India’s LGBT Community is Not Alone in Protesting Court’s Anti-Gay Sex Ruling

India’s LGBT Community is Not Alone in Protesting Court’s Anti-Gay Sex Ruling
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The Diplomat‘s Sanjay Kumar reports from New Delhi.

Raveena and Rohit stood quietly at one corner of the protest venue, unlike their other friends who shouted slogans. Some of Rohit’s friends tried to coax them to join the chorus but they were not keen to join them. Their mood on Wednesday evening was completely transformed from that morning when they were on the Supreme Court’s lawn in New Delhi, where they were involved in an animated conversation with other gay and lesbian activists waiting for the landmark verdict from the apex court on whether Section 377 criminalizes same sex alliances or not.

But the highest court’s judgement on Wednesday morning, that gay sex would remain illegal in India, came as a huge setback for Raveena and Rohit who were planning to legalize their relationship. The Supreme Court overturned a four-year-old judgement of the Delhi High Court that legalized same-sex marriage in 2009. With new decision India has once again criminalized gay sex under Section 377. The verdict means that Raveena and Rohit as well as many others cannot think of settling down as a couple and if they do so they might be sent to jail for ten years and possibly for life in some cases.

The court left the decision to abolish or alter Section 377 to the wisdom of India’s legislators.

“With the verdict, our relationship not only becomes suspect but criminal in the eyes of the law. Suddenly the apex court, which is the guardian of freedom of expression and liberty, has made our existence illegal and taken away whatever liberty and freedom we used to have. It’s a very sad day in my life. I didn’t feel that devastated when my family threw me out  for my orientation few years ago. The court has really orphaned me and deeply saddened me,” says Raveena.

Immediately after the verdict the gay community in Delhi held a press conference and condemned the “inhuman” and “unconstitutional” decision of the court.

Speaking with The Diplomat, Anand Grover, senior counsel who fought the case on behalf of the sexual minority said that “the judgement is very disappointing. It took the Supreme Court 21 months to tell the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) community that they are criminals in the eyes of the law. The movement for LGBT equality is unstoppable. We will be filing a review of the decision soon in the court.”

The anger and frustration spilled over onto the streets by the evening. Not only did the LGBT community turn up in substantial numbers but also several women right’s activists came to express solidarity with the  community.

“The judgement has taken us several decades back. The feminist movement is fighting against exclusion, patriarchy,  discrimination and violence. The judgement exposes the LGBT to that,” feels Shehla Rashid, a young activist who came alone all the way from Jawaharlal Nehru University to express solidarity with the disenchanted community. Speaking with The Diplomat she further adds that “the apex court cannot shy away from deciding issues related to fundamental rights. Leaving such a crucial question to the goodwill of parliamentarians, many of whom are not trained in human rights, exposes the gay community to the immense risk of discrimination.”

Despite the broad criticisms, the religious leaders who were petitioners in the case welcomed the verdict.

In an interview with The Diplomat, the yoga guru, Ramdev, who has been a vocal critic of the High Court order in 2009, said that “same sex unions are unethical,unscientific, unsocial and unconstitutional and by criminalizing it the court has taken a historical decision.”

But if one goes by media reports and reactions, the overwhelming majority of Indians have been very critical of the court’s ruling. The ruling has been dominating the headlines and a majority of editorials have questioned the wisdom of the Supreme Court in this landmark judgement. Calling the ruling a “betrayal,” the Indian Express writes that the “Supreme Court has thrown away the opportunity to defend sexual freedom, uphold human rights. It is simply the refusal to extend constitutional protections to some Indian citizens, on the basis of their sexual activity.”

The Hindu called it “a retrograde decision” and writes that the verdict has “enthroned medieval prejudice and dealt a body blow to liberal values and human rights.”

For the first time, some political parties have come out in support of gay rights in India. The ruling Congress has decried the SC’s mandate and termed the decision unfortunate. The top leadership of the party, led by its president Sonia Gandhi, said that “Parliament will address the issue and uphold the Constitutional guarantee of life and liberty to all citizens.” Similar sentiments have been expressed by Rahul Gandhi, the Vice President and prime ministerial candidate of the party. Criticizing the judgement, he said that “the country is known for freedom of expression.”

Some news reports suggest that the government is planning to bring an ordinance soon to abrogate Section 377, a colonial-era law passed in 1860. But in a fractured polity, where the Hindu right-wing Bhartiya Janata Party is on an upswing, gaining parliamentary approval to reverse this landmark change will not be that easy.

Ravenna and Rohit are concerned about their future, but they are not afraid. ”It was not possible to get public support on this issue with the same vigour as is happening now. We don’t intend to go underground. We will defy the system and live together,” says Rohit.

The Diplomat

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India’s new flagship: Russia hands over modernized aircraft carrier to Delhi (VIDEO)

India’s new flagship: Russia hands over modernized aircraft carrier to Delhi (VIDEO)
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Published time: November 16, 2013 17:45

INS Vikramaditya during sea trails (Photo: Indian Navy)

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The Indian Navy has received the 44,500-ton Vikramaditya aircraft carrier at the Russian shipbuilding complex in Severodvinsk. The much awaited carrier was fully refurbished for US$ 2.3 billion, and will now become India’s game-changing flagship.

Russian deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin and Indian Defense Minister AK Antony attended the handing over ceremony at the Sevmash shipyard of the northern Arctic port city, along with other senior government and naval officials of the two countries.

During the ceremony, a Russian flag on the vessel was lowered, and the flag of the Indian Navy was raised in its place. This was followed by a traditional Indian ritual, in which a coconut was smashed against the ship’s side. The ship’s new captain, Suraj Berry, and the deputy director of Russia’s arms export agency Rosoboronexport, Igor Sevastyanov, signed the final handover papers.

Rogozin called the carrier “a mighty contribution to security of India,” adding that India remains a privileged strategic partner of Russia. The ceremony comes just two days ahead of the meeting of the Indo-Russian Inter-Governmental Commission on military-technical cooperation.

Originally commissioned in 1987 as a Soviet Kiev-class aircraft carrier, the ship was deemed too costly for the Russian military budget and was deactivated in 1996. The aircraft carrier – then called ‘Admiral Gorshkov’ – caught India’s attention, and, following years of talks, a Russian-Indian deal for the ship was signed.

In order to match the demands of the Indian Navy, the carrier had to be fully modernized and converted from a hybrid carrier/cruiser to a pure carrier with a ski-jump ramp to fit multirole MiG-29K (Fulcrum-D) fighters.

The refurbishment work, which eventually saw over 70 percent of the ship and equipment replaced, was overshadowed by several delays and cost increases, leading to a diplomatic exchange and tightening of supervision. It became apparent in the process that the Russian shipbuilders underestimated the cabling work costs, and the initial $ 974 million price tag grew to about $ 2.35 billion. Some construction flaws also had to be fixed following the 2012 tests.

The purchase of INS Vikramaditya has been crucial for the Indian Navy, as its British-made INS Viraat, originally commissioned by the UK’s Royal Navy in 1959 as HMS Hermes, has been scheduled for retirement. India’s first indigenous Vikrant-class aircraft carrier has also been experiencing delays. It was launched two years behind schedule in August, with the expected service entry date being 2018.

Now that Vikramaditya is set to be escorted from Russia’s north to the Indian Ocean, India becomes one of the few nations in the world to have more than one aircraft carrier in service – the others being the US, the UK, and Italy. With two ships of that class, India will have the capability to promptly project force on both sides of the Hindustan Peninsula in the increasingly militarized region. Previously, India’s retired carrier INS Vikrant played a key role in enforcing the naval blockade on East Pakistan during the Indo-Pakistan War of 1971.

As for Russia, which currently has one aircraft carrier (Admiral Kuznetsov), it has “no need for [another] ship of the same class,” Rogozin said on Saturday. Calling the fact of having more aircraft carriers “a geopolitical issue,” the Russian deputy prime minister stressed it is “not the issue of the country’s defense capability.” Meanwhile, Russia awaits the delivery of two Mistral-class helicopter carriers from France.

The new Indian flagship was redesigned by Russian shipbuilders to carry 16 MiG-29K fighters and up to 10 Ka-27 and Ka-31 helicopter gunships. With the ship’s length being 284 meters and her beam nearly 60 meters, INS Vikramaditya stretches to an area as large as three football fields and has 22 decks for housing more than 1,600 crew members. It has been estimated that the ship can operate up to 45 days without replenishment, while having the capability to cover 1,400 kilometers a day and maintaining a “surveillance bubble” of a 500 kilometer radius.

RT – News

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As He Retires, Tendulkar Gets India"s Highest Honor

As He Retires, Tendulkar Gets India"s Highest Honor
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Students in Ahmadabad, India, honored cricket superstar Sachin Tendulkar in their own way earlier this week.

Siddharaj Solanki/AP

Students in Ahmadabad, India, honored cricket superstar Sachin Tendulkar in their own way earlier this week.

Siddharaj Solanki/AP

Indian cricket superstar Sachin Tendulkar has indeed left the pitch for the last time, now that his national team’s match against the West Indies is over (India won easily, 495-182).

As predicted, the West Indies ran out of batsmen on Saturday and never came close to erasing India’s lead — effectively ending the competition on Day 3 of what could have been a 5-day match.

On his way into retirement, the “little master” has been awarded the Bharat Ratna, which the Times of India describes as the nation’s “highest civilian honor.” He’s the first “sportsman” to receive that award.

Tendulkar, 40, is to cricket in India what Babe Ruth was to baseball in the U.S. He’s also one of the highest-paid athletes in the world — ranking No. 51 on Forbes‘ latest list, with about $ 22 million in earnings.

India’s Tv9 Maharashtra has posted a video on his emotional departure from the game. It’s not in English, but you’ll certainly get the drift.

News

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Insight: The poison pill in India"s search for cheap food

1 of 2. A farmer sprays pesticide containing monocrotophos on a paddy field at Mohanpur village, about 45 km (28 miles) west of Agartala, capital of India’s northeastern state of Tripura July 25, 2013.

Credit: Reuters/Jayanta Dey

By Rajendra Jadhav and Jo Winterbottom

MUMBAI/NEW DELHI | Sun Jul 28, 2013 1:35am EDT

MUMBAI/NEW DELHI (Reuters) – Nearly a decade ago, the Indian government ruled out a ban on the production and use of monocrotophos, the highly toxic pesticide that killed 23 children this month in a village school providing free lunches under a government-sponsored program.

Despite being labeled highly hazardous by the World Health Organization (WHO), a panel of government experts was persuaded by manufacturers that monocrotophos was cheaper than alternatives and more effective in controlling pests that decimate crop output.

India, which has more hungry mouths to feed than any other country in the world, continues to use monocrotophos and other highly toxic pesticides that rich and poor nations alike, including China, are banning on health grounds.

Although the government argues the benefits of strong pesticides outweigh the hazards if properly managed, the school food poisoning tragedy underlined criticism such controls are virtually ignored on the ground.

According to the minutes, the 2004 meeting conducted by the Central Insecticides Board and Registration Committee, the Indian government body that regulates pesticide use, concluded that: “The data submitted by the industry satisfies the concerns raised…Therefore, there is no need to recommend the ban of this product.”

The minutes of the meeting can be read here: cibrc.nic.in/248rc.doc

Government scientists continue to defend the pesticide, and insist the decision to not ban it remains good.

Just weeks before the school tragedy in Bihar state, the Indian government advised farmers via text message to use monocrotophos to kill borer pests in mandarin fruits and rice, records on the agricultural meteorology division’s web site show.

“It is cost effective and it is known for its efficacy … some even call it a benevolent pesticide,” said T. P. Rajendran, assistant director general for plant protection at the Indian Council of Agricultural Research.

“I can say that pesticides currently permitted in the country are safe provided they are used as per specifications and guidelines. We have exhaustive and detailed guidelines. They need to be followed.”

A senior official directly involved in the decision-making on pesticide use said: “You have got to understand that all pesticides are toxic but they are essential for maintaining or increasing agricultural production.

“Can we afford to lose 15-25 percent of output? One cannot afford to lose such a large percentage of agricultural produce. The answer lies in judicious use.”

The official declined to be identified.

The WHO has cited a 2007 study that about 76,000 people die each year in India from pesticide poisoning. Many of the deaths are suicides made easy by the wide availability of toxic pesticides.

15 PAGES OF REGULATIONS

In the school tragedy, police suspect the children’s lunch was cooked in oil that was stored in a used container of monocrotophos.

The Indian government has issued 15 pages of regulations that need to be followed when handling pesticides – including wearing protective clothing and using a respirator when spraying. Pesticide containers should be broken when empty and not left outside in order to prevent them being re-used.

But in a nation where a quarter of the 1.2 billion population is illiterate and vast numbers live in far-flung rural districts, implementation is almost impossible. For instance, monocrotophos is banned for use on vegetable crops, but there is no way to ensure the rule is followed.

According to the WHO, swallowing 1,200 milligrams – less than a teaspoon – of monocrotophos can be fatal to humans. In 2009, it called for India to ban the product because of its extreme toxicity.

“It is imperative to consider banning the use of monocrotophos,” it said in a 60-page report. “The perception that monocrotophos is cheap and necessary, have prevented the product from being taken off the market” in India.

WHO officials say the school tragedy reinforces the dangers of the pesticide.

“We would advocate that countries restrict, ban, or phase out…those chemicals for which they can’t ensure that all aspects of use are safe,” said Lesley Onyon, WHO’s South-East Asia regional adviser for chemical safety. “If they can’t ensure safety, it’s our policy to say that these chemical or pesticides shouldn’t be used.”

Indian government officials refuse to address the WHO’s findings directly.

“We have to take decisions depending on our need, our priorities, and our requirements. No one knows these things better than us,” said the government source.

NATIONAL PRIORITY

For India, providing more food to its people is a national priority. According to the World Bank, nearly 400 million people in the country live on less than $ 1.25 per day.

Nearly half its children under five are malnourished.

The Bihar school where the children died was participating in the government’s midday meal program, aimed at giving 120 million school pupils a free lunch – both providing nutrition and encouraging education. India is also close to implementing an ambitious plan to provide cheap food to 800 million people.

Central to these efforts will be higher crop yields and managing costs.

According to government officials and manufacturers, monocrotophos is cheap and is also a broad spectrum pesticide that can only be replaced by four or five crop- or pest-specific pesticides. Even similar pesticides are much more expensive.

A 500 ml monocrotophos bottle sold by Godrej Agrovet, a subsidiary of Godrej Industries, is priced at 225 rupees ($ 3.75), while an alternative, Imidacloprid, in a bottle of 500 ml produced by Bayer, costs 1,271 rupees.

Monocrotophos is banned by many countries, including the United States, the European Union nations, China, and, among India’s neighbors, Pakistan. Sri Lanka only allows monocrotophos use for coconut cultivation.

One of the two companies that argued against the ban on monocrotophos in 2004 halted production five years later under pressure from the public in its home country, Denmark.

Cheminova, a unit of Auriga Industries, said it stopped producing monocrotophos in India in 2009 and converted its plant to produce a low-toxic fungicide.

“We decided to phase out monocrotophos because with many alternative products, we could not see any reason to have such a toxic product in a country like India,” Lars-Erik Pedersen, vice-president of Auriga Industries, told Reuters in Copenhagen.

“It was a big decision because it is one of the best-selling products in India,” he added.

The other manufacturer that made a presentation at the 2004 meeting was United Phosphorus, currently the biggest producer of the pesticide in the country.

Managing Director Rajju D. Shroff told Reuters that monocrotophos was “very harmless,” and hinted calls for a ban were aimed at helping multinationals sell more costly alternatives.

“Companies want to sell new pesticides. If they have monocrotophos, farmers will not change to new, expensive ones,” said Shroff, who attended the meeting as the head of the Crop Care Federation of India, a position he still holds.

NOT MOST TOXIC

Historically, India appears reluctant to ban pesticides. Monocrotophos isn’t the most toxic pesticide used in the country, according to the WHO’s classifications. Phorate, methyl parathion, bromadiolone and phosphamidon, all classified as extremely hazardous, are likewise registered for use.

And endosulfan – a substance so nasty the United Nations wants it eliminated worldwide – was banned only by a Supreme Court order in 2011. The decision came a few months after the chief minister of the southern state of Kerala, the top elected official, went on a day-long hunger fast to demand the ban.

According to media reports, over 1,000 people were killed and hundreds born deformed because of indiscriminate aerial spraying of endosulfan in Kasargod, a Kerala district.

Both production of monocrotophos and demand in India was higher in 2009/10 than in 2005/06, according to latest available government data. It accounted for about 4 percent of total pesticide use in 2009/10 and 7 percent of production.

Its share in total sales is about 2-3 percent now, according to the Pesticides Manufacturers & Formulators Association, which says it represents the industry on a national basis with over 250 members.

The Centre for Science and Environment, a leading environmental NGO in India, says the state of pesticide control in the country is deplorable and companies have great influence.

“The story on the ground is abysmal, it’s very disappointing,” said Amit Khurana, program manager in the CSE’s food safety and toxins unit.

“People still do not know how much of pesticide is to be used, which pesticide is to be used for which crop. The biggest influence for a farmer is the sales representative of the company … so there’s this sense of gross mismanagement at that level.”

The government has tried to introduce legislation for “more effective regulation of import, manufacture, export, sale, transport, distribution and use of pesticides” but the bill has languished in parliament since 2008.

India is no stranger to the dangers of pesticides. Besides the thousands killed each year, the country suffered the world’s worst industrial disaster when lethal methyl isocyanate gas leaked from a pesticide plant in the city of Bhopal in 1984, killing nearly 4,500 people.

But in the fields of rural India, pesticides like monocrotophos continue to be widely used.

“I have been using it for the last 10 years, I have a very good experience,” said Gaiyabhu Patil, a 56-year-old farmer who has just finished spraying monocrotophos on his 15-acre cotton crop in the western state of Maharashtra. “It is cheap and effective.”

Anil Dhole, a pesticide vendor in Koregaon, a district town southeast of Mumbai at the center of a sugarcane and cotton growing region, said few of his customers took health warnings seriously.

“Many farmers don’t take the necessary precautions while applying the pesticide. We do inform them about its toxic nature, but they take it casually,” he said “Farmers don’t even bother to cover their noses.”

($ 1 = 59.5650 Indian rupees)

(Additional reporting by Annie Bannerji and Mayank Bhardwaj in NEW DELHI, Kate Kelland in LONDON, Ole Mikkelsen in COPENHAGEN, Catherine Hornby in ROME and Rujun Shen in SINGAPORE; Editing by Raju Gopalakrishnan)

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Insight: The poison pill in India"s search for cheap food

Biden Meets India’s Leaders to Promote Closer Ties

NEW DELHI — Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. held a parade of meetings Tuesday with India’s top political leaders, but the most important part of his trip to India will begin Wednesday when he is expected to discuss with India’s business elite in Mumbai the growing concerns about India’s economy.

Mr. Biden started his trip Monday afternoon with a visit to the memorial to Mohandas K. Gandhi, who is considered India’s founding father. Mr. Biden wrote a tribute to Mr. Gandhi in the visitor’s book, calling Mr. Gandhi “one man who changed the world.”

On Tuesday, Mr. Biden held meetings with Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, President Pranab Mukherjee, Vice President Mohammad Hamid Ansari and Sushma Swaraj, a leader of the opposition Bharatiya Janata Party. A banquet in Mr. Biden’s honor was scheduled for Tuesday night, after which he was scheduled to fly to India’s financial capital, Mumbai.

Mr. Biden’s trip is part of a long-term effort to convince India’s officials and people that the days when Pakistan, India’s longtime rival, was the United States’ favorite friend in South Asia are over. Mr. Biden’s trip is the first by an American vice president in nearly 30 years, and it comes one month after Secretary of State John Kerry traveled to New Delhi, the capital, to discuss climate change and diplomacy.

But Mr. Biden is expected to deliver more than just happy talk about the growing strategic and cultural ties between the United States and India. While in Mumbai, he is expected to voice growing concerns about India’s economy and its openness to foreign investment before leaving for Singapore Thursday night.

Investors from the United States and around the globe once flocked to India, drawn by its rapid economic growth, gradual economic liberalization and huge population. But in the last decade, many American companies have found the going far tougher than expected, and their complaints are beginning to resonate in Washington.

The problems that companies confront here — endemic corruption, shifting government rules and poor infrastructure, among others — seemed less dire when the Indian economy was growing at a blistering rate. But growth has slowed to 5 percent over the past year, and those issues have become far greater irritants.

Mr. Biden’s complaints about India’s investment climate are likely to be greeted with some sympathy in Mumbai, since even Indian companies have begun looking for growth outside their country’s borders. Investments by both foreign and domestic companies have fallen over the last five years to 31 percent of the country’s gross domestic product from nearly 38 percent, said Subir Gokarn, director of research at Brookings India, with crucial sectors like manufacturing and mining doing especially poorly.

The prime minister, Mr. Singh, acknowledged in a speech to a prominent business group here on Friday that the nation’s economy was under stress.

“We, like most other countries, are going through a difficult period,” Mr. Singh said in his barely audible whisper. “I know that business is deeply concerned about the slowdown in our economy.”

The Indian rupee has lost about 9 percent of its value against the dollar in recent months, a decline exceeded only by the Brazilian real among major emerging market currencies. India has substantial budget and current account deficits, and inflation is running at nearly 10 percent annually.

The country’s central bank has been faced with the difficult task of defending the currency by trying to raise short-term interest rates without pushing up long-term rates, which would further slow growth. But the Reserve Bank of India took the unusual step last week of withdrawing a bond sale after investors insisted on interest rates that were higher than the government’s bankers wanted to pay.

Ajay Shah, a professor at the National Institute of Public Finance and Policy in New Delhi, said these problems guaranteed that India’s era of rapid economic growth would not return for many years.

“There’s been a tremendous collapse in confidence,” Mr. Shah said.

India’s government has taken steps to put its fiscal house in order by reducing fuel subsidies, a hugely expensive program that largely benefits the rich. Last week, the government announced a loosening of restrictions on certain foreign investments.

But national elections scheduled for next year are likely to mean that the government will be loath to make additional cuts to popular welfare projects, said Sreeram Chaulia, a professor and dean at the Jindal School of International Affairs. A new food security bill could even expand such social spending significantly.

“Right now, this government is concerned about winning the next election,” Mr. Chaulia said.

Mr. Biden also intends to push India for further defense cooperation and more arms purchases from the United States, according to a senior Obama administration official.

India has long resisted becoming too close to the American military. But recent border tensions between India and China have jangled nerves in New Delhi and made officials here strive to improve India’s defense manufacturing abilities, something the United States has said it could help achieve.

NYT > Global Home

Biden Meets India’s Leaders to Promote Closer Ties

India’s demographic challenge: Wasting time

ONE of India’s bigger private-sector employers can be found in Patna, the capital of Bihar, a poor, populous state in the east of the country. Narendra Kumar Singh, the boss, has three gold rings on his right hand and arms big enough to crush rocks. His firm, Frontline, has 86,000 people on its books. They are mostly unskilled men from rural areas in poor states like Bihar; thanks to Mr Singh they have jobs in cities all over India.

There is lots to celebrate about this. Mr Singh’s business has sales of $ 185m and its employee base has grown by 1,600% since 2000. He is looking for a Western partner and wants to expand to Sri Lanka and Bangladesh. He is providing paid work for part of the large cohort of young people now entering the workforce. And by shifting people from farms to cities he is helping urbanisation of the sort that underpinned startling progress elsewhere in Asia.

Yet Frontline is also a symptom of a colossal failure. For it is not supplying labour for a manufacturing boom of the kind that helped so many in China, South Korea and Taiwan out of poverty, or for the IT services at which India has excelled. Instead it offers relatively unproductive service-sector jobs—in particular, security guards. It has become de rigueur for every ATM, office, shop and apartment building to have guards. Across India millions of young men now sit all day on plastic seats in badly fitting uniforms with braids and epaulettes, unshaven and catatonically bored as the economic miracle passes by. This isn’t how East Asia got rich.

From a bomb to a boom and back

During the boom of the 1990s and 2000s, it became fashionable to talk of India’s forthcoming “demographic dividend”. This was quite a turnaround. In the 1960s and 1970s, the booming populations of states like Bihar were seen as a curse. “The Population Bomb”, a Malthusian bestseller by two American environmentalists, Paul and Anne Ehrlich, began by describing “one stinking hot night in Delhi”, and its horrifying number of “people, people, people, people”. In the 1970s there was a forced sterilisation programme. Sanjay Gandhi, a thuggish scion of the ruling dynasty, organised vasectomy camps near Delhi—one doctor boasted he could perform 40 sterilisations an hour.

In the 1990s, though, economic liberalisers evoked the experiences of East Asia and the demographic dividend it benefited from when previously high fertility rates began to decline. Working-age populations rose at the same time as the ratio of dependants to workers fell. An associated rise in the rate of saving allowed more investment, helping pay for the vast expansion in manufacturing that employed those workers and lifted hundreds of millions of people out of poverty. In the mid2000s the prospect of a similar dividend in India, where the fertility rate had dropped a lot in the 1980s and 1990s, was a key reason for investors’ optimism. The timing was particularly encouraging: India’s labour force was due to soar as China’s began to decline (see chart 1).

Now many are worried that India is squandering this demographic opportunity. This is partly because the economy is in a funk. Growth is at 4.5%, half the rate at the peak in the mid-2000s. Industry is 27% of output, compared with 40-47% in other big developing Asian economies. High inflation has prompted households to store ever more of their savings in physical assets rather than the financial system (see chart 2). The costs are clear. With few manufacturing exports, India has a chronic balance-of-payments problem. And India has created too few formal jobs in the past decade.

India’s leaders have long said they are committed to employment, but have shown little stomach for the economic upheaval rapid job creation entails. China’s policymakers accepted that the process of adding jobs overall often destroyed jobs in particular industries and places. For years India’s politicians have preferred economic palliatives such as NREGA, a giant scheme that guarantees work for the rural poor, and subsidies for the needy.

Now India’s borrowing has soared to queasy levels and welfare spending is being squeezed. There are worries that joblessness could be feeding the spasmodic unrest seen in some cities since 2011. Not all protesters were young. And their motivation varied from support for the anti-corruption guru Anna Hazare to disgust at a series of rapes in Delhi. But the protests added to a sense of youthful volatility.

An official report into the public finances in 2012 warned that a combination of slower growth and the demographic bulge could be “politically destabilising”. Rahul Gandhi, who is poised to lead the ruling Congress party in the general election due by 2014, speaks of the “angry” young and their “urgent demand for jobs”. The government’s economic adviser, Raghuram Rajan, says jobs are the biggest priority. Some in the elite seem to be waking up. But is it too late?

Quantity and quality

To see the scale of the challenge, consider that the working-age population, aged between 15 and 64, will rise by 125m over the coming decade, and by a further 103m over the following decade. On current trends a third of the growth will come from poorer and less literate states in the north, notably Uttar Pradesh and Bihar.

Not everyone of working age will be in the job market. More people aged 15-24 will remain in education—26% do today. Some adult women will stay at home; presently only about a third work, a low level by Asian standards. But India probably needs to create about 100m net new jobs in the next decade.

China’s boom created 130m net jobs in services and industry between 2002 and 2012. But India is no China. The most recent survey showed no net new jobs were created between 2004-05 and 2009-10, a dramatic slowdown on the previous five years, when 60m jobs were created.

These figures may not be as shocking as they seem. Fewer jobs were created partly because some folk voluntarily withdrew from the workforce. More women in rural areas decided not to look for jobs—perhaps because several fairly good years for farmers meant they did not need the cash. Wages for the unskilled have been rising, and though this is partly because of the NREGA guaranteed-work scheme, it suggests there has not been a collapse in the jobs market. For all these caveats, though, the headline data remain disquieting. Even during a boom few jobs were created. Now that the economy is growing more slowly things have got harder.

The rural poor seem likely to be frustrated, which will add to the number of migrants headed for the cities. The better-educated will suffer, too. By some estimates India produces twice as many new graduates each year as it can absorb. In a half-built private-run campus in Patna most students have modest expectations of their future salaries—typically $ 500 a month. Even so, their professor worries they won’t all get job offers.

The problem lies not just in the quantity of jobs, though; quality matters too. Statistics verify what the naked eye can see in any Indian city. They all have their armies of guards, peons, delivery boys, ear-dewaxers and men who sit on stools in lifts pressing the buttons. About 85% of India’s jobs are with “informal” enterprises—those organisations with fewer than ten staff which are not incorporated. Another 11% are casual jobs with formal companies. Only 16% of Indians say they get a regular wage. People with informal jobs are usually very poor. An official study of 2004-05 data concludes that 80% of informal workers got less than the then national minimum wage of $ 1.46 a day. There are some good jobs. But India’s IT firms, for example, account for only a few million jobs out of a total of half a billion.

All this seems to be closely linked to the lack of manufacturing. Although some 23% of Indian workers are categorised as working in “industry”, compared to nearly 30% in China and 22% in Indonesia, half of India’s “industrial” workers are in construction whereas the figure is just a quarter in Indonesia. Of the remainder almost all are in the “manufacturing” subcategory. But these are not jobs that involve exposure to modern machinery, techniques and training (crucial for unskilled labour let down by the country’s education system). More than half of Indians in the manufacturing sector work in facilities without electricity.

The obvious problem is a “missing middle”. Most of the jobs are in tiny operations. Most of the value added is in a few big, sophisticated firms that prefer using machines to humans. Some, such as Tata Sons and Mahindra, are well-known. Most of those seem keener on expanding globally than on building factories at home. For every dollar of foreign direct investment (FDI) made by outsiders in Indian manufacturing in the five years to March 2012, local firms invested 65 cents in manufacturing abroad. The number of jobs in factories (excluding the very smallest) has increased since 2005; but only by 2.8m.

What manufacturing FDI India does attract tends to be high-end—Volkswagen has a smart €570m plant full of robots. Meanwhile investment is pouring into Vietnam and Indonesia (see chart 3) as costs in China rise. Li & Fung, a big trading firm based in Hong Kong which buys goods in Asia and sells them in the West to retailers including Walmart, gets some 5% of its goods from India, compared with about 20% from South-East Asia.

Death on the shop floor

India’s missed opportunity is most evident in textiles and clothing, a labour-intensive industry that has been dominated by China. In 2011 McKinsey, a consultancy, found that purchasing managers at global clothing firms wanted to shift their sourcing from China; their favoured new destinations included Bangladesh, Vietnam, Indonesia and Cambodia—but not India. India’s textile exports have grown, but those from Vietnam and Bangladesh, combined, easily outstrip them.

Why don’t more people want to make things in India? Indian migrant workers are sought across the world, not least in the Gulf. But at home tricky labour relations are a problem.

In a dusty lawyers’ room in the industrial belt near Delhi, five workers explain how they were fired by Maruti Suzuki, a carmaker controlled by Suzuki of Japan, after simmering tensions on the shop floor led to a riot at a nearby plant in July 2012. A manager was burned to death. The men are in their 20s and from rural families. They have a strong sense of injustice. “We have told our families that they should consider us as behind bars and that they should make other plans for their lives. We are ready for a long fight.” The Maruti violence has so far been a one-off. But the episode unnerved businesspeople.

Economists have long identified arcane labour laws as the key to India’s manufacturing problem. Scholars have gleefully dissected India’s 51 central and 170 state labour statutes, some of which pre-date independence, to demonstrate how they make it hard for firms with more than a handful of staff to fire people and allow disputes to become legal endurance tests. Studies have shown how tighter rules impede growth in labour-intensive industries and prompt firms to remain small.

Two-tier world

Yet the industrial belt in which Maruti’s factory sits shows times have changed. Big firms can bypass labour law by using “contract” workers, technically employed by third-party agents. In the past decade they have used—or, workers say, abused—this kink in the rules a lot more. At three car and motorbike plants, based on discussions with workers, about 70% of 14,500 staff work on a contract basis. Their average wage is $ 5-6 per working day, a quarter of what permanent, unionised staff get. The minimum wage in Guangzhou, a Chinese industrial hub, is $ 10.5 per working day.

That might appear to be good news. If lots of factory workers can be hired at globally competitive rates, on flexible terms, manufacturing firms should pile into India. In practice the situation is unstable. As the Maruti riot showed, the two-tier workforce has caused anger—the five men in the lawyers’ room were permanent employees who say they were disgusted by the treatment of their contract colleagues. Maruti is abandoning the distinction. And from a financial perspective the contract system is not as good as it looks for employers. They must still hire unionised permanent staff, and though these may be in a minority they can account for the majority of a plant’s wage bill, lifting the average pay across all workers to Chinese levels.

The labour situation is a long way from the strikes and militancy of the 1970s, but it is unpredictable. That puts off potential manufacturers. And there are lots of other deterrents, too, from red tape to erratic electricity (see, for example, the monumental blackout across north and east India in 2012), a lack of land, bad roads and busy ports. One shipping boss thinks logistics add 20% to the cost of making something in India, compared with 6-8% in China. The Middle Kingdom hardly excelled on such metrics 20 years ago, but India does seem to be especially intimidating for industrial firms. Where non-labour problems have been tackled, notably in Gujarat, manufacturing does better. But Gujarat—population 60m—is not a big state by Indian standards.

Since 2000 India has tried carving out special economic zones (SEZs) to create islands with lower taxes and access to infrastructure, where manufacturers can feel at home. But these have been a limited success, with many dominated by IT firms. A new twist is a proposed industrial corridor between Delhi and Mumbai, inspired by the expressway between Seoul and Busan in South Korea. The project has Japanese support, but basic things such as access to land and water have yet to be settled.

In its frustration India is flirting with a more overt industrial policy. A new rule says that government offices must now buy computers with a chunk of components made locally. This is designed to improve the balance of payments and promote an indigenous industry. The government is also now offering subsidies that could be worth billions of dollars to attract a microchip foundry. There is a push to indigenise the defence industry.

The legislation on offer to try to change the situation more generally may not enthuse industry. There are noises about labour-law reform, but rather than liberalise the regime for permanent workers it may merely tighten the one for contract employees. A bill that is supposed to make it easier to buy land could make the process even more expensive and protracted, argue many businesspeople.

For robust jobs growth there must be a change of mindset among officials, judges and politicians. Although Mr Gandhi and others are talking about the challenge, not everyone is, partly due to the electoral system’s skew towards the countryside. Only 10% of legislators in the lower house have urban constituencies in which 75% or more of the population is urban, reckons the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS), a think-tank. Jobs in factories in cities are not a priority for most politicians.

Failing gently

Could the voices of the young change this? There is a rising level of political involvement. A recent survey by CSDS and the Konrad Adenauer Stiftung, a German think-tank, found that nearly twice as many of today’s 18- to 33-year-olds say they are interested in politics as did in 1996. Some 20% of young rural men say they participate in protests, as do 22% of college-educated young men. Those with exposure to the media, from talk shows to social media, are most politically active. One of India’s big mobile-messaging sites, Nimbuzz, with 25m mostly young users, says traffic doubled in the aftermath of the rape scandal in Delhi in December and during the Anna Hazare anti-graft protests. But the young have little independent political identity; their party allegiance is much like that of their parents. Nor do they have any obvious muscle.

The lack of political resolve and of a clear signal from voters mean India is unlikely to summon up the single-minded dedication with which South Korea, Taiwan and China created industrial jobs. Its demographic dividend will yield only a fraction of what it could, and the problem of low-quality employment will fester. That would be an immense waste. Most policymakers and well-off people would deny that it is a deep threat, though. The country’s religions, its distinctive mix of hierarchical culture and populist politics and its durable family structures will ensure social stability, they say.

They are probably right. They might want to pay their security guards a little more, though. Just in case.

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India’s demographic challenge: Wasting time