Obama’s Support for Same-Sex Marriage: A Watershed or a Footnote?

 

When US President Barack Obama finally articulated his thoughts on same-sex marriage, moving from sympathy to support for the cause, many saw it as a watershed in the movement to accord equal rights to the LGBT community. Indeed, several commentators saw it as the rightful conclusion of the civil rights movement of half a century ago.

Rainbow flag. Symbol of gay pride. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

However, although the symbolic importance can hardly be overemphasised, Obama’s comment means very little practically in the broader struggle for the rights of same-sex couples. Even in the United States, more than thirty states – North Carolina recently becoming the 31st – have legislated to define marriage as the union of a man with a woman, and nothing else. Obama’s comments themselves have served to polarise the election scenario in that country, many of the deciding ‘swing’ states now expected to move decidedly towards the anti-gay rights Republicans.

When the American society, often considered as a fountainhead of civil liberty, is unwilling to accept and incorporate the LGBT community as equal citizens, little needs be told about the attitudes of governments and civil societies in other nations. Indeed, as of today, there are only eight countries that have legislated to legalise same-sex marriage, five of which are European, the others being South Africa, Canada and Argentina. In contrast, nearly thirty countries have laws which ban such marriage. Every other country does not recognise such unions despite not criminalising them.

Putting Underprivileged Students Into College Classrooms: A Market Approach

(This article was originally written for Youth Ki Awaaz)

Children, they say, are the future of a nation. If that be true, India’s potential is unmatched across the world. We have one of the largest and at the same time youngest populations. So is the future one happy story for India? Er, not really. Poverty is widespread in our country despite the gains made through six decades of planning. Although the Government would tell us that one in three persons is poor, this figure isn’t a reliable estimate of the number of Indians who will grow up without access to what modern civilisation considers basic needs: health care, sanitation and education. The World Bank figure of more than one in two Indians suffering from multidimensional poverty tells a more accurate story of the structural constraints facing children in India today.

india calcutta bookstore (Photo credit: FriskoDude)

With more than half of our population poor, and relatively high birth rates among the poor in India, nearly three-fifths of India’s children are born in underprivileged households. And their chances to lead an educated, dignified life with economic and social freedom are stunted to say the least. As a nation, it is imperative upon us to allow all our children to access basic social infrastructure like good education and gain the capabilities that will arm them enough to contribute positively towards the development of themselves, their society and the country. As of today, this aim is just that: an aim. Nearly 60 per cent of children hailing from underprivileged backgrounds drop out of school and have very little chances of going to college, forget completing a course there. Poverty, which ushers in the necessity to work and earn a living from a very early age, is the predominant factor behind this state of affairs.

This leads us to the question as to what we can do to change the ground realities. What indeed are the stumbling blocks that contribute to our abysmally low percentage of college graduates and what steps need be taken to address the problem? The approach I’ll be taking is one that attempts to enhance the freedoms people, including poor people, enjoy rather than restrict their options in order to achieve the same goal.

India’s Iran Policy Reexamined

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton stopped over in India this week as part of the last leg of her Asian tour that began in China. Surprisingly, the major agenda for her visit wasn’t Pakistan or terrorism. Rather, it was to persuade India to reduce its oil imports from Iran and contribute to the sanctions imposed against that country by the US and Europe.

India’s response to the US’ arm-bending over the issue has hardly been coherent. While External Affairs Minister SM Krishna pointed out to Clinton that the extent of oil imports from Iran would be dictated foremost by national interests, import data released almost parallely told a different story. Indeed, there has been a 34% fall in oil imports from Iran in April compared to March. A large part of this decrease is due to state-run oil companies Indian Oil Corporation (IOC) and Bharat Petroleum Corporation Ltd (BPCL) not importing any Iranian oil last month. If India is indeed standing up to the US stance on Iran, the evidence isn’t very apparent as of now.

The reason for this may be that the Indian administration isn’t willing to appear as if it is buckling under US pressure to act against an old ally. Instead, there have been discreet efforts to meet the US’ expectations while publicly portraying a neutral stance. And the efforts in this regard have hardly gone unnoticed. At a press conference in New Delhi, Mrs.Clinton said “We commend India for the steps its refineries are taking to reduce its dependence on imports from Iran… There’s no doubt that India and the United States are after the same goal (of preventing a nuclear Iran).”

However, it is true that India has been using the sanctions imposed on Iran to improve its own trade balance with that nation.

Outsiders at Home:Where next for northeasterners?

It has been a couple of weeks since northeast students Loitam Richard and Dana Sangma lost their lives due to alleged cases of racial discrimination. These deaths have sparked off major debates regarding the step-motherly attitude that Northeasterners have to face when they leave their region for other parts of their own country in search of better opportunities in education and work as well as a more peaceful and opulent environment to live in.

Facebook, that ever-handy tool of the social vigilante, provided the base for a massive movement. A group “Justice for Loitam Richard”, already has more than 2 lakh members. Petitions have been signed in large numbers demanding unbiased investigations in the two cases. Protests have taken place in various cities of India and the world. The Indian media, forever shy of covering events relating to the northeast has pitched in too.

The broad debates that these issues have flared up has exposed the misunderstanding and ignorance that most Indians breed towards those hailing from the Northeast. Just a year back, a project report on ‘North East Migration and Challenges in National Capital: City’s silent Racial attack on its own countrymen’ released by the North East Support Centre and Helpline (NESCH) revealed that 78 per cent of the North-East population in Delhi, numbering nearly two lakh, is subject to several kinds of humiliation because of their appearance. The situation isn’t drastically different in other parts of the country. So it was not surprising when the allegations of racial discrimination towards Richard and Dana were immediately brushed aside by college authorities and police as a result of persecution complex. It is indeed time for the nation to wake up to the presence of people from the northeast in “mainland India” and to make concerted efforts towards overcoming the racial and cultural divide that leads to prejudiced ideas regarding people from the region.