U.S. - Russia Relation: Signed New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty

Presidents Barack Obama of the United States and Dmitry Medvedev of Russia signed a new Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty for the reduction of their nuclear weapons stockpiles on April 8, 2010.

The new START deal, which will last for ten years, was signed at a meeting in Prague, where President Obama outlined his vision for nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation around a year ago.

Speaking after the signing, President Obama said, “This day demonstrates the determination of the United States and Russia - the two nations that hold over 90 percent of the world's nuclear weapons - to pursue responsible global leadership.”

President Obama further said that the treaty would significantly reduce missiles and launchers and puts in place a “strong and effective verification regime.” He added that it would also maintain the flexibility needed to protect and advance the U.S.’s national security and guarantee its “unwavering commitment to the security of our allies.”

Describing the deal as a “win-win” for both countries, President Medvedev said, “This agreement enhances strategic ability and, at the same time, allows us to rise to a higher level of cooperation between Russia and the United States.”

Specifically, the treaty agrees to aggregate limits of 1,550 warheads; a combined limit of 800 deployed and non-deployed Inter-Continental Ballistic Missile launchers, Submarine-Launched Ballistic Missile launchers, and heavy bombers equipped for nuclear armaments; and separate limit of 700 deployed ICBMs, deployed SLBMs, and deployed heavy bombers equipped for nuclear armaments.

The White House noted that the warheads on deployed ICBMs and deployed SLBMs will count toward the limit and each deployed heavy bomber equipped for nuclear armaments would count as one warhead toward this limit. The warhead limit itself was 74 percent lower than the limit of the 1991 START Treaty and 30 percent lower than the deployed strategic warhead limit of the 2002 Moscow Treaty, a White House statement added. Further, the limit on launchers and bombers is less than half the corresponding strategic nuclear delivery vehicle limit of the previous START Treaty.

In terms of verification and transparency, the new treaty has a verification regime that combines the appropriate elements of the 1991 START Treaty with new elements tailored to the limitations of the Treaty. In this regard, the White House also stated that measures under the new treaty include “on-site inspections and exhibitions, data exchanges and notifications related to strategic offensive arms and facilities covered by the Treaty.”

The signing of the new treaty came two days after the announcement of the Obama administration of its Nuclear Posture Review, in which the U.S. forswore nuclear attacks on all nuclear states compliant with the Non-Proliferation treaty. However, the U.S. reiterated its commitment to maintaining a credible nuclear deterrent.

START I or Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty

START (for Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty) was a bilateral treaty between the United States of America and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) on the Reduction and Limitation of Strategic Offensive Arms. The treaty was signed on 31 July 1991 and entered into force on5December 1994 . The treaty was signed by the United States and the USSR, that barred its signatories from deploying more than 6,000 nuclear warheads atop a total of 1,600 ICBMs, submarine-launched ballistic missiles, and bombers. START negotiated the largest and most complex arms control treaty in history, and its final implementation in late 2001 resulted in the removal of about 80 percent of all strategic nuclear weapons then in existence. Proposed by United States President Ronald Reagan, it was renamed START I after negotiations began on the second START treaty, which became START II.

The START I treaty expired 5 December 2009. On 8 April 2010, the new START treaty was signed in Prague by U.S. President Obama and Russian President Medvedev. It will enter into force after its ratification through the parliaments of both countries. The first START proposal was presented by United States President Ronald Reagan inGenevaon29 June 1982. Reagan proposed a dramatic reduction in strategic forces in two phases, which he referred to as SALT III at the time. The first phase would reduce overall warhead counts on any missile type to 5,000, with an additional limit of 2,500 on ICBMs. Additionally, a total of 850 ICBMs would be allowed, with a limit of 110 "heavy throw" missiles like the SS-18, with additional limits on the total "throw weight" of the missiles as well. The second phase introduced similar limits on heavy bombers and their warheads, and other strategic systems as well. At the time the US had a commanding lead in strategic bombers. The US B-52 force, while aged, was a credible strategic threat but was only equipped with AGM-86 cruise missiles, beginning in 1982, because of Soviet air defense improvements in early 1980s.

The US also had begun to introducenewB-1BLancer quasi-stealth bomber and was secretly developing the Advanced Technology Bomber (ATB) project that would eventually result in the B-2 Spirit stealth bomber. The USSR's force was of little threat to the US, on the other hand, as it was tasked almost entirely with attacking US convoys in the Atlantic and land targets on the Eurasian land mass. Although the USSR had 1,200 medium and heavy bombers, only 150 of them (Tupolev Tu-95s and Myasishchev M- 4s) could reach North America (the latter only with in-flight refueling).

They also faced difficult problems in penetrating admittedly smaller and poorly defended US airspace. Possessing too few bombers available when compared to US bomber numbers was evened out by the US forces having to penetrate the much larger and heavier defended Soviet airspace. This changed when new Tu-95MS and Tu-160 bombers appeared in 1984 equipped with first Soviet AS-15 cruise missiles. By limiting the phase-in as it was proposed, the US would be left with a strategic advantage, for a time.

As Time magazine put it at the time, "Under Reagan's ceilings, the U.S. would have to make considerably less of an adjustment in its strategic forces than would the Soviet Union. That feature of the proposal will almost certainly prompt the Soviets to charge that it is unfair and one-sided.

No doubt some American arms-control advocates will agree, accusing the Administration of making the Kremlin an offer it cannot possibly accept a deceptively equal-looking, deliberately nonnegotiable proposal that is part of what some suspect is the hardliners' secret agenda of sabotaging disarmament so that the U.S. can get on with the business of rearmament." However, Time did point out that, "The Soviets' monstrous ICBMs have given the ma nearly 3-to-1 advantage over the U.S. in "throw weight" the cumulative power to "throw" megatons of death and destruction at the other nation."

Negotiations

Continued negotiation of the START process was delayed several times because US agreement terms were considered non-negotiable by pre-Gorbachev Soviet rulers. President Reagan's introduction of the Strategic Defense Initiative program in 1983 was viewed as a threat by the Soviet Union, and the Soviets with drew from setting a timetable for further negotiations.

Due to these facts, a dramatic nuclear arms race proceeded during the 1980s, and essentially ended in 1991 by nuclear parity preservation at a level of more than ten thousand strategic warheads on both sides. This treaty also stated that the United States and Russia would have 6,000 fighter aircraft, 10,000 tanks, 20,000 artillery pieces and 2,000 attack helicopters.

Ratification

It was signed on July 31, 1991, five months before the collapse of the Soviet Union. Entry-into-force was delayed due to the collapse of the USSR and awaiting an Annex that enforced the terms of the treaty upon the newly independent states of Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, and Ukraine. The latter three agreed to transport their nuclear arms to Russia for disposal.

It remains in effect between the U.S. and Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, and Ukraine These latter three have disarmed since becoming independent nations in the wake of the break up of the Soviet Union. Today, the United States has 3,696 and Russia has 4,237 deployed strategic warheads. The US has roughly 10,000 total warheads, counting strategic and tactical, both deployed and in reserves. The figures for Russia are less reliable, but are considered to be in the range of 15,000 to 17,000 total warheads.

Implementation

365 B-52Gs were flown to the Aerospace Maintenance and Regeneration Center at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base in Arizona. The bombers were stripped of all usable parts, then chopped into five pieces by a 13,000-pound steel blade dropped from a crane. The guillotine sliced four times on each plane, severing the wings and leaving the fuselage in three pieces. The ruined B-52s remained in place for three months so that Russian satellites could confirm that the bombers had been destroyed, after which they were sold for scrap.

"It remains in effect between the U.S. and Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, and Ukraine. The latter three became non-nuclear weapons states under the Treaty on the non-proliferation of Nuclear Weapons of July 1, 1968 (NPT) as they committed to do under the "Lisbon Protocol" (Protocol to the Treaty Between the United States of America and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics on the Reduction and Limitation of Strategic Offensive Arms) after becoming independent nations in the wake of the break up of the Soviet Union."

Efficacy

Belarus, Kazakhstan and Ukraine have disposed of all their nuclear weapons or transferred them to Russia; while the U.S. and Russia have reduced the capacity of delivery vehicles to 1,600 each, with no more than 6,000warheads.

Expiration and renewal START I expired December 5, 2009. Both sides agreed to continue observing the terms of the treaty until a new agreement is reached. There are proposals to renew and expand the treaty, supported by U.S. President Barack Obama. Sergei Rogov, director of the Institute of the U.S. and Canada, said: "Obama supports sharp reductions in nuclear arsenals and I believe that Russia and the U.S. may sign in the summer or fall of 2009 a new treaty that would replace START-1". He added that a new deal would only happen if Washington abandoned plans to place elements of a missile shield in central Europe. He expressed willingness "to make new steps in the sphere of disarmament," however, saying they were waiting for the U.S. to abandon attempts to "surround Russia with a missile defense ring." This referred to the placement of ten interceptor missiles in Poland, as well as an accompanying radar in the Czech Republic.

Russian President Dmitri Medvedev, said, the day after the U.S. elections, in his first state of the nation address, that Russia would move to deploy short range Is kander missile systems in the western exclave of Kaliningrad "to neutralize if necessary the anti-ballistic missile system in Europe." Russia insists that any movement towards a new START should be a legally binding document, and must, then, set lower ceilings on the number of nuclear warheads, and their delivery vehicles.

On March 17, 2009, Russian President Dmitri Medvedev signaled that Russia would begin a "large scale" rearmament and renewal of Russia's nuclear arsenal. President Medvedev accused NATO of pushing ahead with expansion near Russian borders and ordered that this rearmament commence in 2011 with increased army, naval, and nuclear capabilities. Additionally, the head of Russia's strategic missile forces, Nikolai Solovtsov, told news agencies that Russia would start deploying its next-generation RS-24missiles after the December 5 expiry of the START-1 treaty with the United States. Russia hopes to change the START-1 treaty with a new accord. The increased tensions come despite the warming of relations between the United States and Russia ever since U.S. President Barack Obama took office.

As of May 4, 2009, the United States and Russia began the process of renegotiating START, as well as counting both nuclear warheads and their delivery vehicles when making a new agreement. While setting aside problematic issues between the two countries, both sides agreed to make further cuts in the number of warheads they have deployed to around 1,000 to 1,500 each.

The United States has said they are open to a Russian proposal to use radar in Azerbaijan rather than Eastern Europe for the proposed missile system. The Bush Administration was using the Eastern Europe defense system as a deterrent for Iran, despite the Kremlin's fear that it could be used against Russia. The flexibility by both sides to make compromises now will lead to a new phase of arms reduction in the future.

A 'Joint understanding for a follow-on agreement to START-1' was signed by Presidents Barack Obama and Dmitri Medvedev in Moscowon 6 July 2009. This will reduce the number of deployed warheads oneach side to 1,500–1,675 on 500–1,100 delivery systems. A new treaty was to be signed before START-1 expired in December 2009 and the reductions are to be achieved within seven years. After many months of negotiations, Presidents Obama and Medvedev signed the successor treaty, Measures to Further Reduction and Limitation of Strategic Offensive Arms, in Prague, Czech Republic on 8 April 2010.

START II

START II (for Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty) was signed by United States President George H.W. Bush and Russian President Boris Yeltsin on January 3, 1993, banning the use of MIRVs on ICBMs. Hence, it is often cited as the De-MIRV-ing Agreement. MIRVed land-based ICBMs are considered destabilizing because they tend to put a premium on striking first. When a missile is MIRVed, it is able to carry many warheads and deliver them to separate targets and thereby possibly destroy more than one missile of an enemy who does not strike first in their silos. The LGM-118 Peacekeeper missile was capable of carrying up to 10MIRVs. However, in 2001, President George W. Bush set a plan in motion to reduce the country’s missile forces from6,000 to between 1,700 and 2,200. Russian President Vladimir Putin agreed to follow a similar plan and in October 2002 the deactivation of the Peacekeeper missile began and was completed by 19 September 2005.

The Minuteman III ICBM is the primary U.S. missile system and can carry up to 3 MIRVs. Hypothetically, if one were to assume that each side had 100missiles,with 5warheads each, and further that each side had a 95 percent chance of neutralizing the opponent's missiles in their silos by firing 2 warheads at each silo, then the side that strikes first can reduce the enemy ICBM force from 100 missiles to about 5 by firing 40 missiles with 200 warheads and keeping the remaining 60missiles in reserve. Thus the destruction capability is greatly increased by MIRVs but the number of targets does not increase.

START II followed START I and, although ratified, the treaty has never entered into force; in other words never been activated. On June 14, 2002, one day after the U.S. withdrew from the Anti- allistic Missile Treaty, Russia withdrew from START II. The historic agreement started on June 17, 1992 with the signing of a 'Joint Understanding' by the presidents. The official signing of the treaty by the presidents took place on January 3, 1993. It was ratified by the U.S. Senate on January 26, 1996 with a vote of 87-4. However, Russian ratification was stalled in the Duma for many years. It was postponed a number of times to protest American invasion of Iraq and military actions in Kosovo, as well as to oppose the expansion of NATO.

As the years passed, the treaty became less relevant and both sides started to lose interest in it. For the Americans, the main issue became the modification of the ABM Treaty to allow the U.S. to deploy a national missile defense system, a move which Russia fiercely opposed. On April 14, 2000 the Duma did finally ratify the treaty, in a largely symbolic move since the ratification was made contingent on preserving the ABM Treaty, which it was clear the U.S. was not prepared to do.

START II did not enter into force because the Russian ratification made this contingent on U.S. Senate ratifying a September 1997 addendum to START II which included agreed statements on ABM-TMD demarcation. Neither of these occurred because of U.S. Senate opposition, where a faction objected to any action supportive of the ABM Treaty. On June 14, 2002, one day after the U.S. withdrew from the ABM Treaty, Russia announced that it would no longer consider itself to be bound by START II provisions.

The treaty was officially bypassed by the SORT treaty, agreed to by Presidents George W. Bush and Vladimir Putin at their summit meeting in November 2001, and signed at Moscow Summit on May 24, 2002. Both sides agreed to reduce operationally deployed strategic nuclear warheads to 1,700 from 2,200 by 2012.

START III

The third Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, or START III, was a proposed Nuclear disarmament treaty negotiated between the United States and Russia. It was never signed. It meant to drastically reduce the deployed nuclear weapons arsenals of both countries. The treaty was meant to continue the weapons reduction efforts that had taken place in the START I and START II negotiations. The framework for negotiations of the treaty began with talks in Helsinki between President Bill Clinton and President Boris Yeltsin in 1997.

Proposed basic elements of the treat included: By December 31, 2007, coterminous with START II, the United States and Russia would each deploy no more than 2,000 to 2,500 strategic nuclear warheads on intercontinental ballistic missiles, submarine- launched ballistic missiles, and heavy bombers. Russian officials stated that they were willing to consider negotiated levels as low as 1,500 strategic nuclear warheads with in the context of a START III agreement.

The United States and Russia would negotiate measures relating to the transparency of strategic nuclear warhead inventories and the destruction of strategic nuclear warheads, as well as other jointly agreed technical and organizational measures to promote the irreversibility of deep reductions.

The talks faced a number of obstacles. Russia opposed the eastward expansion of NATO and American plans to build a limited missile defense system (which would have required changes to or the US withdrawal from the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty). Russia strongly hinted that any progress on START III would be subject to the satisfaction of its concerns on these issues. In addition, a Russian proposal to reduce stockpiles still further to 1,000-1,500 warheads was opposed by the US Joint Chiefs of Staff. Very little progress was made towards completing negotiations on START III. President Clinton revived the issue in 1999 and it played a role in the 2000 presidential elections, but persistent disagreement, especially on the issue of missile defense, resulted in stalemate. The 2002 decision by the Bush Administration to with draw from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty all but killed START III. It was superseded by much the weaker SORT treaty.

SORT

The Treaty Between the United States of America and the Russian Federation on Strategic Offensive Reductions (SORT), better known as the Moscow Treaty "represents an important element of the new strategic relationship between the United States and Russia". with both parties agreeing to limit their nuclear arsenal to 1700–2200 operationally deployed warheads each. It was signed in Moscow on May 24, 2002. SORT came into force on June 1, 2003 after the Bush-Putin ratification in St. Petersburg, and expires on December 31, 2012. Either party can with draw from the treaty upon giving three months written notice to the other.

Mutual nuclear disarmament

SORT is the latest in a long line of treaties and negotiations on mutual nuclear disarmament between Russia (and its predecessor the Soviet Union) and the United States, which includes SALT I (1969– 1972) the ABM Treaty (1972), SALT II (1972– 1979), the INF Treaty (1987), START I (1991), START II (1993), and START III, which died as of the linkage to START II.

The Moscow Treaty is different from START in that it limits actual warheads, whereas START I limits warheads only through declared attribution to their means of delivery (ICBMs, SLBMs, and Heavy Bombers). Russian and U.S. delegation smeet twice a year to discuss the implementation of the Moscow Treaty at the Bilateral Implementation Commission, or "BIC".

The treaty has been criticized for various reasons: There are no verification provisions to give confidence, to either the signatories or other parties, that the stated reductions have in fact taken place.

The arsenal reductions are not required to be permanent; warheads are not required to be destroyed and may therefore be placed in storage and later redeployed.

The arsenal reductions are required to be completed by December 31, 2012, which is also the day on which the treaty loses all force, unless extended by both parties. This is why some experts joke that SORT is only 'sort' of a treaty.

There exists a clause in the treaty which provides that with drawal can occur upon the giving of three month's notice and since no benchmarks are required in the treaty, either side could feasibly perform no actions in furtherance of the treaty, and then simply with draw in September of 2012.

Implementation

Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory reported that President Bush directed the US military to cut its stockpile of both deployed and reserve nuclear weapons in half by 2012. The goal was achieved in 2007, a reduction of US nuclear warheads to just over 50 percent of the 2001 total. A further proposal by Bush will bring the total down another 15%.

Strategic Arms Limitation Talks

The Strategic Arms Limitation Talks refers to two rounds of bilateral talks and corresponding international treaties involving the United States and the Soviet Union-the Cold War superpowers on the issue of armament control. There were two rounds of talks and agreements: SALT I and SALT II. A subsequent treaty was START.

The first ever negotiations started in Helsinki, Finland, in 1970. They were held during Apollo 12's flight - four months after astronauts from Apollo 11 had returned safely home. Primarily focused on limiting the two countries' stocks of nuclear weapons, the treaties then led to START (Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty). START I (a 1991 agreement between the United States and the Soviet Union) and START II (a 1993 agreement between the United States and Russia) which placed specific caps on each side's number of nuclear weapons.

SALT I

SALT I is the common name for the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks Agreement, also known as Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty. SALT I froze the number of strategic ballistic missile launchers at existing levels, and provided for the addition of new submarine- launched ballistic missile (SLBM) launchers only after the same number of older intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) and SLBM launchers had been dismantled.

The strategic nuclear forces niche of the Soviet Union and the United States were changing in character in 1968. The U.S.'s total number of missiles had been static since 1967 at 1,054 ICBMs and 656 SLBMs, but there was an increasing number of missiles with multiple independently target able reentry vehicle (MIRV)warheads being deployed. MIRV's carried multiple nuclear warheads, often with dummies, to confuse ABM systems, making MIRV defence by ABM systems increasingly difficult and expensive. One clause of the treaty required both countries to limit the number of sites protected by an anti-ballistic missile (ABM) system to two each. The Soviet Union had deployed such a system around Moscow in 1966 and the United States announced an ABM program to protect twelve ICB Msites in 1967. A modified two-tier Moscow ABM system is still used. The U.S. built only one ABM site to protect Minuteman base in North Dakota where the "Safeguard Program" was deployed. Due to the system's expense and limited effectiveness, the Pentagon disbanded "Safeguard" in 1975.

Negotiations lasted from November 17, 1969 until May 1972 in a series of meetings beginning in Helsinki, with the U.S. delegation headed by Gerard C. Smith, director of the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency. Subsequent sessions alternated between Vienna and Helsinki. After a long deadlock, the first results of SALT I came in May 1971, when an agreement was reached over ABM systems. Further discussion brought the negotiations to an end on May 26, 1972 in Moscow when Richard Nixon and Leonid Brezhnev signed the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and the Interim Agreement Between The United States of America and The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics on Certain Measures With Respect to the Limitation of Strategic Offensive Arms. A number of agreed statements were also made. This helped improve relations between the USA and the USSR.

SALT II

It was a controversial experiment of negotiations between Jimmy Carter and Leonid Brezhnev from 1977 to 1979 between the U.S. and the Soviet Union, which sought to curtail the manufacture of strategic nuclear weapons. It was a continuation of the progress made during the SALT I talks. SALT II was the first nuclear arms treaty which assumed real reductions in strategic forces to 2,250 of all categories of delivery vehicles on both sides.

SALT II helped the U.S. to discourage the Soviets from arming their third generation ICBMs of SS- 17, SS-19 and SS-18 types with many more MIRVs. In the late 1970s the USSR's missile design bureaus had developed experimental versions of the semissiles equipped with anywhere from 10 to 38 thermonuclear warheads each. Additionally, the Soviets secretly agreed to reduce Tu-22Mproduction to thirty aircraft per year and not to give them an intercontinental range.

It was particularly important for the US to limit Soviet efforts in the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) rearmament area. The SALT II Treaty banned new missile programs (a new missile defined as one with any key parameter 5%better than in currently deploye dmissiles), so both sides were forced to limit their new strategic missile types development although US preserved their most essential programs like Trident and cruise missiles, which President Carter wished to use as his main defensive weapon as they were too slow to have first strike capability. In return, the USSR could exclusively retain 308 of its so- alled "heavy ICBM" launchers of the SS-18 type.

An agreement to limit strategic launchers was reached in Vienna on June 18, 1979, and was signed by Leonid Brezhnev and President of the United States Jimmy Carter. In response to the refusal of the U.S. Congress to ratify the treaty, a young member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Senator Joseph Biden of Delaware, met with the Soviet Foreign Minister Andrey Gromyko, "educated him about American concerns and interests" and secured several changes that neither the U.S. Secretary of State nor President Jimmy Carter could obtain.

Six months after the signing, the Soviet Union deployed troops to Afghanistan, and in September of the same year senators including Henry M. Jackson and Frank Church discovered the so-called "Soviet brigade" on Cuba. In light of these developments, the treaty was never formally ratified by the United States Senate. Its terms were, nonetheless, honored by both sides until 1986when the Reagan Administration withdrew from SALT II after accusing the Soviets of violating the pact.

Subsequent discussions took place under the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) and the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty.

USA/USSR Arms Limitation Treaties

Partial or Limited Test Ban Treaty (PTBT/ LTBT): 1963. Also put forth by Kennedy; banned nuclear tests in the atmosphere, underwater and in space. However, neither France nor China (both Nuclear Weapon States) signed.

Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT): 1968. Established the U.S., USSR, UK, France, and China as five "Nuclear-Weapon States". Non- Nuclear Weapon states were prohibited from (among other things) possessing, manufacturing, or acquiring nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices. All 187 signatories were committed to the goal of (eventual) nuclear disarmament.

Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty (ABM): 1972. Entered into between the U.S. and USSR to limit the anti-ballistic missile (ABM) systems used in defending areas against missile-delivered nuclear weapons; ended by the US in 2002.

Strategic Arms Limitation Treaties I & II (SALT I & II): 1972 / 1979. Limited the growth of US and Soviet missile arsenals.

Prevention of Nuclear War Agreement: 1973. Committed the U.S. and USSR to consult with one another during conditions of nuclear confrontation.

Threshold Test Ban Treaty: 1974. Capped Nuclear tests at 150 kilotons.

Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF): 1987. Eliminated nuclear and conventional ground-launched ballistic and cruise missiles with intermediate ranges, defined as between 500-5,500 km (300-3,400 miles)

Strategic Arms Reductions Treaty I (START I): 1991. This was signed by George H. W. Bush and Mikhail Gorbachev; reduced the numbers of U.S. and Soviet long-range missiles and nuclear warheads from10,000 per side to 6,000 per side.

Mutual Detargeting Treaty (MDT): 1994. U.S. and Russian missiles no longer automatically target the other country; nuclear forces are no longer operated in a manner that presumes that the two nations are adversaries.

Strategic Arms Reductions Treaty II (START II): 1993.Will reduce the numbers of U.S. and Russian long-range missiles and nuclear warheads from 6,000 per side to 3,500-3,000 per side. (START III proposed for 2007).

Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) 1996. Prohibits all nuclear test explosions in all environments; signed by 180 states, and ratified by 148. The United States has signed, but not ratified, the CTBT.

Strategic Offensive Reductions Treaty (SORT/Moscow Treaty (2002)). Established bilateral strategic nuclear arms reductions and a new" strategic nuclear framework"; also invited all countries to adopt nonproliferation principles aimed at preventing terrorists, or those that harbored them, from acquiring or developing all types of WMD's and related materials, equipment, and technology.

Foreign Direct Investment in India: Policy Platform for FDI

Union Commerce and Industry Minister Anand Sharma on March 31, 2010 released the final document of FDI Policy Framework that would now comprise the single document on FDI policy and mark the inception of a whole new chapter on FDI policy.

Mr. Sharma said the current exercise had been initiated with the aim of integration of all prior regulations on FDI, contained in Foreign Exchange Management Act (FEMA), RBI circulars, and various Press Notes into one consolidated document, so as to reflect the current regulatory framework. Having a single policy platform would also ease the regulatory burden for Government. The intention of this exercise is not to make changes in the extant guidelines, but to deal with them comprehensively.

Limit in LLP firms

The government said it was considering allowing FDI in limited liability partnership (LLP) firms and also to clearly define whether shares and bonds issued to overseas investors could be treated as foreign direct investment.

The government may also do away with Schedule IV of the FEMA that deals with sale and purchase of shares and debentures by NRIs and overseas corporate bodies on non-repatriable basis, Mr. Sharma said.

“There are many issues related with FDI policies that are currently under discussion in the government,” he said after releasing a compendium. LLP, the fast emerging form of business structure, is a hybrid of companies and partnership firms, which allows unlimited number of partners in an entity but their liability is restricted to the extent of the stake held by them.

FDI Inflows Touch US $ 1.72 Billion During February 2010

The Minister said that such consolidation would ensure all information on FDI policy is available at one place, which is expected to lead to: simplification of the policy; greater clarity of understanding of foreign investment rules among foreign investors and sectoral regulators, as also predictability of policy. “Having a single policy platform would also ease the regulatory burden for Government. Updation of this document will be carried out after every 6 months. This consolidated Press Note will be superseded by a Press Note to be issued on September 30, 2010, ensure that the framework document on FDI policy is kept updated”, Shri Sharma said.

Earlier, the draft document was released on 24 December, 2009 and was open for comments until the 31st of January, 2010. The response to the draft document has been excellent. Comments from 60 stakeholder organizations (including various Government Departments, Reserve Bank of India, Law Firms, consultancy firms, Chambers of Commerce and private companies) have been received. All comments, received until date, have been considered, before preparation of the final document. Even after receiving the responses, we held another round of discussions on the document with a number of consultancy firms that had offered comments on the draft, as also with the Reserve Bank of India and the Department of Economic Affairs.

There are a number of issues related to FDI policy that are currently under discussion in the Government, such as foreign investment in Limited Liability Partnerships (LLPs), policy on issuance of partly paid shares/warrants, rescinding Schedule IV of FEMA, clarifications on issues related to Press Notes 2, 3 & 4 of 2009 and on Press Note 2 of 2005, as also certain definitional issues etc. When a decision on these is taken, the Government decision would be announced and thereafter incorporated into the Consolidated Press Note subsequently.

Foreign Direct Investment into India is a capital account transaction under the Foreign Exchange Management Act (FEMA), 1999. The Government of India and the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) regulate such transactions. The Government comes up with new regulations or amends/changes the existing ones, keeping in view the requirements that may exist at a particular point in time. Various aspects of FDI policy are, accordingly, pronounced/ notified through Press Notes issued by DIPP, RBI circulars, Acts and changes in regulations. DIPP itself has issued about 177 Press Notes since 1991, covering various aspects of FDI policy, including cross border investment, policy liberalisation, policy rationalization and foreign technology collaborations, Industrial Policy etc.

As far as FDI policy is concerned, it had been felt, through interaction with various investors, counterpart government organizations and other stakeholders, that there is a need for further simplification and consolidation of the FDI policy framework, so as to make it more comprehensible to all investors and stakeholders. The Prime Minister, in his remarks at the World Economic Forum in December, 2008, had also announced that, “Our policy will be guided by the desire to make India even more attractive for Foreign Direct Investment. We are particularly keen to rationalize and simplify procedures so as to create an investor friendly environment”. The present exercise was a step in the above direction.

FDI Inflows

FDI equity inflows for the month of February, 2010 have been US $ 1.72 billion, which represents an increase of 15%, in US $ terms, over the inflows received in February 2009 (which were of the order of US $ 1.49 billion). FDI equity inflows for current the financial year (i.e. April, 2009 to February, 2010) have been around US $ 24.68 billion. These are comparable to the FDI equity inflows for the comparable period of the previous year, which were around US $ 25.39 billion.

FDI inflows for almost all months in the current financial year, from June onwards (excepting September, 2009 and January, 2010) have shown an increasing trend over the FDI inflows of the same months in the previous financial year (2008-09). The pace of inflows, therefore, is stable.

Accordingly, it is likely that the total inflows in the current financial year (2009-10) are comparable to the total inflows received during the last financial year (2008-09). This is despite the fact that the UNCTAD World Investment Report, 2009, had noted a fall of global FDI inflows, from a historic high of 1.979 billion in 2007 to 1.697 billion in 2008, a decline of 14%. UNCTAD had subsequently predicted a fall in global FDI investment flows by 30%, from US $ 1.7 trillion in 2008 to US $ 1.2 trillion in 2009.

It is relevant to note that the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), in its latest report on investment, released in March, 2010, has noted a significant stagnation in the global investment activity. It has noted that: The average monthly Merger&Acquisition (M&A) activity in the past 12 months was just under US $ 50 billion. The last time monthly M&A activity fell below US$50 billion was in April 2006. Year on- year, global M&A activity is now at its lowest level since the beginning of the global economic crisis, at around 35% of the levels reached two years ago (March, 2007 through February, 2008).

India-Britain Relation (Declaration on Civilian Nuclear Cooperation)

India on feb 11 signed a “declaration” on civilian nuclear cooperation with the U.K. which officials described as a “general umbrella agreement.”

The two sides are expected to make a public announcement in the coming days. The U.K. becomes the eighth country with which India has signed a civilian nuclear pact since breaking out of restrictions imposed on it. The agreement was signed by Atomic Energy Commission Chairman Srikumar Banerjee and British High Commissioner Richard Stagg. The pact will provide a legal framework for British companies that have expertise in supplying components.

According to the Nuclear Industry Association of the UK, 185 British companies in the island nation which include the nuclear plant operators, those engaged in decommissioning, waste management, nuclear liabilities management and all aspects of the nuclear fuel cycle. The British nuclear industry exports nuclear goods and equipment worth over 1.11 billion dollars and can supply 70-80 per cent parts of a new nuclear reactor.

Since September 2008, when the Nuclear Suppliers Group lifted the embargo on India's participation in international nuclear commerce, India has signed civil nuclear cooperation agreements with France, USA, Russia, Kazakhstan, Mongolia, Argentina and Namibia. India has also finalised a civil nuclear cooperation deal with Canada, which is expected to be signed soon.

India-UK Bilateral Relations

India’s multi-faceted bilateral relationship with the UK has intensified over the past few years. Recent dialogues at the highest level have underlined the bilateral strategic partnership in all areas. The UK is an important interlocutor in the bilateral, EU, G8 and global contexts.

Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh visited the UK on 19-20 September 2004 and met PM Tony Blair. During the visit, the two Prime Ministers adopted a Joint Declaration titled 'India-UK: Towards a new and dynamic partnership' which envisages annual Summits and meetings between Foreign Ministers. It also outlined areas for future cooperation in civil nuclear energy, space, defence, combating terrorism, economic ties, science and technology, education and culture.

The then PM Tony Blair mooted the idea of India joining G-8 discussions. At his invitation PM visited the UK on 7-8 July 2005 for the “G-8 Plus 5” Gleneagles Summit (India, China, South Africa, Brazil and Mexico). He visited India on 6-8 September 2005 in his capacity as EU President for the EU/ India Summit on September 7, and also for the bilateral Summit held on September 8 in Udaipur. PM met the then PM Blair in St. Petersburg in July 2006 during the meeting of the Outreach Countries with G8 leaders.

Prime Minister Dr. Singh visited UK from 9-11 October 2006 and held the third annual India-U.K Summit. Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s visit to India (20-21 January 2008). The fourth India-UK Annual Summit was held in Delhi on January 21, 2008 during the visit of Prime Minister Gordon Brown. Building on the achievements of the two declarations (2002, 2004), the two sides issued a joint statement on India-UK Strategic Partnership.

The two sides agreed

On the importance of more representative and effective international institutions to address global challenges. The UK reaffirmed its firm support for India’s candidature for a permanent membership in an expanded UNSC.

To cooperate in developing collaboration between small and medium enterprises, entrepreneurs and venture capitalists.To forge a closer partnership of two knowledge societies in the field of higher education. In particular, it was agreed to establish an Education Forum to work towards an early conclusion of an education partnership agreement and to enter into a MoU on an Indo-UK Higher Education Leadership Development programme to develop leadership skills in higher education.

To establish a Science Bridge Initiative shall be established to build institution to institution relationship on equal partnership with joint funding under the principle of parity. To promote cooperation in civil nuclear energy and would work towards a bilateral agreement for this purpose. The UK supports the India-US civil nuclear cooperation initiative.
Both sides expressed satisfaction over the announcement of UK-India agreement on the second phase of UK-India Climate Change Impacts and Adaptation study aimed at identifying the barriers to local carbon technology transfer. Remain committed to build on existing cooperation on counterterrorism including establishment of bilateral dialogue on terrorist financing.

Prime Minister met Prime Minister Brown on the sidelines on the UNGA Summit in New York on 26 September 2008. The two leaders discussed the global economic crisis, terrorism, and other bilateral and regional issues. Prime Minister of UK Gordon Brown was on a half-day visit to New Delhi on 13th December 2008 as part of his visit to the region following Mumbai terror attacks. He met the Prime Minister and conveyed his condolences on the Mumbai terror attacks.

India-UK Round Table

The 11th India-UK Round Table was held in India in 2-5 May 2008 at Shimla. The issues discussed include prospects for the world economy, the demographic dimension, health care, the dialogue of cultures & education, research and innovation. The next round of India-UK RT will be held in Dichley, UK on 3-5 July 2009 (both days inclusive). Economic and Commercial Relations

Bilateral economic linkages have strengthened through increased trade and investment flows. Two-way bilateral trade in goods has crossed £ 8.11 billion in 2007-08 and is expected to cross £ 10 billion before 2010. Trade in Services is estimated to be more than £3.5 billion in 2007-08 and thus the total bilateral trade in goods and services amount to £ 11.6 billion in 2007-08. The export basket from India has undergone substantial diversification and more than 50% of India’s exports now constitute non-traditional and hi-tech goods like petroleum products, engineering products and pharma products.

UK fourth largest investor in India

UK is the fourth largest investor in India and the cumulative investment by UK from April 2000 till September 2008 was $ 5,058 million. For the period April-September 2008, the total investment by UK was $ 695 million. The UK is the most preferred nation for investments by Indian companies in 2008 so far, accounting deals worth $6 billion. (till August 08). India has emerged as the third largest foreign investor in the UK and the second largest overseas investor in London and Northern Ireland in terms of number of acquisitions / investments. India is the second largest creator of jobs in the UK with opening of offices by over 500 Indian companies. London Stock Exchange hosts 52 Indian companies, with a combined market cap of £ 9 billion. Indian firms have raised a total of £3 billion through listings on the exchange. In March 2008, Tatas acquired Jaguar and Land Rover for £2.3 billion.

India-UK Joint Trade and Economic Committee (JETCO)

The fifth meeting of JETCO was held during the visit of Peter Mandelson, Secretary of State for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform and Shri Kamal Nath, Minister for Commerce and Industry on 20 January 2009. Liberalisation of visa regime, progress on the eight working groups set up was among the issues discussed. The fourth meeting in London on 13th December 2007 had constituted Working Groups under the JETCO in order to identify the barriers and to promote the business.

The working groups have been set up in Hi-Tech Industry, Agribusiness, Accountancy, Financial Services, Intellectual Property Rights, Legal Services, Infrastructure and Healthcare sectors.

India-UK Financial Dialogue

This initiative was launched in January 2007 by Finance Minister Shri Chidambaram and UK’s then Chancellor of the Exchequer Mr. Gordon Brown with a view to exchange views on bilateral and global financial issues. The second meeting of the India-UK Financial Dialogue was held on 11 August 2008 between Shri P. Chidambaram, Finance Minister and UK Chancellor of the Exchequer Alistair Darling.

The discussion focused on the Doha trade talks and financial services liberalisation in India. The Ministers also discussed commodity markets and energy policy. The two Ministers signed a Memorandum of Understanding to encourage sharing of best practices in the development of Public Private Partnerships.

India-UK Investment Summit

The first ever India-UK Investment Summit took place in London on 10 October 2006 to coincide with Prime Minister’s visit to the UK. The second India-UK Investment Summit took place in India in January 2008 during the visit of Prime Minister Gordon Brown. At the summit, both sides agreed to cooperate in developing collaboration between SMEs and entrepreneurs and venture capitalists.
The British side agreed to support the establishment of a capacity building programme in India for public private partnership in infrastructure. CII delegation was invited by Prime Minister Gordon Brown on 25th March 2008 to follow up issues discussed during the summit. UK side agreed to consider CII’s request to implement a UK funded three year programme to impart vocational skills to one million Indians in rural areas.

Education

The 2004 Joint Declaration identified education linkages as a priority. India has (November 2004) become a strategic partner in the Global Gateway Initiative of the UK Department for Education and Skills for linkages between schools. The share of Indian students in UK universities and higher education is growing steadily. There are about 22,000 Indian students in Britain. The annual intake has crossed 18,000.

In September 2005, then PM Tony Blair had announced £ 10 million UK-India Education and Research Initiative (UKIERI), during his visit to India, and launched it in April 2006. Four corporates – BAE, BP, GlaxoSmithKline and Shell, have together contributed £ 4 million. The first meeting of the India-UK science and Innovation Council in London (June 2006) had endorsed UKIERI and agreed to match the UK’s contribution for bilateral research projects. Overall, total anticipated fund for UKIERI is in excess of £ 25 million over 5 years. The three main strands of the initiative are Higher Education and Research, Schools, and Professional and Technical Skills.

Indian Community in Britain

Indian on Britain’s population of 59.8 million, the population Community of Indian origin is estimated to be around 1.5 million, accounting for the single largest segment of ethnic population. Over 40% of them live in inner and outer London. Outside London, Indian community’s main concentrations are in West and East Midlands, Leicester and Greater Manchester. Over the years Indians have performed extremely well in various fields.

Majority of the second generation have opted for higher education and are in white collar professions like doctors, engineers, solicitors, chartered accountants, etc. House of Commons MPs of Indian origin: Parmjit Dhanda, Dr. Ashok Kumar, Marsha Singh, Keith Vaz (all Lab.) and Shailesh Vara (Cons.).

House of Lords: Raj Bagri, Narendra Babubhai Patel, Meghnad Desai, Navnit Dholakia, Shreela Flather, Tarsem King, Bhikhu Parekh, Adam Patel, Swaraj Paul, Usha Prashar, Diljit Rana, Kumar Bhattacharya, Kamlesh Patel, Karan Bilimoria, Sandip Verma, Mohamed Sheikh. In addition, there are Indian origin Councillors in active politics in many Councils across UK.

UK Profile

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom, the UK or Britain, is a sovereign island country located off the northwestern coast of continental Europe. The UK includes the island of Great Britain, the northeast part of the island of Ireland, and many small islands.

Northern Ireland is the only part of the UK with a land border, sharing it with the Republic of Ireland. Apart from this land border, the UK is surrounded by the Atlantic Ocean, the North Sea, the English Channel and the Irish Sea. The largest island, Great Britain, is linked to France by the Channel Tunnel.

The UK has an area of 244,100 sq. km. forming a group of islands lying off the North-West coast of Europe. The two largest islands are Great Britain proper (comprising the greater parts of England, Wales and Scotland) and Ireland (comprising Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland). Britain does not have extreme weather, but is subject to frequent changes depending on the prevailing southwesterly winds. The temperature rarely rises above 32 C or falls below -10 C.

According to statistics compiled in 2000, the population of UK was 59,755,700 with England accounting for 50.0 million, Scotland 5.1 million, Wales 3.0 million and Northern Ireland 1.7 million. United Kingdom is set to become Europe’s most highly populated nation within two generations, driven by immigration. Forecasts published by the European Commission suggest that UK will overtake Germany within 50 years as the population rises from 60.9 million today to 77 million.

The UK has a parliamentary system of government where the Constitution is not based on a written constitution but is the result of gradual evolution over many centuries. Unlike most countries, the British Constitution is not set out in a single document but is made up of statute law, common law and convention. The monarchy is the oldest institution of the Government, with Queen Elizabeth II as the Head of the State. Britain follows universal adult suffrage from the age of 18. It has a bicameral system of Parliament, with an elected House of Commons (646 seats) and a nonelected House of Lords, which has recently been reformed to consist mainly of appointed life peers.

Economy

The economy of the United Kingdom is the fifth largest in the world in terms of market exchange rates and the sixth largest by purchasing power parity (PPP). It is the second largest economy in Europe after Germany's. Its GDP PPP per capita in 2007 is the 22nd highest in the world.

The credit crunch and the ongoing economic crisis have severely affected UK. The Office for National Statistics (ONS) in UK revealed that Britain's economy shrank during the third quarter of the year for the first time since 1992 and endured the worst single quarter since 1990. It said gross domestic product (GDP) from July to September 2008 was down 0.6 per cent on the previous quarter. The contraction came at a faster rate than previously thought, and was down from last month’s initial estimate of a 0.5 per cent contraction.

» GDP (PPP): $2.772 trillion(2007 est.) (5th)
» GDP growth: (-) 0.6 % (Q3 2008)
» GDP per capita: £ 23,500 (2008 est.)
» GDP by sector: agriculture (1%), industry (26%), services (73%)
» Inflation (CPI): 4.4% (2008 est.)
» Population below poverty line: 14% (2006 est.)
» Labour force: 31 million (includes unemployed)
» Labour force by occupation Services: (81%), industry (18%) and agriculture (1%) (excludes unemployed) (2007)
» Unemployment: 6.0% (Oct.2008)
» Exports: $470 billion (2007 est.)
» Main export partners: USA 15%, Germany 11%, France 10%, Ireland 7%, Netherlands 6%, Belgium 6%, Spain 5%, Italy 4% (2007)
» Imports: $600 billion (2007 est.)
» Main import partners: Germany 14%, USA 9%, France 8%, Netherlands 7%, Belgium 6%, Italy 5%, The People's Republic of China 4%, Ireland 4%.

United Nations Report on Toxic Electronic Waste

United Nations Report on Toxic Electronic Waste

According to a United Nations report released recently Developing countries face increasing environmental and health hazards from electronic waste unless toxic materials are collected and recycled properly.

The report highlights the problem of recycling and salvaging procedures in poorer countries, often in unsafe conditions by unregulated operators. Sales of electronic devices are set to rise sharply in the next 10 years, particularly in emerging economies such as China and India, the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) said.

According to report, titled Recycling - from EWaste to Resources, the world produces about 40 million tons of waste from electronic devices, known as e-waste, every year.

Main Feature

Experts said exposure to toxic chemicals from ewaste - including lead, cadmium, mercury, chromium and polybrominated biphenyls - can damage the brain and nervous system, affect the kidneys and liver, and cause birth defects.

The report was launched in Indonesia’s resort island of Bali. It used data from11 developing countries to estimate current and future e-waste generation from discarded computers, printers, mobile phones, pagers, cameras, music players, refrigerators, toys, televisions and other items.

China produces an estimated 2.3million tons of ewaste annually, and though the country has banned e-waste imports, it remains a major dumping ground for waste from developed countries, the report said.

The UN research predicts that in South Africa and China, e-waste from old computers may jump by 200 to 400 per cent from 2007 levels and by 500 per cent in India.

E-waste from mobile phones in the same period is forecast to rise seven times in China, and 18 times in India.

According to the report, over 1 billion mobile phones were sold in 2007 worldwide, up from 896 million in 2006.

The report said most e-waste in China was improperly handled, with much of it incinerated by backyard recyclers to recover valuable metals like gold. Jim Pucket of the Basel Action Network, a nongovernmental organization fighting the international trade in toxic wastes, said massive amounts of discarded devices had been exported to China for years.

But China is not alone in facing the serious e-waste problem. India, Brazil, Mexico and others may also face rising environmental damage and health problems if e-waste recycling is left to the vagaries of the informal sector.

Report urged governments to establish e-waste management centres, building on existing organizations working in the area of recycling and waste management.

What is Electronic Waste

Electronic waste, e-waste, e-scrap, orWaste Electricalc and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) describes loosely discarded, surplus, obsolete, broken, electrical or electronic devices. The processing of electronic waste in developing countries causes serious health and pollution problems because electronic equipment contains some very serious contaminants such as lead, cadmium, beryllium and brominated flame retardants. Even in developed countries recycling and disposal of e-waste involves significant risk to workers and communities and great care must be taken to avoid unsafe exposure in recycling operations and leaching of material such as heavy metals from landfills and incinerator ashes.

Problems

Rapid technology change, low initial cost, and planned obsolescence have resulted in a fast-growing surplus of electronic waste around the globe. Dave Kruch, CEO of Cash For Laptops, regards electronic waste as a "rapidly expanding" issue. Technical solutions are available, but inmost cases a legal framework, a collection system, logistics, and other services need to be implemented before a technical solution can be applied. An estimated 50million tonnes of E-waste is produced each year. The USA discards 30 million computers each year and 100 million phones are disposed of in Europe each year.

In the United States, an estimated 70% of heavy metals in landfills comes from discarded electronics, while electronic waste represents only 2% of America's trash in landfills. The EPA states that unwanted electronics totaled 2million tons in 2005. Discarded electronics represented 5 to 6 times as much weight as recycled electronics. The Consumer Electronics Association says that U.S. households spend an average of $1,400 annually on an average of 24 electronic items, leading to speculations of millions of tons of valuable metals sitting in desk drawers. The U.S. National Safety Council estimates that 75% of all personal computers ever sold are now gathering dust as surplus electronics. While some recycle, 7% of cell phone owners still throw away their old cell phones.

Surplus electronics have extremely high cost differentials. A single repairable laptop can be worth hundreds of dollars, while an imploded cathode ray tube (CRT) is extremely difficult and expensive to recycle. This has created a difficult free market economy. Large quantities of used electronics are typically sold to countries with very high repair capability and high raw material demand, which can result in high accumulations of residue in poor areas without strong environmental laws. Trade in electronic waste is controlled by the Basel Convention. The Basel Convention Parties have considered the question of whether exports of hazardous used electronic equipment for repair or refurbishment are considered as Basel Convention hazardous wastes, subject to import and export controls under that Convention. In the Guidance document produced on that subject, that question was left up to the Parties, however in the working group all of the Parties present believed that when material is untested, or contains hazardous parts that would need to be replaced as part of the repair process, then the Convention did apply.

Like virgin material mining and extraction, recycling of materials from electronic scrap has raised concerns over toxicity and carcinogenicity of some of its substances and processes. Toxic substances in lectronic waste may include lead, mercury, and cadmium. Carcinogenic substances in electronic waste may include polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs). Capacitors, transformers, and wires insulated with or components coated with polyvinyl chloride (PVC), manufactured before 1977, often contain dangerous amounts of PCBs.

Up to 38 separate chemical elements are incorporated into electronic waste items. Many of the plastics used in electronic equipment contain flame retardants. These are generally halogens added to the plastic resin, making the plastics difficult to recycle. Due to the flame retardants being additives, they easily leach off the material in hot weather, which is a problem because when disposed of, electronic waste is generally left outside. The flame retardants leach into the soil and recorded levels were 93 times higher than soil with no contact with electronic waste.[12] The unsustainability of discarding electronics and computer technology is another reason commending the need to recycle or to reuse electronic waste.

When materials cannot or will not be reused, conventional recycling or disposal via landfill often follow. Standards for both approaches vary widely by jurisdiction, whether in developed or developing countries. The complexity of the various items to be disposed of, the cost of environmentally approved recycling systems, and the need for concerned and concerted action to collect and systematically process equipment are challenges. One study indicates that two thirds of executives are unaware of fines related to environmental regulations.

Hotspots

Increased regulation of electronic waste and concern over the environmental harm, which can result from toxic electronic waste, has raised disposal costs. The regulation creates an economic disincentive to remove residues prior to export. In extreme cases, brokers and others calling themselves recyclers export unscreened electronic waste to developing countries, avoiding the expense of removing items like bad cathode ray tubes, the processing of which is expensive and difficult.

Defenders of the trade in used electronics say that extraction of metals from virgin mining has also been shifted to developing countries. Hard-rock mining of copper, silver, gold and other materials extracted from electronics is considered far more environmentally damaging than the recycling of those materials. They also state that repair and reuse of computers and televisions has become a "lost art" inwealthier nations, and that refurbishing has traditionally been a path to development. South Korea, Taiwan, and southern China all excelled in finding "retained value" in used goods, and in some cases have set up billion-dollar industries in refurbishing used ink cartridges, single-use cameras, and working CRTs. Refurbishing has traditionally been a threat to established manufacturing, and simple protectionism explains some criticism of the trade. Works like "The Waste Makers" by Vance Packard explain some of the criticism of exports of working product, for example the ban on import of tested working Pentium 4 laptops to China, or the bans on export of used surplus working electronics by Japan.

Opponents of surplus electronics exports argue that lower environmental and labor standards, cheap labor, and the relatively high value of recovered raw materials leads to a transfer of pollution-generating activities, such as burning of copper wire. In China, Malaysia, India, Kenya, and various African countries, electronic waste is being sent to these countries for processing, sometimes illegally. Many surplus laptops are routed to developing nations as dumping grounds for e-waste.

Because the United States has not ratified the Basel Convention or its Ban Amendment, and has no domestic laws forbidding the export of toxic waste, the Basel Action Network estimates that about 80% of the electronic waste directed to recycling in the U.S. does not get recycled there at all, but is put on container ships and sent to countries such as China. This figure is disputed as an exaggeration by the EPA, the Institute for Scrap Recycling Industries, and the World Reuse, Repair and Recycling Association.

Guiyu in the Shantou region of China, Delhi and Bangalore in India as well as the Agbogbloshie site near Accra, Ghana have electronic waste processing areas. Uncontrolled burning, disassembly, and disposal can cause a variety of environmental problems such as groundwater contamination, atmospheric pollution, or even water pollution either by immediate discharge or due to surface runoff (especially near coastal areas), as well as health problems including occupational safety and health effects among those directly involved, due to the methods of processing the waste. Thousands of men, women, and children are employed in highly polluting, primitive recycling technologies, extracting the metals, toners, and plastics from computers and other electronic waste.

Proponents of the trade say growth of internet access is a stronger correlation to trade than poverty. Haiti is poor and closer to the port of New York than southeast Asia, but far more electronic waste is exported from New York to Asia than to Haiti. Thousands of men, women, and children are employed in reuse, refurbishing, repair, and remanufacturing, sustainable industries in decline in developed countries. It is held that denying developing nations access to used electronics denies them affordable products and internet access.

Opponents of the trade argue that developing countries utilize methods that are more harmful and more wasteful. An expedient and prevalent method is simply to toss equipment onto an open fire, in order tomelt plastics and to burn away unvaluable metals. This releases carcinogens and neurotoxins into the air, contributing to an acrid, lingering smog. These noxious fumes include dioxins and furans. Bonfire refuse can be disposed of quickly into drainage ditches or waterways feeding the ocean or local water supplies.

In June 2008, a container of electronic waste, destined from the Port of Oakland in the U.S. to Sanshui District in mainland China, was intercepted in Hong Kong by Greenpeace. Concern over exports of electronic waste were raised in press reports in India, Ghana, Ivory Coast, and Nigeria.

Recycling

Today the electronic waste recycling business is in all areas of the developed world a large and rapidly consolidating business. Electronic waste processing systems have matured in recent years, following increased regulatory, public, and commercial scrutiny, and a commensurate increase in entrepreneurial interest. Part of this evolution has involved greater diversion of electronic waste from energy-intensive down cycling processes (e.g., conventional recycling), where equipment is reverted to a raw material form.

This diversion is achieved through reuse and refurbishing. The environmental and social benefits of reuse include diminished demand for new products and virgin raw materials (with their own environmental issues); larger quantities of pure water and electricity for associated manufacturing; less packaging per unit; availability of technology to wider swaths of society due to greater affordability of products; and diminished use of landfills.

Audiovisual components, televisions, VCRs, stereo equipment, mobile phones, other handheld devices, and computer components contain valuable elements and substances suitable for reclamation, including lead, copper, and gold.

Electronic Waste Substances

Some computer components can be reused in assembling new computer products, while others are reduced to metals that can be reused in applications as varied as construction, flatware, and jewelry.

Substances found in large quantities include epoxy resins, fiberglass, PCBs, PVC, thermosetting plastics, lead, tin, copper, silicon, beryllium, carbon, iron and aluminium.

Elements found in small amounts include cadmium, mercury, and thallium.

Elements found in trace amounts include americium, antimony, arsenic, barium, bismuth, boron, cobalt, europium, gallium, germanium, gold, indium, lithium, manganese, nickel, niobium, palladium, platinum, rhodium, ruthenium, selenium, silver, tantalum, terbium, thorium, titanium, vanadium, and yttrium.

Almost all electronics contain lead and tin (as solder) and copper (as wire and printed circuit board tracks), though the use of lead-free solder is now spreading rapidly.

Nuclear Security Summit

Nuclear Security Summit: Adopted Communique and Plan of Work

A major international summit convened by Barack Obama to discuss ways of improving the security of nuclear materials got underway on April 12, 2010 with the American resident underlining the importance of preventing terrorists from getting hold of the ingredients for a nuclear bomb in Washington.

The two-day summit brought together 47 countries, including the U.S., 37 of whom are being represented by their heads of state or government. A final declaration, negotiated over the past few months by officials from participating countries has been released.

Romania has nearly 1500MWe of nuclear generating capacity and sources 20 per cent of its electricity from nuclear energy, Bulgaria's two reactors account for 35 per cent of its national power grid, and Hungary has four reactors generating one-third of its power. All three countries also figure in the list compiled by the International Panel on Fissile Material with stocks of Highly Enriched Uranium in the 10-100 kg. range. Yet, neither country will be at the Washington summit, even though Armenia, with just 370MWe of nuclear power has been invited. Uzbekistan has also not been invited, despite holding HEU stocks in the 100-1000 kg range. But Georgia, with no nuclear programme to speak of, will be in Washington.

Two other countries whose presence ought to have been considered essential to such an end eavour are Niger and Namibia, who together account for nearly 18 per cent of the world's mined uranium. But the two African states, whose yellowcake drives much of the world's nuclear programme, were not considered important enough for the summit.

Laura Holgate, Senior Director, WMD Terrorism & Threat Reduction at National Security Council, told that the idea was to get a representative set of countries. “We couldn't invite every single country that has any nuclear connectivity and so we were looking for countries that represented regional diversity where we had states that had weapons, states that don't have weapons, states with large nuclear programs, states with small nuclear programs.”

Both India and Pakistan has attended the summit at the prime ministerial level. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pulled out at the last minute, opting to send his Foreign Minister instead.

Statement by Indian Prime Minister

Nuclear security is one of the foremost challenges we face today. I therefore wish to commend President Barack Obama for his initiative in convening this Summit on Nuclear Security. We would like the Summit to lead to concrete out comes which help make our world a safer place.

The developmental applications of nuclear science in areas such as medicine, agriculture, food preservation and availability of fresh water are by now well established. Today, nuclear energy has emerged as a viable source of energy to meet the growing needs of the world in a manner that is environmentally sustainable. There is a real prospect for nuclear technology to address the developmental challenges of our times.

In India we have ambitious plans for using nuclear energy to meet our growing energy needs. Our target is to increase our installed capacity more than seven fold to 35000MWe by the year 2022, and to 60,000 M We by 2032.

The nuclear industry’s safety record over the last few years has been encouraging. It has helped to restore public faith in nuclear power. Safety alone, however, is not enough. The challenge we face today is that of ensuring nuclear security.

The danger of nuclear explosives or fissile material and technical know-how falling in to the hands of non-state actors continues to haunt our world. India is deeply concerned about the danger it faces, as do other States, from this threat.

Since 2002, we have piloted a resolution at the United Nations General Assembly on measures to deny terrorists access to Weapons of Mass Destruction. We fully support the implementation of United Nations Security Council Resolution 1540 and the United Nations Global Counter Terrorism Strategy. The primary responsibility for ensuring nuclear security rests at the national level, but national responsibility must be accompanied by responsible behaviour by States. If not, it remains an empty slogan. All States should scrupulously abide by their international obligations. It is a matter of deep regret that the global non-proliferation regime has failed to prevent nuclear proliferation. Clandestine proliferation networks have flourished and led to insecurity for all, including and especially for India We must learn from past mistakes and institute effective measures to prevent their recurrence.

The world community should join hands to eliminate the risk of sensitive and valuable materials and technologies falling into hands of terrorists and illicit traffickers. There should be zero tolerance for individuals and groups which engage in illegal trafficking in nuclear items.

Global non-proliferation, to be successful, should be universal, comprehensive and non-discriminatory and linked to the goal of complete nuclear disarmament. We welcome the fact that the world is veering around to our view that the best guarantor of nuclear security is a world free from nuclear weapons.

Starting with Jawaharlal Nehru over five decades ago, India has been in the forefront of the call for global and complete nuclear disarmament. In 2006 India proposed the negotiation of a Nuclear Weapons Convention. We have also expressed our readiness to participate in the negotiation of an internationally verifiable Fissile Material Cut-off Treaty in the Conference on Disarmament.

Former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi had put forward a concrete Action Plan in 1988 for the universal and non-discriminatory elimination of nuclear weapons leading to global nuclear disarmament in a time- ound framework. I once again reiterate India’s call to the world community to work towards the realisation of this vision.

We welcome the agreement between the United States and Russia to cut their nuclear arsenals as a step in the right direction. I call upon all states with substantial nuclear arsenals to further accelerate this process by making deeper cuts that will lead to meaningful disarmament.

We are encouraged by the Nuclear Posture Review announced by President Obama. India supports the universalisation of the policy of No First Use. The salience of nuclear weapons in national defence and security doctrines must be reduced as a matter of priority. The dangers of nuclear terrorism make the early elimination of nuclear weapons a matter of even greater urgency.

The Indian Atomic Energy Act provides the legal framework for securing nuclear materials and facilities, and the Atomic Energy Regulatory Board ensures independent oversight of nuclear safety and security. We are party to the Convention on the Physical Protection of Nuclear Material and its 2005 amendment.

India’s three stage nuclear power programme which began sixty years ago is based on a closed nuclear fuel cycle. A direct benefit of this is that it ensures control over nuclear material that is generated as spent fuel. At the same time, we are continually upgrading technology to develop nuclear systems that are intrinsically safe, secure and proliferation resistant. We have recently developed an Advanced Heavy Water Reactor based on Low Enriched Uranium and thorium with new safety and proliferation- resistant features.

India has maintained an impeccable non-proliferation record, of which we are proud of. As a responsible nuclear power, India has and will not be the source of proliferation of sensitive technologies. We have a well-established and effective export control system which has worked without fail for over six decades. We have strengthened this system by harmonisation of our guidelines and lists with those of the Nuclear Suppliers Group and the Missile Technology Control Regime. Our commitment to not transfer nuclear weapons or related materials and technologies to non-nuclear weapon states or non-state actors is enshrined in domestic law through the enactment of the Weapons of Mass Destruction Act. We stand committed not to transfer reprocessing and enrichment technologies and equipment to countries that do not possess them.

As a founder member of the International Atomic Energy Agency, we have consistently supported the central role of the IAEA in facilitating national efforts to strengthen nuclear security and in fostering effective international cooperation. We have so far conducted nine Regional Training Courses on Nuclear Security in cooperation with the IAEA. We have entered into a Safeguards Agreement with the
IAEA in 2008, and have decided to place all future civilian thermal power reactors and civilian breeder reactors under IAEA safeguards.

We will continue to work with the IAEA and our partners in the United Nations as well as other forums such as the Global Initiative to Combat Nuclear Terrorism to upgrade standards, share experiences and ensure effective implementation of international benchmarks on nuclear security.

we have decided to set up a “Global Centre for Nuclear Energy Partnership” in India. We visualize this to be a state of the art facility based on international participation from the IAEA and other interested foreign partners. The Centre will consist of four Schools dealing with Advanced Nuclear Energy System Studies, Nuclear Security, Radiation Safety, and the application of Radioisotopes and Radiation Technology in the areas of healthcare, agriculture and food. The Centre will conduct research and development of design systems that are intrinsically safe, secure, proliferation resistant and sustainable. We would welcome participation in this venture by your countries, the IAEA and the world to make this Centre’s work a success.

Communiqué and Plan of Work

The 47-nationNuclear Security Summit ended with the adoption of a short final communiqué and seven page work plan aimed at promoting the effective security of nuclear materials worldwide.

The communiqué includes general commitments while the more specific work plan constitutes a political commitment by participating countries to carry out applicable measures, on a voluntary basis, in all aspects of the storage, use, transportation and disposal of nuclear materials.

Unlike most nuclear documents springing from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty system, the Washington communiqué makes no legal distinction between nuclear weapon states and the rest. Nor is there any reference to the NPT. Instead, it reaffirms the fundamental responsibility of States, consistent with their international obligations, to maintain effective security of all nuclear materials. These materials are defined as including “nuclear materials used in nuclear weapons, and nuclear facilities under their control.”

The document calls for wider support for existing international instruments on nuclear security such as the 1979 Convention on the Physical Protection of Nuclear Material and its 2005 amendment, the Convention on the Suppression of Nuclear Terrorism.

There is no reference in the documents to U.N. Security Council Resolution 1887 on nuclear security and non-proliferation, passed last year at the urging or U.S. President Barack Obama. Indian officials say the reference in that to NPT adherencemeant it could not be included in the communiqué.

But the communiqué and work plan have words of support for the G8-led Global Partnership against the Spread of Weapons of Mass Destruction. This initiative includes the annual G8 statements on nonproliferation, the last of which sought to prevent India from accessing enrichment and reprocessing technologies.

The work plan covers a wide range of issues from nuclear detection and forensics to exchange of information to detect and prevent illicit nuclear trafficking, and the promotion of nuclear security culture.

The document recognises that highly enriched uranium (HEU) and separated plutonium—basic ingredients of a nuclear weapon require special precautions and that participating countries agree to “promotemeasures to secure, account for, and consolidate the sematerials.” It also says that they agree to encourage the conversion of reactors from HEU to low-enriched uranium, a stated priority of the U.S. in the run-up to the Summit.

Next Nuclear Security Summit in the South Korea

President Barack Obama announced that the next Nuclear Security Summit would be held in the Republic of Korea (South Korea) in two years. He said that this would help to “ensure that our progress is not a fleeting moment, but part of a serious and sustained effort.”

Mr. Obama said the summits provided the nations with the opportunity to take specific and concrete national-level actions to secure the nuclear materials, to strengthen the International Atomic Energy Agency, and to deepen international cooperation aimed at preventing nuclear materials from falling into the hands of terrorists.

The New Child Labour Law

Child is a bundle of joys a flower incarnate in person. A flickering smile of the child pleases everyone. The brightness and future welfare of the society is closely interwoven with the brightness of the child and its careful upbringing. Childhood is the most important period of life, as it shapes adulthood. The very initiation of life-making starts at childhood. The early lesson of the child starts from the cradle. Parents adopt different methods to rear up the child in different ages, to make it a happy man or woman later. The mother being closer, has a greater responsibility to train up the child well from the very infancy.

If one desires to know a nation, he should look for it into its children. Child is not only the future of the nation and its aspirations but also, and mainly, its strength in reserve. The future of nation is best insured if its children are healthy and active, educated and informed, disciplined and trained, as well as free from social prejudices, having a scientific outlook. It is, therefore a duty cast on the society at large to protest this crop of nation from the damaging effects of excessive exposure to vagaries of climate, as well as, from social oppression and injustice.

Talking all the aspects as a whole, the childhood is the most significant period of one’s life. It is considered, and rightly so, to be the very foundation of life on which depends the entire structure the whole personality as such child the father of man – is the natural future leader of the nation in every walk of life, may it be industry, education, politics, social services, administration defence, civil services or anything else. It is during this formative period of moulding that the life begins to acquire shape and substance, and the attitudes, behaviours, manners and emotions do get developed.

CONCEPT OF CHILD LABOUR The term ‘Child Labour‘ is, at times, used as a synonym for ‘employed child’ or ‘working child’. In this sense it is co-extensive with any work done by a child for profit or reward. But more commonly than not, the term ‘child labour’ is used in a derogatory sense. It suggests something which is hateful and exploitative.

Thus, child labour is recognized by the sociologists, development workers, educationists and medical professionals as hazardous and injurious to the child, both physically and mentally.

According to Shri. V.V.Giri, former president of India, has thus distinguished the two concepts of the ‘child labour’s: the term ‘child labour’ is commonly interpreted in two different ways: first, as an economic practice and secondly, as a social evil. In the first context it signifies employed of the children in gainful occupations with a view to adding to the labour income of the family. It is in the second context that the term child labour is now more generally used. In assessing the nature and extent of the social evil, it is necessary to take into account the character of the jobs on which the children are engaged, the dangers to which they are exposed and the opportunities of development which they have been denied.”

The term ‘child labour’ applies to children engaged in all types of activities whether these be industrial or non-industrial but which are determined to their physical, mental, moral and social well being and development. The brain of a child develops anatomically till the age of ten, the lungs till the age of fourteen and the muscles till the age of seventeen. Anything which obstructs the natural growth of any or all of these vital organs should be considered as determinate to natural physical growth, or even hazardous.

SOME HISTORICAL ASPECT ON CHILD LABOUR IN INDIA In ancient India it was the duty of the king to educate every girl and boy and parents could be punished for not sending their children to school called ashrams, which were really residential schools under a guru (a learned sage). Child labour existed only in the form of child slaves children, sometimes even less than 8 years of age, were purchased, to do so-called low and dishonorable work. Kautilya (4th century B.C) considered it degrading to make children work on such jobs and hence prohibited the purchase and sale of slave children below 8 years.

Children, however, helped their parents in household activities and family crafts. They learnt the skills by observing and participating in such activities. A predominantly rural society is inevitably characterized by small and marginal economic units. India, through its medieval period, was no exception. Increasing pressure on land led to fragmentation of holdings. Growing families had to look beyond personal cultivation for subsistence. A class of landless labourers came into existence, often bonded to the large landowners. These labourers used their children to help in their economic activities. The rural artism rarely worked alone. Infact the entire family was a work unit with the ‘pater familia’ being the master craftsman. Occupations were determined largely on the basis of heredity, and children were introduced to their traditional craft at a young age.

NATURE OF CHILD WORK From time immemorial it has been the practice that children were to engage themselves in some sort of work or the other, both in home and in the field. In olden days, children of tender age performed even toilsome work alongwith adult agricultural and other workers. In the medieval period, children used to be engaged as trainees under the guidance of their parents to learn traditional crafts of the family.

In agriculture, children are employed not on agricultural operations but in non-agricultural operations also. They are employed in such diverse agricultural operations as ploughing, sowing, transplanting, weeding, harvesting threshing and guarding the crops, etc.

In plantations, child labour is a part of family labour. They assist their parents in plucking of leaves and coffee berries, or collecting of latex, or they do some secondary jobs, such as, weeding, spreading of fertilizers, the care of nurseries, digging of drains, etc. they are also employed to pick out stalks and coarse leaves of tea spread over the green leaves in the shadow.

There is also an increasing concern about the accident and disease incident among child agricultural workers, controls on hazardous insecticides and pesticides are deficient and neither the children nor their parents receive any instruction as how to use them safely. The same is true of mechanical operations.

Children in cities perform much larger varieties of activities than those in villages because of the extensively diversified structure of urban economics. Often, children are employed for packing, labeling, etc., in the factories. Other industries in which children are engaged are match factories, bidi manufacturing, mica cutting, wood and cork, furniture and fixture, printing, publishing and allied trades, leather products, rubber and rubber products, machinery, transport equipment, lock factories, gem cutting and polishing, potteries, glass bangle industries, brass work, carpet industries and personal services like laundaries, deying and cleaning.

Millions of small boys and girls are engaged in the unorganized sector, comprising hotels, restaurants, canteens, wayside ‘dhabas’, shops, repair workshop, and establishments of various types. They also work as hawkers, coolies, shoe-shine boys and venders. In big cities, children can be seen cleaning and washing automobiles just for a trip. The bigger the city, the higher is the persistent demand for teenagers to work as domestic servants and it is there that they are often subjected to worst types of exploitation without any means of protections-legal or social on the kitchen floor and are, as a rule, not permitted to attend school. Sexual abuse is also reported to be frequent.

In a good number of occupations child worker is invariably exposed to risks of various nature because of his tender age. For instance, he is likely to suffer burn injuries while working round about big ovens, or while carrying hot beverages; the newspaper hawkers and shoe-shine boys are exposed to the risk of road accident; rag-pickers may get cut injuries from glass pieces or broken tin cans; or the child working on construction sites alongwith his parents may sustain injuries while carrying brick or stone loads.

Interestingly, children are sometimes also employed as performing artists. They are given roles in films, and in circus they perform acrobatic feats, Magicians and jugglers use them as ‘Jamura’ (the helping boy) and they are also used by them for arousing public sympathy at wayside shows for alms.

Some writers and social workers are of the view that begging is a major field of operations where children are put to work. Mrs. Sengupta has observed.:
“Our seething millions where child employment is rife and has become a various form of exploitation ….. begging is becoming a real profession and there are scaring rumours that gangsters and syndicates of inhuman beings trade in human babies and children. Certainly the mother clad in a rag and clutching a baby in her arms is a sight that is shameful. Children are drugged or even, one hears, tortured. To see pavement dwellers in all their horrors living in filth, children picking up rejected and popping food mixed with filth into their mouths makes one feel desperate: but no one seem to do prevent from flaunting drugged babies or little tots on the road and to use them for employment purposes.”

Curiously, some well to do urban families, having connections in the country-side, take in some child of a poor relative, ostensibly, for supporting the child out of sympathy for the for the poor relatives, but he or she eds up as a domestic servant with no opportunity for education.

It has been also discovered that a sizable number of children ranging between 5 to 12 years of age had actually been kidnapped from different places to weave carpets and were forced to work for as long as 22 hours a day. These children treated like virtual slaves, were found to bear scar marks of torture. They were, reportedly, severely beaten even with iron rods, if they were deficient in work or committed errors in weaving.

The most nefarious rather barbarian form of child exploitation is the practice of bonded labour. The child is handed over by the loaner as security or collateral security against small sums of loan obtained at an exorbitant rate of interest. The bonded child usually gets only a handful of coarse grain for his subsistence. He has to toil very hard and exists at the mercy of his lord for the whole of life without the least hope of redemption. The mortgagee is usually some big landlord, money –lender or the village businessman and the mortgager is the poor landless labourer. Through this practice is prevalent in many parts of rural India, it is predominant in Vellore district of Tamil Nadu but with a distinguishing feature that there the bonded child is allowed to stay with his parents on the condition that he must present him self at work daily at 8 a.m. The practice of bounded labour is still prevalent dispite stringent laws against it which provide for imprisonment of, and imprisonment of, and imposition of fine on, the guilty.

CAUSES OF CHILD LABOUR Child labour is a socio-economic phenomenon. It is generally concerned that illiteracy, ignorance, low wages, unemployment, poor standard of living, stark poverty, deep social prejudices and appalling backwardness of the country-side are all, severally and collectively, the root causes of child labour. Mr Madan, Deputy Director, Ministry of Labour, is of the view that “the children are required to seek employment either to augment the income of their families or to have a gainful occupation in the absence of availability of school going facilities at various places.”

It has been officially stated that, “child labour is no longer a medium of economic exploitation but is necessitated by economic necessity of the parents and in many cases that of the child himself.” Prof. Gangrade believes that child labour is a product of such factors as customs, traditional attitude, lack of school or reluctance of parents to send their children to school, urbanization, industrialization, migration and so on.

AGE LIMIT The Indian constitution in its article 24 lays down that, “No child below the age of 14 years shall be employed to work in any factory or mine or engaged in any other hazardous employment.” The abuse of the tender age can be stopped by bringing these vast unorganized sectors under legislative control. We see that children employed in different occupations and different states are subject to different set of regulations and treatment. But our primary interest is to save the tender aged children from health risks, hazardous and other forms of exploitation. The complex socio-economic conditions in different social milieu may not advocate the uniform age limit. But this should not rule out the possibility of acceptance of age uniformity, though child labour (Prohibitions and Regulation) Act has brought about much needed uniformity in certain cases. Not only in our country, but also in almost all other countries of the world the non-uniformity of age regulation is still in existence. The most widely covered and most strictly regulated sector is industry. Fifty-four of the member countries for which such information is available, have fixed the minimum age for industrial employment at 14. A higher age – 15 or 16 is the general rule in another forty-five and a lower one -12 or 13 – in just over a dozen. In case of non-industrial employment national laws and regulations are naturally extremely diverse. The majority of countries have, in principle, a uniform minimum age of 14, 15 or 16 years for all employment (disregarding agriculture for the moment).

But in our country where dire poverty is manifest in every walk of life what will be the minimum age for child labour? The International Labour Organization in its Convention No. 138 (1973), in Article 3 had clearly stated, “The minimum age for admission to any type of employment or work which by its nature or the circumstances in which it is carried out is likely to jeopardise the health, safety or morals of young persons shall not be less than 18 years.” If India ratifies this convention, millions of children will be thrown out of employment. In the present socio-economic condition in the country it is difficult to prescribe the minimum age. It will make the problem of unemployment and poverty more acute. But for the sake of uplifting the future standards of employment as well as to protect the children from such abuse of their tender age, at least we can appeal to our government to provide free and compulsory education to every child up to the age of 14 years. The law –makers must keep in mind the recommendation of the Convention No. 138. age limits should be gradually raised to a level consistent with the fullest physical and mental growth and development of child workers as recommended by the International Labour Organization to save the children from the clutches of social injustice and deprivation and to ensure for them a happy normal growth in the national interest of every country.

HOURS OF WORK The health and efficiency of the workers depend mostly on the hours of work. Long hours of work are harmful not only for moral and physical development, but also retard efficiency. Considering our climate and geophysical conditions the hours of work should be lowered. The long working days minimize the working life. So it is less productive in the long run. Shorter working days are also less productive, but it provides more employment. The socio-economic conditions of India demands shorter working hours. The tender age of the working children should be protected from the onslaught of rigorous working hours. The environment of the working places, such as, hotels, restaurants, tea-stalls, and sweet-shops is most uncongenial to the development of the child. But the working children devote 16 to 20 hours daily to serve the clients.

According to the Child Labour (Prohibition and Regulation) Act, 1986, no child shall be permitted to work more than a period of 6 hours inclusive one hours rest in one day. Moreover short working hours, with rest intervals would enable the child workers to perform their duties efficiently and happily. The most surprising thing is that the employer hardly takes any care to make a difference between the child and the adult worker. Naturally working children become the victim of exploitation. Working hour should be restricted in such a way that they may be permitted to part time education. The most striking thing is that no special provision have been made regarding the condition of work, conservancy services whole- some drinking water, medical facilities, accident benefits, rest, etc., for the child workers. They should enjoy the same facilities like the adult workers.

IMPLEMENTATION OF SCHEMES Our constitution provides, as a fundamental right, that no child below the age of fourteen years shall be employed in any factory, or mine, or be engaged in any other hazardous occupation. Once Dr. Rajendra Prasad had remarked, “We might search our hearts and ask ourselves whether we have done everything possible to implement this directive.”

According to the report of the National Commission on Labour, the employment of children in factories, mines, plantations or in other organized sectors has been decreasing. However, this report adds that it continues to persist in varying degrees in the unorganized sector, such as, small plantations, restaurants, hotels, cotton ginning and weaving, carpet weaving, stone breaking, brick kiln, handicrafts and road building, etc. Employment of children, who are below the prescribed age, was also reported to be continuing at far off places and in rural areas where enforcement of statutory provisions was all the more difficult.

The real enforcement lies in the implementation. The positive side of implementation is that law should have and validity. The greedy employers do not care the existing laws. Like all other countries several industrial activities such as manufacturing, mines, construction and various kind of transport are dealt with by separate laws and regulations. On the other hand the immature children are in the dark about legal protection. Like all laws should be properly administered. The essential feature of the administration of labour law is inspection. A peculiar feature is that the employer always tries to draw a screen before the inspector. Inspector hardly gets any opportunity to identify the child for verify his age and the other working conditions. Children do not come openly to the inspector to report about their grievances.

INTERNATIONAL LABOUR ORGANIZATION AND CHILD LABOUR The basic aim of the ILO to abolish Child Labour altogether is yet a distant goal in view of the present economic setup of the World. It has taken measures to protect the working children and to ameliorate their working and living conditions and to impart job-based education. The United Nations declaration of the rights of the child says:

“The child shall enjoy special protection and shall be given opportunities and facilities, by law and by other means, to enable him to develop physically, mentally, spiritually and socially in a healthy and normal manner and in conditions of freedom and dignity. In the enactment of laws for this purpose the best interests of the child shall be the paramount consideration.”

It further states that: “the child shall be protected against all forms of neglect, cruelty and exploitation. He shall not be the subject of traffic, in any form. The child shall not be admitted to employment before an appropriate minimum age; he shall in no case be caused or permitted to be engaged in any occupations or employment which would prejudice his health or education, or interfere with his physical, mental or moral development.”

Best blessings on those
Little, innocent lives
Bloomed on earth,
Who have brought the message
Of joy from heavenly garden
- Rabindra Nath Tagore

It is the bounded duty of the country to provide for atleast free primary education for all children. One must remember that the industrialization can wait but youth does not last long. This right to primary education must be for all the present time, and not a dubious or ambiguous must be for the present for some defined future. The basic guarantees of our Constitutional must be fulfilled here and now.

Therefore, so far as the projects for development of human resources are concerned, the programme for welfare of children must be given top priority. It is only in this way that children can be trained to be good future citizen, mentally alert and prosperous. We should aim at providing proper and equal opportunities for development to all children in the light of the above mentioned constitutional directives. It is only then that we can fulfill our aspirations and achieve our objectives of social justice and equality enshrined in our constitution.