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Sealing the law MSP vs market price |
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Flat-footed cricket Find and hone cricketing talent AS if an early exit from the Champions Trophy were not bad enough, we now have confirmation of what was increasingly apparent — there is insufficient “bench strength.” The new chairman of selectors, Dilip Vengsarkar, while announcing the 16-member squad for the South African tour, was brutally honest.
Geopolitics of nuclear energy
Of navels and a ‘volcano’
Don’t miss the revolution Russian arms stage a comeback Medical tourism deserves a boost
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Sealing the law A residential area is meant for living. Commercial activity is supposed to be conducted from specially earmarked establishments. But in India, such finer distinctions are only for the stupid, or the weak. The powerful ones can run their business or factory from wherever they like. So what if residents of the area have to put up with lifelong nuisance! We are not talking about backwaters. The problem is the most serious in the national Capital. Sarkari inspectors have the knack of overlooking such brazen violations when they are taking place, either because the perpetrators are too influential or – more often – because they like kickbacks. Once a shop or industry starts in a residential area, it is there for keeps. In Delhi, they opened by the thousands. The common citizens cried themselves hoarse but no government ever listened to them. This forced the judiciary to step in, which tried to put an end to this high-handedness by ordering the sealing of illegal constructions in residential areas. Happy ending? That is only for enviable fiction writers. In real life you have to be prepared for ugly twists. The well-organised traders hit back with greater ferocity than which they had gate-crashed into residential areas making many areas of Delhi unliveable. After many vociferous demonstrations, they held the Capital to total ransom on the first day of their three-day strike on Monday, fighting with the police and deflating bus tyres. Most roads were choked. Normal life came to a halt. Even chemists’ shops were closed. The idea was to inconvenience the public so much that it has no option but to cry for regularisation of their encroachments. They have been succeeding. The court-appointed monitoring committee is not reviving the sealing drive from November 1 as planned. That will further embolden the agitators. Not that they need to. They comprise a strong vote bank and all parties are willing to go along with them. If necessary, the matter can be pulled out of the jurisdiction of courts through outrageous amendments. If any tears are shed for the suffering residents in various localities at all, these might very well come from crocodiles, or politicians. |
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MSP vs market price THE minimum support price of wheat fixed at Rs 750 a quintal for the coming season may appear good, but is not good enough. It is far short of the prevailing market rate, which rules above Rs 1,000. Farmers may not complain as they can safely sell their stocks to private traders at higher prices. There may be those unfortunate ones with smaller holdings in small towns who may have no choice but to offload their produce only to official agencies. The better-off may even hold back their stocks as prices are expected to escalate due to lower global wheat production. The government is faced with a serious problem. Despite the Rs 100 hike in the MSP, it may not be able to buy sufficient stocks for the Central pool. Indications are it may announce a bonus of Rs 50 or so as it did last year. Still the gap between the prevailing price and the MSP is glaring. It will have to have either a depleted buffer stock or buy wheat at the market prices. The first option of having insufficient stocks will lead traders to exploit the situation and force the Centre to import wheat at higher prices. This is what had happened last year too. The second option of buying wheat locally will also significantly inflate its food subsidy bill. If farmers rejoice at high wheat prices, consumers, particularly the poor, will be hit hard and demand relief. In view of the coming elections, the government will have to spend more on wheat imports to artificially depress prices. That would annoy farmers. What the government should do is to encourage higher wheat production. This can be done by bringing in more area under wheat and by raising wheat productivity through research. To meet the rising demand for edible oils and shortage of pulses, a similar strategy will have to be adopted. |
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Flat-footed cricket AS if an early exit from the Champions Trophy were not bad enough, we now have confirmation of what was increasingly apparent — there is insufficient “bench strength.” The new chairman of selectors, Dilip Vengsarkar, while announcing the 16-member squad for the South African tour, was brutally honest. There is not much talent around, he noted, and many first class cricketers are not ready to wear the India cap. Of course, India is not necessarily alone in this. South African cricketer Barry Richards noted that this was happening everywhere. But that is small consolation when our existing corps is struggling to hit top form. Ups and downs are not new to the Indian team, and we did go to the 2003 World Cup smarting from a terrible tour to New Zealand. But the magic seems to have gone out of the Indian batting, and it is looking increasingly tired. Any good team is a mixture of experience and fresh talent, and guys like Anil Kumble, now back in the squad, should probably have never been out of it in the first place. The same can be said for V.V.S. Laxman. Poor fielding abilities have been cited for keeping these performers out of the one-day side, but if the heart goes out of the Indian batting and spin bowling, its traditional strengths, mere athleticism on the field is unlikely to make up for it. The induction of Wasim Jaffer into the one-day team is welcome, and it will be good for India if he can do well in the shorter version of the game. A well-settled top three is the key for a winning combination. But there is an urgent need for a couple of fresh “finds.” And that will be possible only with an overhaul of both our domestic cricketing structure and selection procedures. Barry Richards points to the presence of 27-odd teams here while Australia and New Zealand have six each. But then, India is a large country. What we need therefore are domestic tournaments which pit the best of talent against the best, more often, and rewards performers, not influence, or regions.
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I don’t know as I want a lawyer to tell me what I cannot do. I hire him to tell me how to do what I want to do.
— J.P. Morgan |
Geopolitics of nuclear energy
THE geopolitics of energy has become a hot issue in the debate on Asia’s rising share in the world economy. To sustain higher growth, big developing nations like China and India are confronted with finding more energy and raw materials to fuel their exports, industrial production and road transportation. The intensifying competition for energy injects a new element into geopolitics, with unpredictable consequences for the future of Asia. If China were to come out openly against a transparent, bilaterally negotiated, US-India cooperation agreement that also promotes global energy security, it would deal a blow to another Asian country’s plans for faster economic growth and a setback to improving Sino-Indian relations. India’s quest for more energy through greater reliance on nuclear power was designed to overcome its yawning energy deficit which cannot be adequately met from other sources. The India-US deal, as both governments have underscored, is about civilian nuclear energy, not a military or strategic programme directed against a third country. The agreement is now going through the process of US legislative approval, and if adopted in identical form by the two houses of Congress the bill will go to the President for signature and become the law. The US will then submit the agreement for international endorsement by the Vienna-based 45-nation Nuclear Suppliers Group or the NSG. This multilateral body, which monitors the guidelines for the export of nuclear materials and technologies, will be asked to amend the existing international procedures and allow permitted nuclear commerce with India. Separately, India and the International Atomic Energy Agency will negotiate India-specific nuclear safeguards as required under the deal with the US. The Director-General of the IAEA has said that making advanced nuclear technology to India will contribute to increased nuclear safety and security. Endorsement of the deal by the NSG is a critical next step before the India-US nuclear agreement can go into effect. At present, four of the five recognised nuclear-weapon states and permanent members of the UN Security Council — the US, the UK, France and Russia — and a majority of the NSG, including Canada and South Africa, are in favour of the US-India agreement. Of the countries having reservations on the deal, the most prominent is China, even as certain European countries are at not yet fully on board with the mainstream European Union position. China has not directly attacked the US-India agreement or formally stated its position in the NSG, but Chinese official media has expressed opposition to the deal on grounds of its alleged impact on the existing non-proliferation regime. This line of argument has now become completely untenable after the recent North Korean nuclear test, just as the new Japanese Prime Minister was on an official visit to Beijing and Seoul. A more plausible reason for Chinese opposition to the US-India deal is probably China’s concern about some imaginary Indo-American military-strategic alliance to counter Chinese influence in Asia. Alternatively, China may be looking for a pretext to justify Beijing’s reported moves to build eight or 10 nuclear reactors for its long-time ally Pakistan and an offer to supply a nuclear reactor to Bangladesh in return for that country’s natural gas, via Myanmar, to China instead of the most logical next-door Indian market. This looks like a strategic move to keep India boxed in the South Asian straightjacket while China itself moves outward to become a dominant power in the Asia-Pacific region. Under this scenario, a new balance of power will emerge in Asia, commensurate with China’s eventual status as the second super power, co-equal to the United States. India could not and would not accept any strategic configuration or constellation of forces in Asia that results in the domination of a single power, no matter how big or benign. That would destabilise the region and destroy any prospect of Asia becoming the new engine of global economic growth and prosperity in the new century. How should India respond to the new situation without hurting its growing bilateral ties with China while benefiting from the opportunity of greater energy security flowing from the India-US nuclear agreement? The answer lies in India, the United States and other like-minded nations to pro-actively engage the NSG and explain the civilian purpose of the nuclear agreement. A timely and greater diplomatic effort now would reduce the chances of disappointment later. China and India also need to talk frankly about this matter and find creative solutions to an emerging strain in their relations. India has clearly shown by its actions as a nuclear weapon state that it is a responsible member of the international community, is committed to non-proliferation and has not exported nuclear materials and technology to other countries to develop nuclear weapons, missiles or any other weapons of mass destruction. The energy problems of India and China are not dissimilar: energy demand is outstripping domestic supply, huge investments are required to develop alternative energy resources and environmental risks from polluting coal can no longer be ignored. India’s dependence on imported oil and gas is even higher than China’s and unlike China, India has no territorially contiguous foreign sources of energy with overland access through pipelines. India needs more energy to maintain its growth rate. If the two countries can work together on oil and gas deals in strife-torn West Asia, then why can China also not take a more positive view of the US-India nuclear deal? It would be good politics and sound
economics
The writer is a Geneva-based strategic investment consultant and a former Ambassador of India to the UN.
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Of navels and a ‘volcano’
Navel-gazing has traditionally figured in some religious rituals but that part of the human anatomy (especially of the feminine variety) has come into a great deal of prominence in modern times also. In fact, a clergyman in a rural area of Italy has been so troubled by the women parishioners wearing low-cut jeans and high-cut tops that he has felt some counter measures are necessary to meet the problem. He cannot afford the expense of keeping guards, as the larger churches can, to warn people against skimpy dresses. So he has contented himself with placing a sign outside the church: “God knew what your navel looked like before you were born, so there is no need to expose it in the church”. In glaring contrast with the limited resources of that church is the story of a media tycoon whose mind-boggling opulence is fully matched by his insatiable desire ever to be in the headlines. In his holiday-home villa there are already a Greek style amphitheatre, a garden with 1000 cacti and as many as five swimming pools. He has now constructed there an unbelievable volcano on the top of an artificial hill which consists of a collation of lights, optical fibre and smoke, and at night it seems that the cone is erupting and lava is pouring out of it. Along with that there is provision for machine-made earth tremors being produced to complete the impression of a volcanic eruption. Indeed, the arrangements is so realistic that the neighbours were highly alarmed and called up the fire brigade for help! Altogether, the entire project is outrageously outlandish and some critics consider it suggests mental instability of the man behind it. There is also a plan for the Swiss Alps, which is modest in comparison with the ‘volcano’ but is still very awe-inspiring. It envisages — hold your breath — a mountain top being extended by about 120 metres. The project is the brain-wave of the Tourism Department and is intended to avoid the mountain being over-shadowed by another one close to it. The extension will be in the form of a glass pyramid and will take the full height to some 4000 metres. The pyramid will include viewing platform, a restaurant, and also a few rooms where the visitors can stay for the night. TAILPIECE: A woman started a chicken farm and after some time invited a friend in the ministry dealing with the subject, to look at how her business was running. He went round and liked what he saw but made one observation. “Jane”, he said, “I see you have 100 hens and 100 roosters but the normal practice is to have 10 hens to one rooster and not an equal number of them”. Jane drew herself up in anger and said, “John, you are talking rubbish. You are just expressing a man’s point of view”. |
Don’t miss the revolution Great powers cease to be great for many reasons. In addition to the causes frequently debated – economics, culture, disease, geography – there is an overarching trend. Over the last 500 years, the fate of nations has been increasingly tied to their success, or lack thereof, in harnessing revolutions in military affairs. These revolutions happen during periods of momentous change when new technologies combine with new doctrines and new forms of organisation to transform not only the face of battle but also the nature of the state and of the international system. Because we are in the middle of the fourth major revolution since 1500 – the Information Revolution – it is important to grasp the nature and consequences of these upheavals. Until the 15th century, the mightiest military forces belonged to the Mongols. But strong as they were in the days of bows and arrows, the Mongols could not keep pace with the spread of gunpowder weapons and the rise of centralized governments that used them. They fell behind, and Europe surged to the forefront. In 1450, Europeans controlled just 15 percent of the world’s surface. By 1914 – following not only the Gunpowder Revolution but also the first Industrial Revolution –their domain had swollen to an astounding 84 percent of the globe. Not all European states were equal, of course. The big winners of the Gunpowder Revolution (from roughly 1500 to 1700) were the northern European states, from Britain to Russia. But the Romanovs, Habsburgs and Ottomans did not survive the cataclysmic conflict of the first Industrial Age – World War I – and their empires collapsed, even as Germany and Japan were catapulting themselves into the upper ranks of nation-states largely through their growing military expertise. World War II – the major conflict of the second Industrial Revolution, defined by the internal combustion engine, the airplane and the radio – further shook up the international balance of power. The conventional assumption is that the outcome of World War II was virtually foreordained. But by 1942, Germany, Italy and Japan controlled most of the natural resources of East Asia and Europe. This would have allowed them to match the Allies if they had been more adept at marshaling their military and economic power. The Soviet Union and the United States – the biggest beneficiaries of the second Industrial Revolution – did a better job not just in managing wartime production. They also grabbed the lead in the use of such key weapons as the tank (the Soviet Union) and the long-range bomber and aircraft carrier (the United States). There are many reasons once-dominant powers such as France and Britain had become second-tier ones by 1945, but central among them was their failure to exploit advances in weaponry during the inter-war years. The Information Revolution of the late 20th century upset the seemingly stable postwar order. The Soviet Union had no Silicon Valley and could not compete with the United States in incorporating the computer into its economic or military spheres. U.S. prowess at waging war in the Information Age was showcased in the 1991 Persian Gulf War, which, along with the collapse of the Soviet empire, left the United States standing alone as a global hegemon. But if history teaches any lesson, it is that no military lead is ever safe. Challengers will always find a way to copy or buy the best weapons systems or develop tactics that will offset their effect. Our most formidable enemies, al-Qaida and its ilk, have done both. They are using relatively simple information technology – the Internet, satellite television, cell phones – to organize a global insurgency. By using hijacked airliners and bombs detonated by garage-door openers, they are finding cracks in our defenses. We have an insurmountable advantage in high-end military hardware. No other state is building nuclear-powered aircraft carriers, stealth fighters or unmanned aerial vehicles. In fact, we spend more on the development and testing of new weapons – $71 billion this year – than any other country spends on its entire defense. But all that spending produces weapons systems that aren’t much good for pacifying Baghdad or Kandahar. Technology isn’t irrelevant to the global war on terrorism. We can use powerful surveillance systems to break up terrorist plots. And “smart bombs” can be invaluable for dealing with the perpetrators. But our enemies can stymie multibillion-dollar spy platforms by using couriers instead of satellite phones, which helps explain why Osama bin Laden remains on the loose. New revolutions in military affairs, possibly centered on biotechnology and cyber-war, promise to give smaller states or sub-state actors more destructive capacity. Imagine the havoc that could be caused by a genetically engineered contagion combining the worst properties of, say, smallpox and the Ebola virus. Or imagine how much damage our enemies could inflict by using computer viruses – or directed-energy weapons – to immobilize critical bits of our civilian or military computer networks. In theory, it’s possible to crash stock markets, send airliners plowing into the ground and blind our most advanced weapons systems. The most threatening weapon of all harks back to an earlier military revolution. Nuclear bombs haven’t been used since 1945, but given their proliferation around the world, it will be only a matter of time. Our scientific sophistication gives us a reasonable chance of shooting down a nuclear-tipped missile, but a nuclear suitcase smuggled into the United States would be much harder to detect. To stop such stealthy threats, we need to get much better at human intelligence, counterinsurgency, information operations and related disciplines. We need more speakers of Arabic and Pashto, more experts who understand tribal relations in Iraq’s Anbar province and Pakistan’s Northwest Frontier province, more diplomats who can win over audiences on Al-Jazeera. And we need to set them loose without having to worry about a burdensome bureaucracy micromanaging their every move. Boot is a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.
By arrangement with
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Russian arms stage a comeback Russia has overtaken the United States to become the developing world’s arms supplier striking a record number of arms deals last year.
According to a report prepared for the US Congress, Russia captured almost one quarter of the arms market in the developing world in 2005, winning new business worth $7 billion, up from $5.4 billion in 2004. The report covered government-to-government arms deals but excluded agreements by commercial dealers. France, the US and the UK took second, third, and fourth place respectively, with deals to supply the developing world with arms worth a collective $15.28 billion in 2005. The report showed Russian sales included missile defence systems to Iran, military aircraft to China, heavy battle tanks to India, and multiple consignments of the ubiquitous Kalashnikov assault rifle. But although Russia is now the biggest weapons supplier to the developing world, the report also showed that the biggest arms dealer on the planet remains the United States. It made arms deals last year worth a total of $12.8 billion and was involved in almost one third of all transactions. The report by Richard Grimmett, an expert at the Congressional Research Service, said Russia’s state arms industry had staged a remarkable comeback since the Soviet collapse. It put Russia’s success down to the fact that it has abandoned its post-Soviet policy of only accepting hard currency. Moscow has been helped by the fact that the developing world is in the grip of an arms race. Government-to-government deals totalled $30.2 billion last year, the highest figure in real terms for the past eight years. Entitled Conventional Arms Transfers to Developing Nations, the report named China, India and Iran as the Kremlin’s best customers and predicted Russia would dominate an “intensely competitive” market for the next decade. Russia has yet to open up a commanding lead though; France was rated as the second biggest arms dealer in the developing world with new business last year worth $6.3bn while, with sales of $6.18 billion, America was pushed into third place. The report showed that Britain signed arms deals with developing countries worth $2.8bn in 2005, placing it fourth. The report said India struck more arms deals last year than any other country, with agreements worth $5.4 billion. With $3.4 billion, Saudi Arabia came second, while China was ranked third with purchases worth $2.8 billion. It is now open to more flexible financing packages that extend to debt forgiveness, and offers better after-sales service. Russia’s prices also often undercut Western rivals and it has a large range of military equipment. Its arms deals are not uncontroversial. Last year Moscow signed a $700 million deal to supply Iran with surface-to-air missile defence systems which American military planners fear could prove a serious obstacle if Washington ever decided to bomb Tehran over its nuclear plans. The Russian media has compared the arms-sales race to the Cold War era. “Only this time,” said the daily Nezavisimaya Gazeta, “it’s not a political confrontation between two powers with different ideologies; it’s economic competition and a battle for international influence. By arrangement with The Independent
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Medical tourism deserves a boost With internationally recognised healthcare professionals, holistic medicinal services and low cost of treatment, India has the potential to attract over one million “health tourists” (equal to Thailand) every year, according to the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII). The country offers a unique mix of modern medical treatment at world class hospitals along with indigenous systems such as yoga, ayurveda and meditation techniques. This, along with the presence of top medical experts and the cost advantage, can help earn $5 billion every year. While a heart surgery costs $30,000 in the US, it costs $6,000 in India. Similarly, a bone marrow transplant costs $26,000 here compared to $250,000 in the US. A study by CII-McKinsey estimates that the country could earn Rs 5,000-10,000 crore by 2012. Ambika Soni, the minister of Tourism, stated recently that the capacity of medical tourism to earn foreign exchange is greater than even the IT sector. Citing the example of Thailand, CII stresses that India should aggressively publicise its medical services in association with the tourism authorities. ‘Baby Noor’ from Pakistan, who came by the Indo-Pak bus service and got a red-carpet treatment at a hospital in Bangalore, is one of the examples. Several Indian state governments have realized the potential of this ‘industry’ and have been actively promoting it. Visitors, especially from the West and the Middle East find Indian hospitals a very affordable and viable option. However, the country would have to improve its healthcare infrastructure, connectivity between major cities and streamline visa procedures for medical visitors. Accreditation of Indian hospitals is also essential for attracting such tourists. The Government plans to start overseas marketing of India as a medical tourism destination. According to senior Government officials, the formalities for marketing medical facilities to a global audience have already started. Apart from receiving patients from those parts of the globe that have poor medical facilities, India has been getting some medical visitors from the West for a variety of reasons, including the long waiting period there for treatment in Government hospitals in some countries. Our National Health Policy recognizes the treatment of international patients as an export, which allows private hospitals treating such patients to enjoy benefits such as lower import duties, increase in the rate of depreciation (from 25 per cent to 40 per cent) for life-saving medical equipment, and several other tax sops. There are plenty of challenges that need to be addressed for India to become the world’s preferred healthcare destination. Prominent among them is the need for proper accreditation and the putting in place of requisite standardisation systems. A tripartite synergy between hospitals, tour operators and the government would need to be created. There might be need for a separate regulatory authority. Standardisation of a price band for graded hospitals and a quality assurance model should be taken up immediately to take medical tourism ahead. What’s more, the beneficiary of such growth will be the country’s desperately overburdened public health system, say industry associations such as CII and FICCI. Stark contrasts are no surprise in urban India, and in the healthcare sector, the difference between what is available – world-class techniques and service, at a price – and what the common man is missing in terms of even basic facilities in the healthcare system is sizable. Private sector healthcare centers are gleaming “islands of excellence, all too often surrounded by seas of medical neglect and overcrowding in the public health sector. Look at the possibility of the public hospitals being technologically upgraded to world-class standards with the additional source of income from medical visitors. As of now the country is considered as a new kid on the block as compared to other Asian countries like Thailand, Singapore, Korea, Malaysia, Philippines etc. Cities like Chandigarh should explore the possibility of setting up a “medi-city” on the lines of an IT park. When the mix is just right, with support from the government in the form of incentives and tax breaks, international healthcare accreditation standards in place, breakthroughs in insurance coverage for overseas patients, and savvy promotion of India as a tourism-plus-medical tech destination, the numbers will fall into place.
The writer is a senior eye specialist and planner, India Conventions Promotion Bureau, union ministry of tourism. |
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