Author: hamid

SRINAGAR: J&K government’s assertion that not a single case of child labour has been detected in Kashmir in 2016-17 has more to do with the lack of proper policy than the absence of such cases.
Experts say that thousands of child labour cases are found in Kashmir, but the existing anti-child labour laws are full of loopholes. For instance, the Department of Labour considers only those cases as child labour where a child below the 18 years of age is working under an employer.
In cases where children are working in unorganized sectors like carpet weaving, pashmina shawl making, and traditional family business, or work independently to support their families, are not included in child labour category.
A huge percentage of child labour cases, experts say, have been reported from unorganized sectors like handicrafts, where children continue to work without receiving any help from government or from any of its agencies.
“All the children (below 18) who aren’t enrolled at any educational institution amount to child labour because it is the age in which they should have been studying at schools. Though no one wishes to work as labourers at such age, but it is the bleak financial conditions that forces children and parents to do so,” says Sharif Bhat, Programme Manager, Save the Children.
Sharif said that when the government says that a child working on their own will does not amount to child labour, then the claims of “no child labour” were no surprise.
Moreover, as per the anti-child labour law, officials say, they can only act against employers where children below 14 are employed. There are no regulations for those who work on their own, or on the insistence of their families. Traditional families work is not covered under the law either.
Insiders at the department say that if at all any case of child labour is traced, the department doesn’t follow the cases itself but leaves it up to the courts.
To a request for information from labour department about the cases where trial was completed and prosecution was done in the court, officials said they had no details.
The dearth of staff to monitor child labour is another challenge faced by the department. The department has 12 labour inspectors for all the ten districts of the valley which, officials say, is very little for “such tiresome work”.
A labour inspector, wishing anonymity, said that he has been assigned to overlook an entire district. “It is not possible for me to inspect each and every place in a district with other official engagements on my schedule as well. There is probability that we may miss child labour cases somewhere,” the inspector said.
Experts say, majority of children working as labourers are in sectors like handicrafts, carpet weaving, shawl weaving, agricultural activities, brick kilns and other traditional works of families.
“Rather than turning blind eye towards the existing and growing menace, government should come up with policies where root cause of the menace of child labour is addressed. Challenging employers or asking children not to work when they struggle to even manage two meals a day is not a solution. There should be a policy where these children would get handsome economic benefits besides training and basic education,” says Bhat of Save the Children.
In inspections carried out at 90 different locations across the Kashmir in 2016-17, the labour department has said that they have found not a single case of child labour.
An independent survey ‘Child labour in Jammu and Kashmir-Social, Economical and Ethical dimension’ conducted by a Prof Fayaz Ahmed Nikka, puts the figures of children in labour at a staggering 2.50 lakh in Jammu and Kashmir. The 2001 census report also points out that as many as 1,75,000 children were working as labourers in Jammu and Kashmir.
Back in 1996, a Government of India (GoI) sponsored scheme – National Child Labour Project (NCLP) – was launched with an aim to control and curb the menace of growing child labour in Jammu & Kashmir.
Under this scheme, the Labour Department was supposed to provide a monthly stipend of Rs 150 to the children besides giving them basic education and vocational training. Around 11 Child Labour special schools in areas like Parimpora, Foreshore road, Kursoo Rajbagh and Habak of Srinagar were established. Scores of children, who were earlier recovered from different workplaces, are studying in these schools.
However, the willingness of children to work as labourers limits the impact of the scheme.
“They don’t work to support their own needs but that of family. They need stipends to get rid of burden of supporting family,” said a department insider.
How serious are the efforts put in by the labour department to eradicate the menace can be gauged by the fact that not a single holistic survey has been conducted so far to ascertain the quantum of child labour in Kashmir. Moreover, there is no proper data management of cases detected during the inspection or the cases in which the department filed challans in courts.
Admitting there was a lack of comprehensive anti-child labour policy, assistant labour commissioner Srinagar, Malik Tanveer told Kashmir Reader that there are family compulsions and bleak financial conditions of families that force parents to send their children to work as labourers.
“In that context, rehabilitating the children from very poor background holds no rational arguments because, they (children) are willingly working at establishments to support their family. Ideally there should have been a mechanism where these special cases could have been identified and a handsome stipend besides education and training would be provided to them. Only then, we could succeed in our objective,” Tanveer said.
“We don’t consider that as a child labour if someone (below the fourteen years of age) works independently to earn few pennies,” he said. Asked if these cases form a huge percentage in Srinagar and elsewhere in valley, he says there are no provisions for the case like them.
“There is need to have some provisions where we could address these cases as well but then it lies with policy makers to ponder over it,” he said.
On many occasions, he says, inspectors of labour department received backlash from the employers as well as from those who employ the children because there are no laid down guidelines that gives us powers to a strong action.
“Whenever our inspection team visits any establishment where they believe child labourers are employed, to escape government action, the children deny they are working there or if at all, they are caught red handed then they show manipulated birth certificates or manage to bring birth certificates documents signed from doctors to our inspectors. That leaves our inspection teams helpless,” he says.

Courtesy: Kashmir Reader

Barkha Dutt 

“The United States does not recognize our countries as great powers.” Chairman Mao Zedong, the Communist revolutionary and the founding father of the People’s Republic of China, said this to Jawaharlal Nehru, India’s first prime minister, in 1954. The two leaders met in Beijing and bonded over a shared sentiment of anti-imperialism. “The ruler that the United States uses to measure other countries will no longer be useful in the future,” Nehru agreed with Mao, according to archives now declassified and released by the Wilson Center. “In addition to money there are other factors, the human factor is the most important,” he said idealistically; “ … our two countries should play more important roles in Asia. In any case, the population of our two countries reaches one billion. This will lead to immense influence.”

More than six decades later, between them, China and India make up 36 percent of the world’s population and are the globe’s fastest-growing economies, with a recent report placing India ahead. Nehru was prescient about the influence they would wield — he coined the phrase “Hindi-Chini bhai bhai” (the Indians and Chinese are brothers) — but absolutely misjudged their imagined partnership. His naiveté about China resulted in a war in 1962 that caught India off guard. This year, as Chinese and Indian soldiers stand eyeball to eyeball in the Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan in a month-long standoff, the state-run Chinese media has threatened India that “it will suffer greater losses than in 1962.”

But, as Indian Defense Minister Arun Jaitley said, “India of 2017 is very different” from the India of 1962. India has refused to kowtow to China’s entitled assumptions about a hegemonic control of Asia.

At the epicenter of the growing crisis is the Doklam plateau, which sits at the tri-junction of India, China and Bhutan, near the northeastern Indian state of Sikkim. In June, the Bhutanese army objected to the Chinese constructing a road in territory that it says is within its sovereignty. It asked the Indian military for help to resist the Chinese aggression, and Indian troops moved into the construction area in Bhutan. India says China has violated an agreed-upon status quo and is in violation of a 2012 boundary agreement. Beijing has referenced a much earlier colonial treaty signed between Great Britain and China. The Indian military maintains a permanent training presence in Bhutan; its current king was a graduate of the National Defense College in Delhi. China, for its part, has for years wanted full diplomatic ties with Bhutan.

But still, Bhutan may simply be a decoy for a bigger play: Who will lead Asia?

“The larger battle is essentially about strategic competition for geopolitical space and influence in Asia between India and China,” said Nirupama Rao, who served as India’s ambassador to China and retired as the government’s top-ranking diplomatic official. “The gauntlet thrown is not directed against Bhutan, but against India,” she told me in an interview.  The entire Indo-Pacific region is now the gladiatorial ring where a global joust is unfolding, pulling in countries well beyond Bhutan. The United States, India and Japan just completed trilateral naval exercises amid reports of Chinese submarine presence in the Indian Ocean region.

Tibet — and India’s support for the Dalai Lama — has been another flashpoint; as China sulked, India allowed the Buddhist leader, who has championed independence for Tibet, to visit Tawang in the eastern Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh, which China claims to have rights over.

Regional provocation is also spinning along the Sino-Pakistan axis. China has regularly blocked action at the United Nations against Pakistan-based terrorist groups. China’s ambitious “one belt, one road” initiative passes through territory that India regards as sovereign, angering New Delhi. Beijing has used the Sikkim-Bhutan standoff to threaten India on possible interference in the Kashmir Valley, in support of Pakistan.

Many Indians believe that infrastructure, power projects, highways in Pakistan are the instruments of Chinese neo-colonialism. Beijing’s protectorate over Pakistan, Islamabad, is now seen as a virtual colony of China, locked into inescapable dependence.

Yet, despite the Indian military chief asserting his readiness for a “two-and-a-half-front war” (a reference to Pakistan, China and internal threats), some believe that Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s observation that India and China have not fired a single bullet in 40 years will remain true. India is China’s largest trading partner; a sixth of India’s imports are now Chinese. “China is no monolith,” said Alok Bansal with the India Foundation, a think tank linked to the government. “We have to look at the subterranean currents; Chinese society today is extremely driven by commercial interests. I don’t think the people there want conflict with India. Indian soft power has also made its own ingress.” Bansal said that what really bothers the Chinese is India’s growing proximity to the United States and points out that any maleficent aggression will achieve precisely that.

There are also murmurs in strategic circles about overdependence on Washington. “If ever there was a war with China, America would never come to our rescue,” one government official said. India’s road to equality with China may eventually route itself not through Washington or the West, but through the East; Modi has invested energy in building relationships with Japan, Vietnam and South Korea, all of whom are suspicious of China.

Amid current fears of a second Sino-Indian battle between two nuclear-armed giants of Asia, the only denouement can be a mutual withdrawal of soldiers from the contested Bhutan region. Anything else could be cataclysmic.

Courtesy: Washington Post

Jammu: The government has rejected any likelihood of talks with separatists or other fundamental groups in the Valley unless the level of terrorism and violence comes down substantially.“Already some attempts were made to reach out to separatists and other fundamental groups but they shut their doors to the delegations from the Centre. Besides, there is a clear message from the Centre that unless the Valley returns to normal, the government will not take any initiative for talks,” said Deputy Chief Minister Nirmal Singh talking to The Tribune.He said the time was not opportune as well as atmosphere not conducive to take any step for dialogue. Admitting that the scenario in the Valley was steadily changing, Nirmal Singh said people were trying to come out of the “false consciousnesses” created over the years by the forces inimical to peace and stability in the region.On the frequent killing of soldiers on the border as well as while battling insurgency in the Valley, the Deputy Chief Minister expressed anguish.“The unfortunate killings like those of Lt Ummar Fayaz, Naik Mudasser Ahmed, Lance Naik Mohammad Naseer and DSP Mohammed Ayub Pandith are highly condemnable. But these have also started alienating people of Kashmir from the separatist propaganda and radicalisation supported by the Hurriyat and its mentor,” said Nirmal Singh.When asked why the BJP had not given a serious thought to scrapping Article 370, which has been the greatest impediment for the state’s total integration with India, the Deputy Chief Minister said the issue was under consideration and needed a constitutional amendment.“Since it would be a constitutional amendment, the Bill would have to be passed by both Houses of Parliament with two-thirds majority and has to be signed by the President,” said Nirmal Singh, adding that first it would have to be passed by the “constituent Assembly” of J&K before it is sent to Parliament.

Srinagar: Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti has said dialogue or engagement should not be confused with appeasement as the exercise is for reconciliation. In an interview with The Hindu, first since the attack on Amarnath yatris, she said the widespread condemnation of the attacks showed Kashmiriyat is still most important for Kashmir, and advocated restarting the dialogue with separatists.

“As soon as one says the word dialogue, electronic media and others say you are appeasing the separatists, appeasing the other side. Dialogue is engagement for reconciliation,” Mehbooba said.

On media’s portrayal of Kashmir, the CM said, “The electronic media is powerful and its images have an impact. We see on TV 24X7 only the same images of a dozen odd young boys with their faces covered, pelting stones. This also encourages the stone pelters, as they see that gets them attention. Kashmiris feel offended by the debates on TV that pits India against Pakistan and paints Kashmiris badly, and that adds to their alienation. Even if the intention of the media may be good, but not understanding the situation on ground, they tend to get carried away.”

When asked several districts becoming no-go areas for Central security forces, particularly her own area of South Kashmir, she said, “This is a false idea. Of course we are going there, maybe Ministers aren’t visiting as much, but our workers are there. But if you follow national electronic media, you would think every part of Kashmir is like that. I don’t think it should be shut down, but someone needs to explain to them that they are not helping the country in anyway with these aggressive debates and putting Kashmiri youth in a bad light. I was really shocked when I heard someone asking “Why do Kashmiris have pink cheeks” and raising questions about their ancestry. It can’t get worse than that.”

On her China statement, Mehbooba explained, “Whenever there is an external threat, whether it is from Pakistan or from China, or any other country, the whole country gets together like, in the current standoff, all the Opposition parties met and assured the government that they are behind them. Kashmir is the place where everything is centred — first it was Pakistan, and now with China too, when they find nothing else worked in the [Doklam situation], they have picked up the Kashmir stick to beat India with. My point is, in the rest of the country this is seen as a national threat, where everyone is united. But when it happens in Jammu and Kashmir, it becomes the State government’s fault. As if there is no external factor, no infiltration, no problem other than a law and order one. How can you ignore that there has been a problem in J&K for 70 years? Everyday our security forces and civilians are sacrificing lives, why not see that?”

To a question whether PDP’s standing in the Valley has suffered because of the alliance, she answered, “When you have a larger objective in mind, which my father did, he put everything at stake: his leadership, credibility, the party he worked so hard to build, all because he wanted to bring the State out of the mess of so many years. He thought that Mr. Modi, with such a huge mandate, was the one person who could follow in the footsteps of Mr. Vajpayee, and create again that magic of 2002. I think Mr. Modi has tried all around, he even went to Lahore, but unfortunately it wasn’t reciprocated in the same manner. And I have to do the same.”

Asked about transfer of power projects, AFSPA, Kashmiri Pandits and West Pakistan refugees, the CM said, “Unfortunately our government didn’t have time to stabilise. It was hardly three months before all hell broke loose [with Burhan Wani killing]. With this situation and the violence, it became more difficult to identify places for example, for Kashmiri Pandits to move back to. Again, we have discussed the transfer of power projects: it will give Kashmiris a real sense of achievement about the alliance, but it is taking time to persuade people in Delhi. We will hand over more transit accommodation in the next 2-3 months. The Pandits have said they would prefer to live in the locality they are already living in. We will also build new colonies that will be mixed, with all faiths, and presently two-three families share one flat.”

On allegation of nepotism in the government, her younger brother, despite not elected, nor being part of the government, but seemingly wielding a lot of power in the civil secretariat, Mehbooba said, “He is not in the civil secretariat. If he has ever set foot there, I would put in my papers. He is an internationally acclaimed cinematographer. Yes he is a coordinator in the Chief Minister’s grievances cell, and deals with people who have problems, and maybe he ruffles some feathers when he asks for action to be taken. He works without a salary, but he is very attached to Kashmir and cares about environmental and public issues. It’s too early to say what his future role will be, we don’t even know when the Anantnag election will be held [that he is the PDP candidate for].” 

(COURTESY THE HINDU)

Srinagar: The Government has clarified that all private and government schools will reopen after a short summer break of ten days from tomorrow (Monday).
Talking to KNS Secretary to Government School Education Department Farooq Ahmad Shah said there would be no extension at any level in the summer break announced for government and private schools ending today.
The speculations about any extension in the short summer break of ten days ending today (Sunday) are totally baseless and all government and private schools will reopen from tomorrow. (KNS)

 NEW DELHI: Congress today lauded the youth of Banihal and Army, local administration for their efforts and hard-work in saving many lives in the bus accident of Amarnath Yatris at Ramsu Banihal. At least 16 Amarnath pilgrims were killed and over 30 injured when a bus skidded off the Jammu-Srinagar national highway and rolled down into a deep gorge in Ramban district of Jammu and Kashmir on Sunday. Senior Congress leader & Secretary Salman Nizami said “Locals rush to rescue Amarnath Yatri’s putting own life at risk. Humanity has no religion. It bridges the gaps of religion. We salute their efforts and hard work. Nizami said “Had the Army, JK Police & local youth – not helped, the death toll could have been much more. I want to thank these youth, who were not paid salaries, but who, on their own saved many people,” he said.

Chinese Media Say No Room For Negotiations on Doklam

New Delhi: Firing a fresh salvo against India over the ongoing standoff at the Sikkim border, China on Saturday said there is ‘no room’ for negotiations and the only solution is the withdrawal of Indian troops from the Donglang or Doklam region.

India will face “embarrassment” if it does not withdraw its border troops to its own side and the situation could get “worse”,  the official Xinhua news agency said in a commentary on Saturday night.

The remarks, made by Chinese state media, comes days after New Delhi said it is using diplomatic channels to resolve the issue with Beijing in a ‘peaceful manner’.

Xinhua warned India of major consequences if its troops are not withdrawn from the territory of Doklam. “If the trespassers of India do not backout unconditionally, the situation would get worse,” it said, further warning New Delhi of suffering an “embarrassment” if the Indian forces choose to continue to remain at standoff.

“India has repeatedly ignored China’s call for pulling its border-crossing troops from Doklam area back to its own territory. However, turning a deaf ear to China will but worsen the month-long standoff and put itself further into embarrassment,” the commentary added.

The statements issued through Xinhua, experts say, should be considered as the official policy line of Beijing, as the publication is controlled by the all-powerful Communist Party of China (CPC).

Significantly the commentary also referred to Ladakh region and linked it to Pakistan, China’s “iron brother” ally.

“India should not regard the existing situation as the same as or even similar to the previous two standoffs in 2013 and 2014 near Ladakh, a disputed area between China, Pakistan and India in southeastern Kashmir.Diplomatic efforts led the troop’s frictions there to a well-arranged end. But this time it is a totally different case,” it added.

The commentary, apart from warning India of repelling from Doklam, also accused New Delhi of spreading false propaganda against China. Rubbishing the Indian claims of acting on behalf of Bhutan in the disputed region, Xinhua opined that New Delhi is attempting to undermine the sovereignty of Thimphu.

It alleged that Bhutan “never sought India’s intervention” in the territorial dispute with China over Doklam, referred to as Donglang by Beijing. Accusing India of “lying” before the world, the Chinese government’s mouthpiece read, “New Delhi claimed encroachment of its own territory by China before saying it sent troops to ’protect’ its ‘ally’ Bhutan, a sovereign state which has apparently so far made no such an invitation for the sake of that boundary area.”

The standoff at Sikkim erupted in mid-June, after the Indian forces prevented the road construction party of China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) from entering Doklam, lying at the tri-juncture of India, China and Bhutan.