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After the US Supreme Court passed a landmark decision declaring gay marriages legal, the world supported the move and also showed solidarity on social networking sites.<br />
<br />
The spotlight also came on India where ‘unnatural sex’ and gay marriages are still a crime.<br />
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However, Union Law Minister DV Sadananda Gowda on Tuesday hinted that India could move towards abolishing Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code, which criminalises 'unnatural sex'.<br />
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He also hailed US’ decision, adding the mood was in favour of it but decision would be taken only after widespread consultations.<br />
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Meanwhile, Gowda thinks that a recent legislation on the rights of transgenders could provide a model for the Indian gay community.<br />
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He told Economic Times that after several years of delay, a private member's Bill on the rights of transgenders, moved in the Rajya Sabha by Tiruchi Siva of DMK, had received overwhelming response.<br />
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“That Bill has been passed by the Rajya Sabha (in April) and everyone supported it. If that Bill is passed by the Lok Sabha and becomes an Act, Section 377 will become irrelevant," Gowda told ET.<br />
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Tiruchi Siva told the financial daily that he had limited his Bill to just the educational, economic, employment and health rights of transgenders.<br />
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“The Bill does not talk about Section 377 or anything other than the rights of transgenders. Still, I am always optimistic that rights of others will also get due importance,” he told ET.<br />
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(Image: Reuters)<br />

Happy and Gay in India? Sec 377 could soon be abolished

<b><br /></b><strong><ul><li><strong><keyword id="997884" type="PERSON" weightage="20" keywordseo="Harish-Iyer">Harish Iyer</keyword> is the first openly gay person to become a politician. </strong></li><li><strong>Iyer on Tuesday announced that he is joining the Indian National <keyword id="1575" type="ORGANIZATION" weightage="20" keywordseo="Congress">Congress</keyword>. </strong></li><li>India's Supreme Court decriminalised homosexuality in 2018 allowing Iyer's move to politics today</li></ul></strong>Harish Iyer, who grabbed headlines after becoming the first gay person in the country to seek proposals for same-sex marriage in 2015 announced that he is joining the Indian National Congress.<br /><br />"I have officially joined the Congress and look forward to working with the Mumbai Congress team in weeding out homophobia, transphobia, Islamophobia and the politics of hate," Harish Iyer announced on Twitter.<br /><br />
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<br /><br />Iyer has become the first openly gay politician in India. He has been working proactively as an Indian Equal Rights Activists and has presented his opinion on number of issues including promoting rights for the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, transsexual, queer (LGBTQ+) community, children, women, animals and survivors of child sexual abuse. He is also organising the gay pride parade in India to fight the rights of LGBTQ community. <br /><br />Iyer tweeted "So, sometimes we cannot afford sitting on the fence. Sometimes, you need to take a plunge into things with people who are working against the intent of equality and stand against the very fabric of secularism that our nation is blessed with. We need to strive to protect it.”<br /><br />Last year, India’s the Supreme Court struck down section 377, a landmark decision that decriminalized gay sex and turned a leaf for the country's LGBTQ community.<br />

India's first openly gay politician joins the oldest party in the country

<br />In a landmark judgment, <keyword id="3658" type="LOCATION" weightage="20" keywordseo="India">India</keyword>’s Supreme Court has decriminalised <keyword id="34262" type="PERSON" weightage="20" keywordseo="homosexuality">homosexuality</keyword>, striking down a colonial era law from 1861, saying homosexuality is not an offense. <br /><br />Upholding the rights of individuals, a 5-judge bench led by India’s Chief Justice <keyword id="6355251" type="PERSON" weightage="20" keywordseo="dipak-misra">Dipak Misra</keyword> took a unanimous decision with the chief justice saying the “LGBT Community has the same rights as of any ordinary citizen. Respect for each others rights, and others are supreme humanity. Criminalising gay sex is irrational and indefensible,” the chief justice reportedly observed.<br /><br />The court has observed:<br /><br />
  
  
  
  
  
  
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<br /><br />The <keyword id="6362797" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="20" keywordseo="section-377">section 377</keyword>, which dates back to 1861, had criminalised sexual activities that are "against the order of nature." The law has been used to criminalise homosexuality in the country, often impinging on the rights of the LGBTQ community in India. <br /><br />A five-person bench headed by India’s Chief Justice Dipak Misra pronounced its judgment following a hearing in July on a string of petitions that had challenged the law as unconstitutional that violated the fundamental rights of citizens including the right to equality and right to freedom and expression. The right to privacy verdict of the Supreme Court earlier this year is also likely to be a significant factor that will influence the court’s decision.<br /><br />In 2013, India’s Supreme Court had overturned an earlier ruling by the <keyword id="6355014" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="20" keywordseo="delhi-high-court">Delhi High Court</keyword> which had decriminalised section 377 in 2009. <br /><br />The Indian government which had been given the option of enacting legislation that would have scrapped this law, had left the decision to the “wisdom” of India’s Supreme Court.<br /><br />The decision marks a key moment for both India’s Supreme Court as well as its outgoing Chief Justice Misra who will pass on reigns to Justice Ranjan Gogoi next month.<br /><br />In 2001, Netherlands became the <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/where-is-same-sex-marriage-legal-world-2017-11">first</a> country to recognise same sex marriages. Same sex marriages are now legally permitted in over 20 countries including Australia, the US, New Zealand, Germany, and Malta, among others. <br /><br /><strong>Section 377</strong><br /><br />The section 377 of the Indian Penal Code is a colonial era law that criminalised sexual activities that are "against the order of nature” and was punishable with life imprisonment. <br /><br />Specifically, the language of the<em> 377</em> states that “Whoever voluntarily has carnal intercourse against the order of nature with any man, woman or animal, shall be punished with imprisonment for life, or with imprisonment of either description for a term which may extend to ten years, and shall also be liable to fine.” <br /><br />While the law has rarely been enforced,  gay and civil right activists have long argued the law was used to harass members of India’s queer community.<br /><br />The 377 itself traces its root to the Buggery Act of 1533, enacted during the reign of King Henry VIII that criminalised and sodomy and bestality.<br /><br /><strong>Moment Of Pride</strong><br /><br />The decision has been hailed as a historic win for the LGBTQ rights in India and Twitter as abuzz with celebratory tweets from celebrities and politicians alike:<br /><br />
  
  
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Section 377 Verdict: India’s top court decriminalises homosexuality in landmark verdict

<h2><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"></div><p></p></div></div></h2>
<p><em>In many places attacking the rights of gay people can still be politically useful and popular</em></p>
<p>IN THE argot of human rights, LGBT means lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender--a catch-all term for sexual minorities. But Yahya Jammeh, president of Gambia for 20 years, has a different reading. "As far as I am concerned," he thundered during a televised speech in February, "LGBT can only stand for leprosy, gonorrhoea, bacteria and tuberculosis." He compared gay people to vermin, and said his government would fight them as it does malaria-bearing mosquitoes, "if not more aggressively".</p>
<p>Gay sex is illegal in Gambia, as it is in 37 of Africa's 54 countries. Documented evidence of a criminal homosexual conspiracy to poison Gambian culture remains elusive. But politicians remain vigilant: in August the government brought in fresh anti-gay legislation. A few weeks later ministers in Chad approved a bill mandating prison sentences of 15 to 20 years for gay sex. Across Africa, and elsewhere in the world, politicians have found gay people a useful scapegoat to distract from corruption or other domestic problems, to shore up conservative constituencies, or to steal a march on political rivals.</p>
<p>The best-known example is Uganda. In 2009 David Bahati, an MP, introduced a bill which would have imposed the death penalty in cases of "aggravated homosexuality", a term that covers gay sex with people under 18 and people with disabilities or HIV. <span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.5em;">There was a furious response from <keyword id="6356001" type="COMPANY" weightage="60" keywordseo="international">international</keyword> human-rights groups and some governments. The bill lost its harshest provisions, including the death penalty.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.5em;"> In February, after some apparent hesitation, Yoweri Museveni, Uganda's long-standing president, signed the bill into law. He accused Uganda's critics of acting like latter-day colonialists seeking to impose their values on Africa.</span></p>
<p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image"></div><p></p></div></div>Similar rhetoric had been heard two months earlier when Goodluck Jonathan, the president of Nigeria, signed a bill outlawing displays of same-sex affection, banning groups devoted to gay people's rights and introducing 14-year prison sentences for anyone entering into a gay marriage or other contractual union.</p>
<p>As in Uganda and Gambia, Nigeria already had a law on the books prohibiting gay sex. To the extent that Nigerian gay activists had a legislative agenda, it did not include gay marriage. The UN human-rights chief said of the Nigerian bill that she had rarely seen a law that "in so few paragraphs directly violates so many basic, universal human rights."</p>
<p>Russia has also been targeting gay people. In 2012 Vitaly Milonov, a legislator in St Petersburg, spearheaded the city's adoption of a law banning homosexual "propaganda" to minors. In June 2013 the Duma passed its own version, making "propaganda" about "non-traditional sexual relationships" a crime. Russia's president, Vladimir Putin, finds gay-bashing politically appealing. It runs together various favoured themes: that the West is a corrupting influence best rejected; that tolerance and liberalism are alien to traditional Russian values; that the Orthodox church should be given a more prominent role.</p>
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<p><keyword id="6358883" type="PERSON" weightage="100" keywordseo="Politics">Politics</keyword> also drove Mr Museveni's decision to sign Uganda's Anti-Homosexuality Act. Mr Museveni is a wily operator who has occupied the presidency since 1986; he had not previously found it necessary to tighten Uganda's anti-gay provisions. But facing a re-election bid in 2016, he chose to ride the homophobic wave his allies in parliament had created for their own purposes.</p>
<p>Mr Jonathan, meanwhile, is up for re-election next year and has encountered a crisis of confidence over his handling of the Islamists of Boko Haram and his poor domestic record; attacking gay people was a distraction, and one that Nigeria's Muslims and Christians, often daggers drawn, would both support.</p>
<p>An enemy within can be handy for all sorts of leaders, and often more or less any old enemy will do. Some leaders' anti-gay language has a conspiratorial tone that feels borrowed from the anti-Semitic diatribes of another time: gay people are portrayed as in thrall to alien values and particularly dangerous to children.</p>
<p>Recent developments in the West also create exotic targets against which divisive leaders can define themselves without taking on any particularly powerful enemy at home. Nigeria's law would surely not have taken its current form had gay marriage not made such remarkable advances in Europe and America.</p>
<p>None of this would work if there were not deep wells of homophobia to draw on. Over 95% of Ugandans and Nigerians disapprove of homosexuality. Four-fifths of Russians say that they have no gay acquaintances (though many may be wrong to say so).</p>
<p>Such numbers say little about the intensity of anti-gay feeling in each country. They are certainly not evidence of a clamour for legislative attacks on homosexuals; activists often point out that gay people in places like Nigeria were able to lead relatively untroubled, if intensely private, lives before they became political targets. But the feelings they represent offer an opportunity for politicians seeking a quick populist win.</p>
<p>Some argue that the colonial provenance of anti-gay laws, in Africa and elsewhere, shows that these feelings have little genuine cultural basis. Imperial British authorities were certainly not slow to impose such laws on the lands they occupied, and they were often imported directly from home; in several former British colonies such provisions are numbered 377 in the legal code, indicating their common source.</p>
<p>Attitudes in some former British colonies in the Caribbean are particularly distressing; in Jamaica vigilantes harass gay people as police look the other way. The prime minister, Portia Simpson-Miller, has defended gay people and pledged a parliamentary vote of conscience on the country's 19th-century "buggery law", although this has not taken place.</p>
<h3>It's a sin</h3>
<p>To see the colonial legacy as the root of the problem, though, is to go too far. It underrates the energy that post-colonial governments have put into keeping these laws on the books, or adding to them. Governments have not been shy about amending other colonial-era laws they see as no longer needed.</p>
<p>A more contemporary and pernicious Western influence is that of conservative American evangelists who export their anti-gay message to places where it may meet more receptive ears, along with money that makes it all the more attractive. In Uganda's case, they appear directly to have influenced the drafting of legislation.</p>
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<p>Whether domestic or imported, religion matters. A survey of 39 countries by the Pew Research Centre last year found a strong correlation between a country's tolerance for homosexuality and its religiosity. African and Middle Eastern nations are the least tolerant; in several Muslim countries homosexuality is a capital crime. Russia, a relatively godless place, is an exception to the rule.</p>
<p>So, increasingly, is America, though in the opposite direction; it is more tolerant than its levels of religious belief would predict. The greatest exception along those lines is Brazil, where attitudes are broadly tolerant and, as in Argentina and parts of Mexico, gay marriage is now legal. Homophobic violence, though, remains a problem.</p>
<p>None of the new laws seems to have been vigorously enforced. But the climate of hostility and fear their passage generates can make life unpleasant for gay men and women, and their mere existence presents opportunities for extortion and blackmail. In 2011 David Kato, a prominent Ugandan campaigner for gay people's rights, was murdered after a tabloid newspaper published his picture, along with those of 99 other homosexuals, under the headline "Hang them!" Homophobic attacks rose tenfold in Uganda after the passage of the Anti-Homosexuality Act, according to a local group. Gay people in Nigeria have been set upon by mobs.</p>
<p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image"></div><p></p></div></div>The simultaneous advance of gay rights in the developed world and its retreat in some other places throws up difficult dilemmas for the West. When gay people's rights are respected at home it is hard to justify turning a blind eye to hideous abuses abroad, particularly in countries with budgets propped up by foreign aid. Yet shout too loudly and you become vulnerable to Mr Museveni's charge of neo-colonialism--and you may jeopardise the safety of the men and women you seek to help.</p>
<p><br>America has taken the most hawkish approach. In 2011 Barack Obama's administration issued a memo formally integrating the promotion of gay people's rights into its diplomacy, including in this the setting of foreign-aid policy. After the Ugandan law was passed America cancelled joint military drills, cut aid and applied travel bans. Some other Western countries followed suit, as did the World Bank. The hard line triggered harsh reactions in some African countries. The European Union has taken a softer approach, finding it more productive to work the phones, exert quiet influence and avoid celebrating victories.</br></p>
<h3>Domino dancing</h3>
<p>Optimists think that, one way or another, outsiders can make a difference. On August 1st Uganda's Constitutional Court overturned the Anti-Homosexuality Act, ruling that there was no quorum in the parliament when it passed the bill in December 2013. What drove the decision--an unusually quick one, by the court's standards--remains unclear.</p>
<p>Anti-gay campaigners accused Mr Museveni of leaning on the court to overturn the law, a few days before he was due to fly, along with dozens of other African leaders, to Washington for an America-Africa summit. If so, it might well be because he faced pressure. Even before the ruling Mr Museveni had begun to waver; in July his government pleaded that the law had been "misinterpreted" by outsiders.</p>
<p>The technical nature of the court's ruling did not quell activists' jubilation. Campaigners in court cheered and draped themselves in a huge rainbow flag. A few days later a few dozen campaigners held a celebration on the shores of Lake Victoria. Remarkably, local police provided them with an element of security. Some MPs want to introduce a new anti-gay bill into parliament.</p>
<p>Yet this week Mr Museveni appeared to warn against such a move. In a long, eccentric article in a Ugandan news weekly, he suggested that a new law could endanger Uganda's trade relationships because "the homosexual lobby can intimidate potential buyers".</p>
<p>If outside pressure had some effect on Mr Museveni--he says it did not--it does not mean it will work more widely. Long a "donor darling", and more recently a military partner of the United States, Uganda has strong links with Western governments. European and American officials were in constant contact with Mr Museveni's government behind the scenes after the law was passed; the public pressure brought to bear on Uganda was only half the story.</p>
<p>Nigeria, a far larger economy with less dependence on aid, is a different case. And as for Russia, Western attacks only play into Mr Putin's hands. Campaigners found it more useful to run a celebrity-led pro-gay campaign around the Sochi Winter Olympics earlier this year than to attack the country's laws head-on.</p>
<p>Moreover, says Kevin Watkins, head of the Overseas Development Institute, a London-based think-tank, even in countries that do receive aid, "conditionality"--tying funds to particular policies--tends not to work. He and others point out that advancing gay people's rights has always been a domestic civil-rights phenomenon. Rather than withholding aid, they argue, better for Westerners to support grassroots organisations which agitate for change.</p>
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<h3>Left to their own devices</h3>
<p>Well-known international human-rights groups devote as much attention to the quiet cultivation of links with local activists as they do to public denunciations of laws they disagree with. The advance of democracy can help insofar as it creates space for civil-society groups and strengthens independent institutions like judiciaries; but democracy can also facilitate demagoguery. One observer points out that anti-gay bills have failed to get far in Ethiopia and Rwanda, two authoritarian states, while becoming law in the messy semi-democracies of Nigeria and Uganda.</p>
<p>Westerners can help in other ways, too. Asylum courts have not always taken the most enlightened approach to applications from gay people. In recent years European and British judges have ruled that sexual orientation may be considered a ground for asylum if the applicant can demonstrate a convincing fear of persecution. This is not always easy in countries where suppressing one's sexuality may be the only way to guarantee personal safety.</p>
<p>The other way in which people in the West might make a difference is available only to a few--gay celebrities who obscure this aspect of their lives. With popular culture ever more global, an increase in the number of openly gay football heroes or Hollywood stars could have an effect.</p>
<p>The dearth of such figures suggests that, for all the progress that has been made in respecting the rights of gay people in the rich world, there is still a worry that in some careers being openly gay will not work. The wells of homophobia on which populist politicians can draw in Africa and elsewhere seem not to have dried up quite as much as people might like to believe.</p>
<p>There are large parts of the world where the rights of gay people are not, at present, a political punchbag. China is not a particularly gay-friendly place; until 1997 homosexuality was illegal, and until 2001 it was officially considered a mental illness.</p>
<p>Yet the issue has not been heavily politicised, and in cities gay life is far easier than it was. A court recently heard a case brought by activists against a clinic that offered "gay-conversion" therapy. In Hunan province a 19-year-old caused a stir when he challenged the provincial authority's decision not to allow him to register an organisation devoted to gay people's rights.</p>
<p>In India the past decade has brought considerable change. The first national magazine for gay people, Pink Pages, was launched in 2009. Gay-pride marches, if not necessarily very large ones, are a common sight in big cities. Bollywood has produced sympathetic films.</p>
<p>Yet even if it is becoming slightly easier among India's elite to be openly gay, almost no one in public life dares declare it. And the legal position for homosexuals is in flux. In July 2009 a high court ruled that the ban on "carnal intercourse against the order of nature" in the penal code violated India's constitution, a ruling which in effect decriminalised gay sex.</p>
<p>In December 2013 two Supreme Court judges overturned the ruling. They said that parliament could pass a law to legalise gay sex; at the moment, that looks unlikely. Other straws in the wind suggest that India's laws could become less gay-friendly. Adoption by gay parents is not banned (adoption rules make no reference to sexuality), but on August 6th the national cabinet reportedly decided to block it, perhaps because of pressure from Hindu nationalist groups.</p>
<p>Across South-East Asia, meanwhile, tolerance varies markedly. Religion is partly behind that: homosexuality is legal in Indonesia except for Aceh, a conservative Muslim state. In Brunei, which has begun to implement a sharia-based penal code, "sodomy" is punishable by stoning to death. Malaysia and Singapore both retain colonial-era prohibitions on sex between men, though with varying degrees of punishment: fines, imprisonment for up to 20 years and whipping in Malaysia; imprisonment for up to two years in Singapore.</p>
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<p>Though poor, conservative and the possessor of a shameful record on human rights more generally, Vietnam offers a counter-example. Hanoi, the capital, has hosted gay-pride parades since 2012. Bills to legalise same-sex marriage nearly passed this year in both Vietnam and Thailand, which has long been far more tolerant of transgender people than the West has. Singapore offers an example of another sort. Though gay men remain in a precarious legal position, the country's gay-pride event, Pink Dot, has grown in each of its six years of existence: this June it drew a record crowd of 26,000.</p>
<p>As the South-East Asian experience demonstrates, a country's laws on homosexuality do not always predict the degree of freedom granted to gay men and women. Cameroon has passed no anti-gay legislation in recent years, and has thus largely escaped the opprobrium of Western governments and campaigners. But it prosecutes the laws on its books with particular vigour: arrests have been made on the basis of text messages and clothing choices.</p>
<h3>Love comes quickly</h3>
<p>In most Western countries it was only after other social battles had been won that gay people began to be tolerated and their legal rights secured. And some Westerners have already forgotten how recently those changes came about. Less than 50 years ago gay sex, let alone marriage, was illegal over broad swathes of the now comparatively enlightened world (see map). It was only ten years ago that America's Republicans made use of votes on gay marriage to help them win elections by rousing social conservatives (some Democrats now do the same thing in the opposite direction).</p>
<p>In the end gay people in the developing world will probably win their rights as they did in the West. Civil-society organisations, enlightened political and judicial leadership, and the advance of the liberal idea that the state has no business regulating the harmless activities of adults will all play a role.</p>
<p>Most powerful, though, is likely to be people's discovery that they have perfectly decent gay friends, neighbours, even relatives. The most pernicious thing about institutionalised homophobia and legal repression is that they make this realisation so hard. Once the wall begins to crack, though, it can quickly come tumbling down.</p>
<p>Click <a href="http://www.store.eiu.com">here</a> to subscribe to The Economist</p>
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World politics: Tainting love

<ul><li>Due to lack of <keyword id="944278" type="PERSON" weightage="20" keywordseo="insurance-coverage">insurance coverage</keyword>, LGBTQIA+ community needs to have a higher rate of savings to prepare for medical emergencies or even for planning to adopt a pet. </li><li>DDB Mudra Group has taken a step in the right direction to empower its queer employees who otherwise lack basic financial rights in our country. </li></ul>With the abolition of article 377 that decriminalised homosexuality, our country has come a long way. However, LGBTQIA+ community still has to fight for basic social rights and financial planning needs. <br /><br />From hunting for a perfect apartment where they don’t get an eviction notice in the first month of moving in with their partner to dealing with social prejudices, the queer community also has to navigate through a financial ecosystem that doesn’t back them up at all. They need to have a higher rate of savings to prepare for medical emergencies or even for planning to adopt a pet. <br /><br />While several companies now offer insurance coverage for gender-reassignment surgery, DDB Mudra Group is the first agency network in India to cover same-sex couples and unmarried partners who live together under its <keyword id="35492" type="PERSON" weightage="20" keywordseo="insurance-policy">insurance policy</keyword>. <br /><br />Married hetreosexual couples in India live stress-free because they are covered with their spouses’ family-floater health policy. So with its latest move, DDB Mudra Group aims to modify the definition of ‘family.’ It is also an honest attempt at building an inclusive workplace for its employees.<br /><br />“Everyone should be able to care for those they love,” read its caption. <br /><br />        <div type="javascript" title="Custom" contenttype="Image"><cdata><![CDATA[]]></cdata></div><br />To bring about this change, the HR team at DDB Mudra Group had to stay patient and push themselves as the process took an entire year. Rita Verma, Executive Vice President &amp; Head HR, DDB Mudra Group said that it was worth the wait. <br /><br />She said, “Today, I’m very proud to say that our medical insurance covers our people’s partners - same-sex, hetro, live-in or married. This entitlement of medical benefits from only the spouse to anyone you love is monumental. To drive this change internally and with our insurance partners required unwavering commitment. The entire process took almost a year, but it was so worth it. Change doesn't happen overnight, and as a Group, we will continue to push ourselves to shed any unconscious bias in the work environment, every single day.”<br /><br />Talking about DDB’s work culture in India, Verma added, “At DDB, the “Freedom to Be” is a deeply held value. When our employees feel they have to hide or mask a key part of themselves at work because they feel unsure, unsafe, or invisible; it can take a toll on motivation, engagement, and (ultimately) employee retention and turnover rates. Over the years, we have worked towards helping each person feel free, valued and respected no matter who they are, how they choose to live and who they choose to love. And a way to create an immediate impact, is through the company benefits that employees receive for them and their loved ones.” <br /><strong><br />Lack of basic financial rights for same-sex partners in India</strong><br /><br />There are over a gazillion financial, social and legal benefits a marriage license offers to a hetreosexual couple in India, like the ability to inherit spouse's assets, nominate one's spouse as a partner-in-life in insurance schemes, share a lease legally, get medical insurance together or open a joint bank account, but gay couples can't rely on their marital status for financial protection. It is time we give them the 'right to companionship' instead -- to help them be financially secure. <br /><br />Talking about how workplaces can drive socio-economic change in our country by pushing themselves a little, Amit Kekre, National Strategy Head, DDB Mudra Group, said, “Because of same-sex relationships not being legal in most parts of India, they struggle on the issue of basic financial rights, such as partner insurance, property co-ownership, joint loan applications for instance. But that’s not just where the buck stops. They even face issues on small little things, like being able to rent or buy houses for instance. Although, the issue is not just a legal one. As a matter of fact, some states in India have begun to legalise same sex relationships. But the problem is larger -- its a socio-cultural issue, one which corporates can make a huge impact on by institutionalising policies that normalise same sex relationships.” <br /><br />Here is hoping that more agencies and brands follow DDB Mudra Group’s lead. <br />

This Indian agency is the first to update its insurance policy that includes same-sex couples and live-in partners

<p><div class="image-container float_right" style="width:400px"><div class="image"></div><p class="source"><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/josephadams/5777842715/">Flickr/JosephAdams</a></p></div>FROM the <keyword id="6359726" type="ENTERTAINMENT" weightage="60" keywordseo="Colorado">Colorado</keyword> state capitol in Denver, head south on Broadway, one of the city’s main arteries, and before long you find yourself in "Broadsterdam", a cluster of dispensaries with names like Ganja Gourmet and Evergreen Apothecary.</p>
<p>They peddle dozens of strains of pot, as well as snacks, infusions and paraphernalia, to any state resident bearing a "red card": proof of a doctor’s recommendation.</p>
<p>Landlords in the area were struggling, says William Breathes (a pseudonym), whose reviews for a local paper make him, he says, America’s first mainstream pot critic. But when Colorado began to regulate the sale of <keyword id="40905" type="PERSON" weightage="60" keywordseo="Marijuana">marijuana</keyword> for medical use in 2010, they saw an opportunity.</p>
<p>Broadsterdam of 2013, and many places like it in America and Europe, would have been unimaginable in New York in 1961, when diplomats hammered out the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs, which aimed to counter the "serious evil" of addiction. That treaty, with 184 countries signed up, underpins the prohibition policy of the past half century. Though an international debate on legalisation has barely started, experiments are already showing how the production and consumption of drugs could be regulated.</p>
<p>Change is coming because the "war on drugs" is being convincingly won by drugs, and the powerful criminal gangs who deal in them. Since 1998, when the UN held an event entitled "A drug-free world: we can do it", consumption of cannabis (marijuana) and cocaine has risen by about 50%; for opiates, it has more than trebled. And a swelling pharmacopoeia of synthetic highs is spinning heads in dizzying new ways. The UN reckons that 230m people used illegal drugs in 2010. They and their suppliers (usually the humblest ones) fill prisons in rich and poor countries alike. Drug convictions account for almost half of American prisoners in federal jails.</p>
<h3>Burned at both ends</h3>
<p>If efforts to stem demand have been futile, trying to control supply has been disastrous. The illegal-drug industry’s revenues are some $300 billion a year, according to the very roughest of guesses by the UN, and flow untaxed into criminal hands. Drug-running mafias corrupt and destroy the places where they operate. Of the world’s eight most murderous countries, seven lie on the cocaine-trafficking route from the Andes to the United States and Europe. Only war zones are more violent than Honduras. More than 7,000 of its 8m citizens are murdered each year. In the European Union, with a 500m population, the figure is under 6,000.</p>
<p>Latin American leaders are tiring of this. Trying to stop the flow of narcotics is akin to the legendary Sisyphus futilely pushing a boulder uphill, says Fernando Carrera, Guatemala’s foreign minister. In recent years his country has laboriously cleared its San Marcos region of opium crops, only to see it replanted five times. The president, Otto Pérez Molina, now wants to see global legal regulation of all drugs, from hashish to heroin, albeit with strict controls. Juan Manuel Santos, president of Colombia, favours legalisation, but says that his country cannot lead the way. Last year Felipe Calderón, the outgoing president of Mexico, declared it "impossible" to stop the drugs business and called for "market alternatives". Uruguay’s government has sent to congress a bill to legalise the sale of pot through state-backed dispensaries. Smokers would be allowed to buy up to 40g per week, with profits funding crime-prevention and anti-addiction schemes.</p>
<p>In parts of the United States, change has already come. In November voters in Colorado and <keyword id="6354998" type="COMPANY" weightage="60" keywordseo="Washington">Washington</keyword> backed proposals to legalise, tax and regulate cannabis for recreational use. State officials are now scrambling to draft the practical rules. On February 28th a task force charged with producing recommendations for the Colorado legislature will issue its report.</p>
<p>Though non-binding, this will be the first glimpse of what a fully formed regulatory regime for legal cannabis may look like. Although plenty of countries (and 15 American states) have decriminalised cannabis possession, in many cases treating it as no worse than a traffic infraction, nowhere has fully legalised its supply. Within a year the entire supply chain in Colorado and Washington, from cultivation to manufacture to retail, will be within the law. State coffers will gain tax and fee revenues and save in law-enforcement resources (maybe $60m a year in Colorado). Licensed outlets will appear on the streets.</p>
<p>Assuming, of course, that the federal government consents. Marijuana remains illegal under America’s Controlled Substances Act, the 1970 law that implemented the Single Convention in the United States and that is still the foundation of federal narcotics policy. The CSA classifies it as a "Schedule I" substance, meaning it can easily be abused and has no recognised medical value. (A federal appeals court recently rejected an attempt to have it reclassified.)</p>
<p>In December Eric Holder, the attorney-general, said that the justice department would issue a response to the state laws "relatively soon". But for the time being the department says only that it is reviewing the state initiatives, and that marijuana remains illegal under federal law. Shortly after Mr Holder’s statement, Barack Obama told a television interviewer that he would not make it a priority to prosecute pot smokers in the two states. But the federal government has never had the resources to target users, only big traffickers.</p>
<p>One clue to the future comes from the 18 states plus Washington, DC, where medical marijuana is legal. The Feds have come down hard on some growers and distributors in states that have drafted their laws poorly. In 1996 California was the first state to approve medical marijuana but lawsuits clog the courts, competing regulatory ballot measures confuse voters, and in some cities pushy dispensaries unnerve residents. In better-regulated places (like Colorado) the federal authorities have done little. A big issue will be leakage of legal marijuana from Colorado or Washington to other states. After meeting Mr Holder in January, Jay Inslee, the governor of Washington, told reporters that the state would pay particular attention to this.</p>
<p>For some, that is a futile gesture. "We’ll become the source for most of the rest of the country," says a weary Tom Gorman, of the Rocky Mountain High Intensity Drug-Trafficking Area, a federal anti-drug outfit in Denver. Last year it tracked dozens of cases of diversion of Colorado’s medical marijuana, finding it in 23 states. Legalisation will add to the flow.</p>
<p>Yet diversion also makes life more difficult for the criminal gangs of Mexico, which are reckoned to supply anything between 40% and 70% of America’s pot. Their trade reaps profits of $2 billion a year according to IMCO, a Mexico City think-tank; cocaine profits are $2.4 billion. Part of the business model is murder: of around 70,000 people over the past five years. But IMCO reckons that once Colorado and Washington’s growers get going, the Mexicans could lose nearly three-quarters of their American customers (though others question these numbers).</p>
<p>Much will depend on how the state laws take shape. The Colorado task force has already suggested letting retailers serve non-residents, possibly in limited amounts. It also wants to relax restrictions on financial services for the industry. Many dispensaries struggle to obtain even basic banking and credit.</p>
<h3>Trying to stay upright</h3>
<p>Jack Finlaw and Barbara Brohl, who chair the task-force, are also pondering the "vertical integration" rules that have shaped the state’s medical-marijuana industry. Dispensaries must grow at least 70% of the marijuana they sell. Some cultivate it in-house; most grow it in off-site warehouses. This hampers distribution and wholesale markets. Rob Corry, a pro-legalisation lawyer, terms it "absurd, like a supermarket owning apple orchards". As elsewhere, tight rules have costs. But they have also helped citizens get used to an unfamiliar trade. "We’ve shown that we can make the industry work here," says Ean Seeb of Denver Relief, a leading dispensary.</p>
<p>Public acceptance, plus a clever campaign (paid for partly by outside money), led to victory in Colorado. Washington’s medical-marijuana industry is less advanced, but opponents of legalisation there were even more widely outspent.</p>
<p>More changes are looming. As with gay marriage (see chart), something that seemed revoltingly decadent to many Americans in past years has rapidly won acceptance. Campaigners are seeking further wins, mainly in the relatively liberal states of the west and north-east. Some dare to dream of changing federal law.</p>
<p>Their foe is the mighty prohibition industry: officials and bureaucrats who have spent their professional lives combating illegal drugs. Law-enforcement officers and Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) officials have written to Mr Holder urging him to uphold federal law. Yet others counter that legalising pot will boost consumption, particularly if it can be advertised and marketed. That brings fears of health and other risks. Others counter that smoking more dope would mean people drank less alcohol, which is arguably a more destructive drug. But the effect could be the other way round. What legal pot would mean for tobacco and cocaine use is also unknown.</p>
<p>Cannabis policy is changing in Europe, too. At Santa María, a shop across the street from one of Madrid’s main hospitals, customers queue to buy fertilisers, potting earth and imported Dutch cannabis seeds. The owner, Pedro Pérez, cheerfully warns customers not to plant until late in March when the frosts have gone.</p>
<p>Spain’s approach now rivals that of the pioneering liberal Dutch. Though selling is illegal, buying is not. One result is hundreds of cannabis "social clubs", which allow members to pool their purchases. These range from small co-operatives where new members must wait six months for new cannabis to be grown before joining, to huge semi-commercial organisations, with thousands of "members" buying cannabis. One in Barcelona even made a €1.3m ($1.74m) deal with the country town of Rasquera to grow supplies on local land, better known for its almond trees. Similar experiments are under way in France, Belgium, Italy and Germany, says Tom Blickman of the Transnational Institute, a think-tank based in Amsterdam. In much of Britain, especially its big cities, the risk of prosecution for those using small quantities of soft drugs is vanishingly low.</p>
<p>But the most comprehensive policy comes from Portugal. In 1997 opinion polls rated drug use the country’s biggest social problem. Now, 12 years since the decriminalisation of personal use of small amounts (meaning less than ten days’ worth) of all drugs, it ranks 13th. All parties now support the policy of treating drug use as a health issue, not a crime. HIV rates have plummeted, too, says João Goulão, the national drugs co-ordinator.</p>
<p>But decriminalisation is not the same as legalisation. Portugal uses "dissuasion boards", made up of doctors, psychologists and other specialists. They aim to get addicts into treatment and to prevent recreational users from falling into addiction. When necessary they can impose fines and community work. By removing the "fear and stigma" of criminal punishment, says Mr Goulão, drug users are encouraged to seek the help they need.</p>
<p>Brendan Hughes, of the Lisbon-based European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction (EMCDDA), an agency of the European Union, says Portugal stands out for its "consistency and comprehensiveness". Other countries wanting to focus on health have only "tweaked" their criminal laws, he says.</p>
<p>In 2009 the Czech Republic decriminalised possession of most drugs along Portuguese lines. In December it went further, fully legalising medicinal cannabis. The plan is for imports--probably Dutch or Israeli--to be sold in pharmacies, says Jindrich Voboril, the head of the government drugs council. If that works, it will then license a number of competing companies to grow supplies locally.</p>
<h3>The elusive molecules</h3>
<p>The other big policy innovation in Europe has been to drop punitive policies in dealing with heroin and cocaine addiction, in favour of harm reduction (see box). But a much bigger worry now is the rise of legal highs. The EMCDDA reports that a new psychoactive substance is found weekly, on average. These concoctions are openly marketed as "plant food" or "research chemicals". Mephedrone and ketamine--both legal highs until recently--have become mainstream clubbing drugs in Britain, taken alongside ecstasy and cocaine. Tim Hollis of the British Association of Chief Police Officers says that the police are "flat-footed" trying to keep up. Many of the new drugs do more harm than the illegal narcotics that they are replacing.</p>
<p>The legal regime governing cocaine is more controversial. Some countries, including Portugal, Mexico and Colombia, have decriminalised the possession of small doses of the drug, referring users to treatment rather than giving them a criminal record. But the harm cocaine does to health and its addictive nature make governments queasy about legalising its sale.</p>
<p>High in the Andes, regulated cultivation for "traditional" use (coca leaves give a mild caffeine-like buzz and suppress hunger, cold and altitude sickness) has been going on for decades. In Trinidad Pampa, a tiny village in Bolivia’s mountainous Yungas region, the hillsides are divided into neat terraces, where coca saplings are planted after being cultivated in beds enriched with rice-husks and sand. The whole village is involved. Children and even toddlers help their parents.</p>
<p>The 1961 narcotics convention banned coca along with cocaine (albeit with a long transitional period). But on January 11th Bolivia became the first country to negotiate a partial opt-out from the treaty. It was readmitted with a get-out clause for coca, having resigned last year over the ban on what its president, Evo Morales, calls the "sacred leaf". A former coca-grower and union leader, he enjoys grandstanding against America (he expelled its ambassador in 2008 along with DEA officials).</p>
<p>In 2004, following protests by coca growers led by Mr Morales (then in opposition), Bolivia brought most of its 28,000 hectares of coca fields within the law. The government claims that increases in population and heavy use among miners and truckers justify the extra growing-permits. But sales figures suggest that in fact most coca goes elsewhere. Leaves must be sold in state-controlled markets, which in 2011 bought just over 18,000 tonnes from farmers. The UN estimates that potential production was about 48,000 tonnes. Most of the missing 30,000 tonnes leaked into the cocaine business, reckons César Guedes, head of the UN drugs office in La Paz.</p>
<p>This alarms Bolivia’s neighbours. Brazil believes it has the world’s second-biggest market (after America) for cocaine and the largest for crack; most of Brazil’s cocaine imports come from Bolivia. Usage of crack is up in Argentina, too.</p>
<p>Yet keeping Bolivia outside the treaty was "infinitely more dangerous" than bringing it in, says an official from a nearby country. Supply increased a little after the regime was relaxed in 2004, before levelling out in 2008 and dropping by about 12% in 2011, to beneath 2004 levels. Letting farmers get on with it has allowed Bolivia to focus scarce police resources on organised crime. In 2011 it destroyed more than 5,000 cocaine processing factories, five times more than a decade earlier (though that could also show that trafficking has increased). Coca farmers still have a difficult relationship with the authorities in some parts of the country, but the abuses that accompanied the military-led eradication efforts of the 1990s have lessened.</p>
<p>Partial reforms have their limits. Most drug crime is not cannabis-related. Moving from punishment to harm reduction may help drug users, but it leaves gangsters in control of supplies and revenues. Many countries still stick to prohibition.</p>
<p>The votes in Colorado and Washington were hardly imaginable ten years ago and make deeper change likely. They weaken the Single Convention, the illegal trade, and the prohibition industry that feeds on it. Peter Reuter, an expert at the University of Maryland, says America should "evaluate the experiment and put up with international condemnation for a couple of years." Even that counts as progress.</p>
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