Multinational clothing brands are sourcing from cotton spinning mills in Tamil Nadu that exploit teenage girls, subjecting them to what the ILO terms the ‘worst forms of child labour’.
India is failing to address its farmer suicide crisis, says the Center for Human Rights and Global Justice (CHRGJ), in a report released yesterday that has indentified an agrarian crisis in India where farmer suicides are on the rise and caste discrimination only exacerbates the problem.
Even a Dalit millionaire in India can’t buy a house for his mother in the ‘upper caste’ part of her village, or see his son marry an ‘upper caste’ girl. Despite the economic success of a small fraction of India’s Dalits, discrimination prevails and a top economist argues that in fact discrimination and repression are what underpin India’s economic growth, forcing the majority of Dalits into low paid and insecure labour situations.
In his inaugural address at Civil Services Day on April 21st in New Delhi, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh warned civil servants that there was no room for relaxation of vigil when it came to dealing with violence in India. He pointed out the violence committed against Dalits was a priority and stressed that the Government would work for the development of far-flung areas in order to strengthen internal security.
India’s Supreme Court is pushing local law enforcement and state Governments to stop caste discrimination by clamping down on discriminatory practices. Recent verdicts include a ban on using different cups for Dalits in tea shops in Tamil Nadu, cracking down on caste-based violence across the country and outlawing the use of derogatory caste names.
IDSN have launched a YouTube Channel on www.youtube.com/IDSNVideo
On the 23rd of March the Delhi Development Authority (DDA) bulldozed 750 houses in the Gayatri colony - 80% of which belong to Dalits.
In the new National Budget of India, presented last week, only 4% of the total budget has been allocated to scheduled castes and scheduled tribes (SC/STs)- Dalits and Tribals - who make up more than 24% of the total population.
In a statement concluding her January visit to India, UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights defenders, Margaret Sekaggya, raised particular concern for the situation of Dalit human rights defenders and noted widespread deficiencies in implementation of laws to protect human rights defenders.
Former British prime minister Gordon Brown recently visited a project in India that seeks to end discrimination against dalits – and was shocked at the living conditions he saw in the poor Delhi neigbourhood - Bhalswa.
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