Biswas on India

12 July 2011 Last updated at 16:47 GMT Female sterilisation is the mainstay of India's population programme Can the promise of a car or a mixer grinder help keep India's population in check?

Well, that's what health authorities in the northern state of Rajasthan apparently believe. They are offering a cheap car, among other things, as a prize in an attempt to sign up some 20,000 people to meet an ambitious sterilisation target. Time will tell whether this turns out to be another gimmick or an innovative incentive.

But what worries many is the ethics of such sterilisation drives in a largely patriarchal society like India.

As population expert Usha Rai says, the promise of such lucrative incentives typically make husbands push their wives to undergo sterilisation and avoid a range of contraceptives that are available to help limit the size of their families. There's enough evidence to support this concern.

Some 37% of India's married women - who use modern family planning methods - have opted for sterilisation, a government study has found. (Only 1% of males had opted for sterilisation.) Intrauterine devices, condoms and pills were being used by some 10% of the women.

Draconian

In India's most populous state, Uttar Pradesh, with 200 million people - and an economy the size of Qatar which has a population of less than 2 million - the bulk of women who use any modern method of family planning get sterilised.

Ever since the 1970s India has used a combination of coercion and incentives to carry out sterilisation drives to check population growth.

During the 22-month-old Emergency in the mid-1970s when prime minister Indira Gandhi suspended democratic rule, the government embarked on a draconian campaign to sterilise poor men - they were dragged into operating theatres in makeshift camps, and police surrounded entire villages at night and herded the men into the camps.

India is home to 17% of the world’s people

More than six million Indian were sterilised in one year - that's 15 times the number of people sterilised by the Nazis. Mrs Gandhi government was routed in the next elections, thanks to the public anger against this drive, among other things. It is "politically dangerous", as one expert says, to target the reproductive ability of men in India.

There is little doubt that unchecked population growth is an existential threat to India - 17% of the world's people live in a country which has only 3% of the world's land area.

'Chilling'

The good news is that India's birth rate has dropped by more than half in 35 years - from 5.7 children per woman in the mid-1960s to 2.7 in 2010. Nearly a third of India's people have lowered their fertility to replacement levels.

The bad news is that India is still set to overtake China as the world's most populous nation by 2030. A Planning Commission report points to a "chilling" fact: the wide geographical disparity in the projected population growth. The four northern states of Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, Bihar and Madhya Pradesh will alone account for 44% of the expected addition of 370 million people to India's population between 2001-26, the report says.

That's not all. Half of India's population is in the reproductive age group. More than 40% of the population increase is contributed by births beyond two children per family. Just over half of the 188 million couples are using contraceptives.

But, as many experts believe, India's family planning programme continues to be sexist. The onus, as award-winning science writer Maria Hvistendahl says, is on women to control their fertility.

Even the Planning Commission admits that female sterilisation has become the mainstay of the programme. High levels of infant and child mortality and preference for sons means that women delay sterilisation.

Experts believe that women should be offered more reversible choices of contraception like injectibles and implants which are not presently offered under India's family planning programme.

More importantly, they say, men should be pushed to take more responsibility for limiting their family - male methods account for only 6% of contraceptive use in India. Should women be bearing the brunt?

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India actress jailed over killing

1 July 2011 Last updated at 09:58 GMT An Indian court has sentenced an actress and her naval officer boyfriend in connection with the killing of TV executive Neeraj Grover in 2008.

Maria Susairaj was sentenced to three years in jail for destroying evidence. Emile Jerome got 10 years for "culpable homicide not amounting to murder".

Both had been charged with murder. But a judge in the Mumbai (Bombay) court ruled the killing was not planned.

Mr Grover was stabbed and his body hacked to pieces, the court heard.

Both defendants had been charged with murder, criminal conspiracy, common intent and causing disappearance of evidence.

Susairaj, a model who has had some small television parts, confessed to her role in covering up the killing. But she said that Jerome had been responsible for Mr Grover's death.

Her lawyers claimed that she was not party to the killing and that there had been no conspiracy. Her lawyer is quoted saying she was "a victim of circumstance".

According to the prosecution, Jerome, to whom Susairaj was engaged to be married, had a fight with Mr Grover when he found him at the actress's home.

The naval officer stabbed the producer to death, the court heard. Prosecutors said the couple then hacked Mr Grover's body to pieces and disposed of it in a nearby forest.

The judge held that Jerome had acted on the spur of the moment and that it had not been a pre-meditated killing, so he passed the lesser verdict of "culpable homicide".

"When he [Jerome] entered the room he was calm. This showed he did not have intention [to murder]. Obviously for a fiance, in a situation where he finds a stranger with his partner, would upset a prudent man and he would lose control," sessions court judge NW Chandwani is quoted as saying by the CNN-IBN news channel.

Correspondents expect Susairaj to be freed soon, as she has already been in jail for three years. Jerome faces seven more years in prison.

Both defendants have been ordered to pay compensation to the family of Neeraj Grover. Mr Grover's family have said they are unhappy with the verdict, saying they have not received justice.

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Google Street View halts in India

21 June 2011 Last updated at 09:50 GMT Google launched Street View in Bangalore last month Google has stopped collecting images for its Street View service in the southern Indian city of Bangalore after objections from police.

Police in Bangalore said they had security concerns and that Bangalore was a "highly sensitive" area.

Google launched its project to collect high definition images to give Google users 360 degree views of streets only last month in Bangalore.

Google data collection has caused concern in numerous countries.

Cameras mounted on cars and tricycles had been taking pictures in streets across Bangalore.

"We received a letter from Bangalore's commissioner of police and are reviewing it. We will not be collecting any more images for Street View until we speak to the police," a Google spokeswoman told AFP.

Police told the BBC that they had expressed concern about the project and said they asked Google to seek clearance from India's ministry of home and external affairs.

Bangalore's additional police commissioner, Sunil Kumar, said that Bangalore, home to key defence and scientific institutions such as Indian Space Research Organisation and Hindustan Aeronautics, was high on the list of terror targets.

In 2008 a series of bombs exploded around the city, killing one woman and injuring several others.

But Google India's Product Head Vinay Goel told India's CNN-IBN news channel that they were "only driving on public roads and taking publicly available imagery."

Last year almost 250,000 Germans told Google to blur pictures of their homes on the Street View service and the Czech government also banned Google from taking any new photos for the service.

In the UK Google has also agreed to delete private emails and passwords mistakenly picked up from wireless networks by its Street View cars.

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India 'mystery illness' kills 28

21 June 2011 Last updated at 10:29 GMT At least 28 children in India's Bihar state have died in the past week from an unidentified illness, officials say.

Officials said that all of the children were between two and eight years. They died in Muzaffarpur town, 80kms (50 miles) from the state capital, Patna.

Bihar Health Minister Ashwani Choubey told the BBC that a team of doctors from Delhi is visiting Muzaffarpur on Tuesday to diagnose the disease.

Local doctors say the symptoms are similar to Japanese encephalitis.

But, they say, an important symptom of Japanese encephalitis is a stiffening of the neck, which is absent from the Bihar cases.

On Sunday, Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar told reporters that the disease had not been identified yet.

"Without identifying the disease how can we say what is killing the children there? The local doctors are giving treatment only on the basis of symptoms," he said.

Officials said blood samples of some of the ill children have been sent to the National Institute of Virology in Pune and National Institute of Communicable Diseases in Delhi for test and identification.

Meanwhile, local TV channels say a number of sick children are being admitted to hospitals across northern Bihar.

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India mothers charged with murder

16 May 2011 Last updated at 13:28 GMT Police in the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh have filed preliminary charges against two women accused of killing their daughters.

The women, who were neighbours and are both Muslim, were reportedly furious with their daughters for eloping with Hindu men, police told the BBC.

Zahida, 19, and Husna, 26, were strangled last week after they returned home to make peace with their families.

The two mothers are yet to make an official response to the accusations.

One of the accused is quoted by the Indian Express newspaper as saying after being arrested, "How could they elope with Hindus? They deserved to die. We have no remorse."

Police say they are still trying to ascertain if the women assisted each other.

Zahida and Husna fell in love with two Hindu construction workers and eloped and got married before returning home to the town of Baghpat last week. Their mothers were arrested by police on Friday.

Correspondents say that marriages between Hindus and Muslims are not common in India. In rural areas especially they are frowned upon by both communities.

Last week India's Supreme Court ruled that people convicted of so-called honour killings should face the death penalty.

"It is time to stamp out these barbaric, feudal practices which are a slur on our nation," the court said.

According to one recent study, hundreds of people are killed each year in India for falling in love or marrying against their families' wishes.

Convictions for so-called honour killings usually carry life sentences.

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