RELEVANCE OF COMMUNISM !

So many strange things are happening in the Cosmos ! One of them is Communism. With the collapse of the Soviet Union and China's Leap Forward into capitalism, communism appears to be faded into the quint back-drop. It appears that the class conflict that Marx believed determined the course of history seemed to  have melt away in the so called prosperous era of free trade and free enterprise. The Times Finance commented, " the far reaching power of globalisation, linking the most remote corners of the planet in lucrative bonds of finance, outsourcing and border less manufacturing, offered everybody from Silicon valley tech gurus to Chinese farm girls ample opportunities to get rich. But the global economy in a protracted crisis, and workers around the world burdened by joblessness, debt and stagnant incomes, Marx's biting critique of capitalism--that the system is inherently unjust and self-destructive-----cannot be easily dismissed. Marx theorised that the capitalists system would inevitably impoverish the masses as the world's wealth became concentrated in the hands of a greedy few.  "Accumulation of wealth at one pole is at the same time accumulation of misery, agony of toil, slavery , ignorance, brutality, mental degradation at the opposite pole", according to Marx.

Notwithstanding like any form of government,Communism actually evolved over many years but the two philosophers , who captured and codified the basic concept of communism of a form of government that treated everyone equally, were Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. Their ground breaking publication was "The Communist Manifesto" and it may surprise you to find that it has lot of ideas that are popular to our democracy (like schooling of children, not just the rich). More surprisingly Marx felt that there was natural evolution of political systems and that totalitarianism and imperialism naturally evolved into capitalism and that capitalism and that capitalist just a step along the way to an even, egalitarian society form of government, that was communism. Karl Heinrich Marx was a Prussian-German philosopher and revolutionary. His ideas played a significant role in the establishment of the social sciences and the development of socialist movement.

Karl Marx is dead and buried but his philosophies of Communism and socialism have great relevance. With the new liberalised economic policy throughout the globe, particularly America, China, a big  gap between the rich and poor has been created. Rich are getting richer while middle class and poor are getting poorer. Exploitation of poor is at its zenith."The income gap is producing a level of tension that I have never seen in my life time," says Richard Wolff, a Marxist economist at New School of New York. Tensions between economic classes in the US are clearly on the rise. Society has been perceived as split between 99 percent (the regular folk, struggling to get by ) and the one percent (the connected and privileged super rich getting richer every day). Throughout the world strong to very strong conflict between rich and poor, particularly In China and India are taking explosive shape.

The Times Finance says, " a SEP study from the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) in Washington noted that the medium annual earnings of a full time, male worker in the US in 2011, at $48,202 were smaller than in 1973. Between 1983 to 2010, 74 percent of the gains in wealth in the US went to richest five percent while the bottom 60 percent suffered a decline, the EPI calculated. No wonder some have given the 19th century German philosopher a second look. In China, the Marxist country that turned its back on Marx. Yu Rongjun was inspired by world events to pen a musical based on Marx's classic Das Kapital, "you can find reality matches what is described in the book, says the playwright. One classic example of the US-"Trickle Down economics", which claims that the success of one percent will benefit the 99 percent. Such  rhetoric of America has come under heavy scrutiny.

If one considers these inequality throughout the planet countries, he will have to say Marx was entirely correct. His "dictatorship of proletariat" did not quite work as planned. But the consequences of of widening inequality is just what Marx had predicted:class struggle is back. The Times Finance writes, "Workers of the wold are growing angrier and demanding their fair share of the global economy. It seems that from the floor of U S Congress to the streets of Athens to the assembly lines of southern China, political and economic events are being shaped by escalating tensions between capital and labour, a degree unseen since the communist revolutions of 20 th century. How this struggle plays out will influence the direction of global economic policy, the future of welfare state, political stability in China and who governs from Washington to Rome. "

Ferocity of new class struggle has penetrated deep with more revolution-type movement in France. and financial crisis and budget cuts for poor made the situation worse in France and the rich-poor divide widened to such an extend that citizens of France voted the Socialist Party's Francois Hollande, who had once proclaimed: "I do not like the rich".. In China, Mao Zedong might have insisted that " political power grows pout of barrel of guns" but in word here Das Kapital is more and more mobile, the weapons of class struggle has changed. Rich-poor divide is perhaps most volatile in China.. Newly installed President of China Xi Jinping faces challenge. Even in rapidly expanding emerging markets, tension between rich and poor is becoming a primary concern for policy makers. The Times Finance commented, " contrary to what many disgruntled American and Europeans believe, China has not been a workers' paradise. The ' iron rice bowl-the Mao-era practise of guaranteeing workers jobs for life-faded  with Maoism and during the reform era, workers have had few rights. Even though wage income in China's cities is growing substantially, the rich -poor gap is extremely wide." Another Pew study revealed that nearly half of the Chinese surveyed consider the rich-poor divide a very big problem, while eight out of ten agreed with the proposition that the rich-just get richer while the poor get poorer in China..The report has also mentioned, " resentment is reaching a boiling point in China's factory towns and they say people from outside see our lives as very bountiful but the real life in the factory a is very different. Facing long hours, rising cost, indifferent managers and often late pay, workers are beginning to sound like true proletariat. Workers are organising and uniting themselves to protest atrocities. Experts believe it has been on the rise, workers have become outspoken in their demand for better wages and working condition. Such tactics have left China's proletariat distrustful of their proletariat dictatorship.. Social unrest is bound to creep in China to protest liberalised economic policy.

That is the ultimate fall-out in China  . Class interest brings class struggle. by forcibly overthrow of existing social condition. Marx wrote: " the proletariat have nothing to lose but their chains" World labourers are increasingly inpatients with their feeble prospects. Ten  of thousands have taken their streets of cities like Madrid, Athens, Delhi etc, protesting stratospheric unemployment and the austerity measures that making matter worse. Despite such volcanic situation throughout the world, the current economic policy , however, continues to fuel tension. In China, lip services have been adopted to narrow the income gap amid huge corruption.  India government by its new economic policy not only growing rich-poor gap but encouraging rampant corruption.In Europe debt burdens have slashed welfare programmes even as joblessness has risen and growth sagged.

Thus communism, diagnosed by Marx, getting deeper to ameliorate the deplorable condition of poor and middle classes. If the policy makers do not discover new methods of ensuring fair economic opportunity, the workers of the wold may unite, and Marx will have last laugh !

64 million urban population in major cities live in slums

Indian cities are said to be biggest slums in the planet !Over 64 million people in six major  urban cities  in India live in slums in degrading condition. According to country's first complete census of its vast slum population; over 64 million Indian live in most deplorable urban environment  very much like much-publicised Oscar-winning movie-'Slumdog Millionare'. The first-ever nationwide report-prepared from data collated for the 2011 national census-looks at urban slums in about 4,000 towns across the country. (a slum is defined as a settlement of at least 60 households deemed unfoit for human habitation, but the report does not cover every towns and cities in the vast country like India).

The report  gives alarming scenario of bleak vision of the future of urbanisation  in India . Ten towns with a population of around 5, 000 have been categorised as 'all slum towns' These towns concentrated in four states, namely Jammu and Kashmir, Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal and Sikkim.. Mumbai has the largest absolute population of slum dwellers: 41 percent of its 20.5 million people. In percentage terms,  India's commercial capital has been overtaken by two other megacities: the bustling port city of Vishakapatnam on the Bay of Bengal (43 percent of its 1.7 million inhabitants) and the central India cities of Jabalpur, (42 percent of its 1.3 million people). Open sewers and poverty are rampant in these slum clusters. At the same time it also shows many slum residents own  mobile phones and televisions in their slum cluster respecitve houses. Both legal and irregular electricity connections are prevalent in these slum areas, the report said.

However, New Delhi, the capital of India, has comparatively low 15 percent households in slums, while the big cities of Kolkata and Chenai had 30 percent and 29 percent respectively, Bengaluru, formerly known as Banglore, had only nine pecent slum dwellers.A nation-wide survey has indicated that more than one-third of slum homes have no indoor toilets and 64 percent are not connected to sewerage systems. About half of the house-holds lived in only one room or shared with another family. Significantly, 70 percent have television and 64 percent have mobile phones. All these slums in major cities , specially in  Mumbai are close to posh apartments complexes resided by millionaires and top officials. In these slum colonies, residents have to queue up for hours for toilets and  and also for drinking water from public hydrants.

After such alarming slum dwellers in Indian cities without any basic facility the Planning Commission has recommended urban clusters with as few as 20 house-holds should be classed as slums.The Registrar General of India Census Dr C Chandramouli said, " we will be analysing the census data on the basis of the new definition also. This is likely to increase the number slum households acrodss the country."

CHILDREN'S EDUCATION IN MESS IN INDIA !

India's education scenario is worse. Less said is better about secondary and higher education in the country.Imparting education has become a trade in India for earning huge money under political and bureaucratic patronage. Whatever may be the government statistics, over 68 percent of children, particularly girl child, are deprived of education, specially in the rural areas, thanks to the lackadaisical approach of the union and the state governments. But for rich, education is easy because they could afford huge sum to educate their children ! Four years ago, the World Bank upgraded India from "poor" country to middle-income one. Being alarmed over world-wide criticism over non-availability of education to children, specially in majority rural areas,and wide-spread illiteracy  the India government awoke from deep slumber and enacted Right to Education Act in 2009, a free and compulsory education is guaranteed for all children aged between six and 14. To some extend primary education school enrolment is looking up !Earlier this year, the independent Annual Status of Education Report into rural schools found declining levels of achievements, with more than half children in standard five-aged around 10- unable to read a standard two-level.

According to Oxfam India's Anjela Taneja; going to school, as those monitoring progress on the millennium development goal of achieving universal primary education have increasingly realised, is one thing, the quality of education you get to another. Within government schools pupils face numerous challenges. Overcrowded class rooms, absent teachers and unsanitary condition as well as insecurity to children are common complaints and can lead parents to decide it is worth their child going to schools.

A report of the National Council for Teachers Education (NCTE) estimated that an additional 1.2 million teachers were needed to fulfil the RTE Act requirements and last year the RTE forum, a civil society collective of around 10,000 non-governmental organisations (NGOs) that only five percent of government schools complied with the basic standards for infrastructures set by the Act. Some 40 percent of primaries had more than 30 students per class rooms; and 60 percent did not  have electricity, a report of UK-based Guardian newspaper says, quoting NCTE. The RTE Forum also reported official figures, showing that 21 percent teachers were not professionally trained. Taneja further points out nor do enrolment figures necessarily reflect who is actually attending schools. The number of primary age children not in school in India was put at 2.3 million in 2008 but other estimates suggest it could be as high as eight million. According to  an Indian government report, the primary drop-out rate in 2009 was 25 percent.

 More over to put the children in 'child labour' by their parents for livelihood is also one of the major factors of drop-outs in schools.Girl child and marginalised groups such as very poor and the disabled,  are often left behind. While girls attend primary schools in roughly equal numbers to boys, the gap widens as they get older and more are forced to drop out to help with work at home or get married. Of the out-of school children in 2008, 62 percent are girls; they make up two-thirds of illiterate 15-to24- year-old. And two-thirds of those not in school were from those lowest in caste system,tribal groups and Muslim communities despite those historically oppressed groups making up only 43 percent of India's children. Taneja is of the opinion that neighbourhood 'low budget' private schools serving low income families desperate to provide children with a quality education have mushroomed. But they are unregulated and lack trained teachers and proper infrastructures..

Quality of teaching in government primary schools, specially in rural areas, is insufficient and poor. In many such schools, there are some of the gloomy bare-walled class rooms, having low benches and desks, the girls sit on the floor with books in their laps. The Global Campaign for Education (GCE), a coalition 26 NGOs and teaching unions wants all nations to allocate at least six percent of GDP on education, India has been promising that since 1968, but the figure has never topped four percent and currently it is 3.7 percent. Reacting over such deplorable manner of the Indian government Taneja says, " it is issue of political will, rather than a lack of cash. Education is not a vote widening issue in a system of frequent elections, where pledges need to be delivered immediately."

Political classes  have no stake because they do not tend to send their children to government  schools. As the 2015 deadline for the millennium goal of primary education looms, there are disappointments among parents for imparting education to their children in India, particularly girl child.. Progress on the education , initially , was rapid but has stalled since 2008 and 61 million children remain out of education, resulting into marginalised citizens' children suffering in INDIA.

"CHINESE PARLIAMENT HAS 83 BILLIONAIRES"

ACCUMULATION of wealth in a few hands throughout the COSMOS is said to 'bad economy'. Such  capitalist practice deprives the individual and society as a whole in sharing the fruits of nations' resources and they continue to be neglected ! There are normally three forms of system in sharing wealth-accumulation of wealth  in few hands, is called 'capitalism',; distribution of wealth equally to the society, is called ' socialism' ; and distribution of wealth equally to all individual each  is called ' communism'. Apart from these basic facts, there are many versions of economy, deliberated by economists throughout the globe.

A recent startling report, published in The Financial Times, has revealed that the Legislature  (National People's Congress) of the World's major communist country-CHINA is wealthiest in the world, being a communist country.  About 3000 elected delegates of the Congress had assembled recently on a 13-day session at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing. The session concluded on last Sunday with the installation of Xi Jiping as President of China in the capacity of the new General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party. Li Keqiang has been elected as Premier of China.

There are 83 dollar billionaires among delegates to the China's Parliament. Indian Parliament has hardly four billionaire including Janata Dal (U) MP Mahendra Prasad from Bihar, Vijay Mallay of Karnataka. The United States of America, which is said to be world's richest and advanced nation, has not a single billionaire in the House of Representative or the Senate. Paradoxically the China, which is hard -core communist country, has, surprisingly huge wealth,accumulated in the hands of individuals .

The recently concluded delegates session of the National People's Congress (NPC) in Beijing,has seen the gathering of the  wealthiest and richest people of the world., according to the China-based Hurun Global Rich List. Thirty-one delegates with more than $1 billion in personal wealth and assets were identified. The riches is Zong Qinghou, founder of Chinese drink maker Wahaha, with an estimated fortune of $13 billion, according to Hurun .Huge hidden wealth of many China's top leaders and their families  have been detected by the analysts, say Hurun report.The number of dollar billionaires identified by the report was up 17 percent this year from the last year when 28 billionaires attended the NPC and 43 were the at the CPPCC. The average for tune among the 83 wealthiest NPC and CPPCC delegates is $ 3.35 billion, according to Hurun report., compared with average annual wage for Chinese urban worker less that $ 7000.Comparing the US house members, each of the 83 richest members of the US house and Senate has an average of $ 56.4 million, according to figures from the Centre for Responsive Politics. .

More over, the NPC is tasked with approving legislation proposed by the ruling Communist Party of China, but in practice it plays a mostly ceremonial role. Another 52 billionaires are delegates to the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, a toothless advisory body that meets at the same time as the NPC for about two weeks each year in early March. At nearly 3,000 delegates, the NPC is the biggest legislative assembly in the world while the CPPCC boasts about 2,200 delegates.

In a communist country like China's authoritarian but nominally egalitarian system, the convergence of power and great wealth is highly sensitive topic and one that communist leaders regard as potentially destabilising. The newly-appointed head of the party and military, Xi Jinping, has launched a campaign against extravagance and corruption immediately upon taking office in the last November. Xi  Jinping has said, " it will make priority of social spending and other measures to spread prosperity more evenly and narrow a politically volatile gap between China's wealthy elite and poor majority as well combat endemic corruption. We must resolutely reject formalism, bureaucrat ism, hedonism and extravagance and resolutely fight against corruption and other misconducts in all manifestation."

This tone and tenor of Jinping's statement has reportedly sent a clear signal to the China's ultra wealthy that, now more than ever, they need to be inside the political tent. "Our government is a totalitarian one with an axe hanging over every body's head and the decision over whose head it will fall on lines with officials" said Fang Xingyuan Feng, a researcher at the Chinese An Academy of Social Sciences, a government think tank. "when busness people amass fortune, they need to protect it-so either they find an agent to do so or they become an official themselves.. Another popular choice is to acquire a foreign passport, and we are already seeing a lot of CPPCC members who have become foreigners."

The top three richest members of the CPPCC are all sons of of Hong Kong tycoons, with Victor Li, the son of Asia's richest man, Li Ka-shing, coming in first with an estimated family fortune of $ 32 billion. Hng Kong's relatively smooth transition from a former British colony back to Chinese territory over the past 15 years has bee helped by support from the territory's richest citizens, who were mostly co-opted by the Communist Party in exchange for business opportunities on the mainland.

Coal-based power plants endangering lives in India and Europe:1.20 lakh die in India yearly because of power plants pollution !

Fast growing pace of industrialisation, without any preventive measures, in India  is  creating more and more problems for inhabitants. Rampant setting-up of coal power plants is proving public health hazard. In India alone 80000 to 120000, premature deaths have come to light yearly and 20 million population have been suffering from asthma due to air pollution from coal-based power plants, specially in the region of West Bengal, Jharkhand,, Delhi, Mumbai, western Maharshtra, eastern Andhra Pradesh and the Chandanpur-Nagpur region of Vidarbha.The first study of the health impact of India's dash for coal, conducted by the Greenpace under former World Bank head of pollution, says the plants cost hospitals $3.3-$4.6 bn a year-a figure certain to rise as the coal industry struggles to keep up with the demands for electricity. Almost all regions of coal -based power plants were found to be most polluted but Mumbai, western Maharashtra, Eastern Andhra Pradesh and the Chandrapur-Nagpur region in Vidarbha were badly affected.

Not only that, lots of the world's attention has been focused recently on the 'startling high-level of smog' in China. But things are not too great  in Europe., either, where the popularity of coal-fixed power plants is endangering the live of entire generations of people..According to a report, released late last week by the Health and Environment Alliance (HEAL), a Brussel-based nonprofit, which indicates that coal pollution causes more than 18,200 premature deaths each year in Europe-or 23,300 deaths, if one add in Siberia, Croatia and Turkey. The economic costs of burning coal totals up to $71 billion in dollars, equalling about four million lost working days every year.

Before I deliberate the dangerous impact of coal-based power plants in India, I must place here one important facts. Coal as power source has been a decade-long wane in Europe, but HEAL sees the potential for "short-term rebound" in the fossil-fuel's popularity due to high prices of natural gases. Actually, it is already happening:coal is gaining traction in part due to the action of Germany, which ditched nuclear power plants in favour of coal in the wake of the Fukushima disaster. And there are 50 more coal power plants in development in Europe, some designed to burn lignite (aka 'brown coal') that is cheap but especially foul for the  environment.

The study of the Greepace, which data took from 111 major power plants in India, says there is barely any regulation or inspection of pollution. "hundreds of thousands lives could be saved and millions of  asthma attacks, heart attacks, hospitalisation, lost workdays and associated costs to the society could be avoided, with the use of cleaner fuels and stricter emission standards and the installation and use of technologies required to achieve substantial reductions in these pollutants,"the report says and adds, " there is a conspicuous lack of regulations for power plants stack emission. Enforcement of what standards (which) do not exist, is nearly non-existent"'.

In India, there are general complaints that the power is mostly exported to large cities and heavy industries while local people, where  electricity is generated, are left with pollution and toxic dumps. About 400 million people in India have no electricity and power outages are common. The pressure to generate power has led to tens of thousands of homes being moved to make ways for mines and plants. In the process, crores of people in Odisha, West Bengal, Chhatishgarh, Madhya Pradesh, Jharkhand, Maharshtra, Andhra Pradesh  Karnataka etc have become homeless and landless as their living areas in forest and plan have been forcibly acquired by the government and the same have been handed over to multi-nationals, corporates, industrialists, neo-rich political classes etc for setting up power plants and industries in the respective regions.

India is the world's second coal burner after China, generating 210 GW of electricity a year, mostly from coal. But it is likely to become the largest if plants to generate a further 160 GVV annually are approved. "Thousands of lives can be saved every year if India tightens its emissions standards, introduces limits for pollutants such as sulphur dioxide, nitrogen oxides and mercury and institutes mandatory monitoring of emissions at plant stack", said the report's author, Sarath Guttikunda, a former head of the World Bank's pollution division.

Vinuta Gopal of GreenPeace says, " The ongoing coal expansion is irrational and dangerous. Coal mining is destroying forest cover , tribal communities and endangered species and now we know the pollution it emits when burned is killing thousands. Coal has failed to deliver energy security. We need a moratorium on new coal plants and ambitious policy incentives to unlock the huge potential India has in efficiency measures, wind and solar."

As regards, such menace in Europe, it is interesting to study the country-by-country breakdowns in HEAL's report as reported by The Guardian and the Washington Posts, which the group says is the first to comprehensively examine the medical-economic impact of coal on the continent. Some of the worst polluters are power-generation facilities in former Eastern Bloc countries like the imposing Maritsa Iztok lignite complex in Bulgaria and the quad-smokestacks Turcenia Power station in Romania.. More than half of total health impacts that HEAL logged come from Romania, Poland, Germany, while runner-up countries with high levels of combustion include Bulgaria, Turkey, the Czech Republic, the France and the United Kingdom.

Experts say, "coal pollution has been linked to chronic diseases of the heart and lungs and can trigger nasty stuff like bronchitis, emphysema, lung cancer, heart attacks and arrhythmia. A boom in coal could increase the amount of ozone and particulate matter over European cities where already between 80 and 90 percent of people are breathing air that is beyond dirty as defined by the World Health Organisation (WHO).

The Guardian and the Washington Post have disclosed that HEAL is asking policy makers to consider putting a moratorium on new plants or use better pollution-scrubbing technology. At the very last says the group's leader Genom Jensen, the "startlingly high costs to human health should trigger a major rethink on EU energy policy".

HELPLESS CHILDREN AND EMPOWERED WOMEN !

Which one is more important-betterment of childrens' life or measures for safety and security of women from atrocity? Both are essential in India ! But in my opinion, childrens' cause is more important because they are 'helpless' than the atrocity on women, who are competent enough to tackle the situation of their own because of their empowerment in the society.


Much hue and cry is being raised over atrocity on women, particularly much-publicised rapes in New Delhi. And the union government has also shown prompt attention  by promulgating an ordinance amending various criminal laws for stringent punishment to rapists on the line of Justice Verma Commission report. Almost all political parties have also shown concern over the incidents of rape in the country. And the union government is taking extra measures to enact a stringent law for the safety and security of women in the country. And the genuine causes of  lakhs of helpless children are being ignored !

Sadly, the same union government is showing little concern over enacting a radical law to improve the sad plight of lakhs of children, who are  being trafficked , kidnapped and  forced into child labour and sexual exploitation  in India.The Indian cabinet led by the prime minister Manmohan singh had last year decided to bring an effective  law, which would make the employment of under-14s punishable by three years in jails. . The current law bans the employment of under-14s only hazardous occupations. The Centre had decided in August 2012 to enact a new law-Child and Adolescent Labour (Prohibition) Act following reports of huge scale of children being trafficked for unlawful labour. Over 40 children were rescued and 20 traffickers were arrested from a train. Apart from that, 38 children were also rescued in other raids in Punjab and north-west Delhi.

More over the government had also proposed to introduce the criminal law amendment bill to include  a ban on child trafficking and trafficked for forced labour. The proposed law has provision  for sentence  between seven years and life imprisonment for those convicted. But as the understanding goes that there had been serious attempts to water down the  enactment of law on children. Anti-trafficking activists are alarmed over some hidden move  to weaken the proposed law.Bhuwan Rhibu from the Bachpan Bachao Andolan (BBA) has said," it is very important for consumers in India and the west to speak -up.People need wise up and face the fact that many of the products they buy are made by child labour by children abducted from their homes and whose lives have been violated. It is important now for consumers to take action and demand change and and for the authorities to then enforce the law."

The Guardian and The Observer of Great Britain have elaborated in detail about child trafficking in India, citing evidences of the trafficking and kidnapping of hundreds of thousands of children in India. Children are used to manufacture goods which end up on western high streets and have urged consumers to demand changes in the laws on children. Over 90000 children go missing in India every year. They are most neglected lot in India. ( My two blog topics-CHILD LABOUR: A BIGGEST CURSE IN INDIA and  90000 CHILDREN GO MISSING IN INDIA EVERY YEAR , written on  25 September 2012 and  November 30 2012- www.kksingh1.blogspot.com ).

During raids at different places in India, some children were found hidden in sack. The youngest was seven -year-old. All these rescued children told their rescuers they had been working up to 16 hours a day for Rs 20 only (25p a week) A joint investigation between The Observer and BBA found goods being made for western brands in other backstreet workshop. A BBA spokesman said the children were found to be employed in embroidery work in a condition of forced labour and slavery in 11 workshops trucked away among the narrow lanes of the Delhi colony.

According to Indian government figure; there are currently about five million children working in the country (down from  nine million in 2005). But activists say that is gross underestimate and that the true figure is closer to 50 million.. Many of these children are trafficked by criminals gang. At least 100,000 children go missing from their homes in India every year-274 each day- and only 10 percent are registered as officially missing. The Indian government's own National Child Labour Project is reported to have rescued and rehabilitated 354,877 child labourers but mounted only 25006 prosecutions over the last three years. Other government records show that between 2008 and 2012 , a total of 452,679 child labour and trafficking cases were reported. But the records also show that out of those 25006 prosecutions, only 3,394 employers or traffickers were convicted.

Recently, Minna Kabir, the wife of the chief Justice o f the Supreme court, has written an open letter to the Hindstan Times  , English daily in which she has said," Every society is responsible for the well being and care of the children up to the age of 18 years, especially if they are marginalised, helpless and powerless to do anything for themselves."