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Wednesday,
February 5, 2003, Chandigarh, India  
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India’s oil interests In no-man’s-land Reinvent the Congress |
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Corruption & public expenditure
Kalpana Chawla: a tribute
Storm at the Indo-Bangla border
Many dine alone
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India’s oil interests THE common Indian has started feeling the effect of war clouds gathering over the West Asian skies as President Bush seems determined to disarm Iraq and force a change in regime there. Continuing his rhetoric as part of the psychological warfare, he has made it clear that it is only a “matter of weeks, not months” before the USA carries out its offensive against Iraq. Petrol and diesel prices have already started hardening. Stock markets across the world are jittery and have already declined sharply. How much investor wealth is lost will depend on the duration of war or the war-like situation. Every country is going to be touched by the war. The impact may vary from the minimal on China to the maximum on the USA, Germany and Japan. East Asia’s Tiger economies, which had just started coming out of a prolonged recession, might take more time to recover. The only silver lining in an otherwise gloomy horizon is that if it is a brief, quick war, oil prices might rise further and then plunge as fast as they had risen and global stock markets might rally to new heights as it had happened after the January, 1991, Gulf war. The longer it takes for war to end, the heavier would be the burden imposed on each nation. More worrying is the continuing uncertainty that would dampen economies globally. The number of countries that are “evil empires” in the US eyes is growing. If it was Afghanistan yesterday, it is Iraq today and it could be North Korea or some Islamic country tomorrow. The fight against terrorism has to be a prolonged one with Osama bin Laden still around somewhere. In this dismal scenario there are dim chances of an early global recovery, although there are positive signs of increased consumer spending in countries like Britain, Australia and Spain, besides America. Where does India stand in this tense situation? India may get bruised lightly if it is a short war. If it continues, say for three months, the country may have to shell out $ 5 billion more on oil imports. The international price of oil can shoot up to $ 40 a barrel. Since a hike in the diesel and petrol prices results in an across-the-board increase in the transportation costs, the prices of commodities needed for daily consumption as well as of industrial goods can go up. Exports are likely to slow down. Inflation has already started moving up after remaining at a reasonably low level for quite some months. India, as usual, is slow to react and slower to prepare for the crisis that has been
building up in the neighbourhood. To cope with any possible shortages, the Centre has revived a four-year-old proposal to build tankages for the storage of 15 million tonne crude stocks which can last 45 days. This will cost around Rs 4,350 crore. When the proposal was first moved by Engineers India Ltd to build startegic crude reserves for 15 days in June, 2000, the estimated cost then was Rs 1,250 crore. The proposed disinvestment of oil companies, as also of Engineers India, has further created doubts about India’s vulnerability during a crisis situation. The nation’s oil interests have to be kept in mind while privatising the two major oil companies. India has neither prepared itself well in advance for the proposed war nor taken any major initiative to avert it. |
In no-man’s-land WHEN Deputy Prime Minister L.K. Advani spoke of pushing back illegal Bangladeshi immigrants some time back, he was doing so on the theoretical plane. How far removed theory is from reality is emerging only now when an effort to send back just 213 such persons has made the border tense and almost precipitated a clash in the Cooch Behar area. This despite the fact that the immigrants are keen to go back and carry documents to prove that they are Bangladeshis. Yet, the Bangladesh Rifles
(BDR) is not willing to take them back. Just imagine how “easy” it would be to send back millions of Bangladeshis living here illegally who have even acquired fake documents proving their “Indian” citizenship. Obviously, India has a major problem at hand. In fact, one story suggests that the 213 gypsy snake charmers caught in no man’s land are a victim of a BDR ploy to push them into Indian territory. Local reports suggest that these snake charmers perform Hindu rituals and worship the snake goddess
Manasa. This practice has not gone down well with Muslim fundamentalists. The gypsies told the BSF that they had travelled to a border village in Bangladesh to hold shows. It had rained hard on January 30 and they were looking for a shelter. The BDR personnel told them about a nearby schoolhouse where they could spend the night. When they reached there they found no such building. Not only that, they found to their chagrin that the BDR was unwilling to take them back. That put the hapless persons in no man’s land at the centre of an ugly stand-off between the two neighbouring countries. This episode proves how easy it is to cross the border. That is how thousands of Bangladeshis trickle into India. The problem is a test for Indian diplomacy. It has to traverse a fine line between bearing their burden for all times to come and going to war with the
neighbour. It is regrettable that India-bashing has been made into a profession by certain politicians of the neighbouring country. Just because it is larger in size, it is projected as a big bully. Mountains are made up even when there are no molehills. The only solution to the vexed problem is to mount effective vigil at the border because once they manage to cross it, it is very difficult to weed out the migrants. The terrain is difficult but the need for securing the border is paramount. On a diplomatic level, one interesting suggestion is to quietly participate in the economic growth of the poor neighbours so that the economic motive for migration is diluted. That suggestion appears far- fetched, but is well worth considering because the cost of helping out the neighbours would be far less than the expenses involved in becoming an unwilling host to millions of uninvited guests. |
| Reinvent the Congress THE meeting between Congress President Sonia Gandhi and Samajwadi Party President Mulayam Singh Yadav at 10 Janpath on Monday should arouse the interest of those searching for the elusive “secular” strategy for arresting the march of the Sangh
Parivar. Neither side is willing to disclose the issues that came up for discussion between the leaders of a national party and one that has a strong political base in Uttar Pradesh. But the fact that the two sides, after years of undercutting each other, with a third party taking advantage of their rivalry, seem to have realised that it will take two to tango in UP. The Congress leadership has evidently accepted that it is bad politics to nurse an open-ended grudge against the Samajwadi Party because it had prevented Mrs Sonia Gandhi from heading a possible “secular” coalition after the one-vote defeat of Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee in 1999. As of today there is more at stake for the Congress than the Samajwadi Party in UP. Its strength was reduced to 23 when it suspended the MLA from Rae Bareli for anti-party activities. Now it has been reduced to 16 with seven more having walked out last week and forming a questionable separate group, duly recognised by the Speaker, with the help of the suspended colleague. It is about time the Congress realised the importance of regional parties to help redraw its long- term political strategy at the national level. There are at least four states, two in the North and two in the South — UP, Bihar, Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu — where the Congress does not have a future without evolving strategic political partnerships with the regional parties. It may have to enter into a similar arrangement with the Left Front in West Bengal. And maybe in Orissa with Mr Naveen
Patnaik. It should treat the thawing of relations with the Samajwadi Party in UP for reinventing its role at the national level. Political analysts believe that the Congress should work on what is called a reversible 75-25 formula with the regional parties. For instance, the Samajwadi Party should be given 75 per cent of the Assembly seats in UP with the remaining 25 going to the Congress and in the event of the combine winning a majority the Congress should join the coalition headed by the Samajwadi Party. In the Lok Sabha elections the ratio of seats each party would get should be reversed. If the experiment works the Congress leadership should not hesitate to enter into similar strategic alliances with regional outfits elsewhere. The Telugu Desam is with the National Democratic Alliance at the Centre because the Congress is its main rival in Andhra Pradesh. But once the Congress agrees to “give” Andhra Pradesh to Mr Chandrababu
Naidu, the latter should have no problem in giving the Congress 75 per cent seats in the Lok Sabha. The Congress will have to reinvent itself for preventing the nation from suffering the consequences of a single party (or a combination headed by it) dominance at the Centre as it did for 50 years under it. Today the BJP finds itself in the same dominant position because of the squabbling among the so-called secular forces over closing ranks for giving the country a two-party-led system of coalition government. Hopefully, the Congress will take the process of secular unity further during the proposed Opposition parties’ meeting on Sunday at 10
Janpath. |
Corruption & public expenditure Corruption and treason are mentioned as two explicit crimes which, the American Constitution says, can justify the impeachment of a US President — I don’t think affairs with interns fall in this category! So, why are we so bothered about corruption? More importantly, why should we read through a densely written 564-page treatise on corruption that is full of econometric equations, regressions and jargon we cannot even begin to understand—do you know what heteroscedasticity-consistent statistics are, or what the Lagrange Multiplier is, or does? In any case, does corruption really matter in the real sense? After all, when Rajiv Gandhi took (as alleged) Rs 64 crore from A.B. Bofors to grant them the contract for howitzers, all evidence so far suggests that this did not jack up the price of the howitzers for India—Bofors paid this out of its own commissions that would have been paid to its agents anyway. And it is true that corruption, like paying for getting medical attention at government hospitals, is a major irritant. But it doesn’t really affect the macro-economy, does it? Actually, it does, and in a very big way, and that’s why it does makes sense to wade through this terse IMF compilation for scholarly articles. Using data for a vast cross-section of countries, for instance, IMF scholars find that a one unit hike in corruption lowers GDP growth by 1.4 per cent! A one unit hike in corruption, similarly, lowers public spending on education by 0.2 per cent and raises child mortality by 2.7 deaths per 1,000 live births. From a pure economics point of view, studies show that a unit hike in corruption reduces the flow of foreign direct investment by a whopping 11 per cent, and lowers the tax-to-GDP ratio by as much as 2.7 per cent. Not surprisingly, given that government officials can make money only if money is spent, it has been found that in countries with high levels of corruption, the level of government expenditure is usually higher. Indeed, a cross-country analysis also shows that a one unit hike in corruption leads to a hike in military spending by 0.32 per cent of the GDP. Is it any surprise then that African countries tend to have very high military expenditure levels? By the way, India is very high on the Transparency International index of corrupt nations, and it has a high public expenditure, low tax-to-GDP levels, and high military expenditure! Corruption, in fact, lowers the returns very significantly for small and medium enterprises. According to an analysis by Vito Tanzi for Argentina (and this should hold good for most countries), corruption reduces the return on investments in firms by 1 to 2.5 per cent for large firms, and by between 3 to 6 per cent for small firms. What is interesting is that giving bribes to officials doesn’t necessarily lead to higher profits for bribers — very often, firms give bribes just to be allowed to do their work, for instance, to clear their imports from the Customs on time. So, firms have to spend more to give bribes, and yet find their returns are not increasing — so, the return on capital tends to fall. And if returns are lowered, this keeps people (including foreign investors) from investing (that’s how both foreign direct investment and the GDP get affected by corruption). Since we know that real growth in any economy comes from the small and medium segments, this clearly shows that corruption lowers investment levels. So, how do we tackle corruption? One manner, talked of by most policy makers, is to hike the salaries of bureaucrats, to levels that are higher than those for most industrial sector jobs. That, for instance, is the Singapore model. Doing this ensures that bureaucrats have a high social standing, and don’t really need money on the side. But while this is useful, the IMF scholars explain, with regression (what else!), that it isn’t nearly enough. Apart from the hike in the salaries of bureaucrats, what is also needed is a really tough system to check economic crimes. Only if a bureaucrat gets a high salary, and he is afraid of losing it if caught accepting a bribe, will abstain from corruption. Leite and Weidmann explain this concept well, using concrete examples. Let us say, explain the two authors, Nigeria opens up its economy to foreign trade to the level of Chile — this will increase Nigeria’s GDP by 0.74 per cent. The reason for this is simple. When countries open up to foreign trade, this does two things. One, it lowers prices since only those goods that are cheaper than locally produced goods will be imported — lower prices stimulate both consumption and investment and hence boost growth. Second, since prices can no longer be kept artificially high (by restricting industrial licensing or by restricting imports, for example), this lowers corruption as well, and that, as we’ve just said, means higher economic growth. Leite and Weidmann then go a step further. They analyse the impact if legal institutions (basically those that tackle crime, including corruption) are also strengthened. If Nigeria, they say, opens up its economy to Chile’s level and also ensures that its legal institutions are of Chile’s level, this will increase Nigeria’s GDP by a whopping 2 per cent.
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Kalpana Chawla: a tribute On January 16, Kalpana Chawla, the ever-smiling Karnal girl got into a spacesuit
and blasted off spaceward for a 16-day orbital odyssey. That was not her first space sojourn. She went spaceward in 1997 for a similar odyssey and overnight she earned a unique position for herself, the Indian woman. She had done India proud. She then described her earlier flight as a “dream journey”. She became not only the first Indian woman in space, but also the first South Asian woman in space. Her dream knew no bounds. She set it high and hoped to reach Mars. Her career was remarkable. Her courage was incredible. Her dreams were dazzling. The brave Kalpana was again selected for her second space mission by NASA as the Shuttle's flight engineer and was assigned many additional tasks of carrying out several scientific experiments on board Columbia that was on its 28th space flight. She went skyward again with six other brightest and best astronauts of the world in an effort to know the unknown and to conquer space for making the mankind better. The whole world's attention got focused spaceward. None could imagine that her dreams would be shattered. None could imagine that Kalpana and her fellow astronauts would not come back alive and disappear from sight just 16 minutes before reaching earth. We will see no more of her captivating smile. Kalpana was a brave, intelligent, assertive, confident woman with a vision and undaunted spirit soaring high. She became immortal. Her memory will continue to give our youth inspiration and hope. To some the inspiration will be pivotal. Many other Indian schoolgirls may have their life courses changed by learning of the achievements of Kalpana Chawla. She set an example to follow, in whatever walk of life. It is indeed painful for me to write about this daring daughter of Karnal in the past tense. All that I can say about her is that the history Kalpana had left behind is indeed a rare one. The break up of the shuttle Columbia with the bravest astronauts in space broke millions of hearts on earth. Kalpana was not destined to live on earth but in heaven! Our loss is immeasurable. Karnal lost its most famous icon. My heart goes out to the bereaved family. It is bereavement for all the people of Karnal. May God give all members of the family and all of us strength to bear this immense loss. Kalpana will live in our hearts forever.
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Storm at the Indo-Bangla border THE Indo-Bangladesh relations are again under stress. In the past few months, India has taken up two serious long pending issues with Bangladesh. First the use of Bangladesh territory for subversive activities by the north-east insurgents and the ISI operatives and second, the issue of illegal immigration. Though both of them are equally critical, it is the second which has proved to be serious. After a meeting with the top civil administration officials, heads of police forces of different states and senior intelligence officials on January 7 in New Delhi, the Indian government decided to crack down on the illegal Bangladeshi immigrants. Though about 15 to 20 million illegal Bangladeshis have been living in 13 states of the country and posing a serious threat to national security, Bangladesh maintains that no citizen of that country was residing illegally in India. However, unofficial sources in that country tell a different story. According to a report of the Action Against Sexual Exploitation of Children (ATSEC) presented at a seminar in Dhaka in the presence of Joint Secretary of Women and Children Affairs Ministry Ferdous Ara Begum on October 20, 2002, 10,000 to 20,000 women aged between seven and 24 are sent to India, Pakistan and the Middle East every year and used in flesh trade. Most of them are either illiterate or poorly educated. The study recommended the Bangladesh government to lift the ban on the migration of unskilled women to the Middle East, as it neither prevented their trafficking nor protected their rights. The report also highlighted that most women migrated to the Middle East or to India for jobs, but end up as sex workers. According to another report of the People's Empowerment Trust (PET) and the Jagarani Janakalyan Sangstha, some two lakh women were sent to various countries from Bangladesh during 1999. Officials of the Bangladesh National Women Lawyers' Association say, some 70,000 women and children were sent abroad in 11 years till 2001. Other bodies like the United Nations have also inferred that immoral traffic from Bangladesh does exist. When the magnitude of human trafficking is such, the number of illegal immigrants is bound to be much higher. It is feared that migration is likely to increase in the coming weeks. Every year three million new faces are being added to Bangladesh's total population size of 130 million, which is likely to be doubled by 2050. Bangladesh is the most crowded place on earth. This will undoubtedly accentuate the problem of illegal migration. The poverty-stricken Bangladeshis immigrate to India in search of better opportunities. At one time favourable regimes in the bordering states made their job easier. Sometimes they were also welcomed to get an edge in the electoral process. But it has always been difficult for India to guard its 4,100-km border with Bangladesh, which is highly porous. The decade-long illegal immigration in India's northeast is a serious threat to national security. Bangladeshis reportedly indulge in criminal activities in India. In recent times, several fringe fundamentalist groups have emerged on the Indo-Bangladesh border who maintain links with the terrorists operating in India's northeast. Over the years, Pakistan’s ISI has also gained a base in Bangladesh and indulging in subversive activities against India. The increased threat perception in this region has forced India to take some drastic steps which are resented by Bangladesh for different reasons. The immigrants from Bangladesh are an important source of income for the country because of their remittances. Over the years, a large number of Bangladeshis have illegally settled in India. Now Bangladesh is scared at the prospect of so many people returning home as they will cut down the regular inflow of remittances, create the problem of resettlement and disturb law and order. The effective handling of this problem calls for a multi-pronged strategy. At present, the government seems to be concentrating on identifying and deporting illegal immigrants. Both India and Bangladesh have increased patrolling on the border. Besides, the Bangladesh Rifles has mobilised local people living on the border to resist any push-in effort. Not many immigrants have been sent back, but the tension on the border has exacerbated. Instead of concentrating on deporting illegal immigrants, a better way of dealing with the problem would be to stem their steady inflow. The need of the hour is an effective system of border management. A tougher law to tackle immigration is also required to supplement the efforts of the security agencies. This is not to suggest that India should not try to send illegal immigrants back. Their deportation will at least prevent potential migrants not to venture. But identifying millions of immigrants is difficult and time-consuming. These Bangladeshis speak Bengali, have common features like Indians and, therefore, claim to be Indian Muslims. This strategy also has a high diplomatic cost. Human rights bodies might make things difficult for India. In any case, India should first check illegal immigration. Then a strategy to identify and deport illegal Bangladeshis would become more meaningful. The writer is Research Associate at New Delhi’s Institute for Conflict Management. |
Many dine alone YOUR friend has cancelled a dinner date at a restaurant you have been wanting to try for a long time, do you keep the reservation and dine solo or go home hungry? More and more single Japanese women are not afraid of dining alone and are asking for a table for one. An increasing number of them even prefer having a meal at a restaurant solo. It is a surprising change for a society known traditionally as a group-oriented culture. Japanese women, especially, have had an image of being dependent on men. “We recently have been having more women coming alone for dinner. It is a new phenomenon,” said Takaji Higaki, general manager at Tanto Tanto, a popular Italian restaurant in Tokyo’s downtown Shibuya district. Higaki said those solo dinners are mainly single women in their late 20s and early 30s who come after work for pasta and a glass of wine. “Eating by yourself on a Friday evening, when it’s practically a crime not to be with friends, can be fun. After working hard for a day, I need the selfish luxury of a table for one,” said 32-year-old Makin Ohara.
DPA |
Spiritual liberation (is obtained by) an initiation (based on) the uncut hair (kes). This can be either by the excellent initiation of the two-edged sword (khande pahul) or it can be the footwash variety (charanan ki jugati) —Sau Sakhi (2) 4. From W.H. McLeod, Sikhs of the Khalsa, *** The sins that are washed away by taking one thousand holy dips in the Ganga and one crore dips in the Pushkara, are easily destroyed by a mere remembrance of Sri Hari. —Garuda Puran 1.230.18 |
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THOUGH a recent study by Transparency International has estimated that Indians spend Rs 28,000 crore every year just by way of bribes (that’s a figure equal to half the defence budget), corruption is not a new phenomenon. Indeed, corruption figured in Kautilya’s Arthashastra 2000 years ago, Dante put bribers in the deepest part of hell seven centuries ago, and even Shakespeare gave corruption a big role in some of his plays.