Re: [Assam] [assam] The Delhi child servant scandal that has outraged India.
Dear Friends; This story is from the Guardian UK (8 April, 2012) -bhuban The Delhi child servant scandal that has outraged India Plight of 13-year-old locked in house while employers went on holiday sparks revulsion Gethin Chamberlain guardian.co.uk, Saturday 7 April 2012 20.12 BST Article histor Dr Sanjay Verma, centre, and Dr Sumita Verma, right, are arrested at their home in Dwarka, near Delhi, on 4 April 2012. Photograph: Hindustan Times/Getty Images It was the 13-year-old maid's desperate cries for help that finally alerted neighbours to her plight. She was standing, sobbing, on the balcony of the upmarket Delhi apartment. Her employers had locked her in, she said, and gone on holiday. Finally rescued by a firefighter, she told a tale that prompted a widespread display of national revulsion. Her employers – middle-class doctors Sanjay and Sumita Verma – had "bought" her from an agency, which had in turn bought her from her uncle. She was hungry, she said, because they barely fed her. She received no pay and was regularly beaten. Their latest act of cruelty had been to lock her in and go on holiday to Thailand. The couple claim that they thought the girl was 18 and deny mistreating her, but they were roundly vilified and have been refused bail. In court the couple were accused of "subjecting the victim to a treatment which can be best described as torture". Perhaps the most puzzling aspect of the story is why it has caused such fury in a country where, after all, the sight of a youthful servant rarely raises a flicker of curiosity. Delhi's thriving middle class would crumble without its army of domestic servants, whose presence enables couples to go out to work and continue to boost an economy projected to be the largest in the world by 2050. The most liberal members of that society think nothing of employing a maid, a driver, a sweeper, a cook, a gardener and a couple of house boys who sleep on the roof, or in tiny shared rooms. The International Labour Organisation estimates that there are at least four million domestic servants in India, including about 100,000 children working in and around Delhi. While it has been illegal to employ anyone under the age of 14 since 2006, that has done little to hinder the placement agencies which routinely hire out trafficked children. A good maid might earn 3,500 rupees (£43) a month, if she is very lucky, or about half the legal minimum wage for an unskilled worker in Delhi. The less fortunate are bought from brokers and kept as unpaid skivvies – simply fed and given somewhere to sleep. A company called Domestic Help in India is one of thousands of agencies supplying staff. Based in Gurgaon, near Delhi, the company charges employers 16,000 rupees to arrange the hire of a maid for 11 months. Its website is packed with adverts for staff, who can be selected on the basis of age (15 and upwards), religion and gender. Gurpreet, a maid/cook, has two years' experience and costs 3,000 rupees a month. Harjett, who has one year's experience, is available to anyone in Delhi for just 2,000 rupees a month. Those less comfortable with the way the system operates often try to assuage their feelings of guilt by hiring staff at above the going rate. However, writing on an expatriate website that offers advice to foreigners moving to India, Shawn Runacres, managing director of the Gurgaon-based Domesteq staff placement agency, says there should be no need to feel awkward if staff are treated well. "Throw out the guilt – remember you are providing much-needed employment at fair rates and excellent working conditions," she says. "The very thought of no longer having to make beds, cook, dust, wash dishes and do laundry sounds like heaven and, for those with children, if you add to all these things the possibility of affordable, on-tap childcare, it becomes irresistible." Speaking on Friday, she said she was convinced that the market for domestic staff would continue to grow as India's economy expanded, not least because of the challenges posed by living in India. "There are many more challenges to your daily life," she said. She doubts that it would be possible to live without staff. "You would spend your entire time just trying to keep yourself fed and your home in some semblance of shape. You can't just get water from the tap; you have to clean your water. You can't just eat fruit off the tree or out of the market. Is it a luxury? No, not in India. It is absolutely a staple of life." Runacres's agency – which does not employ children and promises fair wages and dignity of labour – pays well above the average. Others are less scrupulous. Bhuwan Ribhu, national secretary of the Bachpan Bachao Andolan (Save the Childhood Movement), said child labour was now common in the cities, particularly involving girls aged 12 to 18, while boys aged 10 and upwards are more common in the countryside. "India cannot and must n
Re: [Assam] [assam] Newswallah: Bharat edition
Dear Friends: I am now restricted by The N Y Times. The Bharat Newswallah (7 April 2012) proves to be an exception -bhuban April 7, 2012, 4:34 AM Newswallah: Bharat Edition By THE NEW YORK TIMES Jammu and Kashmir: A grenade attack was carried out by suspected militants on Thursday night on the road leading up to the Srinagar airport, Kashmir Live reported. The police headquarters and the state vigilance organization are located close to the area that was targeted, but no casualties were reported, the newspaper said. Assam: Rhino horn traders, allegedly based in Nagaland, continue to threaten the rhino population in the state by supplying ammunition to poachers. A forest official at Assam’s Kaziranga National Park, home to the largest rhino population in India, said there was clear evidence that the rhino horn trade in the region is controlled from Nagaland. “These horn traders not only supply arms and ammunition to poachers in the state, but also send sharpshooters from the neighboring state to kill rhinos in the national parks of the state,” the Nagaland Post quoted an unnamed official. The rhino horns travel a long route from Assam, first through Nagaland, Manipur and Myanmar, and then to Vietnam and China, where they are used to prepare medicines, the newspaper reported. Jharkhand: The Central Bureau of Investigation will probe the “circumstances leading to the countermanding” of the March 30 elections held in the state for the Rajya Sabha, or the upper house of Parliament, The Hindu reported. The chief election commissioner of India, S.Y. Quraishi, told the newspaper that the verdict is a “landmark judgment and it has strengthened our efforts to fight against corruption in polls and use of money power.” Gujarat: Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi faced new criticism over a newspaper advertisement published in a vernacular paper in the state by the Gujarat Bharatiya Janta Party (B.J.P.), to which Mr. Modi belongs. The ad “depicts the chief minister as Lord Krishna,” IBNLive reported. The advertisement, which has drawn protests from the Congress Party, also projects the state B.J.P. president and other state leaders as mythological figures from the Hindu epic of Mahabharata. Goa: The port of Mormugao, where 50 percent of the country’s iron ore is exported from, has seen a 27 percent decline in ore exports for 2011-2012, The Pioneer reported. Port authorities said the decline is tied to a number of factors, including a ban on ore exports from Karnataka, restrictions on transporting ore from mines to offload points and the closure of several mines following charges of illegal mining. The Mormugao Port Trust has decided to diversify itself as a multi-commodity port that will export a variety of commodities, including automobiles, cotton yarn, foundry yarn and timber. (IBNLive) Andhra Pradesh: The New Indian Express, citing unnamed sources, reported that the national intelligence bureau reviewed the security cover of a senior officer of the Central Bureau of Investigation — the country’s top investigating agency, because he faces a threat from the state’s mining mafia. The senior officer, V.V. Lakshminarayana, is probing a high-profile illegal iron ore mining case. Kerala: The local government of Tripunithura, a suburb in the city of Kochi, said they would award shares of a bus terminal to residents who give up their land to build the project. The proposed terminal would be built on 12.5 acres of land near the local railway station. (The New Indian Express) E-mail Print Recommend Share TUMBLR DIGG LINKEDIN REDDIT PERMALINK Twitt ___ assam mailing list assam@assamnet.org http://assamnet.org/mailman/listinfo/assam_assamnet.org
[Assam] An interview with Uddhab Bharali
Please find the following Interviews published in Friends http://magazine.assamfoundation.net/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=66:an-interview-with-uddhab-bharali&catid=4:sketches-of-life&Itemid=10 We appreciate Dibyajyoti Sharma and Rupkamal Sarma for preparing the article. Thanks to Chandan Talukdar for the Friends website Ankur "We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard" President John F Kennedy ___ assam mailing list assam@assamnet.org http://assamnet.org/mailman/listinfo/assam_assamnet.org
[Assam] The Clarion : A multidisciplinary international journal started in 1994 and presently sponsored by the Centre for Environment, Education and Economic Development (CEEED), Assam.
The Clarion (http://www.scholarlycommunication.in/journal/) : The CLARION is a multidisciplinary international journal started in 1994 and presently sponsored by the Centre for Environment, Education and Economic Development (CEEED), Assam. .. 1st online edition of "The Clarion" : http://www.scholarlycommunication.in/journal/index.php?journal=clarion&page=issue&op=current Vol 1, No 1 (2012) Table of Contents Editorial Editorial PDF HTML Arup Kumar Hazarika Science River Bank Erosion and Restoration in the Brahmaputra River in India HTML Arvind Phukan, Rajib Goswami, Deva Borah, Ananta Nath, Chandan Mahanta Comments on Ricotta: Ecological Diversity and Biodiversity as Concepts for Conservation Planning HTML Sahotra Sarkar Video Endoscopic Treatment of Complex Anal Fistula-A New Emerging Treatment modality HTML Subhash Khanna Hypothyroidism - A common Phenomenon HTML Sarojini Dutta Choudhury Dark Energy, Non-minimally Coupled Scalar Field and Big Bang PDF HTML K D Krori, Chandra Rekha Mahanta, Kanika Das Quantum mechanical studies on the effect of ions at phosphate and sugar groups of DNA HTML
[Assam] bihu in Delhi
http://assamassociationdelhi.org/images/documents/2012_April_Jogajog.jpg ___ assam mailing list assam@assamnet.org http://assamnet.org/mailman/listinfo/assam_assamnet.org
