tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8278279504304651957.post2785583474484799960..comments2024-03-26T19:25:43.970-07:00Comments on South Asia Investor Review: Slavery in India and PakistanRiaz Haqhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00522781692886598586noreply@blogger.comBlogger5125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8278279504304651957.post-67038461855271100942022-10-28T07:58:35.313-07:002022-10-28T07:58:35.313-07:00Young girls being sold in #India to repay #debt, s...Young girls being sold in #India to repay #debt, says #humanrights body. #Indians living in many rural areas in India often have to borrow money from fellow villagers when a family member falls seriously ill and needs medical treatment. #poverty #slavery https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/oct/28/young-girls-sold-india-repay-loans-human-rights?CMP=share_btn_tw<br /><br />Young girls in the northern Indian state of Rajasthan are being sold as “repayment” for loans their parents cannot afford, the national body that protects human rights has said.<br /><br />The National Human Rights Commission has issued a notice to the state government demanding a police inquiry and answers within a month to what it called an “abominable” practice.<br /><br />People living in many rural areas in India often have to borrow money from fellow villagers when a family member falls seriously ill and needs medical treatment.<br /><br />Local media reports say that in half a dozen districts around Bhilwara, if a family cannot repay a loan, the aggrieved creditor has complained to the “caste panchayats” or caste councils.<br /><br />By way of “settlement”, the councils have ordered the family to hand over their daughter – sometimes more than one depending on the size of the loan – so that the creditor can sell her to a trafficker to recoup his money.<br /><br />In its notice, the commission said that if the family refuses to sell their daughter, “their mothers are subjected to rape on the diktats of caste panchayats for the settlement of disputes”.<br /><br />Among the cases highlighted by the commission is that of a man who borrowed 1.5m rupees (£15,800) from a neighbour who was forced by the panchayat to sell his sister and 12-year-old daughter to settle the debt.<br /><br />In another, a man who borrowed 600,000 rupees (£6,300) when his wife fell ill and needed hospital treatment was unable to repay it. The panchayat compelled him to hand over his young daughter to the creditor, who later sold her to a trafficker in Agra. From there, “she was sold three times and became pregnant four times”, the commission said.<br /><br />The commission has sent an official to Rajasthan to investigate the cases. The Bhilwara district collector, Ashish Modi, said the crimes were the first of their kind. “They are total illegal. The police are investigating and we will make sure the victims get justice and the guilty are punished,” Modi said.<br /><br />Panchayats are often a profoundly regressive force in rural India, acting as kangaroo courts. They have ordered so-called honour killings of couples who have defied tradition by marrying into a different caste or faith or ordered brutal punishments for couples suspected of adultery.Riaz Haqhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00522781692886598586noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8278279504304651957.post-26227540535449123452022-09-01T11:32:16.387-07:002022-09-01T11:32:16.387-07:00Flooding has devastated Pakistan – and Britain’s i...Flooding has devastated Pakistan – and Britain’s imperial legacy has made it worse<br />Shozab Raza<br /><br /><br />https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/aug/31/flooding-pakistan-britains-imperial-legacy<br /><br />Take the story of Bashir Dasti, a tenant farmer I met a few years ago while doing fieldwork in south Punjab. Two weeks ago, his mud house was destroyed by flooding, as was the land he rented, the cotton he cultivated and the cattle he had spent years rearing. Many other farmers and agricultural labourers I got to know in Rajanpur, now a centre of the flooding, have also lost their homes and livelihoods. The Pakistan government has tasked local officials – patwaris – with adminstering relief for flood victims, yet when Bashir approached one, they tried to extort him: he was told that he would only be added to the list if he paid 10,000 Pakistani rupees (roughly £40). Bashir earns a meagre income from farming and pays exorbitant rent to his landlord, an aristocrat from a Baloch tribe called Leghari. He couldn’t pay that kind of money.<br /><br />Back in the 19th century, the British Raj built alliances with local elites in order to secure its rule. In Rajanpur, Bashir’s district, this was particularly important – many tribal chiefs, including the Legharis, were armed and hostile. So in exchange for their loyalty, the Raj turned representative chiefs into unrepresentative aristocrats, granting them magisterial powers, a paramilitary apparatus and immense landed estates (jagirs) on newly irrigated land. The relationship set off a mutually beneficial pillaging of the region, whereby the British Raj and the now-landed aristocrats siphoned off rents, land revenues, and export cash cops like indigo, opium and cotton, all at the expense of previously pastoral tribesmen now forced to settle and toil as local farmers. Combined with expanding canal irrigation, tribesmen’s coerced settlement and exploitation – the British viewed seasonally migrating tribes as a security threat – left them further exposed to floods.<br /><br />Because of this imperial patronage, as well as rising rents due to growing competition for tenancies with the decline of pastoral livelihoods, inequalities between landlords and peasants rose dramatically over the 19th and 20th centuries. While peasants lived in mud houses vulnerable to flooding – archives report several “great floods” affecting the south Punjab region – their chief landlords built lavish, well-fortified housing compounds on immense estates. By the 1920s, the highest-ranking Leghari aristocrat owned about 114,000 acres of land.Riaz Haqhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00522781692886598586noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8278279504304651957.post-43130253154023576052017-10-05T08:08:12.337-07:002017-10-05T08:08:12.337-07:00#Modi government advised to ‘discredit’ #slavery r...#Modi government advised to ‘discredit’ #slavery research that shows half of the world's slaves are in #India. #BJP<br /><br />https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/oct/05/indian-government-advised-to-discredit-slavery-research<br /><br />Prime minister Narendra Modi pressured to condemn Australian report on modern slavery over fears it could tarnish India’s image<br /><br />The government of India has been advised to launch a campaign to “discredit” research into the country’s modern slavery problem because it has the “potential to substantially harm India’s image and exports”, according to an Indian news report.<br /><br />The Walk Free Foundation, an anti-slavery organisation established by Australian mining magnate Andrew Forrest, was specifically singled out in a memo reportedly prepared by the Intelligence Bureau (IB), an Indian security agency, and obtained by the Indian Express.<br /><br />It was produced days after the release of a report last month by the International Labour Organisation (ILO) and Forrest’s Walk Free Foundation that estimated the global population of modern slaves at 40.3m in 2016.<br /><br />India was not specifically mentioned but successive research has estimated the number of modern slaves in the country to be between 14m and 18m people –the most in the world.<br /><br />Modern slavery refers to people involved in forced labour, people trafficking, debt bondage, child labour and a range of other exploitative practices affecting vulnerable populations.<br /><br />According to the Indian Express, the Indian security agency wrote to the prime minister’s office and other high-level government departments advising them to “discredit” the September report and to pressure the ILO to disassociate itself from Walk Free.<br /><br />The foundation was established by Forrest, one of Australia’s richest men, in 2012. It produces an annual estimate of the number of slaves worldwide, lobbies governments to strengthen and enforce labour laws, and invests in frontline social programs.<br /><br />The intelligence memo claimed that researchers were increasingly “targeting” India as a modern slavery hub, according to the news report.<br /><br />It said estimates such as those produced by the ILO and Forrest’s foundation had “potential to substantially harm India’s image and exports and impact its efforts to achieve Sustainable Development Goal 8.7” – a target for eradicating forced and child labour, and human trafficking.<br /><br />The security agency also said the scale of India’s modern slave population was based on “questionable statistics”, citing the fact the ILO-Walk Free survey interviewed 17,000 people in India but only 2,000 in countries such as Russia, Bangladesh and Pakistan, the report said.<br />Riaz Haqhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00522781692886598586noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8278279504304651957.post-91216836560680340152016-08-26T10:18:58.851-07:002016-08-26T10:18:58.851-07:00#PMLN Senator Sardar Yaqoob Nasr: "Poor are b...#PMLN Senator Sardar Yaqoob Nasr: "Poor are born to serve the rich... God made people rich or poor" http://indiatoday.intoday.in/story/pakistan-politician-comment-poor-serve-rich/1/749331.html … via @indiatoday<br /><br />WHO SAID WHAT<br />"The poor of this country will never get to decide their own fate," Haidar said.<br />To this, Nasar remarked that if everyone were to become wealthy, there would be no one to grow wheat or to work as labourers.<br />"This is a system created by God and He has made some people rich and others poor and we should not interfere in this system," he said.<br />Haider countered that socio-economic classes were man-made and God had nothing to do with it.<br />Another Senator, Mohammad Usman Khan Kakar, too said that God created all people as equal and that the poor were not meant to serve the rich.<br />But Nasar could not be convinced and said: "Once in China all people were considered equal, which did not work out well.<br />"Those who cannot get an education and cannot earn more have no right to live the life of a bureaucrat," he said.Riaz Haqhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00522781692886598586noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8278279504304651957.post-26294799134066255752009-11-07T09:36:01.972-08:002009-11-07T09:36:01.972-08:00The piece is well researched and quite an eye open...The piece is well researched and quite an eye opener, but I slightly disagree when you talk of return of democracy in Pakistan. It is nothing but a farce. I somehow feel that Pakistan was lot better under Musharraf's military regime than under "so called" democratic Zardari. What do you say...Was Pakistan better under military rulers?<br /><br />I completely agree with you that slavery is just not restricted to Pakistan. From South Asia it stretches up till Africa. I would have wanted to know more about these Pakistani landlord's "private prisons"Meenakshi Iyerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01409794748992575956noreply@blogger.com