India Republic Day: Largest Democracy Tops World Slavery Charts

India, often described as the world's largest democracy, is home of 18.3 million slaves, the highest number of people trapped in modern slavery anywhere in the world, according to Global Slavery Index 2016 report.

Global Slavery Chart

The report says ten countries with the largest estimated absolute numbers of people in modern slavery include some of the world’s most populous countries: India, China, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Uzbekistan, North Korea, Russia, Nigeria, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Indonesia.

In terms of percentages, North Korea (4.37%) tops the slavery list followed by Uzbekistan (3.97%), Cambodia (1.6%), India (1.4%), Qatar (1.3%), Pakistan (1.1%), Democratic Republic of the Congo (1.1%), Sudan (1.1%), Iraq (1.1%), Afghanistan (1.1%) and Yemen (1.1%).

The Global Slavery Index defines modern slavery as a situation where “a person cannot refuse or leave because of threats, violence, coercion, abuse of power or deception, with treatment akin to a farm animal.” Others in the category of modern slavery include victims of human trafficking, forced labor, debt bondage, forced or servile marriage, and the sale and exploitation of children.

In addition to the 18.3 million slaves in India, there are hundreds of millions of Indians trapped in abject poverty in one of the most unequal societies in the world today.  Depth of deprivation in India can best be judged by Multi-dimensional Poverty Index (MPI) that comprehends 10 indicators, with equal weighting for education, health and living standards. Indian farmers are among the worst affected with a farmer committing suicide every 30 minutes. An OXFAM report on inequality released by the World Economic Forum 2017 at Davos, Switzerland, said the richest 1% of Indians own 58% of the country's wealth.

In spite of India's serious socioeconomic problems of slavery and poverty, the country now boats the world's third largest military budget. India's leader Prime Minister Narendra Modi is flexing his nation's military muscles with nuclear missiles, fighter jets, attack submarines and helicopters on Republic Day celebration in New Delhi today.

While India ranks 3rd in the world in military spending, it spends just 0.72% of GDP on social safety net,  ranking lower than its neighbors Pakistan (1.89%) and Bangladesh (1.09%), according to the World Bank.

In the new Trumpian world of "alternative facts", India stands out as a leader in "post-truth" era described by Indian writer Ranjit Goswami, Vice Chancellor of RK University in Gujarat, India. Here's an excerpt of what he recently wrote in "The Conversation" journal:


"....as the US and UK wake up to this new (post-truth) era, it’s worth noting that the world’s largest democracy (India) has been living in a post-truth world for years. From education to health care and the economy, particularly its slavish obsession with GDP, India can be considered a world leader in post-truth politics. India’s post-truth era cannot be traced to a single year – its complexities go back generations. But the election of Narendra Modi in 2014 can be marked as a significant inflection point. Ever since, the country has existed under majoritarian rule with widely reported discrimination against minorities. India’s version of post-truth is different to its Western counterparts due to the country’s socioeconomic status; its per capita nominal income is less than 3% of that of the US (or 4% of that of the UK). Still, post-truth is everywhere in India. It can be seen in our booming Wall Street but failing main streets, our teacher-less schools and our infrastructure-less villages. We have the ability to influence the world without enjoying good governance or a basic living conditions for so many at home. Modi’s government has shown how key decisions can be completely divorced from the everyday lives of Indian citizens, but spun to seem like they have been made for their benefit. Nowhere is this more evident than with India’s latest demonetization drive, which plunged the country into crisis, against the advice of its central bank, and hit poorest people the hardest. Despite the levels of extreme poverty in India, when it comes to social development, the cult of growth dominates over the development agenda, a trend that Modi has exacerbated, but that started with past governments. The dichotomy of India’s current post-truth experience was nicely summed up by Arun Shourie, an influential former minister from Modi’s own party. He disagrees with the prime minister, just as many Republicans share sharp differences of opinion with President Trump. Shourie said the policies of the current administration were equal to his predecessors’ policies, plus a cow."

https://youtu.be/OzdGIgV7edE




Related Links:

Haq's Musings

Inequality in India and Pakistan

India's Military Budget is World's 3rd Biggest 

Modi's Demonetization Disaster

India Home to World's Largest Population of Poor, Hungry and Illiterates

Abject Poverty in India

Grinding Poverty in Resurgent India

Farmer Suicides Continue Unabated in India

Feudal Slavery Survives in South Asia

The return of democracy in Pakistan last year has once again put feudal political elite firmly in charge of the nation's affairs. Both major parties, the PPP and the PML, are heavily dominated by the country's biggest landowners, who are reliability voted into power by their poor landless peasants making up the majority of the electorate in Pakistan.

British writer William Dalrymple has accurately described the politics in Pakistan as follows: "There is a fundamental flaw in Pakistan's political system. Democracy has never thrived here, at least in part because landowning remains almost the only social base from which politicians can emerge. In general, the educated middle class - which in India seized control in 1947, emasculating the power of its landowners - is in Pakistan still largely excluded from the political process. As a result, in many of the more backward parts of Pakistan the local feudal zamindar can expect his people to vote for his chosen candidate. Such loyalty can be enforced. Many of the biggest zamindars have private prisons and most have private armies."

The Pakistani landlord's "private prisons" came in sharp focus recently with the news of 170 peasants being held against their will by Sindhi landowners, in violation of the court orders.

Responding to questions about the situation during US Secretary of State Hilary Clinton's recent visit, Luis CdeBaca, President Obama's ambassador-at-large to monitor and combat trafficking in persons, told Time magazine, "we are exploring ways we can help Pakistan to confront the scourge of captive workers, to deliver freedom for these workers and realize the promise of Pakistan's 1992 emancipation law."


In his recent column in the New York Times, Nicholas Kristoff argued that the feudal systems remains the biggest obstacle to reform in Pakistan. Addressing those who have not been to Pakistan, Kristoff explains that they "should know that in remote areas you periodically run into vast estates — comparable to medieval Europe — in which the landowner runs the town, perhaps operates a private prison in which enemies are placed, and sometimes pretty much enslaves local people through debt bondage, generation after generation. This feudal elite has migrated into politics, where it exerts huge influence. And just as the heartlessness of feudal and capitalist barons in the 19th century created space for Communists, so in Pakistan this same lack of compassion for ordinary people seems to create space for Islamic extremists. There are other answers, of course, such as education, civil society, and the lawyers’ movement. But I wonder if land reform wouldn’t be a big help."

There have been rare instances when media attention and public pressure have compelled the government to free haaris from private prisons. In April this year, a private TV channel GeoTV reported that police freed 14 people including 8 children and 4 women from the private prison of a landlord in Faiz Muhammad Brohi Goth in Gadap Town near Karachi.

Though Pakistan has been in the news lately for its continuing practice of slavery, it is not alone. Bonded labor in South Asia is considered the problem in modern slavery affecting millions of people. The UN believes 20 million people are enslaved worldwide, the majority of whom are in South Asia, according to a BBC report.

A recent report by US State Department for 2009 said that “India is a source, destination, and transit country for men, women, and children trafficked for the purposes of forced labor and commercial sexual exploitation.”

India is listed with 52 countries on the watch list of nations that have failed to meet the minimum standards against human trafficking but are making efforts to do so. The blacklisted countries are subject to US sanctions if they don’t make greater efforts to fight trafficking.

The Philippines, Cambodia, Bangladesh and Pakistan have recently been added to the U.S. “watch list” because of what the report calls a worsening trafficking record in those countries.

“This is modern slavery. A crime that spans the globe, providing ruthless employers with endless supply of people to abuse for financial gain,” Secretary Clinton said as she released the report.

For the first time, India, China, Russia, Sri Lanka and Egypt and other countries that have been on the on Tier 2 watch list for two years, face the prospect of being automatically moved to the Tier 3 blacklist next year without a presidential waiver if they fail improve their trafficking record, the State Department said.

A 2004 study by the International Labor Office (ILO) estimated that there are up to a million haari families in Sindh alone, the majority living in conditions of debt bondage, which the U.N. defines as modern-day slavery. Last fall, Pakistan's Daily Times newspaper quoted the labor minister of neighboring Punjab province as saying that landlords hold millions of forced laborers in "private prisons" across the country.

Amidst all the cries for democracy, independent judiciary, human rights and social justice in Pakistan, nothing has fundamentally changed during the last year under "democracy", except the worsening economy, much longer power outages and a growing sense of insecurity. Regardless of the party labels and promises, the feudal power continues to endure in the name of democracy. The choices remain narrow for Pakistanis: Choose between the military and the feudal class. There is no third choice as long as the middle class remains small and unable and unwilling to exert strong influence to bring about much-needed reforms. The only hope for real democracy and necessary social, political and economic reforms lies in continued robust growth of the middle class over an extended period of time of another decade or two. There are no guarantees that the current feudal rulers will permit that.

Here is a video about global South Asia's poverty and slavery:





Related Links:

India Not Combating Slavery
Bonded Labor in India, Nepal and Pakistan
Feudalism in Pakistan

Is Democracy Right For Pakistan?

Slavery in Pakistan

US State Department Report on Human Trafficking 2009
Feudal Power Dominates Pakistani Democracy