India has 33 percent of the world’s poorest 1.2 billion people, even though the country’s poverty rate is half as high as it was three decades ago, according to a new World Bank report.

India reduced the number of its poor from 429 million in 1981 to 400 million in 2010, and the extreme poverty rate dropped from 60 percent of the population to 33 percent during the same period. Despite the good news, India accounts for a higher proportion of the world’s poor than it used to. In 1981, it was home to 22 percent of the world’s poorest people.

The World Bank report comes just days after it proposed a $12 billion to $20 billion plan to reduce poverty levels over four years in the Indian states of Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Odisha, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh. Sixty percent of the financing would go to state government-backed projects, according to the Hindu Business Line newspaper.

The study that came out today showed a similar decline in the number of people living in poverty in recent years. People living below $1.25 (67 rupees) a day fell considerably from more than half the people in the developing world in 1981 to 21 percent in 2010, despite a 59 percent increase in world population during the same period.

Still, there are 1.2 billion people living in extreme deprivation, and the World Bank urged the international community to increase efforts to stop this within the next two decades.

China was the most successful country in helping improve its people’s economic condition. Its poverty rate fell to 12 percent of the population in 2010 from 84 percent in 1981.

Sub-Saharan Africa is the only region in the world where the number of poor has risen steadily, despite a decrease in poverty rate from 51 percent in 1981 to 48 percent in 2010, according to the report titled “The State of the Poor: Where are the Poor and Where are the Poorest?”

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Neighbours China and Pakistan do it. Guyana in South America and Egypt do it. Even South Korea, where 81.1 percent of the population is online, does it. Should India make Internet pornography illegal too?

The Supreme Court has asked the government to respond to a public interest litigation which seeks to make watching online porn a non-bailable offence.

Petitioner Kamlesh Vaswani says that the proliferation of Internet pornography is debasing people’s idea of sex, and also results in increased sexual assaults on women.

In a society which publicly espouses prudishness and where sex talk in public space is almost absent, porn videos and pictures (not to mention sex toys) are freely available, and online porn is thriving.

While there are social and political groups who attack Valentine’s Day celebrations and “moral policemen” who haul up couples sitting together in parks, smut has been left alone, relatively speaking.

When a debate on censoring porn comes up, one of the key questions is – how harmful is it?

“Porn is always on demand and watching brutal form of porn increases the viewer’s appetite for similar actions within society,” Vaswani said in his petition.

Reams of newsprint have been dedicated to the negative effects of porn – from spawning ‘porn addicts’ to destroying marriages.

But the main argument, it would seem, is against exposing people to extremely graphic porn which uses degradation, pain, sado-masochism and the like as a tool for gratification.

Vaswani also mentioned the Delhi gang rape incident to support his case. “Offenders’ minds are mostly fuelled by pornography as the sexual offender or rapist achieve his gratification not from sexual release alone but also from the thrill of domination, control and power.”

Advocates of a similar ban in Iceland agree. “When a 12-year-old types ‘porn’ into Google, he or she is not going to find photos of naked women out on a country field, but very hardcore and brutal violence,” said Halla Gunnarsdottir, political adviser to Iceland’s interior minister.

Of course, a ban on any content on the Internet is bound to cause an uproar from India’s vocal online community, raising issues of freedom of expression and human rights.

Is it OK to curtail online freedom and the right to watch what people want? Is it even possible to ban Internet porn? There are a few million porn sites on the Internet, and blocking all of them seems like it would be impossible. And technically competent users can always turn to proxy servers and virtual private networks to get access to what they want to see.

Then there is the matter of supply and demand:

-         About 30,000 people are watching porn each second around the world.

-         Xvideos, the largest porn site on the Web, gets 4.4 billion page views per month.

-         About 30 percent of all Web traffic is porn.

Under circumstances like these, should India even try? Let us know what you think.

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Should any well meaning law proposed in a democratic parliament be shelved because it risks being misused in some form?

Unless we go into specifics, it is hard to generalize the question, but the eighteenth-century English scholar William Blackstone made a strong argument: “It is better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer.”

As lawmakers in India’s parliament were debating the contents of an anti-rape bill on Tuesday, Biju Janata Dal MP Tathagata Satpathy moved an amendment to make stalking a non-bailable offence.

Some parliamentarians objected, suggesting such a law could be misused and could make a criminal of the common man as “everyone has stalked women at some point”.

Satpathy’s proposed amendment fell through and stalking was made a bailable offence in the first instance (with a repeat offence made non-bailable).

Critics who feel the amendment could be misused by women with a personal score to settle or due to misunderstandings have a point. India’s landmark anti-dowry law has also come in for criticism from the Supreme Court because of many instances of women lodging false cases against husbands and relatives.

But as a married man with a daughter living in New Delhi, India’s “rape capital”, and quite a few bad experiences, I have to ask myself: would I want someone stalking people close to me to be freed on bail and brace for a possible repeat of the offence … or worse?

An acquaintance in the city was once followed by a stranger on the street who kept asking for her name. When he tried to grab her, she ran into a shop and stayed put till the man eventually moved away.

She was fortunate, but many victims are not so lucky — there are acid attacks, beatings and stabbings.

The concept of a first-time offence and a repeated infraction could throw up legal loopholes because of the nature of the crime.

Supreme Court lawyer Karuna Nundy told Reuters: “Stalking is a threatening act, and only persistent acts of harassment may be complained of. The word non-bailable is widely misunderstood. It means the person accused can still get bail just not as a matter of right, it leaves that discretion to the judge”.

For all practical purposes, a complaint of stalking would be made after the accused has followed or harassed the victim over an extended period of time.

So will tougher anti-stalking laws be a deterrent?

There’ll always be people who commit a crime without weighing the consequences. But if it makes other likely offenders think twice before making unsolicited advances, I’d be happy to live with the risk of misuse.

(Follow David on Twitter @confusedat30 )

(Aditya wonders whether the new anti-rape bill could be misused)

Google is offering $30 million in prizes to the first privately funded teams to safely land a robot on the Moon, including a grand prize and other bonus prizes.

In a conversation with Reuters, Narayan talks about Team Indus’ prospects, timing, his struggle to be taken seriously by investors and why he would not be too disappointed if someone else wins.

Q: What is the biggest challenge in this mission?

A: Everything is a challenge – money, finding advisers, being taken seriously, reaching out to people.

Almost all of it is uncharted territory. Nobody’s done a (privately funded) mission before, definitely not from India.

Q: How was Team Indus formed?

A: I had gotten in touch with them (organizers) saying, if there was an Indian team, please let me know, I’d like to work with them. They got back to me saying there was no Indian team, and if you want to set up a team, we can give you a bit of expert help. That’s when I got out of whatever startups I was doing.

Q: How did you recruit people for this project?

A: Almost our entire team right now is people who came to our website and said they wanted to work.

Q: When is your planned launch date?

A: We plan to launch sometime in 2015.

Q: How much have you spent so far? What is the projected total cost?

A: We’ve spent about one crore rupees (10 million rupees, or about $185,200), including for registration, a little bit of prototype being done, operational expenses and salaries. It’s a design effort and we are not doing any hardware yet. Total spend, we expect it to be $15 million.

Q: Where do you see yourself among the 23 active teams?

A: We believe we are in the top five. We believe the moment we sign up with ISRO, we will be in the top two. Signing up with ISRO is the one big event that changes a lot of things for us. It has not happened yet, but we’ve started talking to them. (The Indian Space Research Organisation, or ISRO, is the primary space agency of the Indian government. Team Indus plans to use ISRO’s PSLV satellite launch vehicle for its moon mission)

Q: The competition rules state that the project must be 90 percent privately funded. So how are you managing?

A: Right now it is founder-funded. We’ve divided the cost into three different parts. One is cost of design, second is the cost of building it and the third is the cost of launching it. We have separate strategies for each one of them. For designing, we will be looking for investments. Building it is where we are looking at partnerships (aerospace companies, IITs or government agencies). We are looking at these people to partner with us and potentially contribute, if not money, then equipment. The last part, we are going to do crowdfunding.

Q: Why would investors be interested?

A: I started by saying we are an aerospace company. So we see this as a company which is doing a project, and it will continue doing other aerospace projects or derived technologies or IPR, or licensing rights from what we’re going to do here (moon mission).

We are a for-profit company. It’s not just this mission, we will continue building beyond it.

Q: What if somebody else beats you to the prizes?

A: We’re definitely aiming for the first prize. We’ve got one bonus prize built into it. But, if all the prizes go away in 2014 and I’ve booked my launch with ISRO, that doesn’t mean I stop. I have to go because I’ve already done my engineering, I’ve already spent the money and probably just a residual amount is left. So you’d see that differently as then maybe it converts from a Google Lunar X Prize mission to simply a India’s mission. It’s a people mission, people have contributed to it, people have worked in it, and people have a part in it.

Q: What would losing mean for your team?

A: Even if we lose, we’ll still accomplish a fantastic engineering feat. Prize money is just one component of it, so I’m talking about a company which is going to continue after the prize money.

You can follow the David on Twitter @confusedat30

A man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh.

This verse on marriage from the Book of Genesis in the Bible is meant for men in general.

For Indians, it becomes especially pressing when they reach a certain ‘marriageable’ age, with concerned parents, relatives and friends urging them to settle down.

Still, some decide to take the road less travelled. Rahul Gandhi, the 42-year-old scion of the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty and perhaps India’s most famous bachelor, hinted this week he may shun marital life to stay away from dynasty politics.

“If I get married and have children, I will be status-quoist and will like my children to take my place,” he told Congress party lawmakers.

Here’s a look at reasons other celebrity bachelors have given for staying single:

Fear of the unknown: Industrialist Ratan Tata told CNN International’s Talk Asia that he came “seriously close” to getting married four times but cited “fear” among the reasons why he never took the plunge. The 75-year-old former chairman of Tata Group said he did not regret not getting married.

Mirror, mirror on the wall: Actor Rahul Bose, known for the unconventional parts he chooses in arthouse cinema, uses self-deprecating humour.

“… I’m so ugly, there are no chicks,” the 45-year-old actor said, adding he will have to become “very rich” to be able to find a bride.

Having kids without marriage: Bollywood actor Salman Khan seems to like the idea. In a country where parents usually want their children to get married before turning 30, the popular 47-year-old actor has often faced the ‘M’ question. “I am working on a way I can escape marriage and just have the kids,” Khan told fans recently.

Too busy: Former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, now 88, was once asked why he never settled down. He reportedly said, “I didn’t find time.”

Work over family: He’s a scientist and was one of India’s most popular presidents, but can a huge part of APJ Abdul Kalam‘s achievements be attributed to his single status?

A book about the man described as ‘the father of India’s missile programme’ says that Kalam once told a friend jocularly that if he had married, he would never have achieved even half of what he has managed.

You can follow the author on twitter @confusedat30

The artists whose works are displayed include four Turner Prize winners, Jeremy Deller, Richard Long, Grayson Perry and Gillian Wearing. Work by World Press Photo (2007) winner Tim Hetherington, who was killed in Libya, also is on display.

“I wanted to see what it is that makes up our idea of what our identity is. Is it our language that we speak? Is it the place that we come from?” said Gupta. “The exhibition really hopes to raise a set of questions rather than provide answers.”

The theme of the exhibition holds special relevance to Indians, Gupta said.

“Most of the works in the exhibition, the themes that the art addresses, find complete resonance with us here, especially questions of language, family ties, communities, religion. These are the things that we most often use to define ourselves as Indians,” she said.

The exhibition features more than 80 works of photography, painting, print, video and sculpture drawn from the permanent collection of The British Council. It runs at the Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts, Janpath, until Feb. 14. It will go on display in Kolkata in March, Mumbai in April and Bangalore in the last week of June.

A photograph by Suki Dhanda from the series “Shopna” (2002). Shopna, a 15-year-old Bangladeshi-British girl, was photographed with her friends and family over the course of a year to explore nuances of the public and private lives of Muslims in the UK.

The next picture is taken from Tim Hetherington’s series “Dem Ol Bod Ose: Creole Architecture of Sierra Leone” (2004), where he documented West African history through the fast-disappearing Creole architecture in Freetown, Sierra Leone.

Below is a work by Turner Prize-winner Grayson Perry, who is known for his ceramic vases. Titled “Village of Penians” (2001), the fantasy village on the vase brings together indigenous totemic symbols such as the phallus, and scenes from village life, nature and toys.

Next is Angus Bolton’s “Untitled II” from the series “The Homeless London” (1995-2000). The project documents the plight of homeless people who sleep in temporary shelters across London.

In Anthony Haughey’s untitled work from the series “Home” (1991-92), the artist shows a portrait of daily life of families who lived on the Ballymun housing estate in Dublin.

Nathan Coley’s hardboard creation “Camouflage Bayrakli Mosque” (2007). The Bayrakli Mosque was built during the Turkish occupation of Belgrade in the late 16th century. It was later converted to a Catholic Church under Austrian rule and then reverted to a mosque. Coley’s camouflage version reflects the chequered and contested history of the edifice.

Among the issues which the panel addressed was a “neglected area” concerning sexual violence against women in areas of conflict.

The committee recommends stripping security forces of special immunity that they enjoy in conflict areas in cases of sexual assault on women, and bringing them under the purview of ordinary criminal law.

Special laws like the Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA), which is enforced in  Jammu & Kashmir and the northeastern states, give security forces immunity from prosecution unless sanctioned by the central government.

Human rights groups say the military arbitrarily uses it to violate human rights, which sometimes include sexual assault on women.

Unlike other parts of the country, victims in most cases do not have any avenue for redress because security forces cannot be prosecuted by state law enforcement. What happens in most cases is that the army conducts an internal probe, and punishment for the accused is hardly reported.

A prime example is that of Manorama Devi, who was reportedly raped and killed by security forces a few hours after being arrested from her home in Manipur. The incident sparked a mass protest in the state, and a group of women famously stripped naked in front of a paramilitary base.

A retired judge who conducted a government-ordered probe said he found the security forces guilty. But the report remains sealed, and no action has been taken after nine years.

There are similar reports from other conflict areas like Kashmir, as well as in Chhattisgarh where armed Maoists are active.

Allegations of abuse by security forces are also not a recent trend. A noted social worker in Mizoram last year refused a national award, citing the brutal suppression of the Mizo insurgency in the 1960s.

“I was only six years-old at that time. I had personally witnessed how three Indian Army personnel dragged a woman into a house. She was covered with blood stains and her clothes were ripped apart,” she said.

The army says special laws to protect soldiers are necessary in conflict zones because they work in an environment where it is difficult to differentiate between friend and foe.

The Verma committee recommended changing this. “It must be recognized that women in conflict areas are entitled to all the security and dignity that is afforded to citizens in any other part of our country,” it wrote.

That is not to say other forms of rights abuse are justified. The Verma panel also stresses the need to review the continuance of the special powers act and other similar legal protocol “as soon as possible.” The question now is what the government will do.

(July 3, 2009: A Kashmiri protester carrying a piece of brick confronts Indian police during an anti-India protest in Srinagar
. Anti-India protests raged across the Muslim-majority Kashmir valley after the bodies of two women, aged 17 and 22, who locals say were abducted, raped and killed by security forces, were found on May 29. Reuters photo: Fayaz Kabli)

Singh, 61, was elected unopposed for a two-year term till 2015 after scandal-tainted incumbent Nitin Gadkari resigned and opted out of the race.

Sharing a stage with BJP leaders, Singh called on party workers in a televised speech to work hard to secure victories for the party in the upcoming elections.

“If you work with strong willpower and determination, then as Advaniji (party leader L K Advani) has hoped, in all the state elections of 2013, the BJP will form the government … in 2014 national elections also the BJP-led NDA (National Democratic Alliance) will form the government,” he said.

Singh, a Lok Sabha lawmaker from Ghaziabad in Uttar Pradesh, was also the party’s president for two terms between 2006 and 2009.

He was seen as a consensus candidate after media reports said some BJP leaders had raised objections over Gadkari, who is facing allegations of corruption.

Both Gadkari and Singh are regional leaders who were promoted by the BJP’s ideological mentor, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS).

“It’s one provincial leader replacing another. It’s because the RSS doesn’t like city slickers,” said political analyst Amulya Ganguli.

The BJP rose to prominence in the early 1990s on the back of a Hindu revivalist movement and ruled from 1998 to 2004, promoting economic reforms and gaining a reputation as pro-business. It lost to the Congress in two straight elections in 2004 and 2009.

On Wednesday, Singh attacked the Congress party over its failure to tame rising prices, a string of corruption scandals and a weaker economy.

“If our country is going through a crisis, then the Congress is the only party responsible for it, because in independent India, for a long time there has been Congress rule,” Singh said.

“All types of crises — inflation, internal and external security crisis, crisis on the diplomatic front.” (Additional reporting by Vipin Das; Editing by Tony Tharakan)

So why should it matter?

One reason for Gandhi’s long-awaited promotion was to energise the party for a round of state elections in the run-up to the national elections in 2014. The Congress remains a party which derives its charisma from the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty and party workers openly swoon over the family. News of Gandhi’s appointment was greeted with fireworks and proclamations by party leaders of brighter days ahead.

Congress leader RPN Singh said this would be a “game changer” which would infuse “new vigour” in the party.

The focus on Gandhi’s youth — at 42, he’s still young compared to most of India’s politicians — also marks a generational shift in Congress leadership, one that could see younger leaders getting more say in party matters.

“The Congress party will be forward looking, progressive, youth oriented and the participation of young people in the Congress and national politics will increase manifold,” said Sachin Pilot, corporate affairs minister and at 35, one of the party’s young brigade.

In his new role, the reticent and largely untested scion of the Nehru-Gandhi family will be more accountable to his party’s fortunes and the people. He will now have to demonstrate “moral legitimacy” and earn “respect and credibility”, social scientist Yogendra Yadav said on a televised panel discussion.

Before that can happen, the No. 2 man in the Congress will have to make himself more accessible. Gandhi will also have to make his views known on important issues, something which he has avoided in the past.

With Gandhi now almost certain to lead the Congress in the 2014 elections, he would need fresh ideas to woo the young voter and the increasingly assertive middle class, who are not so enamoured by his surname.

By accepting the vice president’s post, Rahul Gandhi has finally decided to take on a national role and take decisions which could make or break his party’s chances of returning to power. The question is — what tricks does he have up his sleeve?

(Updated with response by Zee News)

Two senior journalists of Hindi-language channel Zee News were arrested on Tuesday night in an extortion case filed by Congress lawmaker and Jindal Steel and Power Ltd Chairman Naveen Jindal.

Jindal released video recordings last month that he said showed the journalists trying to extort money from the industrialist in return for not airing negative stories on coal block allocations involving his company.

Jindal Steel and Power Ltd (JSPL) was among the companies named in a state auditor report as one of the beneficiaries of controversial coal block allocations which came to be known as “coalgate”.

Zee News editor Sudhir Chaudhary and Zee Business head Samir Ahluwalia were arrested after a forensic report by police concluded that a video CD submitted by Jindal in his criminal complaint was genuine. The video purportedly showed the journalists asking the company to commit to 1 billion rupees in advertising at the channel during a period of four years.

The channel on Wednesday said its editors were “illegally arrested” and denied all allegations by Jindal.

Addressing a press conference, Zee News Ltd Chief Executive Alok Agrawal said it was Jindal’s company that offered money to the channel.

The channel’s lawyer R.K. Handoo said the “sting operation” conducted by the arrested journalists against JSPL was their “own venture” which did not involve others in Zee News.

The journalists were on Wednesday sent to two-day police custody by a Delhi court.