 |
|
Setback to growth Runaway bridegrooms |
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Hospital horror
Loan-waiver scheme
Scotch and small talk
Japan’s concrete ceiling World hunger threat is rising Delhi Durbar
|
Setback to growth The
IIP (index for industrial production) data for January confirms that India is slowing down faster than expected. The 11.6 per cent industrial growth, achieved in January 2007, is sharply down to 5.3 per cent this January with the capital goods sector registering a dramatic 19 per cent decline on a month-to-month basis. The claims of the Prime Minister and the Finance Minister of a 9 per cent or “close to 9 per cent” growth this fiscal may well turn out to be a pie in the sky. Stock market traders seem better informed about the real state of the economy than the country’s top leadership. Blame it on the US recession, the appreciating rupee, the rising prices of oil, domestic policy paralysis or infrastructural bottlenecks, India’s dream of clicking a double-digit growth rate will remain just that. Growth has been hurt by flawed policies. The RBI persistently raised interest rates, which hit housing and consumer durables, apart from raising the capital cost to industry. The obvious aim was to control inflation, which rose more due to increases in the global prices of food items, fuel and metals than due to any increase in money supply. Once again, inflation is on the rise, and that may deter the RBI from cutting interest rates. The Finance Minister has been telling the government banks to slash rates on loans of less than Rs 20 lakh but somehow shies away from giving the same advice to the RBI. Unless the RBI lowers the cost of borrowing, banks may not cut rates. As the rupee strengthened, thereby denting exports, the government tried to discourage capital inflows and scared away foreign institutional investors. The huge pile of foreign exchange reserves has not been put to any productive use. The budget has diverted resources from infrastructure building to buying votes with handouts. To tackle the US slowdown, the Feberal Reserve reacted promptly with sharp rate cuts to boost American consumption and confidence. Here one does not expect the RBI to get that bold and take unscheduled corrective measures. The leadership is in a denial mode and refuses to see the emerging crisis.
|
|
Runaway bridegrooms The
Bill passed by the Punjab Government on Wednesday ordaining that every marriage solemnised in the state must be registered — irrespective of religion, caste or creed — can help lighten the burden of hardship faced by women in the state due to never-ending matrimonial disputes. There are cases in which when women complained against their husbands or accused them of desertion, the men simply denied that they were married. Then there were numerous instances of bigamy and polygamy also. But the most worrisome was the condition of those girls who happened to marry unreliable, and often untraceable, non-resident Indians. It was found in several cases that they were already married. Many lives were ruined through such frauds. The situation can be salvaged to a great extent by making it mandatory for every marriage to be registered. Then its existence will be a matter of official record and it will be very difficult to take anyone for a ride. The Bill has been passed on the directions of the Supreme Court which was exercised over many such cases flooding the court. It is in the fitness of things that all religions have been covered under the new provision and there is no scope of finding loopholes. One hopes that the Chief Registrar of Marriages and the official resources necessary will be put in place without delay to ensure smooth functioning. At the same time, Punjab has removed another lacuna. So far, there was no provision for the registration of a marriage under the Anand Marriage Act, despite the fact that it had been on the statute books since 1909. As such, the Sikhs had to get their marriages registered either under the Hindu Marriage Act or the Special Marriage Act. Now, it will be possible to register marriages solemnised under this Act also. Strangely, Pakistan had passed a draft of the Anand Marriage Act and allowed Sikhs to register marriages under it in January itself. Punjab is now having to follow the lead given by Pakistan.
|
|
Hospital horror The
story of two premature babies being burnt to death in incubators in separate incidents in Delhi and Ahmedabad, are a shocking reminder of the appalling safety standards in government hospitals. While general hygiene, protection against hospital-induced infections, competence of the medical staff, and availability of the right facilities come first to mind when thinking about short-comings in hospitals, many are lagging behind when it comes to issues like electrical and fire safety. Reports suggest that these incubators may have caught fire due to short circuits. In the Delhi incident, at Bhagwan Mahawir Hospital in Pitampura, the incubator was an “infant warming” device that suddenly caught fire in the night. There was a five-day old baby in it, which died before the mother — sleeping in the ward nearby — could reach her. On the parents’ complaint, the police have filed a case, and the Delhi Health Minister has reportedly asked the hospital for a report within 36 hours. The Ahmedabad incident also happened in the early hours, at the municipal Shardaben hospital, with a three-day-old infant succumbing to the flames. Shockingly, three other incubators also caught fire, but the staff apparently rescued the babies placed in them. The state government has announced compensation to the parents of the dead infant. The Centre has announced a 15 per cent increase in the health budget for the next financial year, with a stress on containing HIV and polio cases. While such initiatives are needed, there has to be a focus on improving the facilities and best practices at government hospitals, which provide health care at all levels for people in low and middle income groups. Any kind of laxity in care and facilities is fraught with frightening, if not fatal, consequences. Those dependent on public hospitals for life-giving treatment deserve more dedicated and diligent service.
|
|
Be polite, write diplomatically; even in a declaration of war one observes the rules of politeness. — Otto von Bismark
|
Loan-waiver scheme
Loan-waiver
or one-time settlement for the farm sector is not something new or a unique step taken for the farm sector in this year’s Central budget. India is known for going soft on defaulters in other sectors too. There is precedence of one-time settlement (OTS) for small industries and even allowing tax evaders to turn their black money into white without penalties. Loans in the farm sector, too, were waived up to Rs 10,000 across the board during the Chandra Shekhar-Devi Lal regime. Principally, such waivers spoil the credit culture that favours the defaulters, more so wilful defaulters, and punishes the law-abiding borrowers, who retire their obligations in time. The existing level of non-performing assets (NPAs) of institutional lenders (banks and cooperatives) is partly a fallout of the earlier waiver also. OTS is an individual-based settlement, depending upon the assessed ability of the borrower to repay the loan, and it varies from person to person. Waiving of a certain percentage of the outstanding loans across the board is a financially bad policy and waiving the over-dues or outstandings totally is worse. These steps may sound populist and the decision-makers may entertain the hope of creating vote-banks, yet they help more the undeserving and frustrate the non-defaulters that are in majority, the political fallout of which may turn out to be rather negative. It is worth noting that none of the expert committees appointed by the government or the Reserve Bank of India or any expert ever recommended the waivers across the board. Recommendations have been on rewriting the loans and interest waivers mainly. The waivers, wherever recommended, have been recommended on an individual basis in cases of extreme distress only, as a liability of the government. Assuming that the decision on loan-waivers and OTS emerge out of genuine concern of the government on the plight of the farmers, there are some issues that need clarification. First, how to define one or two hectare land-holding. Is it irrigated or unirrigated land? Is it one-crop or two-crop land? Is there some scheme to standardise the acre/hectare? Or, is it the land size which is pledged as collateral with the bank? It is a difficult task and involves lot of arbitrariness. Left to individuals, it will generate vagueness and lead to frustration among the beneficiaries. Second, why the limit on two hectares? A fraction of a hectare higher does not make the borrower solvent or better placed in respect of the repaying capacity. From this angle, the earlier waiver of Rs 10,000 for all the farmers was a better approach that left no vagueness in the system of relief. Third, is the waiver applicable to crop loans only or does it cover medium-term loans also? Some of the farmers who got tractor loans sold their new tractors in the market at lower prices and some of them encashed their loan at showrooms even. Do such defaulters deserve waivers? The loan-waiver or one-time settlement, in principle, should be meant for helping a person who is in distress in spite of his best effort to come out of the debt. Fourth, in respect of cooperative loans, there is a widespread practice that at the end of the financial year, the loans are shown as recovered for the sake of keeping the balance-sheet healthy and the same or similar amounts are shown as advances in the next fortnight. Thus, there are no or a few defaults and over-dues. Yet, de facto loans are not recovered and are in default. Such borrowers will not be entitled for loan-waivers or OTS. The main benefit of loan-waiver will go to the states where the percentage of marginal farmers below one hectare is larger. In terms of operational holdings, the country has 63 per cent marginal farmers below one hectare and the percentage of small farmers, between one to two hectares, is 18.08 (2000-01 data). Thus, the beneficiaries of the loan-waivers would be over 81 per cent of the farmers in the country. Yet, how many of these farmers have obtained loans from institutional sources is another question. Most of the marginal and small farmers resort to loans from private moneylenders and commission agents. They can not benefit from the loan-waivers announced by the government. Punjab had only 18.65 per cent marginal farmers and 16.78 per cent small farmers in 1995-96. In 2000-01, the percentage of marginal farmers declined to 12.31 and that of small farmers increased marginally to 17.35 per cent, making it a total of 29.66 per cent eligible beneficiaries of loan-waivers. This percentage must have declined further because of the trend of reverse tendency in the state. Again, a majority of these farmers are likely to have borrowed from private moneylenders and commission agents. Thus, the loan-waiver dispensation contained in the Central budget, even after the webs of confusion are cleared, is not going to help much the marginal and small farmers in the state. If the government had to adopt the pathway of loan -waivers to alleviate the distress of the farm sector, it would have been much better to put monetary limits of, say, Rs 20,000 to Rs 30,000 or even higher amounts across the board and then OTS as an alternative for the borrowers of higher amounts, whichever may be their choice. Real benefit would have flowed to these categories of farmers if some steps had been taken to reduce the burden of debt from informal sources of private moneylenders and commission agents, about which the scheme is eloquently silent. Regulation of private moneylenders under an act of the Parliament can go a long way in alleviating the distress of farmers, specially the marginal and small farmers. The essentials of this act should include no claim as collateral on one house and five acres of land and interest limit at the maximum 3 or 4 per cent above the prime lending rate of the banking sector. Again the provision should be that if repayment is made twice the capital borrowed, the loan should be considered as fully repaid. These provisions will help those borrowers who opt to take recourse to the law against usurious rates of interest and exploitation by the private moneylenders. These steps would prove to be a better option in the interest of the farming community of the
country.
|
Scotch and small talk
This happened many years ago, when I was young and still had a roving eye. It was at one of those duty-free liquor parties given by the second or third secretaries of embassies and high commissions to disseminate the particular culture of their respective countries in the jungle of Chanakyapuri. I had one eye trained on the white-jacketed disseminator of drinks while the other ran up and down on a red-haired, green-eyed girl who seemed to be disseminating a great deal of charm. But I was finding it extremely difficult to concentrate on either. This was because I had been cornered by a lanky, flat-chested bespectacled female with a German name. Somehow, she had got me mixed up with a professor from the university who was happily imbibing a mixture of scotch and “kultur” in another part of the L-shaped room. The woman persisted in addressing me as “Herr Doktor”. ‘Now, much to my private gratification, I have often been mistaken for a retired army officer though no one has ever called me anything but a Colonel. This, I suppose, is due to the fact that generals are rarely seen at cocktail parties, being busy writing their memoirs, like I.C.S. men and newspaper editors. It was altogether a new experience for me and one that I did not relish, to be taken for an “intellectual”.’ I made several ineffectual attempts to put the lady right on the score. I even indicated with a forefinger of my free hand her proper quarry who was gasticulating wildly with his. But it was no good. She had made up her mind that I was a doctor of sociology and that I could tell her all she wanted to know about our customs and peculiarities. “Plees to say, Herr Doktor,” she asked, “ees there mooch homo-sexuality in your country?” “I have no idea, Fraulein,” I said. “I haven’t studied the subject in any great detail. Perhaps you would like to consult someone who has, like that long-haired gentleman with a shawl round his shoulders. I understand that he did his Ph.D at Heidelberg in a subject akin to the one you are interested in and he speaks fluent German.” “Eees that so?” said she. “Zen plees to introduce me, Herr Doktor.” “No need for an introduction,” I said, looking round for the red-haired, green-eyed temptress who, I saw to my chagrin, had been appropriated by a young fellow with the face of an Adonis and the build of an Olympic athlete. “Just go up to him and slap him on the back. He’s a very sociable fellow and extremely susceptible to the charms of foreign young ladies.” “Sus, vat ees zat you say, Doktor?” “Forget it,” I said. “What I need right now is sustenance.” And I walked rapidly towards the bar. An angry exclamation in a guttral voice followed me but, as I don’t know any German, it didn’t worry
me.
|
Japan’s concrete ceiling The
scene is a fifth-floor cafe in Tokyo’s neon-lit Electric City district. It is one of the breed of “maid cafes” that have sprung up to lure the Japanese capital’s introverted geeks away from their laptops. The customer is greeted by a phalanx of heavily made-up young waitresses wearing stockings, mini-skirts and pigtails. “Welcome home, master,” they squeal in unison, tongue firmly in cheek of course. A woman’s place has traditionally been in the home in Japan, the only leading industrialised nation where women are still struggling for equal rights in the workplace. It comes as a shock to learn that, on the eve of International Women’s Day 2008, only 0.8 per cent of Japanese chief executives are women, compared with 10 per cent in Britain and 23 per cent in Sweden. Only 10 per cent of Japanese MPs are women, one of the lowest rates of participation in the developed world. In the professional classes, women make up 9 per cent of lawyers and 8 per cent of the accountants. In Japan, the glass ceiling is so thick it is known as the “concrete ceiling”. In fact, Tomoyo Nonaka, the former chief executive of the electronics giant Sanyo, describes the barrier to women’s professional advancement as “an iron ceiling – with a few holes in it”. Thanks to a combination of women’s and government efforts, the effects of the ageing population and a diversifying economy, the holes are getting bigger. Ms Nonaka knows all about Japanese boardrooms where she is the only woman. Soon after she joined Sanyo, in 2005, she started to hear such whispers as “the female head of a manufacturing company doesn’t look right”. After less than two years as chief executive, she was out of a job. She says she fell victim to the money-men whose eye was on the financial bottom line. “The media said my vision was too naive, too feminine.” Ms Nonaka is a former television presenter who is one of the most prominent women in Japan and now heads the Gaia Initiative, a non-profit organisation promoting renewable energy projects. She didn’t get to the top by being a traditional Japanese wife. “They called me the smiling killer,” she says, smiling, perched on an armchair in a 49th-floor meeting room of a private members’ club with dizzying views over the city. She started out as a photojournalist with the television channel NHK and realised while she was covering the royal wedding of the Prince of Wales and Lady Diana Spencer in 1981 that “out of 250 people, I was the only woman journalist – the others were helpers”. To succeed in Japan, “you have to prove that you are three times as good as the men”, she says. “I might feel angry or tired, and I was entitled to be, yet I had to carry the tripod to show that I was better than the men to make sure they would accept me.” She became one of the country’s best-known presenters – and one of the first women anchors – before joining government committees and what she calls the “boys’ club”. Ms Nonaka points out that after the Second World War, under American occupation Japan was catapulted into the 20th century and women were given the right to vote “without even fighting for it”. As the economy recovered, “the castle became the company which gave you lifetime employment. Women simply weren’t included. “They stayed at home to raise children.” That tradition has been long in changing, despite an equal-opportunity law passed in 1985. The sociologist Yuko Kawanishi agrees that the corporate culture has held women back. “The men became slaves to the company which became like a family. People got sucked into the system and women had to take care of the home, in a kind of division of labour.” But she also acknowledges Japan’s long history of Confucianism and patriarchy. “Foreigners think that because Japan is an industrialised society, it’s comparable to other G7 countries. But Japan is uniquely Japanese. If you look around Asia, the status of women goes up with educational achievement. That’s not the case in Japan, where almost as many women complete a university education as men.” A government Gender Equality bureau – staffed by 50 people with equal numbers of men and women – was set up in 1999 under the authority of the prime minister. Atsuhiro Kaneko, a bureau official, says that as the economy diversifies, more women are needed in the economy. At present, 50 per cent of Japanese women are in full-time work where they earn one third less than men. The greatest discrimination facing women is when they have a child: 70 per cent of women do not return to a job after having a first baby. If they do return after a maximum 14-week paid maternity leave, they see their income decline. “Once they quit there are no laws to protect women,” says Mr Kaneko. Mizuho Fukushima, the leader of Japan’s opposition Social Democratic Party, is battling for women’s rights. She wants to give women the right to keep their maiden name, an uphill struggle that has so far seen a bill rejected 10 times, and is an advocate of the rights of children born out of wedlock, which negatively affects their inheritance. She also campaigns against sexual harassment, domestic violence and for improved maternity leave and child care. When she was elected to the Upper House, 10 years ago, she had to share the male lavatories. Now she and her female colleagues have separate loos. Studies show a gradual change in attitude. A survey in 1979 found that 70 per cent agreed with the statement “the husband should be the breadwinner, the wife should stay at home”, where paradoxically the woman rules supreme. This year, for the first time, a majority of 52.1 per cent disagreed. Keiko Kitahara, a 54-year-old architect says: “in the place where I work, the women always make the coffee. When I arrived, I said, ‘hey guys, let’s make our own coffee’. But as more women have joined the company, they’ve started getting it for the men. The guys are still on top.” By arrangement with
The Independent
|
|
World hunger threat is rising The
price of food is soaring. The threat of hunger and malnutrition is growing. Millions of the world’s most vulnerable people are at risk. An effective and urgent response is needed. The prices of basic staples – wheat, corn, rice – are at record highs, up 50 percent or more in the past six months. Global food stocks are at historic lows. The causes range from rising demand in major economies such as India and China to climate- and weather-related events such as hurricanes, floods and droughts that have devastated harvests in many parts of the world. High oil prices have increased the cost of transporting food and purchasing fertilizer. Some experts say the rise of biofuels has reduced the amount of food available for humans. The effects are widely seen. Food riots have erupted from West Africa to South Asia. In countries where food has to be imported to feed hungry populations, communities are rising to protest the high cost of living. Fragile democracies are feeling the pressure of food insecurity. Many governments have issued export bans and price controls on food, distorting markets and presenting challenges to commerce. In January, to cite one example, Afghan President Hamid Karzai appealed for $77 million to help provide food for more than 2.5 million people pushed over the edge by rising prices. He drew attention to an alarming fact: The average Afghan household now spends about 45 percent of its income on food, up from 11 percent in 2006. This is the new face of hunger, increasingly affecting communities that had previously been protected. Inevitably, it is the “bottom billion” who are hit hardest: people living on one dollar a day or less. When people are that poor, and inflation erodes their meager earnings, they generally do one of two things: They buy less food, or they buy cheaper, less nutritious food. The result is the same – more hunger and less chance of a healthy future. The U.N. World Food Program is seeing families that previously could afford a diverse, nutritious diet dropping to one staple and cutting their meals from three to two or one a day. Experts believe that high food prices may be here to stay. Even so, we have the tools and technology to beat hunger and meet the Millennium Development Goals. We know what to do. What is required are political will and resources, directed effectively and efficiently. First, we must meet urgent humanitarian needs. This year, the World Food Program plans to feed 73 million people globally, including as many as 3 million people each day in Darfur. To do so, the program requires an additional $500 million simply to cover the rise in food costs. (Note: 80 percent of the agency’s purchases are made in the developing world.) Second, we must strengthen U.N. programs to help developing countries deal with hunger. This must include support for safety-net programs to provide social protection, in the face of urgent need, while working on longer-term solutions. We also need to develop early-warning systems to reduce the impact of disasters. School meals – at a cost of less than 25 cents a day – can be a particularly powerful tool. Third, we must deal with the increasing consequences of weather-related shocks to local agriculture, as well as the long-term consequences of climate change – for example, by building drought and flood defense systems that can help food-insecure communities cope and adapt. Last, we must boost agricultural production. World Bank President Robert Zoellick has rightly noted that there is no reason Africa can’t experience a “green revolution” of the sort that transformed Southeast Asia in previous decades. U.N. agencies such as the Food and Agriculture Organization and the International Fund for Agricultural Development are working with the African Union and others to do just this, introducing vital science and technologies that offer permanent solutions for hunger. Simply improving market efficiency can have a huge effect. Roughly a third of the world’s food shortages could be alleviated to a significant degree by improving local agricultural distribution networks and helping to better connect small farmers to markets. The writer is secretary general of the United Nations
By arrangement with LA Times-Washington Post
|
|
Delhi Durbar The customary dinner hosted by Congress president Sonia Gandhi at her 10 Janpath residence for party functionaries, MPs and their spouses earlier this week had some surprise guests. For the first time, Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, her husband Robert Vadra and their two children were also present on the occasion, making it a truely family affair. Sonia Gandhi was the perfect hostess as she received all her guests personally and took care to have a word or two with the spouses who had come for the dinner. All those who attended said it was a pleasant evening and the food (catering was by the well-known food expert Marut Sikka) was delicious, epsecially the Amritsari kulcha and the gulauti kebab. While everybody was busy tucking into this mouth-watering fare, junior minister Subirammi Reddy, whose Rajya Sabha term ends this month-end, was apparently like a cat on a hot in roof as his renomination was hanging in balance. Reddy spent the entire evening flitting from one big “neta” to another in a desperate attempt to register his presence. Parliament in action Seeing is believing. Students from Baba Farid Law College, Faridkot and Panjab Rao Deshmukh Institute of Management and Research, Nagpur, returned quite satisfied after watching the proceedings of Parliament earlier this week. The visiting students enjoyed the discussion on the Rail Budget but were a trifle disappointed that the MPs did not mind their Ps and Qs. They felt that they could have maintained some decorum in the House. The Nagpur group, however, said that watching the proceedings from the Visitors Gallery had definitely improved their theoretical understanding of Parliamentary proceedings and changed their earlier impression of Parliamentarians, formed after watching live telecast of debates on television. Call to prayer Prime Minister Manmohan Singh stopped briefly during his speech at the “Dhanyavad-Abhinandan” rally organised by the Congress in the capital last Sunday to build up electoral momentum on the farm loan waiver package announced in this year's budget. As mediapersons and crowds looked on curiously, senior party leader Janardan Dwivedi came upto the mike to announce that the PM had stopped after hearing the sound of Azan from a nearby mosque. Old timers explained that it is a Congress tradition that party leaders take a short break during their public speeches if they are able to hear the Azan at the rally venue. They also said leaders of several other political parties have also been following this practice and rallies were often so timed to ensure that the prayer time was during the speeches. Contributed by Anita Katyal, Tripti Nath and Prashant Sood
|
| HOME PAGE | |
Punjab | Haryana | Jammu & Kashmir |
Himachal Pradesh | Regional Briefs |
Nation | Opinions | | Business | Sports | World | Mailbag | Chandigarh | Ludhiana | Delhi | | Calendar | Weather | Archive | Subscribe | Suggestion | E-mail | |
