Two thirds of all Indian people I know have been abused

This Valentine's Day, before we express our love to the significant people in our lives, lets remember that several hundred million people around the world are probably unable to enjoy love as much as the rest of us can, or be intimate with their partners without being affected by trauma that persists from their childhood.

To draw an analogy, yes, when we were young our parents asked us to finish the food on our plate because children were starving in poor parts of the world (and they still are). I haven't seen this in many other parts of the world, but in most parts of India, ostentatiousness is looked down upon when there is so much exposure to extreme poverty everyday. So just as we must respect other people's hunger and poverty, so must we respect the inability of many people to love, be loved and be happy.

Am I being overly dramatic? Well I wish I was.

Consider this: India has 19% of the world's children. Yes, 19%. One in five. And over half of them - 50%, have been and continue to be sexually abused. This according to a UN study in partnership with the Indian government conducted in 2007.

What does that mean? Even if there was no child sex abuse in other parts of the world and remained only in India, such figures mean that one in every 10 children in the whole world would have been sexually abused. The actual figure though, is much higher. There is probably more abuse in your country than you imagine. And these things don't happen to 'other people'. There is probably evidence of some sexual abuse in your extended family. People you know still struggle with it and find it difficult to come to terms with it.

And for Indians under the misconception that this only happens in rural parts of India, well, I am from a fairly elite background and there are several people I know and mix with, who were sexually abused. These are people who have come out in the open - many more lie quiet, too traumatised by their childhoods to ever speak about it again.

What better way then, for those of us who are fortunate enough to have led relatively happier childhoods, to give a little money to a charity that helps such children. They only need $12K (although if you're a millionaire and want to donate more, please do)  - a small drop comapred to what is needed, but hey, its not so difficult to make a start. Your $20 will go a long way.

Here's a repost from 12Kfor12K

After the original charity encountered some last-minute problems, we are delighted to announce the charity the 12for12k Challenge will be supporting in February.

Stop the Silence is an amazing charity that is doing some incredibly difficult and heartbreaking work - dealing with the sexual abuse of children.

DONATE HERE

Across the world, 150 million girls and 73 million boys are subjected to forced sexual intercourse and other forms of sexual violence (WHO, 2002). In the U.S. at least one out of four girls and one out of seven boys are sexually abused by 18 years old. Nearly 50 percent of all sexual assaults are against girls aged 15 or younger. There are an estimated 60-80 million survivors of CSA in the U.S. alone.

Life outcomes often include poor school performance, depression, psychosis, promiscuity, teen pregnancy, prostitution, drug abuse, sexually transmitted infections (STIs) including HIV, homelessness, suicide and homicide, and chronic disease. Between doctors, lawyers, social service workers and many others, it costs the U.S. billions of dollars each year to address the aftermath of the abuse - it needs to be prevented, and treated correctly if it happens.

The Mission of Stop the Silence is to expose and stop child sexual abuse and help survivors heal worldwide. The charity’s overarching goals are to:

1) help stop child sexual abuse (CSA) and related forms of violence;
2) promote healing of victims and survivors;
3) celebrate the lives of those healed.

Through their work, Stop the Silence aims to address the relationships between child sexual abuse and the broader issues of overall family and community violence, and violence within and between communities.

While the popular belief is that sexual abuse is carried out by strangers who lure their child victims, the majority is actually carried out by people in positions of trust. Family; friends of the family; teachers; community leaders and more. This leaves the child feeling as if they’re to blame - why else would someone they trust abuse them in this way?

While our original charity for February was going to be an animal-based one, the 12for12k Challenge believes strongly in what Stop the Silence is trying to achieve. We hope you do too, and help us raise much-needed funds for this inspiring cause.

DONATE HERE

• Note: When using the ChipIn widget to make your donation, the email on the front page will be the main 12for12k Charities one. However, your payment does go directly to Stop the Silence and your PayPal or Credit Card receipt will show this.

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Related posts:

1. The First Charity for the 12for12k Challenge
2. Total Raised for January
3. PayPal Option Now Available

Calling all Pakistanis

I'm no admirer of Thomas Friedman, but he does have a way of dramatizing situations with simplified analogies. Whether its 'The World is Flat' or 'Calling all Pakistanis', as in this article.

After all, if 10 young Indians from a splinter wing of the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party traveled by boat to Pakistan, shot up two hotels in Karachi and the central train station, killed at least 173 people, and then, for good measure, murdered the imam and his wife at a Saudi-financed mosque while they were cradling their 2-year-old son — purely because they were Sunni Muslims — where would we be today? The entire Muslim world would be aflame and in the streets.

Is this the reaction we're seeing from India today? Have we all gone back to being Buddhists?

"We had people who died being shot through bulletproof vests"

Ratan Tata, one of India's most successful businessmen and chairman of the Tata group, which owns the Taj Palace hotel in Mumbai, said in his interview to CNN:

"We were getting the cooperation that they could give us, but the infrastructure was woefully poor". 

As an example, Tata said it took three hours for firefighters to get water to the Taj after a blaze broke out in the oldest part of the building. 

Tata said that not even the army or commandoes who ultimately took over the offensive were prepared for the level of organization and execution that the attackers seemed to have put into their plan. 

"We had people who died being shot through bulletproof vests," he added.

Disgusting, but completely unsurprising. 

In addition to this general lack of safety and response measures, as the Jerusalem Post reports,

"In hostage situations, the first thing the forces are supposed to do is assemble at the scene and begin collecting intelligence," said a former official in the Shin Bet's security unit. "In this case, it appears that the forces showed up at the scene and immediately began exchanging fire with the terrorists instead of first taking control of the area."

This was clearly not the case. The area was never brought under control, not just leaving those in the vicinity in danger, but allowing drunk, bigoted men to openly molest Sara Sidner, a CNN reporter. (If video link below is not working, click here)

It is disgusting that even in the face of what was probably the worst terrorist attack in recent times, that it is considered acceptable for men to harass women on a daily basis and as can be seen in this video, that onlookers are clearly not bothered.

Europe in 2012

It has been a surprising year of sorts. Today’s resolution of creating a new pan-Eurasian free trade area is an important and key step that will shape the future for years to come. It is not, however, the significance of the single largest free trade area ever created, it is in fact, the agreement between the EU and several Asian countries, of creating and sharing resource and knowledge pools. This will enable, for the first time in history, largely free movement of highly skilled workers between China on the East, and Great Britain to the west. Today’s agreement not only enables smooth merchandise trade between India, China, the Baltic countries and the EU, but also is the first concrete step taken by such a large group of countries to address talent shortage in several knowledge-intensive industries.

That Russia is not a formal signatory of this agreement is unimportant as it already has FTA’s in place with both China and India and therefore presents only a small administrative hurdle to overall integration. It is clear that Putin is aiming at further re-election of his party by feeding on the renewed nationalist movement in Russia this week after further acerbic criticism directed at Poland for allowing the United States to install missile defence positions.

With the establishment of this cooperation zone, members of the WTO are also probably breathing a sigh of relief as the long drawn argument between Europe, the US and developing countries on the issue of agricultural subsidies is finally drawing to a close. With Europe agreeing to reduce agricultural subsidies to 20% of their current level by 2020 and with Brazil, India and Egypt agreeing to open up their markets to agricultural imports the pressure has now shifted to the US, which is under pressure from the world community to follow suit.

The increasing rift between the US and the rest of the world does not show signs of abating in the near future. With European-led UN peacekeeping forces expected soon in Iraq, anti-American opinion is expected to further rise as more evidence of American mismanagement comes to light.

What does all this, however, mean for Europe? We are now in 2012, a year when Germany is overshadowed by China as the largest exporter in the world, but when Ukraine and Turkey have been given conditional approval to join the EU. When Poland’s agricultural industry is facing the prospect of a shutdown but when the Bank of England is in talks with the ECB to discuss Britain’s accession to the Euro zone. Conflicting signals, but hopefully there exists a common cure and Europe perhaps, has already taken that first crucial step.

The path that Europe takes over the next few years, will be the key driver to how it utilizes this new cooperation area and achieves its vision of the Lisbon Agenda of 2005. That vision, a surprising foresight for the leaders of that time, established clearly that Europe’s future lies in niche services, high value brands and increased knowledge management. Leveraging this low volume-high variety service offering with Asia’s mass production and service industries, is expected to add 1% to each countries’ annual GDP growth – an immense figure considering France only grew 0.8% last year.

The free movement of high skilled labour, is going to address the demographic issue partly, but it is intended more so, as a policy targeting the sudden slowdown of several service industries in Europe because of a lack of suitable talent. It is no wonder that the financial centres of Shanghai and Singapore have grown 30% year on year when London is facing the prospect of a decline.

The future then, seems bright and clear, for a stronger Europe that is more integrated with Asia, the biggest driver of global growth today. Coupled with the ongoing process of further internal European integration and the new members, it seems that Europe has finally awoken out of its slumber and is ready to challenge other developed parts of the world into doing the same.

This is an imaginative article (and in my mind, quite an impossible scenario) I wrote earlier this year during the Cass MBA (yes, I've just graduated).

A "politically correct" map of India

So, I was wondering, without being Indian right-wing, that there is surely a need for a map of India that depicts its boundaries as Indians see it. Of course, this belief differs from the ground reality in that Pakistan controls a large part of Kashmir, China occupies Aksai Chin and also lays claim to Arunachal Pradesh, parts of Uttarakhand and Himachal Pradesh.

There is a need for an 'Indian' version of India's map though. There have been times when I have presented to an Indian audience and I have been forced to use the only map available on Wikimedia Commons. So I thought I should sit down and create an SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics) map of India with the 'politically correct' borders. Hopefully this will help many of us who require a map of India that does not offend Indian sensibilities.

Here is a link to the full scale PNG version (can be opened in most image editors) and also an SVG version for the more technically minded. These maps are released in the public domain and may be used for any purpose, edited and redistributed.

To my knowledge this is the only version of the 'Indian' map in these formats. If you know of other versions please let me know and I'll link back to those sites as well.

Thumbnail image of my map below.



Note that this is an edit of the version on Wikimedia that depicts disputed and occupied areas on the map as well. That version remains the one I support as it depicts ground realities and for that reason I am not endeavoring for this map to replace that version.

Here's how my version of the map (left) compares with the one currently on Wikimedia (right).

The Long India Drive

So I guess it would be interesting to begin with a trip map for what I call the Long India Drive, that I took with a British friend in 2003. Over a period of 3 weeks, we drove from Delhi, up on to the edge of Ladakh, then down south through Rajasthan, Gujarat, Maharashtra, Karnataka and Kerala. 

View Larger Map

Since my friend ran out of time, we decided to make a quick return to Bangalore from where he took the train back to Delhi and a flight back to London. I continued however and traveled to various places in South India, so much so, that by the time the first edition of '52 weekend breaks from Bangalore' was published, I'd already covered most potential 'weekend' destinations.

Anyway, driving is fun, and more so in India. The landscapes you cross, the different people you see, and things you stumble upon, are just too varied and too exciting to miss. There has not been a single day when I have driven through any part of India and not seen something totally strange and thought to myself, wtf!

I've seen a man walk a bear on a leash, had the most wonderful chilli pakoras on what I consider an inspiring stretch of road, seen two synchronized cyclists balance a room sized piece of plywood on their heads, seen a truck so full of hay it covered the entire road, but most of all, I've seen the India I always wanted to see. Not the poor India, or the rich India, but the quiet, peaceful and dramatic India.