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Metro is not for Maytas
Zardari’s nightmare
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A precious resource
Pakistan’s flamboyance
Good luck, Dubya
The world must forge a new order or retreat to chaos
UK’s second bailout for banks
India is greying
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Metro is not for Maytas As the Satyam scam inquiry has been extended to cover the other two firms floated by disgraced B. Ramalinga Raju’s sons, it would be but natural to scrap the award of the Hyderabad Metro Rail project to the consortium led by Maytas Infra Ltd.
The Rs 7,000-crore fraud could have, perhaps, been avoided had the Centre listened to Mr E. Sreedharan, chief of the Delhi Metro Rail Corporation, and taken note of his objections about the Hyderabad project.
In a letter to the Planning Commission way back in September last year, Mr Sreedharan had warned of “a big political scandal” and lambasted the PPP (Public-Private Partnership) model being followed in the execution of the Hyderabad Metro project. That Mr Raju has been very close to Andhra Pradesh politicians is no secret. They helped his companies buy land and get projects. Satyam money was reportedly siphoned off for mutual benefit. To build the Hyderabad Metro, the Maytas Infra-led consortium had offered to pay Rs 1,350 crore to the government for building and running the Rs 12,500-crore Metro project for 35 years. The rival bidders had instead demanded money for executing the project. It later transpired that the YSR Reddy government had agreed to hand over 296 acres of prime land to Maytas Infra for commercial exploitation. This is what had led Mr Sreedharan to cry foul. But neither the Planning Commission to which he had written nor any other government agency took his objections seriously. The only way for the authorities to wriggle out of this self-inflicted mess is to call off the Hyderabad Metro deal immediately. If it fails to act swiftly before the election code comes into force, not only would the project get delayed further but it could also cast its shadow on the Congress prospects in Andhra Pradesh since it is the party’s government in the state which was involved in Mr Raju’s shady deals. |
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Zardari’s nightmare This is, indeed, most flattering: that journalists are as lethal as terrorists. This rather acute pearl of wisdom comes from none other than the astute Pakistani President, Mr Asif Zardari. It is hard to understand how other heads of government in the world, especially those confronted with the menace of terrorism, missed the point. Here are these hacks trying hard in these difficult economic times to survive by writing news and views that would help the dwindling circulation of their newspapers, when along comes this man to throw a spanner in the works.
Journalists have been called many names, and not all of them printable. One US President is reported to have called them “drunkards, deadbeats and bums”. Pretty harmless stuff, considering that the term “terrorist” is very loaded, particularly when it is pinned on anyone who is bumped off by state security forces in this part of the world. Now, why would a Zardari become an extremist in expression? Is he terrified of the media? Is the media terrorising him? Not in a way that anyone, except the Pakistan President, may have noticed. Of course, the media in Pakistan is pretty horrible: despite the iron hand of the army, bomb-throwing radicals and intolerant feudal politicians, journalists have refused to be cowed down by martial law or the Zardaris of the day. Along with the people and the judiciary, the media in Pakistan is guilty of being firmly on the side of democracy which it fought for. President Zardari might say that democracy is all very well, but only up to a point: the point at which he becomes President. After that newshounds should turn into lapdogs and write only what flatters the powers that be. Obviously, Mr Zardari has been unable to either motivate or persuade the media to project him as the knight in shining armour that he believes himself to be. In desperation, it appears, he has now labelled them terrorists. As long as he does not go any further — such as handing over them to New Delhi for the Mumbai attack — journalists can laugh it off as the product of an overworked imagination while watching their backs. |
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A precious resource While India is aspiring to become a global power, most of its citizens do not even have the basic amenity of adequate water supply. During the last seven years, nearly 1.5 lakh villages have lost access to water supply.
According to the Comptroller and Auditor-General’s report, while 85 per cent of rural India is dependent on ground water, the environmental degradation and reduced recharge have made most underground sources ineffectual. Water scarcity ails most Indian states and is a pressing problem facing both the rural and urban areas. One of the major causes of water shortage has been the diminishing water-table, which has been consistently falling due to indiscriminate water exploitation. In grain-surplus states of Punjab and Haryana, with over 20-lakh tubewells and pumps, water-tables have gone 1600 feet deeper. The ground water levels fall by 25 to 30 metres every year. With ground water levels plummeting, Punjab, the food bowl of India, can turn into a desert. The Punjab government’s curb on the early sowing of water- intensive rice is appreciable, but it has to be regulated furthermore. The state government, instead of following appeasement policies like free electricity to farmers, should find suitable steps to augment water resources.
To arrest the water-table, Haryana is planning a joint project with the Centre. In Sirsa district, a pilot project involving recharge and storage tanks has already been initiated. Indeed, water is too precious a resource and India and its states cannot afford to fritter it away. The Central government has been spending crores of rupees on water conservation, yet little attention is being paid to harvesting rainwater, even though it is estimated that if 5 per cent of the rainwater is harvested annually, it could produce 900 million litres of water. The Centre’s initiative to make it mandatory for people to recharge underground water needs to be implemented with greater earnestness. Concerted government efforts must seek community participation, and the revival of the traditional water sources has to be encouraged. |
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Good music is that which penetrates the year with facility and quits the memory with difficulty.
— Thomas Beecham |
Pakistan’s flamboyance
In the ongoing troubled relations between India and Pakistan, while India has been chary of mentioning even the military option as a response, Islamabad has not hesitated to remind New Delhi and the world of its nuclear arsenal. Such statements are borne out of the Pakistani nuclear strategy of offensive defence where the nuclear weapon acts both as an offensive instrument to hold out the threat of nuclear strike right at the beginning of every crisis, and, at the same time, as a defence against India’s punitive action. Pakistan’s nuclear strategy is premised on projecting a quick climb to nuclear use if India decides to undertake any conventional punitive action against it. This approach reduces the risk of retaliation from India against Pakistan’s sub-conventional conflict by manipulating the risk of war to its advantage by suggesting that an Indian military response, irrespective of its nature and scale, would turn into an all-out nuclear war. While holding nuclear threats, Pakistan tends to forget that if things did not go according to its plans, then actually following through on its threats of nuclear use would be nothing short of suicidal for itself. Given the scale of destruction to life and living that nuclear weapons cause, nuclear use cannot be talked about lightly. Over the last six decades, sights of the horrendous destruction and heart-rending stories of the survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki have underlined the special nature of nuclear weapons, their high destruction potential actually making them militarily unusable. After all, what could possibly be worth nuclear devastation? But many decades have passed since the last nuclear use. Could fading public memory of the destructive power of the atom tempt its use? Pakistan might become a prisoner of, or influenced by, its own nuclear flamboyance. Any loose talk on the use of nuclear weapons must keep the following in mind. The consequences of a nuclear exchange between India and Pakistan of only a few nuclear weapons of low yields of the kinds used in Hiroshima (about 15 kt) and Nagasaki (about 20 kt) could render fatalities and casualties in millions of lives and cause destruction of unimaginable dimensions and proportions. In fact, the death and destruction in the region for several reasons would be many orders of magnitude more than what the world has witnessed in the only nuclear use until now. Firstly, the nuclear damage wrought on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, for all its horrors, was much less than what it could have been for the simple reason that the weapons were not used at the optimal height in the case of Hiroshima, and the topography of Nagasaki helped the city escape far greater destruction. The Little Boy was dropped at a height, which resulted in a high airburst. Militaries are today aware that a weapon of similar yield, used as ground burst (at an optimal height of about 180 mts), would contaminate large sections of the target area and effectively render them uninhabitable for years. The fireball created by the ground burst would suck in a lot of dust, sand and other material, and the radioactive fallout would then spread over a much larger area. Besides, of course, the weapon would have caused direct destruction in death and injuries through gamma and neutron radiation, blast overpressure and winds, and thermal fires over several kilometres around ground zero. Used in the modern mega cities, the scope for death and destruction of even small weapons cannot be underestimated. In fact, scientific studies prove that if targeted at mega city centres, low-yield weapons can lead to 100 times as many fatalities and 100 times as much smoke from fires per kiloton yield as previously estimated in the analyses of full-scale nuclear wars using high-yield weapons. Clever targeting can further enhance the destructive potential of the same weapon. Modern buildings with glass facades provide scope for more damage than traditional concrete structures. Similarly, the time of the day of the attack (on which the wind factor and human congestion of an area may depend) as well as the topography of the land influence the extent of destruction. In the case of Nagasaki, for instance, though the yield of the Fat Man was higher than the Little Boy, the number of dead was smaller because hills surrounding the city shadowed the areas from the blast and thermal radiation. Meanwhile, the fireball in the case of Hiroshima was more violent due to the dry conditions and flat terrain. Two points clearly stand out from the above. Firstly, nuclear use cannot and should not be talked about lightly. Pakistan, for all its nuclear bluster, would find it extremely difficult to actually use the weapon against India without creating a far more unfavourable and life-threatening situation for itself. For all the tardiness and hesitation of action that India normally betrays, there can be no way that “nuclear” use would not severely breach the Indian level of tolerance and result in retaliatory action. And in such a case, the sheer size of the country, geographically and in terms of population, would ensure greater survival of India than of Pakistan after it has indulged in first nuclear use and suffered assured, punitive nuclear retaliation for the act. The second point that becomes clear is that the realities of the region do not demand the creation of megaton-weapons in order to deter. Kiloton-weapons would prove to be more than sufficient to inflict damage that any civilised society would find unacceptable. After all, a nation, or what is left of it at the end of a fierce nuclear exchange, can hardly feel greater pride for having killed with megaton weapons. And for the dead, it would matter little whether the shard, fire or radiation that killed them came from a weapon of a smaller or a higher
yield. The writer is Senior Fellow, Centre for Air Power Studies,
New Delhi. |
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Good luck, Dubya
Edward Bulwer Lytton who, in 1839, had coined the metonymic adage “the pen is mightier than the sword” must have gyrated in the grave when the Angels would have whispered in his ears that a user of the pen in Iraq, Muntazar-al-Zaidi, used shoes instead and gained immediate popularity in the world. After the shoe-gate, the media was electric in showering upon him bouquets or brickbats depending upon their leanings towards Bush-baiting or Bush-hating. I, on my part, give cent per cent marks to George W for ducking out of shoe-line, showing remarkable agility at the age of 62. Or are journalists poor shots even against close targets? And Bush had the presence of mind to joke about the incident: “If you want the facts, it’s a size 10 shoe that he threw. Thank you for your concern; do not worry about it.” How many of us have this wit when the atmosphere is charged? Zaidi (29), knowing where the shoe actually pinched, gave a “farewell kiss” (or slip’ to the outgoing President of the US and became an instant hero in West Asia. A vivacious Egyptian beauty Amal Saad Gumaa in her twenties is willing to be honoured as his wife. His hurled shoes had touched a market value of Rs 48 crore but Baghdad had already dropped this catch as the officialdom there had swiftly consigned the pair to incinerator. Whatever be, journalist Craig Brown’s quote in The Daily Telegraph, “journalism could be described as turning one’s enemy into money” fits into the event. Hurling shoes at someone is considered an insult among the people in West Asia. So it is in India. But is it so in the West or the US? It has long been a custom there to throw an old shoe at the bride and bridegroom when they depart from the wedding breakfast or when they go to church to get married. Now it is more usual to tie an old shoe to their car. To throw shoe at someone there is an ancient way of bringing good luck for the person. The first Black has entered the White House and George Bush known for wonderful gaffes has bid farewell. I wish him good luck in his off-President-ship days in spite of Zaidi’s “Scud” loaded with concentrate of ill luck that he did “Patriot”ably but I would indeed miss the “prudent” explanations like the one on the present market crisis, “this thaw — took a while to thaw, it’s going to take a while to unthaw” coming from the most potent executive in the world. Good Luck,
Dubya. |
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The world must forge a new order or retreat to chaos
As the new US administration prepares to take office amid grave financial and international crises, it may seem counterintuitive to argue that the very unsettled nature of the international system generates a unique opportunity for creative diplomacy.
That opportunity involves a seeming contradiction.
On one level, the financial collapse represents a major blow to the standing of the United States. While American political judgments have often proved controversial, the American prescription for a world financial order has generally been unchallenged. Now disillusionment with the United States’ management of it is widespread. At the same time, the magnitude of the debacle makes it impossible for the rest of the world to shelter any longer behind American predominance or American failings. Every country will have to reassess its own contribution to the prevailing crisis. Each will seek to make itself independent, to the greatest possible degree, of the conditions that produced the collapse; at the same time, each will be obliged to face the reality that its dilemmas can be mastered only by common action. Even the most affluent countries will confront shrinking resources. Each will have to redefine its national priorities. An international order will emerge if a system of compatible priorities comes into being. It will fragment disastrously if the various priorities cannot be reconciled. The nadir of the international financial system coincides with simultaneous political crises around the globe. Never have so many transformations occurred at the same time in so many different parts of the world and been made accessible via instantaneous communication. The alternative to a new international order is chaos. The financial and political crises are, in fact, closely related partly because, during the period of economic exuberance, a gap had opened up between the economic and the political organisation of the world. The economic world has been globalised. Its institutions have a global reach and have operated by maxims that assumed a self-regulating global market. The financial collapse exposed the mirage. It made evident the absence of global institutions to cushion the shock and to reverse the trend. Inevitably, when the affected publics turned to their political institutions, these were driven principally by domestic politics, not considerations of world order. Every major country has attempted to solve its immediate problems essentially on its own and to defer common action to a later, less crisis-driven point. So-called rescue packages have emerged on a piecemeal national basis, generally by substituting seemingly unlimited governmental credit for the domestic credit that produced the debacle in the first place, so far without achieving more than stemming incipient panic. International order will not come about either in the political or economic field until there emerge general rules toward which countries can orient themselves. In the end, the political and economic systems can be harmonised in only one of two ways: by creating an international political regulatory system with the same reach as that of the economic world; or by shrinking the economic units to a size manageable by existing political structures, which is likely to lead to a new mercantilism, perhaps of regional units. A new Bretton Woods kind of global agreement is by far the preferable outcome. America’s role in this enterprise will be decisive. Paradoxically, American influence will be great in proportion to the modesty in our conduct; we need to modify the righteousness that has characterised too many American attitudes, especially since the collapse of the Soviet Union. That event and the subsequent period of nearly uninterrupted global growth induced too many to equate world order with the acceptance of American designs, including our domestic preferences. The result was a certain inherent unilateralism – the standard complaint of European critics – or else an insistent kind of consultation by which nations were invited to prove their fitness to enter the international system by conforming to American prescriptions. Not since the inauguration of president John F Kennedy half a century ago has a new administration come into office with such a reservoir of expectations. It is unprecedented that all the principal actors on the world stage are avowing their desire to undertake the transformations imposed on them by the world crisis in collaboration with the United States. The extraordinary impact of the President-elect on the imagination of humanity is an important element in shaping a new world order. But it defines an opportunity, not a policy. The ultimate challenge is to shape the common concern of most countries and all major ones regarding the economic crisis, together with a common fear of jihadist terrorism, into a strategy reinforced by the realisation that the new issues like proliferation, energy and climate change permit no national or regional solution. The new administration could make no worse mistake than to rest on its initial popularity. The role of China in a new world order is crucial. A relationship that started on both sides as essentially a strategic design to constrain a common adversary has evolved over the decades into a pillar of the international system. China made possible the American consumption splurge by buying American debt; America helped the modernisation of the Chinese economy by opening its markets to Chinese goods. Each side of the Pacific needs the cooperation of the other in addressing the consequences of the financial crisis. Now that the global financial collapse has devastated Chinese export markets, China is emphasising infrastructure development and domestic consumption. It will not be easy to shift gears rapidly, and the Chinese growth rate may fall temporarily below the 7.5 per cent that Chinese experts define as the line that challenges political stability. What kind of global economic order arises will depend importantly on how China and America deal with each other over the next few years. A frustrated China may take another look at an exclusive regional Asian structure, for which the nucleus already exists in the ASEAN-plus-three concept. The complexity of the emerging world requires from America a more historical approach than the insistence that every problem has a final solution expressible in programmes with specific time limits not infrequently geared to our political process. We must learn to operate within the attainable and be prepared to pursue ultimate ends by the accumulation of nuance. An international order can be permanent only if its participants have a share not only in building but also in securing it. In this manner, America and its potential partners have a unique opportunity to transform a moment of crisis into a vision of hope. The author was the US Secretary of State, 1973-77. — By arrangement with
The Independent |
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UK’s second bailout for banks
Frustrated by a continued reluctance to lend, the British government on Monday unveiled its second plan in three months to stabilize the nation’s banks, offering to insure them against big losses on toxic assets in exchange for an agreement to issue loans to creditworthy customers. European banking stocks plummeted on the plan and on word that the Royal Bank of Scotland was on track to record the biggest annual loss in British corporate history — as much as $42 billion. The new bailout measures include boosting the government’s stake in the Royal Bank of Scotland to nearly 70 percent, up from the 58 percent acquired by the state under October’s $55-billion bank recapitalization plan. Like the U.S., Britain is finding that its initial financial rescue package last autumn wasn’t enough to stabilize the banking sector or to boost lending. Since the global credit crisis helped trigger deep recessions in both countries, businesses and prospective homeowners increasingly have found themselves shut out from financing because banks have been skittish about lending. Under the British plan announced Monday to address the lack of credit, financial institutions that want the new government insurance against major losses on toxic assets must agree to issue loans to creditworthy customers. RBS said it would agree to make about $9 billion available to British borrowers in exchange for the state protection from certain losses. But the terms of the agreement hadn’t been made final. In the U.S., the incoming Obama administration will subject banks to more oversight in their use of funds from the government, Lawrence Summers, President-elect Barack Obama’s top economic adviser, said Sunday. The Obama administration also is expected to pursue measures to relieve banks of rotten assets as the credit crunch persists. One idea is the creation of a government entity to buy up bad loans. Prime Minister Gordon Brown said the new British actions, which could cost $100 billion or more, were necessary to avert an even greater economic crisis. “Good businesses must have access to credit. Jobs should not be lost needlessly,” he said. “These are extraordinary times. They require unprecedented action.” Just how poorly Britain’s economy is faring was reflected in a new forecast by a private think tank that said unemployment could rise from slightly fewer than 2 million now — the highest number of jobless workers in more than a decade — to more than 3 million by the end of 2010. Almost every day brings news that another company is set to lay off thousands more employees. Under the new insurance against losses on troubled assets, the banks would “take the first hit,” Alistair Darling, the government’s chancellor of the exchequer, told British radio. — By arrangement with
LA Times-Washington Post |
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India is greying
The ageing of a population has its effects on the economic, social and political well-being of a society. However, India has not so far done much for that part of the population which has moved into its 60s or beyond. Generally, persons who have crossed their 60th birthday are not expected to work manually to earn their livelihood. Superannuation benefits such as pensions and gratuities are available to only a limited number. Large groups, such as cultivators, agricultural labourers and those who had been engaged in petty trades and professions, are not entitled to any such social security from the state. Hence, they have either to depend on their children or continue to work themselves to earn a livelihood. The economic situation in the villages is generally such that a majority of the population, including children and aged people, have to work either to earn their livelihood or supplement the family income. The greying of India is a big challenge to India’s ability to draw up a social security policy to meet the changing needs of its elder population though it would take quite some time before the problem assumes the proportion being experienced by the developed nations. During the 1991 census, out of the 839 million people counted in India, excluding Jammu and Kashmir, 435 million were males and 403 million were females. Of the total population, 6.8 per cent were aged 60 years or over and 78 per cent of the country’s 60-plus-year-olds lived in villages, compared to 74 per cent of the total population. With the passage of time the aged population has been gradually increasing. At the time of the 2001 census, the proportion of India’s 1,029 million population aged 60 and over had risen to 7.5 per cent and 75 per cent of the older population was counted in villages. Improving child and adult mortality has played an important role in India’s gradual ageing. Life expectancy at birth in 1951 was 32.5 for males and 31.7 years for females. By 1980, females could expect to live longer than males as life expectancy of life increased to 54.1 for males and 54.7 for females. During 2001-05, it rose to 62.3 years for males and 63.9 years for females. Further increases are, of course, expected, with female life expectancy projected to be nearly 70 years by 2011-15. Despite decreases in the birth rate, India still has a somewhat young population and a modest proportion of old people, at least compared to industrialised countries. Still, the seeds of the ageing process are already there. About ten years from now, one in ten Indians is likely to be age 60 or over. While the total population increased by 21.5 per cent during 1991-2001, the aged population increased by 34 per cent. Its growth was much higher in cities and towns as compared to villages, being 53 and 29 per cent, respectively. The male/female difference was also quite significant. While older males increased by 27 per cent, older females increased by 41 per cent. Are we ready for such ageing? Today a substantial number of aged people have to work in the primary sector, suggesting that they are forced to work as the productive population is not in a position to take care of its aged population. What will be their fate after a decade or two, when their number will be much more? We have to be realistic and concede that India today is not in a position to put through a comprehensive scheme of social security that can provide desirable old-age pensions to all those who need it. We cannot provide full employment even for the productive population. At the same time, it does not appear proper that the aged among us should be left to fend for themselves or rely completely on their descendants for their needs. The solution may lie in finding some arrangement which will not, on the one hand, force our aged population to back-breaking manual work and, on the other, provide for reasonably civilised conditions where they can engage in productive work suited to their physical capacity. We have to remove a blot on the fair name of India —that is sweating its old people till they drop down —and to evolve a pattern which will not undermine the sense of self-esteem of the aged. Regard for age and experience is an important part of India’s culture. Older people must be made to feel that they are not treated as a burden on society after having served it for a lifetime. It is recognised that development brings about demographic, economic and cultural changes, many of which could adversely affect the elderly. Industrialisation, accompanied by the mechanisation of agriculture, is likely to reduce the opportunities of the elderly for self-support. They deserve to be provided employment outside the traditional areas of cultivation and agricultural labour. Rural electrification will definitely encourage small-scale industries that come between unorganised household industries and large-scale factories entailing migration to cities. Small-scale industries, such as the hosiery industry of Punjab, might be ideal for older workers. Meanwhile, development and modernisation might lead to a weakening of the family’s determination to guarantee support and to maintain traditional personal ties to the elderly. Social trends also raise a number of concerns about the adequacy of future support for the elderly. Increased urbanisation and social mobility, smaller families and the entry of married women into paid employment would leave them less time to care for elderly parents. The writers work with the Population Reference Bureau in Washington. |
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