Macho patriotism won’t help

-Seema Mustafa

The Line of Control for the media on both sides is this romantic, dangerous, exciting territory that brings to play by its very mention nationalist jingoism, macho patriotism as we scribes — Indian and Pakistani — struggle to give it a form and substance. So border skirmishes, as and when told to us by the authorities, always acquire these larger connotations even as the reports remain half-baked and speculative. Ignorance about the LoC is justified in our minds as it is covered in a strange kind of defence secrets cloak with the absence of knowledge shining through television channels and media reports that remain dependent on army ‘versions’ of events.

Just a few days ago two Indian soldiers were killed, one of them beheaded, in a most brutal manner by the Pakistan army on our side of the LoC. The news got the nationalist passions running as television anchors acquired military stars in their zeal to defend the country as it were. They ridiculed and humiliated their Pakistani guests on the evening’s entertainment passing as news talk shows; they rejected sane Indian voices calling for dialogue and peace as they clamoured for war; many of them were offensive in their attitude forgetting they were reporters and not officers in uniform carrying a gun. And not a single television channel instructed its reporters to get the facts relying entirely on official statements and hasty interviews to take positions, and churn out their own versions of the story.

The newspapers brought some perspective to the story and let it be known that the border skirmishes had intensified between India and Pakistan for a while; that there were incursions by the Indian troops across the border in which a Pakistan soldier was killed and another seriously injured; that there were unconfirmed reports that Pakistani soldiers too had been beheaded; and while the attack on the Indian troops could not be justified, it was not a unilateral provocation but had to be seen in the context of the recent developments along the LoC. No one can take away from the fact that one of our soldiers was beheaded in an act that does not lend dignity to the Pakistan army but at the same time it is not an act that calls for war.

For once New Delhi has acted with restraint and used its diplomatic might to chastise Pakistan and yet to ensure that there was immediate contact between the Director Generals of Military Operations of both countries in a bid to diffuse the situation across the LoC. It is not clear whether the attack was by the Pakistan regulars or not, but subsequent reports seem to suggest that the special forces could have been responsible. Either ways Pakistan will have to bear the onus, and the muted response on both sides seems to suggest that the sources-based information appearing in Indian newspapers of this being part of the ongoing hostilities at the LoC is correct. And that neither is keen to escalate the situation to a point of no return.

This does not let television anchors and their teeth gritting performances off the hook. These men and women who have appointed themselves as our national custodians will have to realise that one there can be no substitute for cold facts, and as news channels their main purpose is to find the facts and put these out for the viewers even if these do not provide the grist for hysterical debates. Two, slurs and adjectives should not be used against sovereign countries — one anchor kept referring to Pakistan as a rogue nation — with sobriety necessary at all times. Three, guests on a show should be treated with respect or not invited at all as it makes for highly embarrassing television to find guests, whose views do not coincide with the rather limited thoughts of the anchor, being badgered and ridiculed. And four, it is imperative for news shows to be grounded in facts and not emotions and sentiments that seem to guide all such discussions these days. And five, the anchor must remember that he or she is a facilitator to get the news and views out to the viewer who is, and should not be, interested in what the anchor believes or does not believe.

If basic journalistic norms cannot be followed, then these channels should formally turn into ‘news and entertainment’ channels with news interspersed with the screaming‘shows’ that had a housewife at a party recently confiding, “you know I have stopped seeing these soap shows, I go home and watch Arnab Goswami every night. Its such fun.”

The writer is a senior NewDelhi-based journalist

http://www.dnaindia.com/analysis/report_macho-patriotism-wont-help_1787815

Qasab execution does not erase unanswered questions

India has voted against abolishing death penalty

The execution of Mohammad Ajmal Amir Qasab, the sole surviving gunman from the 2008 Mumbai attacks, came on a day when the newspapers interestingly are full of stories about the death penalty.

The Indian Express, quoting the Press Trust of India, reports that India is among the 39 countries that have voted against a UN General Assembly draft resolution which called for abolishing the death penalty. A total of 110 nations voted in favour of the resolution, and 36 abstained.
Though it rarely carries out executions - Qasab's hanging was the second since 2004 - India joined countries such as Bangladesh, China, Korea, Iran, Iraq, Japan, Kuwait, Libya, Pakistan and the US in supporting the death penalty.
A second and more interesting story in The Times Of India says the Supreme Court feels the need to have a fresh look into the "rarest of rare" crimes, a condition for handing out the death penalty in India. These have to be "exceptionally heinous and cold-blooded murder cases", the paper notes.
More than 30 years after the court came up with this condition to send convicts to the gallows, two judges say there was "little or no uniformity in [its] application". The newspaper said: "In short, the court suggested that the present system was not working."
Qasab's appalling crime of gunning down innocents at Mumbai's main railway station surely qualifies as a "rarest of rare" crime. The execution may also provide closure for some of the grieving families of the victims of the tragedy.
Although there has been an outpouring of tasteless retributive glee over Wednesday's execution, there is also a rising tide of moderate opinion which advocates that India should rethink its attitudes towards the death penalty.
"How does legal sanction for retaliatory murder redeem the savagery of what is in essence an 'eye for an eye' act of revenge?" tweeted senior journalist Malini Parthasarathy.
It's a good question.
On the other hand, many believe, the government, beset by allegations of scandal and inaction, timed the execution perfectly.
It came a day before the beginning of the winter session of the parliament, where it's primed to face a noisy and tough opposition. It also came five days before the fourth anniversary of the attacks when the main opposition BJP would have almost certainly reminded the government of its "failure" to execute Qasab.
India, believe many, should continue to put pressure on Pakistan to ensure that no attacks should be mounted from its soil. But India also needs to protect its citizens much better.
The Mumbai attack exposed the incompetencies of the country's fragile security system - mainly the under-equipped, politicised police. How else could 10 armed men virtually take over a thriving city and wreak bloody havoc for 60 hours?
It is not clear whether things have improved radically despite the government spending thousands of dollars to beef up Mumbai's ragged police forces. The less said about the state of police in other parts of the country the better.
The best tribute to the victims of Mumbai would have been a move towards reforming India's weakest security link. Nothing of that sort has happened. The victims of Mumbai continue to be humiliated.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-india-20422270

New Delhi Attack: The Victim's Story

It was early afternoon just before Christmas in India's capital, and a young woman spoke to her friend on the phone, eager to get together.
"Wake up, wake up," she told him. "It's already very late—1 o'clock."

 

 Mail Today/Zuma Press

A memorial for the victim in New Delhi on Sunday.

The two agreed to meet. And so began an innocent outing that set in motion a killing that would horrify the world.
The two met at Select Citywalk, a trendy mall where New Delhi's 20-somethings gather to spend pocket change and enjoy a small taste of the glamour promised by India's economic rise. The young woman—her family's nickname for her was "Bitiya," which means daughter—admired a long coat in a shop window, her friend said in an interview. He thought he would like to buy it for her later. Then, they took in a movie, "Life of Pi," sitting in the same seats where, on an earlier visit, they had watched "Gulliver's Travels" together.
A few hours later, the pair were dumped, naked and bleeding, from a private bus along a highway. Both had been viciously attacked with an iron rod, according to police, and the young woman so violently raped that she died two weeks later, on Dec. 29.
Her death has spawned a moment of national introspection over the threats women face here, whether on the streets of the capital city or in the lanes of a distant village, despite the advances of India's liberalizing society and invigorated economy. Her life embodied the modern Indian dream, the one-generation upward transformation that millions here are pursuing.

The Wall Street Journal reconstructed the details of her life from interviews with family and friends, including the young man, a 28-year-old software engineer, who was with her when she was beaten. He was treated and released but still requires medical attention. The Journal is refraining from publishing the woman's name in keeping with Indian laws governing the identification of rape victims.
The young woman, the child of an airport laborer who earns 7,000 rupees a month (about $130), was determined, her friends and family said, to become the first from her family, which hails from a caste of agricultural workers, to have a professional career. She was on the cusp of achieving it. She had enrolled in a yearslong physiotherapy course in a city in the foothills of the Himalayas. To afford it, she worked nights at an outsourcing firm, helping Canadians with their mortgage issues, family members and her friend said.
As she amassed some money of her own, she enjoyed figuring out how to spend it. Lately, she had her eye on a Samsung smartphone. One day she hoped to buy an Audi. "I want to build a big house, buy a car, go abroad and will work there," her friend, the software engineer, recalled her saying.
On Monday, five men who allegedly raped and killed her appeared before a New Delhi court for the first time, their faces covered in gray woolen caps. All five face charges of kidnapping, rape and murder, among other crimes. They face the death sentence if found guilty. A sixth alleged assailant, a juvenile, faces proceedings before a juvenile court.

Deadly Journey

A lawyer for the accused couldn't be reached.
The family originally hails from Ballia in rural Uttar Pradesh state. They moved to the capital city, Delhi, about 30 years ago to seek "a better life," her father said. He worked for 13 years as a mechanic at an appliance factory. Then he struggled for a decade in his own business, assembling voltage meters. He worked as a hospital security guard.
About three years ago, he became a loader at the airport. He sold half of a small parcel of land to pay for the education of his daughter and her two younger brothers, who are now 17 and 15 years old.
The family lives in Mahavir Enclave on a 6-foot-wide lane off a decrepit street lined with shoe shops, dispensaries and jewelry stores. It is a neighborhood of migrants who work as construction laborers, building apartment houses for Delhi's blossoming middle class.
Her brothers recalled pillow-fights with their elder sister, who was only 5-foot-3 and weighed about 90 pounds. But she stood out as a high achiever in school. She earned pocket money tutoring other children. "She was the brightest student in the classroom," said a school friend who identified herself only as Nisha.
At first, Bitiya had wanted to be a doctor. But her father couldn't afford her tuition or find a suitable guarantor for a loan that a bank would require.

Rape Map

A look at statistics on reported rapes and conviction rates of rape cases in India in 2011.

The Sai Institute of Paramedical and Allied Sciences, in the city of Dehra Dun in the Himalayan foothills, offered an alternative: a 4½-year physiotherapy course that was more affordable. She enrolled in November 2008. A graduate from the school is expected to earn a monthly salary of nearly 30,000 rupees, more than four times what her father earns.
She attended classes from noon to 5 p.m., staff and her friends said. To pay the fees, she worked at a call center on the 7 p.m. to 4 a.m. shift, handling questions from Canadians about their mortgages and supervising a team of employees, friends and family said. The company couldn't be located.
When she first arrived at school in Dehra Dun, she was an "introverted and submissive" young woman who wore simple, traditional dresses, said Bhawna Ghai, a professor and head of the physiotherapy department.
But as the course progressed, she opened up. She left the dorm and moved into an apartment with two friends. She began choreographing and emceeing college dance recitals.
A good English speaker, she became an avid reader, particularly Sidney Sheldon novels, her college friends said. She was a fan, too, of "One Night @ the Call Center," a best-selling novel by Indian author Chetan Bhagat about six call-center workers.
Money remained an issue. Combining her studies and the call-center job was exhausting, friends said. "She slept for only two hours" a night, said Sheen Kaur, one of her roommates, in an interview. In all, she paid about $3,300 in tuition fees.
Along the way, she developed an eye for fashion. If she spotted an outfit she couldn't afford at the mall, her brother said, she would find ways to replicate it in the bazaars. She amassed a shoe collection, preferably high heels.
This past October, she returned to Delhi to look for a volunteer internship, a requirement to complete her physiotherapy studies.
On Dec. 16, the day of the attack, her family gathered at their home. The young woman and her mother cooked lunch—fritters in yogurt, beans, and puffy bread called puri. The siblings teased each other about who would steal a bite of their father's food.
After lunch, their father went to work on the 2 p.m. shift at the airport, one of her brothers recalled. And his sister went to see her friend at the mall, the meeting the two had earlier arranged on the phone. The two weren't dating, both he and the family said, but had been friends for years.
At the mall, her friend recalled noticing that she had put streaks in her hair—white, gold and red. She asked him what he thought. He says he wasn't really a fan of the look, but answered "It's OK," so as not to hurt her feelings. He also remarked that she seemed too thin.
"A lot of people struggle to get this physique," she responded.
After "Life of Pi" ended—she loved the movie, her friend said—they took a motorized rickshaw, an inexpensive, three-wheeled taxi, to Munirka on Delhi's main southern highway, a convenient point to board a bus toward her home.

Associated Press

A police officer cleared traffic at the New Delhi district court Monday to make way for a police van believed to be carrying the five men accused in the attack.

The same evening, about five miles away in a slum of about 300 dwellings known as Ravi Dass camp, two brothers, Ram and Mukesh Singh, were throwing a small party with chicken and alcohol, according to police. Ram was the driver of a private bus.
They were joined that evening by Vinay Sharma, a young man who earned $40 a month as a helper at a local gym, police said. Earlier he had been watching television at home, according to his mother, Champa Devi, when a friend and local fruit-seller, Pawan Gupta, stopped by. Eventually, according to police, the two men joined the Singh brothers, who lived down a narrow lane nearby.
The group, which included one other man and a juvenile, decided to take what police have described as a "joy ride" on the bus that Ram Singh drove.
Around 9:15 p.m., police said, the bus pulled into the stop where the young woman and her friend were looking for a ride. The men aboard the bus offered them a lift to Dwarka, near the young woman's home, according to police.
Four of the alleged assailants acted like regular passengers, according to the young man who boarded. One of them collected 20 cents for each ticket and the other drove.
The accused began taunting the woman with lewd comments, according to her friend, which led to a brawl. The young woman's friend said that some of the men knocked him unconscious with an iron bar.
At the back of the bus, police said, the young woman was raped as the vehicle was driven around, passing Vasant Vihar, an upscale neighborhood which is home to embassies and expatriates. After about 40 minutes, according to police, the bus stopped near a strip of budget neon-lit hotels with names like Star, Venus and Highway Crown, that cater to travelers near the airport.

Tripti Lahiri/The Wall Street Journal

Passersby near the spot where the two victims were dumped, naked and bleeding, by the side of the road.

There, the men on the bus dumped the two friends, naked, by the side of the road in a dusty strip of dried grass, according to police and the young man. As the woman lay barely conscious, her friend, who was bleeding from a cut to the head but could now stand, waved his arms and shouted for help at passing cars. For more than 20 minutes, he said, no one stopped.
Several people who work in the area said that two employees of DSC Ltd., the company that built the highway and now runs it, were the first to attend to the two victims, around 10 p.m. The company declined to comment. One of the DSC employees put in a call to the police, according to a person familiar with the matter.
Moments later, a manager from one of the nearby hotels, a burly 28-year-old, got on his motorbike to head home. He passed the scene without stopping—but then turned back, struck by the image of blood streaming down the man's face.
He offered to get a sheet and a bottle of water from his hotel to cover them as they waited for the police, he said in an interview. One of the DSC employees gave a sweater to the young woman and a shirt to her friend. About 45 minutes after the two were dumped, the police arrived.
Around the same time as the young woman was being taken by police to Safdarjung Hospital, about eight miles away, her family was starting to grow concerned. Usually, her brother said, Bitiya returned home by 8:30 p.m. "We were really worried, but didn't have any other option than waiting," he said. He dialed the pair's mobile phones without success.
Around 11:15 p.m., the police phoned and said the young woman had been in an accident. Her father rushed to the hospital with a neighbor on a motorbike. "It was a sinking feeling," her brother said. "We feared for the worst."
—Preetika Rana, Amol Sharma and Aditi Malhotra in New Delhi contributed to this article.

A version of this article appeared January 8, 2013, on page A1 in the U.S. edition of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: New Delhi Attack: The Victim's Story.

India gang rape victim's father: I want the world to know my daughter's name is Jyoti Singh Pandey

5 Jan 2013 20:56

Devastated dad tells The Sunday People he hopes revealing her name will give courage to other women who have survived such attacks

Badri Singh Pandey, father of Jyoti Singh Pandey. Cover Asia Press/Shariq Allaqaband

She is known to the world only as India’s Daughter following her sickening gang rape and murder.
But today, with permission of her devastated father, we can reveal her name: Jyoti Singh Pandey.
Brave dad Badri, 53, told The Sunday People: “We want the world to know her real name.
“My daughter didn’t do anything wrong, she died while protecting herself.
“I am proud of her. Revealing her name will give courage to other women who have survived these attacks. They will find strength from my daughter.”
We interviewed Badri and his family in his ancestral village of Billia in the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh.

Badri Singh Pandey, father of Jyoti Singh Pandey, with his family

Cover Asia Press / Shariq Allaqaband

 They have retreated there to grieve away from their Delhi home – a place that will constantly remind them of the barbaric sexual attack Jyoti, 23, was subjected to when she and a male friend were lured on to a bus.
His wife Asha, 46, was too shell-shocked to talk to us.
Badri said: “At first I wanted to see the men responsible face to face but I don’t want to any more. I just want to hear that the courts have punished them and they will be hanged.
“Death for all six of them. These men are beasts. They should be made an example of and that society will not allow such things to happen.”
Recalling the day he found out about his only daughter’s ordeal, Badri said he had just returned home after 10:30pm on December 16 from his shift at Delhi airport where he works as a loader.
His wife was worried after Jyoti, a medical school graduate, had not returned home from the cinema.

Indians participate in a candlelight vigil

AP

 Badri said: “We started calling her mobile and her friend’s mobile but there was no answer.
“Then at 11.15pm we got a call from the hospital in Delhi telling me my daughter had been in an accident.”
Badri asked a friend to take him on a motorbike.
He said: “When I first saw her she was in the bed with her eyes closed.
“I put my hand on her forehead and called her name. She slowly opened her eyes and started crying and said she was in pain.
“I held my tears. I told her not to worry, have strength and everything will be all right.”

An Indian family lights candles in memory of a gang rape victim in New Delhi, India

AP

 At the time Badri still didn’t know what had happened. A policeman finally explained. Jyoti and her friend Awindra Pandey, 28, had boarded a bus to get home but had been taken on a two-and-a-half hour ride to hell by the driver, his assistant and four passengers.
Both were battered with iron bars and Jyoti was repeatedly raped before they were stripped and dumped on a road leading to Delhi airport – yards from where Badri was working.
He said: “I immediately called my wife and sons and told them to come to the hospital. But I couldn’t tell them about the rape.”
For the first ten days Jyoti was in and out of consciousness and it was hopeful she would survive. Badri said: “Doctors did their best to save her. She spoke a few times but mostly through gestures. She had a feeding pipe in her mouth making it difficult for her to speak.
But she did write on some paper that she wanted to live, she wanted to survive and stay with us. But it was fate that had the last say in the end.”
Jyoti gave the police two statements, but Badri was too distraught to sit in as he couldn’t listen to what his daughter had been subjected to.

Five men have been formally charged with the murder, kidnap and gang rape of Jyoti

 “My wife was with her through the statements but she cried so much after hearing it all,” Badri said.
“She then told me what happened. I don’t have the words to describe the incident. All I can say is they’re not human, not even animals. They’re not of this world.
“It was just gruesome and I hope no one ever goes through what she had to endure.
“She cried a lot, she was in a lot of pain. And as soon as she saw her mother and brothers she cried again.
“But after that she was a courageous girl, even trying to console us and give us hope that everything will be all right.”
Doctors were forced to remove Jyoti’s intestines and as her conditioned worsened, they flew her to Singapore for specialist care on Boxing Day.
Badri said: “I told her everything would be OK and we’ll soon be back home. She was excited when we talked about going home and she smiled.
“I put my hand on her forehead, she asked me if I’d had any dinner and then she gestured for me to go to sleep. I held her hand and kissed it. I told her to take rest and not to worry and she closed her eyes.”

Jyoti was moved to Mount Elizabeth Hospital for medical treatment before her death

Rex

 As Jyoti battled for life, thousands took to the streets to demand the hanging of the six accused and a new anti-rape law. But three days later on December 29 she had a fatal heart attack.
Badri said: “I so desperately wanted her to survive, even though she would have to live with a memory of that attack and get through her trauma.
“We’re so devastated that she’s gone. There’s a huge void in our lives. She was the centre of our universe. Our lives revolved around her.
“Her absence is so painful, a future without her is unimaginable.”
Badri said Jyoti’s friend Awindra was not her boyfriend – just a very brave friend who tried to save her.
He said: “There was no question of her marrying because we belong to different castes.
“She never expressed a desire to marry. She was concentrating on her studies and wanted a job first.”
Badri also revealed that Jyoti often mentioned how much Awindra tried to save her.

A participant lights a candle next to a sign during a vigil for Jyoti

Reuters

 “She kept telling her mother he tried his best to help but they kept beating him with a rod.”
Badri now cherishes the memories of his daughter. He remembers her dream of being a doctor.
He said: “I told her I can’t afford to pay for her to do such subjects but she was determined. She wanted to be a doctor and earn lots of money and go overseas a lot.”
When Badri first moved to Delhi in 1983 he earned just 150 Rupees a month – the equivalent of £1.70 today.
But he sold some land to pay for his daughter’s studies and saved as much as possible from his 5,700 Rupees (£65) a month he now earns.
Badri said: “It’s hard living in Delhi on my wages, very hard. But Jyoti always said she would change all of that. She wanted to change our lives once she got a job.”
Jyoti had only just finished her four-year course in physiotherapy at college outside Delhi. She was doing an internship when she was attacked.
Her brothers, Gaurav Singh, 20, and Saurav Singh, 15, were close to their big sister and cannot image how they will cope.
Gaurav said: “Life is going to be so difficult without her. Without her guidance I don’t know what to do or how to go about life again.”
Badri and all the family have been touched by the way the nation has supported them.

Indian protesters burn an effigy depicting rapists during a rally in New Delhi

Getty

 He said: “The people of India have given us strength to cope up with our loss. I feel she’s not just my daughter but also India’s daughter.
“I used to read about rape incidents in the newspapers but never digested it much. We’re so thankful to the people who came out to protest against the barbarity.”
DNA tests have linked five men and a 17-year-old from the bus with rape and murder. The men will appear at the District Court in the Saket area of the Indian capital tomorrow. The 17-year-old will be tried separately as a juvenile.
Badri now hopes mothers and fathers will teach their sons to respect women.
He said: “The police cannot handle this on their own. But parents need to keep an eye on their children too.”
Badri’s face lit up when he spoke of Jyoti’s dreams and invited us to look through his family album. Each photo showed his beautiful daughter smiling. In most she is wears western clothes, which she favoured over the traditional sari. She also always wore her long, dark shiny hair down and flowing – never tied up.
In respect with Badri’s wishes he has asked us not to picture her.
Releasing a photo of her is for another day.
Indian law prohibits naming a rape victim unless she authorises it or, if she is dead, her family agrees to it.
At the moment it is enough for the devastated family to sanction the release to the world of their precious daughter’s name. And they hope a hospital will one day be named in her honour.

 http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/india-gang-rape-victims-father-1521289

India’s 50,000 Missing Children

NEW DELHI (AFP) Friday, October 05, 2012 5:00:58 PM

Manan Vatsyayana/AFP/File

The photographs of missing Indian children are displayed at a police station in New Delhi. According to recent crime statistics, 14 children go missing in New Delhi every day, at least six of whom are victims of human trafficking.

Thirteen-year-old Shivam Singh promised his mother he would be back to do his homework as he ran to get some sweets. He never returned, becoming one of the 50,000 children who go missing every year in India.

"My son left his books open, put on his sandals, combed his hair and ran out," Pinky Singh recalls tearfully of the fateful evening in July when Shivam popped out of the house. "It was the last time I saw him."

Three months on, perched on the edge of her son's bed and surrounded by his toys and sports trophies, Pinky Singh is terrified by what may have befallen him.

"I just pray that he is not forced into drugs or begging. He is a very innocent and studious boy."

According to recent crime data, 14 children go missing in New Delhi every day, at least six of whom are victims of human trafficking.

The United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) says around 1.2 million children are victims of child trafficking across the world every year.

Manan Vatsyayana/AFP/File
Religious threads adorn a photograph of missing Indian child, Shivam Singh, at his family's residence in New Delhi, pictured on September 12. Thirteen-year-old Shivam Singh promised his mother he would be back to do his homework as he ran to get some sweets. He never returned, becoming one of the 50,000 children who go missing every year in India.

India's mega cities such as Delhi and Mumbai are a particular target for criminal gangs that police say traffick children in much the same way they sell drugs.

In August this year, the country's top court ordered the federal and state governments to provide data on 50,000 missing children after a petition blamed them for failing to solve the trafficking of children by organised gangs.

Police officials said they have rescued hundreds of children from factories and busted large-scale child prostitution rackets but they accept they are sometimes overwhelmed by the scale of the challenge.

The country's federal detectives admitted last year that there were 815 gangs comprising of more than 5,000 members involved in the kidnapping of children for prostitution and begging across India.

"Very often we find kidnapped children are forced to work as cheap labour in factories, shops and homes. They get exploited as sex slaves or are pushed into the child porn industry," Delhi police spokesman Rajan Bhagat told AFP.

"These gangs target urban slum children because they can easily track their movement, lure them with food and kidnap them.

Manan Vatsyayana/AFP/File
This combination picture taken on September 12, shows Indian women Ranjana Singh (left) posing with a photograph of her missing child Saket Kumar, while Pinky and Dinesh Kumar Singh (right) posing with a photograph of their missing child Shivam Singh.

"Some poor parents are scared to even report the case to the police and most do not have photographs of their children to submit as an evidence," said Bhagat.

In 2006, body parts of 17 children stuffed in plastic bags were found by the police in Nithari, a suburb near New Delhi, a horrifying case that shocked the nation and triggered a raging debate on the safety of children in India.

Twelve-year-old Sharath Kumar knows better than most of the dangers that lurk.

The son of a small shopkeeper in New Delhi, Sharath was nine when he became a kidnap target while waiting to be picked up from school by his mother.

"The old man covered my face with a black cloth, he dragged me and threatened that he would kill me if I raised an alarm," said Kumar.

The abduction however was foiled when several youths heard Kumar crying out for help. They managed to rescue the youngster and reunite him with his mother.

"My son was just plain lucky. He was in a state of shock and cried for hours when he came home," said Kumar's mother, S. Laxmi.

The incident taught Laxmi a crucial lesson.

Manan Vatsyayana/AFP/File
Pinky and Dinesh Kumar Singh pose with a photograph of their missing child Shivam Singh at their residence in New Delhi, on September 12. Thirteen-year-old Shivam Singh promised his mother he would be back to do his homework as he ran to get some sweets. He never returned, becoming one of the 50,000 children who go missing every year in India.

"When my son was kidnapped, the police demanded his latest photograph and I had nothing to offer. I kicked myself and cursed my husband for our carelessness," she told AFP.

She now gets portrait-size photographs taken of her two boys every six months.

Investigators say the absence of photographic evidence makes it impossible for them to trace the child.

"Most kidnappers target children aged between six to 13. We cannot trace the child without photographs," said V. Renganathan, a senior police officer in New Delhi.

Renganathan is the founder of an initiative called Pehchaan (Recognition) in which policemen take pictures of children in slum areas for their records and also provide copies to the youngsters' parents.

"The idea is to safeguard vulnerable children belonging to the poorer sections, millions of families in this country are too poor to even think about taking pictures," said Renganathan.

For Pinky Singh, who provided pictures of her missing son to the police, the wait for news just goes on.

"Every morning I wake up only to wait for my son's return and I fall asleep waiting for him. Waiting is the only way of life for me."

AFP (http://s.tt/1pdSa)

Intel's Ivy Bridge chips launch using '3D transistors'

 

Intel's new Ivy Bridge processors use a new tri-gate transistor technology to boost processing power while reducing the amount of energy needed

Intel is launching its Ivy Bridge family of processors - the first to feature what it describes as a "3D transistor". The American firm says the innovation allows it to offer more computational power while using less energy.

The initial release includes 13 quad-core processors, most of which will be targeted at desktop computers.

Further dual core processors, suitable for ultrabooks - thin laptops - will be announced "later this spring".Intel and PC manufacturers expect the release to drive a wave of new sales."The momentum around the system design is pretty astonishing," Intel's PC business chief, Kirk Skaugen, who is spearheading the launch, told the BBC."There are more than 300 mobile products in development and more than 270 different desktops, many of which are all-in-one designs.
"This is the world's first 22 nanometre product and we'll be delivering about 20% more processor performance using 20% less average power."

The firm has already built three factories to fabricate the new chips and a fourth will come online later this year."This is Intel's fastest ramp ever," Mr Skaugen added."There will be 50% more supply than we had early in the product cycle of our last generation, Sandy Bridge, a year ago. And we're still constrained based on the amount of demand we're seeing in the marketplace."

Low power The fact that Intel's new transistor technology - the on/off switches at the heart of its chips - are more power-efficient could be crucial to its future success.To date it has been largely shut out of the smartphone and tablet markets, where devices are most commonly powered by chips based on designs by Britain's Arm Holdings.Arm now threatens to encroach on Intel's core market with the release of Windows 8 later this year.

Microsoft has decided to let one variant of its operating system work on Arm's architecture, paving the way for manufacturers to build laptops targeted at users who prioritise battery life over processing speeds.
Tri-gate transistors Intel hopes a new transistor technology, in development for 11 years, will help it challenge Arm's reputation for energy efficiency.
Bell Labs created the first transistor in 1947, and it was about a quarter of the size of an American penny.Since then, engineers have radically shrunk them in size - so there are now more than one billion fitted inside a single processor.
Moore's law - named after Intel's co-founder Gordon Moore - stated that the number of transistors that could be placed on an integrated circuit should double roughly every two years without a big leap in cost.However, transistors had become so small that there were fears they would become unreliable if they were shrunk much further.

Intel's 3D tri-gate transistors

Traditionally transistors have used "flat" planar gates designed to switch on and off as quickly as possible, letting the maximum amount of current flow when they are switched on, and minimum when they are switched off.
The transistors' gates in Ivy Bridge chips are just 22nm long (1nm = 1 billionth of a metre), meaning you could fit more than 4,000 of them across the width of a human hair.
Intel plans to incorporate 14nm transistors by 2013 and 10nm by 2015.
The problem is that the smaller that planar gates become, the more energy leakage occurs unless their switching speed is compromised.
Intel's solution has been to make the transistors "3D" - replacing the "2D" gates with super-thin fins that rise up from the silicon base. Three gates are wrapped around each fin - two on each side and the other across the top.
There are several advantages beyond the fact that more transistors can be packed into the same space.

• Current leakage is reduced to near zero while the gates can still switch on and off more than 100 billion times per second.

• Less power is needed to carry out the same action.

• The innovation only adds 2-3% to the cost of making a chip.

 

Traditional planar chip design (left) and Intel's new Tri-Gate technology (right).

"A lot of people had thought that Moore's law was coming to an end," said Mr Skaugen."What Intel has been able to do is instead of just shrinking the transistor in two dimensions, we have been able to create a three-dimensional transistor for the first time.

"For the user, that means the benefits of better performance and energy use will continue for as far as Intel sees on the road map."
Graphics gains Mr Skaugen said that those who use the integrated GPU (graphics processing unit) on the chips, rather than a separate graphics card, would see some of the biggest gains.

He said the processing speed had been significantly boosted since Sandy Bridge, meaning devices would be capable of handling high-definition video conferences and the 4K resolution offered by top-end video cameras.
The GPU's transcoding rate also benefits from the upgrade, allowing users to recode video more quickly if they want to send clips via email or put them on a smartphone.The chips also offer new hardware-based security facilities as well as built-in USB 3.0 support. This should make it cheaper for manufacturers to offer the standard which allows quicker data transfers to hard disks, cameras and other peripherals.

Chip challenge

 It all poses quite a challenge to Intel's main competitor in the PC processor market - Advanced Micro Devices.
AMD plans to reduce the amount of power its upcoming Piledriver chips consume by using "resonant clock mesh technology" - a new process which recycles the energy used by the processor. However, full details about how it will work and a release date are yet to be announced.
One industry analyst told the BBC that Intel was expected to retain its lead.
"AMD did briefly nudge ahead of Intel in the consumer space in the early 2000s at the time of Windows XP, but since then Intel has been putting in double shifts to break away from its rival," said Chris Green, principal technology analyst at the consultants Davies Murphy Group Europe.

"Intel is making leaps ahead using proven technology, while AMD is trying to use drawing board stuff. So there's less certainty AMD will succeed, and PC manufacturers may not want to adopt its technology in any volume, at least initially."As advanced as Ivy Bridge sounds, the one thing it is not is future-proof. Intel has already begun to discuss its successor, dubbed Haswell.
"We are targeting 20 times better battery life on standby - always on, always connected," Mr Skaugen said about the update, due for release in 2013.
"So you can get all your files and emails downloaded onto your PC while it's in your bag, and still get more than 10 days of standby and all-day battery life."

Courtesy: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-17785464

Cancer typifies unmoored instability: Pulitzer winner

New Delhi, April 19 (IANS) Cancer is often described as a 'modern' illness because its metaphors are so modern. It is a disease of overproduction, of fulminant growth tipped into the abyss of no control, says Pulitzer Prize winning writer and oncologist Siddhartha Mukherjee in his book, 'The Emperor of Maladies: A Biography of Cancer'.

'The notion of cancer as an affliction that belongs paradigmatically to the 20th century is reminiscent, as Susan Sontag argued so powerfully in her book, 'Illness as Metaphor', of another disease once considered emblematic of another era: Tuberculosis in the 19th century,' Mukherjee compares.

'Both drain vitality, both stretch out the encounter with death, in both cases 'dying', even more than death, defines the illness,' Mukherjee says.

According to the specialist, 'cancer is an expansionist disease'.

It invades the tissue; 'sets up colonies in hostile landscapes, seeking sanctuary in one organ and then migrating to another.

'It lives dangerously, inventively, fiercely, territorially, cannily, and defensively - at times as if teaching us how to survive. To confront cancer is to confront another species, one perhaps more adapted to survive then even we are,' Mukherjee says.

In writing this book, he started off by imagining the project as a 'history' of cancer.

'But it felt inescapably as if I were not writing about something but about someone. My subject daily morphed into something that resembled an individual - an enigmatic, if somewhat deranged, image in a mirror. This was not so much a medical history of an illness, but something more personal, more visceral in biography,' he writes.

To begin with, every biographer must confront the birth of his subject, the writer says. 'Where was cancer born?' 'How old is cancer?'

In 1862, Edwin Smith, part scholar and part huckster, antique forger and Egyptologist, bought (some say stole) a 15-foot-long papyrus from an antique seller in Luxor in Egypt.

'The papyrus was in dreadful condition, still crumbling, yellow pages filled with cursive Egyptian writing. It is now thought to have been written in the 17th century BC, a transcription of a manuscript dating back to 2500 BC,' Mukherjee says.

Translated in 1930, the papyrus was thought to contain the collected teachings of Imhotep, a great Egyptian physician who lived around 2625 BC. The physician listed 48 cases of illnesses found during his time.

'Describing case forty-three, Imhotep advises, 'if you examine having bulging masses on breast; if you place your hand upon breast and find them to be cool, there being no fever, they have no granulations, contain no fluid, yet they feel protuberant to your touch, you should say (concerning him): This is a case of bulging masses I have to contend with',' Mukherjee says in his book.

Imhotep was referring to breast tumours.

And under the section therapy, he offered only a single sentence: 'There is none.'

Mukherjee says: 'In 500 BC, Persian Queen Atossa self-prescribes the most primitive form of mastectomy (for breast cancer) which was performed by her Greek slave.'

Atossa's disease and her war against it serves as the cornerstone for cancer research over the centuries - evolving with time.

The book is divided into seven chapters.

In the summer of 2003, after having completed his residency in medicine and graduate work in cancer immunology, Mukherjee began an advanced training in cancer medicine at the Dana Faber Institute and Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston.

'I had initially envisioned writing a journal of that year - a view from the trenches of cancer treatment. But the quest soon grew into a large exploratory journey that carried me into the depths not only of science and medicine, but of culture, history, literature and politics - into cancer's past and its future,' the writer says.

The book, published in India by Harper-Collins, is priced at Rs.499.