Welcome, Bamberites!
Unfortunately, if you're only just now joining the story, you're catching me in the midst of some particularly uninteresting career dithering. If, as I suspect, you came here looking for some hardcore bitching about India, you'll need to go to the archives. Might I suggest here, here, and here?
Thanks for looking, and why not travel to Thailand instead?
Thanks for looking, and why not travel to Thailand instead?
10 Comments:
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Anonymous said...
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- 4:35 PM
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Anonymous said...
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- 9:18 PM
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esquiver said...
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- 9:26 PM
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Anonymous said...
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- 12:11 PM
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esquiver said...
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- 1:49 PM
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Anonymous said...
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- 1:20 AM
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esquiver said...
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- 1:28 PM
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Anonymous said...
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- 9:28 PM
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esquiver said...
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- 12:32 PM
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Anonymous said...
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- 4:04 PM
Post a CommentThis is my first time visiting your blog (I came here from Bamber's site) and I don't mean to be rude, but what did you expect? You are visiting a Third World country. Did you think that it would be like Western Europe, America, or even Japan? Try comparing it to other countries that have similar per capita GDPs and see if you still think as poorly of India. I would guess that you would find other countries (subsaharan african countries, latin american countries) to be worse.
My apologies if this was rude; my intent was only to prod you to re-examine your experience. Wonderful posts, take care.
Given the promotion of Thailand, which was ranked in Gallup's perception poll as one of the most corrupt nations (although it does do better in Transparency International's poll), I'm not sure what the metric for what this blogger's idea of a good developing nation to visit is. India's got a lot of problems, but at least it's not so well-known as a pedophile destination...
First post-er: Yeah. Re-examine my experience. Never occurred to me. Thanks for that. Buh-bye.
Second post-er: True, not well-known. Which very much makes it easier for them to operate.
Gallup perception poll? Having lived in both countries, I'll stick with reality, thanks.
esquiver,
Interesting -- so you think there's actually more pedophile travel to India? The NAMBLA folks don't seem to be organizing the package tours to Mumbai that they do for Bangkok, so I guess they aren't getting the "where's the easiest place to operate as a pedophile" update.
The poll is of people who have traveled and lived in those countries, so I'm not sure why their reality is less valid than yours -- if by "reality" you mean "your perception alone with its biases of specific incidents, memory, etc."
No, of course the NAMBLA folks aren't planning trips to India. Christ, just because they're pedophiles doesn't mean they're masochists.
There's a wide range of estimates of the number of street children in Mumbai, but even the most conservative put it at 100,000 -- which doesn't even count the essentially homeless slum children. You don't think they're for sale -- or vulnerable to those who see them as free for the taking? The problem is well-publicized in Thailand, and bunches of NGOs and prevention programs are in place to protect the at-risk kids (who number a fraction as many as they do in India). In India, the problem doesn't officially exist, and NGOs are few. Where do you think children are better off? Or are pedophiles only Western card-carrying members of NAMBLA who come in on package tours?
esquiver,
I confess myself frankly confused. Do you *know* of large numbers of street children who are kept in brothels and raped by pedophiles? Or are you just assuming based on the *sheer number* of street children? (as in your post above about how India's inevitably just gonna crack under the weight of poverty and population) I know of one big case this year where a man pretending to run a shelter for street kid actually was sending them off with tourists, and the National Human Rights Commission of India (not that you can trust it, being official) issued a massive report a year ago about how child sex tourism has increased. Save Our Sisters is an Indian NGO that assists sex trafficked girls, and it claims that Mumbai is the worst city for sex trafficking, because it is the business capital.
You seem to think that because a problem is recognized in Thailand, it must occur less per capita there than it does in India, where it historically has not thought as much of a problem. I'm fine with this as long as you actually can cite statistics or even your own experiences to back up this claim of sex-trafficking's being worse in India than Thailand. I'd also be interested in your NGO statistics -- my own bias is to think there must be some NGOs in India, considering that one of my oldest friends worked in one in Mumbai, and my little sister was to have worked in a different one this past summer.
PG, your confusion confuses me. You accuse me of not having stats (for a problem I've already said is unrecognized and underdocumented), and then go on to merrily cite individual datapoints. All I'm saying is this: there are far greater numbers of vulnerable children in India than in Thailand. Moreover, the number of NGOs on this issue in Thailand mean they can focus not only on public education, but on outreach to the kids themselves, further entailing that chances are far greater that a victim in Thailand has an idea of where to go for help. Save Our Sisters is a terrific organization, but it's only been around since -- what, about 2000? -- and, tellingly, it focuses on trying to convince the public and key players (police, lawmakers, etc.) that a problem even exists.
But I think we're arguing past each other. You seem to rank it as a moral victory if more Western pedophiles travel somewhere other than India; I'm concerned with how many abused kids there are. Thus, it's also a factor for me -- but, I suspect, not for you -- that India also has a child marriage problem that Thailand quite simply does not. There do exist stats for this, and they vary, but the most recent Indian census data I've seen put the underage marriage figure at 4.9 million girls, or approximately one in every 17 girls in the 10-17 age group (as of 2005). And I'll point out for the benefit of other readers, as I'm sure you're already aware, we aren't talking Alabama-style elopements between starry-eyed 16-year-olds; we're talking about 13-year-old girls being compelled to marry 50-year-old strangers.
E,
You seem to have answered my questions.
PG: Do you *know* of large numbers of street children who are kept in brothels and raped by pedophiles? Or are you just assuming based on the *sheer number* of street children?
E: All I'm saying is this: there are far greater numbers of vulnerable children in India than in Thailand.
I initally mentioned the sex trafficking problem in Thailand because you describe India as highly corrupt and thus a disagreeable place to live or visit in comparison to Thailand. Now you are pulling in statistics about teen marriage to try to prove a point about child abuse -- which as far as I know, isn't really a corruption issue. Such marriages do occur in violation of the law, which requires women to be 18 and men 21 before marriage, but unless you know of many women's going to the law to prevent being married and not having it recognized as a violation of the law, corruption doesn't really come into it. Yes, I'm well aware of child marriage in India -- my grandmother was married when she was 14. However, by declaring all child marriage to be inherently abusive, I think you misunderstand the culture. Rural girls in India are raised to take on the responsibilities of marriage at an early age, much as they historically were in the rest of the world, and arranged marriage has hung on in India past its discarding in Europe after the 18th century.
"However, by declaring all child marriage to be inherently abusive, I think you misunderstand the culture."
There's an emotion somewhere in between extremely angry and extremely sad where this statement leaves me. Bill Roth, you around? You wanna take this one? Italophile and me, we've been doing all the shoveling around here lately.
Wow, I am glad it wasn't just me that was floored by that particular statement.
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