GENEVA, Oct (IPS)–Although it remains the fastest growing region, Asia is already experiencing an economic slowdown, with gross domestic product (GDP) expected to fall from 6.8 percent in 2011 to slightly below six percent in 2012. Several countries – including China, India and Turkey – have been adversely affected by weaker demand from developed countries.

Supachai Panitchpakdi

Given the headwinds from the international economy, some developing countries have since relaxed their monetary conditions and many of them have applied countercyclical measures that are helping to boost household incomes and to maintain a much needed shift from external to domestic demand, alongside the role of investment.

China, for example, has played a critical role in global rebalancing, being the chief engine of world growth since 2009 and having reduced its surplus markedly (from 10 percent of GDP in 2007 to two percent in 2012) as it shifted its economy towards domestic demand.

In China and other major economies in the region, however, internal rebalancing remains unfinished as private consumption should take on a greater role relative to investment. High wage growth will help to support this goal as well as helping to promote further external rebalancing.

High and volatile commodity prices also present a risk to the rebalancing process for the Asian region, because they can be a drag on growth. Rising oil prices, for example, act as an immediate dampener on aggregate spending in fuel-importing countries, contracting spending more or less immediately, whereas any spending expansion from fuel-exporting countries occurs only after a lag.

However the main risk continues to be concentrated in the developed economies, where the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) has long been concerned that premature and excessive fiscal austerity is choking recovery and growth unnecessarily. The developing economies in Asia have played a major role stoking the engine of growth since the crisis, but this could be derailed if there continues to be a decline in consumer demand from their traditional markets in the advanced economies, and the effects of a reduction in this demand would of course have further spill-over effects if it provoked a downturn in Asian household and investment demand.

The second aspect of the rebalancing has occurred after the crisis. Global trade rebalancing has been largely due to the decrease in China’s exports and the increase in its domestic demand. Trade imbalances for many other East and South-East Asian (ASEAN) countries have not altered significantly. In 2011, the trade surplus of ASEAN as a whole had recovered to its 2007 level and it is currently similar in size to that of China, at about 100 billion dollars.

The rebalancing of the last three years has been due to a number of factors: the worsening terms of trade, especially for China, the decrease in international demand for products collaboratively (vertically) produced by East Asian countries, and the increase in domestic demand in China.

In practice, while China’s trade surplus is largely related to its trade with high-income markets, that of other East Asia countries is largely owing to trade with China. Indeed, the trade surplus of ASEAN countries with China has been increasing in the recent years.

The implications of this rebalancing are largely related to Chinese imports from the region. In this regard, the increase in Chinese domestic demand and the weak international demand for Chinese manufactures are resulting in a shift in the composition of Chinese imports. In practice, China imports relatively fewer goods to fuel its export sectors, and more consumption goods to meet the increasing domestic demand.

In this context, regional partners serving the Chinese export industry (those with vertical supply chain links with China) are likely to continue to be negatively affected as long as demand for Chinese exports remains weak. On the other hand, regional firms serving the Chinese domestic markets are likely to show continuous growth. However, a caveat is that China’s demand for final goods is still largely met by domestic producers, and thus the increase in domestic demand may not have large external spillovers.

A reduction in international demand for Chinese exports may also accelerate the transformation of the Chinese manufacturing industry towards higher value-added goods. This clearly depends on the extent to which Chinese firms are able to upgrade along the value chain and to capture market share in these segments.

If (or when) this occurs, it may have repercussions for the vertical integration of production processes in the region. In practice, Chinese firms could turn from vertically integrated partners into competitors of firms in more advanced countries. On the other hand, the process of manufacturing upgrading may benefit less advanced economies in the region, which are presently competitors of Chinese firms.

Ultimately, what is most important is that regional markets remain open, so that rising domestic demand in each country is met not only by domestic enterprises but also by those operating in other countries of the region. (END/COPYRIGHT IPS)

* Supachai Panitchpakdi is the secretary-general of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD).

NEW DELHI, Sep (IPS/South Centre) Since January 2012, aviation has been included in the European Union’s Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) that requires aircraft operators to surrender one allowance per tonne of carbon-dioxide emitted on a flight to and from (and within) the EU. This covers passenger, cargo and non-commercial flights and applies no matter where an aircraft operator is based.

Anuradha R.V.

Each such airline would have to comply with a benchmark set by the EU on the basis of its average annual emissions in respect of flights to and from the EU. One of the most controversial aspects of the measure is that it calculates an airline’s emissions from the point of take off; this means that a flight from New Delhi to London, which flies within the EU only for a few hours, would have to account to the EU for its emissions from New Delhi itself. EU’s rationale in putting in place the system is to ensure that its own operators are not at a competitive disadvantage.

The economic impact of the EU-ETS for the global airline industry has been estimated to be 1.5 billion dollars annually, and 13.8 billion dollars through 2020, according to Thomson Reuters Point Carbon. The annual financial impact on major airlines from India has been estimated to be in the range of 30 to 40 million dollars.

The EU system offers airlines some allowances for free, and they are required to purchase the rest at EU auctions. If an airline exceeds the benchmark set for it, it can buy carbon credits from the market. Revenue from the auction of aviation allowances is expected to earn the EU close to 334 million dollars in 2012.

Airlines would simply pass on the enhanced costs of EU-ETS compliance to consumers, and it could indeed be argued that perhaps it is not such a bad thing for international air travellers to pay for their carbon footprint.

However, the EU’s action is essentially a statement that it would take measures on its own to police climate change, disregarding multilateral processes, which impact activity both within its own territory and outside of it.

There are potentially other forms that such unilateral action could take, for instance, through imposition of taxes or other charges on imports, or other non-tariff regulatory requirements, whose impact on goods and services from countries like India could be more severe.

EU-ETS in fact already includes a provision stating that the EU would consider measures for “carbon equalisation”, which could affect imports from countries that do not have comparable emission reduction norms, depending on the outcome of the ongoing multilateral negotiations. The main reasoning seems to be that if multilateral negotiations do not have the effect that EU desires, then EU will impose unilateral measures.

To state the obvious, any unilateralism would make a mockery of the multilateral processes. Under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), any unilateral action would run contrary to the principle that only Annex I (developed) countries have quantitative legally-binding emission reduction targets, while other countries have no binding quantitative targets of any kind.

This principle – also referred to as the principle of “common but differentiated responsibilities”, is clearly violated by EU-ETS requirements, which effectively treat Annex I and non-Annex I countries in the same way.

The Kyoto Protocol to the UNFCCC required Annex I countries to pursue reduction of aviation emissions by working through the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO). ICAO resolutions in 2007 and 2010 emphasised that countries should undertake market-based measures relating to aviation emissions only subject to multilateral or bilateral agreements. Such a mandate essentially means that measures such as EU-ETS can be enforced against an aircraft operator from a third country only if the EU has entered into an agreement with such a country. EU-ETS, however, ignores this principle.

As a response to EU-ETS, 23 members of the ICAO (including the U.S., Japan, Singapore, India, China and Brazil) met in February 2012 to condemn EU’s move. These countries have outlined a basket of measures which they would want to explore against the EU, which include:

- filing of an application under ICAO’s convention for resolution of the dispute;

- prohibiting their airlines/aircraft operators from participating in the EU-ETS;

- imposing additional levies/charges on EU carriers/ aircraft operators as a form of counter-measure;

- reviewing Bilateral Air Services Agreements, including Open Skies with individual EU member states;

- suspending current and future discussions and/or negotiations to enhance operating rights for EU airlines/ aircraft operators;

- exploring action under WTO agreements.

Following the above declaration, the governments of China and India have taken the position that their airlines would not comply with EU-ETS. Under the EU directive, non-complying aircraft operators face a penalty of 100 pounds per missing allowance, and also face a potential ban from operating in the EU. The extent to which the stalemate continues, and the extent to which EU will enforce its penalties or even suspend non-complying airlines from entering its airspace, remains to be seen.

As seen from the joint declaration of the countries opposing the EU’s move, the only effect of EU’s unilateral action could be a spate of unilateral measures from other countries.

Will good sense prevail to enable an amicable resolution? Otherwise, between the various unilateral measures – threatened and actual – the only casualty would be climate change. (END/COPYRIGHT IPS)

* Anuradha R.V. is a partner at Clarus Law Associates, New Delhi, and works on law and policy relating to international trade and climate change. For further analysis see Climate Policy Brief, September 2012 (http://www.southcentre.org).

GENEVA, Jun (IPS) India may be famous for the Taj Mahal, its religious ceremonies, Bollywood films and one of the highest economic growth rates in recent years. But more importantly, India has had a positive global impact through its supply of vast quantities of low-cost, good-quality generic medicines, which have saved or prolonged millions of lives.

Martin Khor. Credit: South Center website.

Many people go to India to buy life-saving generic medicines from pharmacies and bring these back in suitcases to give to close relatives who cannot afford the expensive branded original products.

A decade ago, the Indian pharmaceutical company Cipla produced generic HIV/AIDS drugs that could treat a patient for 300 dollars a year, far cheaper than the branded product’s cost of 10,000 dollars per patient a year. Today the Indian generic version is even cheaper, below 80 dollars.

This has enabled millions more AIDS patients to be treated, since India supplies 70 percent of the HIV/AIDS drugs obtained by the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), the Global Fund and the William J. Clinton Foundation for developing countries.

A further 75-80 percent of medicines (not only for AIDS) distributed by the International Dispensary Association to developing countries come from India. No wonder India has been termed the ‘pharmacy of the developing world’.

In January 2012, the Indian Drug Manufacturers’ Association (IDMA), comprised of 700 drug-manufacturing member companies, celebrated its 50th anniversary, by toasting the industry’s high growth, wide range of medicines, and its contribution to safe, affordable drugs.

But there are also many factors that may hinder the continuation of the company’s role as chief supplier of medicines to developing countries.

A main factor of the industry’s success was the government’s decision, back in 1970, to exclude pharmaceutical drugs from product patents.

This paved the way for local companies to produce generic versions of expensive foreign drugs and within a few decades they had taken over 80 percent of the domestic market, while also supplying cheap medicines abroad.

The situation took a negative turn when the intellectual property agreement, known as TRIPS, was established in 1995 together with the World Trade Organisation, which disallowed countries from excluding medicines from patentability.

However, TRIPS allowed individual countries to determine the criteria for an invention that can be granted a patent. Furthermore, TRIPS gave governments the ability to grant a compulsory licence to local companies to produce the patented products, if their requests to patent owners for a voluntary licence did not succeed.

To implement its TRIPS obligations, India passed changes to its patent law in 2005 so that drugs could now be patented. However, the new law also contained flexibilities such as strict criteria for patentability (trivial changes to a patent-expired product would not qualify for a new patent); allowance for public opposition to a patent application before a decision is made; and compulsory licencing.

India has one of the best patent laws in the world that still gives some space to its producers to make generic drugs. But it is also true that the old policy space has been eroded because many new drugs have, since 2005, been patented by multinational companies that are selling them at exorbitant prices.

Indian companies can no longer make their own generic versions of these new medicines unless they successfully apply to the government for compulsory licences, a most cumbersome process; or unless they obtain a licence from the patent-owning multinational, which comes with stringent conditions, especially for export.

Another worry is that India is negotiating a free trade agreement (FTA) with the European Union. Such agreements usually contain provisions such as data exclusivity and extension of the patent term, which prevents or hinders generic production.

Finally, six Indian companies were recently bought up by large foreign firms. If this trend continues, the Indian drug market may be dominated by multinationals again. It is uncertain whether they will continue to supply the developing world with cheap generic medicines when this may be in conflict with their own branded products.

International health organisations such as UNAIDS, UNITAID and Doctors Without Borders have raised their serious concerns that these recent trends may threaten India’s role as the chief supplier of affordable medicines to Africa and other developing countries.

Millions will die if India cannot produce the new HIV/AIDS medicines in the future –it is a matter of life and death, said Michel Sidibe, executive director of UNAIDS, during a visit to India last year.

Thus, a strategy is needed that involves the government and the drug companies, which ensures that the local drug industry continues to thrive; that it produces not only existing medicines but also new medicines even if they are patented; and that they are supplied at cheap prices not only in India but to the developing world.

That was the sobering message that emerged during IDMA’s 50th anniversary conference in January, even in the midst of congratulations on the achievements of the past. (END/COPYRIGHT IPS)

* Martin Khor is the executive director of the South Centre in Geneva.

VILAPPILSALA, India, Jun 6 (IPS) – "We tell friends planning to visit us to follow the stench of rotting garbage," says Jeevaratnam (one name), a homemaker in this village 16 km from Kerala state’s capital of Thiruvananthapuram.

But Jeevaratnam’s humorous quips give way to anger as she talks about a plan by the Thiruvananthapuram city corporation to convert a part of this once idyllic, palm-fringed village of limpid backwaters into a garbage dump.

"Let the people of Thiruvananthapuram city deal with their own garbage. Why are they dumping it on us?" she demands to know.

Six months ago, Jeevaratnam joined other villagers and environmental activists in physically stopping trucks unloading garbage from the city on a 54-acre site acquired by the corporation in Vilappilsala for an aerobic waste composting plant.

Although the corporation is now armed with an order from the Kerala High Court to reopen the plant, it does not have the courage to face the irate villagers.

An enquiry commission appointed by the court has substantiated allegations by the villagers that the waste from the composting site was leaching into streams, wells and water sources in the village.

"Many of the villagers have been suffering from stomach and respiratory problems ever since they started dumping the garbage here," said Shobhana Kumari, president of the panchayat (village local body). "We are not going to allow city garbage to be dumped in our village," she said.

What is happening at Vilappilsala is indicative of a malaise that is gripping the whole of India – an inability to deal with the mountains of garbage generated by rapid urbanisation.

India framed a solid waste policy in 2000 on the orders of the Supreme Court, which required all cities to implement comprehensive waste-management programmes that would include household collection of segregated waste, recycling and composting.

However, no city has been able to set up any programme like that envisaged in the policy, with the result that heaps of rotting waste are now a regular feature of urban life.

Indian cities generate more than 50 million tonnes of solid waste a year, and on average, each person in the urbanised areas produces half a kilogram of waste daily.

The Energy and Resources Institute in New Delhi estimates that by 2047 waste generation in the cities will touch 260 million tonnes per year, with local governments unable to handle the problem.

Commenting on the mass dumping of urban waste in rural areas, as is being attempted in Vilappilsala, C. R. Neelakantan, one of Kerala’s best-known environmental activists, told IPS that this is "unconscionable and violates the ‘polluter pays’ principle."

"Trash and garbage are now a serious source of pollution in towns and cities and it is a failure of governance that the problem remains unaddressed," Neelakantan, chairman of ‘Samara Samiti,’ a non-government organisation (NGO), said.

One solution, increasingly finding favour with local governments, is contracting out waste handling to private waste incinerator operators – though environmentalists say this is a remedy worse than the disease.

Almitra Patel, a Bangalore-based environmentalist who has been involved in shaping Indian solid waste policy for over 16 years, told IPS that incinerators and waste-to-energy schemes are rotten with corrupt practices.

"The simple fact is that corrupt municipal authorities do not have the capacity to operate or monitor these plants under the strict conditions required to ensure that there is no environmental pollution from toxic emissions," she said.

"Incinerators also cost 12 – 43 times more than simple, easily-managed, low-cost composting, which is the ideal solution for a country like India," said Patel, a member of the Supreme Court committee on solid waste management.

"Unlike in developed countries where waste is segregated and has high calorie packaging that works well with incinerators, Indian waste is high in organics and moisture and has very low calorific content," Patel said.

"Thermodynamically there is no surplus energy available after deducting processing energy needs and that rules out waste-to-energy incinerators," she said.

Indian waste also has a high proportion of inert materials such as street dust and drain silt that damage waste-conveying equipment and the incineration chambers. "An incinerator set up in New Delhi’s Timarpur area packed up within a week and has been lying inoperative for years," Patel said.

Yet, Delhi went on to allow a private contractor to build a larger ‘waste-to-energy’ incinerator with a capacity to handle 2,000 tonnes of solid waste daily, ignoring protests by residents of the Okhla area who fear that the thick smoke billowing out of its smokestacks will harm their health.

"We fail to understand how the government can allocate 15 acres of prime land in a densely populated part of the city for a privately-operated incinerator of this size, utterly disregarding public health," said Vimal Monga, president of a residents’ welfare association.

"Government must enforce controls, starting with segregation of waste and monitoring of emissions for toxic byproducts such as dioxins, furans and respirable particulate matter before allowing incinerators to come up in residential areas," Ravi Agarwal, chief of Toxic Links, a major environment NGO, told IPS.

Lack of waste segregation is a serious issue in India, said Agarwal, with everything from electronic waste to hazardous biomedical refuse from hospitals ending up in the same stream.

A study carried out in 2010 by the Indian Institute of Management in Lucknow for the Central Pollution Control Board found that 50 percent of biomedical waste generated in India’s hospitals gets dumped along with municipal garbage.

Jose Joseph, executive director of the ‘Clean City’ movement in Kerala’s port city of Kochi, told IPS that better understanding between manufacturers and consumers about the use and recycling of products will go a long way in solving the growing problem of waste disposal.

Green economists have suggested that what India needs is a comprehensive waste management and recycling strategy on the lines of Brazil’s national solid waste policy.

K. Lathanathan, a green activist, told IPS that recycling and energy recovery from waste are profitable even if there are issues of decent work involved. "It is worth considering that recycling in all its forms employs 12 million people in Brazil, China and the United States."

(END/2012)

GENEVA, May 23 (IPS) – Ahead of the Universal Periodic Review (UPR) of India, a coalition of NGOs denounced the gap between the country’s growth rate and the rate of poverty, malnutrition and lack of health and sanitation.

They charged that even when laws and policies exist, their implementation is unsatisfactory and assessment of efforts is a difficult undertaking.

"According to official figures, the average growth rate between 2007 and 2011 was 8.2 percent but poverty declined only by 0.8 percent. While this is already disturbing, standards used to measure poverty are very suspect. They are based on a poverty level of 50 cents a day, which is an insult to the poor," said Miloon Kothari, convenor of the Working Group on Human Rights in India (WGHR) and former United Nations rapporteur on the right to housing.

The WGHR was set up three years ago by leading human rights NGOs to prepare for the second Universal Periodic Review (UPR), an inter-governmental review of the human rights record of every single state, that will take place on May 24 at the Human Rights Council in Geneva.

Indian NGOs compiled their concerns about the country’s uneven development in a 170-page report, which said that standards for measuring poverty were not consistent with international standards and did not follow a human rights approach.

Kothari claimed that if the country followed the standards set by the 2012 Human Development Report, its poverty rate would be close to 55 percent of the population.

"There is an obsession with growth and the 11th five-year plan does not depart from this. Growth should not be an end in itself, but a way to achieve goals like education and health. Even scholars like Amartya Sen have argued that India’s poverty statistics are very controversial and unreliable. There must be a radical change."

Delhi currently ranks 134 out of 187 countries on the U.N. human development index.

The first consequence of poverty is the violation of the right to food. India has the world’s highest number of malnourished people, amounting to 21 percent of the population. A full 42 percent of the country’s children under the age of five are underweight.

"True, in our country the right to food is justiciable, but the reality is that we have excessive grain and a very unsatisfactory distribution mechanism," Kothari told IPS. "There is a lack of support of the agricultural sector and shocking starvation that biotechnologies make even worse."

He sees a new threat in free trade agreements (FTAs) for which there is no consultation of the public and parliament. "FTAs are not at all consistent with human rights obligations," he added. In this context, the government’s refusal to universalise the public distribution of food grains despite overflowing food stocks is "unacceptable."

On the water and sanitation front India holds another appalling record: the largest number of people in the world – 51 percent of the population – that defecate in the open. Sixty percent of rural households lack access to toilets, an issue that particularly affects Dalits, who comprise 16.3 percent of the population, said Asha Kotwal, general secretary of the All India Dalit Women’s Rights Forum.

"Over 700,000 of our people are involved in the cleaning of toilets using their bare hands, this is a huge shame on our country. From 2008-2010 over 100,000 acts of violence were committed against (Dalits), such as murder, rape, or (forcing women) to parade naked, particularly women asserting their rights."

While on paper Dalits and Adivasis have been allocated a large share of state budgets, they were denied almost 30 billion dollars of that money in the last five years alone.

"It is time to expose the cruelty of the caste system," Kotwal said. "The culture of impunity has affected all of Indian society. The state, the judiciary and the media (discriminate based on caste). Faster growth has meant faster exclusion for us. We need anti-discrimination legislation or an equality act to prevent any (more) discrimination."

India’s development process, which relies heavily on the exploitation of natural resources, has also displaced and dispossessed millions of tribal people throughout the country, said Prafulla Samantra, president of the People’s Empowerment Movement.

"In Central India, states like Orissa and Andhra Pradesh are being increasingly targeted by multinationals for investment. The Forest Rights Act of 2006 recognises some rights, but it has not been fully implemented and companies keep taking over forest and land. Many tribal people were shot by police defending the multinationals."

The draft land acquisition, rehabilitation and resettlement bill does not take a full human rights approach, nor does it state that evictions should take place only in exceptional circumstances.

"With increasing land acquisition and land grabbing, public interest must be redefined," NGOs say. But even when laws exist, studies on their impact, particularly on women and children, are scarce, according to Madhu Mehra, director of Partners for Law in Development.

An example is the recent change in the religious-based family laws that allow women to inherit. "We keep hearing that women have begun to get inheritance, but is it a fact or wishful thinking?" she asked.

"Women’s groups have asked for this change, but in the paradigm of multiculturalism, their voices are not seen as the voices of the communities." In fact, women are often represented by religious leaders. The same holds true for the Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act of 2005, which lacks effective implementation.

Another example of the gap between rights on paper and rights in practice is the 2009 Delhi High Court ruling that supposedly decriminalised homosexuality. Despite legal protection, rampant discrimination in health services, employment, education and housing continues virtually unabated, forcing many homosexuals into invisibility.

NGOs are also concerned about India’s non-compliance with international human rights obligations.

"India has still not ratified the convention against torture," said human rights lawyer Vrinda Grover, "and this is worrisome because torture is routinely practiced by law-enforcement agencies across the country. Its use is particularly systematic and brutal in conflict areas like the Northeast, Jammu and Kashmir and Central India. Enforced disappearances, arbitrary arrests and detentions, extrajudicial killings and sexual violence remain entrenched in these areas. India must ratify the convention against enforced disappearances," she stressed.

"India faces enormous human rights challenges," concluded Kothari, "and the second UPR offers a major opportunity to admit its shortcomings and move from a defensive to a collaborative approach with the U.N."

(END/2012)

MUDA, Nepal, May 7 (IPS) – Social activists say that attempts to rehabilitate sex workers in this former monarchy call for special efforts to uplift the Badi, a Hindu caste that has for centuries been associated with entertainment and prostitution.

Sabitri Nepali was initiated into the traditional vocation of the Badis before she turned 14. Now, at 30, she is baffled by the changes taking place in a country struggling to climb out of a feudal past and transform into a modern, democratic republic.

"My family has survived on this trade for generations. My mother was a sex worker and I continued with the family profession. It was normal for us," Sabitri tells IPS in this remote village in Kailali district, 700 km west of Kathmandu.

Badis, estimated to number 50,000, live in the western districts of Nepal but find work in the towns and cities of Nepal and neighbouring India, including Kathmandu, Mumbai and New Delhi.

Four years ago the Nepal government banned the Badis from pursuing their traditional occupation after it came under pressure from local communities fearing that that the districts where there were Badi concentrations were turning into red light areas.

But, the government made no move to implement the ban, with the result that local communities formed monitoring groups backed by vigilantes that used violent methods to compel the Badis to give up their sole means of livelihood.

"We defied the ban and continued with our traditional occupation. How could we survive without incomes? Think about our children," says Kalpana Badi,35, who like many others uses a surname that readily identifies her caste and her profession.

The word ‘badi’ is a corruption of the Sanskrit word ‘vadyabadak’, meaning one who plays a musical instrument, and suggests a degradation in the status of the caste over time.

South Asia’s rigid caste system once rigidly defined the occupation that people could engage in and Badis formed one group that has been unable find its way out of a degrading position on the social ladder. "We didn’t want to continue with prostitution but the government has failed to fulfill its promises of rehabilitation," says Bishal Nepali, husband of a Badi sex worker.

The government did announce a package that included housing, income generation activities and scholarships for Badi children, but these were never implemented.

"This has been a very frustrating process. We don’t know why the government has been so indifferent. The Badis are in a desperate situation," says Uma Badi, a prominent activist and one of a handful of college-educated Badi women.

"Most Badis are uneducated and have no farms or livestock," Uma explained.

Badis were denied citizenship rights until 2005 when the Supreme Court ordered the government to grant it to them and also extend them financial support.

According to a study published in 1992 by Thomas Cox, an anthropologist then attached to Kathmandu's Tribhuvan University, Badi girls "from early childhood, know, and generally accept the fact, that a life of prostitution awaits them."

Badi girls, the study said, do not get married and commonly bear the children of their clients.

Cox recorded that upper caste Nepali society gives little encouragement to Badi girls to pursue other professions and those among them who enter public schools are "often severely harassed by high caste students."

Two decades after Cox's study, the Badis, as members of an ‘untouchable’ Dalit (meaning broken people) caste, are still not permitted use of the village water pump or well and their situation may have worsened.

In Muda village, many Badi girls and women have fled their homes fearing the Muda Anugaman Toli Samiti (a vigilante group) whose members have been accused of beating up Badis and their clients.

Badis are not allowed to run legitimate businesses. "People fear to buy anything from my shop because they fear the villagers," says Dinesh Nepali, a Badi male who runs a small shop selling cigarettes, vegetables and soft drinks. "How can we survive like this?"

Badi activists are aware that their peculiar issue attracts the United Nations Millennium Development Goals that deal with women’s rights, education and poverty, but realise that their uplift calls for extraordinary and determined initiatives.

"A handful of non-government organisations and donor agencies have been supporting the empowerment of Badi women, but that is not sustainable. Projects come and go but only government support can provide a long-term solution," says Uma.

There were hopes that the abolition of the monarchy in favour of republican democracy, at the end of the bloody 1996-2006 civil war, would bring positive changes to the lives of the Badis, but Nepal is still coping with political instability.

"I have met three different prime ministers in the past few years," said Uma. "They promise support but forget us as soon as we head back to our villages."

In 2007, Badi activists threatened to march naked through Kathmandu to embarrass the government into implementing the court-ordered rehabilitation, but that promised nothing except more promises.

The local monitoring committees – that are backed by the vigilantes – admit that the government has failed in its promise to help the rehabilitation of the Badis.

"We are trying to help the Badi women start new dignified lives but we do admit that there are no viable alternatives," says Riddha Bhandari, a leader of Muda’s monitoring group. "The government needs to act now."

Bhandari denied that the Muda committee was out to destroy the Badis, but said there were worries over adverse influences on non-Badi girls and the possible spread of HIV/AIDS.

(END/2012)

COLOMBO, May 3 (IPS) – Krishnaveni Nakkeeran has fled the country of her birth twice and returned twice in the last two decades. The 36-year-old mother of four from the northern Jaffna peninsula in Sri Lanka first fled the bloody civil war to India when she was just 16 years old in 1990.

Her family mistakenly believed it was safe to return five years later and was forced to flee yet again in 1998. She returned again in 2010, barely a year after government forces had defeated the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) in 2009, accompanied by her family. The war may have ended, but a harsh reality awaits those like Nakkeeran, returning after years spent in India. "Life has been hard, very hard, we probably work double (here) what we did in India," she told IPS.

Tens of thousands of Sri Lankans, almost all of them from the minority Tamil community, fled to neighbouring India during the island’s three decades of civil conflict. According to the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR), there are over 100,000 Sri Lankan refugees in India, out of which roughly 68,000 live in 112 camps in the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu.

Since the war’s end in May 2009, some of these have begun to return. Last year UNHCR facilitated the return of over 1,700 refugees to the island.

This year has seen a drop of around 30 percent in the number of returning citizens; the latest figures released by the U.N. refugee agency said that 408 persons returned during the first quarter of 2012, compared to 597 during the corresponding period in 2011.

The UNHCR office in Sri Lanka has attributed the drop to the suspension of a ferry service between South India and Sri Lanka, which had allowed for cheaper passage and the chance to bring back more household material.

However, rights groups working with returnees and those still remaining in India speculate that the hard grind awaiting exiles in their old homeland might explain the reduced rate of return.

This is especially true of those returning to the Vanni, a vast swath of land in Sri Lanka’s northern province that weathered the worst excesses of the war.

"They have to start life all over again. During the years of absence, so much has changed in Sri Lanka that it is a new life in a new country that they come back to," Sinnathambi Suriyakumari, Sri Lanka's head of the Organisation for Eelam Refugee Rehabilitation (OfERR), that has worked in India and Sri Lanka since 1983, told IPS.

She added that the biggest problem for the returnees is starting from scratch. While there are programmes aimed at assisting internally displaced persons (IDPs) returning to their homes in the former war zone, there is no special programme for those returning from India.

"This is where the problem starts, these people feel as if they are returning to an alien land, especially those without extended family here," Suriyakumari said.

UNHCR's representative in Sri Lanka, Michael Zwack, told IPS that returning refugees lacked proper documentation like identity cards, land deeds and birth certificates that they lost during their flight from the country decades ago. The lack of such documentation is a serious bureaucratic hassle.

The returnees, who are given a standard reintegration grant, are faced with multiple other problems that need special attention.

"Shelter is another key challenge facing refugees returning to former conflict areas, as they need assistance with carrying out repairs or rebuilding homes that were damaged," Zwack said.

Of the roughly 100,000 houses that were destroyed during the final phase of the war, only 16,000 had been built as of February 2012 according to the latest U.N. figures, which also revealed that reconstruction commitments only extend to the building or repair of 35,000 homes.

Meanwhile, the Indian government is expected to commence building 40,000 houses in the region by mid-2012.

The displacement of thousands of families, be they IDPs or exiles in India, has created a serious land issue in the Vanni. "Many land owners in the Vanni still find it difficult to claim ownership over their property, and land issues have become a serious problem," Saroja Sivachandran, head of the Jaffna- based Centre for Women and Development, told IPS.

The problem of land and housing is worse for those returning from India, since people who fled as individuals tend to return with families in tow, according to Suriyakumari.

She said one returnee from the Jaffna district who left in the mid 1980s with five children has now returned with five full families. "All the children have their own families, and now all of them live on this tiny plot of land."

Returnees like Nakkeeran are also forced to confront the phenomenon of squatters, people who have lived on others’ land for decades.

"We don’t have our land now, we (are forced) to live with someone else on our own land," she said.

Jobs, scarce even among the 434,559 IDPs who are slowly trickling back into the Northern province, is even more pronounced among those who return from overseas.

Most of the returning refugees use a 200-dollar UNHCR resettlement grant to make ends meet. "They are free to use the money according to their own priorities to help them restart their lives, for example by purchasing household goods, a bicycle, seeds, or repairing damaged housing," Zwack said.

Despite all the obstacles, many of those who have returned and others planning to make the journey feel they have made the right choice.

"It is a land of opportunity and hope for them, that is why they come back," Suriyakumari said.

(END/2012)

A glimpse of seagrass close to the seashore of the Gulf of Mannar Marine National Park, which is home to a spectrum of marine wildlife / Malini Shankar/IPS

In coordination with the Indian Coast Guard, forest officials have recorded more than 200 cases of smuggling, accounting for the loss of over 13,000 kilogrammes of sea cucumbers (Holothurian scabra) and seahorses (Hippocampus species) in the last 16 months alone.

Illegal marine wildlife traders in India smuggle their catch to neighbouring countries like Sri Lanka and Bangladesh, where the red-flagged items become legal marine exports to other Southeast Asian countries due to exemptions in the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES).

"The seahorse found in the Gulf of Mannar Marine National Park is one of the five rarer species of seahorses," Shekhar Kumar Niraj, field director of the Gulf of Mannar Marine Biosphere Reserve, informed IPS.

In 2001, India’s stringent Wildlife Protection Act listed sea cucumbers and seahorses as ‘schedule I’, thereby making forest officials legally responsible for their protection.

Around the same time as this classification came into play, the markets for traditional Chinese medicines exploded.

A fragile ecosystem

The Gulf of Mannar Marine National Park (GOMMNP), part of the Gulf of Mannar Marine Biosphere Reserve, is an undersea reserve formed by the strip of land that once connected India to Sri Lanka. The peninsula divides the Palk Straits in the north from the Gulf of Mannar in the south.

The fragile reef ecosystem is shallow and forms the habitat for corals, crabs, clown fish, dugongs, dolphins, porpoise, prawns, parrot fish, sea cucumbers, seahorses, sea snakes, turtles, whales and a whole list of highly endangered endemic marine wildlife.

The marine diversity includes four species of shrimp, 106 species of crabs, 17 types of sea cucumbers, 466 species of molluscs, 108 species of sponges and 100 species of echinoderms.

More than 2000 species of fin fish are found in the Gulf of Mannar and seagrass is also clearly visible in the shallow sea. Prosopsis jujuba, a shrub forest species endemic to dry arid zones, "is surprisingly dominant in the mangroves and mud flats, amply justifying the protection lent to the marine national park," Sundar Kumar, the wildlife warden of the underwater reserve, told IPS.

"The hotbeds and kingpins of marine wildlife crime are in Rameshwaram, Mandapam, and Tuticorin all around the Indian coast of the GOMMNP," T. Rajendran, assistant conservator of forests for the marine reserve, told IPS.

Lose-lose deal for fisherfolk

"There is no local consumption or markets (for smuggled goods). Only the middlemen gain. These are the (people) who are connected to international crime syndicates," added Niraj. These ‘middlemen’ buy sea cucumbers from fisherfolk for about 50 dollars per kilogramme and sell them for a profit of 600 percent, at 307 dollars per kilogramme.

"Sea cucumbers have ecologically significant roles in scavenging coasts and seabeds, which in turn helps other species like corals and seagrass to flourish and propagate," Niraj explained.

"Only owners of trawler fishing boats indulge in poaching sea cucumbers, which is a double whammy for us traditional fishermen; not only is the catch depleting, but fuel prices are increasing. The additional burden of illegal poaching of marine wildlife by trawler fishermen make us suspect in the eyes of the enforcement agencies," lamented K. David, a traditional fisherman in Rameshwaram.

Field director Niraj disputes the fact that trawler fisherfolk are the only smugglers involved in this rackets, pointing to statistics of recent raids that show traditional (Dinghy) fishermen also indulging in the smuggling of sea cucumbers and seahorses.

David is convinced that traditional fishing will come to an end when his generation is "dead and gone", since youngsters like 10-year-old Vishal Selvan and 11-year-old Alan want to become merchant navy captains and Indian Administrative Service officers respectively.

In order to keep traditional fishermen from engaging with smugglers out of economic desperation, employment schemes have been put in place to guarantee the livelihoods of various fisherfolk, in the face of depleting fish stocks.

"The alternative livelihood initiatives carried out by the United Nations Development Programme-Global Environmental Facility (UNDP-GEF) through the Gulf of Mannar Marine Biosphere Reserve Trust (GoMBRT) include Palmyra mat weaving and thatch making, clown fish and other ornamental fish fattening, goat rearing, jasmine cultivation, betel leaf cultivation, salt-fish making and plaster of Paris for doll-making," V. Deepak Samuel, programme specialist at the energy and environment unit of the UNDP-GEF (GoMBRT), told IPS.

Unchecked crime

"We are as yet unable to trace the route of smuggled goods and links beyond Sri Lanka to markets in the Far East, primarily because once the goods arrive in Sri Lanka they become legal exports, blocking our investigations further," explained a wildlife crime inspector, speaking under condition of anonymity out of fear for his safety.

Patrolling the sea is all the more challenging given enforcement agencies’ meagre logistical capacity.

Led by Rajendran, the entire patrol operation includes four range forest officers, 22 foresters, 11 guards, two watchers and 33 anti-poaching camp watchers who share six jeeps, six wireless sets, two base stations, six anti-poaching camps, eight mechanised patrol boats and three speed boats between them – to patrol an area of 10,500 square kilometres or 18,900 nautical miles.

They lack night vision lamps and financial incentives. They are no match for the 25,000 well equipped trawlers that fish illegally across the whole Marine Biosphere Reserve every day.

Still, the greatest challenge is not out on the water.

"Opposition to protection of marine wildlife (and) fishes comes from even official establishments like the Central Marine Fisheries Research Institute, the Marine Products Export Development Authority and the National Institute of Oceanography – all in the name of livelihoods," Niraj said.

"Growing numbers of anthropologists propagate illusions glossing over the likely consequences that would emerge should we lose the remaining biodiversity… They quote the Convention on Biological Diversity where sustainability, right to access and benefits sharing are the guiding principles. However, sustainability that applies to economic principles may not exactly apply to ecology because of biological principles that are very different," Niraj explained.

Poaching of sea cucumbers even in the seas around the Andaman Nicobar Islands is so rampant that natives report they hardly sight sea cucumbers anymore.

*Malini Shankar is a wildlife photojournalist and filmmaker based in Bangalore.

(END/2012)

NEW DELHI, Apr 27 (IPS) – Ignoring widespread concern over the safety, efficacy and cost of pentavalent vaccines, India’s central health ministry has, this month, approved inclusion of the prophylactic cocktail in the universal immunisation programme in seven of its provinces.

Pentavalent vaccine doses, a cocktail of five antigens in a single shot, confers immunity against five paediatric diseases – diphtheria, pertussis, tetanus, hepatitis B and haemophilus influenza type b (Hib), with the last one considered particularly problematic by some experts.

Pentavalents, produced by several manufacturers and promoted by the Global Alliance on Vaccines and Immunisation (GAVI), has had a history of causing adverse reactions and deaths in India’s neighbouring countries like Bhutan, Sri Lanka and Pakistan.

In 2010, the National Technical Advisory Group on Immunisation (NTAGI), a body of experts selected by the Indian government, recommended limited introduction of pentavalents in southern Kerala and Tamil Nadu and evaluation of results over a year before extension to other states.

Pentavalents were launched in Kerala and Tamil Nadu in December 2011, but the results were not encouraging. Kerala recorded four infant deaths following vaccination, with symptoms similar to what were seen in other South Asian countries.

Public health activists in Kerala, a state with 100 percent literacy and human development indices similar to those of advanced Western countries, quickly filed a public interest litigation (PIL) in the Kerala High Court asking for intervention in having the programme called off and a return to the existing health plan.

But despite infant deaths and two pending PILs (with yet another being heard in the Delhi High Court) against pentavalents, the health ministry announced on Apr. 16 that pentavalents would be introduced in five more states – Gujarat, Haryana, Karnataka, Goa, Jammu and Kashmir and Puducherry in October.

In making the decision, the government overlooked the NTAGI, which has not even been convened since August 2010 when the body suggested limited introduction to Kerala and Tamil Nadu as the two states have good adverse event following immunisation systems.

"Going by what we have seen in the neighbouring countries and now in the state of Kerala, pentavalents can, without warning, cause children (to suffer) hypersensitivity reactions and death," Jacob Puliyel, an eminent paediatrician at St. Stephen’s hospital in New Delhi and member of the NTAGI, told IPS.

Puliyel likened the situation to penicillin sensitivity and said it bordered on criminality to be administering pentavalents without first testing a child for hypersensitivity. "Every child that is being given a dose of pentavalent vaccine is a potential victim of the adverse reaction," he said.

Puliyel was among the many eminent physicians and public health activists in India who wrote to World Health Organisation (WHO) director-general Margaret Chan on Apr. 3 asking the health body to "re-evaluate" its recommendation of pentavalent vaccines on the grounds of safety.

Another signatory, Dr Meera Shiva, an expert on pharmaceutical drugs attached to the voluntary Medico Friends Circle, told IPS that WHO had to delist a number of brands of ‘prequalified’ pentavalent vaccine, "but adverse reactions persist and we have surely not heard the last of them."

The letter to Chan, written under the aegis of the All-India Drug Action Network, an umbrella of public health activist groups, suggested that the cause of the vaccination-related deaths was likely to be "hypersensitivity reaction as described in the post mortem report on one of the children (who died) in Kerala."

"Unlike conventional drug treatments meant for the management of existing diseases, in prophylaxis with vaccines, safety is of paramount importance. Vaccines that frequently and unpredictably cause the death of healthy children cannot be recommended," the letter to Chan said.

Policy analysts specialising in vaccines said they were dismayed at the move to approve pentavalents in as many as seven of India’s states, which account for 340 million of India’s 1.2 billion people.

"Pentavalents are a test case for India’s new policy on vaccines that is in keeping with liberalisation and openly favours pharmaceutical majors at the cost of India’s public sector vaccine units," said Madhavi Yennapu, a scientist who specialises in vaccines at the central government’s National Institute of Science, Technology and Development Studies.

Twenty of India’s 23 public sector vaccination units, once the mainstay of the country’s immunisation programme, have been shut down one after another over the last four years on the grounds that the quality of their products was suspect.

Yennapu pointed to the draft National Vaccination Policy, released last year, for clues on why the government has not made any serious attempt to revive the vaccine-manufacturing units by enforcing quality standards, for instance.

The new policy demands that the "risk of manufacturing vaccines by private manufacturers must be cushioned by assistance from (the) government" and suggests that it be made mandatory for the government to support vaccine producers with advance market commitments (AMCs).

Madhavi explained that AMCs provide guaranteed markets for a vaccine even before trials are conducted, with the government committed to paying a supporting minimum price. "Even if the vaccine turns out to be less efficacious than the existing one the government must honour the AMC by buying the new vaccine at the agreed price.

"This means that AMC funds must be deposited with the World Bank ahead of vaccine delivery by countries that GAVI is supposed to be helping with the introduction of new vaccines," Madhavi told IPS. "Naturally, GAVI would be looking at large countries like India, Brazil and China to provide the AMCs."

For a country like India, what is important is to "see how many vaccines are needed to prevent how many deaths and at what cost, rather than throw out tried and tested vaccines in favour of a cocktail (pentavalent) which not only has doubtful advantages but has been shown to cause adverse reactions," Madhavi said.

According to Madhavi, there is no hard scientific evidence to show that India needs the Hib vaccine ."It is clearly piggybacking on other vaccines and the public made to pay for it."

The existing diphtheria, tetanus, pertussis (DPT) vaccine costs about 30 cents for all the doses needed to immunise a child, while immunisation with pentavalents will cost more than 10 dollars. "We need to ask ourselves if introducing the new vaccine is really worth all the public money being spent on it," Madhavi said.

(END/2012)

RAYAGADA, India, Apr 27 (IPS) – Tribal farmer Harish Saraka has rediscovered the key to sustainable farming in this rain-dependent hinterland of eastern Odisha state – mixed cropping.

Harish, 38, is careful not to take credit for helping to turn around farming in this area, in the news just a decade ago for starvation deaths. "All we are doing is returning to our grandfathers’ practices," says this member of the Kondh tribe.

Harish recalls that his forebears sowed three different seeds in the same field: millet, legume, oilseed and maybe a creeper bean.

The 72 Kondh households in Harish’s village of Munda, in Rayagada district, reside in the foothills of the Niyamgiri Hills, stretching over 250 km, that the London-based mining major Vedanta Resources Plc has been trying to exploit for its bauxite deposits.

"The environs, the climate and the forests have changed drastically," murmurs Bhima Saraka, 65, almost to himself, resting on a sagging string cot in front of the thatched house where he lives with 23 of his kinsmen.

The rains, he observes, are "regularly irregular", resulting in crop losses year after year while Kondh families have grown in numbers, putting pressure on the forests they once shared with tigers and harvested tubers and fruits.

In 2010, amidst public outrage over a spate of farmers’ suicides over poor harvests and high-interest on loans taken for farming inputs, the then agriculture minister Damodar Rout admitted that Odisha’s agriculture was in crisis, "impacted by climate change, erosion, dryness, soil acidity and falling ground water levels."

For Harish and other subsistence farmers in 70 Niyamgiri villages in Rayagada, adapting to changing conditions meant reverting to traditional farming methods such as mixed cropping, the use of organic fertilisers and trusted seed varieties.

So, while farming has been failing elsewhere in Odisha, Harish has been cultivating not three but 14 crops on his half-hectare land since the last two years – enough to see his family through the lean August-December season.

"I now harvest 300 kg of food grains, a 200 percent increase from the earlier single-crop high-yield paddy farming," says Harish.

In Kerandiguda village, Loknath Nauri, 58, is the first to try mixed farming on a portion of his one-hectare hill stream-fed land that he got under a government programme for the landless rural poor.

"Seeing my good harvest, ten other households here have decided to try their luck this year," says Nauri who is ready to share his seeds with them.

"The Kondhs’ once self-sufficient and local resource based agriculture system was affected by the introduction of commercial high-yielding paddy," says Debjeet Sarangi who heads ‘Living Farms’, a non-government organisation (NGO) that works with marginal farmers.

Bhima told IPS that a few years back Munda villagers were lured into planting high-yielding paddy seeds given free by the government along with chemical fertilizers. "The seeds were old and many did not sprout while the fertilisers demanded water and we have no source except the rains," he says.

"None got much out of this ‘free gift’ except an important lesson, that their local seeds – acclimatised to their dryland soil and more able to withstand monsoon’s unpredictability – were indeed their lifeline," says Sunamajhi Pidika, Living Farms’s local field organiser.

Sarangi said tribal communities, "who neither cultivated nor ate rice traditionally, are now trying to re-establish their food sovereignty."

‘Ailing Agricultural Productivity in Economically Fragile Region of India’ – a recent study published by the Bhopal-based Indian Institute of Soil Sciences found that the cultivation area for small millets in Odisha had declined by 500 percent over the last 40 years.

The popular perception is that the government policy is pushing in cash crops to the detriment of subsistence millet-farming practiced by communities like Bhima’s.

"The government is not coercing them, just putting intelligent choices before them," said Nitin Bhanudas Jawale, administrative head of Rayagada district.

However, in April, it was decided to procure millet and make it available at fair price outlets, so that the tribal people could go back to their traditional food, Jawale said. "The U.N. World Food Programme is collaborating with us."

"In discussions with village elders we came to know there are varieties of millets and pulses which can tolerate heat and water stress," says Sarangi.

"I have heard my grandfather talk of the 11 varieties of millet that his father cultivated," recounts 24-year-old Prasant Wadraka from Gandili village while waiting at the government’s tribal development office to collect free tin sheet roofing.

According to Wadraka, near-extinct millet varieties include one called ‘kodo’ which has medicinal properties to control diabetes. Millet is packed with protein, B-complex vitamins and minerals, nutritionists say.

"The movement in India to return to traditional seeds is growing stronger and at country inter-NGO level too we exchange seeds to supplement local communities’ seed needs," says Sarangi.

In 2008, Living Farms began a programme of giving poor families seeds on condition that after harvest the same quantity would be returned plus 10 percent ‘interest’ to be put into grain banks – simple woven bamboo baskets sealed with a clay-and cow dung daub and opened in times of need.

Just before the monsoons all the seed varieties are sowed on the same field. These are a combination of niger (an oilseed), sorghum, millet varieties like finger, foxtail, pearl, pigeon pea and horse gram along with creeper beans.

Some of these will ripen in 90 days while others will take 120 days before harvest.

According to leading Indian agro-scientist M.S. Swaminathan mixed cropping – that involves several cereals, pulses, oilseeds, vegetable and fodder crops – retards buildup of insect pests.

It is significant that tribal communities never use chemical inputs or even diesel irrigation pumps and sell their produce in the local market.

"Their products have minimum carbon footprints," Sarangi said. "In the imminent global climate crisis, we have much to learn from indigenous communities."

(END/2012)