People's Democracy

on file

 THE revelation that Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi had asked additional DGP R B Shreekumar to tap the telephones of slain minister Haren Pandya and Union textile minister Shankersinh Vaghela has once again put a question mark on the credibility of the Gujarat government.

 The then state intelligence chief, Mr Shreekumar, was asked to tap the phones of Haren Pandya, who was suspected to have deposed before a private tribunal about Mr Modi’s role in the riots, and Mr Vaghela, who the chief minister suspected of fuelling the communal riots going on in the state…….

 The father of Haren Pandya, Mr Vithal Pandya, who has been waging a lone battle with the Modi government since his son’s murder, said that Haren Pandya was aware that his phone was being tapped.

 --- The Asian Age, March 5

CHILD poverty is increasing in many of the richest countries, according to a new report.

 The report by the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) released in Brussels on Wednesday (March 2) says up to 50 million children are living in poverty in rich nations, and the proportion of poor children has increased in 17 of the world’s richest countries since the early 1990s…..

 In the United States and Britain the rates still remain high. In the United States approximately 22 per cent of those aged under 18 live in relative poverty, while Britain still has 15 per cent of the child population below its poverty line, despite a government campaign that has led to a 10 per cent drop.

 Nordic countries appear to have poverty under control due to higher social spending. 

--- The Dawn (Pakistan), March 4

WOMEN working in the unorganised sector of the labour force, which constitutes 95 per cent of working women in India, “are the most vulnerable” of the working people, said the director of International Labour Organisation (ILO), Herman Van Der Laan.

 “Women are severely excluded from India’s growth and development,” the ILO director said on Sunday (March 6), while inaugurating a seminar on unorganised sector with special focus on women, organised by the All India Trade Union Congress….

 Taking note of several “unreached and excluded” groups in the country, the ILO director said the informal or unorganised sector faced some challenges and suitable strategies should be evolved to bring the workers there to the mainstream and form a part of India’s success and development.  

 --- The Times of India, March 9

LIFE for many of the world’s women has become tougher in the decade since a global UN conference in Beijing agreed to push for equality and economic development, according to a grass-roots group.

 The report, released as some 6,000 women activists converged at the United Nations, blamed governments for failing to act on pledges to improve conditions for women in the final document from the 1995 Beijing conference, known as the Platform for Action……

 “Governments are….failing to mobilise the political will and leadership needed to carry out the commitments made to women at Beijing,” said June Zeithlin of the Women’s Environment and Development Organisation, which wrote the report. “As a result, many women in all regions are actually worse off now than they were 10 years ago.”

 Beyond government inaction, women’s progress was hindered by growing poverty, increased militarisation and fundamentalist opposition to women’s rights, Zeitlin told a UN briefing on Thursday (March 3).

 --- National Herald, March 5