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Hard to do business Security compromised |
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China overtakes the US
Finding relief from hair scare
Afghanistan before and after the exit
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Hard to do business The
mascot for the recent Make-in-India drive launched in September was the majestic lion but as India has dropped two places to rank 142, according to the World Bank's latest "Ease of Doing Business" report for 2015, it seems more effort will be required to unleash the animal spirits to recharge the business environment. The report ranked 189 nations and it will need great effort for India to get its act together to move up from being the lowest ranked country in South Asia, what with Sri Lanka (99), Nepal (108), the Maldives (116), Bhutan (125) and even Pakistan (128) ranking higher. Singapore, the most conducive business hub, topped the list for a ninth straight year. It takes just two days to set up a business in Singapore, which was ranked as the third most globalised economy among 60 of the world's largest economies in a recent Ernst and Young 2011 Globalisation Index. India's best performance was on the indicator of protecting minority investors and the worst was in the field of enforcing contracts to resolve commercial disputes and dealing with construction permits. Starting a business became easier with a considerable reduction of the registration fee but it also became more difficult due to the requirement of obtaining a certificate for the commencement of business operations. Hopefully, the ranking would improve the next year because of the business-friendly measures already taken by the Modi government. These include extending the validity period of industrial licences from three years to seven years and a single-window labour-compliance process for industries. A system that is a facilitator for domestic and foreign investors requires reforms in labour laws, a workable policy on special economic zones, less tedious foreign direct investment rules and a simpler tax regime, not to mention big-ticket reforms in the land-acquisition policy. While the Centre is proactive, states too need to speed up clearances and cut red tape, litigation and corruption that hold up industrial projects. Only then would it be possible to attract greater foreign investment and secure a higher World Bank ranking.
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Security compromised No
classified information was compromised. There was no evidence of any damage to the computer systems. Officials said that it caused 'inconvenience'. Yet, the recent cyber attack made news, largely because where it was targeted - at the White House. Even as some security experts pointed fingers at Russian hackers, it was evident that the US Government was embarrassed, and it has reasons to be. This cyber attack is not the first audacious success of hackers, purported to be Russian. They have spied on NATO and the Ukrainian Government, and also hit a bank, compromising information linked to 83 million accounts. There is also the worry that the attack on the network of one of the most prominent institutions in the world may have been designed to test the vulnerabilities of the system, as a precursor to further such probes and possible assaults. If so, it may have triggered the opposite reaction, since it has obviously led to a further buttressing of security procedures and protocols. While the White House is a prominent target, its open networks do not enjoy the same level of security as its classified networks do. What happened there is also a warning to other nations, including India, which has fared poorly whenever it has been targeted through cyber attacks. Indian networks are notoriously porous, and there have been a number of significant breaches, some of which have been reported from time to time. The all-pervasiveness of the internet is now an accepted reality of our lives. It is the conduit of our most sensitive information, and for this very reason we have to ensure that we take proper steps to safeguard our interests. Hackers, whatever their origins, backers or causes, cause harm largely by exploiting human weaknesses, be it security lapses or design flaws in software. Being mindful and aware of their activities and sharing information about such attacks with other affected parties will go a long way in thwarting their designs.
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Thought for the Day
Most hard-boiled people are half-baked. —
Wilson Mizner
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Age limit of government of India scholars THE Syndicate of the Punjab University had recently before it a letter from the Under Secretary to Government, Punjab, in the Home Department, stating that His Honour the Lieutenant Governor did not think that sufficiently strong reasons had been urged for raising the age limit in the case of Government of India scholars, from 22 to 23 years. It was stated further that the necessity for selecting students holding the degree of M.A. or M.Sc. was not apparent and that it would seem preferable that scholarships intended to enable the recipients to go through a course of study in an English University should be awarded at an earlier stage of education. The Syndicate was of the view that as the rules, drafted by Government, stood it was not possible to recommend a B.A., if there should be any M.A. candidate equally eligible in regard to the qualifications required under Regulation 4.
Alteration of age entries HIS Honour the Lieutenant Governor of the United Provinces some time back moved the authorities of the Punjab University inviting their co-operation in checking the falsification of ages by absolutely prohibiting the alteration of age entries except in the case of purely clerical errors, as provided by the authorities of the Calcutta University. In the opinion of His Honour the Lieutenant Governor of the Punjab this practice should be made an absolute rule. The position of the Punjab University has already been extremely rigid in the matter. As far back as in 1895 the Syndicate ruled that an age once recorded should not be altered, and since then the records have been altered only in cases where Inspectors of Schools has been satisfied that the school record was incorrect and had ordered the correction.
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China overtakes the US
What
was earlier anticipated by many observers, including this writer, regarding the rise of China as the largest national economy in the world is official now. The latest International Monetary Fund (IMF) data has confirmed that China with 17.6 trillion dollars Gross Domestic Product (GDP) now has a 16.47% share of the global GDP and the US at the number two position with a 16.28% share. Between them, these two countries now have one-third of the entire world's GDP. India, which overtook Japan as the third largest economy in 2011, is way behind in its share at 6.81 per cent of the world GDP. The ten largest economies in the world now are (in the descending order): China, the US, India, Japan, Germany, Russia, Brazil, France, Indonesia and the UK. America has been the most dominant national economy in the world for 142 years. It overtook the UK as the largest economy in 1872. It seems that if the 19th century was a British century, the 20th century a US century, the 21st century is likely to be an Asian or, to be more exact, a Chinese century. America's decline has been slowly in the making but the financial crisis since 2007-08 has precipitated that relative decline. The American intervention in Afghanistan and Iraq has further put strain on US resources despite some American corporations winning energy, military and construction projects in these countries. China's rise has been phenomenal. In 1980, China' share of the global GDP was merely 2% (lower than even India's 2.40%) while America' share was 22.6% which went up to 23.3% (nearly one fourth of the world GDP) in 2000. China's dominance is not confined merely to a top place in the GDP ranking. China is also the largest exporter in the world. It is also the largest importer of many commodities, and it is able to use that economic clout to be a price setter of many products. China holds the world's largest trade and current account surpluses, is the owner of a third of the world's currency reserves and holds the world's largest flow of savings. As the owner of the world's largest dollar reserves, although it owes that position to its exports to the US, it holds the US fate in its hands. China is the biggest trading partner in Africa and has a huge foothold in Latin America, Europe, Middle East and South and South East Asia. Many observers had found it odd that when the IMF first presented data a few months ago which suggested that China would overtake the US as the largest national economy in the world by the end of 2014, China protested against the IMF estimates. China's protest related to the use of the Purchasing Power Parity (PPP) method used by the IMF to estimate the GDP of all countries rather than using the current exchange rates to measure the GDP. It is true that at current exchange rates, China's GDP is lower than the USA's but due to differences in costs of living in different countries, the PPP method is internationally accepted as a better measure of comparing GDPs of different countries. China has finally accepted the IMF estimates. Any other emerging economy in the world, including India, would have celebrated with great fanfare if that economy had reported to have achieved the number one GDP slot but China seems to be reluctant to accept that status. Chinese reluctance is based on the astute realisation that becoming the world's top GDP economy carries many global governance responsibilities too. The recent criticism of China's disproportionately low commitment to fighting the Ebola virus in Africa has brought into sharp focus the responsibilities that accompany the power that comes with achieving the top economy status. China's rise to GDP dominance is a reflection of a wider structural change taking place in global capitalism. The advanced capitalist economies have been in crisis since 2007-08. Although most recently there have been signs of recovery in the US and the UK mainly reflected through the decline in unemployment, the new jobs that are being created are low wage, generally with very low job security and most often part time in nature. In contrast with that the leading emerging economies have shown reasonable rates of growth. No doubt, per capita income in the advanced economies still remains significantly higher than that in the emerging economies. The central question that arises is: can the emerging economies reach the levels of per capita income and standards of living that the Western capitalist economies have enjoyed for several decades? The answer to this question is: no. The reason is that when the advanced capitalist economies grew largely after the Second World War, their growth was not constrained by ecological risks. It is the historical misfortune of the emerging economies that their growth will result in a threat of ecological barbarism due to climate change and global warming. One example should suffice to illustrate the risks involved. A car is considered the most visible and known product that symbolises Western standards of living. If we take the motor vehicle use as a proxy for car use, the most recent data available from the World Bank shows that the US has 786 cars per a thousand population while China has 198 and India has 41. If China (and India) were to have the US level of car use or even half of the US level, it would create such a high level of demand for steel, rubber and oil that our planet earth would not be able to sustain that level of demand. Environmental science teaches us that all produced products eventually become waste which are then absorbed by the environment (land, water and air) and the scale of waste that would be generated by the US level of car use in China and India would be so horrendous that our land, water and air would be polluted to an extent that they would threaten life on earth. China's rise to GDP prominence highlights that capitalism so far has been confined to relatively low-population countries (except the US) and its extension to high-population countries such as China, India and Indonesia, to name just the top three, has such high environmental risks that new environmentally sustainable paths of development need to be worked out not only for these emerging economies but also the so-called developed economies. The earlier models of development cannot be repeated in the emerging economies. The writer is a Professor of Economics at Oxford Brookes University, Oxford, UK
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Finding relief from hair scare For me every day is a bad hair day. Come summer, come winter, come rain or come shine. No amount of grooming will give my hair the silky shine I see in that of others. "You need to have a hair spa, madam." I rush in to take the hair spa, paying a formidable amount of money. The hair is shampooed and combed, with heaven knows what special treatment, and I rush back home. Within the next two hours it is back to hair one, I mean square one. Yes, I used to have very long hair that was oiled and combed very gently by my loving father. Every few strands that came out naturally were looked upon by him with utter sadness. He would always admonish me, "If you won't look after your hair, you will soon lose all of it!" Later in life, with the rush of work, I could not really give time to my hair and got a shoulder-length done for managing it. But no, I could not manage it, because the hair got permed up naturally. "We can do rebounding of your hair. It will iron away all the waves," advised a hair expert. I took the rebounding session. Oh my God! It looked great! The combing became very easy. But come night, I could not sleep, because the straightened hair would bend with the slightest pressure I placed on it. And like all good things come to an end, my straightened hair was again outgrown by new wavy hair growth. Once during an exhibition, an artist made a cartoon sketch of me. I was shocked to see my forehead as a vast expanse. Though I would have treated it as a sign of great intelligence, one onlooker, to clear my doubts, commented hilariously, "Receding hairline!" I was stumped. Now I hardly comb my hair every day, for whatever I do, it remains unruly, dry and unmanageable. But I take relief from my hair scare, when I realise that some hair is better than no hair at all, even though my crowning glory is no longer glorious!
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Afghanistan before and after the exit Please
don't call it our Dien Bien Phu,” Lieutenant Colonel Simon Winkworth, of the Royal Engineers, requested as we gazed out onto a desolate expanse of scrub and sand on which he was going to build Camp Bastion. There were reasons for optimism on that February day, eight years ago, that Britain's Helmand force would not suffer the same fate as the French in Vietnam when a prolonged siege of that base effectively brought their occupation of Vietnam to an end. The British would not underestimate the enemy as the French had done, we were assured. And John Reid, the then Defence Secretary, stated, when the mission was announced by Tony Blair's government, that it would last no more than two years and end, he hoped, “without a shot being fired” in anger.
End to Britain’s Afghan war
On October 26, 2014, the Union flag was lowered for the last time in Camp Bastion, bringing an end to Britain’s Afghan war after 13 years, three weeks and five days. Although the invasion following 9/11 was in 2001, for the UK the war really started in 2006. Until then, five members of the forces had been killed in total, three from suicide, accidental firearms discharge and a homicide respectively. The death toll today is 453; meanwhile around eight million rounds had been fired in combat; and the financial cost of the mission is over £40bn. The US has supplanted the UK as the main combat force in Helmand over the past few years, and the main handover ceremony to the Afghan army's 215 corps was very much an American and Afghan affair. It was held at Camp Leatherneck, the US camp adjoining Bastion; the speech by Lieutenant-General Joseph Anderson, commander of Regional Command South West made only a passing reference to the UK's contribution in the conflict, focusing instead on those of the Afghan forces and the US Marines. The senior British officer present, Brigadier Rob Thompson, spoke of the allies helping “Afghanistan get itself back on its feet” and the creation of the “opportunity now for the Afghan leadership to get into the fast lane and move ahead”. He stressed that “we need to get the story into 2014 space and not 2006 space. Don't see Helmand in a lens shaped by 2006. In Lashkar Gar today, you could easily go down the street. I have seen children playing chicken in the street. I have seen policemen at checkpoints.” In reality all those things could be done and seen in Lashkar Gar, the Helmand capital, in 2006 — before the arrival of the UK task force. At the time, my colleagues and I stayed in a guest house in the city, shopped and drank chai in the bazaar: I accompanied the British commander running a small team, Lieutenant Colonel Henry Worsley, as he went in "soft-skin" Land-Rovers to meet imams and elders in village shuras without body armour and helmets. The suicide attack Then came the first suicide attack in Lashkar Gar. The American private security company, DynCorp, had started carrying out poppy eradication in Helmand, and their contractors took to visiting their former colleagues in the US military at the Lashkar Gar base. A car packed with explosives followed them and drove into the main gate. One of the reasons for making Helmand the location of the UK force, the Government said, was to tackle the poppy harvest: 90 per cent of the heroin on the streets of Britain came from the province, which was responsible for 25 per cent of Afghanistan's opium crop. Sher Mohammed Akhundzada, the governor, was one of the main druglords; the British insisted on his removal, much to President Hamid Karzai's chagrin. Helmand now produces 52 per cent of the Afghan crop. The British military were extremely wary about getting involved in creating another tier of enemy among farmers whose livelihood depended on the crop. As I was leaving Lashkar Gar to fly up to Kabul that February, Lt Col Worsley asked: “Are you going to the British embassy in Kabul? If you are, can you ask them what exactly is the HMG policy on poppy eradication? No one has told us.” By the summer of 2006, the British had more than poppies to worry about. Helmand was aflame, pitted with lots of mini Dien Bien Phus where small UK units were besieged in their bases by the Taliban. General David Richards (now Lord Richards), then British commander of the International Security Assistance Force (Isaf) in Afghanistan in Kabul, wrote in his diary for 3 July: “Every UK position except the main base came under fire last night, but because, mercifully, there were no casualties, it did not merit a mention in the press. The situation down there is serious and we need to bring it home to people”. There were subsequent recriminations. General Richards had wanted to implement an "inkspot" policy in which centres of population would be defended and governance slowly extended. Instead, Brigadier Ed Butler, head of 16 Air Assault Brigade, had sent his troops off to challenge the Taliban in remote areas; but he himself was under pressure to do so from Whitehall after President Karzai's complaint that the insurgents had been gaining ground in Helmand after the removal of Governor Akhundzada.
Arrival of the Americans There were never enough troops on the ground. In Kajaki, I accompanied British forces who fought hard to capture an enemy position and then had to withdraw because it was simply not possible to keep it occupied; within a day, rocket and mortar fire resumed from that position. In Kajaki, we also came across poignant reminders of previous foreign adventures in Afghanistan in a trench: a book by Pushkin and a letter home from a Russian soldier. It took the arrival of the Americans with huge numbers to change this. I went with several thousand US Marines to recapture Naw Zad, along with air support and Leopard tanks from a Danish contingent. A similar-size force retook Garmsir, then Marjah, a long-standing Taliban stronghold. But both British and American casualties continued to mount; the great game-changer was improvised explosive devices, or IEDs, lethal and cheap to produce, accounting for more than 90 per cent of the casualties. In 2010 at Babaji, company Sergeant Major Steve Taylor, of the Coldstream Guards, said when I arrived: “Out of 130 men, we have had four deaths and 35 casualties, four of them have been double amputees, two single amputees. I have had young lads pleading that they didn't want to go out on patrol, but you say, ‘Son, you have to go through with this, this is what we do’. They have gone out and done the job. I could have asked for no more”.
Weariness about the war I soon got a taste of what they faced. During one patrol, Sergeant John Amer was injured by a booby trap as he rushed to help an injured soldier. As we returned with the stretcher party, another IED, placed on a route cleared just a few hours previously, exploded, causing more severe injuries. But, progress was being made, places which had been battlegrounds begun to get forms of governance, schools reopened and businesses began to take root in traditional commercial centres like Gereshk. Afghans would complain of bribes demanded by officials, deaths caused in air strikes by international forces, but very few wanted the Taliban to come back. “It's not just what the Taliban did, it's what they can't do,” Gulab Mangal, a very able governor of Helmand pointed out. “They can't build roads, factories, provide jobs.” But there was rising weariness about the war in America and Britain, not the anger which surfaced over the lies told to justify the Iraq invasion, but questioning of just when it will end. Accounts of rapacious corruption in the Karzai administration added to the disenchantment.
Putting Afghan govt on notice The early announcement of the date for the end of mission by Barack Obama was meant to put the Afghan government on notice to get its act together. But it also meant that the West had shown its hand to the Taliban and their backers in the Pakistani military and secret police. The rush to raise the strength of the Afghan security forces to 352,000 resulted in training courses being curtailed and, on occasions, these forces being thrown into battle before they were fully prepared; the losses among the country's army and police have been horrendously high in the past year. The uncertainty about the future after the international forces leave has also led to businesses moving funds abroad and foreign aid workers leaving.
Promises to new government According to the new mantra in Washington and London, Najibullah, the Afghan President left behind by the Russians, was not just a Kremlin stooge, as the West had previously declared, but an astute leader who had kept the insurgency at bay for some time until the collapse of the Soviet Union meant the money tap was turned off. That is something, we are assured, which will not happen with the new Afghan government of Ashraf Ghani and Abdullah Abdullah who will continue to get the required funding. After the overthrow of the Taliban in 2001, Tony Blair declared: “This time we will not walk away” — as the international community had done after the Russians withdrew in 1989. But that is precisely what happened when troops and resources were moved to Iraq two years later, allowing the Taliban to return. As tumbleweed blows through Bastion, and the last of the kit is packed away, we will have to wait and see whether the West, facing a new conflict in Iraq and Syria, keeps its promises to Afghanistan.
— The Independent
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