Child Beggars India

JUST RECALL THE kid you snubbed last time at a traffic signal after he or she knocked at your car windowpane. Have you ever given a thought that what compels such children to beg even in the extreme weather conditions?

We watch them daily raising their little hands before strangers and most of the time they are screamed at. Isn’t it possible that these little beggars are just another group of harassed victims? Or worse, the ugly face of a bonded life, blatantly existing in metros.

Everyday we see a number of children begging on the roads and we just turn our backs on them by saying, "What can we do?"

More than our money, these little beggars expect compassion towards their tragic lives so that they could be rescued from this vicious circle of poverty and pain. They are helpless and seek public support.

A beggar’s life is far more tragic than we can imagine. Standing at traffic signals, begging for that elusive rupee or two in exchange for a flower or a balloon can be anything but personal choice.

Most begging children don’t actually have a choice. They just have to work irrespective of fever or any other disease. Teenager girl beggars suffer the worst. Be it a lorry-driver, auto-rickshaw driver or the notorious traffic policeman, all look at them with bad intention. And, the poor helpless girls cannot do much about it.

Informing more about this social evil, Rakesh Seneger, National Secretary, Bachpan Bachao Andolan, said, “The child beggars are part of a forced beggary racket. They are trained how to carry crutches to appear disabled on road and later paid Rs 10 or 20 as commission out of their daily earnings."


There are gang leaders that include females also, who keep a check on the beggars so that they could not steal the money. Or if children are found doing so they are beaten black and blue for that.

"In Delhi, many individuals in Rohini’s Lal Quarters area, have been allegedly running training centres for child beggars. Areas like Delhi ’s Mahipalpur, Mehrauli and Vasant Kunj traffic signals are the main begging points," said Seneger.

For some, the bonded beggary is the cost they pay after running away from their native land. But for others, it is the last choice to avoid a threat to be made a prostitute or served before any pedophile.

"My uncle takes away my daily-earnings and arranges food for us. We are four sisters and all of us work at this traffic signal. Though sometimes people are kind but sometime they are very rude. Many a times we find people gazing at us in a bad way. I don’t want to go to school. It doesn’t pay. I sell flowers at times at this traffic signal, but my sisters beg for our ailing mother’s treatment," said 14-year-old Anita (name changed) near Moti Bagh traffic signal.

There are occasional beggars, who are in the daily wage business and take to begging when the going gets tough. Sociologists say that the problem of begging exists due to the absence of organized system of charity.

"Begging is also seen as a respectable activity in India. In all, other societies, charity is seen as respectable. In order to have charity, you have to have the people who are to be benefited by charity. Unfortunately, in India, we could not evolve a mechanism for organised charity," said Purshotam Aggarwal, a sociologist.

_______________________

Refrence Posting From: http://www.merinews.com/catFull.jsp?articleID=125190

Latest EU Report on GLOBAL WARMING

Global warming is likely to overshoot a 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 F) rise seen by the European Union and many developing nations as a trigger for "dangerous" change, a Reuters poll of scientists showed on Tuesday.
Nine of 11 experts, who were among authors of the final summary by the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in 2007 (IPCC), also said the evidence that mankind was to blame for climate change had grown stronger in the past two years.
Giving personal views of recent research, most projected on average a faster melt of summer ice in the Arctic and a quicker rise in sea levels than estimated in the 2007 report, the most authoritative overview to date drawing on work by 2,500 experts.
"A lot of the impacts we're seeing are running ahead of our expectations," said William Hare of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research.
Ten of 11 experts said it was at best "unlikely" -- or less than a one-third chance -- that the world would manage to limit warming to a 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 Fahrenheit) rise above pre-industrial levels.
"Scientifically it can be done. But it's unlikely given the level of political will," said Salemeel Huq at the International Institute for Environment and Development in London.
And David Karoly, of the University of Melbourne, said the world was "very unlikely" to reach the goal.
"The concentration of long-lived greenhouse gases in the atmosphere is already enough to cause warming of more than 2C above pre-industrial levels, and we are continuing to emit more and more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere," he said.
BONN TALKS
Officials from 175 nations are meeting in Bonn, Germany, for 11 days of negotiations lasting until April 8 on a new U.N. climate treaty due to be agreed in December. Reuters got 11 replies to five questions, sent to 35 IPCC authors.
The European Union, many developing nations and environmental groups say 2 Celsius above pre-industrial levels is the maximum to avoid the worst of rising sea levels, floods, droughts or heatwaves. Temperatures are already up 0.7 Celsius.
An alliance of 43 small island developing states, who fear being swamped, want temperatures limited to an even tougher goal of below 1.5 Celsius. They say rich nations should sharply cut greenhouse gas emissions, mainly from burning fossil fuels.
Removal of manmade sun-blocking smoke under clean air laws may add a 1 Celsius rise while oceans will warm further under a lag effect, underscoring how near the 2 degrees limit is already.
The IPCC said in 2007 that it was at least 90 percent certain that human activities, led by burning fossil fuels, were the main cause of warming in the past 50 years. Nine reckoned that evidence was stronger, two said it was unchanged.
Six of the scientists said world average annual temperatures would set a new record by 2015 -- and another four projected that it would happen by 2020 -- dismissing views from skeptics that global warming has stopped.
The hottest year since records began in the 19th century was 1998, according to the World Meteorological Organization.
And the scientists generally said that sea levels would rise faster than projected in the IPCC report, in a threat to many cities, islands and coasts from Bangladesh to Florida.
The IPCC said seas would rise by between 18 and 59 cms (7-24 inches) this century. But it pointed to big uncertainties about ice sheets in Greenland or Antarctica -- one IPCC estimate was that this ice could add up to 20 cms to sea level rise.
In the poll, the lowest projection for sea level rise by 2100 was 30-40 cms, the highest up to 140 cms.
And 10 of those polled projected that Arctic late summer sea ice could vanish before 2050, with two saying it could disappear by 2020. The IPCC had said some scenarios pointed to a loss in the latter half of the century.
---------------------------------------------
Source: http://uk.reuters.com/article/scienceNewsMolt/idUKTRE5363MV20090407?sp=true
-- For Reuters latest environment blogs click on: blogs.reuters.com/environment/