Eideard

A newlywed woman in a village in the Indian state of Madhya Pradesh has won her struggle to have a toilet at her husband’s home.

Anita Narre left husband Shivram’s home two days after her marriage in May last year because the house had no toilet. She returned eight days later after Shivram, a daily wage worker, built one with savings and aid from villagers.

An NGO announced a $10,000 reward for Mrs Narre for her “brave” decision and forcing her husband to build a toilet.

More than half-a-billion Indians still lack access to basic sanitation. The problem is acute in rural India and it is the women who suffer most.

Shivram said he was not able to build a toilet at home because of lack of money. He admitted that his wife returned home only after he constructed one with his savings and “some support from the village council”.

“It is not nice for women to go outside to defecate. That’s why every home should have a toilet. Those who don’t should make sure there is one,” Mrs Narre told the BBC.

I’m with you Mrs Narre, Lots of younger folks won’t remember how primitive toilet accommodations can be. Even an outdoors privy can be made usable with care and good design. It’s always worth the effort in terms of health and sanity.

And we had a hell of a celebration when they finally installed the indoor crapper. Made winter visits practical.

The chief of India’s federal investigation agency says Indians have illegally deposited an estimated $500bn in overseas tax havens.

Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) director AP Singh said Indians were the largest depositors in foreign banks. Funds were being sent to tax havens such as Mauritius, Switzerland, Lichtenstein and the British Virgin Islands among others, he said…

Mr Singh was speaking at the opening on Monday of the first Interpol global programme on anti-corruption and asset recovery in the Indian capital, Delhi…

Mr Singh said getting information about such illegal transactions was a time-consuming and expensive process as each country where money had been sent had to be approached for help with investigations.

He said there was a lack of political will in the tax havens to part with any information because they were aware of the extent to which their economies had become “geared to this flow of illegal capitals from the poorer countries”…

In a report in November 2010 the US-based group, Global Financial Integrity…India’s underground economy accounted for 50% of the country’s gross domestic product, it said. The report said the illicit outflows of money had increased after economic reforms began in 1991.

I know it ain’t ever easy to get nations to cooperate when a significant portion of their economy is designed to aid criminal activities. But, that is exactly the context which should make penalties easy to establish in the home country.

Gee, all you need is honest politicians in your own government to pass the laws.

Authorities in the country have virtually canceled Valentine’s Day by nixing planned concerts and other events, according to the Associated Press, citing a report by Russian news agency RIA-Novosti.

Instead, Uzbeki lovers will have to content themselves with a government-organized reading of poems by medieval Mughal emperor Babur, who wrote about monuments, flora and fauna, wine parties and battle strategy…

Uzbekistan’s unofficial ban on romantic celebrations isn’t new. Last year, news agency Turkiston described Valentine’s Day as the work of “forces with evil goals bent on putting an end to national values.”

Other Muslim countries feel equally as frigid toward the amorous holiday, which is a nominally Christian one.

Saudi Arabia and Iran have both banned celebration of the day, Voice of America reports. Iranian officials last year said they would take action against amorous citizens who ignored the ban. Saudi Arabia prohibits the gifting of red on V-day — including chocolates, bears, or roses, according to the Saudi Gazette.

In India, right-wing group Sri Rama Sena warned in 2010 that it would take action against educational institutions, restaurants and theaters if they encouraged Valentine’s day celebrations. Some adherents of the group even burned Valentine’s Day cards…

Malaysia joined in the spoil-sporting last year when it announced it would crack down on “immoral acts” during the holiday as part of a wider campaign for its citizens’ lifestyles to be “sin-free.”

The head of the Malaysian Islamic Development Department told state media: “In reality, as well as historically, the celebration of Valentine’s Day is synonymous with vice activities.”

Is there no end to bureaucrats on this planet with no heart for love?

Interview by Alan Moorehead

It is the violence of Gandhi’s death, this complete and contemptuous negation of everything he lived for, which is the shocking thing. Yet paradoxically, this is the aesthetic end to a life of non-violence, the end which, one imagines, the old man would have chosen for himself.

I remember, in the very middle of the war, I went as a war correspondent to interview him in Delhi. It was an excessively hot afternoon and I sat cross-legged on the floor sweating through my army uniform. Gandhi leaned back on a white bolster, wearing nothing but a loincloth, and he said amiably: “What is the good of our talking? You and the people you represent are committed to violence. I am interested only in non-violence. We have nothing to say to one another.”

I asked him if he was prepared to see the Japanese invade India (they were then very close in Burma) “Why not?” he said. “They can’t kill us all.” He went on to propound his famous doctrine: never oppose violence with violence. “Non-violence,” he said, “requires an even higher kind of courage than violence. You must be just as prepared to lay down your life – even more so.” I remember how cheerful he was that afternoon, how healthy with his great brown barrel of a chest, and how wittily he talked.

Nor was he much changed when I went to one or two of his prayer meetings in Delhi this winter. He was still getting up at four in the morning to exercise, he was still the nimblest (and I think the gayest) good brain in India, and he was still talking in parables on precisely the same theme.

Of course he becomes a martyr now; more than that – a mystical legend and a god. It is probably a waste of time trying to assess him in western terms. Inevitably, the mysticism and the fatalism intervene, blocking out all logic. I do not think Jawaharlal Nehru and the others ever expected practical politics from Gandhi, but they were inspired by him just the same. They loved him passionately.

I never met anyone in India who came away from a meeting with the old man without being captivated and in a slightly elevated condition of mind. He had an overpowering charm under that humility. He talked hard common sense as a rule and the mysticism ran between the lines.

What happens now? It seems almost impossible to be optimistic. The country has lost its figurehead, its living public conscience. Who is to speak against racial hatred now with that authority? The British kept the peace with police and prestige and Gandhi did it with love. Now, within six short months, both police and love have vanished together. Perhaps enough of his followers will obey his creed of non-violence. Whatever the immediate effect may be, at least his influence in the long run can only be for the good.

He has been missed in so many ways.

Health officials are hailing a polio breakthrough in India, once recognised as the global epicentre of the crippling disease, as the country marked one year since the last recorded case.

India, once home to half of all global cases of polio, on Friday completed one year since an 18-month-old girl in West Bengal was diagnosed with the disease.

AP Photo/Biswaranjan Rout

The breakthrough could see India removed from a list of nations where polio is still endemic by the World Health Organisation (WHO) in the next month.

With Niger and Egypt taken off that list in recent years, India’s removal would see the list of nations with indigenous polio reduced to just three: Afghanistan, Nigeria, and Pakistan…

In a statement, Ghulam Nabi Azad, India’s health minister, said: “We are excited and hopeful, at the same time, vigilant and alert”…

Part of…new tactics and innovations was an effort to reach poor children in railways and on the streets. “Remotes areas were huge havens of disease, but we persisted,” Sona Bari, a spokesperson for the Global Polio Eradication Initiative, told Al Jazeera. “Wherever there were no facilities, we just had people camping on the floor.”

According to WHO estimates, the Indian government dedicated two billion dollars to polio eradication over the last decade and a half. “It was almost completely self-funded,” Bari said. “India has shown that it can be done, despite extremely difficult circumstances…”

The advance in a nation where polio had been thought endemic, has raised hopes that polio will join smallpox as the second disease to have been successfully eradicated globally.

RTFA. India will be deemed to have eradicated the disease if it stays polio-free for another two years.

Now – religion is an acceptable excuse to keep from having your kids vaccinated. What fools these parents be.

Daylife/AP Photo used by permission
Yoga guru Baba Ramdev performs purification ritual pouring milk into the River Ganges

More than two-thirds of Indian milk is adulterated with items ranging from salt to detergent and may be unsafe to drink, a government watchdog says. The Food Safety and Standards Authority of India conducted a survey in 33 states and found that 68.4% of 1,791 milk samples was contaminated. Among the substances found in milk were milk powder, fat, glucose and water.

In urban India, nearly 70% of samples were found to be contaminated, compared with 31% of samples in rural areas.

The survey said that only two states – Goa and Pondicherry – sold unadulterated milk, while all 250 samples from four eastern states were found to be contaminated with detergent.

Centre for Science and Environment spokesman Chandra Bhushan told the BBC that the survey was important because it was the first time that such findings had been released by a government agency rather than by non-governmental organisations. “It means the government has been accepting that we have been drinking adulterated milk,” he said…

He demanded that the government should conduct similar surveys on other edible goods.

I many ways – as I would expect – India’s problems with health and safety, purity and quality, parallel China. Moving incredibly large populations through development stages that took decades and centuries in the West in the 50 or 60 years since liberation from colonial status takes something more than an Upton Sinclair moment.

Though one might suggest a bit more dedication to that task really won’t hamper production of educated money-makers from the universities and colleges.

Police in India say they have arrested six foreign nationals suspected of defrauding hundreds of people using text message and email scams…

Authorities seized 14 laptops, seven memory sticks and 23 mobile phones, as well as fake documents and cash. The arrests come after security firm Kaspersky reported that India now sent more spam than any other country in the world.

Police said the six men, all Nigerian, would be remanded in custody until 12 January. The arrests signal attempts to crack down on a growing cybercrime problem in the region…

Mumbai-based internet security specialist Vijay Mukhi said poor enforcement of laws meant spammers could act with impunity.

“We have an Information Technology Act that was introduced in 2000. But we don’t have any convictions under it and it’s silent on spam,” he said…If I’m a spammer, I would rather spam from India to India and the rest of world because nothing will happen to me.”

It’s still the biggest hoot of the day that the 6 spammers busted happen to be from Nigeria.

Is it because of bigotry on the part of the coppers? Easier to arrest African nationals. Or have the world’s leading spam hustlers actually started moving to India because they feel safer committing cybercrimes from there?

Solar power is a clean energy source. But in this arid part of northwest India it can also be a dusty one.

Every five days or so, in a marriage of low and high tech, field hands with long-handled dust mops wipe down each of the 36,000 solar panels at a 63-acre installation operated by Azure Power. The site is one of the biggest examples of India’s ambitious plan to use solar energy to help modernize its notoriously underpowered national electricity grid, and reduce its dependence on coal-fired power plants.

Azure Power has a contract to provide solar-generated electricity to a state-government electric utility. Inderpreet Wadhwa, Azure’s chief executive, predicted that within a few years solar power would be competitive in price with India’s conventionally generated electricity…

Two years ago, Indian policy makers said that by the year 2020 they would drastically increase the nation’s use of solar power from virtually nothing to 20,000 megawatts — enough electricity to power the equivalent of 20 million modern American homes. Many analysts said it could not be done. But, now the doubters are taking back their words.

Dozens of developers like Azure, because of aggressive government subsidies and a large drop in the global price of solar panels, are covering India’s northwestern plains — including this village of 2,000 people — with gleaming solar panels. So far, India uses only about 140 megawatts, including 10 megawatts used by the Azure installation, which can provide enough power to serve a town of 50,000 people, according to the company. But analysts say that the national 20,000 megawatt goal is achievable and that India could reach those numbers even a few years before 2020.

“Prices came down and suddenly things were possible that didn’t seem possible,” said Tobias Engelmeier, managing director of Bridge to India, a research and consulting firm based in New Delhi. Chinese manufacturers like Suntech Power and Yingli Green Energy helped drive the drop in solar panel costs. The firms increased production of the panels and cut costs this year by about 30 percent to 40 percent, to less than $1 a watt.

Developers of solar farms in India, however, have shown a preference for the more advanced, so-called thin-film solar cells offered by suppliers in the United States, Taiwan and Europe. The leading American provider to India is First Solar, based in Tempe, Ariz.

India does not have a large solar manufacturing industry, but is trying to develop one and China is showing a new interest in India’s growing demand. China’s Suntech Power sold the panels used at the Azure installation, which opened in June.

RTFA. Lots if info. I chuckle when folks writing articles like this include notes about government subsidies being necessary. I don’t recall a major power plant built anywhere in the world – coal-fired, nuclear, nat gas, whatever – in decades without government support. It ain’t exactly the kind of construction project done on spec.

Daylife/Reuters Pictures used by permission

In the growing rivalry between the emerging superpowers China and India, Beijing scored a symbolic victory on Thursday: a Chinese woman won a chess match.

The woman, Hou Yifan, 17, easily retained the Women’s World Chess Championship title when she drew the eighth game of a match against Humpy Koneru, the best Indian woman to play the game.

The final score of the best-of-10 match was 5.5 points to 2.5 points. Despite the lopsided score, the victory was not as easy as it appeared, Ms. Hou said in a telephone interview from Tirana, Albania, where the match was held. “Every game was interesting. Both of us had chances,” she said. The difference was that “in the middle games, I caught her mistakes…”

The match was sponsored by Taci Oil International, whose chief executive, Rezart Taci, is president of the Albanian Chess Federation. Ms. Hou will receive 60 percent of the $267,000 prize fund, and Ms. Koneru 40 percent.

Ms. Hou became the youngest world champion in history last year when she was 16. The match against Ms. Koneru, 24, was Ms. Hou’s first defense of the title.

In some ways, the match was a competition between the world’s two most populous countries as well as the two players. In recent years, the Chinese have dominated women’s chess, but the overall world champion is Viswanathan Anand of India. Ms. Koneru had a chance to make India the holder of the chess world’s most important titles.

Though Ms. Hou is ranked No. 3 in the world among women and Ms. Koneru is No. 2, Ms. Hou was a slight favorite because she had beaten Ms. Koneru in the semifinals of last year’s championship as well as the one in 2008…

Though Ms. Hou is the world champion, Judit Polgar, a Hungarian, is the best female player and the only woman to ever be ranked among the world’s top 10. But she does not play in competitions that are limited to women, which is why she has never won the women’s title…

Ms. Hou added that she hoped to find time in her competitive schedule to go to college.

“I have to know some more things,” she said. “I have to open my eyes to see the whole world.”

Bravo.

Daylife/AP Photo used by permission

An Indian court found 31 people guilty on Wednesday of killing 33 Muslims during riots in Gujarat state in 2002.

The trial in a court in Gujarat, followed an investigation, ordered by the Supreme Court, into the events that took place on March 1, 2002. On that evening, a mob of Hindu rioters surrounded houses belonging to Muslims in Sardarpura village in the district of Mehsana and set them on fire, burning dozens of people alive, including men, women and children.

Killings, arson and looting continued throughout the night, with attackers burning shops and houses owned by Muslims. Most of the Muslim families left the village after the episode.

The rioting followed the burning of a train carrying Hindu pilgrims in a Muslim-dominated area in which 59 passengers were killed. The train attack incited widespread riots across Gujarat for several weeks. More than 1,000 people, primarily Muslims, were killed in the riots.

The violence attracted widespread condemnation about the ineffectiveness of Gujarat’s state government. The lack of immediate prosecutions after the riots prompted the National Human Rights Commission to file a case in the Supreme Court for special investigation…

The court also acquitted 42 in the rioting. Concerning the large number of acquittals, Teesta Setalvad, an activist who represents riot victims said she and others representing the victims will speak to the victims’ families to discuss a possible appeal.

The 31 people convicted were sentenced to life in prison and fined $1,000 each.

Sounds like the Old Days in God’s Country – when Black Americans were lynched for the crime of being Black. And state and federal politicians in charge of India reacted to protect the lives of ordinary Indians who happen to be Muslim just about as slow as molasses-foot Congress ever did.