The Tribune, Chandigarh, India

Russia’s interest in India
How they can benefit from each other

How significant is India’s position in the Russian scheme of things for Asia and the rest of the world can be understood from the fact that both top leaders of that country have found time to visit New Delhi this year. President Dmitry Medvedev’s visit has come about after Prime Minister Vladimir Putin’s dialogue with Indian leaders in March. Russia apparently does not want to lose time to get as much economic gains as possible from the fast growing nuclear power industry in India. Russia, which has already been cooperating with India in two nuclear power projects in Tamil Nadu, has been having discussions with the Indian authorities for two more such projects in the same state — Kudankulam III and Kudankulam IV. But certain provisions in India’s newly enacted nuclear liability law are coming in the way. President Medvedev is likely to bring to bear upon India that its law relating to the nuclear industry must be in consonance with the 1963 Vienna Convention. India has its own viewpoint that the law cannot be allowed to have loopholes to deny adequate compensation to victims of a nuclear accident if it ever happens.

But nuclear energy is not the only area where the two countries can help each other. Russia has vast gas and oil reserves and India needs these for meeting its fast growing power requirement. India has joined the gas pipeline project along with Afghanistan and Pakistan to bring gas from Turkmenistan. Russia does not want to be left behind, as the impending talks between the Indian leadership and the Russian President may indicate.

There are certain other subjects about which there is commonality of views between the two countries. How to go about fighting terrorism emanating from the Af-Pak area is one such issue. In this regard India and Russia need to discuss a joint strategy for post-July 2011 Afghanistan in view of the scheduled departure of the US-led NATO troops from there. Iran may offer its help to both India and Russia to protect their interests in Afghanistan. How far Iran can be allowed to join the Indo-Russian strategy should be discussed during Medvedev’s New Delhi visit.

Legendary Tendulkar!
His 50th century in Tests is mind-boggling

Breaking records seems to come naturally to Indian’s cricket maestro Sachin Tendulkar. His landmark 50th Test century against South Africa at Centurian against the world’s most deadly pace attack should be an object lesson to anyone aspiring to make it big in international cricket. The beauty of this cricket legend’s extraordinary talent is that most of his records are unsurpassable in the foreseeable future. That Australian skipper Ricky Ponting who has the second highest number of centuries in Test cricket is way behind with 39 is testimony to Tendulkar’s genius. The same goes for Tendulkar’s record of the number one runs scorer in Tests and numerous other records both in Tests and the one-day format of the game. This has indeed been a great year for Tendulkar and his performance has effectively silenced all those who held his age against him and counselled him to hang up his boots while the going was good.

As 2010 comes to an end, all eyes will shift towards the World Cup beginning in February in India, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh. This trophy is one feather still missing from Tendulkar’s already crowded cap and he would most certainly like to add this distinction to his remarkable unfinished career of two decades. A player always seeks to sign off on a high and while there is no sign of Tendulkar hanging up his boots in a hurry, the coming year could well be the year when he announces his future course of action. While it would be an individual decision, the Indian cricket establishment would be well advised to think beyond him.

Tendulkar is not only a role model for the young in how he plays. His temperament, his sense of patriotism and his level-headedness hold him out as a person worthy of emulation by all. One cannot but wish this cricketing maestro anything but the best for all that he has done to make the game popular not only in India but across the world. His contribution in raising public morale in the country is immense indeed.

Thought for the Day

Man is the only creature that consumes without producing. He does not give milk, he does not lay eggs, he is too weak to pull the plough, he cannot run fast enough to catch rabbits. — “Animal Farm” by George Orwell

ARTICLE

Growth must benefit all
Better poverty-alleviation schemes needed
by Jayshree Sengupta

On the economic front, there is much to cheer about with the GDP growing at 8.9 per cent in the second quarter of 2010-2011. There is now hope that the annual growth rate this fiscal year will be 9 per cent which means that India will be catching up with China soon and emerging as the second fastest growing country in the world. Agricultural, export, manufacturing (the Index of Industrial Production for October has shown a record growth of 10.7 per cent) as well as import growth figures are rising rapidly. Food inflation has come down to 8.69 per cent and general inflation is around 8 per cent which, though high, is not unmanageable. With a strong monetary policy of the past one year, inflation has been tamed and with another interest rate hike, it may come down further.

Today India, however, is not isolated from the trends in the global economy. The problems in the European Union and the US regarding economic recovery are affecting our economy in many ways. For example, there has been a sharp drop in Foreign Direct investment flows which recorded a fall of 25 per cent to $14.9 billion during April October in 2010. Despite the continuing problems in the West, there has been a surge in FII investments and India received $28.7 billion in 2010. There has been some foreign institutional investment (FII) outflow also and $158 million has been withdrawn since November12, 2010, or ever since the 2G telecom licence auction scam and the housing scam (and several other scams like the food scam) have surfaced.

Before the scams were unearthed the equity market had gone up to a record high in October, gaining 8 per cent. The heavy FII inflows resulted in a high ratio of financially mobile capital to forex reserves at 67.6 per cent. On the export front, however, external demand has improved for merchandise exports which has helped industrial growth. But imports are growing rapidly as compared to exports and this means there is widening of the current account deficit of around 4 per cent. Since India has substantial forex reserves, the danger of the country going bankrupt is unlikely to be there, but this will mean keeping a watchful eye on the FII inflows which are helping to finance the deficit. If the outflow continues, it will be bad for the stock market and if too much short-term capital comes in as a result of the US policy of quantitative easing (QE2), it may also lead to problems of high value of the rupee against the dollar, hurting exports.

Another piece of good news is that software exports are showing recovery and Indian domestic demand is reviving with a rebound in consumer confidence. There is a sharp rise in auto sales. Remittances have remained strong, making India the number one recipient of such fund flows — $55 billion in 2010. Tourism has also picked up and the banking sector has shown a robust growth.

Agriculture has surprisingly shown a higher growth rate in the second quarter — 4.4 per cent — thanks to the good monsoon, and foodgrain production is expected at 82 million tonnes. If this 4.4 per cent growth rate can be sustained, then the GDP growth rate of 9 to 10 per cent is achievable. But much depends on agricultural investment. Already Rs 90,000 crore of credit has been disbursed to farmers in the first quarter of this year. If it has led to deeper structural changes with investments in storage, roads and minor canals, it can result in higher productivity growth in the future.

But amidst all the good news there are problems that cannot be ignored. Why is it that the ranking by the IMF of India’s per capita GDP income, according to the purchasing power parity, is low at the 127th position? Some time ago, the multi-dimensional poverty index developed by Oxford University showed pervasive poverty within a country with 410 million Indians living in poverty. (China’s ranking is higher in both cases). This means that the trickle-down effect of a high GDP growth rate is being hampered by certain obstacles to growth, which is a cause for concern. The obvious obstacles are lack of governance and corruption. For example, the latest food scam of UP revealed how millions of tonnes of foodgrains meant for the poor were diverted to the open market. Why is it that there are 100,000 billionaires in India and 8.7 crore families are still living below the poverty line?

According to Transparency International (Germany), which compiles the global corruption perception index, India is ranked 87th out of 178 countries. India’s rank was 84th in 2009 and in one year the slip to the 87th place is due to a rise in corruption. The bulk of the bribes, according to Transparency International’s view, is below $20 and corruption is a uniquely disenfranchising exercise as it is the poor who suffer the most. Due to the widespread practice of tax evasion and bribe taking.

India’s black economy is huge at 50 per cent of the GDP and amounts to Rs 30 lakh crore. It is in the hands of 3 per cent of the elite. But, fortunately, around 300 million people also belong to the middle class. The polarisation problem can only be solved with the rise of the middle class and the participation of civil society in controlling corruption. In each budget, there is more allocation for poverty alleviation schemes, but there is still so much deprivation and malnutrition in the country due to the fact that only a fraction of the money actually benefits the targeted people.

The first priority in the New Year ought to be education and health for the poor in the villages and skill training. Only then will the 240 million youth joining the labour force in the next five years be able to get jobs. Unless the youth is properly educated and trained, there will be a big problem instead of the “demographic advantage or dividend” that India is supposed to have over China.

For the implementation of the right to education law for children between 6 to 14 years of age, 1.2 million teachers are needed to meet the requirement. Today only 700,000 teachers are available and absenteeism is high at 25 per cent. The dropout rate is 39 per cent for 10-year-olds, and among the 15 to 19 year-olds, according to the World Bank, only 2 per cent receive job training.

If only we could reduce corruption and have leakage-proof poverty alleviation programmes, the high GDP growth would benefit all and not just some sections of the population. It is a New Year wish, indeed!

MIDDLE

Those Fridays in 1971
by Brig Suryanarayanan (retd)

IT was 6.40 pm on Friday, December 3, 1971. Some of us were sitting outside our dugouts being filled, in forward area and distributing jawans’ pay, under low-wick-lanterns. Suddenly, the speeding General Officer’s car screeched to a stop before my Fire Direction Centre (FDC); he bombarded me from within: “Surya, what are you people doing outside the dugouts? Why are your vehicles hooked up? Why are the dugouts being filled? Where is your Commander?”

I explained that the Commander had gone to witness a newly arrived regiment moving from Hide to Temporary Gun Position by night; we were closing up and moving my FDC to another position, approved by his HQ! He shouted at me: “Don’t you know the PAF has attacked our forward airfields? Ground attack is expected tonight. You better re-occupy this very position! I shall send your Commander here” and off he went. (That regiment would have problems soon; which is a separate story!)

The Commander came after an hour and saw us re-digging. He said sheepishly: “I should have listened to you and left the dugouts unfilled but camouflaged” (my suggestion that morning)! He had flown off the handle and called us “softies”! My reasoning, which I couldn’t tell him, was: every Friday, there used to be Mirages on photo-recce over the Divisional sector, which did not happen that day, conveying some foreboding; secondly, Yahya had said in an interview the previous week that “Next Friday, I will be off fighting a war!”

We had not even finished re-digging when intense enemy shelling started over my FDC and the gun positions at 8.48 pm! I ordered ‘breaking wireless silence’ and immediately, frantic calls for fire from 108 field-guns under my control as Brigade Major, came from 26 Observation Post officers all over the front!

I occupied the half-re-done FDC; and our return fire commenced. Within the first hour, my living bunker and jeep got direct hits and were written off; I lost my personal effects and had no jeep for the remainder of the war! Non-stop action went on for the next five days and nights, when we couldn’t get a wink of sleep! The GOC directed the operations mostly from my FDC till December 6, due to excellent communications.

Due to some reverses, we had to pull back guns and the FDC from the present locations (which, planned for a different scenario, had become untenable) to the rear across the river, after three days. Before that, we got two prize catches: a Lt Col of an enemy’s attacking battalion, lying wounded and begging for mercy (the highest ranking PoW in the Western sector) and his arrogant second-in-command elsewhere! The latter would return as Military Attaché to India in 1989!

During a lull in battle on the ninth, I had dozed off and my Commander very sweetly got me moved to his caravan; I woke up after 18 hours for a hot bath and back to the FDC into a renewed fierce counterattack! It was a Friday again, when I had to write my “Last Letter or Will”.

OPED INTERNET

‘It’s not about how many pages.
It’s about how good they are’
Ian Burrell

When in doubt, most people who have Internet access go to Wikipedia, the free, web-based, encyclopedia that can be edited by users. Jimmy Wales, the founder of what has become the unrivalled source of knowledge, speaks on how his website is a fundamental part of the information structure in the world.

Jimmy Wales

It’s not yet the tenth day of Christmas and time for lords to start leaping, but one of the great aristocrats of the internet, Jimmy “Jimbo” Wales, can be forgiven for having a spring in his step as he walks the London streets.

A decade after he founded Wikipedia, the apparently limitless trove of online information has grown to 17 million articles and attracts a monthly audience of 400 million users, making it the fifth most popular website in the world.

If Wikipedia — which some estimates have valued at $5 billion — were not a non-profit venture, shunning advertisers and overseen by a charitable foundation (of which he is emeritus chairman), Wales would possess unimaginable wealth. As it is, he is making his annual appeal to Wikipedia users for added funding, this year seeking $16m, in order to maintain independence by avoiding dependence on major benefactors.

Fact file

n Wikipedia is a multilingual, web-based, free-content encyclopaedia project based on an openly editable model.
n The name “Wikipedia” is a portmanteau of the words wiki (a technology for creating collaborative websites, from the Hawaiian word wiki, meaning “quick”) and encyclopaedia. Wikipedia’s articles provide links to guide the user to related pages with additional information.
n Wikipedia is written collaboratively by largely anonymous Internet volunteers who write without pay. Anyone with Internet access can write and make changes to Wikipedia articles (except in certain cases where editing is restricted to prevent disruption or vandalism). Users can contribute anonymously, under a pseudonym, or with their real identity, if they choose.
n Since its creation in 2001, Wikipedia has grown rapidly into one of the largest reference websites, attracting nearly 78 million visitors monthly as of January 2010.
n There are more than 91,000 active contributors working on more than 17,000,000 articles in more than 270 languages. There are 3,507,215 articles in English.
n Unlike printed encyclopaedias, Wikipedia is continually created and updated, with articles on historic events appearing within minutes, rather than months or years.
n Wikipedia is run by Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. is a non-profit charitable organization headquartered in San Francisco, California, United States. The foundation operates several online collaborative wiki projects including Wikipedia, Wiktionary, Wikiquote, Wikibooks, Wikisource, Wikimedia Commons, Wikispecies, Wikinews, Wikiversity and Wikimedia Incubator.
Source: Wikipedia

He made his own small fortune as a futures and options trader in Chicago before even dabbling in the Internet. And, having established Wikipedia with his then partner, Larry Sanger, on 15 January 2001, Wales has since set up a separate for-profit business, Wikia, which carries advertising and caters to more than 100,000 “wiki” groups with specialist interests ranging from The Muppet Show to the cult computer game World of Warcraft.

Speaking at a London hotel, Wales, 44, admits that the scale of Wikipedia’s growth has outstripped even his famed self-confidence. “[With] 400m people a month visiting the site it has become really a fundamental part of the information infrastructure of the world,” he says. “I didn’t imagine this.

It just didn’t occur to me, sitting at my computer, that I would end up travelling all over the world. That bit escaped my thought process.” Before starting Wikipedia, Wales’s only foreign trips had been to Canada and Mexico. Now he travels to speak at global economic events, and his social network includes Bono, Richard Branson, Al Gore and Jimmy Carter.

But as he spreads his gospel internationally he must overcome an unforeseen and potentially damaging misapprehension: the comparatively commonly held view that Wikipedia is in some way attached to WikiLeaks, the scourge of the Western establishment for its publication of millions of confidential documents, exposing diplomatic secrets and covert military operations.

While Wales has been hobnobbing with British politicians in London, the WikiLeaks co-founder, Julian Assange, spent much of last week across town in Wandsworth prison fighting extradition charges.

“The most important message... is that we have absolutely nothing to do with WikiLeaks,” says Wales, who is irritated by the name of Assange’s site.

“What they’re doing is not really a wiki. The essence of wiki is a collaborative editing process and they’re just getting documents from people and releasing them. There’s no collaborative editing going on. The fundamental of what they’re doing is not really a wiki. It’s unfortunate. I wish they were called Open Leaks.” That’s not to say that, as a champion of free speech, Wales doesn’t have some sympathy with WikiLeaks in its current position. “It’s complicated. In open and free societies it’s really important that people who have evidence of wrongdoing have some avenue to make that known. I think that’s a good and healthy part of democracy. At the same time I would echo some of the concerns raised by Amnesty International and Reporters Without Borders, and counsel that WikiLeaks should be careful about the ramifications of what they’re releasing, and work with people to make sure that what they’re doing is providing a useful public service.” Wikipedia, he has no doubt, is doing just that. The site was once widely lampooned for the untruths that resulted from allowing anyone to edit its entries. Wikipedia’s own Wikipedia page contains the acknowledgement that “some media sources satirise Wikipedia’s susceptibility to inserted inaccuracies”. The Onion, the American satirical newspaper, once published a prominent article headlined “Wikipedia Celebrates 750 Years of American Independence”.

Wales believes the quality of articles has markedly improved. This is partly due to protection measures recently introduced for the most sensitive articles (such as the biography of George W Bush), where all changes are subject to a delay so that they can be reviewed by an established Wikipedia editor. “Where we’ve gotten to now is fairness — we don’t get these stories that we are a crazy bunch of people and it is complete garbage,” says Wales, acknowledging that an institution of the scale and influence of Wikipedia is rightfully held to account. “We do get criticised where there are errors and I do think it’s a valid subject, a really important subject, for broad public dialogue.”

Where Wikipedia can improve, he admits, is in the diversity of its contributors. Around 1,00,000 volunteers are involved in editing on at least a monthly basis, allowing the site to operate with only a tiny staff of around 45. But editors are “over 80 per cent male and tech-savvy”, he says, meaning that subjects such as “sociology or Elizabethan poetry” can be neglected.

“Whatever 26-year-old tech geek males are interested in we do a very good job on. [But] things that are in other fields we could do with some more users participating.” So Wikipedia will begin its second decade by making it easier for less tech-minded users to edit pages. In future, users are likely to be encouraged to give ratings to the pages they read.

Not that Wales wants everyone to be an editor. “We’ve never been about participation for participation’s sake. We are trying to build an encyclopaedia.” Similarly, he is unconcerned that growth in new articles on English Wikipedia seems to be slowing. “All the easy topics have been written about. But it’s good to slow down. It’s not about rapidly creating the maximum number of pages — that’s not the point. The point is to create useful pages.”

Wales focus is moving east, in particular to India where in the next six months Wikipedia will open its first office outside of America, probably in Mumbai or Bangalore. Increasing the number of articles in Indian languages is “really key”, he says. “We have 50,000 articles in Hindi and tens of thousands in other languages, so we already have active communities there but we are still very far behind the European languages.”

There is still so much to do. Africa remains largely undocumented by the site, especially in native languages. Around 20,000 articles have been written in Swahili (and a similar number in Afrikaans) but Zulu accounts for barely 100 entries. He cites a need for more contributions in Arabic but is pleased that the linguistic breadth of Wikipedia — which has 262 language editions — gives it a remarkable reach in the developing world.

Where many of the great digital media brands have lost their way — AOL, MySpace, Yahoo! — Wikipedia has maintained its relevance. According to Sergey Brin, a founder of Google, Wikipedia is “one of the greatest triumphs of the internet”.

Wales does not have the same profile as some of the other great online pioneers. He has not had a Hollywood film made about him like the creator of Facebook. But as a character he is more red-blooded than other famous nerds such as Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg. After working as a futures trader, he set up Bomis, a male-oriented dot-com business focusing on “babes” and sport. He has been married twice and has a daughter with his second wife. When he broke up with one girlfriend, Rachel Marsden, she delighted internet gossips by selling off his clothes — on eBay.

His first marriage was to a former work colleague in a grocery store who he wed when he was 20. Back then in Alabama — where he had grown up as the son of a store owner and had spent long hours poring over the Encyclopaedia Britannica — he had the ambition of being rich and living in Britain, seeing a photograph of an English castle and telling his young wife Pam: “Yeah, we’re going to have that one day.”

Sitting here in the hotel drinking from a glass of water, he’s just an ordinary-looking bearded guy in an open-neck shirt. He might not be quite the king of the internet but for millions of users of Wikipedia, there’s something quite noble about Jimmy Wales.

— The Independent