2013: TheYear to End the Culture of Rape

India is the world’s largest democracy with 1.22 billion people. It is also a country renowned for its many enlightened teachers and as the birthplace of Mohandas Karamchand ‘Mahatma’ Gandhi, a much-celebrated world leader committed to non-violence, civil rights and freedom.

So to me it seems entirely synchronistic (and I do not say that to trivialise this in any way) that two long, long, long-needed, significant social/cultural/equality shifts (this story and the welfare story below, also from India) appear to be evolving out of India within the first few days of the year that we have been told will bring us huge change on many levels.

This first, observational story has horrific beginnings. It’s crux is last week’s shockingly brutal gang rape of a young Indian woman who died from her horrific injuries. I warn you that the first paragraph of this opinion column below is distressingly graphic.

India to Hand Money Directly to Poor in New Welfare System

I’m personally flummoxed as to why any country would have ‘a middle man’ involved in any welfare distribution program! Yet, although  fingerprinting and the collection of biometric data is involved, at least India is attempting to rid its welfare system of what we call ‘fat cat’ fraud. And this ‘new’ program has already had wonderful results in Brazil. Thanks to Sandy.

By Associated Press – Fox News – January 1, 2012

http://www.foxnews.com/world/2013/01/01/india-to-hand-money-directly-to-poor-in-new-welfare-system/?test=latestnews

NEW DELHI – India will pay billions of dollars in social welfare money directly to its poor under a new program that aims to cut out the middlemen blamed for the massive fraud that plagues the system.

Previously officials only handed out cash to the poor after taking a cut — if they didn’t keep all of it for themselves — and were known to enroll fake recipients or register unqualified people. The program inaugurated Tuesday would see welfare money directly deposited into recipients’ bank accounts and require them to prove their identity with biometric data, such as fingerprints or retina scans.