|
|
|
|
Blow to Bengal New deal for
teachers |
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Piracy at sea
Axis of financial
evil
Alone in the crowd
Unsafe food Chatterati Greed is fine.
It’s stupidity that hurts
|
|
New deal for teachers THE University Grants Commission’s recommendation to increase the salaries of teachers has not come a day too soon. The proposals of the Sixth Pay Commission are already being implemented for Central Government employees and some of the states have pledged to follow suit. Teachers — who are as much affected by inflationary pressures and stagnant pay scales as any other section of government employees — could not have been ignored, and not only because they are organised. With all the emphasis on knowledge power and knowledge-based industry, the least the government can do is to provide better salaries to those in the vocation of teaching. The UGC wants the proposals, finalised by its Pay Review Committee, to be implemented with effect from January 1, 2006. These recommendations, when implemented, will benefit over five lakh teachers in 285 universities and 6000 colleges across the country. In addition to a nearly 70 per cent increase in pay, the UGC has also proposed the creation of new posts such as senior associate professor and professors of eminence, new pay scales and extension of the retirement age to 65 years. The proposal over the retirement age is bound to provoke a debate with the interests of those in service being pitted against the need for more employment opportunities for the young. While the UGC scales will benefit bulk of the teachers, there is a sizeable teaching community outside the ambit of universities and colleges employed in institutions under different government authorities. It remains to be seen whether this large section, which has not gained by the Sixth Pay Commission, will also lose out on the UGC scales. This apart, there is an even stronger case for extending salary hikes to teachers in schools, which are the threshold of education but remains sadly neglected when it comes to the question of better pay, facilities and job protection. The contribution of schoolteachers being no less important to national development and the creation of a knowledge society, they, too, should be extended better pay and facilities, job security and opportunities for promotion.
|
|
|
Piracy at sea THE capture of the Hong Kong-licensed ship MT Stolt Valor with 18 Indian sailors among a crew of 22 in the Gulf of Aden brings to the fore the threat the shipping industry faces. Even though the pirates had seized the ship on September 25, there seems to be no end to the crisis. They are reportedly firm on their demand for ransom, which they have reduced from $35 million to $6 million. Western diplomats and Somali officials had talked tough about a military strike against them. Somali officials fear that paying the pirates would only fuel more attacks which have turned Somalia’s waters into the most dangerous and pirate-infested in the world. This year alone, over 25 ships have been hijacked. The going price is usually $1 million to $2 million to free them. Unfortunately, the standoff continues with the rigid stand of both the Somali authorities and the pirates. The pirates don’t seem to be bothered about the American warships bristling with missiles and big guns in the Somali shore. As the safety of a large number of Indians in the hijacked ship is at stake, the Government of India needs to exert considerable pressure on the international community to help secure their release without any harm. The United Nations, too, should do its bit for a peaceful resolution of the problem. The Gulf of Aden has become a very dangerous place despite patrolling by the navies of the US, the UK, France, Canada and other countries. Piracy may be as old as navigation, but it has increased of late. Defence Minister A.K. Antony says that Indian warships in the Gulf of Aden are unable to make any “direct intervention” because India does not have any agreement with Somalia and, moreover, it is not permitted under international law like the UN Security Council Resolution 1816. India also does not have the option of hot pursuit. Still, it should continue its efforts with the UN and Somali authorities to help secure the early release of all the hostages.
|
|
|
Teaching is the profession that teaches all the other professions. — Anonymous
|
Axis of financial evil PRIME Minister Manmohan Singh has just sealed an alliance with the United States at a time when it has just accomplished the financial annihilation of the American system. In a world of competitive greed, Dr Singh has much to learn from those who determine the global governance agenda because nothing that the Government of India has ever done - the stock market scams of the 1990 (under Dr Singh's supervision) and 2001 included - has been quite as irresponsible as the swindle pulled off by the high priests of American finance. Using the twin routes of asset and finance inflation, they made money cheap, dreams cheaper as they extravagantly went about leveraging sticky assets: toxic credit. The weapon of mass destruction was being developed not in Iraq but on Wall Street. The $700-billion bailout is another version of the weapon that protects Wall Street even as it destroys the rest of America. Today, as Indian techies around the world turn to mass prayers for divine intervention to save their jobs chanting the Runa Vimochana Nrusimha stotra at Chiklur's "Visa temple', there is another incantation in the United Kingdom that has long surrendered itself to the US' financial hegemony. The Labour party is praying to the good Lord to save Gordon Brown, who cooked books through the much maligned Private Finance Initiative. The average Briton is in the hoc by £26,100; the UK's national debt touched a humungous £581 billion; and the concealed debts exposed more layers of IOUs. Moscow, another subscriber to the American way, saw yet more financial engineering with a $130 -billion bailout for the ruble-denominated MICEX. Nothing could be more irresponsible than the $700-billion bailout for Wall Street in a Washington that believes that what is good for Wall Street is good for America. In effect, the Senate and the House of Representatives have cleared a plan to bail out the axis of financial evil even as it has left the millions facing foreclosures on their homes and the smaller players who got sucked into the financial bubble that was wilfully floated over the years to fend for themselves. Certainly something was going wrong somewhere and for a long time; there was nothing 'irrational' about the 'exuberance' equities that marked the beginning of the crisis way back in the 1990s. Its causes were deliberately played down by the mandarins in Washington as something attributable to the greedy techies, as they planned the fake realty boom; the parent of today's illiquid housing assets that purported to help America claw its way out of a dotcom bust (some $5 trillion evaporated between March and October 2002). It did so but on rickety legs, covered by fake flesh; it was fashionable and clever to do so as America was transported from a somewhat isolated dotcom-driven boom to a mass housing-driven boom with catastrophic effect. That is when the competitive irresponsibility of the players gained momentum. The pundits won plaudits for spreading the risks through "complex derivative instruments" when they were actually digging the $1,000-billion hole with a state-sponsored, mortgage-backed securities/ CDO bubble valued at around $12 trillion. Having thus fathered the "frothy" solution, the former Federal Reserve chief, Alan Greenspan (who dismissed the bubbles as mere froth), today produces catchy soundbites around a "once-in-a century" financial crisis! Wall Street had spread the contagion into global gullies; in India the State Bank, ICICI Bank, Bank of Baroda and Bank of India were known to have fallen prey; outsourced operations are seeking to down their shutters. Greenspan was in good company. The world's smartest and the savviest were a part of the fraud; between them, the CEOs of Freddie Mac, Fannie Mae, AIG, Lehman Brothers and Merrill Lynch took home around $118 million in 2007. Each had created a financial ogre that was worse than the other's in terms of the sugar-coating of the package and the slime that it contained. Documents of deceit - paper assets - 'cover'ed by even more duplicitous insurance were marketed to unsuspecting citizens who were guilty of wanting a piece of the pie. One does not need to be a Sherlock Holmes to realise that the secret to the crisis lay in the "dog that did not bark"; there was no dog; there were no regulators. Also, there were no housing assets; the Wall Street boys had managed to sell unreal realty; every home was infected. Everyone, among them the redoubtable Henry Paulson, then the CEO of Goldman Sachs (its group quarterly profit plunged 70 per cent as Goldman reported $1.1 billion in write-downs) was a party to the frantic building of the house of cards. Stock brokers were permitted to operate like veritable banks and banks were permitted to throw capital adequacy norms to the wind as the world was jubilant over the financial whiz kids cracking the code to financial utopia through derivatives. The first time the European insurance companies quietly picked up the clean up tab. This time it is an American insurance company that has had to be nationalised! A staid insurer, AIG created a financial-products division that was allowed to go berserk as it underwrote derivatives contracts that devoured the whole company. The world was celebrating the inverted American pyramid; its base holding up enormous borrowings backed by non-existent assets. Released in the bourses dominated by the bulls they hastened the pace of sub-prime loan disbursements to the new-age ninjas (no-income-no jobs-no asset Americans). The collapse was inevitable and the pyramid lies in a pool of red: a trillion dollars in shreds with yet undisclosed losses. The going, so great as long as the losses stayed tucked in the various unregistered shells, turned toxic when the capacities of these shelters were exhausted. From around September last they started gushing out, engulfing the system. Current estimates say that $450 billion-worth in the credit-default swaps market alone hold the fragile global banking and investment fund regimes. As the Fed proceeds to fix the crisis with the "best bailout money can buy", there is no attempt to fix blame; no heads roll (some retire with indecent parting compensations); everyone gets a portion of the bailout bounty being cleared by the Congress sans the hearings and committee process. This cosy club would once again have bailed itself out with the Paulson buying $700 billion in distressed mortgage-related assets from the private and public merchants of the scam. Could there be greater hilarity than the act of the Federal Reserve Bank allowing the errant Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley to become bank holding companies, thereby assuring them easy access to credit? Capitalism and free market, American style, then literally means a licence to defraud because Uncle Sam will foot the bill. Yet as delinquent capitalism gets saved by an unprecedented nationalisation of the losses, what remains unanswered is how Uncle Sam will find the money. The public has been swindled, the banks have lost it all and the insurers are out with their begging bowls. No one has talked of any light at the end of the tunnel for this in one tunnel that not even the gods of the Chiklur temple can
illumine.
|
|||||
Alone in the crowd SHAM LAL KAUSHAL is the real and the least known name of ‘Bandhuji’, a man of legendary honesty, competence and equanimity in the Food Corporation of India’s Punjab office for the past 38 years. One cannot help but wonder at the motivation of this well-groomed, silver-haired, medium-statured man, who holds five MA degrees, one with a gold medal, walks over two kilometres to reach office an hour before others and walks back home at dusk two hours after everybody else has left. Needless to say, one after the other, heads of the office have been falling to his charisma and been signing heaps of files ‘filtered’ through ‘Bandhuji’ as if in a trance. I shudder to imagine the state of my successors who will have to face all the ‘arrows’ without the ‘shield’ of Bandhuji, as he retires in six months. Like a wise elder he shares his perspective of life once in a while, but only when asked to; otherwise he likes to limit the conversation to official matters. One of my predecessors had asked him once as to what was the foundation of his absolute integrity in the environment of strong allurements, to which he had replied simply, “If at all, I am obliging myself and not anyone else by being honest; people yield to temptations because they cannot see clearly the outcome of their actions which is only distant in time but certain.” And about his untiring stamina for work, he shared his secret with me once. “I lie prostrate before my deity when I go home; it releases an elixir in my blood that takes away all my tiredness.” Sometime back, on my insistence, he got his medical checkup done at the Fortis as he had been complaining of small problems with stomach and breathing. The doctor looked at his reports, then at him and said, the tests don’t look to be of a 60-year old; he had difficulty believing that all his three arteries were totally clear, just as every other test was also ok. A vegetarian and teetotaler he politely refuses to accept sweets or fruit, the only gifts, those having official dealings with him dare offer him. Seeing him, it appears nature has certain laws. His son recently completed his CA and was promptly picked up by GE Finance and sent to the US for training at company’s expense. When his son found a girl for himself, the girl’s parents approached him anxiously to know if there were any demands, only to be baffled to get the reply that dowry won’t be accepted even if offered; the two sides could, however, share the marriage bill equally. His other son will be completing Masters in Computer Applications shortly. When I asked about his post retirement plans in the background of attractive salaries being offered to him by a couple of private companies, he said, “Sir, I think by now, I have discharged my worldly responsibilities; I will pass on my pension benefits and other possessions to my wife and sons so that they are comfortable. God willing, I will move to some Ashram and try to connect with the Supreme Soul in solitude.” Those around him, reveling in or experimenting with the profane, are off and on seen sitting in his room, wondering who is
smarter.
|
|||||
Unsafe food
Although
the food crisis has been discussed mainly in terms of high prices and accentuating food shortages for the poor, there is another, a less discussed, but nevertheless very serious aspect of the food crisis. This relates to the many-sided deterioration in the quality of food — in terms of reduced nutrition content as well as increasing hazards implicit in the use of too many harmful chemicals used for growing, processing and preserving food. Wendell Berry truly captured the contradictions of the modern food system in one sentence when he said, “It is one of the miracles of science and hygiene that the germs that used to be in our food have been replaced by poisons.” If any one thinks that this is an exaggeration, then let him or her see the 1986 report of the London Food Commission, which said that at least 92 pesticides cleared for use in Britain have been linked with cancer, birth defects or genetic mutation in animal studies. Or the 1987 report of the National Academy of Sciences, USA, which said that pesticides in the food of US citizens may cause more than one million additional cases of cancer in the US over their life-time. It is well known that excessive use of fertilisers causes a loss of flavour of food; what is less known is that it can also cause a loss of nutritive value and even create some serious health problems. According to prominent nutrition expert, C. Gopalan, there is disturbing evidence of micronutrient depletion of soils in some areas; these are likely to be eventually reflected in impaired nutritive value of foodgrains grown in such soils.” Richard Douthwaite has written in his widely discussed book “The Growth Illusion,” “Nitrogenous fertilisers can raise the amount of nitrate in the final crop to four or five times the level found in the compost-growing equivalent, while at the same time cutting vitamin C and dry matter levels. This change is potentially serious, since nitrates can be turned into powerful carcinogenic nitrosamines by bacteria found in the mouth, while vitamin C has been shown to protect against cancers.” In addition we’ve to cope with the nutrition loss caused by unscientific processing of food which leads to a massive loss of precious nutrients. In many rice mills and other cereal mills, the part of grain which is wasted is the one which is the most nutritious. According to L. Ramchandran, who has made detailed estimates of the loss suffered in the process of refining cereals in his book, “Food Planning,” “The quantitative loss in the case of cereals alone may amount to not less than eight million tons. The qualitative loss is even more staggering because the portions of the grain that are removed in refinement are many times richer in quality, proteins, fats, minerals such as iron and phosphorous, and vitamins such as thiamine, nicotinic acid, riboflavin, and, in some cases, also vitamin A, in the form of carotene, than the portions that are retained and consumed by us. These are precisely the nutrients in which the average Indian diet is woefully deficient.” Another major source of loss of nutrients is the hydrogenation of oils. Hydrogenation changes most of the unsaturated fats into saturated fats. Saturated fats consumed in excess can be very harmful. Unsaturated fats, specially some of the poly-unsaturated fats, are important in nutrition and play a protective role against the risk of cardiovascular disease and other ailments. In the words of Ramchandran, “in hydrogenation, what is good and necessary is changed into what is not necessary and may be harmful.” A new threat to food safety has appeared in several countries in the form of genetically modified crops. The Penang Statement, issued by several eminent scientists, scholars and activists who had met at Penang to discuss the issue in detail, says, “Some GEOs (Genetically Engineered Organisms) have been made with virus to transposon vectors that have been artificially enhanced to become less species-specific. Since viruses and transposons can cause or induce mutations, there is the concern that enhanced vectors could be carcinogenic to humans, domestic animals and wild animals.” In addition to all this there is the ethical dilemma faced by vegetarians, who may find it difficult to select food when animal genes are introduced into plant genes. The choice becomes even more difficult (and not just for vegetarians) when even human genes are introduced into food crops. This dilemma is most difficult to resolve when GM foods are not specifically labelled, and generally GM food companies try their best to avoid any legal requirement of specific labelling of GM food. There is a widespread myth that food safety standards in western countries are so high that once something is approved there, people in developing countries can accept this unhesitatingly. The truth is that there is serious concern in several developed countries about deteriorating food quality and standards. As Paul Krugman reported in a recent column on the situation in the USA, “Lately there always seems to be at least one food-safety crisis in the headlines - tainted spinach, poisonous peanut butter and the attack of the killer tomatoes.” Blaming the undue emphasis exercised by big business interests on government regulation agencies, he blamed “the systematic appointment of foxes to guard henhouses” for this malaise. The risk of harmful imports, including GM imports, has increased for many countries in these days of free trade supported by WTO regulations. Great caution is needed to ensure that harmful food is not imported. It is equally important to emphasise food production and processing methods within our country which can provide good quality, healthy food. In this context, the future prospects of organic farming are bright. Healthy food provided by organic farming can make a big contribution to improving health and nutrition of people as well as farm animals while also contributing to improving soil quality and farmland fertility and protection of the
environment and wildlife.
|
|
Chatterati Amar
Singh is a very busy and irritated man nowadays. Though he claims to be related to Digvijay Singh, but even then he has had no luck on seat-sharing in UP. His hopes are now on Rahul Gandhi, who, at the moment, is letting the general secretary handle his affairs. Amar Singh’s obsession with Bollywood is well known and his latest targets for the Samajwadi Party ticket are Shabana Azmi and Sanjay Dutt. Shabana has the right friends in the Congress and has made the right noises recently on how Muslims are actually treated. Sanju Baba, after his marriage to the ambitious Manyata, has said his goal is politics. But the Congress is very happy with his sister, Priya, as an MP. They will not want to touch Sanjay anyhow till his cases are over. Hindi humour Union rural development minister Raghuvansh Prasad Singh is known for his wit. Many a time he has caused embarrassment to his officers. At times, even his simple pronouncements in Hindi become a source of humour. Well, at a meeting to reallocate work among bureaucrats, Raghuvansh said: “Mere dahine ore baithe joint secretary paani ka kaam dekhenge and bayain ore pakhane ka (the joint secretary sitting on my right will look after water and one on the left will take care of sanitation)”. Needless to add that the officer in charge of sanitation went red in the face. The spoiler Mayawati was thrilled after the Karnataka elections. No, not because she won a single seat but because the Congress got a taste of “spoiler” Mayawati. In as many as 14 seats in Karnataka, the BSP led to the defeat of the Congress. It got 4 per cent of votes in 13 constituencies while it scored 11 per cent in another. Mayawati was particularly delighted by the Congress defeat in the southern state. After the results, she told her supporters that a more promising “dose” will be administered to the Congress supremos in Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh and Delhi. Language problems The Rajya Sabha is facing linguistic problems. The floor coordinators of the UPA and the NDA are a confused yet amused lot. The Congress team includes parliamentary affairs minister Vayalar Ravi, his deputy V. Narayansamy, chief whip P.J. Kurian, deputy speaker K. Rahman Khan and Jayanti Natrajan. It is hilarious when this team has to negotiate with Sushma Swaraj, Sharad Yadav and Gandhi Azad. There is so much humour there. At times even small things that can be sorted out easily get stuck and become complicated because of the language barrier. Wonder, why they don’t think of having translators as in the UN. |
|
Greed is fine. It’s stupidity that hurts During
a financial crisis, after people have had their fill of discussions about margin calls and credit default swaps, they experience a strong desire to have the whole thing put in some larger and more human context. Invariably they come around to some variation of, “Isn’t this really just a story about excessive greed?” I’ve never really figured out how to answer that question. In a capitalist economy, the basic premise is that everyone is motivated by a healthy dose of economic self-interest — the shopper looking for the best bargain on tomatoes and the farmer looking to get the highest price for his produce, the grocery clerk looking to earn the highest wages for restocking shelves and the investor looking to earn the biggest profit from Safeway stock. Without some measure of greed and the tension it brings to most economic transactions, capitalism wouldn’t be as good as it is in allocating resources and spurring innovation. Perhaps that’s why most definitions of greed refer to an excessive desire for wealth that is beyond what anyone really needs or deserves. The obvious problem with that, of course, is that those are terribly subjective criteria. Do you draw the greed line at two cars, a three-bedroom house, two weeks at the beach in the summer, and college tuition for the kids? Or is it at seven houses, 50 pairs of designer shoes, a yacht, two Bentleys and a Renoir? Others suggest that for greed to really be greed, the money or goods that are desired have to be denied to somebody else who might want, need or deserve them. A landowner who gets rich by overcharging tenant farmers who can barely feed and clothe their families — he’s obviously greedy. But somehow the owner of a restaurant in the Hamptons who overcharges his millionaire patrons for lobster salad and foie gras is a lot less greedy. In many minds, greed may have less to do with the amount of wealth or possessions someone has, or aspires to have, than it does with the way in which it is earned. Even before they decided to give away most of their money, nobody seemed to begrudge Bill Gates or Warren Buffett their billions or criticize them for their “unbridled” greed. That seems to have a lot to do with the fact that Gates and Buffett made their money on the basis of their own ingenuity, skill and hard work. On the other hand, when people line up to buy tickets to a Powerball lottery with a $10 million payout, we don’t consider them particularly greedy just because they want to get rich through dumb luck. If the person who wins that lottery, however, doesn’t send some of that money to his struggling Aunt Mildred or offer to fix up the local Little League field, most people would call him greedy. But no matter how many millions the overpaid corporate chief executive gives away to charity, in the minds of many, greed will always be his middle name. Which brings us to the now widespread belief that the cause of the current financial crisis has been “the greed on Wall Street.” Both John McCain and Barack Obama believe that. So do Joe Biden and Sarah Palin. A clip search of major publications over the lpast month turns up about 2,700 stories that contained the words “Wall Street” and “greed. “ The month before, there were less than 200. The big problem with Wall Street isn’t that it’s greedy — it’s that it keeps making the same mistakes over and over. Each cycle, the masters of finance start out with reasonably good products and good intentions, only to get swept away by their success. They become arrogant, take too many risks and begin to believe their own marketing spiels. Then, when the cycle turns against them and the risks turn sour, they try to cover it up and begin lying to their customers, to regulators and to each other. Trust erodes, and the whole thing collapses. In the populist “greed” fantasy, it is ordinary people who are the losers while the Wall Street bigwigs walk off with all the loot. But in the real life version, most of the bigwigs lose as well. They lose their jobs, their stock becomes worthless, their reputations are ruined. They spend the next several years shelling out $700 an hour to lawyers to defend themselves against lawsuits and regulatory inquiries and $250 to psychiatrists to help figure out where they went wrong. Bottom line: They wind up worse off than they would have been if they had simply done their jobs well, put their customers first and managed their companies for the long term. To some, that may be a story of greed. To me, it looks more like old-fashioned incompetence. — By arrangement with
LA Times-Washington Post
|
|
|
|
| HOME PAGE | |
Punjab | Haryana | Jammu & Kashmir |
Himachal Pradesh | Regional Briefs |
Nation | Opinions | | Business | Sports | World | Letters | Chandigarh | Ludhiana | Delhi | | Calendar | Weather | Archive | Subscribe | Suggestion | E-mail | |
