INDIA’S RAHUL GANDHI PROMISES TO CHANGE OLD WAYS OF ELITIST POLITICS

[Gandhi has been a member of parliament since 2004 and is now a step below his mother, the Italian-born Sonia Gandhi, who is the president of the Congress party. But his elevation Saturday marked a significant generational shift in Indian politics, where the average age of politicians is over 60.]

By Rama Lakshmi

 Rahul Gandhi: India’s reluctant prince: Widely expected to be India’s future
prime minister, Rahul Gandhi is being pressed to take a bigger political role.

NEW DELHI — A day after being elevated to vice president of India’s ruling Congress party, Rahul Gandhi on Sunday promised to fix the prevailing elitism in the nation’s politics, address the impatient anger of its youth and bring change, but he told his supporters not to expect change too quickly.

Amid loud cheers from a hall full of party workers in the northern city of Jaipur, the 42-year-old scion of India’s oldest and most privileged political dynasty outlined the coming challenges in a country that is rapidly modernizing, that has an assertive middle class that wants to change the old ways of doing politics, and in which more than two-thirds of its billion-plus people are younger than 35.

“The voices of a billion Indians are today telling us that they want a greater say in government, in politics and administration. They are telling us that the course of their lives cannot be decided by a handful of people behind closed doors who are not fully accountable to them,” Gandhi said, speaking about the increasing push among Indians for a more participatory style of decision-making. “They are telling us that India’s governmental system is stuck in the past. It has become a system that robs people of their voice.”

Gandhi said that the answer isn’t in running the old system better, but in “completely transforming” it. He did not say how he planned to do this, but mentioned the ambitious new program to assign each Indian a unique biometrics-based identity number. The government hopes to use these numbers to identify the poor and send them welfare money directly, cutting out the middlemen.

Gandhi has been a member of parliament since 2004 and is now a step below his mother, the Italian-born Sonia Gandhi, who is the president of the Congress party. But his elevation Saturday marked a significant generational shift in Indian politics, where the average age of politicians is over 60.

Gandhi’s colleagues hope that his promotion will galvanize the demoralized party at a time when the Congress-led coalition government in New Delhi has been besieged with public anger over corruption scandals and inflation.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s government is largely viewed by many as unresponsive and aloof, especially in the face of massive urban anger and street protests witnessed in the past two years against rising corruption and violence against women.

Thousands of young protesters poured into the streets last month and demanded measures to ensure the safety of women, better policing and tougher laws against rape after the horrific gang rape and killing of a young woman in New Delhi. But the police beat them back with canes, water cannons and tear gas shells, and politicians continued to make misogynistic remarks.

“Why is our youth angry? Why are they out on the street? They are angry because they are alienated, they are excluded from the political class,” Gandhi said referring to the ivory-tower lifestyles of India’s politicians. “There is a young and impatient India, and it is demanding a greater voice in the nation’s future,” he added.

Earlier in the day, the party discussed ways to engage young voters via social-networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter, which have triggered some of the protests.

In a party that has been criticized for being completely controlled by the Nehru-Gandhi family, Gandhi said his goal is to prepare 40 to 50 leaders who are capable of running the country. Some analysts said this could be a signal that he will not covet power for just his family members.

His mother led the party to an impressive victory at the 2004 national election but appointed the 80-year-old economist Singh as India’s prime minister in 2004. Some had hailed it as renunciation, but others said that she wanted Singh to keep the seat warm for her son until he is ready.

On Sunday, Rahul Gandhi said that his mother came to his room and wept with him because “she understands that the power so many people seek is actually a poison.”

Kapil Sibal, a minister in the Congress-led coalition government, called it a “visionary speech” that also “touched the hearts of all Indians.”

Another minister, Jairam Ram­esh, called Gandhi’s elevation the party’s “Obama moment.”

But Gandhi hastened to warn supporters against any unrealistic expectations of change.

“Change is needed fast, but the change has to be cautious and considered,” he said. “We have to do things, but not do them in a hurry. The change has to be sustainable and deep.”

@ The Washington Post

INDIA’SCHILD MAIDS FACE SLAVERY, ABUSE AND SOMETIMES RAPE

[India erupted in outrage at the gang rape last month of a young woman on a moving bus in New Delhi. But in the same city, experts say, a vast network of child trafficking and abuse operates with society’s implicit sanction and official apathy. As India strives to become a modern and developed nation, the problem serves as a reminder of the exclusion of a vast swath of the population from the benefits of a rising economy and the broad indifference of many middle-class Indians to the rights of the poor.]

By Simon Denyer

NEW DELHI — She was just 14 years old when she was picked up from her poor village in eastern India and promised good wages as a maid in New Delhi. Instead, she was forced to work for free as a virtual slave in a wealthy middle-class household.

When she plucked up the courage to complain to the “placement agent” who had found her the job, “he beat me and then he raped me,” the girl, now 17, said in an interview in this capital city. “He said if I ever tried to run away from home, he would kill off my family and burn down my house.”

Every year, hundreds of thousands of girls are trafficked from rural India to work as domestic servants in middle-class homes in India’s fast-growing urban areas. They are expected to work at least 15 hours a day for food, lodging and salaries well below the legal minimum monthly wage of about $125. Many end up cut off from their families, abused and treated like slaves. Some are sexually assaulted.

India erupted in outrage at the gang rape last month of a young woman on a moving bus in New Delhi. But in the same city, experts say, a vast network of child trafficking and abuse operates with society’s implicit sanction and official apathy. As India strives to become a modern and developed nation, the problem serves as a reminder of the exclusion of a vast swath of the population from the benefits of a rising economy and the broad indifference of many middle-class Indians to the rights of the poor.

“The trafficking of young children, especially girls, under the garb of placement agencies is the biggest organized crime in India today. And the worst part is, it is right there in the open, in our homes, and yet invisible,” said Bhuwan Ribhu of the child rights groupBachpan Bachao Andolan.

One of the six suspects in the gang-rape case, a purported 17-year-old, was himself trafficked at age 11 from a poor village in northern India to a life of child labor in the capital, where he worked in a roadside restaurant and as a bus driver’s assistant, police have said. He soon lost touch with his parents.

Law widely flouted

Many middle-class Indians believe they are helping poor families by giving their children work. But according to municipal law in New Delhi, which has enacted some of India’s strictest child labor laws, they should be jailed. Employing people younger than 18 in a hazardous job, as domestic service is defined, has been a non-bailable offense since 2009.

But the law is widely flouted, said Ribhu, who added that on rare occasions police carry out “rescue operations” of underage servants after complaints from parents or activists.

“Almost all of the domestic maids are either minors, or started work as maids before they were 18,” Ribhu said.

There has never been a systematic attempt to determine the scale of the problem. The government says 5 million children are employed in India, but activists say the real number could be 10 times that. A senior official at India’s Home Affairs Ministry, which oversees the police, estimated that as many as 4 million children work in domestic service nationwide and that up to 4,000 placement agencies operate in New Delhi and its suburbs alone.

But the official, who insisted on anonymity to speak candidly, said it was often hard to get his fellow bureaucrats to take the issue seriously because so many of them employ children at home.

A tool of control

Sometimes, placement agencies demand a one-time fee for supplying servants, a sum often docked from the girls’ wages by their employers. Other times, the employer pays the wages directly to the placement agency, which might give a portion of that money, or none at all, to the girl.

One 18-year-old interviewed, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to avoid retribution from former employers, said she received no money for four years of work as a maid for doctors and businesspeople. Another, whose statement forms part of a court case filed by activists in an attempt to force New Delhi authorities to regulate the industry, said in her testimony that she was paid $45 a month but was essentially imprisoned for years and never allowed to telephone her family.

When she complained to the placement agent, she said, he raped her. Ribhu said traffickers often use rape — which can ruin a young woman’s marriage prospects by robbing her of her “honor” — as a tool of control.

“I could not bear the pain and fell unconscious,” she said. “When I awoke, I found myself in a pool of blood. When I came out crying, he told me he would sell me off and never send me home if I didn’t keep quiet.”

The Washington Post generally does not name rape victims.

Activists have made progress only by taking such cases to Indian courts. New Delhi’s high court has led the way by ordering authorities to raise the minimum age for domestic service and requiring placement agencies to be registered. But the fine for failing to register ranges from just 50 cents to $5, and monitoring of registered agencies is nonexistent, activists say.

After two years of unpaid work, and after being raped on two occasions by her placement agent, the 17-year-old girl from eastern India was rescued by a Bachpan Bachao Andolan activist who was working undercover at New Delhi’s railway station.

The girl was at the station because the trafficker had promised to take her home to her village but had secretly bought tickets to the teeming commercial capital, Mumbai, where he apparently intended to sell her off into a life of further slavery or prostitution.

A year later, the girl is still in New Delhi, hiding from the trafficker. Small and shy, with her hair tied back in a bun and covered in a patterned scarf, she has an unassuming manner that masks a determination to see her tormentor put behind bars.

“The first thing I want is that man should be punished for what he did to me,” she said. “Then I want to see the money I am owed in my hand. The third thing is to go back home safe and sound.”

@ The Washington Post