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Bullish on India
Stalled in House |
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Regulating SIM cards
Polarisation in US politics
An ode to newspaper hawker
Britain’s brutal colonial past
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Bullish on India
IF India’s stock markets have not fallen much despite slowing growth and high inflation, it is because foreign institutional investors (FIIs) still keep buying shares. According to official figures, FIIs invested Rs 11,000 crore in the stock markets in August, the highest in six months. The first two months of the current year saw a good inflow of foreign capital. Then the Union budget with its retrograde proposals empowered the tax authorities to look into any cross-border deal if they suspected tax evasion. While the Supreme Court judgement in the Vodafone case had enthused foreign investors, the then Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee’s initiatives scared them. Dollars headed for the exit door, hastening the fall of the rupee. After Mukherjee’s elevation to Rashtrapati Bhavan, the Prime Minister took charge of Finance and set up a committee under Parthasarathi Shome to look into the tax avoidance rules. The committee has suggested that the implementation of the general anti-avoidance rules (GAAR) should be deferred by three years. This should put at rest FII apprehensions on tax issues. The return of P. Chidambaram to the Finance Ministry has also gone down well with foreign investors. Both Dr Manmohan Singh and Mr Chidambaram are seen as investor-friendly and their being at the helm has raised hopes about the acceleration of reforms. However, the continuing political standoff over coal allocations may dash some of these hopes. As interest rates in the developed world are close to zero and Europe and the US are still not out of the woods, there are not many safe avenues left for investment. China’s export-driven growth has been badly affected by global slowdown. India’s growth is largely led by domestic consumption. Foreign investors are buying shares of pharmaceutical firms and companies catering to local consumption. If the government fails to live up to FIIs’ expectations about fiscal consolidation and India is downgraded to junk status, hot money would flee as fast as it has come.
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Stalled in House
One of the showcase ministries of the UPA government, the Human Resource Development, run by Kapil Sibal — who takes pride in being in a hurry — has had only a mixed bag of success, with many flagship initiatives receiving flak and others stuck in the “system”, Parliament to be more precise. Some of the prominent Bills that are either stalled in the House or the minister has not been able to present these to Parliament owing to the current stalemate include one on tribunals for academic disputes and another on setting up a regulator for higher education, above the UGC and the AICTE. An electronic repository of academic awards for quick verification and autonomy for the CBSE are also awaited. All of these are urgently required to address the burgeoning higher education set-up, which in size is third in the world. As for its worth, a study (Universitas 21) that took output, resources, policy environment and collaborations into account has ranked India 48th out of 48 countries it assessed. The reasons are all around to see. There are thousands of vacancies in technical institutes going abegging. A degree from most of these places does not lead to a job commensurate with the qualification. Some of the best humanities colleges have syllabi and courses that today have few takers as they have lost relevance for the industry. Other than the premier institutes, very few have faculties that may inspire confidence. On the other hand, there are brilliant students in rural areas who don’t have access to colleges for reasons of distance or money. India is a country that takes pride in its human resource — both size and quality. The latter, however, meets global standards only when students go abroad for higher education, as we have very few world-class institutes. The country lags way behind in pure sciences and industrial research and development — essentially, high-worth knowledge. Unless the political leadership understands the importance of higher education, it would be hard to keep up in today’s knowledge-driven world. Meanwhile, we continue to lose our top students to foreign universities and industry. |
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Regulating SIM cards
THE government’s move to stop telecom service providers from providing mobile connectivity to foreign tourists visiting India for more than three months is not a well-considered step. Tourists form a bulk of foreigners who visit India and in this day and age, everyone expects to have mobile connectivity. The new guidelines of the Department of Telecom (DoT), which have the stamp of the Home Ministry on them, say that phone connections should not be issued to foreigners even if the validity of their visa is beyond three months. It is difficult to understand the logic behind the order. Surely, if someone has a valid visa that person should be entitled to get a phone connection in case he wants to have one. While there have been instances of misuse of phones after the departure of some foreigners, it is a bit too draconian to penalise all by making their legitimate telecommunication demands difficult to fulfil. We also have to remember that many foreigners come from nations that do not have any regulation of SIM cards and, as such, view the scrutinty that they have to endure negatively. Misuse of cellphones is prevalent in certain situations, be it in the areas suffering from Naxal violence or in other disturbed areas. Terrorists have also misused cellphones, and recently there was the case of using SMS messages and other means to spread misinformation that led to many people from the North-East leave the cities they were living in and head home. After the misinformation campaign was exposed, they have started boarding trains to get back to where their livelihood and studies take them. The government should certainly keep close watch on disruptive elements who misuse technology and hunt out any person who engages in acts of terrorism. At the same time, it needs to be careful in not impinging on the freedom of innocent citizens for foreigners. “Atithi devo bhava” should not be just a slogan; we should extend hospitality to our guests, and take pains to ensure that their stay in India is as pleasant and hassle-free as possible. |
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When your work speaks for itself, don't interrupt. — Henry J. Kaiser
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Polarisation in US politics
Political
polarisation in the United States is at an all-time high and partisan divisions in the country now cut across a range of issues affecting the American people. As the country faces a host of socio-economic challenges that deserve critical attention of US lawmakers and unstinting cooperation between the White House and the Capitol Hill, the prevailing political atmosphere in Washington DC does not seem able to ensure any of that. The Republicans and the Democrats hold entirely different ideological views and stand on opposite poles concerning some of the most pressing issues affecting the country. Since the financial meltdown starting in 2008, America is having the slowest recovery since the Great Depression of the 1930s and sharp differences persist between the Democratic Party and the Republican Party on how to bring the country’s economy back on track. The Bush-era tax cuts will expire by the end of this year, bringing forth what is being called the “fiscal cliff”. Unavoidable spending cuts will require a reform of America’s fiscal management. With the unemployment rate in the country remaining constant at over 8 per cent, there is an overall sense of pessimism over the disharmony and non-cooperation between the two major political parties and between the government and the Congress. A general feeling seems to pervade that political elites in Washington are geared rather more towards political one-upmanship than towards the task of problems which demand a consensual and cooperative approach. A gridlock over critical socio-economic issues like healthcare, jobs, social safety nets, and the imminent debt-ceiling continues to trump any chance of a compromise, yielding little to look forward to in the days to come. Regardless of whether Romney wins the Presidency or Obama gets a second term, fiscal problems and issues of debt management will dominate in the coming four years. A lot will depend on the power relationship between the White House and the Congress and, at this juncture, it is impossible to predict the political complexion of the next Congress as 2012 is also a year of Congressional elections. There is only one certainty: Politics in America is polarised and more partisan than ever before, and that is not a situation for good policy-making. Compromises between the two parties are important for arriving at deals vital for the governance of the country and moderates in both parties have had a big role to play there. But more Republicans are now calling themselves conservatives, and more Democrats, though relatively fewer in comparison with the Republicans, are calling themselves liberals, and the ‘middle’ in American politics is getting slowly poisoned. The decreasing space for moderates in both parties is giving fodder to more disagreements and diminishing consensus in policy-making. According to opinion polls by respected organisations like the Pew Research Center and Gallup, polarisation along ideological lines has reached an all-time high in the last decade during the presidencies of George W. Bush and Barack Obama. Apart from appealing to undecided voters, the on-going electoral campaign is even more about the candidates keeping their traditional support bases secured and getting their stories right to appeal to their core voters in Red or Blue states. In fact, a Gallup poll early this year showed how far the two main political parties have diverged in their views as to how America should be governed. An average of 80 per cent of Democrats approved Obama’s job performance while only 12 per cent of Republicans approved of the same. The rise of the Tea Party Movement, which wants a radical curtailing of the federal government’s role and desires reduced taxes, has pushed the Republican Party further to the right, increasing the influence of the conservatives within the party and sidelining those with moderate views. The traditional bases within both the Republican and Democratic parties have been critical of their respective parties not living up to their core ideals, thus increasing the incentives for members in adopting extreme positions. Polarisation is also being accentuated by aggressive lobby groups, Political Action Committees, campaign fund-raisers and a media that has its own biases. Huge sums of money are being spent on campaign ads, many of which have been declared highly negative and distasteful. Moreover, uncompromising stands on basic beliefs and values across different levels of state and national politics create a logjam over contentious issues. Steep differences continue to freeze policy-making regarding the scope and role of the federal government, management of the economy, social safety nets and healthcare, etc. The rising income inequality in the United States has given birth to a potent debate over the issue of equal opportunities in the country. The “rich vs the rest” debate has given rise to even more partisan bickering over tax cuts. There are basic divergences between the Republicans and the Democrats as to how far the American government should go to care for the needy who are not able to fend for themselves. The Republican Party sees such a role for the government as going against the American ideals of individualism and self-reliance. While both parties have become more homogeneous and are increasingly being taken over by their respective Conservative and Liberal cores, an increasing number of voters are calling themselves Independents. But this does not tell the whole story as many of the so-called Independent voters are actually found leaning towards one or the other of the two main parties, thus accentuating the polarising process. Further, polls taken by Gallup and NBC News and the Wall Street Journal show a minimal number of undecided voters, and both the Obama and Romney campaigns seem to be of the view that they have more to gain by cementing their traditional hardcore voter bases. Many American analysts are saying that the increasing polarisation and the resultant gridlock in Washington DC are at the centre of America’s dysfunctional politics. Thomas E. Mann, senior fellow in governance studies at the Brookings Institution, and Norman J. Ornstein, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, recently opined that “…. this dysfunction is worse than we have ever seen …., and it is not limited to Capitol Hill. The partisan and ideological polarisation from which we now suffer comes at a time when critical problems cry out for a resolution, making for a particularly toxic mix.”
The writer is an Associate Fellow (US studies) at the Observer Research
Foundation, New Delhi.
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An ode to newspaper hawker
As
my white Ambassador whizzes past the narrow and crowded mall of Solan, my eyes can’t help getting riveted to an old newspaper shop where some hawkers are busy placing pullouts and inserts in the papers while others are seen packing the bundles of the copies which are to be delivered to the customers. Immediately, the nostalgia of my childhood days sets in when I would help my father run a newspaper agency in the small town of Kharar. The new-born bureaucrat in me cannot help contemplating about the welfare of my former friends with whom I have spent the best days of childhood. The newspaper hawkers are the most important human resource for the burgeoning newspaper industry of India. The prowess of the fourth estate would be toothless if ever this manpower decides to stop peddling. It makes one morose to think of days without a copy of a paper being delivered. Imagine how tasteless the morning tea would be without a daily dose of politics, films, entertainment, horoscope, etc, which our hawkers bring to our doorsteps. The strong foundations of Indian democracy owe much to the newspaper hawkers, who have made the information spread in every nook and corner of India. Whatever strategies our newspapers may employ to promote “e-papers”, the broadsheet has its own charm as the suspense lies between the pages therein. Some of the newspaper hawkers become a part and parcel of our lives. I still meet many prominent people, who would remember my late grandfather, Rup Lal Jain, who would make them wake up each morning while delivering the prized copy of The Tribune. On the days of the matriculation and university results, hundreds of boys and girls would eagerly wait for him to bring the copy of the special edition of The Tribune, which he would deliver while sharing their joys and sorrows as the case may be. The work of the newspaper hawker is, no doubt, the toughest vocation. Their work begins when birds are yet to chirp and the dawn has not set in. Whether it is summer, winter or the monsoon, the newspaper publication continues and so is the work of a newspaper hawker. As if the nature has some old scores to settle, even in heavy rain, the work of a newspaper hawker cannot stop. There are no gazetted holidays for them. Taking leave for them is not easy even if they are ill. As soon as the sun rises, any unsold copy would mean a loss. Such is the challenge of the job. Yet, no one realises the importance of the newspaper hawkers in our lives. The management of any newspaper hardly has any welfare policy for them. The governments rightly have schemes for landless farmers, pavement dwellers or other marginalised sections, but none for the newspaper hawkers. The greatest callousness is shown by “we”, the newspaper readers. Even if the newspaper supply is a few minutes late heavens would fall and we forget all our sophistication and mannerism while berating the poor hawker, who obviously has no high connections. He swallows all just for those few paisa that he gets for delivering the paper. We readers have the purse to give hefty tips to the elegantly dressed waiters of five-star hotels, but have we spared a penny for someone without whom our mornings would be incomplete? Or maybe, a little “thank you” souvenir on festivals? Sometimes, voices of social justice, dignity and equality seem to get lost in the din of our political and social landscape. It seems the platform of the media that has been the sentinel of the high ideals has willy-nilly forgotten the cause of the very arms which make its existence
possible.
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Britain’s brutal colonial past Remember all that national soul-searching and self-flagellation over Empire and all the horrors committed in its name? No, me neither. But this is the fictional Britain that has been conjured up by our Foreign Secretary, William Hague. “We have to get out of this post-colonial guilt,” he declared in Evening Standard. “Be confident in ourselves.”
Here is an echo of Gordon Brown’s assertion in 2005 that “the days of Britain having to apologise for its colonial history are over”. It was a straw man argument, because there has never been an apology for British imperialism. The British Empire has been virtually erased by collective amnesia; like an embarrassing, sordid secret that should never be mentioned in polite company. A foreign country such as Turkey can rightly be berated for failing to come to terms with an atrocity like the Armenian genocide, but the darkest moments of our own history are intentionally forgotten. India a cash cow Consider India, the “jewel in the crown” of the British Empire. At the beginning of the 18th-century – before it was conquered – its share of the world economy was well over a fifth, nearly as large as all of Europe put together. By the time the country won independence, it had dropped to less than 4 per cent. India was treated as a cash cow; the revenues that flowed into London’s Treasury were described by the Earl of Chatham as “the redemption of a nation… a kind of gift from heaven”. By the end of the 19th-century, India was the world’s biggest buyer of British exports and provided highly paid work for British civil servants – all at India’s expense. As India became increasingly crucial to British prosperity, millions of Indians died completely unnecessary deaths. Over a decade ago, Mike Davis wrote a seminal book entitled Late Victorian Holocausts: the title is far from hyperbole. As a result of laissez-faire economic policies ruthlessly enforced by Britain, between 12 and 29 million Indians died of starvation needlessly. Millions of tons of wheat were exported to Britain even as famine raged. When relief camps were set up, the inhabitants were barely fed and nearly all died.
Famine victims’ fault The last large-scale famine to take place in India was under British rule; none has taken place since. Up to four million Bengalis starved to death in 1943 after Winston Churchill diverted food to well-fed British soldiers and countries such as Greece. “The starvation of anyway underfed Bengalis is less serious” than that of “sturdy Greeks”, he argued. “I hate Indians. They are a beastly people with a beastly religion,” he said to his Secretary of State for India, Leopold Amery. In any case, the famine was their fault for “breeding like rabbits”. Churchill had form: back in 1919, he declared himself “strongly in favour of using poisoned gas against uncivilised tribes”, arguing that it would “spread a lively terror”. We normally associate “concentration camps” with the Nazis, but the term entered into general circulation because of the British. During the Boer War at the turn of the 20th-century, up to a sixth of the Boer population – mainly women and children – perished after the British imprisoned them in camps. Their homes, farms and crops were burned, their sheep and cattle butchered in a scorched earth policy.
Mau Mau uprising Elsewhere in Africa, British rule could be just as cruel. Two decades before helping to send hundreds of thousands of British Tommies to their deaths, Lord Kitchener led a brutal campaign to seize the Sudan. As historian Piers Brendon put it his The Decline and Fall of the British Empire, “British punitive expeditions in the Sudan” were extremely brutal, “at times amounting almost to genocide”. These sorts of atrocities are not all part of some distant past. In July, three survivors of the 1950s Mau Mau uprising against British rule in Kenya demanded reparations from the Government for alleged torture. In the brutal crackdown of the insurgency, thousands of members of the Kikuyu tribe were driven into detention camps, described by Harvard historian Caroline Elkins as “Britain’s gulag”. Estimates of deaths vary widely; historian David Anderson puts the death toll at 20,000, but Elkins believes up to 100,000 could have died. Despite courageous opposition from Labour’s Barbara Castle and – oddly enough – Tory right-winger Enoch Powell, British crimes were hidden from the population back home in favour of a daily diet of Mau Mau atrocities.
European excesses None of this is to single out Britain: a conspiracy of silence remains over European colonialism as a whole. Most have never heard of Belgium’s King Leopold II, but he should be regarded as a tyrant up there with Hitler and Stalin. Under his tyrannical rule over the modern-day Democratic Republic of Congo, about 10 million people – or half the population – died horrible deaths. Millions were forced to collect sap from rubber plants; those that missed their quotas had their hands chopped off. It is difficult to know where to start with other European horrors, like the forgotten German genocide against the Herero and Nama people in South-West Africa in the early 1900s, or the post-war French slaughter of hundreds of thousands in Indochina and Algeria. European moral superiority is often asserted, despite the fact that the greatest atrocities in human history – colonialism, two catastrophic wars, Nazism, the Holocaust – were all committed by Europeans, and within living memory. But it is all too tempting to airbrush the colonial era from history. As Hague says, “it’s a long time ago, the retreat from empire.”
Yet it is all too easy for an aggressor to say “let bygones be bygones”. Hundreds of millions still suffer from the consequences of colonialism. As the then-South Africa President Thabo Mbeki put it in 2005, colonialism left a “common and terrible legacy of countries deeply divided on the basis of race, colour, culture and religion”. Across Africa, the Middle East and the Indian sub-continent, conflicts and divisions created or exacerbated by colonialism remain.
Learn from the past We could learn from our colonial past, too. The siren voices of armchair bombers, loudly demanding intervention in foreign lands, would be far less appealing if we were aware of past horrors. In the 19th century, Britain was bogged down in an unwinnable war in Afghanistan; and so history repeats itself. Both William Hague and Gordon Brown would have us believe that we have tortured ourselves enough over Empire, and that it is time to move on. But a national debate over this largely ignored – and crucial – part of our history has not even begun. It is desperately overdue.
The Independent
Before it was conquered, India’s share of the world economy was well over 20 per cent, nearly as large as all of Europe put together. By the time the country won independence, it had dropped to less than 4 per cent.
Historical vignettes Great Famine of 1876–1878 The Madras famine, or more accurately, the Great Famine of 1876–78 was a result of successive crop failures in various parts of India, especially Madras, Mysore, Hyderabad, Bombay, as well as parts of Central Provinces, United Provinces, and Punjab. Mishandling by the British Administrators like Sir Richard Temple, who had, ironically handled an earlier famine well, acerbated the woes of lakhs of Indians and led to lakhs of deaths.
Boer Wars The Boers (farmers) of the Transvaal, South Africa, revolted against the British annexation of their territory in 1877. This led to the first Boer War of 1899-1902. A painting showing civilians being rounded during the Boer War Concentration camps Long been used to intern local populations, concentration camps are associated with large-scale causalities of those interned in them. In 1896, over one lakh Cubans died in the concentration camps set up by General Valeriano Weyler, a Spaniard, when he crushed a rebellion there. In 1899, the United States authorities set up concentration camps to stifle revolt in the Philippines. During the Second Boer War, the British set up concentration camps where the Boer civilians, especially the wives and children of farmers whose houses had been burnt were detained. Some black people were also interned. Apathy and inefficiency led to the death of an estimated 28,000 Boer women and children and at least 20,000 black people. The most notorious are the Nazi concentration camps, like Auschwitz , set up with the express purpose of killing their inmates. The number of people who died in these camps is disputed, but an estimated 58 lakh Jews and 50 lakh people of other races were killed by the Nazis.
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The second Boer War broke out on October 11, 1899. The British won the war, but with high number of casualties, and an outrage at their policy of scorched earth and for using concentration camps to imprison Boer women and children, as well as a number of black people. Mahatama Gandhi, who was a practising lawyer in South Africa at that time, served in the Red Cross under the command of British forces during this war.