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Warning from Lahore Strike unwarranted |
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Wages of criminalisation
Please-all Budget
A mine of courage
Fear in the Beijing air Farm waivers will harm development Gross Domestic Wellbeing
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Warning from Lahore Terrorists have once again demonstrated their capacity to strike at will anywhere, anytime in Pakistan. On Tuesday they killed 32 people when suicide-bombers targeted the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) building and a house in a plush locality having the residences of PPP co-chairman Asif Ali Zardari, PML (N) leader Nawaz Sharif and many senior army officers in Lahore. Reports say that a US-trained special investigation unit was there at the FIA complex where those suspected of their involvement in last week’s suicide attack at Lahore’s Naval War College were being interrogated. At least 600 people have died in terrorism-related incidents in Pakistan this year alone. The problem that began in November 2006 appears to be getting worse with every passing day. Today it poses a serious threat to stability and progress in Pakistan. Terrorist outfits like Al-Qaida and the Taliban, which had grown deeper roots particularly in Pakistan’s tribal areas bordering Afghanistan, seem to be desperate. The February 18 elections have proved that the masses have no sympathy for these destructive elements. Most of those sympathising with the extremist forces have been rejected by the electorate. Even tribal people have started treating extremists as enemies of peace. That is why an anti-Al-Qaida meeting of tribal elders in Darra Adam Khel on March 2 was attacked by suicide-bombers, leading to the death of 40 persons. Whatever gains the terrorist outfits made owing to the blunders committed by the Pakistan Army have, perhaps, been eliminated because of the belief among the people that only an elected government can provide solutions to their problems. This is, therefore, the time to strengthen the hands of the forces of democracy. People in Pakistan are sick of President Pervez Musharraf’s rule. They consider the former Army Chief’s ill thought-out policies as being mainly responsible for the terrorist menace. There is, perhaps, a clear message for the new coalition government going to be formed by Mr Zardari and Mr Nawaz Sharif: their anti-terrorism policy should be different from that of the previous regime. There should be no compromise with the forces of destruction as evidenced by the “peace” accords in Waziristan. At the same time, nothing should be done to enable terrorists to exploit people’s sympathy.
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Strike unwarranted The
strike by some 15,000 employees of the Airport Authority of India cannot be justified in any way. The sudden disruption of air services and the resultant inconvenience to the travelling public could have been, perhaps, avoided had the government been more firm and forthright in dealing with the airport employees. The striking ground staff, who include baggage handlers and cleaners at 129 state-run airports, have no legal ground to agitate. They seem to have realised this and thus chosen to call their protest “a non-cooperation movement”. The Supreme Court orders against such strikes are very clear. Besides, a 1984 law empowers the Bureau of Civil Aviation Security to arrest anyone disrupting services like fire, water and safety at the airports. The authorities have threatened to use the Essential Services Maintenance Act and also made alternative arrangements like the deployment of Air Force personnel, especially in Delhi and Mumbai, but flights elsewhere are bound to be affected. The protest is over the possible loss of jobs due to the proposed closure of the existing airports at Hyderabad and Bangalore after the new airports, built by private companies, become operational later this month. A standing committee of Parliament headed by CPM leader Sitaram Yechury has also opposed the move to close down the “government-owned airports built with the taxpayer’s money”. The striking staff and the parliamentary committee forget one basic principle of governance, that is, once a contract is signed, it cannot be renegotiated unless the parties concerned want it. The terms and conditions cannot be changed after private parties have spent crores of rupees on the construction of airports. The new airports are being developed as a matter of policy, and policy decisions are not the domain of employees. Any giving in to the pressure of the strikers may jeopardise the work of upgrading Indian airports to global standards in keeping with public interest. There are genuine problems of access to the new airports and some resent the levy of a user development fee of Rs 1,000 at Bangalore. But such issues can be resolved across the table. |
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Wages of criminalisation People’s
representatives are supposed to be models of probity. But the factual position is that there are numerous – and inglorious – exceptions to this rule. There are as many as 1,300 cases pending against sitting MPs and MLAs in various courts. The CBI happens to be investigating 65 such cases. Invariably, the accused have the habit of defending the indefensible, and may protest that several of these cases have been registered against them only out of political vendetta; and that they are not the villains of the piece. But such an argument cannot be sustained as a large number of these cases are of a serious nature. The fact of the matter is that several criminals with a record have graced the benches in our legislatures in the past and continue to do so even now. That is an affront to decency and values in public life, and also to representatives with a clean record. Pappu Yadav and Mohammad Shahabuddin can hardly be seen as ideal poster boys for any House. This situation is the result of criminalisation of politics. Initially, gangsters used to provide muscle support to leaders. Gradually, political parties started giving tickets to these “bahubalis”. Once they had tasted blood, there was no going back. No wonder, the Lok Sabha and other Houses have repeatedly witnessed shameful incidents, such as the people’s representatives defying the Chair, coming to blows and using bad language. Nearly every party happens to have some such worthies. They have almost hijacked the agenda and now indulge mostly in disruptive activities. Our stand all along has been that there should not be even one criminal in Parliament or the state legislatures. Unfortunately, there are more than 40. And yet, we are quibbling about whether a sitting MP or MLA, if convicted in a criminal case and sentenced to more than two years in jail, should be disqualified right away or be allowed to continue until his appeal is disposed of. The government’s response before the Supreme Court on this issue is remarkable. It says that in an era of coalitions and razor-thin majorities, unseating a member or two may result in political instability. That begs the basic question: should those facing criminal charges be given tickets at all? Political parties must build a consensus on this issue and apply the mandatory correctives right away.
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To be poor and independent is very nearly an impossibility. — William Cobbett
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Please-all Budget
AFTER the dust has settled down, and the market has crashed again and again, it may be said that Budget-2008 was a very unusual one. It emphasised one aspect of Indian agriculture — indebtedness of farmers. In a way, the Finance Minister is right. It is a big problem, and agricultural slowdown is indeed very worrisome. How can GDP growth at 8.7 per cent be sustained if agriculture continues to grow at 2.6 per cent? Actually, the bigger problem is rural development and the two Indias that are coexisting side by side. Many small farmers are heavily indebted to moneylenders, and whatever they earn is grabbed by the loan sharks. Such farmers’ loans have not been waived. Around two-thirds of the loans taken by small farmers are from moneylenders. These farmers are mostly without any education and subsist from year to year. They send their children to work as farm labour, weavers and carpenters to supplement family income. Rural India is full of child labour which is out of school. Raising agricultural production is indeed critical for India at this juncture because world prices of foodgrains are rising. Wheat prices have increased by 88 per cent since April 2007 and rice by 15 per cent, internationally. If India has to import big amounts of food, the domestic price of foodgrains will go up and get closer to international prices. That is why self-sufficiency in food has been emphasised in the Budget. But the main problems that cause low productivity and create a need for imports are the lack of proper irrigation and other inputs like good seeds, technology, fertilizers, storage space as well as proper marketing channels. These need to be revamped. Clearly, loan waivers are not enough. Many items in the health sector have been addressed to in the Budget but no matter what is done to this sector (there has been a rise of 15 per cent in health expenditure), nothing seems to trickle down. The primary health care in the villages is more or less absent, and the hospitals in the towns are overcrowded and inadequate. It is amazing how some villages close to metro cities like Kolkata are without any health care facilities, and they do not have proper roads connecting them to highways. Local medicines are being used to treat serious illnesses like TB. The tax holiday to set up hospitals in tier-I and tier-II towns is a good idea. But will it work — everyone is looking for profits after all. For private enterprise, starting health care facilities for the rural poor may not be attractive at all. There are so many other problems in this vast country which have not been addressed and, perhaps, cannot at all be addressed in the Union Budget. Education, however, needs to be upgraded even though it is a state subject. And even when allocation has been raised by 20 per cent, it is still less than 6 per cent of the GDP. But including more children in midday meal schemes from upper primary classes is important because it may ensure school attendance. Similarly, the National Employment Generation Scheme being extended to all 596 districts is going to help at least some people. As for industry, there are many problems that have not been addressed to in the Budget — the spread of global recession, slack demand and high cost of infrastructure and finance. It is important to raise the competitiveness of Indian exports, specially textiles. The main problem is that of high interest rates which is preventing industry to undertake innovative cost-reducing investments. The size of the fiscal deficit is also important. In the current year, it has been pegged at 3.1 per cent and revenue deficit at 1.4 per cent. Next year, it would be reduced slightly to 2.5 per cent and 1 per cent respectively. It is well known that as the government continues to borrow from the market, less funds are available to the private sector. Availability of more market funds would lead to a softer interest rate regime. Unfortunately, there are few signs of interest rates softening in the future. The hardening of the rupee against the dollar is a problem for exporters and is also due to high interest rates that attract short-term foreign institutional investment inflows. The rupee has appreciated 14 per cent in one year and this has affected the growth of exports. For resuscitating industrial growth, it would be important to lower interest rates. And to meet its burgeoning expenditure, the government should rely more on bigger revenue generation rather than on market borrowing. After all, the tax-GDP ratio has risen to 12.5 per cent in 2007-08. In the service sector, Indian IT sector is soon going to face acute competition in the US from local American firms and also from Eastern Europe. It is likely that the IT sector will start facing heavy pressure to retrench people, upgrade its products and trim costs. Nothing much has been done for the IT sector in the Budget. Similarly, the Finance Minister has relied on income tax relief and excise duty reduction to revive the consumer demand in all sectors that are languishing. The consumer durables industry, for example, is slowing down due to slack demand. Only two-wheelers have been singled out for excise duty reduction. There are, however, many points touched by the Finance Minister that are noteworthy like the emphasis on women and minorities. A corpus of Rs 500 crore has been granted for women self-help groups and giving attention to the problems faced by the minority communities, the SC/STs and the OBCs. These are signs of more inclusive growth. On the whole, it seems that many controversial items have been left out deliberately like a reduction in the corporate tax and opening up the insurance sector further to foreign equity, or opening up the retail sector or more privatisation measures in the mining and infrastructure sectors. Instead, the impression is that it is a people-friendly Budget with emphasis on the downtrodden — the “aam admi”. Perhaps, it is not too late to fight on the other fronts — the looming crisis in agriculture, industrial slowdown, problems in the service sector and rising inflation. But the government has only one more year to
go!
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A mine of courage
From birth in a non-descript village to international acclaim, Kinkari Devi made it actually happen. She was a born fighter. Be it abject poverty, being a lesser mortal, powerful mining lobby of the area and insensitive local leadership, against all these odds her battle started not very long after birth in 1940 at Ghaton, a remote Sirmaur (HP) village. It continued till her death recently. During 80s when unscientific quarrying of limestone was at peak in Sangrah area near Renukaji in Sirmaur, Kinkari rose like a phoenix from the rubbles and raised her voice against blatant mining. When ladies in the vicinity could hardly think of breaking out of the four walls of household she jumped into the pitched battlefield against “rape” of the nature. Attempts were made to gag her through various means, but Kinkari was not to relent. Bereft of any chance to get education, Kinkari was married off at 14. Her son was barely three, when the husband passed away. But all the miseries made her even stronger. She resorted to a legal battle against mining mafia of the area. She undertook fast for 19 days in Shimla to attract the attention of the powers that be, to the plight of the hapless people of the area because of unscientific quarrying. Consequently a committee to inspect the mines was set up and rules framed thereof. This was no mean achievement for an illiterate lady. All this brought Kinkari to the centrestage and the recognition came from outside the country also. In 1995, she was invited to attend World Women Empowerment Day celebrations in Beijing in presence of world figures like Hillary Clinton who honoured Kinkari by asking her to light the inaugural lamp. Elsewhere also, she was called to address conclaves of women and environmentalists. Mafia was continuously after her blood but she remained undeterred in her task. And her success was befittingly rewarded by some NGOs and public sector undertakings. Among the awards bestowed upon her are Vinoba Bhawe Award, Shri Ram Memorial Trust Puraskar, Himachal Gyan-Vigyan Samiti prize, Himotkarsha and Akhil Bhartiya Sahitya Parished awards - to name a few. Nearly two decades ago, I met this frail lady courtesy a friend at Sangrah. She made it amply clear that the threats were not going to make her succumb. She said when blasts were triggered, she felt deeply that not the rocks but her body was being ripped apart into pieces. “Why have you started opposing mafia”? “Why should I not, when reckless mining and felling of the trees have dried up the natural water channels of my area? Why should I remain mum when the land of my area is turning barren because of the dust caused by quarrying. What will we eat and how our cattle head will survive?” she retorted. A few days before her death, Kinkari told a visitor in the hospital she was admitted to, that situation in Sirmaur had turned from bad to worse due to mining. She would not sit idle and after recuperating, she would start her struggle with new gusto. She had even talked of grooming her grand daughter to carry on her fight against mining. But this was not to be.
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Fear in the Beijing air BEIJING – Matt Reed was 1,500 meters into the last segment of the triathlon when he found himself gasping for oxygen. His legs were still pounding away at the pavement, his body pumped up after cruising through the swimming and cycling contests, but his lungs were shutting down. The 32-year-old American triathlete blames air pollution for triggering his asthma attack during the September track meet. If he returns to Beijing for the Olympics, he says he will wear a mask except while actually competing. And he’ll try to avoid showing up until the second week of the games when the triathlon is held, even though that would mean missing the Aug. 8 opening ceremonies. An increasing number of Olympians are threatening to skip part or all of the Olympics because they believe the air is unsafe. Belgian tennis champion Justine Henin said she will probably skip Beijing entirely because of fears the air would aggravate her asthma. Champion long-distance runner Haile Gebreselassie broke something of an unofficial taboo on complaining about the air when he announced this week that he would not run the marathon in Beijing, opting instead for the 10,000-meter run, which is easier on the lungs. Many teams have set up offshore training camps in South Korea or Japan, murmuring polite but shallow excuses to their Chinese hosts that they are avoiding the pre-Olympics media hype or trying to save money. “There is no other reason, but to stay out of the pollution. It’s definitely to avoid the air,” said Reed, who if he qualifies will be training with the other U.S. triathletes on Korea’s Cheju island. “This air (in Beijing) is just so terrible for your body.” The British Olympic Association commissioned scientists to develop a high-tech breathing mask for its athletes to wear while competing. U.S. Olympic officials say their athletes will not wear masks in competition but might at other times during their stay in Beijing. For the Chinese, for whom saving face is crucial, it would be a nightmare to have athletes parade in front of television cameras wearing masks, or a raft of no-shows at the opening ceremony. The country claimed to have invested more than $16 billion in cleaning up Beijing’s air in advance of the Olympics. The Chinese pride themselves on mastering nature; in this case, they have literally tried to move heaven and earth. Working under the auspices of the futuristic-sounding Bureau of Weather Modification, scientists have been practicing techniques to induce rain showers before the games that would wash away pollutants. Beijing’s planners have created almost overnight a forest twice the size of New York’s Central Park on a 1,750-acre site just north of the Olympic village in order to raise oxygen levels. Nearly a dozen factories are in the process of closing or relocating outside of Beijing, including a massive steelworks with 120,000 employees. Factories hundreds of miles away in Inner Mongolia, Shanxi, Hebei and Shandong provinces will suspend operations during the Olympic period. About 1.5 million cars – half of those in the city – will be banned from the Beijing streets during the same period. Beijing recently improved emission standards for automobiles and opened new subway lines. Zhang Lijun, deputy director of China’s State Environmental Protection Agency, told reporters at a news conference on Tuesday in Beijing that China had would keep a commitment to improve air quality it made in 2001 when it submitted its Olympics bid. “After we fully implement all of the Olympic measures, it will be no problem for the air quality to meet acceptable standards. We can deliver on our commitment,” said Zhang. Beijing occupies an unfortunate location in an inland basin that is frequently swept by sandstorms from the Gobi desert. Mountains on three sides of the city trap inside the emissions of a booming capital of 17 million people. The average amount of airborne particulate matter is six times the standard recommended by the World Health Organization. (By way of comparison, Los Angeles’ particulate matter rating is about twice the WHO standard.) Jeff Ruffolo, a public relations consultant to the Beijing Olympics, says the concerns about air quality are similar to what he heard in the run-up to the 1984 Summer Games in Los Angeles .”At the end it was fine, and it will be in Beijing too,” he said. “Everybody should take a proverbial deep breath and relax.” The Beijing Olympic organizing committee announced last month that major pollutants – particulate matter, carbon monoxide, supher dioxide and nitrogen dioxide – in the city’s air had dropped 13.8 percent since Beijing won the Olympic bid. But one American expert, Steven Q. Andrews, recently produced a study that said many of the statistical gains were achieved by moving air quality monitors to less polluted areas of Beijing. Many athletes are also skeptical of the claim “We race all around the world, but I’ve never noticed pollution so badly as in Beijing. Sometimes we’d go for a bike ride before the race, then you’d get back and blow your nose and it’s all black,” said Reed, the triathlete who suffered an asthma attack last year in Beijing. Jarrod Shoemaker, a 25-year-old triathlete from Sudbury, Mass., said that after racing in Beijing he noticed “I was so out of breath that I couldn’t carry on a conversation, and if I tried to laugh, I’d be doubled up with pain.” He intends to wear a face mask most of his time in Beijing, even if he risks offending the Chinese. “I know it’s probably not the best statement to make, but I have to protect my lungs and body.” Jos Hermens, a Dutch sports agent who represents Gebreselassie, says marathon runners who compete in hot, polluted environments can suffer permanent damage to their health. “You have to decide how much you want to risk for a particular event. Will you put it all at stake for an Olympic medal?” By arrangement with
LA Times-Washington Post
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Farm waivers will harm development The
Indian government has announced a loan waiver in the budget for small and marginal farmers to the extent of Rs 60,000 crore – a heavy sum. Added to this, the economy is burdened with the policy of providing subsidies to please the voters, mostly on items used for agricultural production, thus benefiting the farming community, and to some extent on non- infrastructural activities, at the cost of tax payers and development works. India is a country with a large chunk of the village population predominantly consisting of farmers. The farming community contributes a good amount to the state exchequer by way of land revenue paid by them. The business and salaried classes in urban cities also pay large sums by way of income and sales taxes. The government also resorts to borrowings from other countries for various projects and developmental schemes. Still feeling short of funds, the government is turning to big private companies and financial houses to undertake projects like overhead bridges and laying of roads etc. on BOT basis, which in turn earns huge sums by levying heavy toll taxes from the citizens with the approval of the government. Thus the country is not in a position to match the income from revenue and other taxes and borrowings etc., to the funds needed for infrastructural development of the country. Roads are in poor shape. The school and hospital buildings are in shabby condition, are ill equipped, without proper teaching, medical and para-medical staff. It’s a country where quacks are also practicing, and most of the diagnostic centres and medical shops are being run by untrained and unskilled/semiskilled persons with no check, of any sort, on them. All this goes to show that there are many maladies which need immediate redressal and government attention at the centre and in the states. Leaving these aside, the government has come forth with a palatable ‘sop opera’ for the farmers by way of the loan waiver. It is the last budget of the present government and it can well be thought that they have gone all out and beyond the means of the Economy, which is already burdened with loans and interest on it and the subsidies, to appease the farming community, and thus can truly be termed as a vote-catching gimmick. The government has announced that it will implement it within the next few months, thus leaving the state exchequer poorer to the extent Rs 60,000 crore. The loan waiver policy of the government will also set the ball rolling for chain reactions, which to some extent, have already started. The other sections of society will be coming forth and start agitations for loan waivers. To cite a few cases, educational loans by students, loan taken by small scale businessmen, and loans taken for house-building by SCs, BCs and OBCs may come under pressure for this kind of favour. Secondly, the farming and other communities will be encouraged to take more loans from financial institutions and the government in future, with the intention not to repay it, thinking that, sooner or later, it will be waived off by some benevolent government at the opportune time. Thirdly, the subsequent ruling parties would worry about losing vote banks, may be of farming, business communities and other poor sections, if they do not resort to such acts of perspective benevolence. The would be beneficiaries may even try to blackmail the political parties to do these favours in future in lieu of their votes, which can cut at the very roots of democracy. The hefty sum of Rs 60,000 crore could have been used to implement government policies to encourage the farming community to adopt small scale income projects and produce more in the national interest. Teaching new methods of small scale farming, introducing third crop in the year, intensive teaching programmes for illiterate farmers, providing good quality seeds at reasonable prices, actual on site help and demonstration, better educational facilities and infra-structure in villages and rural areas would have gone a long way in improving the lot of such poor people. Last but not least, this huge amount is not the personal property of the government that it can spend it the way it likes. This money has been collected by way of taxes from the urban areas also and thus belongs to the public at large in the country, and must be spent equally for all. The amount needs to be spent for general development projects rather than showering personal favours as a vote catching device.
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Gross Domestic Wellbeing The
news media and the US government are fixated on the fact that the U.S. economy may be headed into a recession – defined as two or more successive quarters of declining gross domestic product. The situation is actually much worse. By some measures of economic performance, the United States has been in a recession since 1975 – a recession in quality of life, or well-being. How can this be? One first needs to understand what GDP measures to see why it is not an appropriate gauge of our national well-being. GDP measures the total market value of all goods and services produced in a country in a given period. But it includes only those goods and services traded for money. It also adds everything together, without discerning desirable, well-being-enhancing economic activity from undesirable, well-being-reducing activity. An oil spill, for example, increases GDP because someone has to clean it up, but it obviously detracts from well-being. More crime, more sickness, more war, more pollution, more fires, storms and pestilence are all potentially positives for the GDP because they can spur an increase in economic activity. GDP also ignores activity that may enhance well-being but is outside the market. The unpaid work of parents caring for their children at home doesn’t show up in GDP, but if they decide to work outside the home and pay for child care, GDP suddenly increases. And even though $1 in income means a lot more to the poor than to the rich, GDP takes no account of income distribution. In short, GDP was never intended to be a measure of citizens’ welfare – and it functions poorly as such. Yet it is used as a surrogate appraisal of national well-being in far too many circumstances. The shortcomings of GDP are well known and several researchers have proposed alternatives that address them. Although these alternatives – which, like GDP, are measured in monetary terms – are not perfect and need more research and refinement, they are much better approximations to a measure of true national well-being. The formula for calculating General Progress Indicator (GPI) created by a think tank, for instance, starts with personal consumption expenditures, a major component of GDP, but makes several crucial adjustments. First, it accounts for income distribution. It then adds positive contributions that GDP ignores, such as the value of household and volunteer work. Finally, it subtracts things that are well-being-reducing, such as the loss of leisure time and the costs of crime, commuting and pollution. There’s already been some movement in this direction around the world. Bhutan, for example, recently made “gross national happiness” its explicit policy goal. Canada is developing an Index of Well-being, and the Australian Treasury considers increasing “real well-being,” rather than mere GDP, its primary goal. We should tax “bads” (carbon emissions, depletion of natural resources) rather than “goods” (labor, savings, investment). We should recognize the negative effects of growing income disparities and take steps to address them. International trade also will have to be reformed so that environmental protection, labor rights and democratic self-determination are not subjugated to the blind pursuit of increased GDP. By arrangement with
LA Times-Washington Post
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