Swiss Bank Accounts May Answer Well

Swiss Bank Accounts May Answer Well

Indian Holocaust My Father`s Life and Time - EIGHTY THREE

Palash Biswas


Left opposes foreign investment in India , not in Bengal where the capitalist cum Marxist Brahmin Chief minister never cease pronouncing his gayatri Mantra- industrial drive to continue. On the other hand in New Delhi, confusion and divisions within the United Progressive Alliance Government on the entry of Foreign Directive Investment in retail sector have surfaced once again.The Prime Minister's Office is reported to have pulled up the Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion for not responding to Congress President Sonia Gandhi's concerns.Bharti Group chairman Sunil Mittal said that their partnership with Wal-Mart remained unchanged. A PMO communication said the Prime Minister has desired that the Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion may conduct a study of the possible impact of transnational supermarkets and major domestic business houses on small-scale retailers and vendors.

The first citizen of India is not least confused on the controversy of SEZ.Kalam referred to another controversial issue — the acquisition of agricultural land for industrial development — saying compensation had become an issue of major public concern, and a new rehabilitation policy was on the way which would be backed by suitable amendments to the Land Acquisition Act. The growing pressures on the UPA from the spurt in inflation was reflected in President A P J Abdul Kalam’s address to Parliament on Friday, as he referred to efforts by the government to tackle inflation with fiscal and monetary measures and its commitment to insulate the poor from it. He acknowledged that the rate of inflation had been showing an upward trend, but also drew attention to how the government had tried to lower the impact of global oil and commodity prices early last year.

The US has said it would like India to be more active in concluding the Doha round of WTO, but stopped short of pinning full blame on New Delhi for the tardy pace of the multilateral trade talks.
India "tends to be less inclined to be a proactive contributor... (it) has a very, very important role to play here, and we hope that India will be part of the solution rather than hold back the talks," US Trade Representative Susan Schwab said in an interview. Negotiations on the Doha round that fell through in July 2006 resumed early this month, but Commerce Minister Kamal Nath warned that this round could not perpetuate structural flaws in global trade and subsidy in agriculture. Schwab, however, admitted that tempers have cooled and talks again are underway to try finally to agree on the Doha round of multinational trade negotiations. India is insisting that the US, like the European Union, should offer to cut support it provides to the agriculture sector so that negotiations on Doha round reach a conclusion.

What the Nazi Caste Hindu Ruling classes of an aspiring Super Power as par as US may expect in this scenerio with a drop scene centralised by the protagonist of much hyped Bofors deal Ottavio Quattrocchi?

Swiss Bank accounts may answer well.


Kolkata: Court asks for details on Singur

The Calcutta High Court on Friday asked the West Bengal government to explain the land acquisition process for Tata Motors plant at Singur, a project that has set off a political storm. The court directed the state government to file an affidavit explaining details of agreements with land owners for acquiring 997 acres of land for the project.The order was in response to a Public Interest Litigation questioning the land acquisition process at Singur.

A division bench of acting Chief Justice Bhaskar Bhattacharjee and Justice K K Prasad directed the state government to file an affidavit explaining details of agreements with land owners for acquiring 997 acres of land for the project.

Questioning whether land acquisition can be done at a place simultaneously under two different sections of Land Acquisition Act 1894, the bench directed the government to state the total number of farmers who had received the compensation from the government.

Quattrocchi

How could an Italian businessmen, that too an alleged beneficiary of the Bofors deal, get such a vice-like grip on the swings of Indian politics? In 1999, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) named him in a chargesheet as the conduit for the Bofors bribes. The CBI said AE Services, a firm owned by Quattrocchi and his wife Maria, had received illegal payments to the tune of $7 million from the Swedish arms manufacturer. Four years later, Interpol revealed two bank accounts held by Quattrocchi and his wife Maria with the BSI AG bank, London, that contained 3 million euros and $1 million - huge savings for a mid-level Italian business executive. The accounts were subsequently frozen. Last year, this money was withdrawn within days of a London court deciding that there was no legally solid case against him after a request from B. Dutta, the additional solicitor general from India.

But his real calling card was his closeness to then prime minister Rajiv Gandhi and his wife Sonia. It was the magic key that opened the levers of powers wherever he went, dressed in his savviest Italian suits.
In the nearly 16 years that he represented the Italian company in Asia, he proved his wizardry as a networker and managed to garner as many as 60 projects worth more than $600 million.Life was one big party for Quattrocchi, who arrived in India in the mid-1960s, till a seemingly innocent report on Swedish Radio in 1987 broke the news of hefty bribes being paid to top Indian politicians and officials to secure the Bofors gun deal and rocked the political establishment. The stench of the scandal wafted into the elections in 1989 when opposition parties boomed with slogans of 'Rajiv Gandhi chor hai.' The Congress party lost. And Mr Q, the hustler with a strong survival instinct, knew instinctively that his joyride was over.


Mysteriously, despite being in India at that time, his passport was not impounded and he managed to flee the country. Since then he has been a shadowy fugitive, on the run from Indian intelligence agencies and an Interpol red corner notice.

Quattrocchi did not wield the gun to get his way around the incestuous power set-up in New Delhi. He had other weapons: Sicilian charm (the city where he was born) and cunning spiked with a habit of dropping the names of literally the who's who of India's political and bureaucratic elite. Quattrocchi, the flamboyant Italian businessman who once had a free run of an Indian prime minister's house and whose alleged proximity to the powers-that-be to fix a gun deal led to a democratic regime change in the late 1980s is back to haunt the political establishment here again.

Quattrocchi, who was detained in Argentina early this month, could not have surfaced in the news at a worse time for India's ruling coalition led by Italian-born Sonia Gandhi whose husband Rajiv Gandhi died long before he was given a clean chit in the multi-billion dollar Bofors howitzer bribery scandal. As the government seeks his extradition, Quattrocchi has unwittingly provided the opposition with a live wire issue as the parliament is in session and Uttar Pradesh, India's most politically consequential state, goes to the polls next month.
Meanwhile , Industry hopes to cash in on higher outlay for defence sector. For the defence sector, good news in terms of higher allocation for the past five years shows no signs of abating. This year too promises to be no different. However, spillover benefits to industry, barring the public sector, from the annually increasing military equipment purchases had been scarce. With the Defence Ministry having erected the necessary policy superstructure in the form of a Defence Procurement Policy (DPP) and, more important, inserting an offset clause, the stage is set for the Union Finance Minister to give the intentions a push towards implementation. Though Budget figures are classified, a hint about a higher outlay comes from two indicators. The first is the defence XI plan, which indicates the broad outlay from fiscal 2007 to 2012. The Government has approved an outlay of Rs. 6.5 lakh crores for the XI Plan, which translates into Rs. 1,30,000 crore a year. Given that some of the money might not materialise and the increase over the years will be incremental, the budget promises a higher outlay than last year's Rs. 89,000 crore. Although the Plan outlay translates into 2.33-2.34 per cent of the gross domestic product (GDP), it falls short of the services' demand for 3 per cent of the GDP. The second indicator is the Government's desire to improve the ratio between equipment purchase and revenue expenditure (mainly salaries). From 70 per cent on the revenue account and 30 per cent on equipment purchases in 2001-02, the ratio improved to 60:40 in 2003-04. The aim is to further change the ratio to 50:50 and finally to the world ideal of 40:60.

With the Government showing no indication of beginning an exercise to downsize the armed forces, the one available way to improve the ratio is to give a higher amount for equipment purchases while keeping revenue expenditure as static as possible. The only alternative to achieve this goal is by driving up the total budget allocation for the defence sector till the Government feels that the security situation is comfortable enough to begin reducing the number of men in uniform. The trend of modernising the armed forces is not expected to slow down in the near future and this holds true for all the armed forces — the Army, Air Force and the Navy. Even the Navy, which traditionally received the lowest amount for capital expenditure, the allocation for capital purchases stands at Rs. 16,000 crore annually and is poised to go up to Rs. 20,000 crore a year in the next couple of years.

Basu Versus Buddha

Campaign is on to convince people that agriculture will not suffer, says Jyoti Basu. He declares that the industrialisation in West Bengal is on hold for full three months for the democratic process. basu is not only the nonogenerian ex Chief minister of Bengal, but he had been the master mind to ensure land reforms in bengal. Thus, the Left romps home and rules Bengal sustaining Brahminical system and establishments and enslaving all underclasses. This is the relity of Class struggle and Marxist Revolution in West Bengal.

A three-month campaign is under way across West Bengal to explain to the people that the State Government's move for industrial development would not be at the cost of agriculture, veteran Marxist leader Jyoti Basu said here on Friday. This, however, is not expected to have a bearing on the process of land acquisition for industry in areas marked for setting up of new projects or put on hold the industrial drive.


Left Front chairman and CPI(M) state secretary Biman Bose, however, said there was neither a decision to postpone the industrialisation drive, nor to go overboard with it.

Asked whether the non-placement of the West Bengal Land Reforms (Amendment) Bill, 2006, before the assembly would affect the state's industrialisation process, Basu replied in the negative. "I have heard that it is difficult to place the bill in the assembly. Perhaps it is not coming. But it will not affect industrialisation."

The three other front majors -- the CPI, Forward Bloc and RSP -- had said yesterday that they were against SEZs and the move to relax the land ceiling act to enable acquisition of larger land holding for industry.

The land acquisition process is on in certain places, save at Nandigram in Purbo Medinipur district, Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee said later in the day. Mr. Bhattacharjee had, on earlier occasions, stated that there would be no acquisition of land at Nandigram — the proposed site for a chemical hub — till the people of the area gave their consent. If that was not forthcoming an alternative site might have to be considered, he said. Asked whether the CPI (M) campaign meant that the industrialisation process would be postponed, Biman Bose, Secretary of the party's State Committee, said after a meeting of the CPI (M)'s State Secretariat that neither had a decision been taken to postpone the industrial drive nor go overboard pushing it through.

Had the pro-industry campaign been launched earlier certain "misunderstandings [on the issue] could well have been avoided," Mr. Jyoti Basu pointed out. "But it is important that our party workers and mass organisations now go to the people and convince them that the industrialisation process would not put in jeopardy agricultural prospects," he added.

At the recently concluded two-day conference of the CPI (M) State Committee leaders reiterated the need to intensify the campaign to explain the Government's plans on industrial development.

Differences


Mr. Basu also felt that the West Bengal Land Reform Amendment Bill 2006, which proposes to increase land availability for industry, commerce and infrastructure, was unlikely to be placed in the coming session of the Assembly as had earlier been hoped.

This comes in the wake of differences between the CPI (M) and its three major partners in the Left Front — the Communist Party of India, the All India Forward Bloc and the Revolutionary Socialist Party.

"No decision as yet"


"It is difficult... It [the Bill] might come up this time [at the coming session]," Mr. Basu said. "The Left Front has not taken any decision [regarding the proposed Bill]," Mr. Biman Bose added when asked of its future.

Trinamul threat
Calcutta, Feb. 23: The Trinamul Congress today warned of “all forms of resistance” in the Assembly if the government doesn’t return “forcibly acquired” land in Singur and goes ahead with farmland acquisition elsewhere.

The budget session will kick off on March 8. In the last session, Trinamul members had vandalised the House — furniture were smashed, microphones wrenched and papers burnt — because Mamata Banerjee was not allowed to go to Singur, where prohibitory orders had been clamped.

After a meeting with the Speaker, leader of Opposition Partha Chatterjee said: “We’ll resist the government in every possible way if it does not give the plots back to the people of Singur.” He described the November violence as an “emotional outburst” and said the Left Front should not feel secure because of its numbers.

Army cantonment to be set up in West Bengal: Pranab
Berhampore, Feb. 24 (PTI): An army cantonment will be set up at Nabagram in West Bengal's Murshidabad district, External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee said today. Talks have been initiated by the Defence Ministry with the West Bengal Government for acquiring 250 acres for the cantonment, he told reporters here. "We are looking for land for the proposed cantonment," Mukherjee, a former Defence Minister, said.

To a question, he said the land that had been identified was of mono-crop variety and would be purchased from its owners.

The Centre will also soon launch a drive to enthuse the younger generation to join the army. "Our younger generation will have to be enthused to join the Indian Army and a drive will be launched shortly," Mukherjee said.

Mukherjee held a meeting with officials of the National Highway Authority of India here to discuss the immediate repair of the Ballarpur road bridge near Farakka. A sum of Rs 47 crores has been earmarked for the repairs, he said.


Industry is the future of Bengal: Sourav Ganguly
Feb 22, 2007 - 10:50:43 PM
'I hope that you will help the city to create not only cricketers, but also athletes, swimmers and footballers. Football is game of the city and let Bengal attain the glory of past days,' he said.
With industrialisation the buzzword of the present communist regime in West Bengal, cricketer Sourav Ganguly also fell in line as he advocated industry as the future of the state.

Attending a programme for the foundation stone laying of a Rs.2-billion sports complex-cum-commercial hub at Rajdanga in south Kolkata Thursday, Ganguly said: 'Kolkata is a much developed city now. I believe industry is its future.'

'Multiplexes would come up here no doubt, but our interest is related to the sports complex. I hope that facilities of this complex will be of international standard,' he added.


BENGAL SHOWS THE WAY, A Tehelka story

Singur and Nandigram have forced renewed debate on some of the most burning questions of our time. Shoma Chaudhury travels to the hotspots to trace the roots of unrest and its lessons.

The frontline: A women’s rally in Nandigram protesting against false FIRs and arrests
The first thing you experience when you enter Singur is shock. There are reasons why many critical tensions of our time have come brimming forth in this small agrarian community. When you are there, you understand why. Singur has been in the news for eight months, but nothing in the media has prepared you for the beauty or prosperity of the place. This is not a destitute patch of barren land from which people should want to be evicted for some monetary compensation. Singur is emerald country. Even an urban cynic, unmoved by pastoral idylls, can see in an instant that this is no poor man’s burden. Land here is wealth. Singur is merely 45 kilometres from Kolkata, runs flush along the Durgapur highway, and lies between the Damodar, Hooghly and Kana rivers. Almost every villager’s house here is pucca, a secure shelter of cement and polished red stone. The fields are lush with crop — rice, jute, potato, and a myriad vegetables. And every 500 yards there is a pond swimming with ducks. Beauty never plays a role in the reckonings of macroeconomics. That could be a mistake. Human beings respond to beauty. They defend the things they love. The colour green has meaning in Singur. It lives. It has a weight and texture and smell that is easy to forget in a city. It spells generations of rootedness in land. It spells a self-sufficient way of life that people are willing to fight and die for.

Singur first slipped into the news in May last year. Soon after the Left Front government was sworn into power for the seventh time in a row in West Bengal, the CM, Buddhadeb Bhattacharya announced that Tata Motors was going to set up a car factory in Singur. Bengal has been suffering a stagnant economy for decades. This was to be the proud flagship of a new, aggressively industrialising Bengal. In popular middle-class imagination, the Tata name usually equals progress and growth. But trouble began almost immediately. Rallies, demonstrations, petitions, and then as the government persisted in acquiring the land, escalating tension and violence. September 25 and December 2, 2006, are folkloric dates in Singur. Scores of villagers are still smarting at the memory of the police action, lathi charge, tear gas, rubber bullets and arrests. For us, in our safe enclaves, these words have lost meaning with overuse. Unless one faces the might of the State oneself, one cannot approximate the pain of wood thudding on skin, the searing burn of tear gas. One cannot approximate the fear and anger ordinary people feel on the ground. On September 25, about 7,000 workers led by the Krishi Jami Rakha Committee — a conglomeration of parties, activists, and workers’ groups — had gathered at the Block Development Office to protest anomalies in the disbursal of compensation. In the police action that followed, Rajkumar Bhool, the 24-year-old son of a landless couple, was so badly beaten he collapsed by a pond and died. Several people were injured and 72 activists, including 27 women and a two- and-a-half-year-old girl, were arrested, several under Section 307 of the IPC, that is “attempt to murder.” This incident increased the groundswell of anger. In response, the government clamped Section 144 of the Cr PC on the Singur region. On December 2, flanked by police, as the government began to fence off the acquired land, thousands of people gathered to stop the fencing. They were lathi-charged by the police and the Rapid Action Force (RAF). Women complained of verbal and physical abuse. Sixty villagers were arrested, 18 among them women. All were charged with IPC, Section 307. On December 18, 18-year-old Tapasi Malik’s body was found smouldering in the fields. Since then, Singur has continued to boil, with the government asserting that the Tata Motors small car factory would come up there at any cost.




The colour green has meaning in Singur. It lives. It spells generations of rootedness in land


One might wonder why one should be concerned with local trouble over a small car factory project in a faraway place. In fact, most people in urban India reading about Singur in small news snippets say, “But the farmers are being paid adequate compensation, why don’t they move?” Or as an Indian friend from America put it, even more dismissively, “Oh Singur — that Mamata Banerjee drama!” He could’ve been speaking for almost all of India’s middle-class.

Sitting in Delhi and Bombay and Bangalore, it is difficult to imagine what’s going on in these places. But Singur, and much more powerfully, Nandigram, the other seething faultline in Bengal, are not just about “adequate compensation” and competitive party politics. They are white hot samples — symptoms — of what’s happening in every corner of India. Raigad, Kalinganagar, Dadri, Kalahandi, Kakinada, Aurangabad, Bijapur, Chandrapore, Haripur, Bachera, Chowringa, Tirupati, Mand. The underlying stories everywhere are the same. Land takeover in the name of development or big industry. Summary eviction and displacement. Inadequate compensation. Lack of informed consent. Police action and state oppression. The breakdown of democratic process. And the arrogant sense that unless you have a high, urban standard of living and speak English, you are not a legitimate Indian.

By raising the temperature then, Singur and Nandigram have brought to head several of the most crucial questions of our time. Which path to development is India taking? One custom-built to fit its complex socio-political realities, or one imposed top down? How democratic is that path? Who will bear the “pain of growth”? What will shining India do with simmering India? And most importantly, if our governments do not course correct, how will simmering India express itself? It is undoubtedly true that sections of India have seen massive growth in the last five years. We, in the urban centres, who have benefited from that economic buoyancy, we who are coasting on massive salaries and a giddy new buying power, might find it difficult to see this as lopsided growth, but the most hawkish reformer would find it hard to deny that India’s galloping gdp is being forged on an under-layer of deep resentment.

And lava always finds its volcanic mouth. Visit the first house in Singur and the stories start to flow. Srikant Koley, 31, a swarthy, muscular man, used to own five bighas of land in Gopalnagar. This has been acquired for the Tata project and now falls within the fenced-off area. From being a self-sufficient farmer, he has become a daily-wage labourer. Yet he refuses compensation. Leaning scornfully on his cycle, pointing to the rich vegetable patch around him, he says, “We hear the Tatas have spent Rs 1,50,000 crore to acquire Corus, and here it is using the government to forcibly take our land away on subsidised rates? Are they such big beggars? Our land is our wealth, it is our life’s security. I’ll gift them my land then, but I will not take money for it.” “If I sell out, what will happen to the people who work on my field,” asks 50-year-old, Pratap Ghosh, owner of three and a half acres of land, now fenced off. A giant granary towers behind him. “Who will watch out for the discontent and unrest this is going to create? We are a community, we help each other. We can’t all be absorbed by the Tata factory. If I sell, I’ll just be creating dacoits in my own house. Money is temporary, how long can it last? Land is perennial.”

A reformer for the poor
Friday , February 16, 2007

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Franz Kafka's 'Metamorphosis' has haunted West Bengal chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee since his university days. There are many interpretations of the play, the most popular one, being how a salesman wakes up in bed one night to find himself transformed into "monstrous vermin" or a "bug" or an "insect." Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee does not need to worry about waking up in the morning and finding that he's become an insect. But perhaps he does needs to worry about a different kind of metamorphosis.


From peasant communities, to social activists to eminent historians, the coalition of the conscience that once rooted for the Left, are now ranged in implacable opposition against Buddha-babu. The West Bengal government's land acquisition in Singur and its plans of an SEZ in Nandigram have shocked the supporters of the CPM. How could a party committed to the poor and the marginalized, how could a party that initiated Operation Bargha, that so fundamentally empowered the rural poor, now turn against the very poor peasants who have voted for it year after year? Comrades within the CPM themselves are voicing dire warnings against neo-capitalism, the ayatollahs of the Delhi Politburo continue to issue their fatwas against foreign investment in India and party apparatchiks themselves are making critical films about Buddhadeb. The only thing that silences his critics is his mandate. In the assembly elections of 2006, with Brand Buddha and his new industrial policy very much on his campaign agenda, voters rewarded him with a gigantic three fourths majority, for the first time urban and affluent sections too voting for the Left.


Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee now finds himself cast in the role of agent of change, indeed an agent of metamorphosis. What is the best way to secure long term change and transform a certain type of Bengali psyche that revels in victimhood and forever sees itself in opposition to commerce, in opposition to reform and in opposition to progress? Economists have provided several solutions. First and foremost the land acquisition policy must be re-thought. Agriculture must first be liberalized. Economic liberalization is taking place in industry, but its not taking place in agriculture. If a villager wants to buy and sell land it is almost impossible. Converting agricultural land to non-agricultural land is in many cases illegal. Land is simply not an economic asset and whatever price the farmer sells his land at, he's going to be the loser. The liberalization of industry, as many economists are now saying, cannot take place, unless concomitant steps are taken to liberalise agriculture. And this means scrapping land ceiling laws, scrapping land conversion laws and regularizing land documents. If ceilings on industry can go, if a Tata or a Reliance can grow in an unlimited way, then why is agriculture still being kept tied to laws that prevent an agriculturalist from growing? If land is the only asset of the farmer, and this asset is going to cost five times more in the years then why will he sell at today's price? The struggle for land will continue to be violent and bloody unless the entire legal framework applied to agriculture is changed. Land must be bought from voluntary sellers and sellers will only sell voluntarily if they know they will be richer as a result. As economists point out, simply handing over compensation is not enough. Lump sums of cash are meaningless and are frittered away. Instead just as Buddhadeb is creating a metamorphosis in industry, he must equally create a metamorphosis in land, so the West Bengal peasant becomes the father of the industrialization process and not its step child.


Secondly, land acquisition methods too must change. Acquisition policies can incorporate the following: first leave homesteads intact, that is acquire the land but let the villages remain and avail of the new facilities that industry and the SEZ develops for them rather like the Lal Dora areas in Delhi. Second, lease land from the villagers instead of buying it outright so that the villagers become landlords instead of oustees and benefit from the rising rents of the land. Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee's industrial policy is certainly the only hope for West Bengal but the policy itself must be implemented in a manner that befits Buddha-babu. After all he is a reformer of the poor, not a reformer of the rich. His economic reforms are designed to rescue millions from poverty, not simply contribute to the coffers of industrial houses. There is another initiative that Buddha-babu must take as he embarks on the transformation of society and mentality in Bengal. Just as Rammohan Roy created a new progressive Bengali in the 19th century through an exciting fusion of Christian thought and Indian tradition, Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee has to create a new homegrown "leftism", a leftism of democratic market-friendly rootedness. How will he do this? Reformist chief ministers generally always lose the people's confidence. Chandrababu Naidu, SM Krishna and Om Prakash Chautala were all bundled out of office for daring to reform the economy.


Yet Buddhadeb has advantages that his other chief ministerial colleagues do not. In West Bengal, the CPM is a formidably well organized party machine, a system in which in every village almost everyone from the postman to the seamstress is loyal to an entity they call "the party". Now Buddhadeb should use this party machine to his advantage and push a "New Bengali" agenda. The chief minister should embark on a programme of mass contact, in almost Gandhian style. If the CPM becomes a regional rather than an ideological party, if it transforms itself (invisibly) into a Bengali DMK or Akali Dal, based on identity rather than ideology then Buddhadeb might find that he has far more room to manoeuvre, ideologically. In short for the economic agenda to succeed the chief minister must not sing `ekla chalo re'. Instead this is the time to ride out aggressively to meet the people, to encourage a range of new programmes and campaigns centred on the new Bengal and for using the party machine to embark on a whole new era of populism. Sops, subsidies and gifts to voters have never been the CPM's style. The cadres have ruled more by fear and intimidation than by generosity. But the time of economic reforms is also the time of generosity. It is a time for unleashing reforms across the board not just building flyovers and malls but in the agriculture market, in police stations, in cultural festivals, in the post offices and in the bureaucracy.


The unsmiling stern apparatchik must shed his stern-ness and stand forth as a large hearted leader of the people, a Bengali NTR or MGR, a popular hero, a subaltern who wants to make money for the sake of the village and not for the sake of the city, a towering personality who believes in pragmatism. Certain types of reformers are always popular in India, whether a Krishna Chaitanya or a Ramakrishna Parmahansa, the reformers of the poor. Reforms have to phrased in the language and idiom of the poor and not in the language of dry CII policy. Buddhadeb has the votes, he has the mandate, he has the party organization, he has the personal incorruptibility and now he has the historic moment. He has the opportunity to create a whole new language of economic reform. If he succeeds in doing this Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee will be the first and only chief minister to have created economic reforms in the name of the poor. And that will really be a metamorphosis.


Posted by Sagarika Ghose at 09 : 28 hrs

Bharti retail plans good for farmers: Pawar

REUTERS

NEW DELHI, FEBRUARY 23: Bharti Enterprises' retail plans, which could involve a tie up with Wal-Mart, will be useful for India's farmers, Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar said on Friday.
US retail giant Wal-Mart Stores and Bharti Enterprises are very close to finalising a deal for a retail joint venture, Bharti's chief said on Friday.

"Effort of Bharti will be useful for Indian farmers as they will be able to get remunerative prices," Pawar said after a meeting with Wal-Mart Vice-Chairman Mike Duke.


‘It’s suicidal not to address real problems of farmers’
ABHIRAM GHADYALPATIL

TIMES NEWS NETWORK[ WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 21, 2007 03:23:50 AM]

MUMBAI: The state government’s claim that farmers’ suicides in Vidarbha region are in decline has been called into question by the local NGOs and social activists.