification. Goa attracts them because it is very cheap. Besides, one could always abuse a child in Goa with impunity. Tehelka (Sin in paradise, Tahelka.com) reported ‘On the run after crackdowns on cheap child-sex tourism in Thailand and Sri Lanka, the paedophile bus has rolled into Goa. And, turned the picture-postcard tourism destination into an arena of perversity and of horrors. Goa has made an alarming transition from being a laid-back resort to a paedophile’s paradise. And the government, despite knowledge of this debased crime, despite alerts from international agencies, chooses to look the other way’.
When there is a hue and cry from the NGOs against this commerce, the police announces having succeeded in busting rackets. For instance, on August 9, 2005, Delhi police announced that they ‘have busted a large prostitution racket here with the arrest of 27 sex workers, aged between 20 and 35, and five pimps from Welcome Colony area of north east district’ (Tribune, New Delhi, August 9, 2005). The arrested persons always get benefit of doubt and never get punished.
In April 2005, Crime Branch of Delhi Police announced that it has arrested Kanwaljit Singh, aged 47, who is mastermind of Indian women’s and children’s international traffic. The police described him as the ‘king pimp’ who had social connections with politicians, bureaucrats and businessmen not only in India but also abroad (particularly in Hong Kong, Singapore and Thailand).
According to police, ‘Kanwaljeet runs a prostitution racket which spans across Asia. There are men and women working for him even in Thailand and Hong Kong’. He also organises the women’s and children’s tours to foreign countries where wealthy businessmen accompany them.
The two women, arrested with the accused, were being paid a monthly salary of Rs 50,000. Some police officers described Singh as the ‘Cadillac pimp’ because Cadillac was his favourite choice of transport. Singh charged anywhere between Rs 75,000 to 5, 00,000 for his services and changed his mobile number every 15 days. Several parties had assured him of a Rajya Sabha seat. However, to avoid public exposure, he refused the offers.
Tejinder Singh Luthra, deputy commissioner of police (Delhi) alleged, ‘Singh’s clientele included a five-star list. He specialised in acting as a front for several models and movie starlets’. Children are the preferred ‘commodity’.
According to sociologists, boys’ prostitution is rarely focused in Indian media. As for the girls’ prostitution, there are numerous reasons for its geometric-progression growth. It is generally believed that virgins and pre-pubescent girls can cure venereal diseases. They contain elixir for rejuvenating the doddering old mates. The social-service organisations lament, ‘Despite the growth in this trade, nobody seems to be doing anything about it. After West Bengal, Andhra Pradesh is the second largest supplier of girls’.
In 1997, the Supreme Court ordered a national plan of action for an in-depth study and a committee to look into prostitution. But nothing has been done so far. India’s perceptions of women’s trafficking are not in consonance with internationally accepted definitions.
The UN documents define trafficking as ‘All Acts involved in the recruitment and/or transportation of a person within and across national borders for work or services by means of violence or threats of violence, abuse of authority or dominant position, debt bondage, deception or other forms of coercion’. This definition encompasses all kinds of work like ‘farming, child camel- jockeys, carpet factories, forced beggary, domestic service, criminal activities, forced marriage, sex market, illegal adoption etc’.
Indian hotels also are notorious for supplying male and female kids to their customers. Not only the ordinary hotels but also the posh hotels provide the ‘supply service’. Despite their mind boggling charges, even the costliest Indian hotels have never gone bankrupt. The hotel suites cost $1,250 a night to $ 5,000. A few figures: (a) Chandragupta Suite, Maurya Sheraton, Delhi, $ 1250 (Rs 54,000). (b) The Grand Presidential Suite, Taj Mansingh, Delhi, $ 5,000 a night (Rs 2, 17,500) a night (c) Maharani Suite, Umaid Bhawan, Udaipur, $ 3,200 (Rs 1, 39,000). (d) The Rajput Suite, Taj, Mumbai, $ 2,000 (Rs 87,000) a night. (d) Sajjan Niwas Suite, lake Palace, Udaipur, $ 1,500 (Rs 65,250) a night.(e) The Kohinoor Suite, Amarvillas, Oberoi, Agra, $ 1,950 (Rs 85,000) a night.(f)Royal Villa, Raj Villas, Jaipur, $ 2,400( Rs 1,04,000) a night. (g) Suryavanshi Suite, Rambagh Palace, Jaipur, $ 1,700 (Rs 74,000) a night.
The prohibitions against prostitution and children traffic are contained in the UN Convention for the Suppression of the Traffic in Persons and of the Exploitation of the Prostitution of others (1951), UN Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and Children (2000), the United Nations Convention against Transnational Organized Crime, and Protocol against the Smuggling of Migrants by Land, Sea and Air. However, the tragedy is that despite the existence of national and international laws, India’s state machinery has proved ineffective to fight against trafficking. In 80 per cent of the cases, victims of exploitation are punished. The traffickers go scot-free.
Twenty percent of Bombay’s brothel population is thought to be girls under the age of eighteen. In Nepal, Every year, 5,000 to 7,000 women and children are trafficked into India for forced prostitution. 20% (i.e. 40,000) of trafficked Nepali women and children for sex trade in India are girls below 16 years of age.
The report, released by Indian government’s Human Resource Development Ministry, based on a survey conducted in six Indian cities, confirmed that ‘70,000 to 100,000 sex workers, of whom 15 percent were under fifteen years of age when they entered prostitution; 25 percent were between sixteen and eighteen years.
According to international estimates, human trafficking is the third biggest illegal trade in India which makes annual profit up to $5 billion to $7 billion after drugs smuggling and gun running. The present rate of trafficking in children is already 10 times higher than the trans-Atlantic slave trade at its peak. Trafficking is the fastest growing form of forced labour.
Trafficking is now a billion dollar industry in South Asia. About 89 per cent of the trafficked women are sold within India. The sociologists agree, unless everyone, including the police, policymakers, judiciary, activists and people involved in every way with human trafficking join hands, girls and children will continue to be sold in India of the 21st century. This crime will continue unabated until some of the basic issues surrounding its perpetuation-such as extreme poverty, lack of education, the suppression of women and children, and superstitious ignorance are tackled
 

Playing games with human misery
Momin Iftikhar

The shattering Kashmir Quake has left in its wake a trail of destruction and human suffering that will require a long process of healing to dull the pain that it has engendered. The sheer scale and reach of the shock waves has generated a swell of sympathy and togetherness among the Kashmiri masses across the divide of the LoC who are pining to reach out and embrace one another in this time of trial. The consequence is generation of political forces that defy control and promise to bring down the status quo. Indian establishment is well aware of the threat these winds of change mean for her fossilized posturing on Kashmir. The result is an Indian endeavor to manipulate the raw emotions of Kashmiris to spread disaffection with Pakistan. Rather than rising to the occasion in reaching out to the great human tragedy, Indians have largely relied on semantics and symbolism as their means of response.
As the entire Pakistani nation wrestled to overcome tremendous odds in reaching out to those affected by the quake, Indians showed complete insensitivity to the situation by indulging in petty politics and propaganda warfare. At this time of great human tragedy when consideration for those trapped under the rubble and hundreds of thousands who were clamoring for medical assistance should have been supreme, it was chicanery and penchant for symbolism that ruled the roost in India. Indians made quite an issue of Pakistani reluctance in accepting their helicopters to fly relief sorties over active Pakistani defenses in Azad Kashmir but on their own part they refused to permit Pakistani pilots to do the same in their own territory close to the LoC. As per a 1991 agreement, India and Pakistan had decided that no country would allow flight of helicopters within thousand meters of the LoC. Now that situation demanded undertaking such flight by Pakistan for relief purposes, Indians stipulated that they would consider permission for such flights on case to case basis. This meant that Pakistan would be constrained to request a sortie close to LoC, on its own side, to Indian Military Operations Branch that would process the request and then take its time in percolating the permission down to platoon and section levels; a procedure that ran cross grained to the spontaneity of the relief operation procedures where little goes as anticipated. Indians also showed scant if any consideration for difficulties faced by Pakistani flyers in landing their helicopters, while conducting relief operations, in areas close to the LoC. Helicopter flying in mountainous territory of Kashmir with its mercurial weather and changing wind torrents is tricky business where approach to a spur of the moment chosen landing site becomes critical to the safe landing. Indians made it clear that they wouldn’t allow crossing over of the LoC even when a safer approach for landing was not available for the Pakistani choppers conducting relief operations; underscoring that such initiative would be considered violation of the LoC. The inevitable question is that if Indian army is so sensitive to proximity of Pakistani choppers to LoC, how does it consider refusal by Pakistan to let Indian Helicopters meandering in and out of Pakistani air space, over its defenses, to be offensive to its missionary ardor?
While forcing its unwanted hospitality on Pakistan, Indian media launched its sleaze campaign to throw spanners in the Pakistani drive to collect funds for the impending mammoth rehabilitation and reconstruction effort. To deter potential donors, Indian media launched an orchestrated vicious campaign to claim that the funds donated by the international donors would be embezzled instead of being spent on quake relief. It also speculated that instead of reconstruction of the devastated hamlets, homes and cities the money would be spent in construction of defenses along the LoC. Indian spin doctors also wanted to gnaw at the strong bonds of empathy and affection that tie Azad Kashmir with Pakistan; something that is the stuff of dreams for Indians in the IHK. To this end this propaganda tirade also tried to play down the swell of voluntary civilian effort which instantaneously and instinctively rose in this time of trial. Claiming that it was the Jihadi elements that were trying to build their support base among the Kashmiri youth, Indians tried to tarnish the spirit and berated the countless Pakistani volunteers that reached out to the traumatized Kashmir. In the hindsight it is good to see such efforts failing in their insincere and malicious labors. Pakistan has garnered enough funds to tide over the fiscal difficulties. There is no dearth of human resource and enterprise to put this resource to good use and God willing the devastation will give way to tide of the reconstruction that is already beginning to roar on in a well charted direction.
Actions speak louder than words and some of the donors have been dismayed by the Indian lack of empathy that they displayed when the flights bringing in the relief supplies had to make a stop over on the Indian soil. Handling of these flights was extremely irksome and irritating for the crews involved whereby the Indian intelligence sneaked in without permission to gain information about the material being carried and about the identities of persons on board. Besides refueling, Indians charged a number of taxes including transportation charges of the crews to the lounge and back, aeronautical charges, landing fee and ground handling expenses etc. Indian rude attitude stood in marked contrast with the hospitality extended by other countries. In certain cases this abominable behavior crossed limits of working decency extended in such situations. An Indonesian airplane carrying relief goods provided by the Indonesian Government landed at New Delhi on 13 October for refueling. Representing the Indonesian Government, Senior Advisor to the Minister of Peoples’ welfare was on board and the flight had been cleared in advance by the Indian authorities. Despite this background the plane remained stranded without any reason for ten hours before it could take off and while it waited for clearance to fly even the crew members were not allowed to come out of the aircraft.
The unprecedented destruction and human tragedy wrought by the mammoth earth quake in Pakistan and Kashmir has failed to shake the hostility embedded in the Indian mindset. Instead of showing compassion for the human sufferings, Indian response has tended to be insensitive and perfunctory. Indians don’t tire of explaining the importance of promoting goodwill and an ambience of confidence, as an essential component of strategy to tackle the festering Issue of Kashmir. Their failure to rise to the opportunity provided by the Kashmir quake to win hearts and mind in Pakistan as well Kashmir, however stands in a marked contrast to what they preach.