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Pakistan's Growing Human Capital

Here's today's report related to Paistan's growing human capital.

Pakistan is the most dangerous place in Asia to be born: Report – The Express Tribune

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan has the highest first-day infant mortality rate – one in 77 babies — in Asia, accounting for 17 per cent of all under-five deaths in the country, and making it the most dangerous place in the region to be born, according to a report titled, “Surviving the First Day: State of the World’s Mothers 2013.”
The report was launched on Tuesday at a ceremony at Ramada Hotel by Save the Children.
Save the Children Director Health and Nutrition Dr Qudsia Uzma said the 0.9 per cent annual decrease in infant mortality in the country was lower than the global average of 2.1 per cent.
The report contains the first ever Birth Day Risk Index, which documents the death rates for babies in their first day of life in 186 countries. Findings reveal that around 60,000 of Pakistani babies died within the first day of life, accounting for 30 per cent of all newborn deaths.
According to the report, the reasons behind these statistics include a high rate of pre-term and underweight births, at 16 and 32 per cent respectively, mothers’ poor nutritional status, and a lack of family planning. The country also had the highest number of stillborn babies in the region, at 1-in-23.
The report stressed on the need for investment in health workers, particularly those working in the field, to enable them to reach out to vulnerable mothers and babies.
It also called for investments in low-cost, low-tech solutions to deal with fatal situations both pre- and post-pregnancy.
Federal and provincial governments should take responsibility for the recruitment, training, and support of health workers, while increasing funding for direct nutrition interventions, said the report. Uzma said more than a million children’s lives could be saved each year by improving breastfeeding practices and basic hygiene.
TheNetwork for Consumer Protection’s Rubina Bhatti responded by arguing that female employees were not entitled to maternity leave for more than three months, due to which they were not able to fulfil their breastfeeding duties.
The Protection of Breastfeeding and Young Child Nutrition Ordinance 2002 has been implemented but not enforced in many regions across the country, she said.
“The infant mortality rate is unacceptably high. Around 1 in 28 babies do not live past their first birthday, making Pakistan one of 10 countries that account for nearly two-thirds of the three million new born deaths recorded globally per year,” said Save the Children Pakistan Country Director David Skinner.
The Every One Campaign ambassador Haroon Rashid after providing a brief overview of the campaign’s initiative, said the country was ranked 139th on the list of best places to be a mother, coming in ahead of neighbours India and Afghanistan but lagging behind Bangladesh, Nepal, and Sri Lanka.
Rashid said the ranking was based on factors such as a mother’s health, education and economic status, and critical child indicators such as nutrition.
 
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There is no "personal attack".

Stating the obvious fact of the pathetic obsession with India on a thread that was supposedly about "Pakistan's Growing Human Capital" doesn't constitute that.

But then, one can't change the basic fact of reward/conditioning system that has been ingrained for decades.

Carry on buddy.
 
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Further on topic, here's today's story dealing with an innovative approach to effectively utilize Pakistan's growing human capital for generating foreign exchange, contributing to the rise of Pakistan as a great economic, military and spiritual superpower.

Camel jockeys: Popular Arab sport costs Pakistani children their sanity – The Express Tribune
RAHIM YAR KHAN: Nineteen-year-old Shakil struggles to cope up with grade VII coursework at a government school in Chak 72 Rahim Yar Khan. The school’s headmaster says the boy is mentally unfit. What he does not say is that Shakil, like many others in district, is suffering because of the abuse faced as a child camel jockey in the Gulf states.
Shakil’s case is not an isolated one. At least 200 of some 1,200 boys who were returned to Pakistan in deplorable conditions years ago are still suffering from the trauma.
The sport, the popularity of which rivals that of Formula One, was for years powered by the key ingredient of young boys as jockeys. Being young, they were light and would scream loudly spurring the camels. A steady supply of children from Pakistan satiated the hunger for such jockeys.
The practice continued unabated till the early 2000s when laws, and some technology, sought to put an end to this dark chapter. In 2002 Pakistan ratified the Prevention and Control of Human Trafficking Ordinance (PACHTO) banning trafficking of children to the UAE and other Arab countries. The same year, the UAE also introduced laws against the use of children under the age of 15 as camel jockeys. However, this law was not actively enforced till 2005 when the Unicef and some robots helped end the trend of using boys as camel jockeys.
A lifetime of pain
Shakil’s travail is not the only one at the government elementary school. The school’s headmaster Azam Ahmed reveals Khalil, Shakil’s brother, too suffers the after effects of his horrible past.
Nazir, the boys’ father, tells The Express Tribune that a decade ago a human trafficking agent had lured him with promises of good employment and better education. Instead, the agent smuggled the boys into the UAE to serve as child camel jockeys.
Imran Shakoor in Rahim Yar Khan is much younger than Shakil. He goes to school like Shakil. And like Shakil, Imran struggles at school due to the brutal past he experienced.
“Imran is mentally retarded and can not learn any more in school,” his father Muhammad Shakoor repeats an assessment of the young boy’s teacher.
“My ‘Sheikh’ and my trainers used to continuously beat me—this is what I can recall,” Imran tells The Express Tribune.
A senior physician at Bahawal Victoria Hospital in neighbouring Bahawalpur, Dr Naeem, has a history of treating former child camel jockeys. He says that as many as 34 former jockeys had been admitted in the hospital between 2005 and 2007 for treatment. A majority of them, Dr Naeem notes, were mental patients.
Jockeys being sent despite ban
A decade after being banned, those working on the camel jockey supply chain end in Pakistan have yet to close up shop.
Rahim Yar Khan and the surrounding districts of Dera Ghazi Khan and Bahawalpur were for a long time a popular hunting ground for child traffickers who smuggled children into the Gulf country to serve as jockeys in camel races in return for money. Despite the laws banning the practice, the lustre has yet to wear off.
Imran’s father Muhammad Shakoor confirmed that some parents were still sending their children to the UAE and considered it a lucrative trade.

In village Chak No 72/NP in Rahim Yar Khan, Mohammad Ramzan lives with his nine brothers and three sisters. He tells The Express Tribune that recently one of this relatives, who doubles as an agent, had taken his son to Dubai via Iran.
“I sent my son to Dubai as I do not have enough money to feed my family,” he says.
There, Ramzan says, his son has been participating in camel racing and that he has become a good rider now.
There is always a buyer if there is a seller
Inspector Intelligence Bureau Bux Taheem who is deputed in Rahim Yar Khan reveals that as many as 12 human trafficking groups are active in the area and smuggle children from the remote areas of the district to Gulf states. Taheem, though, adds that there is parental consent in handing over children to the smugglers.
Parents too poor to feed their families are willing to sell. For those selling, like Shakoor and Ramzan, there is always a buyer.

Makhdoom Ahmed Mehmood is a prominent agriculturist and politician from Rahim Yar Khan. The district is his constituency where he has served at almost all positions of district, provincial and federal governments in a career spanning 26 years. Unsurprising too that he comes from a family of distinguished politicians of the area. Cousin to both Pir Sibghatullah Shah Rashidi (Pir Pagara) and the former prime minister Yousaf Raza Gilani, he currently serves as Punjab’s 34th governor. Despite his position and influence in the area, he too has been unsuccessful in putting an end to this menace.
“I’ve been addressing the plights of camel race victims on a priority basis. But I could not stop it as most parents willingly send their children [to become jockeys] for the sake of money.”
He pledges that all the victims will receive their due compensation but does not specify when or how.
Former Director General of the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) Zaffarullah Khan, whose agency’s job includes catching human traffickers, says the practice is rife in Rahim Yar Khan, Bahawalpur and remote areas of Punjab.
Despite a ban on shifting children to other states under the law, Khan says hundreds of children are still being smuggled to Gulf countries to become camel jockeys.
The lasting solution, the former FIA chief says, is in addressing the root causes of human trafficking by instituting poverty mitigation measures and safety nets to promote economic development and social inclusion with a view to ameliorate the situation.
A legislation titled Prevention and Control of Human Trafficking Ordinance (PCHTO) was enacted in 2002 and rules for which were notified in 2005. The law specifically addresses the protection of victims of human trafficking. It binds responsibility on the Ministries of Interior, Law and Justice, Labour and the Overseas Pakistanis Division.
Former MNA Sardar Arshad Leghari, though, sees two sides of the picture. On one side, he laments that the plight of child camel jockeys “has earned a bad name for Pakistan.”
On the other side, he accuses Gulf States of exploiting children in camel races for their entertainment.
Compensation, not a black and white matter
With much of the child camel jockey culture being curbed in 2005, as many as 1,200 of the estimated 300 children trafficked to the Gulf States from Pakistan as child camel jockeys returned home.
In 2008, a camel jockey victims’ representative at the United Nation Global Forum to Fight against Human Trafficking Sabir Farhat challenged for compensation for the former jockeys in the Supreme Court. After two years, the court ruled in favour of awarding compensation worth around US $1.4 million to the children.
On directions of the court, Farhat said, cheques worth $1,000 per each child were sent by the UAE government. But many cases are still unresolved and many families are yet to receive their due compensation.
Former Child Protection and Welfare Bureau (CPWB) Rahim Yar Khan district officer Farhan Amir said that the UAE government had sent 750 cheques for the families. Most of the children on the list to receive compensation were employed in camel races from a very young age – some as young as six-years-old – but some never got their cheques.
“Plight of camel jockey still persists with over 200 families still waiting for compensation,” says Minister of Ministry of Interior Affairs Khwaja Siddiq-e-Akbar who adds that dozens of families could not be paid compensation due to problems with their documentary claims.
But Amir, who who used to represent camel jockeys, tells The Express Tribune that there were reports of a small portion of compensatory money being embezzled by the officials engaged in disbursing the cheques. The allegations were dismissed by officials.
Dr Faiza Asghar who supervised camel race victims between 2005 and 2008 as an advisor on child protection to the then Punjab chief minister says nobody knows whether the whole amount was distributed among victim families or not.
Some of the victims’ families have taken their battle to court. FIA legal director Azam told The Express Tribune that over 122 cases had been registered in various courts particularly in Punjab, some which are still waiting for for hearings. “Over 71 cases are pending hearing in the courts.”
Missing jockeys
The issue of compensations has further complications. Even though the FIA records show 3,000 children were trafficked to the Gulf States and only 1,200 returned home, there are as many as 300 children who are specifically listed as missing.
Chairman Burney Trust International and former minister for human rights Ansar Burney says that he has visited Gulf States to take up the issue of children who are still missing. “I will also take up the matter with Ministry of Interior now.”
The Express Tribune had written to the UAE mission in Pakistan for their version on this issue but it refused to comment.



Here's an Emmy and Alfred duPont award winning documentary on the growing skilled workforce of Pakistan working as highly skilled child camel jockeys at international level.
Some highlights:
-The highly skilled workforce starts contributing to the economy sometimes as early as 4-5 years age which parents make readily available for export thanks to the rapidly growing human capital.
-The workforce is trained in their skills by keeping them in an open desert camel camp at 40-50*C temperature and are trained using advanced techniques such as limiting food supply which helps in weight reduction, small size being an important criteria for an efficient camel Jockey.
-The young hardworking workforce also takes care of camels, cleaning, washing and providing sexual services to the caretakers. In the documentary a caretaker was almost caught on camera anally raping a 7-8 year old human capital.

{youtube.com/watch?v=G51lJ-0L2eA}
Child camel jockeys in the Middle East - Ansar Burney - Part 1
{youtube.com/watch?v=LoiOs2DXllM}
Child camel jockeys in the Middle East - Ansar Burney - Part 2


http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/wor...ates-breaking-ban-on-child-camel-jockeys.html
http://www.soschildrensvillages.org...el-jockey-ban-flouted-in-united-arab-emirates
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/w...efies-ban-on-child-camel-jockeys-1914915.html
 
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Here is an article from BRecorder:

Global literacy rate: Pakistan ranks 113th among 120 nations

ASMA RAZAQ

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan ranks 113th among 120 countries regarding literacy rate, which is projected to reach 60 percent till 2015 from the existing 55 percent.

United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (Unesco) in collaboration with Unicef and International Labor Organization (ILO) organised an event here on Tuesday titled ‘Girls’ Right to Education’.

United Nations Resident Coordinator in Pakistan Timo Pakkala, Unesco’s Director Kozue Kay Nagata, ILO’s Country Director Francesco d’Ovidio, Unido’s Country Director Shadia Yousif Bakhait, Unicef’s National Gender Specialist Sadaf Zulfiqar and Unesco’s National Education Specialist Arshad Saeed Khan were among participants of the event.

Timo Pakkala said: “Education is one of the key priority areas of the government of Pakistan, but to increase the overall literacy rate of the country, it is essential to change the mind set of the communities especially in this patriarchal society.”

“Pakistan is lagging behind in the achievement of MDGs, while a lot of work is to be done in education sector to achieve MDGs especially in remote areas and Fata where the female literacy rate is just three percent,” Timo Pakkala said.

He said that the devolution of Ministry of Education to the provinces is a unanimous political decision and the provinces would have to make efforts to cope with this heavy responsibility of improving and developing the education sector of Pakistan.

According to him, empowering girls and women through quality education is the smartest investment for breaking the poverty cycle and achieving social justice.

Arshad Saeed Khan said that the United Nations’ Girls’ Education Initiative (UNGEI) was a flagship for girls’ education. It served as a principal movement to narrow the gender gap in primary and secondary education and to ensure the right to education and gender equality for all children, girls and boys alike, he said.

Arshad said that Pakistan was spending just 2.3 percent of its GNP and 9.9 percent of overall government budget on education, India 4.5 percent of GNP and 12.7 % of government budget, while Bangladesh was spending 2.1 percent of GNP and 14.1 percent of total government budget on education.

Pakistan’s literacy rate was projected to reach 60 percent, India’s 71 percent, while Bangladesh was estimated to have 61 percent literacy rate by 2015.

Youth (between age 15-24) female literacy rate in Pakistan is 61% against 79% for males. However, youth female literacy rate is projected to be 72% (against 82% for males) by year 2015, whereas adult female literacy rate of older age group (15+) is projected to be 47%.

Other participants emphasised that economic progress was not possible when 50 percent human resources were uneducated. Armed conflicts in society and among groups could be avoided when women had equal access to education and participate in decision-making. Some key donors were not only reducing their overall aid budgets, but might also be assigning education a lower priority.

Participants said that literacy was crucial for adults’ social and economic well-being and that of their children. Yet progress on this goal had been very limited, largely as a result of government and donor indifference, while there were still 775 million adults across the world who could not read or write.

Global literacy rate: Pakistan ranks 113th among 120 nations
 
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Riaz Haq Sahab, in all your data and tables and graphs, what is the population of Pakistan? AFAIK Pakistan government claims population to be 17-18 crore to manipulate statistics, which in fact is 20 crore.
 
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How to spot the crackpot — pseudoscience in Pakistan
By Pervez Hoodbhoy
Published: May 27, 2012

These days astonishing science claims abound in the media (there’s one fairly recent one in this newspaper too!). For example, a self-taught engineer in Swat claims he can “fix Pakistan’s energy problem in 3 years” by splitting water to produce free electricity. Last year, a Fellow of the Royal Society from Pakistan published an article saying that the HAARP (High Frequency Active Auroral Research Programme) experiment in Alaska caused floods and earthquakes in Pakistan. Then there are hucksters who run companies which freely advertise “magnetised water” for boosting crop yields and making mangoes taste better. Of course, this is laughable nonsense because every scientist knows that water cannot be magnetised.

Bogus science is sharply rising everywhere. One reason is that the science behind everyday stuff is now more involved than it used to be. For example, until 30-40 years ago, you could understand how every part of your radio or car works using principles learned at school. That’s not true anymore. So, even in advanced countries, large swathes of the population are at the mercy of scientific fraudsters.

Fortunately, this does not mean detecting pseudoscience is a hopeless task. Indeed, this article purports to provide the reader with a do-it-yourself guide for spotting quack science. But be warned that although such guidelines can be helpful, more may sometimes be needed.

To begin, let’s look at the sort of quackery around us. Consumer stuff is relatively harmless. If a woman has fallen for some advertised facial “magic cream” that will change her complexion from ‘sanwali’ to ‘gori’, then that is her stupidity. And if someone actually tries out herbal recipes for baldness, there’s no tragedy there. Ripping such people off is just a voluntary self-administered tax on ignorance.

But other forms of quackery can be less benign and potentially damaging to health. Supporting quack science can also harm the credibility of official bodies. For example, aromatherapy (curing through smelling aromas) and chromotherapy (curing through looking at different colours) have zero scientific validity. But quack scientists propagating this junk science receive official support for “research” from Pakistani government organisations such as the Higher Education Commission.

A recent physics thesis, which resulted in the award of a PhD degree by the University of Balochistan, has stirred some controversy. Guided by a “HEC meritorious professor”, and with publications paid for by the HEC, it was entitled “A quantitative study on chromotherapy”. Several notable Pakistani physicists, who actually know their subject, said the thesis was nonsensical. But after months of trying they still failed to convince the HEC. As a last-ditch effort, I sent a copy to physics Nobel Prize winner (1979), Steven Weinberg, and another to the physics Nobel Prize winner (1988), Jack Steinberger.

Weinberg wrote a point by point criticism which ended up saying: “I am appalled by what I have seen. The thesis shows a lack of understanding of the fundamentals of physics. This thesis is not only unworthy of a PhD, it is positively dangerous, since it might lead patients with severe illnesses to rely on ‘chromotherapy’ rather than on scientific medicine. I find it difficult to understand how this thesis could have earned its author any academic degree”.

Steinberger was equally shocked: “A reasonable physics department should not have accepted anything like this work…. Following world news this past decade, I have been very unhappy about the Pakistani political instability and social problems, but I had imagined that its cultural level was better than what I now see.”

To move to general principles, any time that you hear some unusual or astonishing scientific pronouncement, or some claim of a breakthrough, there are three questions that you should immediately ask: First, is the person involved actually qualified? Could he/she pass a beginning level professional examination in the subject? For example, an engineer who knows the second law of thermodynamics would never claim inventing a machine that runs without fuel. This law is one that every undergraduate student of physics and chemistry has to know well; it says you cannot get energy for free.

Second, how has the claim been announced? Quack science gains publicity through mass media and press releases but avoids professional journals or conferences. For example, in spite of continued superstition that surrounds HAARP, one cannot find a single academic paper written by a meteorologist, published in a scientific journal, which supports the claim that HAARP can cause weather change.

Third, using the alleged “revolutionary” idea or theory, has any machine or piece of equipment actually been built and shown to work? Hand-waving and loud talk does not work in science, or in industry. Similarly, if a purported invention or new process has an unusually long gestation period without commercialisation, then this suggests that there’s something wrong.

While the above guidelines are often good for quack-busting, they cannot resolve all controversies. For example, take the dispute currently raging in the media. Two of our most celebrated bomb-makers, Dr Samar Mubarakmand and Dr A Q Khan, have locked horns on whether coal from Thar can be gasified underground in a commercially viable way. One notes that neither is a mining engineer, or is known to have earlier experience in the field.

In repeated articles, interviews and TV appearances, Dr Mubarakmand says that his gasification project will change Pakistan into a mighty Saudi Arabia of coal. Bitterly criticising those in the Planning Commission who say that his pilot project has flopped, he demands another 105 million dollars to carry on. But Dr Khan says the project is doomed to fail, and “my sincere and considered advice is to give the Thar coal project to Shenhua Group of China”.

This controversy cannot be resolved without transparency, data, and an independent evaluation by experts familiar with mining, chemistry, soil mechanics, and hydrology. Because none exist in Pakistan, perforce such experts should be sought in Australia, China, or elsewhere. Common sense says that a detailed, independent feasibility plan is the very first step in a mega project. Why the Planning Commission has not already done so is a mystery.

Quack science does not just cost money. It also confuses people, engages them in bizarre conspiracy theories, and decreases society’s collective ability to act sensibly. The good news is that simple common sense is often enough to boot out the quacks. The bad news is that we don’t exercise common sense often enough.

How to spot the crackpot


Riaz Haq Sahab, in all your data and tables and graphs, what is the population of Pakistan? AFAIK Pakistan government claims population to be 17-18 crore to manipulate statistics, which in fact is 20 crore.

And no statistics are done in KP area which when included will pull the stats down even further.
 
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DECADES of progress have failed to bring basic sanitation to more than half the population.

IT is a country whose teeming millions have to be paid in an effort to persuade them to spend a penny in a toilet rather than defecate in public.

India is where human waste, discharged along the vast, 65,000km rail network, corrodes the tracks to such an extent the rails have to be replaced every 24 months instead of having a normal 30-year lifespan. This is the human waste left by the 20 million passengers carried each day by Indian Railways.

India is where staggering numbers tell a story of squalor that lies behind so much of the controversy and apprehension surrounding next month's Commonwealth Games.

More than six decades after India won its freedom from British colonial rule, 55 per cent of its people - by one count 638 million - do not have access to a toilet of any kind and defecate in the open.

Paradoxically, more people have access to mobile phones in India than to basic sanitation. A recent estimate suggested about 366 million people have access to sanitation while there are about 600 million mobile phones in service in the emerging economy.

"It is a tragic irony to think that in India, a country now wealthy enough that roughly half of the people own phones, about half cannot afford the basic necessity and dignity of a toilet," a UN report has stated.

It is hardly surprising that India's Environment and Forests Minister Jairam Ramesh has said: "If there is a Nobel prize for dirt and *****, India will win it, no doubt." He is right.

Outside of the glitz of the sumptuous hotels where many tourists stay, the reality is that despite the great strides India has achieved in some areas, hygiene standards in India remain abysmal. The notorious malady known as "Delhi belly" is rampant.

Indians have been let down severely by successive governments since independence. The sort of mindset that has allowed ***** to spoil Commonwealth Games preparations is testament to that failure.

N. R. Narayana Murthy, an eminent Indian and founder of Infosys Technologies, has summed up that failure thus: "The enigma of India is that our progress in higher education and science and technology has not been sufficient to take 350 million Indians out of illiteracy. It is difficult to imagine that 318 million people in the country do not have access to safe drinking water and 250 million people do not have access to basic medical care. Why should 630 million people not have access to acceptable sanitation facilities?"

He goes on: "When you see world-class supermarkets and food chains in our towns, and when our urban youngsters gloat over the choice of toppings on their pizzas, why should 51 per cent of the children in the country be undernourished? When India is among the largest producers of engineers and scientists in the world, why should 52 per cent of the primary schools have only one teacher for every two classes?

"Our corporate leaders splurge money on mansions, yachts and planes, and our urban youth revel in their latest sports shoes. Why should 300 million Indians live on hardly 545 rupees [$12] a month, barely sufficient to manage two meals a day, with little or no money left for schooling, clothes, shelter and medicine?"

Why, indeed. And why, as diplomat, politician and writer Sashi Tharoor asks in his book From Midnight to Millennium and Beyond, is there such an "astonishing disregard for public sanitation" in a country that has otherwise made such remarkable strides in so many areas.

"It is common to find sumptuous luxury apartments in buildings that are ******, rotting and stained, whose common areas, walls and staircases have not been cleaned in generations. Each apartment owner is proud of his own immediate habitat but is unwilling to incur responsibility or expense for the areas shared with others, even in the same building.

"This attitude is also visible in the lack of a civic culture in both rural and urban India, which leaves public spaces dirty and garbage-strewn, streets potholed and neglected, civic amenities vandalised or not functioning. The Indian wades through dirt and *****, past open sewers and fly-specked waste, to an immaculate home where he proudly bathes twice a day."

Some Indians, that is. Those in Tharoor's well-heeled circle of the wealthy elite.

Mostly, however, they're in that hapless 55 per cent who have not even the most basic toilet facilities. They include the labourers at the Delhi Games sites who have made such middens of the new toilets, unused to such facilities and uncaring about how they treat them.

Eight of my long years as a foreign correspondent have been spent in India, recently living in the heart of the up-market Lutyens district of central New Delhi, alongside former Raj bungalows worth $40 million.

Central to this area are the famed Lodhi Gardens, a green haven that is to Delhi what Hyde Park is to London or Centennial Park to Sydney, a refuge from the teeming city beyond its walls.

But those walls tell the sad story of India's abysmal standards of public hygiene. They are constantly used as urinals by streams of Indians and the stench is overwhelming. New toilets installed by the Delhi Municipal Corporation are ignored. Despite the astronomical value of the houses in the areas, laneways are piled high with rubbish over which legions of mangy pye-dogs do battle.

It's bewildering. One of the neighbours while I was there was the head of a global telecom, a billionaire on the Forbes rich list. His luxurious home was worth many millions yet the laneway outside was a rubbish tip.

It's a weird mindset, one that officials in some parts of India have tried to challenge with little success. In Tamil Nadu state impoverished locals have been paid under a novel plan that aims to persuade them to stop defecating in public and use toilets.

Then there's the story of the railways and the human waste that pours on to its tracks each day from passengers either using "open-discharge" toilets or simply defecating openly.

Ironically, Delhi was the setting a couple of years ago of the World Toilet Summit when 40 countries met to discuss how best to bring low-cost, environmentally safe toilets to people in the developing world.

The technology is easy. What's lacking is a change in the sort of attitude that led a top Commonwealth Games official, Lalit Bhanot, to say defensively this week: "Everyone has different standards about cleanliness. The Westerners have different standards, we have different standards. These rooms [in the Games village] are clean to both you and us. However, it may not appear so to some others. They want certain standards in hygiene and cleanliness which may differ from our perception."

There are suggestions Indians believe in the inevitability of their hapless fate and have a couldn't-care-less attitude to life. "Worrying about where they pee and whether it offends people is hardly high on their list of priorities," a newspaper editor says.

But it may be more a consequence of decades of deprivation, of being locked in a seemingly interminable downward spiral from which so many can see no escape.

Bruce Loudon was formerly The Australian's South Asia correspondent.

Cookies must be enabled. | The Australian

If you are Indian, or of Indian descent, I must preface this post with a clear warning: you are not going to like what I have to say. My criticisms may be very hard to stomach. But consider them as the hard words and loving advice of a good friend. Someone who's being honest with you and wants nothing from you. These criticisms apply to all of India except Kerala and the places I didn't visit, except that I have a feeling it applies to all of India, except as I mentioned before, Kerala. Lastly, before anyone accuses me of Western Cultural Imperialism, let me say this: if this is what India and Indians want, then hey, who am I to tell them differently. Take what you like and leave the rest. In the end it doesn't really matter, as I get the sense that Indians, at least many upper class Indians, don't seem to care and the lower classes just don't know any better, what with Indian culture being so intense and pervasive on the sub-continent. But here goes, nonetheless.

India is a mess. It's that simple, but it's also quite complicated. I'll start with what I think are India's four major problems--the four most preventing India from becoming a developing nation--and then move to some of the ancillary ones.

First, pollution. In my opinion the *****, squalor and all around pollution indicates a marked lack of respect for India by Indians. I don't know how cultural the ***** is, but it's really beyond anything I have ever encountered. At times the smells, trash, refuse and excrement are like a garbage dump. Right next door to the Taj Mahal was a pile of trash that smelled so bad, was so foul as to almost ruin the entire Taj experience. Delhi, Bangalore and Chennai to a lesser degree were so very polluted as to make me physically ill. Sinus infections, ear infection, bowels churning was an all to common experience in India. Dung, be it goat, cow or human fecal matter was common on the streets. In major tourist areas ***** was everywhere, littering the sidewalks, the roadways, you name it. Toilets in the middle of the road, men urinating and defecating anywhere, in broad daylight. Whole villages are plastic bag wastelands. Roadsides are choked by it. Air quality that can hardly be called quality. Far too much coal and far to few unleaded vehicles on the road. The measure should be how dangerous the air is for one's health, not how good it is. People casually throw trash in the streets, on the roads. The only two cities that could be considered sanitary in my journey were Trivandrum--the capital of Kerala--and Calicut. I don't know why this is. But I can assure you that at some point this pollution will cut into India's productivity, if it already hasn't. The pollution will hobble India's growth path, if that indeed is what the country wants. (Which I personally doubt, as India is far too conservative a country, in the small 'c' sense.)

The second issue, infrastructure, can be divided into four subcategories: roads, rails and ports and the electrical grid. The electrical grid is a joke. Load shedding is all too common, everywhere in India. Wide swaths of the country spend much of the day without the electricity they actually pay for. With out regular electricity, productivity, again, falls. The ports are a joke. Antiquated, out of date, hardly even appropriate for the mechanized world of container ports, more in line with the days of longshoremen and the like. Roads are an equal disaster. I only saw one elevated highway that would be considered decent in Thailand, much less Western Europe or America. And I covered fully two thirds of the country during my visit. There are so few dual carriage way roads as to be laughable. There are no traffic laws to speak of, and if there are, they are rarely obeyed, much less enforced. A drive that should take an hour takes three. A drive that should take three takes nine. The buses are at least thirty years old, if not older. Everyone in India, or who travels in India raves about the railway system. Rubbish. It's awful. Now, when I was there in 2003 and then late 2004 it was decent. But in the last five years the traffic on the rails has grown so quickly that once again, it is threatening productivity. Waiting in line just to ask a question now takes thirty minutes. Routes are routinely sold out three and four days in advance now, leaving travelers stranded with little option except to take the decrepit and dangerous buses. At least fifty million people use the trains a day in India. 50 million people! Not surprising that waitlists of 500 or more people are common now. The rails are affordable and comprehensive but they are overcrowded and what with budget airlines popping up in India like Sadhus in an ashram the middle and lowers classes are left to deal with the overutilized rails and quality suffers. No one seems to give a ****. Seriously, I just never have the impression that the Indian government really cares. Too interested in buying weapons from Russia, Israel and the US I guess.

The last major problem in India is an old problem and can be divided into two parts that've been two sides of the same coin since government was invented: bureaucracy and corruption. It take triplicates to register into a hotel. To get a SIM card for one's phone is like wading into a jungle of red-tape and photocopies one is not likely to emerge from in a good mood, much less satisfied with customer service. Getting train tickets is a terrible ordeal, first you have to find the train number, which takes 30 minutes, then you have to fill in the form, which is far from easy, then you have to wait in line to try and make a reservation, which takes 30 minutes at least and if you made a single mistake on the form back you go to the end of the queue, or what passes for a queue in India. The government is notoriously uninterested in the problems of the commoners, too busy fleecing the rich, or trying to get rich themselves in some way shape or form. Take the trash for example, civil rubbish collection authorities are too busy taking kickbacks from the wealthy to keep their areas clean that they don't have the time, manpower, money or interest in doing their job. Rural hospitals are perennially understaffed as doctors pocket the fees the government pays them, never show up at the rural hospitals and practice in the cities instead.

I could go on for quite some time about my perception of India and its problems, but in all seriousness, I don't think anyone in India really cares. And that, to me, is the biggest problem. India is too conservative a society to want to change in any way. Mumbai, India's financial capital is about as ******, polluted and poor as the worst city imaginable in Vietnam, or Indonesia--and being more polluted than Medan, in Sumatra is no easy task. The biggest rats I have ever seen were in Medan!

One would expect a certain amount of, yes, I am going to use this word, backwardness, in a country that hasn't produced so many Nobel Laureates, nuclear physicists, imminent economists and entrepreneurs. But India has all these things and what have they brought back to India with them? Nothing. The rich still have their servants, the lower castes are still there to do the dirty work and so the country remains in stasis. It's a shame. Indians and India have many wonderful things to offer the world, but I'm far from sanguine that India will amount to much in my lifetime.

Now, have at it, call me a cultural imperialist, a spoiled child of the West and all that. But remember, I've been there. I've done it. And I've seen 50 other countries on this planet and none, not even Ethiopia, have as long and gargantuan a laundry list of problems as India does. And the bottom line is, I don't think India really cares. Too complacent and too conservative.

http://open.salon.com/blog/sean_paul_kelley/2009/03/26/reflections_on_india

India is sadly the home to the largest number of child labourers in the world. The census found an increase in the number of child labourers from 11.28 million in 1991 to 12.59 million in 2001. M.V. Foundation in Andhra Pradesh found nearly 400,000 children, mostly girls between seven and 14 years of age, toiling for 14-16 hours a day in cottonseed production across the country of which 90% are employed in Andhra Pradesh.40% of the labour in a precious stone cutting sector is children. NGOs have discovered the use of child labourers in mining industry in Bellary District in Karnataka in spite of a harsh ban on the same. In urban areas there is a high employment of children in the zari and embroidery industry.

Poverty and lack of social security are the main causes of child labour. The increasing gap between the rich and the poor, privatization of basic services and the neo-liberal economic policies are causes major sections of the population out of employment and without basic needs. This adversely affects children more than any other group. Entry of multi-national corporations into industry without proper mechanisms to hold them accountable has lead to the use of child labour. Lack of quality universal education has also contributed to children dropping out of school and entering the labour force. A major concern is that the actual number of child labourers goes un-detected. Laws that are meant to protect children from hazardous labour are ineffective and not implemented correctly.

A growing phenomenon is using children as domestic workers in urban areas. The conditions in which children work is completely unregulated and they are often made to work without food, and very low wages, resembling situations of slavery. There are cases of physical, sexual and emotional abuse of child domestic workers. The argument for domestic work is often that families have placed their children in these homes for care and employment. There has been a recent notification by the Ministry of Labour making child domestic work as well as employment of children in dhabas, tea stalls and restaurants "hazardous" occupations.

According to HAQ: Centre for child rights, child labour is highest among schedules tribes, Muslims, schedule castes and OBC children. The persistence of child labour is due to the inefficiency of the law, administrative system and because it benefits employers who can reduce general wage levels. HAQ argues that distinguishing between hazardous and non hazardous employment is counter-productive to the elimination of child labour. Various growing concerns have pushed children out of school and into employment such as forced displacement due to development projects, Special Economic Zones; loss of jobs of parents in a slowdown, farmers' suicide; armed conflict and high costs of health care. Girl children are often used in domestic labour within their own homes. There is a lack of political will to actually see to the complete ban of child labour.

http://www.childlineindia.org.in/child-labour-india.htm
 
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Here is excerpt from an article from brecorder which gives us some idea how the Pakistan's growing human capital is contributing to Pakistan's economy.

The total number of child labourers in Pakistan has exceeded 12 million, which will drastically affect the progress and development of the country both social as well as economic in the long-run. This was the crux of a ceremony titled "Combating Abusive Child labour II Project: Award Distribution Ceremony National Photo Competition on Child Labour' organised by International Labour Organisation (ILO) in collaboration with the European Union.
Number of child labourers exceeds 12 million in Pakistan | Business Recorder
child-labour-in-pakistan-590x350.jpg



A short film by maati tv
 
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Here is a short report from the leading voice of Islamic world, Al Jazeera.
Hundreds of millions of children worldwide are engaged in work that deprives them of adequate education and healthcare.

The UN has launched a global campaign to end child labour by 2016. Among the worst offenders are said to be employers in Pakistan.



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poverty-in-pakistan-21.jpg



Here is a report by press tv from Islamic republic of Iran about the food security of Pakistan's growing human capital.
http://www.presstv.ir/detail/2012/12/15/278243/report-pakistanis-in-grip-of-poverty-food-insecurity/
The Parliament was stunned when Pakistan People's Party revealed that 58% Pakistanis are food insecure while around 30 percent suffer from acute symptoms of hunger.


The government came under fire from the Opposition parties for creating adverse economic conditions to let the people slip below the extreme poverty line.

The latest National Nutrition Survey reveals that 72 percent people in southern Sindh province are the most food deprived. And so is the case with 63 percent of people in southwestern Baluchistan province.

The survey points out that the most of families in Pakistan spend almost half of their income on food. And the poorest 20% of the population earn hardly 6.2% of the country’s total income.

The poor food availability, low quality of diet, and limited knowledge about the quality foods are leading to generate a vicious cycle of malnutrition among poor families.

Pakistan is a disaster-prone country and is exposed to a multitude of natural disasters such as earthquakes, floods, storms and droughts-Experts say all these are also contributing to making people food insecure.

Pakistan is sixth most populous country in the world. And in the Human Development index, the country sadly ranks at 141 among 182 states. What is aggravating country's problems, the report reveals, is the political instability, rising unemployment and insecurity because of growing pro-taliban militancy. Analysts warn that all these are fast bringing the population below the extreme poverty line.





Poverty is allover the third world countries, but some of the countries believe in policy to try keeping it away from eyes of the world so that the image of the elite class is not spoiled. Pakistan is unique in that, the upper castes exploit the awaam of lower kameen castes virtually treating them as slaves, but are very brazen to deny even their existence even when the poor lower castes are the majority. When even existance of such a problem is denied, there is no hope for policy and measures to improve their lives.
 
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A new multi-dimensional measure of poverty confirms that there is grinding poverty in resurgent India. It highlights the fact that just eight Indian states account for more poor people than the 26 poorest African countries combined, according to media reports. The Indian states, including Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh , Orissa, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, and West Bengal, have 421 million "poor" people, compared to 410 million poor in the poorest African countries.



Developed at Oxford University, the Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) goes beyond income poverty based on $1.25 or $2 a day income levels. It measures a range of "deprivations" at household levels, such as schooling, nutrition, and access to health, clean water, electricity and sanitation. According to Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative (OPHI) country briefings 2010, 55% of Indians and 51% of Pakistanis are poor.

Haq's Musings: New Index Finds Indians Poorer Than Africans and Pakistanis

Over 250 million people are victims of caste-based discrimination and segregation in India. They live miserable lives, shunned by much of society because of their ranks as untouchables or Dalits at the bottom of a rigid caste system in Hindu India. Dalits are discriminated against, denied access to land, forced to work in slave-like conditions, and routinely abused, even killed, at the hands of the police and of higher-caste groups that enjoy the state's protection, according to Human Rights Watch.

In what has been called Asia's hidden apartheid, entire villages in many Indian states remain completely segregated by caste. Caste-based abuse is also found in Nepal, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Japan, and several African states.

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."

Caste is now on notice: the UN has failed, she said, to educate people and change mindsets to combat the taint of caste. "How long is the cycle going to go on where those who can do something about it say, We can't, because it's the people, it's their tradition; we have to go slowly.

"Slavery and apartheid could be removed, so now [caste] can be removed through an international expression of outrage."

http://www.riazhaq.com/2009/11/dalit-victims-of-apartheid-in-india.html
 
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^^^^^Mega facepalm troll - (discussing a banned off topic) ruining his own thread, stay on topic - @RiazHaq.
 
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^^^^^Mega facepalm troll - (discussing a banned off topic) ruining his own thread, stay on topic - @RiazHaq.

It's India and the "India Shining Brigade" that's ruining India's human capital by treating its own people like dirt. Most live in abject poverty, endure starvation and suffer abuse.

"We live on a day-to-day basis," Suraj says, as the faint sound of hammering echoes across the village. "What we earn is what we spend on our families in a day."
In Ganne, just off the main road about an hour south of the city of Allahabad, this is a simple fact of life.
It is home to members of a poor tribal community, who live in small huts clustered around a series of shallow quarries.
Inside one of the huts sits a little girl called Poonam. She is three years old, and in the early stages of kidney failure.
Like many children in Ganne she has become used to eating bits of dried mud and silica, which she finds in the quarry. Tiny children chew on the mud simply because they are hungry - but it is making them ill.
When reports first emerged of children eating mud here local officials delivered more food and warned the villagers not to speak to outsiders. But Poonam's father, Bhulli, is close to despair.

What can we do? We eat the mud from the quarry when we feel hungry
Phulkari
Villager
"What can I say," he shrugs. "We can't afford to eat properly, so how can I afford to buy medicines for her?"
"I am really worried about my daughter, but I don't know what to do next. The poor need the government's help - if we had it, we wouldn't be in such a desperate state."
People like Bhulli and Suraj make their money filling lorries with bits of rock. It takes about eight hours for five men to fill one load. They carry the stones up from the quarry in plastic washing-up bowls balanced on their heads.
One of the women in the village, Phulkari, approaches to tell us about her little boy.
"My son's name is Suraj, and he's started eating mud too," she says. "What can we do? We eat the mud from the quarry when we feel hungry."
"Where do we get the money?" she asks. "We usually eat food only once a day. Last night we went to bed without eating anything at all."

BBC News - Diet of mud and despair in Indian village
 
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Here's the real face of India's "human capital" being squandered by its communal and caste-ridden society:

_47849534_foodpic.jpg


"We live on a day-to-day basis," Suraj says, as the faint sound of hammering echoes across the village. "What we earn is what we spend on our families in a day." In Ganne, just off the main road about an hour south of the city of Allahabad, this is a simple fact of life. It is home to members of a poor tribal community, who live in small huts clustered around a series of shallow quarries. Inside one of the huts sits a little girl called Poonam. She is three years old, and in the early stages of kidney failure. Like many children in Ganne she has become used to eating bits of dried mud and silica, which she finds in the quarry. Tiny children chew on the mud simply because they are hungry - but it is making them ill. When reports first emerged of children eating mud here local officials delivered more food and warned the villagers not to speak to outsiders. But Poonam's father, Bhulli, is close to despair.

BBC News - Diet of mud and despair in Indian village
 
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Riaz Haq sahab, I am not sure what brigade you are talking about, we in India openly discuss all these social issues and keep developing and implementing various policies and reforms at political and administrative levels.

Anyway, Staying on topic, here is a BBC report about the changing lifestyles of Pakistan's growing human capital.

It must be remembered that west Pakistan was given some of India's most prosperous, fertile part with lot of water and readymade irrigation system and so this part never had history of food scarcity (unlike east Pakistan/Bangladesh which was comparable to rest of poorer eastern and central India) But it seems after adopting Islamic governance, lately there has been some change in lifestyle::

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/7423161.stm

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Pakistan's economic woes worsen
By M Ilyas Khan
BBC News, Karachi

Gul Rehan, a labourer from Pakistan's north-western district of Dir, says he has never depended on charity to cope with hunger and poverty before.

But now he is sitting in a line outside a restaurant in the southern industrial city, Karachi, waiting for free food.

Three times a day, men, women and children queue up outside dozens of Karachi hotels for meals which are paid for by philanthropists and charity donors.

Until the late 1990s, they used to be mainly beggars and heroin addicts.

But now labourers and housewives from the lowest rung of the economic ladder are also joining the queue.

The "fall" in Gul Rehan's fortunes is easy to track.

"I used to till a couple of acres of my land in Dir in late summer and would then come down to Karachi where I had a job as a security guard at a towel factory," he says.

His crop has failed, and the towel factory, like most knitwear industries, closed down last year.

'Not beggars'

Significantly, the phenomenon is older than the recent rise in international food prices.

"Labourers started appearing in the beggars' queues some three years ago, and have now become a dominant element," says Mohammad Azeem, who supervises the distribution of food to beggars at Sabri Hotel.

"We feed 600 to 700 people out of charity money each day, and most of them are not beggars," he says.

According to Mr Azeem, the queues have grown longer during the last couple of months that saw the Pakistani rupee shed nearly 10% of its value, undercutting its purchasing power.

Sabri Hotel specialises in nihari, a spicy dish of beef and gravy, which is popular with the working class because it is filling - and because it used to be cheap.

Not any more though.

A serving of nihari that cost 36 cents in January now costs 57 cents.

Similarly, one half-plate serving of biryani, a locally popular rice dish, is up from 50 cents in January to a dollar.

Meanwhile, grocery stores in poorer localities are losing sales due to a two-fold hike in the prices of lentils, rice, wheat flour and cooking oil during this period.

"My rice stock never used to last for two weeks. Now it has been here for two months as most people are buying less than before," says Sohail Ahmad, the owner of Sohail and Noman General Store in Neelum Colony, a city slum.

Likely to worsen

The worrying part is that the poorest section of the society may be as large as 34% of the population, and growing, warns Dr Asad Sayeed, a director of the Karachi-based independently-run Collective for Social Science Research.

The situation is likely to worsen if the new , presently caught up in political troubles, fails to focus on the economy.

Last week, the country's central bank increased interest rates to 12% to curb inflation and stabilise the rupee.

A week earlier, the bank chief, Dr Shamshad Akhtar, admitted in a TV interview that disruption of expected dollar inflows since January had lowered foreign exchange reserves, causing erosion in the rupee value.

She said the pressure would ease in June when inflows of over $3bn were expected to enter the system.

But even if these dollars arrive, will they translate into immediate relief for someone like Gul Rehan?

Dr Sayeed says that unless the global community finds a way to regulate international trading in food staples, poor countries like Pakistan are in for a long and bumpy ride.

The government can do little in the short run except devise a mechanism of targeted food subsidies, he says.

Such a move will get a boost if dollar inflows promised by the Western countries as a "democracy dividend" arrive.

In the medium and long run, the government can review and reshape the policies of the previous government which, according to Dr Sayeed, "achieved higher growth but failed to reduce poverty".

For one, the import of luxury goods has to be curtailed and greater emphasis laid on developing and diversifying the export sector.

This is a tall order, and will test the will of the new government when it unveils its first annual budget next month. Expect troubled financial times ahead.
 
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