New Delhi, June 23
Ahead of the United Nation’s September summit to take stock of the world’s progress on Millennium Development Goals (MDG), there’s some bad news for India.

Released today, the 2010 MDG report card paints a dark picture for South Asia, including India, in respect of its ability to meet MDGs of halving poverty and extreme hunger by 2015 (MDG 1) and eliminating gender disparity up to secondary education by 2005 (target missed already by India). The situation is equally grim when it comes to child mortality and maternal mortality rates.

Contrarily, China appears set to meet most targets. Sharpest reductions in global poverty are happening in East Asia, with China all set to reduce its poverty rate to 5 per cent by 2015. Corresponding rate in India would be 24 per cent (it was 51 per cent in 1990). Number of people in extreme poverty in India “is likely” to reduce by 188 million by 2015, states the report, warning South Asia of the danger of missing MDG 1.

UNICEF India Representative Karen Hulshof agreed with the warning, saying 70 per Indians still lived below global poverty standards.

On most other MDGs, South Asia is closer to sub-Saharan Africa than to the advancing East or Southeast Asia. The 2008 financial meltdown has worsened the situation here, with India adding to its number of hungry. In South Asia, hunger rose between 2002 and 2007 from 20 to 21 per cent.

“India and Pakistan together account for the bulk of under-nutrition in South Asia, having witnessed 80 per cent rise in food prices post-2008. Madhya Pradesh and Gujarat are equal to Somalia and Congo in hunger,” economist Jayati Ghosh told the Tribune.

Data analysis shows that South Asia still has the highest child malnutrition rates globally, with 46 per cent children below five being underweight. This marks a poor 5 per cent decline from 1990 when the rate was 51 per cent.

The region also houses the highest number of working poor and those in vulnerable employments globally. In India, just 35 per cent do pair work; of them, 90 per cent in the informal sector.

The report reflects strikingly on global gender inequities in job markets, where men dominate top positions. Though more women are now in paid jobs than in 1990, they haven’t clinched senior posts. Globally, only one in four senior managers is a woman.

In South Asia, only 9 per cent women are managers and just 20 per cent employed outside agriculture are women. Gender inequalities persist in education too. While East Asia is enrolling more girls than boys in education, India, despite small gains, missed the 2005 deadline of achieving gender parity up to secondary level; it may not meet the 2015 target of equality across all education levels. Nepal, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka have done better.

Infant and maternal mortality reduction goals are also far from sight. “The annual rate of reduction of IMR and MMR is well short of 5.5 per cent which was needed to meet these MDGs.” Over 99 per cent women who die globally in childbirth are in South Asia, with just one in four rural women getting any antenatal care.

Though the region has stabilised the AIDS epidemic, it could miss the target of combating malaria/TB. India has the highest malarial deaths in the world --- 30,000 annually. 

New Delhi/ Hyderabad, June 23
The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) today arrested suspended Railway Recruitment Board chairman (Mumbai) SM Sharma and senior divisional personnel officer G Sethi for their suspected involvement in a railway recruitment scam.

The CBI had earlier arrested eight persons, including a son of SM Sharma, but could not nab him because the law bars an investigating agency from initiating any legal action against an officer of or above the rank of a joint secretary without prior sanction from authorities. The CBI arrested Sharma after a go-ahead from the Railway Board.

Sharma is suspected to have played the main link in the scam running into several crores in which some officials in league with fixers leaked question papers to examinees in lieu of hefty sums. Meanwhile, a special CBI court granted a three-day police remand of eight persons accused in the Railway Recruitment Board (RRB) examination paper leak scam.

The accused included Vivek Bhardwaj, son of the suspended Chairman of RRB, Mumbai, SM Sharma. The CBI, probing the cash-for-job scandal, produced them in the court and sought their custody to grill them further on the role of railway officials and others in the racket.

A search is on to nab other agents who operated from various cities across the country and lured the aspiring candidates. The central investigating agency had last week unearthed a well-oiled racket, involving railway officials and agents, who allegedly charged nearly Rs 3.5 lakh from each candidate for leaking question papers for recruitment tests for Assistant Loco Pilots and Assistant Station Masters held on June 6 and 13.

As murky details of the multi-crore scam came to light, the Rail Ministry suspended Sharma. The CBI investigations had revealed that atleast 444 candidates were supplied question papers ahead of the examinations. 

New Delhi, June 23
The Home Ministry is likely to recommend to President Pratibha Patil that the mercy petition of Parliament attack convict Afzal Guru be rejected to uphold the death sentence awarded to him by the Supreme Court.

Official sources said Home Minister P Chidambaram is likely to suggest that such a recommendation could be sent to the President before whom the mercy petition is pending. The relevant file will soon be sent to the Prime Minister's Office shortly from where it will be sent to Rashtrapati Bhavan.

The petition was filed by Afzal’s wife Tabassum four years ago.

A Rashtrapati Bhavan spokesperson said the President was yet to receive any such recommendation from the government.“We have not received anything on Afzal Guru from the Home Ministry yet," the spokesperson said.

Delhi Lt Governor Tejinder Khanna had sent Afzal’s file to the Home Ministry on June 3. The file was sent after 16 reminders from the Home Ministry to the Sheila Dikshit government.

Meanwhile, Law Minister M Veerappa Moily said he supported the stand taken by the Home Ministry in the case. He was replying to a question about his opinion with regard to the Home Ministry's recommendation to the President on his mercy plea.

The BJP expressed the hope that the President would go by the government recommendation that Parliament attack-convict Afzal Guru be hanged, saying he was “a symbol of treachery and terrorism” who deserved capital punishment.

Senior BJP leader M Venkaiah Naidu said whatever might have been the reasons for the delay deciding on the mercy petition in regard to Afzal, the President should accept government's recommendation, if any, rejecting it.

“The Home Ministry after so much delay seems to have recommended that the Supreme Court verdict should be implemented. We hope that the President will go by the recommendation,” Naidu said. The Congress said it supported the ministry's stand. “Law will take its own course and the procedure laid down under the Constitution will be followed,” said party spokesperson Jayanthi Natarjan told reporters here.

New Delhi, June 23
The government today unveiled a National Litigation Policy that would dictate how it would reduce the burgeoning number of its court cases and act as “an efficient and a responsible” litigant.

Law Minister M Veerappa Moily released the policy documents here and said the government had recognised the fact that it and its various agencies were predominant litigants in courts and tribunals across the country.

Of the over 2 crore cases pending in courts, 70 per cent of them involved the government as either petitioners or respondents.

“Its (the policy’s) aim is to transform government into an efficient and a responsible litigant,” Moily told a press conference here. The policy would be implemented from the beginning of next month and comes within a year of its national consultation for reducing pendency and delays in court cases in October last year.

Noting that the policy took into account the responsibility of the government to protect the rights of citizens and to respect fundamental rights, the Law Minister said those in-charge of the conduct of official litigation should never forget this basic principle.

He said under the new litigation policy, the government would cease to be “a compulsive” litigant and expressed the hope that the state governments too would follow the Centre’s example and would come up with their own policy of this sort to reduce the number of cases pending in courts.

“The National Litigation Policy is framed with a view to ensure conduct of responsible litigation by the Centre and urges every state to evolve similar policies,” the document said.

“The philosophy that “matters should be left to the courts for ultimate decision” has to be discarded. The easy approach “let the court decide” must be eschewed and condemned,” it added.

The government would appoint empowered committees, to be chaired at the national level by the Attorney General, to monitor implementation of the policy and to fix accountability of the government departments to follow the principles laid down by the policy. — PTI

New Delhi, June 23
In an effort to preempt any further criticism from the Opposition, Congress leadership is learnt to have suggested to the government that Rs 1,500 crore relief package recommended by the Group of Ministers (GoM) for the Bhopal gas victims could be enhanced.

The Cabinet is set to discuss the GoM report at its weekly meeting tomorrow. The PM had initially convened a special Cabinet meeting on Bhopal issue on Friday but since he is leaving for Canada the same day, it was decided to discuss it in tomorrow. Home minister P Chidambaram, who heads the GoM, is also to travel to Islamabad for the SAARC meeting of home ministers.

The party is keen to deflect attention from the attack mounted against late Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi for his role in the release of then Union Carbide chief Warren Anderson. Although the GoM has recommended that the Centre make fresh attempts to extradite Anderson, it is also aware that the government is unlikely to succeed.

The Congress and the UPA, therefore, want to keep the focus on relief and rehabilitation of the victims and remediation of the contaminated site for which ample funds have been made available. “The last word on this has not been said. If more funds are required, these will be provided,” remarked a GoM member.

Besides the relief package, the CPM’s demand for an all-party meeting on the issue may also figure at tomorrow’s meeting. In a letter to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, CPM general secretary Prakash Karat has said the Cabinet should take a final decision on the GoM report only after an all-party meeting discusses all issues pertaining to the gas leak case.

UPA sources said though this issue may figure in the course of tomorrow’s discussions, the government is unlikely to delay the implementation of the recommendations as it wants to send out a message that it is responding urgently to the demands of the gas victims struggling for justice for the past 26 years.

The Cabinet is expected to take a view on its various recommendations, including filing a curative petition in the Supreme Court against dilution of charges against the accused in the Bhopal gas leak and fresh attempts to seek extradition of Anderson.

The report has recommended a payment of Rs 10 lakh for the next of the kin of the dead and Rs 5 lakh for permanently disabled. This amount has been challenged on grounds that it is based on flawed estimates of deaths and injuries.The GoM has also said Rs 300 crore be set aside for cleaning up the toxic waste at the site though there are rumblings among civil society groups that there was no liability on Dow Chemicals, which had bought Union Carbide in 2001. — PTI 

New Delhi, June 23
The CPM today accused the Government of manipulating poverty estimates statistically to arrive at the number of beneficiaries under the Public Distribution System.

Lashing out at Deputy Chairman of the Planning Commission Montek Singh Ahluwalia, senior party leader Brinda Karat said the Government’s basis for food security was not scientific assessment of actual poverty but the amount of resources it could allocate to foot the subsidy bill.

“One day, the Planning Commission Deputy Chairman says one crore people would be covered. The other day he says 50 lakh would be covered. The estimate keeps changing depending on whether there is money to fund higher subsidy. You can leave Montek Singh Ahluwalia for 365 days and there will be 365 different estimates,” Brinda lashed out at the Plan panel chief, slamming the concept of targeting for PDS at a time when an ever increasing number of people in the unorganised sector are without guaranteed income.

The party Politburo member added that UN’s Millennium Development Goal progress card up to 2010 showed that UPA’s policies were flawed and they needed to be urgently reversed. The report talks grim of India in respect of hunger.

“The UN report card is a red alert for us. We only hope the Government looks at it with the seriousness it deserves. Most disturbing is the issue of food security. We immediately need a food security law for everyone and we also need correct poverty estimates,” said the CPM Rajya Sabha member, accusing the UPA of manipulating official statistics pertaining to poverty.

She asked if the definition of slums had been changed to represent a lower proportion of Indians living in slums; this at a time when data from the National Sample Survey Organisation does not suggest such a decline.

The UN report card released today mentions lower slum population for India than some economists believe there is. 

Chandigarh, June 23
Interventions by the judiciary and directions from the Union Government over abandoned borewells notwithstanding, lack of jurisdictional control is preventing the worst-affected states like Punjab and Haryana from imposing any regulations.

In Punjab, for example, more than 38,000 borewell owners have applied to the Punjab Power Corporation for the grant of regular power connections. In neighbouring Haryana the situation is no different.

Only yesterday, Justice SD Anand of the Punjab and Haryana High Court had issued notices to both the Punjab and Haryana Governments over the increasing incidence of children walking into these “open death traps”.

Justice Anand has taken suo motu action on media reports giving details of such incidents, including the death of a three-year-old girl who, even after being rescued from one such borewell, could not be saved.

Holding the functioning of local government, panchayats and civic bodies deficient, Justice Anand said it was time to have a thorough judicial debate to avoid more such eventualities. He also wanted that accountability be fixed.

Earlier, late last year, the Supreme Court had asked various state governments, including Punjab and Haryana, to cover all abandoned borewells and tubewells with wire meshes or lids to prevent children from falling into them, enforcing a basic safeguard that local administrations should have ensured on their own without being prodded.The state governments have also been asked to fence functioning wells as a preventive step. The Punjab Water Supply and Sewerage Board, claims its Secrertary Paramjit Singh Aujla, got all such abandoned borewells filled and tubewells fenced.

But senior officials in both the Punjab and Haryana Governments maintain that more than 95 per cent of these borwells, both operational and abandoned, are on the private property of individuals and as such the state agencies have no jurisdictional control to enforce the apex court or Union Government guidelines on them. Most of the incidents of children falling into these “open death traps” were reported from privately owned borewells.

The need for legislation to enforce minimum safety and security measures around all borewells and tubewells is supported by official agencies. As of now, they maintain, there are more than 60,000 borewells in Punjab and Haryana, a majority of which lack any reliable fencing or structures to ensure safety and security.

The directives from the apex court and now the High Court and reiteration of instructions by the Union Government recently have been necessitated over the sinking of a large number of borewells during the past 10 years in Punjab, Haryana, Rajasthan and Andhra Pradesh.

Kolkata, June 23
A three-member team of Calcutta High Court today visited the La Martiniere School at Loudan Street for making an on-the-spot inquiry into the alleged mental and physical torture of a class Vlll student, Rouvanjit Rawla, by the principal and four other teachers driving him to commit suicide.

The team was sent to the school following a petition filed by several guardians and Trinamool leader Partha Chatterjee seeking the HC’s intervention into alleged torture and death of Rouvanjit vis-à-vis the illegal and un-academic functioning of the school authorities.

The team members today met the principal and some teachers. They also talked with students and guardians.

“We are now convinced that there are adequate rules and regulations in the school for its proper running but unfortunately none of these rules and regulations are followed,” alleged one of the members.

Coimbatore (TN), June 23
All roads in Tamil Nadu led to the industrial city of Coimbatore today as President Pratibha Patil inaugurated the World Classical Tamil Conference expressing confidence that Tamil language would evolve to meet the needs of a changing world.

“The next generation of Tamils must anchor as well as equip themselves with the knowledge of the Tamil culture, literature and values,” she said. “Thirukkural” written by Thiruvalluvar was a remarkable treatise on ethics, she said, and recalled that Mahatma Gandhi wanted to learn Tamil to enable him to study the work of Thiruvalluvar.

Listing the ancient Tamil epics, she said Tamil literary personalities made signal contributions to the national independent movement.“Tamil is amongst the oldest living languages of the world with its extra-ordinary volume of literature.”She also briefly outlined the history and growth of arts and music.

The poets of the Sangam age belonged to all categories of occupation and this was a sign of equality.