June-July 2006
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Lowering Depths, Growing Pangs
India has one of the highest levels of child malnutrition in the world, higher than most countries in sub-saharan africa . It was calculated that 80 per cent of the indian population was living on less than two dollar per day
Paradox of Hunger Amidst Plenty
India still has the largest number of permanently and chronically undernourished people and one of the highest rates of child malnutrition in the world. Hunger and malnutrition have been increasing since the second half of the 1990s, according to a United Nations report
If Knowledge is Power, Demand it...
The Freedom of Information Bill, 2000 was a significant milestone in the history of legislation in India. With the enactment of the Right to Information Act in 2005, India is now at par with the finest global democratic practices
Himalayan Blunders
The headwaters of fragile river systems are critical and ought to be preserved in their natural pristine state. Thus, villages were traditionally situated a safe distance away from the verdant forests which were held in reverence. During the british era and subsequently in independent india, faulty policies and misuse of power have resulted in rapid and mass denudation of these headwaters
Beware of Ngo Doublespeak
Their deceptive discourse sounds similar but the motive is starkly different. The new language of philanthropy diffuses and eliminates radical dissent and human rights, while effectively facilitating the political economy of cold-blooded globalisation
Flesh Trade’s Twilight ZONE
While human trafficking is close to slavery in many ways, we are nowhere near condemning it the way we ban and punish slave trade
Destination India for PAEDOPHILES
Almost half of the 900,000 persons traded annually across national borders are children. India is a major hub for paedophiles. Victims are either sold for sexual exploitation or trapped in bonded labour, but the establishment seems utterly unmoved
Deadly Intertwining
Disabled people are the new favourites of the flourishing organ trade mafia across the world. From begging to daily torture, the trafficking of the disabled is big money, while legality stands meaningless and manipulated. Do we have a solution
Nothing Sensational ABOUT IT
The demand for legalisation will benefit only madams and pimps in India. The issue is that of decriminalising prostitution because all over the world legalisation has failed to improve the life of women forced into prostitution
Revolutions’s Songbird
Born in a remote village in Andhra Pradesh, Gummadi Vitthal Rao, a dalit student, discontinued his engineering course from Osmania University, took up singing as a career, established the Jana Natya Mandali and travelled to remote villages all over India spreading messages through his songs of revolution. Over a span of four decades, this 57-year-old fighter who carries a bullet in his body, has come to represent the voice of revolution and has thus emerged balladeer comrade Gaddar. In an exclusive interview with Combat Law, he speaks about the rise of global imperialism, naxalism, a confused youth, and failure of many movements.
Hate Machine’s Manufactured Myths
Seducing adivasis into the Hindu caste system and terrorising Christian missionaries who have helped socially empower them are all a sinister scheme the Sangh Parivar has designed in the Dangs in Gujarat
Dubya’s Laboratory of Untruth
The blatant disregard for the Geneva Convention and the stark violations of human rights in Guantanamo Bay prison proves that the George-Bush led US regime cares too hoots for global decency, justice, legality or humanity
Now a New Human Rights Council
The creation of the human rights council in the United Nations gives little room for optimism about any real change in the working of the apex body. The highly politicised process has yielded a body no less selective than others. Nor does it reflect
Judicial Assault AGAINST POOR
If recent judgments on Narmada, slum demolitions, evictions of hawkers and rickshaw-pullers are any indication, the judiciary, instead of upholding the rights of the poor, is spearheading the assault against them. Violated and unable to take it anymore , some are taking to violence
HUMAN RIGHTS and Trafficking in Persons
States must elicit the participation of the community in identifying and rescuing human beings who have been trafficked as well as assisting the law enforcement machinery in tracing the traffickers so that they are punished
Liberalised Sex Slavery, Transit Point India
India is fast becoming a favourite destination for sex tourists from the US and western countries. Commercial exploitation of women and children is becoming a rage. The Indian government supports international conventions but its practical response has been weak, ineffective and half-hearted
Beware of the Second Sex Stereotypes
The discourse on anti-trafficking is fixated on the assumption that prostitution is a violation of human rights. That prostitutes are, if not fallen women, victims, who only need to be rescued and rehabilitated. Or that they have to be controlled and regulated to protect the moral interests of ‘families’ and ‘decent people’. These one-dimensional arguments effectively ignore the fundamental freedoms and rights of women who become sex workers by choice or compulsion
ITPA is Ambiguous
Sex workers have an uncertain legal status. In spite of amendments, the law remains punitive instead of being protective. Existing laws give wide-ranging discretionary powers to the police that can be misused to victimise sex workers and those trafficked
Victims are key witnesses in most cases of trafficking. But in the absence of strong legal protection, they hesitate to testify against their tormentors. And the consequent acquittal of the criminals encourages those trading in human beings to operate more freely and fearlessly, thus making a mockery of the rule of law
Predator or Protector?
So how come the police never go after the mafia during the prevention and rescue operations of trapped women and children? And why does the saviour choose to become the oppressor in some cases? Surely, the police urgently need a crash course on gender sensitisation and human rights
The ‘foreign’ hand of Goa
There are numerous cases foreign adults staying with ‘unrelated’ children and exploiting them sexually in Goa and elsewhere. Are the paedophiles getting away with their crimes
Jockeys of Death in the DESERT SPECTACLE
Children used as camel jockeys are tortured and used as sex slaves in the Gulf. They live with the constant terror of death, and they starve so that they are light, holding the hump of the camel, often racing to inevitable death. Jasaswini Mishra reports the tragedy of thousands of exiled children condemned across the desert
Beauty Becomes a Curse
In the backward Jaunsar-Bawar and Rawain-Jaunpur areas of Uttaranchal, hundreds of women have been methodically trapped and pushed into flesh trade. The cash-strapped marginalised communities here, including dalits, don’t have too many options in the face of grinding poverty.
The Incredible Lightness of BEING ANISA
It was remarkable, the way Anisa handled questions at the meetings abroad, spoke of her experiences and even corrected those who had wrong notions about rescued girls.
Insensitive magistrate SILENCES WITNESS
This is a sad case of how a judicial magistrate, with one insensitive remark, turned the witness hostile. The rescued girl was hence forced to return to the same process, which had brutalised her.
Pathological Monsters and Cracked Mirrors
With his sharp insights, lucidity and amazing grasp of history and politics, linguist and philosopher Noam Chomsky dissects America’s policies in an increasingly unipolar, unstable world. In wide-ranging conversations with award-winning radio journalist David Barsamian, he offers views on the illegal invasion and occupation of Iraq, US war crimes, its neocon, neo-imperial designs, and the rise of the Rightwing
Scarred: Experiments with violence in Gujarat
Journalist Dionne Bunsha’s meticulous reportage of the Gujarat carnage enters the labyrinths of a laboratory where the smell of hate is coloured with human blood and fear and alienation stalks the landscape like a condemned minority report
Assassination
The fatedness of mass starvation deaths and farmers’ suicides is marked by a man-made design, a structural adjustment paradigm, a liberalisation code, a globalised repetition, which is no more a dead cliche but a cold-blooded recipe of organised murder. A new film enters the labyrinth of manipulated hunger across the rural hinterland of India, including the once-thriving apocalyptic tea gardens of West Bengal
Between Injustice and UNFREEDOM
With a receptive judiciary, the public interest litigation was a socially sensitive and successful phenomenon in the 1980s. Is it serving its goals in the contemporary era, especially when it comes to sexual exploitation of women and children in a ‘free market’? Dipika Jain and Anjali Pathak examine various PILs, judgments and implementation efforts to combat the trafficking of human beings
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