A pandemic of child trafficking

The virus has shattered families and orphaned children around the world. But in India, where 27pc of the population of 1.3 billion is under 14, the scale of the crisis is unparalleled. The country had an estimated 350,000 orphans in institutional care going into the pandemic. Now authorities are scrambling to get a count of how many children have been abandoned, either because their parents have been hospitalised or died or because the surviving parent isn’t able to care for them. Priyank Kanoongo, chairman of New Delhi-based National Commission for Protection of Child Rights, says his office has directed all district child protection units, child welfare officials, and police check posts to keep track. What is a health crisis could well morph into a human-rights crisis in a country where child exploitation has long been a problem. Children orphaned by Covid could fall into the hands of child traffickers.

(Adapted from “India Is Worried That Children Orphaned by Covid could fall into the hands of child traffickers,” published in May 2021, by Bloomberg Businessweek)

Fine, sue us

Companies have spent more than a decade forcing employees and customers to resolve disputes outside the traditional court system, using secretive arbitration proceedings that typically don’t allow plaintiffs to team up and extract big-money payments akin to a class action. Now, Amazon is bucking that trend. With no announcement, the company recently changed its terms of service to allow customers to file lawsuits. Already, it faces at least three proposed class actions, including one alleging the company’s Alexa-powered Echo devices recorded people without permission. The retail giant made the change after plaintiffs’ lawyers flooded Amazon with more than 75,000 individual arbitration demands on behalf of Echo users. That move triggered a bill for tens of millions of dollars in filing fees, according to lawyers involved, payable by Amazon under its own policies. Amazon’s decision to drop its arbitration requirement is the starkest example yet of how companies are responding to plaintiffs’ lawyers pushing the arbitration system to its limits.

(Adapted from “Amazon Faced 75,000 Arbitration Demands. Now It Says: Fine, Sue Us,” by Sara Randazzo, published on June 1, 2021, by The Wall Street Journal)

The once-poorer neighbour

India and Pakistan could learn a lot from their once-poorer neighbour. In March 1971, Bangladesh’s founders declared their independence from richer and more powerful Pakistan. This month, Bangladesh’s Cabinet Secretary said that GDP per capita had grown by 9pc over the past year, rising to $2,227. Pakistan’s per capita income, meanwhile, is $1,543. In 1971, Pakistan was 70pc richer than Bangladesh; today, Bangladesh is 45pc richer than Pakistan. Bangladesh’s growth rests on three pillars: exports, social progress and fiscal prudence. The share of Bangladeshi women in the labor force has consistently grown, unlike in India and Pakistan, where it has decreased. India — eternally confident about being the only South Asian economy that matters — now must grapple with the fact that it, too, is poorer than Bangladesh in per capita terms. India’s per capita income in 2020-21 was $1,947.

(Adapted from “South Asia Should Pay Attention to Its Standout Star,” by Mihir Sharma, published on June 1, 2021, by Bloomberg Opinion)

Rich F.R.I.E.N.D.S

In the opening credits of ‘Friends,’ the show’s six co-stars cavort in a fountain as the show’s theme song laments the life of a twenty-something New Yorker whose “job’s a joke, you’re broke, your love-life’s DOA.” Twenty seven years after the sitcom debuted, its stars — and creators — are far from broke. The much anticipated ‘Friends Reunion,’ which aired on HBO Max, paid Monica, Phoebe, Rachel, Chandler, Joey and Ross up to $5m apiece, according to one knowledgeable source. Not bad for one night’s work, but a pittance compared with what they have made across the sitcom’s nearly three-decade long run. The wildly popular television comedy generated nearly $1.4bn in earnings since its broadcast debut in 1994, according to Forbes estimates. Of that, Forbes estimates that the six ‘Friends’ stars received nearly $816 million in pre-tax earnings, or roughly $136 million each.

(Adapted from “How ‘Friends’ Generated More Than $1.4 Billion For Its Stars And Creators,” by Dawn Chmielewski, published on May 28, 2021, by Forbes)

Published in Dawn, The Business and Finance Weekly, June 7th, 2021