Just appearing to be a stable democracy isn't enough.

India is now apparently one of the most dangerous places in the world for women, which is initially confusing since there are a high number of female figures in politics, including the President, the Head of Congress, the head of the opposition party, and there are also a high proportion of women in charge of large businesses and corporations, so why is India being classed as the fourth most dangerous state for women?

Reported today, there has been a sharp increase in genitoplasty, an operation which fashions the female sex organs into a penis, with the child also being injected with male hormones. This is a dangerous procedure which is traditionally used for children born with both male and female reproductive organs, yet parents in India are paying up to $2000 for their child to be surgically changed to a gender which they believe is more valuable. There are high risks with this operation, not only physically as it could leave the child impotent and infertile, but also psychologically as the child may suffer from severe mental health issues including depersonalization disorder.

Female foeticide, abortions based on gender of the child being female, is also common place as families fear the cost of weddings and high levels of dowries that they may have to pay.  This worrying trend adds to the gender balance issue which has resulted in over 7 million more boys than girls aged under the age of six in the country.

If a girl is born, they then face even more danger, with  common stories of girls dying from “natural causes” as their parents do not care for them effectively and in some cases place them in severe risk, with stories of young female babies being wrapped in cold bed sheets out in the cold and then taken to hospital, where they are given medication, yet the parents do not give the child medicine and the child dies, and as such, the death is recorded as “natural causes”. This female infanticide is common place among the middle classes, and it is common place for parents to be assisted by doctors and lab technicians to ensure that these deaths are not investigated by authorities.

The risk facing young girls doesn’t end there. There is also a high risk of being trafficked, especially in sex trafficking, with money being used for the benefit of the male members of the family, and it is estimated that between 25 to 60 million girls have been victims of trafficking in India. It is also not uncommon for girls to be sold as brides, sometimes for as little as £15.

All of these factors added together can help with understanding why India has been classed as the fourth most dangerous state for women, yet unlike in Afghanistan, Congo, Pakistan (the only three more dangerous states in the world above India) where the states are currently in a state of political confusion and unrest and so the suffering of women is at least more easily explained, India is a country which is supposedly politically stable and is predicted by some political analysts to be one of the next world leading super powers.

A country in which, according to Indian Home Secretary Madhukar Gupta , 100 million people, mostly women and girls, are involved in trafficking in one way or another, and where up to 50 million girls are "missing" over the past century due to female infanticide and foeticide, alongside 44.5 % of girls getting married before the age of 18 is undoubtedly dangerous for women, and the political elite appear to be doing nothing about it, despite the leaders of political parties, the government and the Congress also being female.

This problem is growing, and unless it is dealt with through educating people about the importance of having females within society, not only for reproduction reasons, but also for a healthy and balanced state – which India keeps trying to appear to be – then they will struggle to free their country from a devastating issue and will reduce the chances of becoming an effective democracy involved in world politics.


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Bachmann to the rescue! Maybe...

(This article is part of a forth coming series on the Republican Presidential Candidates and their policies)

Michele Bachmann, a Republican Presidential candidate from Minnesota, is a strong, outspoken individual on many issues, including Gay rights, abortion, anti-American conspiracies, and the environment is not an issue Bachmann is shy of talking about.

However, her views aren’t to everyone’s taste. Bachmann does not believe in global warming, and instead insists it is a “hoax”, perhaps it is part of another anti-American conspiracy that keep happening in the world. As she doesn’t believe that global warming is anything other than “voodoo, nonsense, hokum, a hoax," she doesn’t agree that something should be done about climate change and as such her voting record in Congress has reflected this view.

The belief that global warming is a hoax leads to her other views and actions in government legislation, such as in 2010 she supported and signed the Contract from America, which is a pledge by Congress to ensure that federal cap-and-trade programmes reduce carbon emissions is stopped as Bachmann wanted to “Stop costly new regulations that would increase unemployment, raise consumer prices, and weaken the nation's global competitiveness with virtually no impact on global temperatures.”

Bachmann wants to stop costly regulations, which is a shared thought in the UK also, yet the regulation that Bachmann wants to cut would directly influence the environment and the environmental standards in the US. Bachmann believes that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) should be the first regulation to be cut. “I would begin with the EPA, because there is no other agency like the EPA....It should really be renamed the job-killing organization of America.”

During 2009-2010, Bachmann received more than $70,000 for her campaign from contributors from the energy sector, with over ¾ of that money coming from gas and oil interests. Perhaps this money helps to influence her already formulated, strong views on the environment and the attention that it deserves.

The list of issues that Bachmann has concerning the environment does not stop there, there are many more, yet if popularity ratings are anything to go by as she is only polling at 7% popularity, America and the rest of the World will not be affected by Bachmann and her skewed views.

Worryingly, Bachmann is not alone in having strong views about the environment, the current front runner in the polls for the Republican candidate, Mitt Romney (currently leading the poll at a staggering 14%) sees the environment in purely economical terms, which is his general attitude to all other topics, and does support green energy, to a degree, as long as there are financial benefits involved.  Romney is currently described as “unsure” about climate change claiming that "we should not take extreme measures when we are unsure of human role in global warming” following the argument that the world has throughout history become warmer and colder and the actions of humans on earth are doing nothing to change this. Although Romney has been an advocate of pro-climate change policies, his decisions to support these have been based on economical reasoning alone. 

There is, thankfully, one candidate who seems to have their head screwed on right when it comes to the environment, Tim Pawlenty. Pawlenty has a good prior record in environmental action and in 2007, he was ranked by Greenopia as the fifth greenest Republican governor in the country and the 19th greenest overall. He has been a supporter of green policies, yet doesn’t appear to be too happy about EPA writing in a letter to government that  the “EPA should offer input regarding complex energy and environmental policy initiatives, like reducing greenhouse gas emissions, but feel that these policies are best developed by elected representatives at the state and national level, not by a single federal agency.” Pawlenty has solid opinions regarding the environment; however, they may not be favoured by other GOP members or voters. 

Pawlenty looks unlikely to become President, or even the Republican candidate, as he is polling at under 8% and there are rumours that a large majority of his top aides are working for little or no pay, which may lead to the aides jumping ship to a candidate who can actually pay for their time and effort.

The environment is an issue which each Republican candidate has an opinion on, and rightly so, yet no one candidate appears to be the full rounded person needed to be a good challenge to Obama in next year’s election.

The Man From DECC

See original post at: http://www.bettergeneration.com/green-energy-blog.html

Speaking at the Social Liberal Forum on Saturday 18^th June, Chris Huhne laid out his ideas for improving environmental standards which he believes has a “win, win, win” formula as with his proposed changes, Huhne claims that competition can increase, thus leading to lower prices for the consumer and in turn, can benefit the government by helping them to reach the standards required in the EU and worldwide.  The three important “priorities” to enable this to happen include:

·         

   *Encouraging consumers to shop around more, perhaps using a well known market comparing website, this in turn will increase competition and save consumers money.

·      * The Government needs to create a clear set of incentives to develop renewable energy –  apparently a proposal concerning the electricity market will be unveiled soon.

·     *And lastly, apparently “more fundamental” is to get society and the economy away from   fossil fuels and their price catch.

Reviews of Huhne’s speech have been mostly focused on the attacking spirit that Huhne has shown, the full transcript of his speech can be found here yet  this is not the first time that Huhne has shown a fighting spirit only to back down again, as it was only a few months ago that there were rumours he may resign if Lib Dem lost the AV vote – they did lose, and he didn’t resign.

Ministers are currently considering the amount of regulation in place with the UK and are encouraging people to contribute to this discussion via a project called the “red tape challenge”  which acts a little like an x-factor competition – if enough people call for an item to be scrapped then it will be removed. This list includes over 270 environmental regulations. Huhne’s attack on the governmental plans to scrap plans of deregulation of policies such as the Wildlife and Countryside Act and the Climate Change Act seems to be part of a common theme within government at the moment, where the Coalition government have toned down a variety of policies, most notably the NHS in recent weeks after continual pressure from the Lib Dems.

Huhne makes it clear that he is not against removal of any regulation or “red tape” as he points to the astounding figure of over 4300 new regulations implemented by the Labour government of 1997-2010, and it is understandable that as Environment Minister he should be protective of his own departmental area, however Huhne’s attack on the “deregulation zealot” takes away from the point he is trying to make and instead focuses attention on the internal conflict within the Coalition government, rather than encouraging people to support him in protecting vital regulations for the environment.

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