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Junking India Mining desperados |
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Victims of social
practices
Getting the economy
on track
Stories without end
India and US are
natural allies
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Mining desperados
Ban
or no ban, the mining people don’t want to be out of business even if that means killing someone. A constable of the Haryana Police being run over by a truck carrying sand, taken illegally from a riverbed in Faridabad, is an indication of the stakes involved. Courts have banned all mining activity in the state in view of the reckless exploitation of earth that was going on, but that has brought its own pressures on the economy. Construction activity has come to a halt, and, what’s worse, an industry that did not have its hands clean is now turning criminal — thus the suffix ‘mafia’. Organised gangs are bound to come up wherever the legal supply of a commodity in demand is prohibited, be it alcohol, coal or sand. The peculiar situation in Haryana — and some other states — came about because of the government’s failure to check mining beyond the permits. That elected politicians have stakes in mining is not a coincidence. Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka are prime examples of how mining, money and politics (read power) go together. Mining — where money is to be had from simply digging into public land — is a particularly notorious activity the world over. Essentially governed by concessions for a fee, it is very hard to check when a mining licensee digs beyond his permit area. And with big money at stake, whatever little check there may be, is conveniently overcome — if not by bribe, then by murder. Even local communities have failed to rise against the mafia, as they too have been given a stake in the business. In Rajasthan, there are villages no official can dare enter without escort. Mining, a primary sector industry, however, cannot be stopped if the economy has to run. All production begins with mining. In India, it also provides around 7 lakh jobs. To keep it running yet making it sure that it does not harm national and environmental interests, a complete review of the laws governing mining is required. The Centre-state equation regarding this may also need revisiting. The current system of supervising the crucial sector has obviously not worked.
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Victims of social practices IT
is imperative to know if women’s future will always remain framed by the practices of the past. In our patriarchal system, the ritual of a woman’s marriage is termed as
kanyadaan (donation of a girl), unwittingly and unquestioningly. And this ‘donation’ is to be accompanied with loads of dowry — as a kind of compensation to the groom for looking after her for the rest of her life. On the one hand, such practices still remain deeply entrenched in our psyche and social ethos, on the other, constitutional rights accorded to women pose a challenge to these practices. Who wins this battle? Going by what is happening in the panchayati raj institutions, brought about with a lot of goodwill to change the lot of women at the grassroots level, things seem to be defined by the age-old practices rather than a futuristic approach to the equality of genders. Most changes brought about by legislation, without social mobilisation, fail to have the desired effect. Especially, when it comes to gender parity — the more things change, the more they remain the same. Panchayati raj members of J&K are not the only ones whose husbands run the panchayats by proxy, sabotaging their right. The much-talked-about case of Ellen Pao, a junior partner at the venture capital firm, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, who has filed a sexual discrimination law-suit against the company, has it that the same mindset is at work at the enviable Silicon Valley. She accused her male colleagues of not inviting women to big-deal dinners as they “kill the buzz”. In opinion of such people, women do not deserve success because they “remain quiet”. Of 28 lakh elected panchayat representatives in our country, about 10 lakh are women. This is a victory for the 73rd amendment to the Constitution that gave reservation of one-third seats to women in
self-governance. But most of them remain mute — a sad reflection on
our social practices.
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Vision is the art of seeing what is invisible to others. — Jonathan Swift
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Getting the economy on track THE slowdown in India’s GDP growth to 5.3 per cent in the last quarter of the current fiscal year is alarming because the country has come to be known globally as a fast-growing emerging economy. For the past five years it has experienced much higher growth rates of around 8 per cent. Today, however, we can find consolation if we look around the world because many countries are experiencing zero to less than 1 per cent growth, especially in some countries in the European Union (EU). But for India, which is not an industrialised country yet, maintaining a high rate of growth — above 6 per cent — is very important for generating employment for thousands of youngsters who are joining the labour force every year. The decline in GDP growth has been due to a slowdown in industrial growth, which contracted by 3 per cent in March. Growth in this sector (especially in manufacturing) happens to be the most important component of GDP growth. Industrial growth has been falling because of low investments and high input costs. Many industries are not expanding their capacity or making new investments because of rising fuel and raw material prices and lack of business confidence. The fall in investment has also been due to the high interest rates which have prevailed for the last one and a half years. The RBI raised interest rates 13 times to contain inflation. Inflation has come down from the double digit level but is again high at 7.23 per cent and the newly constructed Consumer Price Index (CPI) is at 10.3 per cent. There has been a move from the RBI to soften the interest rates, but even with a significant reduction, the problem of slow GDP growth may not be solved. This is because the global and domestic demand has now been affected. The Eurozone crisis has led to a contraction in demand for Indian exports, though service exports are still doing well. Export growth has been falling and the Commerce Minister has come up with a package of incentives for exporters to make their products, especially labour-intensive goods, more competitive. Otherwise there would be big job losses in the export sector. The incentives have been necessary because of the falling rupee value which, though, has given a boost to some exports, has resulted in a rise in input costs and general loss of competitiveness vis-à-vis India’s competitors. Just as export growth and the global demand are important drivers of industrial growth, the domestic demand is also extremely important for maintaining industrial growth at a high pitch. So far, the domestic demand, especially rural demand, was not a problem and cars, motor cycles, fast moving consumer goods and consumer durables got sold rapidly. But now the steep petrol price hike will give a fresh boost to inflation and people may start cutting down on purchases all round and it may have a strong impact on the demand for goods and services. The rural demand may shrink significantly because there has been a decline in agricultural growth recently. It was 1.9 per cent in April and for two years it has not reached the targeted level of 4 per cent and was around 2.5 per cent. Though there is record cereal harvest this year, other food products like dairy items, fruits, vegetables and pulses have not recorded high productivity — as a result, their prices are going up daily, contributing to inflation. The supply constraint of these food items have to be resolved to control the price rise. If the domestic demand stagnates further as a result of two years’ of inflation and now industrial and agricultural stagnation, the focus of the government should be on boosting the domestic demand somehow. The Chinese are doing the same in the face of falling GDP growth. They have the opposite problem of too much investment and a higher savings rate (42 per cent) than India ( 32 per cent). The government is toying with the idea of increasing public spending on healthcare and pensions to enable people to save less and spend more. Maybe the Indian government should do the same. There is a big need for more private domestic and foreign direct investment also. Our own industrialists have been going abroad to borrow money because of the high interest rates at home. Their external commercial borrowings (ECBs) have created a short term foreign debt of $137 billion which has made the corporate sector vulnerable to redemption pressure, especially when the rupee is low. Though foreign direct investment has been flowing in and was at $36.5 billion in the current fiscal year (2011-12), there is a need for more investment. Many Indian industrialists have been investing abroad mainly through the merger and acquisition route to start manufacturing abroad. Outbound FDI was at $2.77 billion in March. The reason is cheaper operational costs abroad and better infrastructure. To make India an attractive destination for investment for both Indians and foreigners will require quick implementation of all the pending major infrastructure projects and to see that some important Bills are passed in Parliament. The government has to manage the rupee also and see that it does not sink further as it will create problems with imports which will cost more. Already the current account deficit is unsustainable and could reach $75 billion, nearly 4 per cent of the GDP. The investment rating agency Standard & Poor’s has downgraded economic outlook for India to BBB(-) from Stable, because of the government’s huge public borrowings and inability to contain the fiscal deficit. It is the lowest investment grade rating and the government has to work towards bringing back investor confidence by reducing the fiscal deficit to at least 5.1 per cent. There may be a big cut in subsidies and an austerity package has been announced by Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee. Austerity should definitely mean cut in government spending on ministerial and VIP foreign visits and a reduction in expenditure on conferences by not holding them in five- star hotels. Though a freeze has been imposed on the creation of new posts in the government, it should not include job cuts in the public sector because it would bring about widespread protests in India just like in Europe. Joblessness is more dangerous in the Indian context because people do not have any safety net to fall back upon. Important Bills have to be passed through Parliament as it will clarify the position of foreign investors waiting to invest in India, especially in the tribal regions, rich in minerals. With a strong leadership at the top, the economy can be steered away from an impending
crisis.
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Stories without end We, particularly our housewives, are being entertained to scores of feisty serials by a host of TV channels. Often they run to hundreds of episodes and are concluded only when the viewers start feeling totally exasperated with their scripts going increasingly wayward with every passing day. It is eventually the reducing volume of their viewership that decides their ultimate story. The producers, at this stage, quickly bring their serials to an abrupt end on the principle:
“Woh afsana jise anjam tak lana na ho mumkin, use ek khoobsurat morh de kar chhodna
achha” (If it is not possible to take a story to its logical end, it is better to abandon it midway by giving it an interesting twist). If the scripts of these serials are finally consolidated into a novel, these would beat any of our great epics in terms of their size. However, the only problem is that they would not make any sense simply because no cross-thread of cohesion runs through these from the beginning to the end. Their episodes are in the nature of a few disjointed clusters of stories. One has to rip one`s attention apart from the previous bunch to latch on to the next one. Some 30 years back, I read an article suggesting that Rani Padmini of Chittor, who sits on our psyche as a sort of a national heroine, was a fictional character. This gave me a jolt and I decided to investigate her historicity. After a study lasting decades and countless trips to all sorts of weird places, I was able to piece together sufficient evidence to conclude that she was, in fact, a historical reality. Before my book on the subject appeared on the shelves, I was approached by a TV production house to write a serial on Rani Padmini for them. I accordingly produced a five-episode script for their consideration. I was urged to stretch the serial to at least 13 episodes. Inexperienced as I then was, I put my foot down on the ground that the story in that case would become insipidly slow-moving. I did not realise that, in any case, half the time in the episodes would go to the advertising slots. My unnecessary stubbornness finally killed the project. With the hindsight, I now feel that I should not have fussed about the crispness of the story. What after all could be wrong if I had showed a bunch of “sahelis” (female friends) of the superlative lady stripping her for the bath in the water body surrounding her palace. Possibilities in the area were, in fact, endless. Sadly, I failed to seize upon
these.
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India and US are natural allies
India and the United States share a strong commitment to a set of principles that help maintain world security and prosperity, to open and free commerce and to abide by international standards and norms.
My
former boss, President Bill Clinton, I think got it right at the time 12 years ago here in New Delhi when he said, and I quote, “India and America are natural allies, two nations conceived in liberty, each finding strength in its diversity, each seeing in the other a reflection of its own aspiration for a more humane and a more just world.” Thanks to the efforts of past presidents, both Republican and Democrat, our two nations, I believe, have finally and irreversibly started a new chapter of our history. When I returned to government in 2009 to serve as director of the CIA, I found a transformed United States-India relationship. We had acted together to get past our differences and re-establish better cooperation. It required that we get beyond our outdated notions about one another. And today, thanks to President Obama and Prime Minister Singh, along with Indian leaders from across the country’s political spectrum, our two nations now engage actively and effectively as partners on a whole host of bilateral, regional and global issues.
Growing ties President Obama has said that the United States and India will be one of the defining partnerships of the 21st century, and I believe that to be true. Today we have growing economic, social, diplomatic ties that benefit both of our nations. But for this relationship to truly provide security for this region and for the world, we need to deepen our defence and our security cooperation, and this is why I have come to India. America is at a turning point. After a decade of war, we are developing a new defence strategy for the 21st century; a central feature of that strategy is rebalancing toward the Asia-Pacific region. In particular, we will expand our military partnerships and our presence in the arc extending from the Western Pacific and East Asia into the Indian Ocean region and South Asia. Defence cooperation with India is a linchpin in this strategy.
Shared commitment India is one of the largest and most dynamic countries in the region and, for that matter, in the world, with one of the most capable militaries. India also shares with the United States a strong commitment to a set of principles that help maintain international security and prosperity. We share a commitment to open and free commerce. We share a commitment to open access by all to our shared domains of sea, air, space and cyberspace. We share a commitment to resolving disputes without coercion or the use of force and in accordance with international law. We share a commitment to abide by international standards and international norms—rules of the road, if you will—which promote international stability and peace for the world. One of the ways we will advance these principles is to help develop the capabilities of countries who share these values, and India certainly is one of those countries.
Strategic cooperation With regards to strategic cooperation, we’ve built a strong strategic relationship. That is the nature of the relationship between the United States and India. In my own experience, including during my visits here as director of the CIA, my Indian counterparts always offer clear strategic analysis and recommendations. We are transparent. We are honest in our discussions, something that has come to define the strength of our relationship. During my two days here we discussed the new defence strategy that is guiding the United States’ military rebalance to the Asia-Pacific region. We also talked about the value of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) regional architecture in promoting international norms and in guaranteeing freedom of navigation. We discussed Afghanistan, where we have embarked on a transition to Afghan responsibility for security, for governance and for economic affairs. India has supported this process through its own significant investments in Afghan reconstruction and has signed a long-term partnership agreement with Afghanistan. We are making significant progress towards a successful transition. The United States now has an enduring partnership agreement with Afghanistan, and we are committed to the long term in assuring that Afghanistan is a stable nation in this region of the world. I urge India’s leaders to continue with additional support to Afghanistan through trade and investment, reconstruction and help for Afghan security forces. We both realise how important it is to ultimately have a stable Afghanistan if we are to have peace and prosperity in this region. We also discussed India’s immediate neighbourhood. In particular, I welcomed the initial steps that India and Pakistan have taken to normalise trade relations. This is a process that we believe is key to resolving their differences and to helping Pakistan turn around its economy and counter extremism within its borders. Pakistan is a complicated relationship, complicated for both of our countries, but it is one that we must continue to work to improve. And finally, we exchanged views about other key issues, like piracy and terrorism, tensions in the South China Sea, our concerns about Iran, about North Korea's destabilising activities, and new challenges like cyber-intrusions and cyberwarfare.
Defence ties What is it we can do to improve a practical defence partnership? At a very practical level, our defence partnership is coming of age. Expanded military exercises, defence sales, intelligence sharing are key examples of the relationship’s maturation. Last year alone we held more than 50 cooperative defence events. Some of the most significant include our military exercises, which enhance our ability to prepare for real-world challenges. These engagements, these exercises provide opportunities for our militaries to learn from each other. This will sharpen our skills the next time we are called upon to interdict a weapons of mass destruction shipment or break up a terrorist plot or respond to a future tsunami. We’ve also increased our defence sales relationship from virtually nothing early in the last decade to sales worth well over $8 billion today. Finally, in terms of building collaboration, we have some early successes and are poised to embark on technology sharing, co-production and other initiatives that will be a great value to each of our nations. Lockheed Martin, Sikorsky, India’s Tata Group are already jointly manufacturing spare parts for transport aircraft in Hyderabad. This project benefits each of our nations by creating jobs in India and America and strengthening our defence industries. Our shared goal should be to solidify progress and deepen defence engagement and cooperation in all of these areas.
Future strategies So now let me turn to the future. At a strategic level, we have worked together to counter piracy, to counter terrorism, and now we should join forces to tackle new and even more complex threats. We can do more to drive the creation of a rules-based order that protects our common interests in new areas like cybersecurity and space. We need to develop rules of the road in these domains to help confront dangerous activities by states and non-state actors alike. In terms of regional security, our vision is a peaceful Indian Ocean region supported by growing Indian capabilities. America will do its part through doing things like rotating the presence of Marines in Australia. But the fundamental challenge here is to develop India’s capabilities so that it can respond to security challenges in this region. As the United States and India deepen our defence partnership with each other, both of us will also seek to strengthen our relations with China.
Relationship with Pakistan And again, with regard to Pakistan, India and the United States will need to continue to engage Pakistan, overcoming our respective and often deep differences with Pakistan, to make all of South Asia peaceful and prosperous. And to improve our practical cooperation, I do believe that the United States’ and India’s participation in military exercises, which are already strong, should continue to be more regular and complex. And we must move beyond a focus on individual arms sales to regular cooperation that increases the quantity and the quality of our defence trade. I want to stress that the United States is firmly committed to providing the best defence technology possible to India. We are both leaders in technology development, and we can do incredible work together.
Asia at crossroads America’s involvement in Asia has an important past, but it has an even more important future. India is at the crossroads of Asia. It is at the crossroads of a new global economy, and it is at the crossroads of regional security. We, the United States, will stand with India at those crossroads. The United States and India have built a strong foundation for defence cooperation in this new century. My country is committed to an even greater role in the Asia-Pacific, extending all the way to the Indian Ocean, and our attention and resources will advance partnerships throughout the region, including in particular a partnership with India. Our two nations — our two nations may not agree on the solution to every challenge that faces us. And we both face the challenge of political gridlock at home that sometimes prohibits advancing our broader strategic objectives. But I am sure that we will continue to draw closer — closer together because we do share the same values, because the same challenges and threats confront both of our countries, and we share the same vision of a just and stable and peaceful regional order. Our people, our businesses, our militaries and our governments will all be partners in this effort to serve the dream that guides both of our great democracies, the dream of building a better and more prosperous future for our children. Together as partners, we will help one another realise this great dream of the 21st century. US Defence Secretary Leon Panetta spoke at the Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses, New Delhi, recently. This article has been excerpted from his remarks.
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