| Telegraph 16th Feb'01 |
Heat mounts on census to drop beggar tag.
Pressure is mounting on the census authorities to not classify sex workers as beggars.
Sex worker Nimmi Bai, along with three others, had made a representation to the registrar general, census, J.K. Banthia. They pointed out that they made their living by hard work and that the 240 odd million sex workers in the country were doing a service to society. They would rahter be described as self employed or as what they are : sex workers.
At present sex workers are included under column 9 of the census form in the category of beggars/vagabond/street children. Since prostitution is illegal, it was decided to include them in the category of beggars.
But this is the point that Nimmi Bai refuses to buy. At a recent protest meeting, she had said: "Bhikhari hum nahin, who mard hai jo hamare paas ate hain"
Pressure is also being by The Bharatiya Patita Udhar Samiti, which has threatened to move the Supreme Court against the registrar general and ministry of home affairs, if sex workers are denied justice.
Samiti chairman - Khairati Lal Bhola said Article 14 gave all citizens the right to pick their profession. He argued that sex workers toil hard to earn a livelihood just like an industrial worker. At a conference in Calcutta three years ago, sex workers had urged the government to grant them the status of trade unions, as they were working in the sex industry.
WAH BHAI WAH !!
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| The Telegraph - Know How 27th Nov'00 |
Fanatics on the job.
It is difficult to imagine a more bizarre marriage between science and irrationality. The world's first declared attempt to clone humans is being made by the members of a cult that believes we ourselves are the clones of the aliens.
They are Raeliens about 55,000 in numbers and followers of Rael nee Claude Vorilhon, a former sports journalist from France who claimed to have got unique information of human origin from visitors from outer space in 1973.
According to a report in Sunday Times work is underway at a secret lab in Nevada, US where specialist are "using the cells of a ten month old girl who died in America earlier this year" to create her clone. Her parents, says the report have put pound 3 Lac into the project to recreate their daughter leading the effort is Dr Brigitte Boisselier, a 44 yr. old bio-chemist whose eldest daughter Cocolios 22 is a 50 women chosen by Clonaid to become the surrogate mother of a cloned human baby. Bolsselier plans to follow the technique adopted by Dr Ian Wilmut while creating Dolly, the world's first cloned mammal in Scotland in 1996.Since cloning is a cumbersome process with a high failure rate, Dr Wilmut had to create many embryos so that one of them would survive.
Its a disgrace for science that something as challenging as human cloning has now been taken over by those who are psychologically unfit. Clonaid the company which is funding the project has got itself registered in the Bahamas, where organizations do not have to reveal their accounts.
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