India: A Failed State and Sham Secular Democracy

[Fireurimagination]

Dude why are you in to so much crystal ball gazing and crystal ball gazers? Just open your eyes and look around you. Every country on the planet has it's set of problems even the mighty US so much so that Obama asked Americans to be ready to face competition from India and China. India with it's every improving infrastructure, 1 trillion economy with a 8% growth rate, huge potential, huge military, grounded institutions, faith in democracy is no way near a failed state period.

 

[RiazHaq]

First of all....all this is worked on.

Cast system: Already worked upon. There are laws in place for protection and reservation is place for development.

Abolish casteism to integrate Hindus: RSS

Abolish caste system: SC, gives lifer to 6 for Dalit killings

Poverty: Already worked upon. There are various schemes and rules are already implemented. Google for MNREGA, Ladli scheme, Loan waived off etc. etc...

Now what next....one can search for anything if looked with an open mind which sadly Haq Musing does not has.

In support of its assertions of Dalit abuse in India, the Human Rights Watch has documented the following abuses:

* Over 100,000 cases of rape, murder, arson, and other atrocities against Dalits are reported in India each year. Given that Dalits are both reluctant and unable (for lack of police cooperation) to report crimes against themselves, the actual number of abuses is presumably much higher.

* India's own agencies have reported that these cases are typically related to attempts by Dalits to defy the social order, or demand minimum wages and their basic human rights. Many of the atrocities are committed by the police. Even perpetrators of large-scale massacres have escaped prosecution.

* An estimated forty million people in India, among them fifteen million children, are bonded laborers, working in slave-like conditions in order to pay off a debt. A majority of them are Dalits.

* According to government statistics, an estimated one million Dalits are manual scavengers who clear feces from public and private latrines and dispose of dead animals; unofficial estimates are much higher.

* The sexual slavery of Dalit girls and women continues to receive religious sanction. Under the devadasi system, thousands of Dalit girls in India's southern states are ceremoniously dedicated or married to a deity or to a temple. Once dedicated, they are unable to marry, forced to become prostitutes for upper-caste community members, and eventually auctioned into an urban brothel.

Although there are laws in India to deal with caste-related problems of bonded labor, manual scavenging, devadasi, and other atrocities against Dalit community members, the reality is that such laws are widely ignored by the law-enforcement agencies and the perpetrators.

The International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (ICERD) now includes discrimination based on caste. Dating back to 1969, the ICERD convention has been ratified by 173 countries, including India. Despite this, and despite the United Nations Sub-Commission on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights reiterating that discrimination based on work and descent is a form of racial discrimination, the Indian government's stand on this issue has remained the same: caste is not race.

Ms. Navi Pillay, the South African judge who became the United Nations high commissioner for human rights last year, recently told Barbara Crossette of the Nation a story about a group of women who came to her in Geneva recently with a brick from a latrine they had torn down in protest against being forced to carry away human excrement in their bare hands. They wanted to make the point that despite India's frequent assertions that untouchables," who call themselves Dalits ("broken people"), were no longer condemned by birth to do this job, there were still tens of thousands of such latrines in the country, and the ******, soul-destroying work continues.

Judge Pillay, a South African citizen of Indian descent, now wants to force the issue of caste the UN. "This is the year 2009, and people have been talking about caste oppression for more than a hundred years," Pillay says. "It's time to move on this issue."

Haq's Musings: Dalit Victims of Apartheid in India

 

[desiman]

In support of its assertions of Dalit abuse in India, the Human Rights Watch has documented the following abuses:

* Over 100,000 cases of rape, murder, arson, and other atrocities against Dalits are reported in India each year. Given that Dalits are both reluctant and unable (for lack of police cooperation) to report crimes against themselves, the actual number of abuses is presumably much higher.

* India's own agencies have reported that these cases are typically related to attempts by Dalits to defy the social order, or demand minimum wages and their basic human rights. Many of the atrocities are committed by the police. Even perpetrators of large-scale massacres have escaped prosecution.

* An estimated forty million people in India, among them fifteen million children, are bonded laborers, working in slave-like conditions in order to pay off a debt. A majority of them are Dalits.

* According to government statistics, an estimated one million Dalits are manual scavengers who clear feces from public and private latrines and dispose of dead animals; unofficial estimates are much higher.

* The sexual slavery of Dalit girls and women continues to receive religious sanction. Under the devadasi system, thousands of Dalit girls in India's southern states are ceremoniously dedicated or married to a deity or to a temple. Once dedicated, they are unable to marry, forced to become prostitutes for upper-caste community members, and eventually auctioned into an urban brothel.

Although there are laws in India to deal with caste-related problems of bonded labor, manual scavenging, devadasi, and other atrocities against Dalit community members, the reality is that such laws are widely ignored by the law-enforcement agencies and the perpetrators.

The International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (ICERD) now includes discrimination based on caste. Dating back to 1969, the ICERD convention has been ratified by 173 countries, including India. Despite this, and despite the United Nations Sub-Commission on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights reiterating that discrimination based on work and descent is a form of racial discrimination, the Indian government's stand on this issue has remained the same: caste is not race.

Ms. Navi Pillay, the South African judge who became the United Nations high commissioner for human rights last year, recently told Barbara Crossette of the Nation a story about a group of women who came to her in Geneva recently with a brick from a latrine they had torn down in protest against being forced to carry away human excrement in their bare hands. They wanted to make the point that despite India's frequent assertions that untouchables," who call themselves Dalits ("broken people"), were no longer condemned by birth to do this job, there were still tens of thousands of such latrines in the country, and the ******, soul-destroying work continues.

Judge Pillay, a South African citizen of Indian descent, now wants to force the issue of caste the UN. "This is the year 2009, and people have been talking about caste oppression for more than a hundred years," Pillay says. "It's time to move on this issue."

Haq's Musings: Dalit Victims of Apartheid in India

i really want to reply with some stats about pakistan also but i do not want to fall to your level. Yes India is a failed state, happy. Now stop with your idotic posting as it makes no difference to any Indian here. The truth is in front of the world.

 

[below_freezing]

Contrary to conventional wisdom, George Friedman, Chairman of Stratfor, and author of "The Next 100 Years", sees the United States, Turkey, Poland and Japan as the great powers of the 21st century.

Friedman raises serious doubts about India and China staying united as modern nation-states, much less emerge as great powers of the 21st century. He says India and China are regionally fragmented and it's very difficult to govern the vast nations from from Delhi or Beijing. He does not foresee Brazil or Russia emerge as great powers of the 21st century either, essentially dismissing all four members of the the much-hyped BRIC countries.

Talking about the emergence of South Korea and Israel as modern industrialized states, Friedman singles out the value of the transfer by the US of F-16s as a catalyst for recipient countries' development of skills and technical know-how. He makes no mention of Pakistan's development of the F16 maintenance and training infrastructure at Kamra PAC for its F16s in this context.

Friedman says the Islamic World will recover from the current chaos imposed by the United States in its conflict with al Qaeda. He also argues that Turkey, not Pakistan, Indonesia, Iran, or Egypt, will emerge as a great world power, and the leader of the Muslim world.

Here's how Friedman describes the four great powers of the twenty-first century:

Japan, Turkey, and Poland will each be facing a United States even more confident than it was after the second fall of the Soviet Union. That will be an explosive situation. As we will see during the course of this book, the relationships among these four countries will greatly affect the twenty-first century, leading, ultimately, to the next global war. This war will be fought differently from any in history—with weapons that are today in the realm of science fiction. But as I will try to outline, this mid-twenty-first century conflict will grow out of the dynamic forces born in the early part of the new century.

Haq's Musings: Are India and Pakistan Failed States?

Freidman is a complete idiot.

Poland and Turkey's industrial capability is near zero. They can manufacture some shirts and shoes, that's about it. Steel? Cement? Petrochemicals? Weaponry? Computers? Cars? Heavy Machinery? forget about it. They'll be lucky to get to Iran's level, much less even approach India, and if they can't even approach India, then forget about China.

And in fact it's the US that should worry about staying together as one nation.

 

[RiazHaq]

i really want to reply with some stats about pakistan also but i do not want to fall to your level. Yes India is a failed state, happy. Now stop with your idotic posting as it makes no difference to any Indian here. The truth is in front of the world.

Since you don't have any, let me give you some more stats about the failure of public sanitation in India.

Here's an except from a Der Spiegel piece:

Much of the river pollution problem in India comes from untreated sewage. Samples taken recently from the Ganges River near Varanasi show that levels of fecal coliform, a dangerous bacterium that comes from untreated sewage, were some 3,000 percent higher than what is considered safe for bathing.

How levels of water-borne effluvium skyrocketed to such levels in India can be seen by the example of India's capital, Delhi. Only 55 percent of the 15 million Delhi residents are connected to the city's sewage system. The remainder flush their bath water, waste water and just about everything else down pipes and into drains -- many of them open -- that empty into the Yamuna. “We have a flush and forget mindset,” says Narain.

Not that the problems with the Yamuna have been completely ignored in New Delhi. Indeed, fully 20 billion rupees, or almost US $500 million, has been spent on various clean up efforts. In addition, the city has spent massive amounts on sewage treatment plants. Today New Delhi is home to 5 percent of India’s urban population but boasts 40 percent of the country’s sewage treatment capacity.

Dead Rivers and Raw Sewage: Choking on Pollution in India - SPIEGEL ONLINE - News - International

According to the New York Times, the city of Delhi draws 250 million gallons of drinking water from Yamuna every day. That is fine. However, Delhi pays the river back with 950 million gallons of raw, untreated sewage every day. Is that a decent payback to a source of life?

In addition, open defecation in India generates over 100,000 tones of human excrement that Indians leave each day in fields of potatoes, carrots and spinach, on banks that line rivers used for drinking and bathing and along roads jammed with scooters, trucks and pedestrians.

- Bloomberg.com iP_V4RLc&r%20efer=exclusive#

Dr. Singh can cut the national defense budget of India by half and use the saved money for the bathroom project. Who does he think is going to attack India? China? Pakistan? They don’t want to attack and occupy a country where the rivers are running, literally, full of *****. Who else would?

Chowk: Politics: India Needs Toilets To Save Its Rivers

 

[desiman]

Since you don't have any, let me give you some more stats about the failure of public sanitation in India.

Here's an except from a Der Spiegel piece:

Much of the river pollution problem in India comes from untreated sewage. Samples taken recently from the Ganges River near Varanasi show that levels of fecal coliform, a dangerous bacterium that comes from untreated sewage, were some 3,000 percent higher than what is considered safe for bathing.

How levels of water-borne effluvium skyrocketed to such levels in India can be seen by the example of India's capital, Delhi. Only 55 percent of the 15 million Delhi residents are connected to the city's sewage system. The remainder flush their bath water, waste water and just about everything else down pipes and into drains -- many of them open -- that empty into the Yamuna. “We have a flush and forget mindset,” says Narain.

Not that the problems with the Yamuna have been completely ignored in New Delhi. Indeed, fully 20 billion rupees, or almost US $500 million, has been spent on various clean up efforts. In addition, the city has spent massive amounts on sewage treatment plants. Today New Delhi is home to 5 percent of India’s urban population but boasts 40 percent of the country’s sewage treatment capacity.

Dead Rivers and Raw Sewage: Choking on Pollution in India - SPIEGEL ONLINE - News - International

According to the New York Times, the city of Delhi draws 250 million gallons of drinking water from Yamuna every day. That is fine. However, Delhi pays the river back with 950 million gallons of raw, untreated sewage every day. Is that a decent payback to a source of life?

In addition, open defecation in India generates over 100,000 tones of human excrement that Indians leave each day in fields of potatoes, carrots and spinach, on banks that line rivers used for drinking and bathing and along roads jammed with scooters, trucks and pedestrians.

- Bloomberg.com iP_V4RLc&r%20efer=exclusive#

Dr. Singh can cut the national defense budget of India by half and use the saved money for the bathroom project. Who does he think is going to attack India? China? Pakistan? They don’t want to attack and occupy a country where the rivers are running, literally, full of *****. Who else would?

Chowk: Politics: India Needs Toilets To Save Its Rivers

I still don’t want to reply to your stupid post. I can give enough stats about Pakistan also but I don’t plan to fall to your level. It actually surprises me that a man with the kind of experience you have has to indulge in petite name-calling and crap posting to prove his point. It makes me wonder that either you are lying about your credentials or either you have just not learned to be a good human being in all your years. Good luck for your future bro.

 

[MilesTogo]

this seems good news for Pakistan!

 

[12345]

BRAVO RIAZ HAQ.
Your musings are amuzing.

Since its Pak forum its ok.dont say it somewhere else.People with think either you are out of your mind or a complete @$$ .....H***

 

[RiazHaq]

Indian artist MF Husain has reportedly sought asylum in Qatar after he was hounded out of India by right-wing Hindu extremists. Here's a take on this matter by Soutik Biwas of the BBC:

<i>The story of Husain is one of the saddest of post-Independence India. It is a story of how the country's most famous painter has been hounded out while the state looked on.

Thirteen years ago, hardline Hindus attacked Husain for his paintings of nude Hindu goddesses. In 2006, he apologised for a painting in which he represented India as a nude goddess. Hindu nationalists accused him of defiling their region.

They didn't stop at that. They vandalised his exhibitions and filed law suits all over the country. Husain reckons that there are 900 cases against him in Indian courts. His lawyer in Delhi tells me he is personally aware of seven such cases. Four have been dismissed, in three others judgement is still pending.

For the past three years, the 95-year-old maverick painter has been living in Dubai and London. When news washed up earlier this month that he was contemplating taking up Qatari nationality, there was predictable outrage from the arts world in India.

"This is not the first time we have thrown away our geniuses," said fellow painter Anjolie Ela Menon. "In India, we recognise our national treasures only when they are gone." Film actor Sharmila Tagore urged the need for a "movement" to bring back the painter to India since "isolated voices" will not help.

To many, this sounded like a case of too little, too late. Most galleries have been scared to exhibit Husain's work for some years now. A big art summit hosted by India two years ago did not exhibit a single Husain painting. Unbelievable, but true.

Many say the Indian government could easily promise Husain security and coax him to return to India. But that wouldn't necessarily allow the painter to live in peace. As his lawyer, Akhil Sibal, tells me, there's nothing to stop more cases being filed against the painter in remote courts or even getting a judge somewhere to order his arrest. The misuse of judiciary to settle scores is rampant in India. "So Husain is not enthused by the prospect of returning to India which he easily can," says Mr Sibal.</i>

BBC - Soutik Biswas's India

 

[LCA Tejas]

India a failed state??


A member of G15. With second fastest growing economy, 4th in terms of GDP purchasing power parity ,World 3rd largest Armed forces,Leading the world with most number of Satellite launches,Tested a vehicle which could carry man in outer space, One among the best in missile technology, One among a few nations To build Nuke submarine, One among the few Nations to R&D an aircraft, One among the few Who build rocket engines,A nation which takes pride of Having an economy which grew over 5&#37; when rest of the world was suffering economic downturn.

And After all these if someone calls India a failed state, then I guess its time for him to retire from his Job.

 

[Yusuf]

Yes india is a failed state. It only has a trillion dollars economy and growing. Its poverty levels have fallen from the gift it got from the colonial era and that's the first sign of failing. Thayu we have problems in our society is apparent but then there are problems everywhere. But problems are resolved. India has the most reservations in any country, yet its accused of being biased against the lower cast. In fact today the so called lower castes have more money than others.
That we elect our leader and that too in a fool proof election using electronic voting machines that even the US doesn't use is surely the first sign of a sham of a democracy. That a Hindu party with its shining india campaign was thrown out of office just confirms what kind of a sham of a democracy india has.

Damn I love this failed state and proud of it.

 

[chachachoudhary]

I appreciate the concerns shown by the thread starter for india and its people.

Interesting thing, however, is that this "failed" state sometimes does wonderful things from a humanitarian point of view, not only to its own people, but also towards the people from neighbouring countries.

Pakistani children after undergoing heart surgeries at Narayana Hridayalaya, Bangalore, India.

Ever since two-and-a-half-year-old Noor Fatima crossed over the Wagah border into India on board the Lahore-Delhi bus on July 11, the little girl with the heart condition has captured many a heart across the country. This was evident in the unprecedented outpouring of support for Noor and her family during her successful surgery at Bangalore's Narayana Hrudayalaya Hospital on July 15.

In itself, Noor's condition is not an uncommon one, as one in every 140 babies worldwide is born with a heart defect, according to Dr Devi Prasad Shetty, cardiac surgeon and MD of Narayana Hrudayalaya.
Dr Rajesh Sharma, Paediatric Cardiologist He's the cardiologist of choice, both for parents of children with heart defects and doctors in Karachi and Lahore.


The hospital had treated over 55 children from Pakistan for cardiac complications before Noor arrived. Clearly then, it's the manner of her arrival that captured the imagination of thousands of Indians.

Her entry into India through the land route and a short flight to Bangalore was far less arduous than the Pakistan-Dubai-Bangalore round that most anxious parents have been forced to take in the past. Evidence of this was unravelling in Hrudayalaya even as all of Bangalore celebrated the success of Noor's operation: Babbar, a six-month-old infant from Pakistan who had arrived at the hospital three days before Noor—via the West Asia route—succumbed to complications that could have resulted from his far longer journey. The infant developed pneumonia and passed away even before he could be operated on. Noor, consequently, has emerged as a symbol of the possibilities when peace replaces strife in the dysfunctional Indo-Pak relationship.

Says Dr Rajesh Sharma, head of the paediatric cardio-thoracic unit at Hrudayalaya who led the operation team, "Travel does not suit children in this condition. Ideally they should be operated in Pakistan itself. If not, when the destination is Bangalore, they should be able to fly down directly."

For her parents, Tayyeba and Nadeem Sajjad, it has been a long journey. Nadeem, an executive in Lahore, had made a trip to India in December 2001 to check out the hospitals here. It was Nadeem's brother Naeem, a Boston-based nephrologist, who urged them to consult Sharma at Hrudayalaya.

Ever since his stint at Delhi's AIIMS, Sharma has become the paediatric cardiologist of choice, both for parents of children with heart defects and doctors in Karachi and Lahore. Says Sharma, "While I was at AIIMS, a resident surgeon received an informal request from a friend in the US to evaluate a case of a 15-day-old infant from Pakistan who was suffering from transposition of the great arteries." While this was a routine procedure at AIIMS, it was one that Pakistani surgeons were unable to treat. The baby came to Delhi and was successfully operated by Sharma. Since then his reputation as a paediatric cardio-specialist has spread in Pakistan.

Once it was clear that surgery was Noor's only option, the Sajjads started planning their trip to India in May. But the holiday season meant flights to and from Dubai were overbooked. It was around this time that news about the resumption of bus services to Delhi began to circulate. Says Tayyeba, "We were given preference for a seat on the bus because of Noor's condition."

The overwhelming affection that the Sajjads received during their stay in Bangalore came as a pleasant surprise. Says Nadeem, "We were told that people would view us with suspicion and it would be difficult to cope, but there is such a great sense of open-mindedness here, we feel at home though we are 4,500 km away from home." In an emotional gesture, they donated the

Rs 1.4 lakh given by an unnamed donor and Rs 10,000 each from the state government and the Karnataka governor towards treatment of needy children at Hrudayalaya. They have also started a 'Dosti Fund' for Pakistani children who come here for treatment (some Indians too have made contributions).Clearly, the language of the heart speaks loudest of all.

By Ian McWilliam in Kabul
Thousands of Afghans have lost one or both legs to the landmines that litter the country after more than two decades of war.

An Indian orthopaedic team has arrived in the capital, Kabul, with 1,000 artificial limbs to be fitted free of charge.

The project is funded by the Indian Government, which has close ties with Afghanistan's new interim government leaders.

The artificial legs, provided by the BMVSS charity based in Jaipur in Rajasthan, have a specially designed foot for use in less developed countries.

The team has set up shop in a disused building in the grounds of Kabul's main army hospital, where it receives a steady flow of patients.

THE WORLD NEEDS MORE FAILED STATES LIKE INDIA.

 

[RiazHaq]

A recent issue of San Jose Mercury News has a pictorial about grinding poverty in India done by John Boudreau and Dai Sugano. This heartbreaking pictorial illustrates the extent of the problem that India faces, a problem that could potentially be very destabilizing and put the entire society at the risk of widespread chaos and violence.

Left Behind | By Dai Sugano/San Jose Mercury News

Haq's Musings: Can Slumdog's Success Improve Lives of Poor Children?

 

[Yusuf]

They were saying this when the country had more than 60&#37; people below the poverty line.

 

[chachachoudhary]

This heartbreaking pictorial illustrates the extent of the problem that India faces

Nothing that india does not have capability to deal with. Today's india is too strong to be bogged down by these problems.

Like this.

World can sleep peacefully.