Cowboys and Indians

Killing cows is illegal in most of India, but rustlers still round up cattle for slaughter.

Crime is a problem in any big country - but in predominantly Hindu India, an underground mafia has embarked on lucrative raids running counter to sacred beliefs: cow rustling.

Despite being a blessed creature in India, cattle theft has grown rampant throughout the country, authorities say. Cows are illegally sold to factories to be processed into leather and, surprisingly, more and more often for beef on the dinner plate.

With tens of thousands of cattle left to roam freely on city streets and in the countryside, rustlers generally pack pick-up trucks with 10 cows or more, with each animal fetching between $35-$90 in the illegal trade.

Unfortunately the issue is mired in vote bank politics... Owing to communal and sectarian interests, the Indian political establishment is turning a blind eye to this gross violation of constitution, as well as the sentiments of scores of Indians.

Ram Madhav , Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh

In a country where about 29.8 percent of the 1.2 billion populace earn only 40 cents a day, a single night's cow catch of $900 makes it a highly lucrative enterprise.

India's cowboys often scout for stray animals during the day and seize them at night. Gangs of rustlers come well prepared and in some instances heavily armed, with some not hesitating to open fire at police vehicles when chased after "lifting" cows, police say.

Read more here.

Mumbai proposes mannequin ban to 'save women'

Civic body mulls banning display of half-clad mannequins in lingerie shops in an attempt to cut sexual assaults.

One woman is raped every 20 minutes in India, according to the National Crime Records Bureau. Anti-rape protests swept the country in recent months, calling for strict and immediate action from the authorities after a 23-year-old medical student was brutally gang-raped in a moving bus in the capital December 2012.

As of March 2013, 24,000 cases of sexual violence were pending before state high courts and the Supreme Court of India.

In a move designed to prevent the growing number of sex offences in Mumbai, the city that records the second highest number of rapes in the country, the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) has supported a proposal to ban the display of bikini-clad mannequins in front of shops. The proposal still is not law and is currently waiting on approval from the head of the civic body. 

The country's richest civic body, which boasts 227 councillors from across political parties, has unanimously supported the plan put forth by a BJP councillor to ban mannequins with "indecent display" in public areas.

If approved, the proposal developed by councillor Ritu Tawade will legally empower civic officials to force shopkeepers to remove mannequins that are "underdressed". 

"Lingerie mannequins promote rapes. Skimpily clad mannequins can pollute young minds," Tawade told the NDTV news channel. "After the Delhi rape case, I felt something had to be done." 

She strongly feels that mannequins, especially those wearing "the two-piece clothes (bikinis)", impact the incidences of crimes against women in the state. 

Read more here...

Mumbai proposes mannequin ban to 'save women'

Civic body mulls banning display of half-clad mannequins in lingerie shops in an attempt to cut sexual assaults.

One woman is raped every 20 minutes in India, according to the National Crime Records Bureau. Anti-rape protests swept the country in recent months, calling for strict and immediate action from the authorities after a 23-year-old medical student was brutally gang-raped in a moving bus in the capital December 2012.

As of March 2013, 24,000 cases of sexual violence were pending before state high courts and the Supreme Court of India.

In a move designed to prevent the growing number of sex offences in Mumbai, the city that records the second highest number of rapes in the country, the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) has supported a proposal to ban the display of bikini-clad mannequins in front of shops. The proposal still is not law and is currently waiting on approval from the head of the civic body.

The country's richest civic body, which boasts 227 councillors from across political parties, has unanimously supported the plan put forth by a BJP councillor to ban mannequins with "indecent display" in public areas.

If approved, the proposal developed by councillor Ritu Tawade will legally empower civic officials to force shopkeepers to remove mannequins that are "underdressed".

"Lingerie mannequins promote rapes. Skimpily clad mannequins can pollute young minds," Tawade told the NDTV news channel. "After the Delhi rape case, I felt something had to be done."

She strongly feels that mannequins, especially those wearing "the two-piece clothes (bikinis)", impact the incidences of crimes against women in the state.

Read more here.

Qatar’s roads saw more cars, more accidents and more bad driving in 2012

Qatar residents continued to drive badly in 2012, with the number of accidents resulting in injury jumping nearly 12 percent, according to new figures released by the Traffic Department today.

Nearly 1.2 million traffic violations were issued last year, a 39 percent jump from the previous year, the Ministry of Interior said on Twitter. 

But the surge in punishments don’t appear to have deterred raging roadsters, as Qatar saw some 4,218 accidents resulting in injuries last year, compared to 3,780 in 2011. The number of severe injuries increased some 3.2 percent, while the number of people killed fell half a percent.

Also on the rise: the number of vehicles on Qatar’s congested roads. Some 61,666 more vehicles were added to the streets last year, an increase of 7.6 percent from 2011. That brings the total number of vehicles up to 879,039 - more than 200,000 more cars than in 2010.

Population swells

Meanwhile, new Qatar Statistics Authority figures show that Qatar’s population, now past 1.9 million people, is continuing to grow at a much faster rate than originally estimated - last year increasing 7 percent instead of the 2 percent forecasted by the National Development Strategy.

The ensuing increase in vehicles on Qatar’s roads, in addition to road closures due to construction and poor urban planning, are the key reasons behind traffic jams here, some 4,300 residents said in a recent MOI survey.

The best way to tackle those problems is to increase police presence and enforcement on the roads and teach people the basics of traffic awareness and driving culture, residents added.

(Source: Doha News)

Mixed fortunes for the daughters of Travancore

IN THE 1920s Queen Sethu Lakshmi Bayi of Travancore, a kingdom that would later become part of the south Indian state of Kerala, rewarded women who went to university with an invitation to tea at the palace. The royals were matrilineal—the maharajah’s sister’s sons, rather than his own progeny, inherited the throne. The Nairs, an upper-caste Hindu community, likewise bequeathed the family home to women and believed strongly in female education. “The birth of a girl [was] a cause for celebration,” recalls Gouri Parvathi Bayi, a member of the erstwhile royal family, sitting in her now slightly dilapidated palace in Kerala’s state capital, Thiruvananthapuram.

Modern Kerala is still often upheld as India’s best state for women. It has the country’s highest female literacy rate at 92%, with only four percentage points’ difference between male and female rates. In Rajasthan, a large northern state, only 53% of women are literate: almost 30 percentage points behind their male counterparts. Nationally, only two-thirds of all women can read and write, versus four-fifths of men. Kerala also has India’s lowest rates of maternal mortality as well as a population of 1,084 women per 1,000 men, which makes it the country’s most female state. India’s national population has 940 women per 1,000 men, as couples selectively abort female fetuses or neglect daughters. Haryana, another northern state, has just 877 baby girls per 1,000 boys. Families there have in recent years started sourcing brides from Kerala.

The poor status of women in India has been under the spotlight since the brutal gang-rape of a student in Delhi in December sparked home-grown protests, international criticism, and a revision of the country’s sexual-assault laws. Yet vicious attacks have continued. This month, a seven-year-old girl was allegedly assaulted at a school in the capital, triggering further protests. A Swiss tourist camping with her husband in Madhya Pradesh, a poor and landlocked state, was allegedly gang-raped. Women in the growing urban middle class, in particular, are becoming more independent and educated. Yet a culture of preserving a daughter’s virginity, paying dowries upon her marriage, and then “losing” her and her earning capacity to her husband’s family persists. A lower proportion of India’s women work than do those in any of its seven neighbours bar Pakistan. 

Kerala, a small chili-shaped state filled with palm trees, thus bucks some national trends. The progressive maharajahs, who ruled with the permission of British colonisers until 1947, have given way to elected leaders. Many Nairs, whose matrilineal customs were once copied by the less well-off, including Muslim communities, have sold their ancestral land to property developers. Yet women still benefit. Kerala has see-sawed between two coalition governments—one led by the Communist party, one led by the Congress party, which leads India’s national coalition—in every poll since 1982.

Amid such competition, politicians woo savvy voters with welfare schemes that often support women and children. Kudumbashree, a programme founded in 1998 that works with half of the state’s households, organises women into savings clubs and offers grants to entrepreneurs. J. Devika, of the Centre for Development Studies in Thiruvananthapuram, says the scheme has boosted women’s financial know-how (though the state has taken advantage of low wages when it hires the business that have resulted, such as street-cleaning outfits).

But there’s trouble in paradise. Just over a fifth of Keralite women aged 15-59 are working or job-hunting, which is roughly in line with the national average, according to 2009-10 data. This is partly because they are studying at schools and colleges. But it is also because they regard menial jobs as being beneath them. “A change in mindset is urgently needed,” says a senior state government official, who laments that far more women have their noses to the grindstone in neighbouring Tamil Nadu. Also, many families need only one bread-winner. Communist governments and strong unions have resulted in high wages—a carpenter in rural Kerala earns 538 rupees ($9.96) a day, more than double the national average for such work, according to India’s labour ministry. Many Keralite men migrate to the Gulf for work and send large pay packets home.

Perhaps surprisingly, Kerala also has India’s third-highest official rate of crimes against women, with 34 offences per 100,000 citizens in 2011 (this may be due in part to well-informed Keralites reporting more crimes than their peers). Fewer of Thiruvananthapuram’s women go out alone after dusk than do women in Delhi, according to a recent study. Those who do walk alone at night risk being seen as “loose”. Kalyani Nandakumar, a 19-year-old student who is always home by 7pm, feels hemmed in. “Even being seen with a boy is a problem,” she says. “Boys from good families might see you and think, ‘we don’t want a girl like that in our family’.” Kerala’s pride in its women, it seems, comes with a restrictive emphasis on dignified conduct.

(Source: The Economist)