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	Rising Inequality in UK: Enriching the few at the expense of the many by IFS, BBC, Equality Trust, agencies United Kingdom   May 2019   Rising Inequality in UK: Enriching the few at the expense of the many. (BBC News)   Widening inequalities in pay, health and opportunities in the UK are undermining trust in democracy, says an Institute for Fiscal Studies report. The think tank warns of runaway incomes for high earners and rises in "deaths of despair", among the poorest.   It warns of risks to "centre-ground" politics from stagnating pay and divides in health and education. The report says such widening gaps are "making a mockery of democracy".   The Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS), one of the country's leading research institutes, is launching what it says is the UK's biggest analysis of inequality. It be chaired by Nobel Prize-winning economist Prof Sir Angus Deaton.   He said "people were troubled by inequality" more than at any time since the 1940s - and the impact was so serious that it suggested "democratic capitalism is broken".   He warned of the dangers of disillusionment if people did not feel fairly rewarded for their work - and that extreme wealth seemed to be gained by "taking rather than making".   At the outset of this review, the IFS has published indicators of inequality - such as the average chief executive of a FTSE 100 company now earning 145 times the average salary, up from 47 times in 1998. It suggests pay inequality in the UK is high by international standards - with the share of household income going to the richest 1% having tripled in the past three decades.   The middle classes are also under pressure, particularly younger generations, with stagnant pay and unaffordable house prices. The long-term decline in trade union membership is identified as another factor in wages not increasing.   As well as inequality in income, the think tank highlights divergence in health. It says there is almost a 10-year gap in male life expectancy between the richest and poorest areas - and the IFS warns of "deaths of despair", with a rise in early deaths from drug and alcohol abuse and suicide being linked to factors such as poverty, social isolation and mental health problems. Patterns of relationship are also affected by inequality, the study suggests.   The big picture, says the IFS, is the UK is becoming more like the US, with a concentration of wealth at the top and pressure on working families lower down the pay scale.   It says that in the US, increases in life expectancy have stalled and that for non-graduate male workers, pay has not risen in real terms for five decades. "The risk is that the UK is following a similar path," says the IFS study. 'Inequality of political voice is even worse', said Prof. Angus Deaton.   http://www.ifs.org.uk/inequality/ http://www.bbc.com/news/education-48229037 http://undocs.org/A/HRC/41/39/Add.1 http://www.hrw.org/news/2019/08/07/uks-unfair-child-welfare-support-rules http://www.hrw.org/news/2019/05/20/uk-welfare-cuts-mean-families-go-hungry http://www.theguardian.com/inequality/2019/may/14/britain-risks-heading-to-us-levels-of-inequality-warns-top-economist http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/jun/27/un-rapporteur-tax-cut-plans-of-both-johnson-and-hunt-a-tragedy http://www.equalitytrust.org.uk/political-systems-and-institutions http://www.equalitytrust.org.uk/health http://www.equalitytrust.org.uk/about-inequality/impacts   May 2019   UN expert laments UK's doubling down on failed anti-poor policies.   The UK Government's policies have led to the systematic immiseration of millions across Great Britain, the UN's expert on poverty and human rights said in a report released today, calling for a new vision that embodies compassion to end the unnecessary hardship.   'The results of the austerity experiment are crystal clear', Philip Alston said in his report following an official visit to the country in November 2018. 'There are 14 million people living in poverty, record levels of hunger and homelessness, falling life expectancy for some groups, ever fewer community services, and greatly reduced policing, while access to the courts for lower-income groups has been dramatically rolled back by cuts to legal aid'.   'The imposition of austerity was an ideological project designed to radically reshape the relationship between the Government and the citizenry', the expert said. 'UK standards of well-being have descended precipitately in a remarkably short period of time, as a result of deliberate policy choices made when many other options were available.   'The Government's work not welfare mantra conveys the message that individuals and families can seek charity but that the State will no longer provide the basic social safety net to which all political parties had been committed since 1945', Alston said.   'It is hard to imagine a recipe better designed to exacerbate inequality and poverty and to undermine the life prospects of many millions', said the UN Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights. 'But in response to this social calamity, the Government has doubled down on its policies'.   The endlessly repeated response that there are more people in employment than ever before overlooks inconvenient facts: largely as a result of slashed government spending on services, close to 40 percent of children are predicted to be living in poverty two years from now; 16 percent of people over 65 live in relative poverty; and millions of those who are in-work are dependent upon various forms of charity to cope'.   Alston acknowledged that the Government had taken action on a number of the issues raised in his preliminary report. 'I welcome the moves to adopt a uniform poverty measure, to systematically survey food insecurity, and to further delay the rollout of Universal Credit. That programme will be improved by plans to provide more time to repay advances, to reduce debt payment limits, and to reduce extreme penalties. But, for all the talk that austerity is over, massive disinvestment in the social safety net continues unabated', Alston said.   'It is difficult to see recent changes as more than window dressing to minimise political fallout', he said. 'The situation demands a new vision that embodies British compassion and places social rights and economic security front and centre'.   'Given the significant resources available in the country, the sustained and widespread cuts to social support, which have caused so much pain and misery, amount to retrogressive measures in clear violation of the United Kingdom's human rights obligations', Alston said. 'The Government should restore local government funding to ensure crucial social protection can help people escape poverty, reverse particularly regressive measures such as the benefits cap and two-child limit, and audit the impact of tax and spending decisions on different groups'.   http://srpoverty.org/country-visits/united-kingdom-of-great-britain-and-ireland/ http://www.theguardian.com/society/2019/may/19/uk-government-cruel-policies-child-hunger-breach-human-rights-says-ngo http://www.channel4.com/news/parents-and-pupils-protest-over-schools-closing-early http://www.lse.ac.uk/News/Latest-news-from-LSE/2019/01-Jan-19/Divided-societies-more-likely-to-accept-inequality http://www.lse.ac.uk/News/Latest-news-from-LSE/2017/11-November-2017/Higher-inequality-in-the-UK-linked-to-higher-poverty http://www.jrf.org.uk/ http://www.jrf.org.uk/income-benefits/living-standards Visit the related web page
	How caste still rules in India by OHCHR,Centre for Equity Studies gencies New York Times, agencies   Caste systems violate human rights and dignity of millions worldwide. (OHCHR)   At least 250 million people worldwide still face appalling and dehumanising discrimination based on caste and similar systems of inherited status warned the United Nations Special Rapporteur on minority issues, Rita Izsak-Ndiaye, during the presentation of the first comprehensive UN report on caste-based discrimination to the Human Rights Council.   'This is a global problem affecting communities in Asia, Africa, Middle East, the Pacific region and in various diaspora communities', the expert said while stressing that 'caste-based discrimination and violence goes against the basic principles of universal human dignity and equality, as it differentiates between inferior' and 'superior' categories of individuals which is unacceptable'.   Ms. Izsak-Ndiaye warned that discrimination leads to extreme exclusion and dehumanisation of caste-affected communities, who are often among the most disadvantaged populations, experience the worst socioeconomic conditions and are deprived of or severely restricted in the enjoyment of their civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights.   The term 'caste' refers to a strict hierarchical social system often based on notions of purity and contamination. The expert report describes how people from 'lower castes' are often limited to certain occupations which are often deemed 'polluting' or menial by others, including manual scavenging, sweeping and disposal of dead animals.   'Unfortunately, in many cases, attempts to challenge these prohibitions or the unlawful consequences derived from caste systems, which are hereditary by nature, result in violence against caste-affected individuals and retaliation against their communities', the Special Rapporteur said.   She emphasised that caste-affected women and girls are often the victims of caste-based and sexual violence, trafficking and are especially vulnerable to early and forced marriage, bonded labour and harmful cultural practices. Violence and the threat of violence against them frequently go unreported, allowing a culture of invisibility, silence and impunity.   'The shadow of caste and its stigma follows an individual from birth till death, affecting all aspects of life from education, housing, work, access to justice, and political participation', Ms. Izsak-Ndiaye said. 'In many societies discussing these practices is taboo; we need not just legal and political responses but ways to change the mindset of individuals and the collective conscience of local communities'.   There have however been some positive developments, such as constitutional guarantees, legislation and dedicated institutions to monitor and overcome caste-based discrimination.   'I hope that my report will be used as an advocacy tool in supporting the efforts of caste-affected communities and others who are tirelessly working to relegate caste discrimination to history', the Special Rapporteur concluded.   * Access the 2016 report: http://ap.ohchr.org/documents/dpage_e.aspx?si=A/HRC/31/56   Dalit women on an average die 14.6 years younger than women from higher castes, says UN report. (Scroll India)   Dalit women in India on an average died 14.6 years younger than those from higher castes, a United Nations Women report released on Wednesday has said. The report is titled 'Turning promises into action: gender equality in the 2030 Agenda'.   Perceived or inherent identities of individuals and groups can make them more vulnerable to risks of discrimination, and in India a woman's caste can increase her exposure to mortality as a result of factors such as poor sanitation and inadequate water supply and health care, the authors of the report noted.   Women and girls who experience multiple forms of disadvantage because of their gender and other inequalities are those who are often left furthest behind, the report stated. This is likely to result in clustered deprivations, according to the authors, cutting off women's access to education, healthcare and well-being.   'In India, for example, a young woman aged 20 to 24 from a poor, rural household is 5.1 times as likely as one from a rich urban household to marry before the age of 18, 21.8 times as likely to have never attended school', the report said. They are also more prone to becoming adolescent mothers, and have no say in how her money is spent.   'The likelihood of being poor is greater if she is landless and from a scheduled caste', the report stated. 'Her low level of education and status in the social hierarchy will almost guarantee that if she works for pay, it will be under exploitative working conditions'.   The 2030 Agenda, which was adopted in September 2015, has a commitment to 'leave no one behind' and stresses on the need to address the requirements of the most disadvantaged people. The report, its authors said, emphasises the need for a multi-pronged approach to the challenges on hand, and that progress for women has to be ensured for overall development.   Progress on some fronts may be undermined by regression or stagnation on others; potential synergies may be lost without integrated, multisectoral strategies, it states. This is why women's rights advocates fought hard to achieve both a standalone goal on gender equality as well as integrating it across other goals and targets, drawing attention to the gender dimensions of poverty, hunger, health, education, water and sanitation, employment, climate change, environmental degradation, urbanisation, conflict and peace, and financing for development.   http://scroll.in/article/1001870/casteism-and-communalism-why-indian-children-are-shorter-than-even-their-counterparts-in-africa http://scroll.in/topic/5010/dalit-atrocities http://scroll.in/topic/410/dalit-issues   Feb. 2016   India's female scavengers enslaved by caste, gender discrimination, by Rina Chandran.   New legislation in India to crack down on the practice of forcing mainly the poorest women to clear other people's excreta will have little impact unless deeply entrenched sexism and caste bias are changed, activists said.   Manual scavenging, a euphemism for disposing of faeces from dry toilets and open drains by hand, has long been an occupation thrust upon members of the Dalit group, traditionally the lowest ranked in India's caste system.   At least 90 percent of India's estimated 1.3 million manual scavengers are women, according to campaign group Jan Sahas.   "It is not just a case of caste discrimination, but also gender discrimination, as women are forced to do this basest of jobs," said Ashif Shaikh, founder of Jan Sahas, which says it has liberated more than 21,000 Dalit women from the practice.   "It is not even a job, it's slavery," he told the Thomson Reuters Foundation. "The women do not have a choice, they are paid a pittance, and are threatened with violence if they quit. There's a lot of pressure from the village, the community, and their own families."   India, which banned caste-based discrimination in 1955, has passed several laws to end manual scavenging with government pledges to modernise sanitation and criminalise those who employ manual scavengers. Legislation passed in December further tightened penalties.   Yet Dalit communities continue to face threats of violence, eviction and withholding of wages if they try to give up the practice, human rights groups say.   In 2014, Prime Minister Narendra Modi launched a "Clean India Mission" to improve sanitation in the fast-growing economy and increase funding for public toilets to end open defecation.   The campaign has helped draw attention to the plight of manual scavengers and forced state governments to act, Shaikh said. The government offers 40,000 rupees ($590) to each rescued manual scavenger and training for alternate jobs.   Yet crimes against lower-caste Indians are rising. There were more than 47,000 such crimes in 2014, an increase of about a fifth from the previous year, according to official figures.   The International Dalit Solidarity Network has called manual scavenging, a "caste-based and hereditary occupation form of slavery".   Paid less than a minimum wage, manual scavengers are often forced to borrow money from their higher-caste employers, leading to debt bondage.   The government estimated in 2011 that more than 180,000 rural households are engaged in manual scavenging. Western Maharashtra state, which topped the list, had set a deadline of the end of March to end the practice.   "We have provided incentives in rural areas to build toilets, and we have offered alternative employment to these people in some districts," said U.S. Lonare, from the state's social justice department. He did not say if the deadline will be met.   Jan Sahas Shaikh said the new legislation must be implemented in full. "Even one woman forced to do this work is a shame," he said. "Its a crime."   http://idsn.org/key-issues/manual-scavenging/ http://idsn.org/ http://www.indiaspend.com/category/indias-great-challenge-health-sanitation http://www.nybooks.com/articles/2017/12/21/dalits-gods-oppressed-children/ http://centreforequitystudies.org/ http://defindia.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/India-Exclusion-Report-2016_Low-Res.pdf   Nov. 2018   How caste still rules in India, by Jeffrey Gettleman, Suhasini Raj for the New York Times.   Crime against the Dalit - a class of Indians who are not just considered lower caste, but technically outcaste - is on the rise.   When Sardar Singh Jatav set out walking on a muggy night in early September to talk with the men who employed his son, he found them already waiting for him in the road. But they were not in the mood for discussion.   The higher-caste men greeted Sardar with a punch to the face. Then they broke his arm. Then they pinned him down. Sardar shrieked for help. Nobody came.   One higher-caste man stuffed a rag in his mouth. Another gleefully pulled out a razor. He grabbed Sardar's scalp and began to lift and cut, lift and cut, carving off nearly every inch of skin.   'Take that!', Sardar remembers them saying. 'Tell everyone we scalped you!'   Sardar is a Dalit, a class of Indians who are not just considered lower caste, but technically outcaste, what used to be called untouchable. Bound at the bottom of India's Hindu society for centuries, the Dalit population, now estimated at more than 300 million, has been abused for as long as anyone can remember.   And now, according to crime statistics, the violence against them is rising.   This might seem surprising against the new narrative India is writing. The Indian economy is growing. Millions of people are being lifted out of abject poverty.   But in many places, especially in poorer rural areas, caste infrastructure is still the one that counts. And those who rebel against it, like Sardar, are often greeted with unchecked brutality.   It is violence intended to send a message, pain inflicted to maintain India's old social order. The crimes are happening across the country and Dalits are not simply killed: They are humiliated, tortured, disfigured, destroyed.   'We have a mental illness', said Avatthi Ramaiah, a sociology professor in Mumbai.   'You may talk about India being a world power, a global power, sending satellites into space', he said. 'But the outside world has an image of India they don't know. As long as Hinduism is strong, caste will be strong, and as long as there is caste, there will be lower caste', he added.   'The lower castes don't have the critical numbers to counterattack', he said. And the result has been violence that he described as 'intimate, sadistic and cruel'.   In late October, a 14-year-old Dalit girl was beheaded by an upper-caste man whose wife said he hated the girl specifically because of her caste. A Dalit scavenger was tied up and fatally whipped outside a factory in May, in a beating captured on video and broadcast across India. In March, a Dalit man was killed by higher-caste men for riding a horse (traditionally, Dalits aren't supposed to do that).   'Such incidents would not have happened in my childhood', said Chandra Bhan Prasad, a well-known political commentator (and a Dalit). 'In my childhood, a Dalit would not ride a horse. Before 1990, most Dalits worked for someone. Now they are paying a price for their freedom'.   For decades, India has struggled to de-weaponise caste. When the constitution was being written in the late 1940s, intellectuals knew caste was a sore spot that needed to be urgently addressed. They included specific protections for Dalits, who make up about 15 to 20 per cent of India's 1.3 billion people.   Affirmative action programs, though they have generated deep resentments among upper castes, have helped some Dalits escape poverty. Today there are Dalit poets, doctors, civil service officers, engineers, and even a Dalit president, though it is mostly a ceremonial post.   But 95 per cent of Indians still marry within their caste, experts say. And recent studies show income and education levels correlate very closely with caste. Even controlling for education, Dalits still fall behind, indicating that caste discrimination is alive and well in the workplace.   Scholars argue that the current political environment has increased the vilification of 'the other', whether that be along caste, creed or gender lines. According to national crime statistics, the number of caste-based crimes has increased 25 per cent since 2010, reaching nearly 41,000 cases in 2016, the last year on record.   Many analysts blame the ruling party, the Bharatiya Janata Party, whose Hindu supremacist roots have emboldened supporters to lash out at minorities, often in the name of Hinduism. One example is the rash of people beaten up or killed for slaughtering cows. The animals are revered in Hinduism and the vast majority of the victims of the cow viligante squads are Muslims or Dalits.   Experts say this violence is committed to sow terror. They liken it to the many well-publicized horrors inflicted on women here, intended to dehumanize and put people in their place.   Another factor may be that Dalits like Sardar are speaking out more, demanding what is theirs.   What ignited the confrontation that night in September was Sardar's insistence that the higher-caste landlords pay his son about $80 in back wages he was owed for working in their rice paddies.   'All I asked for was what I was due', said Sardar, who has a large, rounded forehead, a square jaw and a strong handshake, even while lying on his back in a hospital bed.   His village, Thati, is about 200 miles south of India's capital, New Delhi. It is home to about 300 families, squeezed together in little brick houses that on a recent day wore a fine coat of dust. Women scrubbed pots with handfuls of mud, and older men lay shirtless on rope cots.   In traditional Indian society, castes designated occupations. The untouchables were the ones who did the dirty work, such as skinning animals or cleaning toilets. Today the caste-occupation relationship has broken down a bit; in Thati just about all the families, whatever their caste, are involved in farming.   But Thati still observes an old social order that the arrival of electricity, cellphones and more opportunity for the lower castes has not dismantled.   The Gujjars, who are hardly at the top of the overall caste ladder, are the most powerful caste here and own most of the land. Gujjars live in bigger homes, and many have tractors and small cars. Most Dalits don't even have bicycles.   Dalits must show Gujjars respect. They are not supposed to look Gujjars in the eye or touch their food or water cups. Gujjars would consider it polluted. The two castes have separate water taps, like in the Jim Crow American south.   All of this is illegal. India's Constitution specifically prohibits the practice of 'untouchability', though recent surveys show many Indians still do it, even in cities.   At the edge of Thati village stands a sacred peepal tree. Beneath its nubby branches lies a small Hindu temple. Dalits are not allowed to sit at this temple, but any Gujjar, including a child, can. This is how it goes for many Dalits, their life circumscribed by what they are not allowed to do.   When one young Dalit man said he was willing to break the taboo, another quickly grabbed his arm and said: 'Don't! If you do, there will be a fight tomorrow'.   While this was happening, a Gujjar farmer happened to walk by. Seeing three journalists talking to the Dalit men, he couldn't resist joining the discussion. He insisted that Thati was a happy place and that Dalits and Gujjars lived like brothers.   'Brothers?' one Dalit man shot back. 'Brothers don't scalp each other!'   Police officers have arrested several Gujjar men accused in the attack on Sardar, who is around 55 years old. But authorities say that caste played 'no role' and that the crime was precipitated by a personal dispute between Sardar and a landlord.   That claim made Sardar laugh, a dry, bitter laugh. He shook his bandaged head, still recovering from a painful skin graft from his thigh. It's a common complaint: that police (who are usually from higher castes) always side against the Dalits.   One police commander tried to claim that the assailants hadnt intended to scalp Sardar but that part of his scalp had simply fallen off when they hit him in the head with a stick.   Two doctors who treated Sardar at a government hospital disagreed. They said just about all the skin on the top of his head had been forcibly removed with a sharp instrument, leaving his skull undamaged but much of the bone exposed.   Sardar said that while he was being scalped, the Gujjars taunted him for wearing a turban, something that Dalits are not supposed to do. He remembers the men saying:'We're going to take away your crown'.   Now, he said, he is going to bear a horrible scar that will remind him, for the rest of his life, what the higher caste men did to him. 'I wish I were a different caste', he sighed.   http://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/17/world/asia/tell-everyone-we-scalped-you-how-caste-still-rules-in-india.html http://thewire.in/caste/swachh-bharat-manual-scavenging-caste-discimination http://thewire.in/category/caste/all Visit the related web page
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