More than 63 years since the first World Leprosy Day turned into celebrated on January 30, 1954, the combat against the disorder in India is stymied by way of regressive legal guidelines. An affected person is still refused a ticket via a railway professional, and using his or her personal car too may be out of the question.

Bizarrely, archaic legal guidelines in India maintain to deal with sufferers with leprosy as untouchables. This despite scientific evidence that it could spread simplest from ‘close and repeated contact with nostril and mouth droplets from a person with untreated leprosy’ and that an affected person becomes non-contagious after just a week of remedy.

The disease makes grounds for annulment of marriage and divorce below the Hindu Marriage Act, 1955; the Dissolution of Muslim Marriage Act, 1939; the Indian Divorce Act, 1869; the unique Marriage Act, 1954; and the Hindu Adoption and renovation Act, 1956.

“people suffering from leprosy are not authorised to tour in public shipping with the equal freedom of others. section 56 of the Railways Act, 1989 and segment eight(four) of the Motor motors Act, 1988 are resorted to, so as to deny people affected by leprosy the right to tour in railways or the proper to gain a using licence, as relevant,” a document through the law fee of India says.

primary rights along with the ones to contest for, and maintain, civic posts continue to be violated underneath state Municipal and Panchayati Raj Acts. In a number of those laws, leprosy patients are put within the equal basket as the ones “of unsound mind”.

As an instance, the Orissa Municipal Act, 1950, says, “No individual will be qualified for election as a Councillor of a Municipality if such person… has been adjudged through an able court docket to be of unsound thoughts or is leprosy or a tuberculosis patient.”

Tarun Das, Trustee, Sasakawa India Leprosy foundation, stated “plenty extra motion” become wanted on the ground to cope with discrimination. “Many people still don’t document the disorder early for the worry of stigma and are available very overdue for remedy resulting in extra deformity,”.

The Sasakawa basis has been working within the location of social uplift of leprosy patients with talent improvement and livelihood introduction. In April 2015, the law commission of India recommended modification of discriminatory legal guidelines in a report — getting rid of Discrimination against folks suffering from Leprosy.

The US economy lost momentum in the final three months of 2016, closing out a year in which growth turned in the weakest performance in five years.

The gross domestic product grew at an annual rate of just 1.9 percent in the October-December period, a slowdown from 3.5 percent growth in the third quarter, the Commerce Department reported Friday. GDP, the broadest measure of economic health, was held back by a jump in the trade deficit.

For 2016, the economy grew 1.6 percent. It was the worst showing since 2011 and down from 2.6 percent growth in 2015.

President Donald Trump has set a goal of doubling growth through an ambitious stimulus program featuring tax cuts, deregulation and higher infrastructure spending.

Private economists believe sustained annual growth rates of 4 percent will be a high hurdle to achieving given underlying trends such as slow growth in the labour market and weak productivity. However, many analysts have been boosting their forecasts believing that Trump will succeed in getting at least a portion of his program approved by a Republican-led Congress.

For the fourth quarter, the biggest factor contributing to the slowdown was a widening in the trade deficit. Exports, which had been temporarily bolstered by a surge in sales of soybeans to Latin America, retreated in the fourth quarter. Meanwhile, imports surged.

Trade subtracted 1.7 percentage point from growth in the fourth quarter after adding 0.9 percentage point to growth in the third quarter. A higher trade deficit subtracts from economic growth because it means more production is being supplied from abroad.

Consumer spending, which accounts for 70 percent of economic growth, slowed to still-solid growth of 2.5 percent in the fourth quarter from a 3 percent gain in the third quarter. But business investment spending accelerated in the fourth quarter, rising at a 2.4 percent rate, the best showing in more than a year. That’s a hopeful sign that a prolonged slowdown in investment spending, reflecting in part big cuts by energy companies, is coming to an end.

The cutbacks in business investment along with efforts by companies to reduce an overhang of unwanted inventories were major reasons growth slowed in 2016.

Economists are forecasting a better performance in 2017, with many raising their forecasts to incorporate the potential impact of Trump’s stimulus program. They believe that the prolonged reduction in stockpiles has run its course and business spending on new plants and equipment will begin to rebound.

Economists at the International Monetary Fund last week boosted their outlook for US GDP to 2.3 percent this year and 2.5 percent in 2018, saying the increase reflected expectations that Trump’s economic program of tax cuts, regulatory relief and higher infrastructure had boosted growth prospects.

Some private economists are even more optimistic. Stuart Hoffman, chief economist at PNC, said he had pushed his outlook up to the growth of 2.4 percent in 2017 and 2.7 percent in 2018 based on a belief that the Trump’s administration’s economic program could begin adding to growth in the second half of next year.

Sung Won Sohn, an economics professor at California State’s Martin Smith School of Business, said there is a lot of uncertainty at the moment about Trump’s program since the new administration has yet to put forward its plan for Congress to consider.

“At the moment, we don’t know the size, the scale and the timing of the Trump program,” Sohn said. “But it is very possible that we will get a significant boost to economic growth in the second half of next year if Trump is successful getting his program through Congress.”

Sohn predicted growth rates could jump to 3.5 to 4 percent. GDP growth has averaged a lacklustre 2.1 percent in the 7½ years since the recession ended, a point that Trump repeatedly brought up during the campaign.