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Reforms drive Continues without any Respite.The finance ministry, in a big reform initiative, is planning to introduce a comprehensive legislation to overhaul the stamp duty regime in the country that will lead to a uniform rate for all financial tra

2012-01-28T10:17:00.001-08:00

Reforms drive Continues without any Respite.The finance ministry, in a big reform initiative, is planning to introduce a comprehensive legislation to overhaul the stamp duty regime in the country that will lead to a uniform rate for all financial transactions!World Economic Forum Davos 2012: Suspension of FDI in retail just a pause; Sharma to global CEOs

Food, fuel inflation numbers to be released monthly to avoid public gaze

Having lost not even one election in the 45 years of his political career so far, union ministerand veteran politician Sharad Pawar has said he wants to bid adieu to politics now to make way for the younger generation.

Manipur poll: 82 pc turnout of voters; 7 killed in militant violence

Troubled Galaxy Destroyed Dreams, chapter 736
Palash Biswas

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Markets advanced for the fourth straight week as investors cheered RBI's decision to cut the cash reserve ratio by 50 bps and on the back of aggressive buying from foreign institutional investors who have injected $1.54 billion this month so far.Gold on Saturday rose by Rs 105 to Rs 28410 per 10 grams on increased buying by stockists and jewellers to meet the demand for the ongoing marriage season, amid a firm global trend.

The finance ministry, in a big reform initiative, is planning to introduce a comprehensive legislation to overhaul the stamp duty regime in the country that will lead to a uniform rate for all financial transactions!Reforms drive continues without any respite. On the other hand,Food, fuel inflation numbers to be released monthly to avoid public gaze!

Meanwhile, in Davos,India today assured global CEOs that its reforms agenda is well on course and the decision to put on hold FDI in multi-brand retail is "just a pause", forced by compulsions of coalition politics. Indian Trade Minister Anand Sharma put up a furious defence of his country on Friday, demanding "why are you picking on India" when asked about concerns in Davos over the emerging giant.

The government is readying the stage for reform of the sugar industry, one of industrial sector still under tight state control. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has set up an expert panel under his key economic aide C Rangarajan to chalk out the policy ...

A firm assurance in this regard was given by Commerce and Industry Minister Anand Sharmawhen he met top management functionaries of global retail chains Walmart and the Metro Group on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum meeting here.

This is for the first time that senior management of the two retailers met any minister after Indian government suspended the controversial decision to open Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) in multi-brand retail on November 24.

Sharma said the decision to open 51 per cent FDI in multi-brand retail "could not be implemented because of the compulsions of coalition politics as also partisan opposition.

"It is just a pause. The decision has only been put on a temporary halt."

He said while the government has restarted consultations taking on board concerns of agrarian states, only the bona fide objections would be taken into account.

His assurance seems to have gone down well with both Walmart and Metro.

"If retail FDI happens, it would be good for the entire trade and the Indian government seems to be confident about that," Frans W H Muller, Member of the management board of German-based Metro Group said.

Walmart Executive Vice-President (Corporate Affairs) Leslie Dach said "We are hopeful about the government allowing FDI in retail. India is a very big growth market for us. We do understand that things take some time in democracy. Even the US similar things do happen."

Having lost not even one election in the 45 years of his political career so far, union ministerand veteran politician Sharad Pawar has said he wants to bid adieu to politics now to make way for the younger generation.

"It's enough... It is the responsibility of people like me to encourage younger people and younger leadership to continue to work in (his) political party," Pawar, the union agriculture minister, said in a TV interview.

Having won the Lok Sabha elections eight times since he first entered the Indian parliament in March 1985, the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) chief said he won't be contesting in the next general polls scheduled in 2014.

"I don't want to contest (the) next Lok Sabha elections because this year I will complete 45 years. I entered politics in 1967 since then continuously I am getting elected... Fortunately I never lost the elections," he told CNN-IBN.

Pawar founded the NCP in 1999 after breaking away from the Congress. He has held the posts of defence minister and has been chief minister of Maharashtra thrice.

His daughter Supriya Sule is already in active politics and is Lok Sabha MP from Maharashtra.

His nephew Ajit Pawar is also a prominent politician in the state and is the deputy chief minister of the state.

But the 72-year-old politician said it was unlikely that some one from his family will succeed him as the head of the NCP.

"I don't believe in projecting anybody. The NCP does not believe in dynastic politics. We have a good team in the NCP. We'd like to encourage good team and ultimately they have to prove (themselves)," he said.

Manipur poll: 82 pc turnout of voters; 7 killed in militant violence

IMPHAL/NEW DELHI: An estimated 82 per cent of the electorate today exercised their franchise inManipur assembly elections which was marred by militant violence that claimed seven lives, including that of an ultra.

Chief Electoral Officer P C Lawmkunga said as per preliminary official reports, 82 per cent of the 17.50 lakh electorate cast their votes even as details from the state's nine districts were awaited.

Deputy Election Commissioner Alok Shukla said in New Delhi that a person, posing as a voter, entered a polling station in an interior area in Sugnu assembly constituency in Chandel district at around 12:30 and started firing indiscriminately, killing a CRPF man, three polling persons and a voter on the spot.

Also Check: Battle Ground 2012

An injured voter, who was taken to Imphal in a helicopter, succumbed to bullet injuries. The shooter, who is yet to be identified, was also gunned down by CRPF personnel posted at the polling booth.

Bombs suspected to have been planted by militants were seized and defused before the start of polling in Khurai Chingangbam area, Sawombung High School, Khomidok in Imphal East district and Naoremthong High School area in Imphal West district, official sources said.

There were also reports from six other places in the state where mobs damaged Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs) and in another incident miscreants snatched an EVM, said Shukla.

A total of 12,967 polling personnel were deployed for the elections at 2,357 polling stations.

Around 350 companies of security personnel including 270 central para military force personnel were deployed besides the state armed police. A helicopter was also kept on standby for emergencies.

The run-up to the election witnessed several militant attacks.

A coordination committee of seven major militant groups had called for a ban on all election meetings and campaigning by Congress candidates.

Congress and its partner CPI, which comprise the ruling Secular Progressive Front, fought separately. While Congress contested all the 60 seats, CPI did so in 24.

Trinamool Congress, which has one legislator and is an ally of Congress in West Bengal contested in 47 seats on its own.

Peoples Democratic Front, an opposition five-party alliance comprising Manipur Peoples Party, NCP, CPI-M, Janata Dal (U) and RJD, contested 43 seats.

BJP fielded candidates in 19 seats and Manipur State Congress Party (MSCP) in 34. Manipur unit of Nagaland-based party, Naga Peoples Front (NPF), contested in 12 constituencies in the hills.

28 JAN, 2012, 05.31AM IST, ET BUREAU

Budget 2012: Finance ministry plans new law for uniform stamp rate for all deals

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It is time for second generation of financial services

The finance ministry, in a big reform initiative, is planning to introduce a comprehensive legislation to overhaul the stamp duty regime in the country that will lead to a uniform rate for all financial transactions.

"The legislation has gone to law ministry for vetting... We are looking at bringing it in the budget session," said a finance ministry official.

For most securities transactions, both in the futures and cash segments, the finance ministry has proposed a rate of 0.003 %, from the present 0.005%. For currency derivatives, the rate could be reduced to 0.0001% to boost trade in this segment.

A high stamp duty tends to discourage secondary market trading in financial assets because of the wafer thin margins these markets function on. The move is in line with finance minister Pranab Mukherjee's budget announcement.

States have in principle agreed to the changes in theIndian Stamp Duty Act and the new Act will allow stock exchanges to collect stamp duty from the purchaser and pass it on to the respective state government.

The reform of century-old Indian Stamp Act, enacted in 1899, is important as the stamp duty has been kept out of the proposed goods and services tax, that seeks to replace a slew of indirect taxes.

Stamp duty is a form of tax that is usually levied on documents and some transactions such as buying and selling of land.

The new framework for stamp duty, which has been finalised after several rounds of discussions spanning more than six years, seeks to drop several archaic provisions. The mechanism for collection of stamp duty will also be streamlined in line with this reform.

Under the proposed system, stock exchanges will collect stamp duty from the purchaser of a financial security and pass it on to the state government entitled to the revenue based on the location of the purchaser.

Currently, brokers collect stamp duty on any sale or purchase of shares or financial instruments and deposit it with the state governments.

A high-level committee headed by RH Patil, which submitted its reports in December 2005, had suggested a blueprint for breathing life into the corporate bond market by prescribing a low uniform stamp levy.

http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/economy/policy/budget-2012-finance-ministry-plans-new-law-for-uniform-stamp-rate-for-all-deals/articleshow/11658785.cms

Food, fuel inflation numbers to be released monthly to avoid public gaze
28 JAN, 2012, 05.21AM IST, RISHI SHAH,ET BUREAU

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The government will stop releasing weekly food andfuel inflation numbers from next month to tone down expectations of price rise and keep public glare off the politically sensitive issue.

"It was felt that weekly inflation numbers were fanning inflationary pressures," said a senior government official. A higher figure for a particular week led to expectations of further price rise the next week, he said.

However, economists felt that weekly estimates kept inflation under the spotlight.

Food inflation numbers also tended to move markets, affecting government debt yields.

"There would be less speculation in the markets and the focus would also be brought off inflation to a certain extent," said Madan Sabnavis, chief economist at CARE Ratings.

The government had stopped releasing weekly numbers for the overall WPI in October 2010. Data on primary articles and fuel and power were being released weekly. They have a weight of 20.12% and 14.91% in the overall wholesale price index, respectively. But data on manufactured products, which have a weight of almost 65% in the index, is released monthly.

"The positives of the move outweigh the negatives," said Saugata Bhattacharya, senior vice president and economist at Axis Bank.

Monthly release of inflation numbers will help the government compile more authentic and up-to-date price data without having to frequently update previous figures. Data volatility is also likely to come down as a result.

"The data would end up being more robust," said Sabnavis.

The government was uneasy about frequent WPI data revisions as there were reports of values being repeated owing to unavailability of data.

Inflation numbers, released in the middle of every month, come with a lag of two weeks.

http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/economy/policy/food-fuel-inflation-numbers-to-be-released-monthly-to-avoid-public-gaze/articleshow/11658706.cms

26 JAN, 2012, 04.26AM IST, BILL GATES,

Innovation in agriculture, vaccine research can wipe out hunger and disease

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Farming is a great example of something critical to the poor that gets very little attention in rich countries. Back in the 19th century, the majority of people in the US worked in agriculture.

Now less than 2% of the workforce is involved in farming, and less than 15% of US consumer spending goes to food. Farming issues rarely make the news. The exceptions are when food is contaminated, when government subsidies are being debated, or when there is a famine like the current one in the Horn of Africa.

Despite the rich world's distance from farming, food-related issues are important for all of us. In the 1960s and 1970s, when I was in high school, people worried that we simply couldn't grow enough food to feed everyone in the world. A popular book that came out in 1968, The Population Bomb by Paul Ehrlich, began with the statement, "The battle to feed all of humanity is over.

In the 1970s, hundreds of millions of people will starve to death in spite of any crash programmes embarked upon now. At this late date, nothing can prevent a substantial increase in the world death rate..." Fortunately, due in large part to the Green Revolution, this dire prediction was wrong.

But the world's success in warding off famine led to complacency. Over time, governments in both developed and developing countries focused less on agriculture. Agricultural aid fell from 17% of all aid from rich countries in 1987 to just 4% in 2006. In the last 10 years, demand for food has gone up because of population growth and economic development: as people get richer, they tend to eat more meat, which indirectly raises demand for grain.

Supply growth has not kept up, leading to higher prices. Meanwhile, the threat of climate change is becoming clearer. Preliminary studies show that the rise in global temperature alone could reduce the productivity of main crops by over 25%.

Climate change will also increase the number of droughts and floods that can wipe out an entire season of crops. More and more people are raising familiar alarms about whether the world will be able to support itself in the future, as the population heads toward a projected 9.7 billion by 2050.

Ibelieve these new dire predictions can be wrong, too. We can help poor farmers sustainably increase their productivity so they can feed themselves and their families. By doing so, they will contribute to global food security. But that will happen only if we prioritise agricultural innovation.

When I was in India in March last year, I met about 20 rice farmers who had recently switched to a new rice seed called Swarna-Sub1, which is both very productive and can survive in flooded fields. Their rice fields get flooded every three to four years, and in past flood years, they ended up with almost no food to eat.

Now, these farmers can feed their families no matter the weather. Currently, four million tonnes of rice is lost to flooding every year in Bangladesh and India. But as farmers in the region adopt Swarna-Sub1, they will grow enough extra rice to feed 30 million people.

Fortunately, there are reasons to believe that the chronic underfunding of research in agriculture is starting to change - and that there will be more breakthroughs like Swarna-Sub1.

One approach that looks promising is innovative partnerships with private companies where the companies donate proprietary assets in which they have invested hundreds of millions of dollars, and their expertise, to help make appropriate varieties available royalty-free to poor farmers.

Other key partners are rapidly-growing countries like Brazil and China, which bring not only new resources but also deep experience in helping poor farmers at home. Brazil is a leader in soybeans, cassava and tropical soils. China is a leader in rice and farmer education. This year, the foundation entered into model agreements to work with both countries.

The foundation's top priority remains helping to complete the eradication of polio, perhaps the best-known vaccine-preventable disease in the world. I spend a lot of my time learning about the disease and being an advocate for doing what it takes to end polio. At the start of 2011, polio virus was still spreading in three areas: 10 countries in Africa (with viruses that originated primarily in Nigeria), Afghanistan and Pakistan, and India.

Now India has reached a huge milestone. The country had only one case in 2011, which was recorded on January 13 in West Bengal. So, on January 13, 2012, India celebrated its first year of being polio-free. The challenge in India was mind-boggling. It's hard to imagine how you would design a polio campaign that reached every Indian child. More than a billion people live in the country.

http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/economy/indicators/innovation-in-agriculture-vaccine-research-can-wipe-out-hunger-and-disease/articleshow/11635019.cms

27 JAN, 2012, 01.12AM IST, SMRITI SETH,ET BUREAU

Food Bill, FDI in retail, NPS: UPA's litany of policy errors raises fears of License Raj

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NEW DELHI: On January 24, the Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs (CCEA) cleared the Cairn-Vedanta deal for the second time. The double-barrelled clearance --- the first CCEA nod was on June 30 last year --- was triggered after the home ministry raised concerns over Vedanta's 'human rights' records, while vetting its security credentials.

But the instances cited by the home ministry --- according to media reports these were disapproving noises from the Church of England and Norway's sovereign wealth fund --- have been in the public domain for years, leaving many puzzled. The actual deal was completed on December 8, 2011 and both companies had made public announcements to the exchanges.

The UPA government, battered by scandals and accusations of policy paralysis, has often struggled to fashion a response. But, as in the case of Vedanta, where the episode became part of the policy paralysis and regulatory uncertainty narrative that has bedevilled its second term, the problems are often self-inflicted.

Far too often its instinct has been reach back into the toolkit of the 1970s raising the possibility, say some economists and industry officials, to the return of the license-permit raj, at least in some sectors.

That era of growth-sapping controls, scrapped by then finance minister Manmohan Singh in the famous 1991 budget, is not about to make a full-fledged comeback. Yet some proposals which are in the works, if implemented, would mean a significant increase in state control in parts of the economy.

Flirting With Controls

Mining and pharmaceuticals are two sectors where the government has been conspicuously flirting with the possibility of reintroducing controls.

Take mining, a sector where alleged violation of environmental norms and corrupt practices has attracted the ire of the Supreme Court and has prompted state-level probes in Karnataka, Orissa and Goa. In response the ministry of commerce has recently proposed that export of certain kinds of iron ore be canalized, or executed through state-owned MMTC.

This is being touted as a measure to check illegal mining, but critics say it marks a return to the permit raj where inspectors decides who gets to export and when.

"The government is turning the clock backwards. We have come far from the control days and this step will not only empower the public sector with unwarranted clout but also hamper the mining industry", said H Noor Ahmed, Managing Partner, Trident Minerals and vice president of the Federation of Indian Mineral industries.

Analysts are also sceptical of the impact of such controls to solve the problem, illegal mining in this case. "Canalising of iron ore exports is a step backwards and will put more pressure on an already stressed mining industry while failing to control illegal mining", Kalpana Jain, senior director (mining), Deloitte.

In some cases, the fondness for physical controls are evidently knee-jerk reactions to scams or strictures from regulators and auditors and are eventually squelched by higher authorities.

The coal ministry recently barred private companies from producing extra coal at captive mines after the National Auditor reportedly criticised a government decision allowing Reliance Power to use excess coal from mines allocated for one power plant for another.

The ministry's directive, which was put on its website, has since been put on hold after intervention by the powerful Prime Minister's Office (PMO). The coal ministry's action, analysts say, was prompted by intense fear of the CAG, whose report claiming huge losses to the exchequer led to the arrest of former minister A Raja and former bureaucrat Siddharth Behura.

Pharma Policy

The origins of what most mainstream economists would describe as retrograde policies in various sectors are manifold, a mixture of populism and judicial proceedings.

In case of the pharmaceutical sector the government has outlined plans to bring 348 drug formulations under price control, according to a draft proposal released in October 2011.

At present 74 drugs are under control, but the new regime proposes to cover 60% of the Indian pharma market. The policy, if implemented, would reverse two decades of liberalisation in which the span of price control has been gradually reduced.
http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/economy/policy/food-bill-fdi-in-retail-nps-upas-litany-of-policy-errors-raises-fears-of-license-raj/articleshow/11643766.cms

27 JAN, 2012, 02.08PM IST, NITIN SETHI,TNN

Poor labourers pledged Rs 100, get Re 1 for day's work under NREGS

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Supreme Court upholds verdict matching NREGA pay with state wages

NEW DELHI: Poor workers are being paid wages as low as Rs 1-10 for a hard day's labour in states like Rajasthan and Karnataka under the Mahatma GandhiNational Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme which promises a real wage of Rs 100 per day.

Documents with TOI show that many desperate, poorlabourers across the country are being cheated of their hard earned money and the much publicized guaranteed daily wage of Rs 100 on many occasions remains a mere illusion.

The scheme legally entitles any citizen in the hinterland to demand work for 100 days from the government and be paid Rs 100 per day for the work rendered. But documents with TOI show how rules of the scheme have allowed government officials to cheat the people of their day's entitlement.

In practice, the promise of guaranteed wage has been supplanted by non-transparent efficiency norms which allow the executing authorities to use discretion to hammer down the wages.

De-linking the payment under the scheme from minimum wages keeps the wages low to begin with. On top of it, linking it to non-transparent efficiency norms has ensured that the poor can be robbed of their wages under MNREGA, and that it can be done safely under the techno-legal loopholes passing off the inefficiency of the bureaucracy to the poor at the latter's cost.

Initial reports had suggested just a one-off case of Re 1 being paid to several in Tonk district in Rajasthan. But trawling through hundreds of muster rolls in the state has shown that this is an endemic fraud being perpetrated on the poor in Rajasthan.

A survey of 249 panchayats in 33 districts of the state carried out by Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathan has shown that in 37 panchayats, some people were paid wages between Rs 1-10 in 2011-12. Another 40 panchayats paid between Rs 11-20 to people employed to carry out rural development work under the scheme. In only 7 of the 249 panchayats, scrutinized workers ever got between Rs 91-100 per day for their work in 2011-12.

The story is as bad in Karanataka. A scrutiny of the muster rolls shows that in Bapur village of Sadapur panchayat in Raichur, people got paid anywhere from Rs 2-11 for carrying out work under the scheme. It is not a one-off case in Karnataka either. The meagre wages have been paid in several districts over the last year, documents with TOI show.

The shocking discrepancy between the promise and the reality is a pointer to how the details of a scheme can end up defeating the objective it was meant for. In this case, while Rs 100 is publicized as the guaranteed pay, it is actually the maximum the poor can get and it entirely depends on the district administration if the worker will get it at all.

Under the scheme, the administration first assesses how much work was done in the day by the labourer on a particular project. This technical assessment takes place days after the labourer has completed his work. The labourer has no room to dispute the assessment and is, thus forced, to settle for whatever has already been put in the banks. More so, because in many cases, the payments reach months after completion of the project.
http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/politics/nation/poor-labourers-pledged-rs-100-get-re-1-for-days-work-under-nregs/articleshow/11645672.cms

Tough US strictures on Ranbaxy

OUR SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT

*

Mumbai, Jan. 27: The US Department of Justice has virtually hurled the book at Ranbaxy Industries as it filed a consent decree in the district court of Maryland as a first step towards resolving a four-year long investigation by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) that uncovered serious irregularities at the drug maker's plants in India and the US.
The consent decree was filed at the request of the FDA.
Investigations by the US drug regulator showed that Ranbaxy had falsified drug tests and data, failed to keep proper records to certify that the drugs had been made properly at its plants and did not investigate evidence that showed that the drugs did not meet specifications.
Last month, Ranbaxy had signed a consent decree with the FDA in which the drug maker agreed to rectify its conduct and clean up its act without admitting its guilt.
It also announced then that it intended to make a provision of $500 million to "resolve all potential civil and criminal liabilities" arising from the four-year-long investigation by the US regulator.
A consent decree is a document that consists of an agreement between parties following which there is a withdrawal of a criminal charge or an end to litigation.
If Ranbaxy was hoping to get off lightly after signing the consent decree and creating a fund to pay out penalties, it wasn't to be.
The US Department of Justice has set extremely tough terms under the consent decree that have the potential to gouge more out of the company in the form of lost business opportunities, with analysts estimating the total impact at over $700 million.
The consent decree sets out stiff terms and conditions that Ranbaxy must comply with before three plants in India and one in the US are allowed to start making drugs for the US markets.
"This action against Ranbaxy is groundbreaking in its international reach — it requires the company to make fundamental changes to its plants in both the US and India," said Tony West, assistant attorney- general for the Justice Department's civil division. "Our commitment to ensuring that the drugs the American people rely on are safe, effective and manufactured according to the FDA's standards extends beyond our borders."
The ferocity of the clampdown on Ranbaxy sent its stock plunging 7 per cent on the BSE today and brokerages piled on the misery with a raft of downgrades.
The dispute with the US FDA dates back to 2008 when the regulator barred exports of around 30 drugs from two Indian facilities of Ranbaxy to the US citing deviation from good manufacturing practices.
Marketmen said the negative reaction to the development came as it was felt that Ranbaxy might at best have to pay up to $500 million.
"Nobody had anticipated such tough conditions. In such consent decree cases, the resolution is not quick and sometimes it can drag on for years," an analyst added.
Under the terms of the consent decree, Ranbaxy will not be able to sell drugs (in the US) made from its four facilities until these units meet the US manufacturing and quality standards. These are Paonta Sahib, Batamandi, Dewas facilities in India and Gloversville in the US. Moreover, Ranbaxy will have to take a number of actions at these plants to ensure that such violations do not occur again.
It will also have to hire an outside expert to conduct a detailed internal review at the affected facilities and to audit applications containing data from those facilities.
In a press statement, the DoJ said Ranbaxy would have to withdraw any applications found to contain false data, set up a separate office of data reliability within and hire an outside auditor to audit the affected facilities in the future.
What worried the market most was that Ranbaxy will give up its 180-day marketing exclusivity for three pending generic drug applications, thus losing potential sale revenues. Moreover, the company will do the same for other applications if it did not meet certain requirements by specified dates.
Although Ranbaxy did not disclose the identities of the three generic drugs, Sushant Dalmia at PINC Research said they could be generic versions of Provigil, Diovan and Valcyte that had potential sales of around $186 million. Dalmia today downgraded the stock to a "sell".
The consent decree also contains liquidated damages provisions. Ranbaxy will have to pay $15,000 in liquidated damages for each day it violates the law or the decree at the facilities covered by the decree and an additional $15,000 for each overall violation of the law and the decree.
The decree also states that if Ranbaxy distributes any drug from the facilities covered by the decree, it shall shall pay liquidated damages equal to two times the retail value of such drug, not to exceed $10 million dollars in any one calendar year.
The decree also permits FDA to order additional Ranbaxy facilities to be covered by the decree if the agency discovers through an inspection that the facility is not operating in compliance with the law or has serious data integrity issues.
Ranbaxy tried to put on a brave face after the latest setback.
"Today's announcement is the next step in the process of finalising our agreement with the FDA to resolve this legacy issue," said Arun Sawhney, Ranbaxy CEO & managing director.

More stories in Business

http://www.telegraphindia.com/1120128/jsp/business/story_15061425.jsp

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'Next 4 billion nations' will power business opportunities: PwC study

OUR BUREAU

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MUMBAI, JAN. 28:

Businesses around the world are now looking at the "Next 4 Billion" nations for growth, owing to the global economic slowdown. The nations included in this category are India, China, Indonesia and parts of Africa and Latin America, according to a PricewaterhouseCoopers (PWC) India report.

The report, titled "Profitable growth strategies for the Global Emerging Middle – Learning from the 'Next 4 Billion' markets", indicates that the next wave of business opportunity will come from the Global Emerging Middle' (GEM) segment.

The GEM segment in these nations, which lies just below the middle segment, constitutes a significant, expanding and largely untapped market, said the report.

The above mentioned nations have an average per capita income of between $1,000 and $4,000 a year. They are home to 4 billion people, or more than half of the world's total population of 7 billion.

"The GEM will represent a combined annual market in excess of $6 trillion by 2021. In India alone, the segment is expected to cross the $1 trillion threshold by 2021 as its ranks swell to 570 million, from 470 million in 2010," said the report.

THREE POINTS

The report has outlined three main points that companies should keep in mind to succeed in the GEM segment. They should have a new value proposition which understands the aspirations and unique trade-offs of the segment. Companies should also develop an innovative business model which they can use to address this segment profitably. Another factor that companies need to adjust to is the shift in mindset.

This requires both internal as well as an external shift. Companies would need to have a strong leadership presence, a bold approach that embraces disruptive solutions, and a willingness to adopt new values and metrics to drive and measure success.

"Innovations developed in 'Next 4 Billion' countries can be exported to mature economies to spur growth and increase efficiencies," said Mr Shashank Tripathi, Executive Director and Leader – Strategy and Research, PwC India

For the report, PwC conducted in-depth interviews with more than 30 CEOs and leaders of major corporations as well as grass-roots organisations and innovation experts.

They also conducted a structured consumer study with individuals and families from the emerging middle class to develop an understanding of their needs and demands.

priya.s@thehindu.co.in

Keywords: Businesses, Next 4 Billion, nations, economic slowdown, PWCreport

http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/industry-and-economy/article2840214.ece

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Fwd: S Teesari Duniya Jan-Feb 2012

2012-01-28T09:29:00.001-08:00

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: anand verma <vermada@hotmail.com>
Date: 2012/1/27
Subject: S Teesari Duniya Jan-Feb 2012

मित्रो,

समकालीन तीसरी दुनिया के जनवरी- फरवरी अंक की पीडीऍफ़ फाइल भेज रहा हूँ. इस अंक पर अपनी राय भेज सकें तो अच्छा रहेगा.

आनंद

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Palash Biswas
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Fwd: [initiative-india] Pressb Release DEVELOPMENT AND GOVERNANCE ARE JUST WORDS ON PAPER IN BIHAR FOR RURAL AND URBAN POOR

2012-01-28T09:08:00.001-08:00

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From: NAPM INDIA <napmindia@napm-india.org>
Date: Fri, Jan 27, 2012 at 6:41 PM
Subject: [initiative-india] Pressb Release DEVELOPMENT AND GOVERNANCE ARE JUST WORDS ON PAPER IN BIHAR FOR RURAL AND URBAN POOR
To: napm India list <napm-india@googlegroups.com>, napmmedia <napmmedia@googlegroups.com>, Initiative India <initiativeindia@gmail.com>, initiativeindia Groups <initiative-india@googlegroups.com>, "action-2007@googlegroups.com" <action-2007@googlegroups.com>, "narmadaandolan@lists.riseup.net" <narmadaandolan@lists.riseup.net>, nbapresslist <nbapresslist@lists.riseup.net>, NAPM Delhi <napmdelhi@napm-india.org>

DEVELOPMENT AND GOVERNANCE ARE JUST WORDS ON PAPER IN BIHAR FOR RURAL AND URBAN POOR

Patna, January 27 : 'Development' and 'Governance' was the poll plank for Nitish Kumar which brought him to power for Second term in Bihar. But what is the reality on ground ? Lokshakti Abhiyan on its fifth day in Bihar reached Patna after travelling through five districts of North Bihar. In Patna the Abhiyan attended a big public meeting at the Kargil Chowk next to historic Gandhi Maidan. The meeting on issues of urban poor organised in the wake of new slum policy in Patna was organised jointly by twelve organisations of Bihar under the banner of National Alliance of People's Movements including Jhuggi Jhopdi Sangharsh Morcha, Jhuggi Jhopadi Morcha Samiti, Ashray Adhikar Abhiyan, Ekta Parishad, Nidan, Seva Kendra, Vanchit Samaj and others.

Later they marched to the CM's residence breaking the Sec 144 since Nitish Kumar's government refused to meet the delegation due to scheduled appointments with the officers of all the districts. However, later he sent a message saying that he is unwell and sent his Secretary to meet. A delegation of ten people met and gave him the Memorandum on different issues. The delegation included, Sister Dorothy, Arun Kumar, Syurendra Mandal, Kishori Das, Mahendra Yadav, Kamayani Swami and others.

Medha Patkar addressing the gathering said, "It is extremely unfortunate that Nitish Kumar coming from Socialist traditions has forgotten the tradition of dialogue. Dialogue with the people's movements, who disagree with his agenda of development and governance. His agenda of privatization of basic services like health, education, water, shelter, transport and employment in every sector. What kind of development is this that State is withdrawing from every sector of basic services and handing its role to contractors big small and leading to complete informalisation of labour. What is this kind of development where on small pretext police opens fires leading to death of four people including children and women, implicates innocent villagers in false cases, put them behind bars and there is no one from the Government with whom there is a possibility of dialogue. The ugly face of development is beginning to show and people's movements will have to intervene to put a halt to this."

Sister Dorothy from Ashray Adhikar Abhiyan said, "in the new development paradigm there is no space for poor people be it in villages or slums in city. The new slum policy will lead to large scale evictions in the cities of Bihar. In the name of beautification and widening of streets lakhs of people will be evicted and displaced. They are already on margins where will they go? It is for this reason that we have to come together and fight. In coming months we will launch strong agitations against the displacement unleashed on the communities."

Speaker after speaker narrated the same tale about this new face of development. Lokshakti Abhiyan members also witnessed the same be it the situation after floods in Kosi region; struggle against Asbestos factory in Madwan, Muzzafarpur; worker's movements in Kanti Thermal Power Factory; Killing of four people protesting against Starch Factory; corruption in MNERGA and farmers protests against land acquisition for Highways.
After the tour of five days and interacting with movements of the state the memorandum submitted by the delegation demanded the following :

- Immediate relief to the families of 4 people killed in Farbesganj, Araria police firing. Withdrawing false cases against villagers of Bhajanpur. Immediate completion of enquiry by the commission of Enquiry and implementation of the recommendations of the Minorities Commission.

- Withdrawl of false cases against the people of Kanti and implementation of the agreement between the administration and villagers which required providing electricity to those living within 8 kms of the Kanti Thermal Power Station.

- Providing compensation to the farmers whose land has been destroyed in the Kosi floods and take immediate action to restore the land to fertility after removing the sand.

- Investigate in to the MNREGA corruption.

- Amend Slum Policy and provide insitu development to the slum-dwellers after consulting them.

Lokshakti Abhiyan will travel to Jharkhand tomorrow and hold a public meeting in kankenagari where land of Adivasis is being acquired for setting up Indian Insitutute of Management Campus and then hold a public meeting at Jagannathpur Chowk in Ranchi.

Medha Patkar, Vijay Kumar, J P Singh, Rajendra Ravi, Rakesh Rafiq, Roshanlal Agarwal, Kamayani Swami, Ashish Ranjan, Mahendra Yadav, Nagesh Tripathi, Ashu Chauhan, Amar Misra, Ashok Purusharthi, Thakur Devendra, Madhuresh Kumar.

For details call : Ashish Ranjan 9973363664 Madhuresh Kumar 9818905316

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Fwd: [Marxistindia] Draft Political Resolution: 20th CPI(M) Congress

2012-01-28T09:05:00.001-08:00

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: news from the cpi(m) <marxistindia@cpim.org>
Date: Sat, Jan 28, 2012 at 3:25 PM
Subject: [Marxistindia] Draft Political Resolution: 20th CPI(M) Congress
To: marxistindia <marxistindia@cpim.org>, lalsalam <lalsalam@yahoogroups.com>, com-news <com-news@yahoogroups.com>, prfw@yahoogroups.com

marxistindia
news from the cpi(m)
Main Points of the

Draft Political Resolution of the 20th Congress of the CPI(M)

International Situation

The Draft Political Resolution points out that the global capitalist crisis which began in 2007-08 is continuing. This prolonged crisis indicates the unsustainability of finance capital-driven globalisation. After spending billions of dollars to bail out the banks and financial institutions which were responsible for perpetuating the crisis, the governments in the United States and Europe have pursued austerity measures and cutbacks in public spending to shift the burden on to the people. The Eurozone countries are in the throes of a debt crisis with Greece at the epicenter.

The impact of the crisis has led to high rates of unemployment, growing inequalities and severe cutbacks in social welfare benefits.

The United States and its NATO allies have embarked on a number of aggressive interventions in order to prop up its hegemony in the face of the continuing economic crisis. The aggression on Libya, the threats of invasion in Syria and the ratcheting up of tensions with Iran are all part of this. The United States and Nato are unable to subdue the Taliban in Afghanistan and their Afpak strategy is in disarray.

The people in all the advanced capitalist countries have been protesting and conducting struggles against the austerity measures and the cuts in social welfare. The Occupy Wall Street movement in the United States, the big strike struggle by workers, students and youth in Europe are noteworthy.

The popular uprising in Tunisia and Egypt toppled the despotic governments there. The United States and the western powers have intervened to hijack and divert these uprisings. Israel continues with its occupation and oppression of the Palestinian people. But the Palestinian movement is more united today.

The struggles and movements of the people in Europe can bring about a substantial change only when a strong political alternative in the form of the Left forces is built up.

In Latin America, the Left has maintained its advance. A number of countries with Left governments have rejected the neo-liberal model and are implementing policies which are an alternative to neo-liberalism.

The Party expresses its solidarity with the democratic and progressive forces in South Asia and will strive to increase the cooperation between the Left, democratic and secular forces in the region.

The current capitalist crisis has ended talk of the triumph of capitalism. Increasingly it is becoming clear that the only alternative to the exploitative neo-liberal capitalism is socialism.

National Situation

The UPA-II government has been pursuing the same neo-liberal policies that it adopted in the first term. The three-year period of the UPA government has been marked by:

(i) Relentless price rise of essential commodities

(ii) Massive high level corruption which began in the UPA-I term

(iii) Continuance of the pro-US foreign policy and strategic alliance with the U.S.

(iv) The working class, peasantry and other sections of the working people continue to suffer from intense exploitation and deprivation.

Neo-Liberal Agenda

The UPA-II government has sought to push forward the neo-liberal agenda with the disinvestment of public sector enterprises; privatization of oil, gas and ,mining sectors; seeking to increase FDI in the financial sector and opening it up further; allowing the pharmaceutical sector to be dominated by the MNCs and seeking to open up retail trade to multinational companies.

The UPA government has refused to take the steps necessary to check price rise like ending futures trading in essential commodities; revising the taxation structure of petroleum products and introduction of a universal public distribution system.

The global economic slowdown and the neo-liberal policies pursued domestically have led to a slowdown of the economy. Employment growth has drastically reduced.

The agrarian crisis is resulting once again in suicides by farmers across the country. Inadequate public investment and cuts in subsidies have meant rising costs for agricultural inputs. With non-remunerative prices, farming is becoming unviable for many farmers.

The condition of agricultural workers has steadily deteriorated. Migration by the rural poor is increasing. The UPA government's policy is for the takeover of Indian agriculture by foreign and domestic big corporates. This has to be fought back.

Land acquisition for SEZs, for corporates and mining has gong up on a large scale. This has led to protests against land acquisition in different parts of the country.

The two decades of liberalisation have benefited the big business and the urban elite and caused deprivation for the majority of the working people. The number of dollar billionaires have increased from 13 in 2003 to 55 in March 2011. On the other hand the exploitation of the workers has increased. And the share of profits in the net value added went up from 20 per cent in the 1980s to 60 per cent by 2008. The share of wages has fallen drastically. Contract and casual work has become the dominant form of employment.

Corruption

The UPA government has become synonymous with high-level corruption. The resolution notes the series of high-level corruption scandals like the 2G spectrum, Commonwealth Games, Adarsh housing, KG basin and the Antrix-Dewas contract for S band spectrum. The illicit financial flows abroad increased after deregulation and liberalisation. The government continues to drag its feet on unearthing black money and the funds illegally stashed abroad.

The resolution sets out the measures required to combat high-level corruption in various spheres. These include apart from the Lokpal, separate legislation for the judiciary, electoral reforms and scrapping those policies which facilitate corporate loot and foster corruption through the big business-ruling politician-bureaucrat nexus.

Political System

The Political Resolution condemns the growing nexus between big business and politics and the flow of big money into the electoral system. Parliamentary democracy is getting corroded by the use of money power. The restrictions on democratic rights are increasing. The Party will conduct a broad-based campaign against money power in politics and for major electoral reforms.

The resolution sets out the need to restructure Centre-state relations; the political solution to the problem in Jammu & Kashmir by provision of maximum autonomy and the need to end ethnic conflicts and extremism in the North-East region.

Communalism & Terrorism

The resolution notes the BJP's efforts to take up the Hindutva agenda after the defeat in the last Lok Sabha elections. The resolution deals with the continuing efforts to create communal tensions and stoke violence in different parts of the country. There have been continuing attacks on the minorities both Muslim and Christian in the BJP ruled states of Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh and Gujarat.

The role of certain Hindutva extremist elements in terrorist attacks have unfolded in the last three years. The terrorist activities of both Hindu and Muslim extremists have to be fought and countered. The resolution stresses the importance of combating the extremist communal ideology which spawns terrorist violence.

On Social Oppression

The Political resolution spells out the pernicious impact of the neo-liberal policies on the status and working conditions of women, the problems faced by the dalits, tribals and minorities. It sets out a platform of demands for social justice and ending the oppression of these sections.

Foreign Policy

The foreign policy pursued by the UPA government in the past eight years has been a pro-US foreign policy and a departure from the independent foreign policy. Its strategic alliance with the United States is having a direct bearing on the domestic policies and the lives of the people, whether it is FDI in retail or the free trade agreements which have an adverse effect on farmers and small producers. The CPI(M) will continue its struggle and campaign among the people for an independent foreign policy.

Political Situation

Noting the big change that has occurred since the 19th Congress after the CPI(M) and the Left suffered electoral reverses, the resolution makes the independent role and the strengthening of the Party at the national level as the central focus. The resolution states: "In the current situation, when the Left has suffered serious electoral reverses, and when West Bengal, the strongest base of the Party is under attack, it is of the utmost importance to expand the influence and the base of the Party in other states." In order to do this, the resolution sets out the priorities in the work of the Party.

Political Line

The resolution gives the direction for the political-tactical line of the Party in the coming days as follows:

"The CPI(M) has to politically fight the Congress and the BJP. Both are parties which represent the big bourgeois landlord order which perpetuates class exploitation and is responsible for the social oppression of various sections of the people. They pursue neo-liberal policies and advocate a pro-US foreign policy. Defeating the Congress and the UPA government is imperative given the crushing burden of price rise, unemployment, suffering of the farmers and workers on the one hand and the brazen corruption and big sops to big business and the wealthy sections. Isolating the BJP and countering its communal and rightwing agenda is necessary and important for the advance of the Left, democratic and secular forces.

"As against the Congress and the BJP, the CPI(M) puts forth the Left and democratic alternative. Only a Left and democratic platform can be the alternative to bourgeois-landlord rule. This alternative needs to be built up through a process of movements and struggles and the emergence of a political alliance of the Left and democratic forces. In the course of these efforts, it may be necessary to rally those non-Congress, non-BJP forces which can play a role in defence of democracy, national sovereignty, secularism, federalism and defence of the people's livelihood and rights. The emergence of such joint platforms should help the process of building the alliance of the Left and democratic forces."

"In the present situation we should strive for joint actions with the non-Congress secular parties on issues so that the movements can be widened. On specific policy matters and people's issues, there can be cooperation in parliament with these parties. As and when required, there can be electoral understandings with some of these parties."

Left Unity

According the highest priority to strengthening the independent role of the Party, the resolution also stresses the necessity to strengthen Left unity. There are a number of Left minded groups and individuals outside the Left parties who should be brought together on issues which the Left advocates.

Left & Democratic Alternative

The resolution underlines the fact that the Left and democratic alternative is the only real alternative to the current bourgeois-landlord policies. In order to rally the different sections of the working people in support of the Left and democratic platform, the resolution sets out some of the major demands and policies of the Left and democratic platform.

The resolution exhorts the Party to lead to fight against the neo-liberal policies which are harming the interests of the working people. We have to conduct the struggles for land, food, employment and social justice. The CPI(M) has to counter the forces of communalism and divisiveness and defend secularism. We have to combat the imperialist pressures in all spheres. We will defend the Party and the Left against the attacks & violation of democratic rights in West Bengal.

The resolution concludes with the call to build a powerful communist party throughout the country and with the pledge to continue the struggle to end class exploitation and social oppression of the Indian people so that we can go forward towards a new alternative path – towards people's democracy and socialism.

Full text of the resolution is available at: http://www.cpim.org/documents/2012-20Cong-Draft-Pol-Res.pdf

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Fwd: [Mulnivasi Karmachari Sangh] Bhaaee Palash Girda bhee ek brahman thaa aur...

2012-01-28T09:03:00.001-08:00

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: TaraChandra Tripathi <notification+kr4marbae4mn@facebookmail.com>
Date: Sat, Jan 28, 2012 at 5:48 PM
Subject: [Mulnivasi Karmachari Sangh] Bhaaee Palash Girda bhee ek brahman thaa aur...
To: Mulnivasi Karmachari Sangh <276373509074205@groups.facebook.com>

TaraChandra Tripathi posted in Mulnivasi Karmachari Sangh.

TaraChandra Tripathi

5:48pm Jan 28

Bhaaee Palash Girda bhee ek brahman thaa aur mayavatee ek dalit

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Fwd: [Display India] एक बार औरंगाबाद में प्रोफेसर चिटनीस ने डॉ आंबेडकर...

2012-01-28T09:01:00.001-08:00

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: प्रचंड नाग <notification+kr4marbae4mn@facebookmail.com>
Date: 2012/1/28
Subject: [Display India] एक बार औरंगाबाद में प्रोफेसर चिटनीस ने डॉ आंबेडकर...
To: Display India <280403591996862@groups.facebook.com>

प्रचंड नाग posted in Display India.

प्रचंड नाग

10:20pm Jan 28

एक बार औरंगाबाद में प्रोफेसर चिटनीस ने डॉ आंबेडकर से कहा - "व्हाट कांग्रेस एंड गाँधी हैव डन टू द अंटचएबल" के बारे में कांग्रेस तथा गाँधी व गाँधीभक्तों की प्रतिक्रिया तीखी है । उन्हें लगता है कि इस पुस्तक में आपने हिंदुओं पर कडा प्रहार किया है ।

डॉ आंबेडकर क्षणिक गंभीर हुये तथा कहा - इन्हें पुस्तक में लिखी बातें तक असहनीय लगती है लेकिन हमें व हमारे पूर्वजों से हजारों सालों तक किए गए अमानवीय व्यवहार के बारे में क्या कहा जाए ? जिन्हें मेरे शब्द भी कठोर जान पड़ते हैं तब उनका अमानवीय व्यवहार हमें कैसा लगता होगा ?

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दोबारा संसाधन जुटाने के लिए मुनाफा बनाना स्टील कंपनियों के लिए एक कड़ी चुनौती बनने जा रहा है।

2012-01-28T06:43:00.001-08:00

दोबारा संसाधन जुटाने के लिए मुनाफा बनाना स्टील कंपनियों के लिए एक कड़ी चुनौती बनने जा रहा है।

सेल या दूसरी भारतीय कंपनियों के पास अपनी कंपनियों को इस्पात की गिरती कीमतों से बचाने का कोई दूसरा रास्ता नहीं है।

मुंबई से एक्सकैलिबर स्टीवेंस विश्वास
Published in CHAMAKTA AAINA

लौह अयस्क कीसमस्या के कारण इस्पात उद्योग को आने वाले दिनों में बड़ी मुश्किलों का सामना करना पड़ सकता है।पिछले कई दशकों के दरम्यान सरकारी नीतियों की वजह से चीन और कोरिया ने इस्पात उत्पादन में भारत को पीछे छोड़ दिया है।कच्चे माल की बढ़ती कीमत, सरकारी नीतियों और मुद्रास्फीति की वजह से इस्पात उद्योग भारी संकट में है। मसलन टाटा स्टील का ग्लोबल कारोबार में भारी वृद्धि हुई है, पर घरेलू कारोबार ढीला है।

अब से कोई 6 साल पहले इस्पात की मांग तेजी से बढ़नी शुरू हुई थी, पर जुलाई 2008 के खत्म होते-होते इसके बाजार में जबरदस्त गिरावट हुई। उल्लेखनीय है कि उत्पादन मात्रा के लिहाज से इस्पात दुनिया की सबसे बड़ी कमोडिटी (जिंस) है। मूडी से जुड़े एक विशेषज्ञ ने बताया कि मंदी के असर को दूर करने के लिए हमें कम से कम 2013 तक इंतजार करना होगा। लंदन स्थित आयरन एंड स्टील स्टैस्टिक्स ब्यूरो के आंकड़ों का हवाला देते हुए फाइनैंशियल टाइम्स के पीटर मार्श ने बताया कि युद्धकालीन समय को छोड़ दें तो 1991 के बाद केवल 4 ऐसे मौके आए जब दुनिया के इस्पात उद्योग को गिरावट से उबरने में 4 साल या उससे ज्यादा समय लगे।

लौह और इस्पात उद्योग को 'बेहद गंभीर' आंतरिक और बाहरी समस्याओं का सामना करना पड़ा।झारखंड में इस्पात उद्योग में निवेश की रफ्तार काफी धीमी है। अलग राज्य बनने के बाद इस्पात उद्योग में निवेश की आशा जगी थी परन्तु जमीन अधिग्रहण की समस्या के कारण कई कंपनियों ने निवेश करने से हाथ खिंच लिए। टाटा एवं आर्सेलर मित्तल के बारह-बारह मिलियन टन के इस्पात संयंत्र लगाने का प्रस्ताव अधर में ही लटका हुआ है। टाटा स्टील का पुराना संयंत्र आधुनिकीकरण एवं विस्तारीकरण की प्रक्रिया से गुजर रहा है। 2012 तक इसकी क्षमता 10 मिलियन टन की हो जाएगी। लेकिन कंपनी के सरायकेला में प्रस्तावित बारह मिलियन टन की परियोजना जमीन अधिग्रहण के साथ-साथ अन्य कई समस्याओं को लेकर अधर में लटकी हुई है। आर्सेलर मित्तल समूह अब तक बारह मिलियन टन क्षमता के संयंत्र की स्थापना के लिए पूरी जमीन का अधिग्रहण करने में विफल रहा है। इस परियोजना पर 40 हजार करोड़ रुपए खर्च होने थे। इसी तरह टाटा की 12 मिलियन टन क्षमता के स्टील प्लांट पर भी 40 हजार करोड़ रुपए खर्च होने थे। इस तरह इन दोनों कंपनियों की ओर से 80 हजार करोड़ रुपए के निवेश से राज्य वंचित हो गया।

जेएसडब्ल्यू एवं जेएसपीएल ने भी इस्पात संयंत्र लगाने का प्रस्ताव किया था परन्तु जमीन अधिग्रहण एवं अन्य समस्याएं अड़चन पैदा कर रही है।

नये इस्पात सचिव प्रदीप कुमार मिश्रा ने गुरूवार को कहा कि सरकार इस उद्योग के समक्ष आने वाली समस्याओं को सुलझाने की हरसंभव कोशिश करेगी।मिश्रा का यह बयान ऐसे समय में आया है जबकि भूमि अधिग्रहण तथा अन्य समस्याओं के चलते इस्पात क्षेत्र में अरबों रुपए का निवेश अटका पड़ा है। मिश्रा ने कहा कि विदेशी निवेशकों का स्वागत है। हम विदेशी निवेशकों की समस्याओं के समाधान के लिए काम करेंगे। समाधान पाने के लिए आदिवासियों सहित सभी सम्बद्ध पक्षों को शामिल किया जाएगा।

टाटा स्टील (Tata Steel): भारतीय कारोबार में टाटा स्टील की घरेलू बिक्री 2011-12 की तीसरी तिमाही में 1.1% घट कर 16 लाख टन रह गयी है।कंपनी के कुल वैश्विक उत्पादन में भारतीय कारोबार की हिस्सेदारी लगभग एक चौथाई है।फिरभी एंजेल ब्रोकिंग के डेरिवेटीव एनालिस्ट सिद्धार्थ भामरे के मुताबिक निवेशक मेटल शेयरों में टाटा स्टील, सेल में निवेश कर सकते हैं। टाटा स्टील में 395 रुपये का अच्छा रेसिस्टेंस है। अगर शेयर रेसिस्टेंस लेवल पार करता है तो टाटा स्टील में अच्छी बढ़त आ सकती है। वहीं सेल में 7-8 फीसदी तक की बढ़त देखी जा सकती है। हिंडाल्को में काफी बढ़त आ चुकी है, अब शेयर में ज्यादा बढ़त आने की उम्मीद नहीं है। शेयर 140 रुपये के स्तर से ज्यादा ऊपर जाने की संभावना नहीं है।

छत्तीसगढ़ के मुख्यमंत्री डॉ. रमन सिंह ने पिछले दिनों केन्द्रीय इस्पात मंत्री बेनी प्रसाद वर्मा से राज्य के स्पंज आयरन उद्योग के लिए कम पड़ रहे कुल 2.5 मिलियन टन लौह अयस्क की आपूर्ति तत्काल राज्य को किये जाने का आग्रह किया है।

मुख्यमंत्री ने नई दिल्ली के उद्योग भवन में राज्य के लौह उद्योगों की समस्याओं को लेकर केन्द्रीय इस्पात मंत्री श्री वर्मा से मुलाकात के दौरान कल यह आग्रह किया।मुख्यमंत्री डॉ0 सिंह ने केन्द्रीय इस्पात मंत्री को बताया कि, राज्य में स्थित निजी स्पंज आयरन प्लान्ट को वर्तमान में कुल 5 मिलियन टन लौह अयस्क की आवश्यकता है।परन्तु इन उद्योगों को वर्तमान में 2.5 मिलियन टन ही लौह अयस्क प्राप्त हो पा रहा है।लौह अयस्क की आवश्यक आपूर्ति न हो पाने से राज्य में लौह अयस्क उद्योगों के बन्द होने का खतरा उत्पन्न हो गया है।इससे लाखों लोगो के रोजगार पर विपरीत असर पड़ रहा है।

इस्पात मंत्री ने मुख्यमंत्री की बातों को गभीरता से सुनते हुए छत्तीसगढ़ के स्पंज आयरन प्लान्ट को कम पड़ रहे अतिरिक्त 2.5 मिलियन लौह अयस्क की आपूर्ति किये जाने के सम्बंध में भरोसा दिलाया।मुलाकात के दौरान मुख्यमंत्री ने केन्द्रीय मंत्री को बताया कि, छत्तीसगढ़ के स्पंज आयरन उद्योगों को पूर्व में लौह अयस्क की आपूर्ति उड़ीसा से होती थी,परन्तु उड़ीसा से लौह अयस्क की आपूर्ति बन्द हो जाने के कारण राज्य के लौह अयस्क उद्योगों को पर्यात लौह अयस्क नहीं मिल पा रहा है।अब ये उद्योग एनएमडीसी (राष्ट्रीय खनिज विकास निगम) द्वारा लौह अयस्क की आपूर्ति पर ही निर्भर है। एनएमडीसी राज्य के लौह अयस्क उद्योगों को 2.5 मिलियन टन ही लौह अयस्क की आपूर्ति ही कर रहा है।

बैठक में इस्पात सचिव पी.के.मिश्रा, सेल के अध्यक्ष सी.एस.वर्मा,मुख्यमंत्री के सचिव अमन कुमार सिंह और विशेष कर्त्तव्यस्थ अधिकारी विक्रम सिसोदिया भी उपस्थित थे।

भारत के समान अफगानिस्तान में भी प्रचुर मात्रा में खनिज पदार्थ (रॉ मेटेरियल्स) उपलब्ध हैं लेकिन इसका दोहन नहीं हुआ है। अब स्टील आथरिटी आफ इंडिया व टाटा स्टील अफगनिस्तान से लौह-इस्पात निर्माण के लिए आवश्यक खनिज पदार्थ लाने की पहल कर रही हैं। ये बातें इंटरनेशनल मेटल वर्कर्स फेडरेशन के निदेशक (दक्षिण एशिया क्षेत्र) सुदर्शन राव शारडे ने कहीं। टाटा स्टील के निमंत्रण पर शहर पहुंचे राव ने गुरुवार को दैनिक जागरण से बातचीत में कहा कि अफगानिस्तान में लोकतंत्र बहाल होने के बाद इसकी पहल शुरू हो गई है। हाल ही में अरब देशों के व्यवसायियों की इस संबंध में अफगनिस्तान में बैठक भी हुई जिसमें रॉ मैटेरियल और पेट्रोलियम पदार्थो के लिए भारत की कंपनियों को आमंत्रित किया गया है। यूरोप-अमेरिका की आर्थिक मंदी को देखते हुए सऊदी अरब-दुबई के व्यापारी भारत में निवेश करने को ज्यादा इच्छुक हैं। टाटा स्टील ने अफगनिस्तान से लौह अयस्क लाने का प्रस्ताव दिया था। राव ने कहा कि योजना के मुताबिक, कराची के रास्ते मुंबई तक माल आएगा।

इस्पात उद्योग को हर देश के आर्थिक विकास के मूल स्तंभों में से एक समझा जाता है और उद्योग की श्रेणी में किसी देश के स्थान को उस देश में इस्पात के प्रयोग के स्तर को देखकर निर्धारित किया जाता है क्योंकि उद्योग में इस्पात के प्रयोग का मापदंड दर्शाता है कि अमुक देश के उत्पादन और उद्योग किस सीमा तक सक्रिय हैं। इस प्रकार बहुत से बड़े औद्योगिक देशों ने औद्योगिकीकरण के प्रथम चरण में इस्पात उद्योग में पूंजी निवेश को अपने उद्योग विकास कार्यक्रम में मुख्य स्थान दिया है और इस माध्यम से उन्होंने अन्य सभी उद्योगों के विकास की ओर क़दम बढ़ाया है।

विशेषज्ञों के अनुसार इस्पात उद्योग की उत्पादन श्रंखला में विस्तार, देश की अर्थव्यवस्था में आर्थिक मूल्य संवर्धन और प्रतिस्पर्धा का कारण बना है।

इस्‍पात राष्‍ट्र की वृद्धि और विकास त्‍वरित करने में महत्‍वपूर्ण भूमिका निभाता है। इसका उपयोग धातु उत्‍पाद, वैद्युत मशीनरी, परिवहन उपकरण, कपड़ा आदि के विनिर्माण में मूल सामग्री के रूप में किया जाता है और इस प्रकार से यह मानव सभ्‍यता का आधार माना जाता है। यह बड़े और प्रौद्योगिकीय रूप से विकसित उद्योग का उत्‍पाद है, जिसका सामग्री प्रवाह और आय सृजन की दृष्टि से प्रत्‍यक्ष और अप्रत्‍यक्ष संबंध मजबूत है। दूसरे शब्‍दों में इस्‍पात का उत्‍पादन और प्रति व्‍यक्ति खपत देश के सकल घरेलू उत्‍पादन में मुख्‍य योगदानकर्ता है और इसके आर्थिक और औद्योगिक विकास का संकेतक है। लौह अयस्‍क, मैंग्‍नीज अयस्‍क और क्रोम अयस्‍क इस्‍पात उद्योग के लिए महत्‍वपूर्ण कच्‍ची सामग्री हैं। उनकी पर्याप्‍त मात्रा और गुणवत्ता में समय पर उपलब्‍धता, दीर्घावधिक आधार पर क्षेत्रक के त्‍वरित और सुव्‍यवस्थित विकास के लिए पूर्वापेक्षित है।

भारत तीन वर्ष पहले आठवें स्‍थान से उठ कर वर्ष 2006 में विश्‍व के पांचवें सबसे बड़े कच्‍चे इस्‍पात के उत्‍पादक देश के रूप में उभरा है। यहां प्रचुर मात्रा में लौह और कोयले के अयस्‍क की खानें हैं। इस्‍पात उत्‍पादन की लागत अन्‍य देशों की तुलना में अपेक्षाकृत कम है। इसने प्रत्‍यक्ष अपचयित लौह या स्‍पंज लौह के विश्‍व भर में सबसे बड़े उत्‍पादक का स्‍थान बनाए रखा है। स्‍पंज लौह का उत्‍पादन वर्ष 2002-03 में 7.86 मिलियन टन की तुलना में वर्ष 2006-07 में 18.35 मिलियन टन के स्‍तर तक पहुंचने के लिए 22 प्रतिशत के सीएजीआर पर बढ़ा है। जबकि, भारत के विषय में अनुमान है कि यह वर्ष 2015 तक विश्‍व में इस्‍पात का सबसे बड़ा उत्‍पादक बन जाएगा। यह भी संभावना है कि वर्ष 2011-12 तक इस्‍पात उत्‍पदन क्षमता 124 मिलियन पहुंच जाए।

इंटरनैशनल आयरन एंड स्टील इंस्टीट्च्यूट के नए अवतार 'वर्ल्ड स्टील' की पहली बैठक में दुनिया के दिग्गज इस्पात निर्माता और आर्सेलरमित्तल प्रमुख लक्ष्मी निवास मित्तल ने भाग लिया। उन्होंने इस बैठक में उत्पादकों से भरोसा रखने को कहा और बताया कि लुढ़कती कीमतों के बीच इस्पात की मांग बढ़ेगी। वैसे इस क्षेत्र में चल रहा मंदी का दौर कोई सामान्य और चक्रीय मंदी नहीं है।

बहरहाल दुनिया भर में पसरी आर्थिक मंदी और तरलता संकट ने सभी आधारभूत धातुओं और खनिजों के बाजार को अपनी चपेट में ले लिया। इससे संकेत मिलता है कि इस्पात निर्माताओं के लिए अगले कुछ महीने बुरे रहने वाले हैं। हालांकि, विचारणीय तथ्य यह कि आर्थिक मंदी का असर कब तक रहेगा और इस साल इस्पात उत्पादन में कितनी कमी होगी। वैसे 2008 में इस्पात उत्पादन के वैश्विक आंकड़े अभी एकत्रित किए जा रहे हैं।

महत्वपूर्ण बात यह कि 2008 में इस्पात का उत्पादन 2007 की तुलना में थोड़ा घटने की उम्मीद है।बता दें कि 2007 में इस्पात का वैश्विक उत्पादन 1.324 अरब टन रहा था। पिछले साल तो मंदी के चलते आर्सेलरमित्तल, कोरस और सेवरस्टाल जैसी कंपनियो को अपने उत्पादन में कटौती करनी पड़ी।

दुनिया में इस्पात के सबसे बड़े उत्पादक और उपभोक्ता चीन में पहली बार उत्पादन को नियंत्रित रखने के प्रयास किए जा रहे हैं।

दूसरे विश्वयुद्ध के बाद की बात करें तो इस्पात के वैश्विक सालाना उत्पादन में सबसे अधिक 8.7 फीसदी की कमी 1982 में हुई थी।

शुक्र है कि भारत के सकल घरेलू उत्पाद की सालाना विकास दर अभी भी 6 फीसदी है। सेल उन इस्पात उत्पादों के उत्पादन पर जोर दे रही है, जिनकी अभी भी खूब मांग है। लेकिन सेल या दूसरी भारतीय कंपनियों के पास अपनी कंपनियों को इस्पात की गिरती कीमतों से बचाने का कोई दूसरा रास्ता नहीं है।

इस्पात निर्माता मांग में लंबे समय तक कमी रहने से आशंकित हैं। उन्हें लगता है कि इस्पात का वैश्विक उत्पादन वहां तक जाएगा, जहां पर 2007 में था। यही नहीं, विशेषज्ञ इस मुद्दे पर बंटे हुए कि कब इस्पात उत्पादन फिर से 1.324 अरब टन (2007 का उत्पादन) तक पहुंच जाएगा।

मालूम हो कि मौजूदा आर्थिक मंदी के चलते इस्पात की मांग और कीमत में हुई कमी 1930 की आर्थिक मंदी के बाद सबसे ज्यादा है।

--
Palash Biswas
Pl Read:
http://nandigramunited-banga.blogspot.com/

Gujarat dalits refuse to shift youth’s body from police station

2012-01-28T06:37:00.000-08:00

Dalits Media Watch

NewsUpdates 27.01.12

Gujarat dalits refuse to shift youth's body from police station- DNA

http://www.dnaindia.com/india/report_gujarat-dalits-refuse-to-shift-youths-body-from-police-station_1642393

Her legacy set in stone, 'Dalit queen' Mayawati faces polls- The Ecinomic Times

http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/politics/nation/her-legacy-set-in-stone-dalit-queen-mayawati-faces-polls/articleshow/11637747.cms

Ambedkar's statue again desecrated in Andhra- The Times Of India

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/hyderabad/Ambedkars-statue-again-desecrated-in-Andhra/articleshow/11645736.cms

Assembly elections: Dalit assertion in Punjab's Doaba does not mean votes for Mayawati-The Economic Times

http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/politics/nation/assembly-elections-dalit-assertion-in-punjabs-doaba-does-not-mean-votes-for-mayawati/articleshow/11639509.cms

DNA

Gujarat dalits refuse to shift youth's body from police station

http://www.dnaindia.com/india/report_gujarat-dalits-refuse-to-shift-youths-body-from-police-station_1642393

A white Maruti Van entered Sanand police station on Wednesday morning and two youths got out of the vehicle. They brought out the body of Atul Rathod, the 25-year-old dalit youth who was killed on Tuesday in Rethal village of Sanand taluka, allegedly in a fight with a group of darbar youths.

A large number of women, weeping and wailing, entered the police station premises soon after and they were followed by a large number of dalits, all angry with the functioning of the Sanand police.

They placed Atul's body outside the officers' room at the police station which was now thronged by more than 200 dalits, shouting slogans against the police department and demanding the arrest of the culprits.

The angry people started shouting slogans against the police, which forced the officers to seek shelter in their rooms for some time. Nothing could be more illustrative of the Sanand police's failure to act against the criminals in the area than the officers' attempt to hide in their rooms.

When some dalit youths wanted to ransack the police station, some elderly people of the community tried to keep them calm and non-violent in their agitation against police inaction.
A flurry of meetings followed at the police station. Dalit leaders of Rethal village had a meeting with DySP, RK Patel. This was followed by a meeting between the leaders and the superintendent of police, Ahmedabad rural, RR Bhagat.

Eventually, Ahmedabad collector Vijay Nehra arrived and held a meeting with the Dalit leaders at the police station. His meeting was followed by a meeting between the leaders and the IGP, Ahmedabad range, GS Malik.

There was just one thing common to all these meetings. Every officer tried to persuade the leaders to remove the dead body from the police station.

But the Dalit leaders demanded two things. First, arrest the people who had killed Atul and, secondly, suspend the police officers who had failed to act responsibly during the incident.
The dalits allege that the police had done absolutely nothing to arrest the culprits. "They did not even bother to raid their houses or ask their relatives about their whereabouts. They want us to remove Atul's body but don't want to arrest the people who killed him," alleged Vashram Rathod, the paternal uncle of the deceased. Meanwhile, dalit youths brought two slabs of ice and put the body on it. Family members, relatives, friends and well-wishers stood around weeping and mourning the whole day. The family members also attended the meetings with different officers in the police inspector's office.

The dalits also demanded the suspension of police officers who had failed to respond following the clash between dalits and darbars on Tuesday in which Atul Rathod was killed. The three people named accused in the case are Yuvrajsinh Rajput, Bharatsinh Rajput and Jabbarsinh Rajput.

The people injured in the incident are Valji Rathod, Manu Rathod, Ramesh Cheu, Khodabhai and Ishwar Khoda. Talking to DNA, a Dalit and victim of the caste system, Shankar Shenva, said Dalits from several villages had now united against the atrocities of the upper caste people in the taluka. They had demanded prompt police action against those responsible for atrocities on dalits.

The Ecinomic Times

Her legacy set in stone, 'Dalit queen' Mayawati faces polls

http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/politics/nation/her-legacy-set-in-stone-dalit-queen-mayawati-faces-polls/articleshow/11637747.cms

LUCKNOW: By her own standards, Kumari Mayawati's birthday celebrations were low-key this year.

After driving through a red-carpeted tunnel of plaster elephant tusks in an Ambassador, India's retro-looking national car, the chief minister of India's largest state swept past a coterie of her party's workers, who bowed and touched her feet.

Diamonds adorned the diminutive figure of "the Dalit Queen", encrusting her necklace, a bracelet, her earrings, a nose-ring and her watch, as she accepted a few bouquets of flowers and marched about briskly in the marigold-draped party headquarters.

But the huge crowds of gaping admirers were missing this year; there was no garland of banknotes, no upper-caste Brahmin on hand to symbolically pop a morsel of birthday cake into the mouth of an "untouchable" who has risen from the bottom of India's social pile to become one of the most powerful women in the world.

That's because election campaign rules are now in effect for staggered polls to be held in February and March in Uttar Pradesh.

Mayawati is far from a sure bet to win another term as chief minister of the northern state whose population of 200 million would rank as the fifth-most populous in the world if it were a country.

If she doesn't, it would be a blow to her undisguised ambition to one day become prime minister of India, a goal that looked reasonable back in 2007 when she won a huge mandate from the state's voters by appealing to a rainbow of castes, which still define the socio-economic status for many of India's 1.2 billion people.

Launching the seventh, gilt-edged volume of an autobiography that runs to thousands of pages and is printed in Hindi and English, Mayawati bemoaned Election Commission rules that obliged her to row back on her usual birthday beneficence.

"Normally, my birthday is an occasion to give away thousands of crores in welfare schemes for Dalits and other backward castes, but because of the election code of conduct we could not do that this year," she said. A crore is 10 million rupees, or $188,000.

Mayawati's nemesis in the election is Rahul Gandhi, scion of the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty that has ruled the country for most of its six decades of independence. A relative greenhorn in the hurly-burly of Indian politics, Gandhi has staked his future on the performance of the venerable but troubled Congress party in Uttar Pradesh.

A TRADITION OF EXTRAVAGANCE

Although she presides over one of the most poverty-plagued states of India -- its per-capita income is just above 50 percent of the national average -- Mayawati's extraordinary personal extravagance preserves a tradition set over the centuries by a succession of rulers in the plains of the river Ganges.

In the five years since she took office, she has blanketed hundreds of acres of prime real estate in the state capital Lucknow and elsewhere in pink marble and sandstone monuments.

The Times Of India

Ambedkar's statue again desecrated in Andhra

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/hyderabad/Ambedkars-statue-again-desecrated-in-Andhra/articleshow/11645736.cms

HYDERABAD: In the second such incident in less than a week, unidentified people desecrated a statue of BR Ambedkar in Andhra Pradesh's East Godavari district on Thursday, triggering protests from Dalit groups.

A statue of the architect of the Indian constitution, who is a Dalit icon, was found desecrated on the Republic Day in Dowleswaram, a suburb of Rajahmundry town, sparking tension in the region.

The incident occurred even before the situation could return to complete normalcy in Amlapuram town in the same district, where three statues of the national leader were desecrated on Monday.

Following the latest incident, Dalit groups began road blockade on the Chennai-Bhubhaneswar national highway, leading to huge traffic jams. They also staged a protest near the Republic Day function venue and observed it as the black day.

Leaders of Dalit groups have demanded stern action against those involved in the incident. The protests were also organised in Rajahmundry town.

Additional police forces were rushed to the town to prevent any untoward incident.

Meanwhile, prohibitory orders banning any gathering of more than four people were continuing in Amlapuram town, where two groups clashed Monday after desecration of the statues.

The state government Thursday decided to send a delegation of ministers to Amlapuram. The four-member ministerial team will try to find the facts about the desecration of statues.

The Economic Times

Assembly elections: Dalit assertion in Punjab's Doaba does not mean votes for Mayawati

http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/politics/nation/assembly-elections-dalit-assertion-in-punjabs-doaba-does-not-mean-votes-for-mayawati/articleshow/11639509.cms

BALLAN (Jalandhar): A speech by BSP leader Mayawati interspersed with music, especially a Ravidasa song, blares from a loudspeaker fitted on an auto bouncing down NH1 between Phagwara and Jalandhar. India's most powerful dalit leader must win over Doaba, Punjab's dalit heartland if she wants any real presence in the state.

Will the UP CM succeed? The answer perhaps lies 20km down the road that leads to Pathankot from Jalandhar. Dera Sachkhand at Ballan village is the most sacred place for the region's dalits, mainly Ravidasis. Its growing clout ensured that Congress's Amarinder Singh visited their chief guru Sant Niranjan Dass for a 'darshan' , and CM Parkash Singh Badal is also expected. But while the sant blesses all, he refuses to talk politics.

Dass, who escaped a bid on his life in Vienna in 2009, has manager Amrik Birdi speak on his behalf. "BSP has sought our support but the sant believes only people who behave as mahapurush should be voted,'' says Birdi. The Dera has led dalits in strengthening their identity.

Another follower is more forthright. "Punjab's dalits are not Jatav like Mayawati and will not like to waste their vote on BSP; they will choose between Congress and Akalis," he says, pointing out that the 'valmikis' have decided to vote for Akalis on the Khanna seat. The Sehajdhari Sikhs, many of who are dalit, have decided to back Congress.

Despite their 'dalit' assertion, the community will as always choose between the two main parties. Importantly , both Congress and SAD (Badal) have given sufficient representation to dalits.

Mayawati drew a blank in 2007 with BSP getting 4% vote share. BSP's best performance was in 1996 when Maya entered into an alliance with Akalis and won three out of four seats. Mayawati apparently has so far failed as Punjab dalits comprise Ravidasis, Valmikis and Majhabi Sikhs who do not relate with the UP CM's Jatav identity.

"Punjab has been more liberal in religious practices which has made it difficult for Mayawati to create a vote-bank solely on her Manuwadi plank,'' says Pramod Kumar of the Institute for Development and Communication.

--
.Arun Khote
On behalf of
Dalits Media Watch Team
(An initiative of "Peoples Media Advocacy & Resource Centre-PMARC")
...................................................................
Peoples Media Advocacy & Resource Centre- PMARC has been initiated with the support from group of senior journalists, social activists, academics and intellectuals from Dalit and civil society to advocate and facilitate Dalits issues in the mainstream media. To create proper & adequate space with the Dalit perspective in the mainstream media national/ International on Dalit issues is primary objective of the PMARC.

TAX LAWS: VODAFONE CASE Zoozoo’s Got The Number Vodafone verdict opens up the tax havens debate ARINDAM MUKHERJEE

2012-01-28T06:30:00.000-08:00

REUTERS (FROM OUTLOOK, FEBRUARY 06, 2012)

Mauritius central bank in Port Louis. DTAA with the country is being renegotiated.

TAX LAWS: VODAFONE CASE

Zoozoo's Got The Number

Vodafone verdict opens up the tax havens debate

ARINDAM MUKHERJEE

http://outlookindia.com/article.aspx?279707

Caller Calls Tune

Government unlikely to ask for review of SC judgement as it would be seen as anti-FDI
New Direct Tax Code expected to fix tax liability on capital gains in India
Treaties with tax havens like Mauritius being reworked to stop misuse by shell firms
Stricter scrutiny of similar M&A cases expected; no more blanket exemptions

***

It hasn't escaped anyone's attention that the Vodafone tax case verdict was quite exquisitely timed. Come to think of it, the value the Indian government derived from it was worth more, much more than the $2.5 billion immediately at stake. Faced with a sagging economy and faltering global image as an investment destination—and fresh from a reversal on opening up investments into multi-brand retail—upa-ii needed to send out a strong signal that India (genuinely) welcomed foreign direct investment (FDI).

The SC verdict on January 20—which cleared Vodafone of its $2.5-billion tax liability in the 2007 Hutch acquisition deal—didn't disappoint. In sum, the SC says the transfer of shares in an offshore entity between two non-residents cannot be taxed in India, and that the Indian tax authorities have no jurisdiction here. This has thus been touted by the world as a victory for India's independent judiciary. It has also got the government working on a counter-strategy, which will play out in the months to come.

For now, though, as expected, many corporate law firms salute the verdict as a confidence-boosting development. Says Dinesh Kanabar, tax head at KPMG, "You need certainty in tax laws. Now the SC has said that the government should frame policies that make tax implications clear." Clearly, the apex court has based its judgement on existing laws, cutting out interpretations used by the income-tax department to put forth its views. Adds Druv Sanghavi of Nishith Desai Associates, "A negative judgement might have been viewed as judicial approval to uncertainty."

Immediately, there are indications that several other similar cases will benefit from this judgement and may escape any tax payout in India. This includes Cadbury's-Kraft, Sanofi-Aventis, SAB Miller-Foster and Essar-Vodafone. Pranay Bhatia, associate partner with law firm Economic Laws Practice, says, "The SC has interpreted the current law such that all similar deals will find shelter under this interpretation." The revenue implications from these company deals put together could be significant.

The Indian corporate sector, however, sees all of this as the calm before the storm. The Direct Taxes Code (DTC)—which will most likely be implemented from April this year—may reverse the situation. "It will force the government to come up with clear legislation on M&As that happens overseas," warns FICCI secretary-general Rajiv Kumar. The industry body feels something might come up as early as the Union budget in March.


	"The tax dept is to blame...they were aware of such transactions, that the law was such and didn't move an amendment ."H.P. Ranina, Tax Expert

Even if the DTC doesn't come into effect this year, the government is going to work on changing the tax laws. An anti-avoidance limitation clause will be introduced for Mauritius, Cayman Islands and Cyprus—this will prevent shell companies from taking advantage of India's double tax avoidance agreement (DTAA) with these countries. The Mauritius DTAA is being renegotiated currently, and the changes will be visible very soon, possibly when their PM visits India next month. "The current laws are not adequate to tackle cases like this. Irrespective of the Vodafone judgement, we will see some changes in rules on General Anti- Avoidance Rules," says Mukesh Butani, managing partner, BMR Legal.

Indeed, far from the mandatory champagne popping, the legal and tax fraternity is (rather seriously) debating the state's next moves. It has been a contentious debate because the I-T department's view challenges the existing taxation system. "Under the present legal framework, the SC judgement is appropriate... but morally, there's need for a rethink," says tax expert ICRIER director Parthasarathi Shome (see interview).

Others are now taking softer positions. "Both views are possible. Another judge could have taken a different view. The income-tax department's view also has some validity and the Bombay HC had upheld it," says tax expert H.P. Ranina. Some are also voicing doubts about the way the apex court looked at the issue. Says Hemant Batra, managing partner at corporate law firm Kaden Boriss, "It (the verdict) will set a wrong precedent and create a superior class of companies who will never pay capital gains in India. While the judgement says the capital assets were not based in India, it cannot be ignored that the capital assets derived liquidity from a business in India."

What helped the verdict was the routing of investments or acquisitions through the Mauritius or Cayman Islands-based companies—the latter featuring in the Vodafone case. Because of India's DTAAs with these countries, many firms use this route to avoid any tax liability in India. In the last decade, 40 per cent of FDI into India has come via the Mauritius route. Ranina feels the government should have checked this route in time to avoid such cases. "The tax department is to blame as they were aware of such transactions and that the law was such and didn't move for an amendment. They should have done it much earlier."

Clearly, more stringent tax rules are being crafted by the government. Will that affect India's standing as an investment decision? Unlikely, as FDI into China continues to flow in despite similar tax measures. India's taxman knows that only too well.

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INTERVIEW

'Morally, We Need A Rethink'

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UTTAR PRADESH: ELECTIONS Mutiny Of Pawns Of the many local outfits, some like Peace Party may make a dent SABA NAQVI

2012-01-28T06:29:00.001-08:00

NIRALA TRIPATHI

Dr Ayub, fourth from left, with Udit Raj and Apna Dal's Anupriya Patel announces the formation of the Ettehad Front

UTTAR PRADESH: ELECTIONS

Mutiny Of Pawns

Of the many local outfits, some like Peace Party may make a dent

SABA NAQVI

http://outlookindia.com/article.aspx?279693

The Small And Big Of It

There are over 190 small parties in Uttar Pradesh registered with the Election Commission. Here are some of them who pose a challenge, even if minor, to the bigger ones:

The Peace Party: Muslim-led formation seeking support of other communities. May cut into Congress, SP votebanks.
All India Minorities Front: Claims to represent Muslim interests nationally, advocates negotiated solution to the Ayodhya issue
Shoshit Samaj Dal: Represents Dalit and backward Muslims, also known as Pasmandas
Apna Dal: The Kurmi interests. Has tied up with Peace Party.
Rashtriya Lok Manch: Amar Singh's party is furthering the cause of statehood for Poorvanchal and is bent on playing SP spoiler. Supported by actress Jaya Prada.

***

Too many cooks do spoil the political broth. As it is, in the elections to the Uttar Pradesh assembly, there will be many four-cornered contests between the main political forces; in descending order—the BSP, the SP, the BJP and the Congress. Besides, as many as 150 local parties have registered, up from 112 in the 2007 polls. (There are approximately 1,178 registered parties in the country, according to the EC).

Most of the small parties in UP failed to get even one per cent of the vote in the last assembly polls. These include formations like the Ambedkar Kranti Dal, All India Minorities Front, Moderate Party, Adarsh Lok Dal etc. Many of them push a particular caste or community card. For instance, the Shoshit Samaj Dal talks of a campaign for a Pasmanda revolution—that Muslims are divided into the Ashrafs (upper castes) and the Pasmandas (Dalits and backwards). Their basic contention is that the Ashrafs have long cornered all the benefits and pushed out and humiliated Muslims who belong to communities such as Julaha (weavers), Kunjra (vegetable sellers), Kalal (alcohol distillers) and Dhunia. Their slogan is, "Dalit-pichhda ek samaan/Hindu ho ya Mussalman (Dalit and Backward are one/ Hindu or Muslim)." They intend to field only OBC or Dalit Muslim candidates across the state. It's an interesting platform but they are not considered serious players.

The new party on the block creating a ripple in political circles is the Peace Party. It actually represents a Muslim-led formation seeking the additional support of other communities on the lines that the BSP does. Muslims, after all, are the biggest group after the Dalits in Uttar Pradesh, close to 19 per cent. The Peace Party is only giving 22 per cent of the 230 seats it is contesting to Muslim candidates. Even among the Muslims, it seems to particularly attract the mbcs. Another significant fact about the Peace Party is that it is not a clerical outfit, like the Ulema Council from pockets like Azamgarh.

What makes the idea behind the Peace Party quite compelling is the personality of its leader, Dr Mohammad Ayub. He is a deeply religious man but not a maulana nor backed by any Jamaat or Jamiat-type quasi-religious group. Dr Ayub is someone who gave up the civil services to practise medicine and has built a 100-bed hospital that treats the poor free in his village Barhalganj on the Gorakhpur/Azamgarh border. His reputation as a surgeon who treats the poor for free has spread across the belt. Apparently, the man has performed an astonishing two lakh operations.

He is clearly a self-made man who now has other points to make. "Good people who want to fight the right battles should enter politics. I can be accused of anything but I have never been corrupted because I believe in my religion. That is why I gave up a posting in the customs service in Bombay. I could not live with the corruption around me. So I started to serve with my skills as a doctor," he says.


	Dr Ayub personally sees the Congress as the big enemies of the Muslims as they have "fooled the community".

The fundamental appeal of the Peace Party for a section of the minority community lies in the argument that, instead of being included, they are being systematically excluded. Dr Ayub says the "first fraud" took place in 1950 when only Hindus were given reservation as Dalits. "A one-fourth opportunity was excluded for minorities," he says adding that till now the backward Muslim was struggling to get a slice of the OBC quota. Now they have limited minorities to 4.5 per cent and asked Muslims to compete with far more educated communities like the Sikhs and Christians. "How can they compete? In reality, they are systematically eliminating Muslims from all opportunities and at the same time giving the BJP an issue," he says.

In the Lucknow flat from where they function, there is a rush of hopefuls for Peace Party tickets. The fan is their symbol. The party is expected to get a section of the votes and in some seats it may not just be the Muslim ones; since a number of candidates are from other communities, they could break some upper-caste and OBC votes too. The Peace Party is primarily expected to be a spoiler for the Congress and the SP. They may win only a few seats but will be in the game and will capture some voteshare.

Dr Ayub personally sees the Congress as the biggest enemy of the Muslims as they have "fooled the community". "They are more dangerous than the BJP," he says. So what can the Peace Party achieve? Well, what isn't helping the Congress is the fact that there is a coherent anti-Congress opinion being put forward by a section of articulate Muslims in the midst of an election when the grand old party is desperately trying to win back the minorities.


	The Peace Party has given 40 seats to Raja Bundela's Bundelkhand Party which can cause upsets.

The Peace Party has struck an alliance with Apna Dal, now led by Anupriya Patel. The party, founded by her father and late Kurmi leader Sone Lal Patel in 1995, had bagged four seats in the 2002 state polls. In 2007, however, the Apna Dal failed to win even a single seat, despite polling some 10 per cent of total votes wherever it contested. But it is seen as having indirectly defeated a few candidates as it did mop up some Kurmi votes. The question is particularly significant for the Congress, which is promoting Beni Prasad Verma as its Kurmi face. Beni is believed to be currently the leader with the easiest access to Rahul Gandhi, who is working hard at campaigning in UP. Now Union steel minister, Beni was once close to Mulayam Singh Yadav and is a veteran from the SP.

The Peace Party-Apna Dal front is certain to irritate the Congress and SP. The Apna Dal has also fielded mafia don and ex-MP Atiq Ahmed from Allahabad-West. The Peace Party-led front has also given 40 seats to the Bundelkhand Party led by TV star-turned-activist Raja Bundela and this could upset some calculations in that belt. In the Bareilly belt, they have an understanding with the Itihad Millat in eight seats.

There are also some old players of UP in the fray who refuse to go gently into the night. Remember Amar Singh, Mulayam's best-friend-turned-foe? He has floated the Rashtriya Lok Manch party and along with Bollywood star and MP Jaya Prada is touring the state, particularly eastern Uttar Pradesh.

Don Mukhtar Ansari is in jail but is the MLA from Mau who's formed the Quami Ekta Front. He will be the party's candidate from Mau while his brother contests from Mohammadabad in Gazipur. In the nation's largest state, a republic unto itself, it seems dons, doctors, filmstars, mullahs and social activists have all turned politicians.

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E-Books Are Easier To Ban Than Books Indian law promotes arbitrary removal and blocking of websites, website content, and online services —making it much easier than getting offline printed speech removed PRANESH PRAKASH

2012-01-28T06:27:00.001-08:00

OPINION

E-Books Are Easier To Ban Than Books

Indian law promotes arbitrary removal and blocking of websites, website content, and online services —making it much easier than getting offline printed speech removed

PRANESH PRAKASH

http://outlookindia.com/article.aspx?279712

Without getting into questions of what should and should not be unlawful speech, let's take a look at how Indian law promotes arbitrary removal and blocking of websites, website content, and online services, and how it makes it much easier than getting offline printed speech removed.

Pranesh Prakash works with the Centre for Internet and Society, Bangalore, which first published this article.

Contrary to what Mr. Sibal's recent hand-wringing at objectionable online material might suggest, under Indian laws currently in force it is far easier to remove material from the Web, by many degrees of magnitude, than it is to ever get them removed from a bookstore or an art gallery. To get something from a bookstore or an art gallery one needs to collect a mob, organize collective outrage and threats of violence, and finally convince either the government or a magistrate that the material is illegal, thereby allowing the police to seize the books or stop the painting from being displayed. The fact of removal of the material will be noted in various records, whether in government records, court records, police records or in newspapers of record.

By contrast, to remove something from the Web, one needs to send an e-mail complaining about it to any of the string of 'intermediaries' that handle the content: the site itself, the web host for the site, the telecom companies that deliver the site to your computer/mobile, the web address (domain name) provider, the service used to share the link, etc. Under the 'Intermediary Guidelines Rules' that have been in operation since 11th April 2011, all such companies are required to 'disable access' to the complained-about content within thirty-six hours of the complaint. It is really that simple.

"That's ridiculous," you think, "surely he must be exaggerating." Think again. A researcher working with us at the Centre for Internet and Society tried it out, several times, with many different intermediaries and always with frivolous and flawed complaints, and was successfulsix out of seven times. Thus it is easier to prevent Flipkart or Amazon from selling Rushdie'sMidnight's Children than it is to prevent a physical bookstore from doing so: today Indira Gandhi wouldn't need to win a lawsuit in London against the publishers to remove a single line as she did then; she would merely have to send a complaint to online booksellers and get the book removed. It is easier to block Vinay Rai's Akbari.in (just asCartoonsAgainstCorruption.com was recently blocked) than it is to prevent its print publication. Best of all for complainants: there is no penalty for frivolous complaints such as those sent by us, nor are any records kept of who's removed what. Such great powers of censorship without any penalties for their abuse are a sure-fire way of ensuring a race towards greater intolerance, with the Internet — that republic of opinions and expressions — being a casualty.

E-Book Bans Cannot Be Challenged

In response to some of the objections raised, the Cyberlaw Division of the Department of Information Technology, ever the dutiful guardian of free speech, noted that if you have a problem with access to your content being 'disabled', you could always approach a court and get that ban reversed. Unfortunately, the Cyberlaw Division of the Department of Information Technology forgot to take into account that you can't contest a ban/block/removal if you don't know about it. While they require all intermediaries to disable access to the content within thirty-six hours, they forgot to mandate the intermediary to tell you that the content is being removed. Whoops. They forgot to require the intermediary to give public notice that content has been removed following a complaint from person ABC or corporation XYZ on such-and-such grounds. Whoops, again.

So while records are kept, along with reasons, of book bans, there are no such records required to be kept of e-book bans.

E-Book Censors Are Faceless

Vinay Rai is a brave man. He is being attacked by fellow journalists who believe he's disgracing the professional upholders of free-speech, and being courted by television channels who believe that he should be encouraged to discuss matters that are sub judice. He is viewed by some as a man who's playing politics in courts on behalf of unnamed politicians and bureaucrats, while others view him as being bereft of common-sense for believing that companies should be legally liable for not having been clairvoyant and removing material he found objectionable, though he has never complained to them about it, and has only provided that material to the court in a sealed envelope.

I choose, instead, to view him as a scrupulous and brave man. He has a face, and a name, and is willing to openly fight for what he believes in. However, there are possibly thousands of unscrupulous Vinay Rais out there, who know the law better than he does, and who make use not of the court system but of the Intermediary Guidelines Rules, firmly assured by those Rules that their censorship activities will never be known, will never be challenged by Facebook and Google lawyers, and will never be traced back to them.

Challenging Invisible Censorship

Dear reader, you may have noticed that this is a bit like a trial involving Free Speech in which Free Speech is presumed guilty upon complaint, is not even told what the charges against it are, has not been given a chance to prove its innocence, and has no right to meet its accusers nor to question them. Yet, the Cyberlaw Division of the Department of Information Technology continues to issue press releases defending these Rules as fair and just, instead of being simultaneously Orwellian and Kafkaesque.

These Rules are delegated legislation passed by the Department of Information Technology under s.79 of the Information Technology Act. The Rules were laid before Parliament during the 2011 Monsoon session. We at CIS believe that these Rules are ultra vires the IT Act as well as the Constitution of India, not only with respect to what is now (newly) proscribed online (which in itself is enough to make it unconstitutional), but how that which is purportedly unlawful is to be removed. We have prepared an alternative that we believe is far more just and in accordance with our constitutional principles, taking on best practices from Canada, the EU, Chile, and Brazil, while still allowing for expeditious removal of unlawful material. We hope that the DIT will consider adopting some of the ideas embodied in our draft proposal.

As Parliament passed the IT Act in the midst of din, without any debate, it is easy to be sceptical and wonder whether Rules made under the IT Act will be debated. However, I remain hopeful that Parliament will not only exercise its power wisely, but will perform its solemn duty — borne out of each MP's oath to uphold our Constitution — by rejecting these Rules.

Article reproduced under CC-BY-NC-SA 2.0 licence

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THE IDEA OF INDIA REDUX Programmed To Survive That the nation persists is what has lent the India story such gravitas: an idea that’s taken strong root. But will the march of history leave us behind? SUNIL KHILNANI

2012-01-28T06:25:00.001-08:00

The fleeting age A couple ride against a commercial centre backdrop in Gurgaon

THE IDEA OF INDIA REDUX

Programmed To Survive

That the nation persists is what has lent the India story such gravitas: an idea that's taken strong root. But will the march of history leave us behind?

SUNIL KHILNANI

http://outlookindia.com/article.aspx?279695

Why India? Why, of all post-colonial nations, is India the country that gets taken most seriously by the very powers it once struggled against? Whether it is corporate Britain wooing Indian money by throwing Bollywood bling parties at London's Claridge's Hotel or European luxury houses like Hermes launching special sari lines for India's glamorati or US President Obama choosing the Indian prime minister as the guest of honour for his first state banquet—the world wants a piece of India. Not since nineteenth-century America has an ex-colony moved so fast into prominence on the world stage.

Plenty of people have answers that purport to explain this phenomenon—India's scale, its software and smartness, its strategic location. But I think the real answer is at once more subtle and more obvious. It has to do with the fact that India is still here—that, unlike many new states created after the end of the age of European empire, it has not self-destructed. What if India's current prominence has more to do with what it has avoided, steered around, than with what it has done?

When I wrote The Idea of India in '97, I wanted to show that the founding idea of India is anchored as much in resisting certain powerful seductions—the temptations of a clear, singular definition of nationhood, of the apparent neatness of authoritarian politics, of the clarities of a statist or pure market economy, of unambiguous alliances with other states—as it was in realising declaratory visions.

***

History moves fast these days—faster that it did when nineteenth-century America began its climb to world power, faster than when Gandhi and Nehru brought India to independence in the mid-twentieth century, and faster still than in the years since I wrote The Idea of India. In India, what were once gradual changes—the upswing of economic growth, the movement of Indians from the countryside to the city, the sabotage of the old hierarchies of the social order, the renegotiation of India's place and status in the world—now turn at dizzying pace.

Such historical fast-tracking has taken India to a point where it is now possible to envisage a real change in the chronic conditions of deprivation and injustice that have so long entrapped most Indians. Actually altering those conditions for the better will, however, require a run of political judgement and action as momentous as that accomplished by India's founders in the mid-twentieth century, when that remarkable generation broke India free from an authoritarian, oppressive past and set it forth in pursuit of liberty and democracy.

The grand tasks of the years ahead are daunting: managing the largest-ever rural-to-urban transition under democratic conditions; developing the human capital and sustaining the ecological and energy resources needed for participatory economic growth; contending with powerful competitor states and containing a volatile neighbourhood; defining what sort of power we wish to be in the world. It is an agenda that would test any society at the best of times. But in India's case, these tasks will have to be achieved under severe constraints of time and choice.

Ours is a society of swiftly inflating expectations, where old deference crumbles before youthful impatience. And internationally, India must navigate a fluid arena: one where global power is rearranging itself in as yet undefined ways, where capital is restless, and where new, unforeseen threats and risks are facts of life. India will have only a sliver of time, a matter of years, in which to seize its chances. After all, the faster history moves, the more likely one is to get left behind.


	Political imagination, judgement, action—the capacities that birthed India—seem to have deserted us when we need them.

The policy choices we make over the coming decade—about education, about environmental resources, about social and fiscal responsibility, about foreign affairs—will propel us down tracks that will be difficult to renounce or even revise in years to come. The aptness of those choices will depend not on India's entrepreneurial brilliance or technological prowess, or the cheapness of its labour, but on politics. Yet, at this historical moment when emergent possibilities and new problems are crowding in, the transformative momentum of India's politics seems to have dissipated.

Although the nation's founders saw political freedom as their great goal, decades on, what that freedom has delivered measures up poorly for many. For India's business leaders eager to compete with China, for the middle classes fed up by corruption, for radicalisant intellectuals, for desperate citizens who've taken up arms against the state, democracy in India is a story of deflating illusions, of obstacles and oppression. Democratic politics itself is seen as impeding the decisive action needed to expand economic possibilities.

It is a troubling irony: political imagination, judgement and action—the capacities that brought India into being—seem to have deserted both the air-conditioned hallways of power as well as the dusty streets of protest, just when it needs them. The distinctive source of modern India's legitimacy has, to many, become an agent of the country's ills.

India's democratic discontent echoes a wider disaffection. Across the globe, democratic politics is in distress and disrepair. It is being challenged in its homelands, from the US to Europe to Japan, while in Russia and China, it stands summarily dismissed. As citizens grow ever more contemptuous of their leaders, leaders readily return the compliment—complaining that they are hamstrung by the short-sighted, unrealistic demands of their citizenry. Just a couple of decades after democracy was proclaimed as the universal future—the riddle of human history solved—it seems fragile, ineffectual, contingent.

In India, the impatience with democracy is perhaps not unreasonable, given how quickly we have moved in such a short time, and how much further we wish to get. But one way to understand the possibilities that democracy alone can underwrite is to remember the context that existed in India at the time that I wrote The Idea of India.

Where progress is metronomic Construction work in progess for the Bangalore Metro. (Photograph by Nilotpal Baruah)

***

I was motivated, then, by a different kind of concern about India's democracy: a kind of majoritarianism, it seemed, might threaten our foundational commitment to diversity and pluralism.

In the mid-'90s, India had emerged from a deep economic crisis, only to be ensnared in battles over identity. What sort of a nation were we? Which groups or cultures had the right to claim special privileges? Religion, caste, region: all were vigorously advanced as answers.

These answers seemed bent on blurring, even dissolving, the idea of India—the constitutive idea of this "unnatural nation". It was that idea that I sought to recover, in hopes of showing how it had made India and kept it going. Part of the burden of my argument was that India's politics was proliferating a variety of ideas about India, some in contradiction and collision with one another. The Indian idea had itself become a proudly plural one—a measure as good as any of the original idea's success. And amidst that plurality were, perhaps inevitably, some conceptions that sought to singularise India's many religious and cultural identities and make it a narrower place.

Today, in many parts of the country, those battles seem to have played themselves out—so much blood under the bridge, or down the Sabarmati, as it were. The conventional view is that India's economic surge has stilled those fights over identity. And although there is some truth in that explanation, it is too partial a perception. It does not address, for instance, why one of India's most developed and fast-growing states, the calendar girl of big business—Gujarat—is also the purveyor of India's most chauvinistic and poisonous politics.


	It is the capacity of India's democracy to articulate and incite its diversity that has saved it from civil conflict.

In fact, what has at least for an interval calmed such politics has been the workings, however rickety, of democratic politics. It is the capacity of India's representative democracy to articulate, and even to incite, India's diversity, to give voice to differing interests and ideas of self, rather than merely to aggregate supposed common identities, that has saved India from the civil conflict and auto-destruction typical of so many states. Many of those states have been in fact smaller and less diverse than India. Consider for a start, the ragged history of India's regional neighbours. The desire to impose a common identity has broken them down.

What has protected India from such outcomes is not any innate Indian virtue or cultural uniqueness. Rather, it is the outcome of a political invention, the intricate architecture of constitutional democracy established by its founders. That constitutional democracy has prevented monolithic outcomes in India. It has stalled zealots in their tracks, penned demagogues to their corrals and taken the wind out of populist sails—just as it has also frustrated and slowed more positive or desirable outcomes. But that is the crucial, under-recognised value of such a system: its capacity not to achieve the good, but to prevent the worse.

***

Democracy's singular, rather astonishing achievement has been to keep India united as a political space. And now that space has become a vast market whose strength lies in its internal diversity and dynamism. It is that vast market, of considerable attraction to international capital, that is today one of India's greatest comparative advantages—and one that makes India a potential engine of the global economy.

In the years ahead, whether the old battles over identity stay becalmed will to a large extent depend on the capacity of India's political system to sustain and spread the country's new growth. Rising disparities in income, wealth and opportunity are a global fact, but they can be particularly acute in growing economies. For twenty-first century India, as economic growth spreads unevenly over the productive landscape, the big questions will turn onto the disequalising effects of economic transformation. This isn't a question that any society, democratic or despotic, has been able to solve, let alone any rapidly growing society—and certainly not China.

The project of devising workable alternatives to market capitalism has animated much of the politics and history of the past two centuries. But that project did not on the whole fare impressively. The collapse of revolutionary dreams symbolised by the events of 1989 and immediately after has been followed by slow punctures in the wheels of Western social democracy. And yet, the lived conditions that gave rise to such political hopes—revolutionary or reformist—remain as intense and painful as ever, not least in the world's two major growth economies, China and India. Part of what it must mean, therefore, for states like India and China to take their place as major world powers must rest on their ability to invent better alternative models of market capitalism.

For India, developing such alternatives must be a priority in coming years. It is imperative for India's economic future that the global disaffection with market capitalism does not take wider hold in the country. We shall need, somehow, to strike a balance between, on the one hand, redistributive social policies and regulation and, on the other hand, the need to keep the economy open, markets functioning, and incentives alive.

Trained goods A new autorickshaw gets rolled out at a storage facility in Gujarat. (Photograph by Reuters, From Outlook, February 06, 2012)

Most people in India remain hopeful that their turn will come. Yet as I write this, thousands of protesters have taken to the streets and squares of the world's financial centres, from NY and London to Frankfurt and Hong Kong, hoping to change the skewed order of global capitalism. Such dissidence is a reminder that the tolerance for disparities, for inequality, can shift sharp and sudden.

In India's case, just as six decades and more of democracy have broken down age-old structures of deference and released a new defiant energy, so too years of rapid but uneven growth may, before we are quite ready to acknowledge it, dismantle the intricate self-deceptions that have so far kept India's grotesque disparities protected from mass protest. As the Indian political classes exercise their populist instincts, corporate India, heady with new opulence, lately comports itself like a well-plumed sitting duck. Without renewed political imagination and judgement, the disaffection and alienation of those who are being left out or actively dispossessed by rapid growth could change the course of our history.

Can India's democracy rise up to the task of rectifying this sorry state of affairs—accommodate the dispossessed and channel discontent into political forms? Most importantly, can India's democracy be rescued from its current function as an acclamatory mechanism to instal new leaders? Is it possible to turn that democracy into something that makes political responsibility more legible, and also enables those who hold power to invest in the country's long future?

In the twentieth century, India was a striking example of post-colonial reinvention. We might now, in the new century, turn our thoughts to practising a more effective democracy and a more inclusive market capitalism—in contrast to China, where wealth amasses and democracy remains a bad coin.

The transformational opportunities that India confronts today have their origins in the life and story that unfolds in my book, The Idea of India. As India moves forward in coming years, ever more forgetful of its history, those origins and that story will matter more than ever. For, even when nations pride themselves on their freedom from the past, it is often in fact their beginnings—their founding spirit and imagination—that remain, in very altered worlds, their greatest resource.

(This essay is the new Introduction to the fifth edition of The Idea of India, published as a Popular Penguin on January 20. Professor Sunil Khilnani is Avantha Chair and Director, King's India Institute, London)

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A walk in Sikkim TEXT & PHOTOGRAPHS: A.J.T. JOHNSINGH Conservation of the geographically diverse and bilogically rich state has become an ecological imperative.

2012-01-28T06:18:00.001-08:00

http://www.frontlineonnet.com/stories/20120210290206400.htm

NATURE

A walk in Sikkim

TEXT & PHOTOGRAPHS: A.J.T. JOHNSINGH

Conservation of the geographically diverse and bilogically rich state has become an ecological imperative.

RHODODENDRON ARBOREUM IS the first of the rhododendron species to flower in the Sikkim Himalaya. In the background is the plateau Tso Lhamo, at 5,490 metres.

IN the summer of 2007, I was helping the Sikkim Programme Office of WWF-India conduct a three-day training programme for officers and other staff of the Sikkim Forest Department on field methods to assess the status of the red panda ( Ailurus fulgens). The red panda is a cute-looking carnivore of the eastern Himalaya and south-western China. It is also the State animal of Sikkim.

On June 1, 2007, as part of the training programme, a young forest officer by the name of Karma Legshey led us on a visit to the rugged and beautiful Kyongnosla Alpine Sanctuary (KAS, 30 square kilometres). Kyongnosla is about 30 km from Gangtok, the capital of Sikkim. We started our walk at an altitude of 3,300 metres from the bridge across the Rongchu (chu means stream) on the Gangtok-Nathula road. The Rongchu gushed merrily down a shallow valley, its water snow-white in the rapids and emerald-green in the pools. The far-off mountains stood shrouded in mist and the sky was laden with patches of dark rain clouds indicating that the south-west monsoon was imminent. We walked along the right bank of the river for about half a kilometre, went up the mountain slope along a stream and, after attaining an altitude of nearly 3,500 m, turned back to the road along the steep, rhododendron-draped slope. That was the second of my three visits to Sikkim (in April 2006, May-June 2007 and March 2011) which have together helped me understand the conservation situation in the State.

Sikkim is a landlocked Indian State nestled in the eastern Himalayas. Spread below Mount Khangchendzonga (about 8,585 m), the third highest mountain peak in the world, this thumb-shaped State has borders with Nepal in the west, the Tibet Autonomous Region of China in the north and east, Bhutan to its south-east and West Bengal to its south. It is the second smallest State (7,096 sq km) after Goa (3,702 sq km) and one of the least populous States in the country. Despite its tiny size, Sikkim is geographically diverse because of its location in the Himalaya. The climate ranges from the subtropical (300 m) to that of the snowbound peaks of the Khangchendzonga range.

RHODODENDRON GRIFFITHIANUM, WHICH flowers in May-June.

Sikkim has become one of India's most visited States owing to its reputation for cleanliness, scenic beauty and political stability. The Teesta and its tributary, the Rangeet, are the major rivers and they join at Teesta Bazaar on the border with West Bengal.

Protected areas

A major problem for this small State is the small sizes of its protected areas. The total area covered by the eight protected areas is about 2,183 sq km (31 per cent of the total geographic area, and the highest of any State in India). Among them the largest is the Khangchendzonga National Park (1,784 sq km). The area coming under the Khangchendzonga Biosphere Reserve is 836 sq km and the total area coming under conservation is 2,620 sq km. In India, biosphere reserves do not have legal status.

PRIMULA SPECIES OF herbs that grow in areas that are snowbound in winter.

The average size of the other protected areas is about 57 sq km, which is too small for the conservation of large mammals, which are already decimated by heavy hunting in the past. In fact, the sambar deer is extinct in Sikkim, in contrast to adjacent Bhutan where it is found in broad-leaved forests even at 3,500-4,000 m, thus enabling the tiger to occur at these high altitudes. For that matter, even other mammals such as the barking deer, the goral and the serow seem to be extremely rare in spite of the availability of splendid habitats. The tiger no longer occurs within the geographical limit of Sikkim, and conflict reports indicate that the clouded leopard may be much more common than the common leopard. Problem species such as the black bear and the wild pig seem to be common if data on conflict are any indication.

FLOWERS OF MAGNOLIA campbellii.

The KAS, one of the eight protected areas in Sikkim, was established in 1984. It is on the right, or western, bank of the Kyongnosla river valley, which was ravaged by massive timber extraction for defence needs during India's border conflict with China in 1962. The credit for restoring the KAS to its present glory goes to the late Chezung Lachungpa, an officer of the Indian Forest Service. He had several decades of experience across Sikkim, and in the 1980s he undertook intensive plantation of various tree species, with a special focus on the rhododendron species.

TIGER PAINTING BELOW Kupub on the Sherathang-Rhenock road. In the past, possibly tigers were common at the tri-junction of Sikkim-Bhutan-north Bengal.

The altitude of the KAS ranges from 3,300 m to 4,100 m, and it is part of a much larger mountainous landscape that extends to the Shingba Rhododendron Sanctuary in the north to the Gangtok Zoological Gardens in the south-west and to the Pangolakha Wildlife Sanctuary in the south. Interestingly, this stretch of mountains was used by tigers in the past as there was report between 1978 and 1981 of a tiger killing cattle near Lacheng village, not far from the Shingba Rhododendron Sanctuary. The tiger disappeared thereafter.

SAVITA RAO

THE RED PANDA, the State animal of Sikkim, is arboreal. When it descends to the ground it is extremely vulnerable to predation.

The KAS is small, but it harbours 14 species of the rhododendron, including Rhododendron niveum, the State tree of Sikkim. It is home to birds such as the monal pheasant, the blood pheasant (State bird of Sikkim), the satyr tragopan and the Tibetan snowcock and mammals such as the pika, the marmot, the goral, the serow, the musk deer, the barking deer, the Tibetan fox, the red panda, the black bear, and possibly the snow leopard in winter. During our short walk in June 2007, I saw signs of the goral and the musk deer, and one of the Forest Department staff saw a pair of blood pheasants with four chicks.

During the three visits I made to Sikkim, I also visited the Fambong Lho Wildlife Sanctuary (52 sq km), closer to Gangtok, the Maenam Wildlife Sanctuary (35 sq km) in south Sikkim, the Barsey Rhododendron Sanctuary (104 sq km), which is contiguous with the Singalila National Park in West Bengal, the Shingba Rhododendron Sanctuary in the north and the Pangolakha Wildlife Sanctuary (124 sq km) in the east. Twice I drove down from Sherathang, near Nathula, to Rhenock, and somewhere below Kupub village I saw a golden yellow tiger painting on a rock. I thought it might have been commissioned by the Army. Walking in these protected areas gave me the opportunity to understand the problems and potential of Sikkim, particularly for the conservation of large Himalayan mammals that occur here.

THE HIMALAYAN TAHR. Ernest Schaffer, a German biologist, made an expedition to north Sikkim in 1930 and discovered this distinct variety in Sikkim.

It is unfortunate that in spite of the efforts by the State government, garbage is still a problem here. It is more so in the countryside. The only large mammal I saw during my visits was a group of Himalayan langur, looking beautiful in their winter coats, near the Shingba Rhododendron Sanctuary. As a result of extensive road construction, even in areas where it should never have been considered in the first place, landslides are a major problem. During my last trip in March 2011, Forest Officer Monee Ram Rai showed me several places where the problem of landslides had been addressed effectively with suitable eco-restoration measures.

RHODODENDRON HODGSONII IS one of the beautiful rhododendron species in the Himalaya.

The magnificent Teesta river is being tamed for the construction of six power plants. In addition, there are proposals for several micro-hydel projects. Pawan Kumar Chamling, the Chief Minister of the State, who was presented the Down To Earth Greenest Chief Minister award in 1998 and has been reigning for the past two decades, believes that when the hydel projects are completed, Sikkim, with excess power to sell, will be economically prosperous.

Hooker's journals

The Sikkim Himalaya, comprising the present State of Sikkim and the Darjeeling Gorkha Hill Council of West Bengal, covers 12,700 sq km of extremely mountainous terrain. Much of the credit for drawing the attention of the scientific community to the biological richness of this region goes to Sir Joseph Dalton Hooker, an eminent Victorian botanist (1817-1911) and a friend of Charles Darwin. Darwin writes of Hooker as the one soul from whom he unfailingly received support when he expostulated his ideas on natural selection.

RHODODENDRON THOMSONII FLOWERS start wilting in early May.

In 1848-49, Hooker braved ticks, mosquitoes, fleas, leeches, inclement weather, high-altitude sickness, irregular supplies of basic provisions and the hostility of the powerful Diwan (Prime Minister) of Sikkim (the aging King was an ineffective ruler) to survey up to about 6,000 m, venturing well into Tibet.

RHODODENDRON FALCONERI. THE large leaves that are rufous on the ventral side help in its identification.

On a subsequent longer expedition in Sikkim, he and his friend, Archibald Campbell, representative of the British East India Company at Darjeeling, were both arrested as they travelled towards Chola Pass in Tibet. Even so, he managed to collect 6,000-7,000 plant specimens which he then deposited at the Kew Botanical Gardens, of which his father was then director. Hooker too eventually became the director of the Kew Botanical Gardens. His monograph Rhododendrons of Sikkim Himalaya describes all the 36 species of Sikkim. His report brought this genus of trees with its showy flowers importance as a horticulture species.

TREVESIA PALMATA, ONE of the most attractive plants seen in the Pangolakha Wildlife Sanctuary.

S.T. Lachungpa, a fourth-generation forester in Sikkim, believes that there could be more than 40 species of the rhododendron in Sikkim. He also makes keen observations on the visible impact of climate change in Sikkim. For instance, mosquitoes, previously unknown here, are now invading north Sikkim because of the warming weather. Similarly, a very valuable tree species, Alnus nepalensis (Nepalese Alder), originally confined to the 1,500-2,000-m belt, is now found at higher altitudes. Local people find that preserving yak meat is a challenge now because temperatures do not stay low enough in winter for the meat to be properly frozen.

CHAMPAK, OR MICHELIA excelsa. It requires greater protection and propagation.

Interesting information on large mammals emerges from Hooker's two-volume book Himalayan Journals, which is dedicated to Charles Darwin, whom he describes as an affectionate friend. Hunting was a way of life in those days, and Hooker frequently obtained meat from the mountains. He writes that the flesh of musk deer females and young males is delicious, but the flesh of adult males is unpalatable because of the odour of the strong musk that they produce. In his writings he mentions the Tibetan woolly hare, the Tibetan antelope, the Tibetan gazelle, the bharal (the blue sheep), and the argali ( Ovis ammon), a wild species of sheep that sports magnificent horns and is a relative of the big-horn sheep ( Ovis canadensis) of North America. Interestingly, nowhere does he mention the goral, the Himalayan tahr, the serow, the leopard, the snow leopard, the black bear or the dhole (wild dog). The credit for discovering the Himalayan tahr in the Sikkim Himalaya goes to Dr Ernest Schaffer, who did this during his expedition to Tibet from Sikkim in 1930. He and his small team were turned back by the Tibetans because he was a Nazi German.

FALLEN BLOOD-RED FRUITS of Sterculia villosa, which are common in early May in lower Sikkim.

In the Himalayan Journals, Volume II, Hooker provides a drawing of an antler of the Sikkim stag ( Cervus elaphus wallichii, now reported to be extinct in Sikkim), which measured 54 inches in length. Hooker reported the deer to be a native of the Choombi (Chumbi) valley in Tibet, where the sub-species of this deer is still in existence. During that time, Choombi valley was part of Sikkim. Once, Hooker's dogs caught an ungulate at an altitude of 2,760 m. He called it the "Regean" and describes it as half goat, half deer, dark and lean, its flesh as rather good and tender. My surmise is that it may have been a young serow.

In the past, both the Teesta and the Rangeet were famous for the golden mahseer, but now the status of this extremely beautiful and immensely valuable fish remains bleak as a result of overfishing, construction of dams and siltation in the rivers. The decline of snowfall over the decades in Sikkim Himalaya has affected the glacial lakes in the north-eastern part of Sikkim, which also suffer as a result of siltation, and could be a threat to the introduced population of rainbow trout and brown trout which can be a great asset for promoting ecotourism.

YOUNG LEAVES OF Rhododendron arboreum in the Barsey Rhododendron Sanctuary in early May.

Several ideas for the conservation of large mammals in Sikkim come to my mind. The high Himalayas still have populations of the Himalayan tahr, the wild ass, the bharal, the argali and the snow leopard which are possibly connected to the other populations in the Himalayas. Recently, Pranay Chanchani, a young student from Wildlife Institute of India, Dehradun, spent nearly six months in the Tso Lhamo plateau (over 4,300 m) studying the conflict between livestock and wild ungulates (the Tibetan argali, the Tibetan gazelle and the Tibetan wild ass) and concluded that wild ungulates survive here only because of the non-hunting tradition of the local people and the seasonal absence of grazing by yak and sheep. There is a lesson in this for large mammal conservation in other parts of Sikkim too: no hunting (which also includes snaring), no grazing in the wildlife habitats and no free-ranging dogs. Dogs can be a great threat to all forms of wildlife, particularly to the less-agile red panda.

The Gangtok Zoological Garden can be used for breeding the sambar for reintroduction. Efforts should be made to protect the golden mahseer, wherever possible, in the Teesta and the Rangeet. There is an urgent need to create the tri-junction peace park encompassing the Pangolakha Wildlife Sanctuary (Sikkim), the Neora Valley National Park (West Bengal) and the Torsa Strict Nature Reserve (Bhutan), as a collaborative project with West Bengal and Bhutan, to bring the tiger back to Sikkim.

COLOURFUL FLAGS WELCOMING visitors to north Sikkim. Sikkim has become one of India's most visited States owing to its reputation for cleanliness, scenic beauty and political stability.

The gaur will then eventually find a permanent home here. Much greater importance should be given to the propagation and protection of various species of oaks, Campbell's magnolia ( Magnolia campbellii) and Champak ( Michelia excelsa).

It should be ensured that the pharmaceutical factories on the banks of the Teesta do not release untreated effluents into the river. All road and dam construction works should be concluded as early as possible and the ugly scars on the landscapes caused by these constructions covered by adequate eco-restoration programmes, enabling Sikkim to rediscover its unmatched scenic beauty.

A.J.T. Johnsingh is with WWF-India and Nature Conservation Foundation, Mysore.

BANKING Negative signal G. SRINIVASAN Moody's issues a raft of revisions on ratings of Indian banks, first downgrading the SBI's financial strength and now that of Syndicate Bank.

2012-01-28T06:15:00.001-08:00

http://www.frontlineonnet.com/stories/20120210290204100.htm

BANKING

Negative signal

G. SRINIVASAN

Moody's issues a raft of revisions on ratings of Indian banks, first downgrading the SBI's financial strength and now that of Syndicate Bank.

AP

The signage of Moody's Corporation in New York. Critics see very little substance in ratings by global agencies.

THE United States-based ratings agency Moody's recently revised Syndicate Bank's local currency deposit ratings and all its debt ratings to negative from stable. In justification, the Moody's Investors Service cryptically noted that "the revision in the rating outlook factors in the increasingly challenging operating environment for Indian banks. As Syndicate Bank has a weaker franchise than other Indian banks, its rating is more vulnerable to potential deterioration in financial strength in the current environment."

That the country's macroeconomic milieu, amid the slowdown of the economy, is none too encouraging is evident from the Reserve Bank of India's (RBI) half-yearly Financial Stability Report (FSR) released in the last week of 2011. The RBI noted tersely that all components of domestic demand (private and government, consumption and investment) had decelerated and cautioned that if gross domestic product (GDP) growth slowed down, there could be some "downstream impact on asset quality". This could be construed rather elliptically to mean that borrowers may balk at repayment citing general infirmities attendant upon a slowing economy. The year-on-year growth rate of non-performing assets (NPAs) at 30.5 per cent as at end-September 2011 has outrun the credit growth of 19.2 per cent. In fact, the latest update showing a credit offtake of 17 per cent for the period ending January 6, 2012, against the corresponding period in 2011, means that 13 policy rate hikes have wrought a deleterious impact on growth and investment.

The apex bank also did not desist from stating that additional capital would need to be raised owing to the compulsions of implementation of Basel III, even as higher provisioning requirements (due to higher slippages) and increased interest expenses already impacted on the profitability of the banking sector. Key sectors that led the trend of rising NPAs include the priority sector, retail, real estate and infrastructure. The gross NPA ratio rose from 2.3 per cent to 2.8 per cent between March and September 2011. This includes lump of loans extended to a spate of troubled sectors ranging from telecom and airlines to power, which have remained caught in either scams or policy inertia for far too long.

The bugle of caution was sounded out a couple of months ago when Moody's revised its outlook for India's banking industry from stable to negative, citing concerns of rampant inflation, monetary tightening and rapidly escalating interest rates. This downward revision arose out of an increasingly challenging operating environment for the banking system that is bound to exert adverse pressures on the system in terms of asset quality, capitalisation and profitability. With the country's money market remaining stringent on the back of rising interest costs, Moody's foresaw that Indian banks' asset quality might get worse over the next 12-18 months even as it reckoned that bank loan growth would plunge from 21 per cent in 2011 to a range of 16-18 per cent in 2012 and 2013. Moody's expected the profitability plank of the banks to weaken owing to lower interest margins as deposit rates are repriced, thanks to the liberalisation on savings deposit rates by the central bank in October last.

It is not that Moody's has suddenly woken up to the worsening operating milieu of Indian banks to issue a raft of revisions on the ratings. It began the downgrade with the rating on the State Bank of India's (SBI) financial strength on October 4, 2011. This was assailed by critics as they saw little substance in such ratings by global agencies that had not clothed themselves with any glory, having miserably failed to detect the global financial meltdown of 2008 when so many fancy financial instruments played havoc with the financial institutions in major economies of the West.

Despite such criticism of patent lapses in their own backyard, Moody's revision on the SBI, in retrospect, did not appear to be an unduly false alarm. The subsequent publication of the SBI results showed that the bank's gross NPA grew by 2 per cent between June and September 2011, against 19 per cent in the case of other public sector banks. There was also a spurt in non-performing loans aggregating to 4.19 per cent of the total advances, with loans amounting to Rs.8,000 crore slipping from the standard category (asset on which there is no default) to the substandard category (marked by defaults). What is causing flutters is that the SBI's core capital, or Tier-I capital (in terms of capital adequacy norms as set by the central bankers' central bank, the Basel-based Bank for International Settlements), had slipped to 7.4 per cent in the quarter ending September 2011 against the mandated 8 per cent.

PAUL NORONHA

THE STATE BANK of India's headquarters in Mumbai

However, Minister of State for Finance Namo Narain Meena, while responding to a query in the Rajya Sabha on November 29, maintained that the "Indian banking sector is in sound financial health and Moody's ratings would not have a long-lasting effect on the banking sector in India". Though the domestic banking industry has not been jolted because of the constant revisions by overseas ratings agencies on Indian banking, the fact remains that the economic slowdown and the lack of appetite for investment either to start a new one or expand the existing ones mainly due to the prohibitively high cost of credit by financial institutions might pose problems in terms of asset quality and risk-taking spurs by the banks in particular. Industry analysts too contend that given the sort of stickiness of the system as a whole due to assets and liabilities mismatch, concerns over the quality of loans and the general economic slowdown, the banking industry will be on a sliding board if it does not get its act together.

The year 2011 proved to be a year of hardships in terms of persistent inflation and a year when the Sensex fell by 25 per cent. The rupee declined by a staggering 16 per cent, rendering it the worst performing major Asian currency, besides making import-dependent energy cost expensive and pushing the price of other imported essential inputs. It is small wonder then that the investors, particularly institutional investors from abroad, were actively pulling their funds from India. Net outflows were $380 million in 2011, after rising to a hefty $29 billion in 2010.

Given the reality that the economy's return to a consistently high growth path would take a couple of years, the banking industry has a greater responsibility in the recovery process of the real sectors of the economy in keeping the credit spigot ajar. But it is precisely when the need for greater capital infusion is imperative that the banks have been directed by the authorities to go for financial inclusion for lending to many welfare programmes.

Against this development, the RBI has released draft guidelines on the proposed implementation of global norms of capital adequacy (Basel-III), requiring banks to go in for capital infusion during the next five years. How far the domestic banking industry will be able to meet the challenges of taking a proactive part in the recovery to high growth while simultaneously beefing up its capital base to meet the international norms of capital adequacy ratio will determine not only its fortunes but also its ability to survive and thrive.

The moot issue is whether the government should allow public sector banks the requisite operational autonomy to meet both ends. Will the banks be able to face price risks in a prudent fashion given their reluctance to lend in the light of the stickiness of the existing loans to various sectors is a difficult issue but one that must be addressed squarely for the long-term viability of the banks and to underpin growth impulses of the real sectors of the economy.

Rebellion and reaction AIJAZ AHMAD The mass uprisings of 2011 in the Arab world and in the Euro-American zone may have entirely different outcomes as the neoliberal framework crumbles.

2012-01-28T06:14:00.001-08:00

http://www.frontlineonnet.com/stories/20120210290200400.htm

COVER STORY

Rebellion and reaction

AIJAZ AHMAD

The mass uprisings of 2011 in the Arab world and in the Euro-American zone may have entirely different outcomes as the neoliberal framework crumbles.

DYLAN MARTINEZ

Tahrir Square, Cairo, February 11: Egyptians celebrate Hosni Mubarak's resignation and the end of his 30-year rule. Trade unions played a big role in the 2011 protests through strikes and organised participation in demonstrations. In fact, getting workers back to work in an economy that had stalled badly was a major impetus for the military to let go of Mubarak and then to outlaw strikes.

ON a global scale, the year 2011 was notable for two contrasting but interrelated features: a deepening economic crisis, especially in the core capitalist countries, and, on the political plain, a vast pattern of protests, strikes and mass uprisings in the Arab world as much as in the Euro-American zones but also enveloping countries as far-flung as China and Chile.

The centre of the economic crisis has now shifted from the United States to Europe, the much brandished U.S. recovery is grinding to a halt, the currency war between the dollar and the euro is in full bloom and an eventual collapse of the euro cannot be ruled out. As has been the case since the onset of the crisis in 2007/8, Asian economies have remained robust on the whole even though the rates of growth are slowing down. However, if the growing economic distress in Brazil is any indicator, China, India and the countries that comprise the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) are also likely to experience considerable contraction if the European Union crisis deteriorates very much further, which it most probably will. Prognosis for 2012 is dire.

This essay is not about the economic crisis but about some of its fallout. This writer has written on the political coordinates of the economic crisis previously ("The Political War", Frontline, September 9, 2011) and may return to it in the future. Here, the focus is on the strikes and the uprisings – the intertwining of revolutionary desire and counterrevolutionary strategies – but this too with a focus on the principal nodes, primarily in the Arab world and Europe.

The Arab revolt: Beginnings

When does a year begin, politically speaking?

One might plausibly say that 2011 began on December 17, 2010, when police confiscated the vending cart of Mohammad Bouazizi, an unemployed college graduate in the Tunisian town of Sidi Bouzid. Forced to vend fruits and vegetable, the young man registered his rage by immolating himself. Three issues were condensed in that one death: police brutality that was the hallmark of a ferocious dictatorship; widespread unemployment among Tunisian – and, more generally, Arab – youth; and the hideous contrast between fabulous wealth of the ruling class and rampant poverty among masses of people in every country that has been a victim of the Washington Consensus, neoliberalism, globalisation and so forth.

Parenthetically, it might be noted that in Tunisia itself there have been 107 documented attempts at self-immolation during the first six months after the overthrow of the Zine El Abidine Ben Ali dictatorship (first six months of "the Revolution") but those have gone largely unreported because such reports impinge upon the myth that there has been a "revolution" and, above all, the myth that "democracy" will somehow exorcise the ghosts of popular suffering. In other words: Bouazizi became a symbol, the dictatorship fell, but issues of neoliberal devastation and rampant unemployment remain.

SALAH HABIBI/AP

TUNIS, JANUARY 28, 2011: Demonstrators hold up a poster of Mohammad Bouazizi, an unemployed graduate in the Tunisian town of Sidi Bouzid who had been forced to sell fruits and vegetables. When the police confiscated his vending cart on December 17, 2010, Bouazizi registered his rage by immolating himself. His death became the rallying point for what went on to be called the Arab Spring.

And when does a year end, politically speaking?

No one could have foreseen that the local demonstrations that erupted in a remote Tunisian town in December 2010 would help ignite the biggest mass uprising in the modern history of the Arab world, from the south-western corner of the Mediterranean to the eastern provinces of Saudi Arabia. Nor could one have foreseen, even in the middle of 2011, well after two dictatorships had fallen in Tunisia and Egypt, that what had begun as wholly secular uprisings of techno-savvy youth and impoverished masses, with impressive mobilisations of trade unions and the working classes, would lead to a chain of Islamist electoral triumphs in Egypt, Tunisia and Morocco. Other fallouts have been worse. We have witnessed North Atlantic Treaty Organisation's (NATO) "humanitarian intervention" in Libya that killed and rendered homeless scores of thousands of people, only to bring to the centres of power an odd assortment of marauding militias, some former members of the Muammar Qaddafi regime, as well as Salafis and Muslim Brotherhood groups. In response to the "Arab Spring, Qatar and Saudi Arabia, and more generally the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), have now emerged as arbiters of the Arab state system. And, a full-scale internationalised civil war over the fate of Syria is picking up steam, as genuinely popular protests against the brutal Bashar al-Assad regime have been taken over by the Muslim Brotherhood and its patrons in the Gulf kingdoms and Turkey, not to speak of a Syrian National Council composed of well-heeled Syrian expatriates promoted by the various chanceries in Ankara, Paris and Washington.

As one calendar year ends and a new one begins, the two key processes – the Islamist takeovers and the war over Syria – are still unfolding. The dynamics of 2011 are still with us. In sum, one finds hardly any correlation between the original causes and aspirations underlying these mass insurrections on the one hand, and, on the other, the deeply reactionary outcomes in country after country across the region. The one hopeful sign is that much of the paraphernalia of the entrenched dictatorships is gone and a new order can now at least begin its struggle to be born, albeit in highly inauspicious circumstances.

Protest goes global

There is a strong tendency to view these Arab uprisings in isolation from developments elsewhere in the world, notably Europe and the U.S., not to speak of earlier demise of dictatorships in countries as diverse as the Philippines and Chile, or the revolutionary upsurge in Venezuela and Bolivia. Just as the European strikes and protests of the previous year can be seen as a prelude to the Arab uprisings of 2011, the historic Occupy Wall Street (OWS) movement that arose later in the year was inspired partially by the Tahrir Square uprisings in Egypt; the massive Spanish movement of the indignados (the angry ones) that erupted on May 15 was also an equal inspiration for many in the U.S. movement. The Chilean student uprising that also began in May was then followed, on August 24-25, by a general strike and the largest mass protest since the fall of the Pinochet dictatorship. A later student demonstration witnessed the astonishing sight of 2,500 professors arriving from all over the country in a 55-bus caravan. The Chilean strikes were followed by sizeable student protests in a number of Latin American countries and are themselves analogous to the Greek student movement which held a hugely popular commemoration, on November 17, 2011, in memory of the famous Polytechnic Uprising on November 17, 1973, that paved the way for the fall of the military dictatorship the next year.

If the Chilean students were demanding an end to the neoliberal structures of education put in place by the Pinochet dictatorship, so as to get free, high quality education for all sections of society, the Greek students were protesting against what they called the rise of "an economic and political junta".

These sentiments were well summed up in a slogan coined by Occupied London: "Then with tanks, now with banks." November was a particularly high point as OWS celebrated two months of its existence across dozens of cities in the U.S. and Canada; students started a week-long strike in all the major cities of Spain; while, in Italy, there were marches and even violent clashes with the police in Rome, Milan, Turin and Palermo. Even in Germany, the great heart of Bankers' Europe, students struck in over a dozen cities.

One of the striking features of these rebellions is the curious interplay between the broader rebellions on the one hand and the workers movements and trade unions on the other. In Tunisia, something like 75 per cent of the population is estimated to have participated in protests at one time or another, but it was the demonstration of 150,000 on January 12, in response to the call given by the UGTT, the Trade Union Confederation, which convinced the U.S. embassy and the Tunisian Armed Forces to let go of Ben Ali, the dictator. (According to information leaked by the French government, General Rachid Ammar, the chief of the Tunisian Army, was acting on the advice given to him by General William Ward, the then acting head of the U.S. Africom.) In Egypt, some 15 million people, about a sixth of the population, are said to have participated in the rebellions, and the role of the trade unions was by no means quite as central. However, for a great many who played leading roles in the rebellion of 2011, the militant strike wave of 2008 was a reference point. Egypt had, in fact, remained turbulent since those strikes, and unions and syndicates played a substantial role in 2011 too, through strikes and organised participation in the demonstrations, going on then to form dozens of new independent unions. These workers' strikes were particularly intense during the last two weeks of Hosni Mubarak's rule and getting workers back to work, in an economy that had stalled badly during the rebellion, was a major impetus for the military first to let go of Mubarak, then to outlaw strikes and unleash brute force against the striking workers after it captured power.

In other words, the Tunisian and Egyptian uprisings began as protests against the extreme forms of poverty, unemployment and acute price rise; they witnessed substantial working class and trade union participation; but they eventually got focussed on issues of dictatorship and civilian rule, so that the creation of the institutional framework of liberal democracy itself came to be seen as the absolute good. The militants' almost exclusive focus on obtaining liberal democratic freedoms and their relative lack of engagement with substantive issues of economic freedoms and redistribution of wealth made it easier for the much better organised Islamists to walk into corridors of power precisely through those electoral processes, while numerically very weak socialist groups were in no way prepared for electoral contests and the rest of the secular forces were largely trapped in the democracy promotion rhetoric that they had learned from Freedom House, etc.

The Euro-American zone

The dynamic of working class resistance to the neoliberal offensive feeding into mass rebellions has been clearer in the Europe of stable liberal democracies than in the anti-dictatorship uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt, though with equally unforeseeable consequences.

SEBASTIAN SILVA/AP

SANTIAGO, CHILE, AUGUST 9, 2011: During a students' protest demanding an end to the neoliberal structures of education put in place by the Pinochet dictatorship and free, high-quality education for all sections. The Chilean uprising was followed by sizeable student protests in a number of Latin American countries.

Spain, for instance, had its first general strike of this century in 2002, and a year before the eruption of the indignados in 2011 there had been another general strike so massive that half of Spain's labour force is said to have participated in it; as these movements erupted in the form that they did, one recalled that Spain was the country that had Europe's strongest anarchist movement in the 20th century. Within this century, Austria, France and Italy experienced mass strikes in 2003, and various such strikes have occurred in one country or another since then. Greece has lived in a virtually permanent state of strikes, uprisings and state repression since 2008, and while French strikes have been comparatively far more amiable they too have been persistent over the past three years. Even in London, the huge student demonstrations of November 2010 were followed by a march of 400,000 in March 2011, in the largest union-organised event in 20 years. The larger movements in Europe are youth driven, though, much as in northern Africa or in Chile. Which should cause no surprise. Unemployment of the educated in parts of even western Europe is beginning to remind one of the same phenomenon in Latin America and the Arab world. At the beginning of 2011, unemployment for youth below the age of 25 was over 20 per cent across the European Union (E.U.), but 26 per cent in Italy, 30 per cent in Greece, and 43 per cent in Spain, while the common European idea of education as a public good that was to be paid for collectively, not through individual "user fees", is being given up in a wave of privatisations and so-called "austerity measures".

Europe has been in the grip of creeping neoliberalism and an increasingly powerful financial oligarchy since the very inception of the E.U., and there has been a veritable financial coup d'etat over the last three years, whose poisonous grip keeps moving from country to country, from Latvia to Ireland, Greece to Spain, Portugal to Italy. Britain and France keep implementing more and more "austerity"– cuts in wages, employment, pensions, social services, and so on – pleading to their populations that without such "austerity" they too might face the fate of Ireland and Greece. Tiny little Iceland has so far been the only country that has refused this oligarchic diktat and saved its future on its own terms. The financial oligarchy seems to have decided that a neoliberal Europe can arise only if social Europe is consigned to the graveyard, and it has therefore launched the most sweeping attack on the European working class that this class has faced since the 1930s. What is being administered to parts of south-western Europe now is in fact a variant of the "shock therapy" that was administered to eastern Europe after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Younger members of the working and middling classes bear the full brunt of this attack and they are the ones most in rebellion.

Something structurally similar lies behind the OWS movement. There has been very little upward movement in the real wages of the American working population since the onset of neoliberalism in the late 1970s. The vast majority of the U.S. population has been able to keep up its standard of living over the past 30 years or so only by incurring more and more debt, mainly of three kinds: mortgage debt for purchase of new housing or against housing already owned; credit card debt; and student debt. It is estimated that $7 trillion in home equity – more than half of the aggregate home equity that existed in early 2006 – has now been lost and about 30 per cent of all homes with mortgages are still facing possible foreclosures.

Between 2007 and end of 2012, as many as 12 million homes – representing one in every four mortgages – will have been foreclosed. With such massive losses of property and savings, other kinds of debt still remain. Student debt now stands at roughly $1 trillion, more or less equal to credit card debt, and is set to rise sharply with escalating educational costs. For instance, students at Berkeley may pay a proposed $23,000 in tuition by the 2015-2016 academic year, up from $11,160 at present, which is itself four times more than the $2,716 in tuition fee 10 years ago. As a large number of families lose their homes, a substantial proportion of the U.S.' young population puts itself through college by incurring huge debts but without secure prospects of a job good enough to repay that debt and also live a decent life. The great slogan of the OWS – "We are the 99 per cent" – may sound rhetorical to the wealthiest stratum but it speaks directly to those who are swamped by these debts: housing mortgage, credit card, and student loans.

THE HINDU ARCHIVES

AT A DEMONSTRATION against the Vietnam War outside the Pentagon in 1967. The mid-1960s saw many protests; 1968 in particular was a year of rebellions worldwide. But the idea of socialism was very much alive and well then unlike in the uprisings of 2011 where it had a microscopic presence.

This is a generation that has had to mortgage its own future for the sake, indirectly, of imperialist wars and Wall Street wealth, while the universities become mere corporate entities and the overall education system erodes, like much of the U.S. infrastructure. They want to defend their own future against corporate greed, and in doing so they speak to the fears and aspirations of countless other people. That is why thousands of occupations have mushroomed all across North America. They are hibernating for the winter, but they will have their spring, hopefully a better spring than the Arab Spring that is sought to be contained by Islamism, sectarianism, neoliberalism, militarism and NATO aggressions – a matter to which we shall return.

Revolution in search of a form

Cumulatively, all these movements of 2011, from Tunis to Santiago to Wall Street, bring two facts into sharp relief. First, and regardless of how other forces intervene to give the movements a different orientation, what is common among these transcontinental developments is a protest against neoliberalism and against the failures, on part of dictatorships and liberal democracies alike, to protect the people from the ensuing miseries; this is combined, then, in a loss of faith in the whole spectrum of actually existing political parties as such.

Second, even though every uprising tends to have unique characteristics and is usually unpredictable before it actually occurs, none can be treated in isolation, and the events of 2011 cannot be seen as unique eruptions, coming out of nowhere.

What, then, of the very form that most of these protests have taken, aside from the familiar form of the workers' strike? A couple of general points can be made to frame this question. First, the accelerated rate of the globalisation of capital has itself given an impetus to the widespread sense among the oppositional forces that protest too has to have an international dimension; hence the well-known slogan "Think globally, act locally" and variations thereof. Second, the very technologies that were invented to facilitate global movement of capital and the creation of a globally integrated battlefield (such as the empire of drones) also have had the spin-off effect of facilitating contacts of various kinds among far-flung protest movements, from building alternative media to information-sharing among individuals and groups in diverse countries, from fast upload of video and cellular phone images to the making of Facebook communities, and so on. Third, as I have been writing for some time, the collapse of the Soviet system on the one hand and the assimilation of social democracy into the neoliberal project on the other have meant that new generations, arising especially since the 1990s, have had to experiment with a variety of novel and not-so-novel forms until a revolutionary form can be found for an emancipatory project – let us still call it socialism – that is adequate to the conditions of the 21st century.

In these uncertain times, vast numbers of people feel more comfortable working in movements, networks, mobilisations on particular issues, etc., than with the historic forms of the political party, the trade union, etc. Not the least consequence of this situation is that with the decline of both communism and social democracy, the third great current descended from the 19th century forms of political radicalism – namely Anarchism – is now ascendant in many of the new movements, even in places where actual individuals may or may not be fully cognisant of the theoretical roots of their own thinking. This is particularly true of the Euro-American zones where many more are consciously anarchist by conviction. In Arab and Asian zones, these kinds of thinking or organising are imbibed more indirectly.

1968 & 2011 – the difference

If we start tracing the real genealogies of 2011 we might have to go all the way back to worldwide rebellions of some 40 years ago that have come to be associated with another year, '1968': wars of national liberation in a dozen Asian and African countries; the Cultural Revolution against "the headquarters" in China; Euro-American movements in opposition to imperialist wars (against the Vietnam War in the U.S.; against the Labour government's support for that war in Britain); growing scepticism and even opposition to the Soviet Union (against intervention in Czechoslovakia; sympathy for the Prague Spring); opposition to dictatorship (Pakistan; overthrow of the Ayub dictatorship); opposition to racism (American civil rights movement; race riots in Britain); opposition to right-wing educational authorities (campus rebellions in many parts of the world); opposition to assigned familial and sexual roles (still an ongoing process across the world); and, in many quarters across Asia and Europe, a certain affiliation with Maoism and the Latin American guerilla. Many of these aspects of '1968' came to be condensed in the French uprising, including the notable discordance between the militants and the French Communist Party (PCF), and '1968' is therefore associated in popular memory specifically with Paris. The uprisings of 2011 are very much in the 'spirit of 1968' but with two historic differences.

First, the movements of '1968' arose within what has come to be known as "the Golden Age of Capitalism", an unprecedented quarter century of increasing prosperity in countries of advanced capitalism, and in the heyday of national liberation and non-alignment in the Tricontinent; the political orientations of those movements were conditioned by those contexts of their emergence. By contrast, the movements of 2011 have arisen in a time of near-total defeat and disorientation of the socialist Left (except in Latin America), the worst economic downturn in the capitalist core in some 80 years, the most brutal offensive of finance capital in its neoliberal guise, and, specifically in much of the Arab world, long-standing and utterly corrupt dictatorships and monarchies at the state level, and – at the demotic level that often gets mistaken for 'civil society' – a cultural crisis that often manifests itself in identitarian fantasies of deliverance through a combination of Islamism, free enterprise and Democracy Promotion. Hence the odd contrast between the Euro-American movements that have remained focussed on livelihood issues raised for the people by neoliberal triumph, and in the Arab world, a peculiar intersection between demands for institutions of liberal democracy on the one hand and the sweeping march of Islamism precisely through those institutions on the other hand. If anything, the issue of imperialism is even weaker in the Arab protests than in the American ones.

JAVIER SORIANO/AFP

PUERTA DEL SOL SQUARE, Madrid, May 21, 2011: Spanish youth, furious over soaring unemployment, unleashed a massive movement of the 'indignados' (the angry ones). A year earlier, more than half the labour force participated in a general strike in the country, which had Europe's strongest anarchist movement in the 20th century.

Second, the idea of socialism – even the idea of a "better socialism" than what the Soviet model had offered – was very much alive and well in the movements of '1968', in both the Marxist and the libertarian forms. That idea has a rather microscopic presence in the movements of 2011 (though, again, not so in Latin America). What these new movements aspire for is a less savage, reformed capitalism, with more jobs, more secure and somewhat higher wages, and improved and cheaper education systems. In Arab movements, rising from under ferocious dictatorships, much libido is invested in 'democracy' as an absolute horizon; in the West, there is nostalgia mostly for Keynes and, in a more diffuse form, for some pale shadow of Proudhon.

Even so, the uprisings of 2011 do stand, at least in their origins, in a substantive relation to the movements of the preceding decades, notably in Latin America. The most aggressive forms of neoliberalism came to Latin America before they came to many other parts of the world, and it was therefore logical that the first great protests against it would also materialise there. This is how Eric Toussant, eminent member of a number of European anti-globalisation movements, summarises some of the salient Latin American developments of the past decade:

After 20 years of neoliberal domination in South America, massive uprisings in several countries proved to be successful: the water war in Bolivia in 2000; the Indian uprising in Ecuador that overturned the neoliberal president (2000); the rebellion that overruled Argentine's neoliberal president (end of 2001) and opened onto a prerevolutionary crisis in December 2001 and on into 2002; the popular uprising in Venezuela in April 2002 to bring Hugo Chavez back to the presidency after a coup (April 11-13, 2002); the gas war in Bolivia in 2003 with the pro-Washington neoliberal president being overruled, and similarly the overruling of the pro-U.S. neoliberal president in Ecuador in 2005…. In the wake of such mobilisations, governments that at least partly broke off with neoliberalism and opposed the U.S. domination, launched political reforms and partly restored public control over natural resources (Venezuela from 1999, Bolivia in 2006, Ecuador in 2007). Yielding to popular pressure, the Argentine government, which was not particularly left-wing, implemented heterodox measures that contrasted with those taken by the PT (Workers Party) government in Brazil and by the Uruguayan Broad Front.

The creation of the World Social Forum (WSF) in Porto Alegre, Brazil, in January 2001 should also be seen as part of that Latin American process, even though many from the rest of the world played important roles in the materialisation of the process. Within the Euro-American zones, this new kind of radicalism can be dated back to the very impressive mobilisation against the World Trade Organisation (WTO) in Seattle (1999) and against the World Bank, International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the G-8 (in Washington in April 2000, Prague in September 2000, in Genoa in July 2001). In a sense, that wave of protests climaxed in the historic worldwide protest against the impending Iraq War in February 2003, which mobilised 12 to 15 million people from one end of the earth to another. That kind of mobilisation declined in the U.S. after the onset of the Iraq War in early 2003 even though several countries in western Europe, notably France, witnessed waves upon waves of strikes and protests. Latin America, of course, remained the home of radical movements throughout the decade. The Occupy movement thus announces the return of oppositional politics in the U.S., in the hands of a new generation, in an altered context and altered form of protest, but very much in the spirit of 1968, the Seattle mobilisation, and the concurrent Egyptian uprising.

MAYA ALLERUZZO/AP

FOR OVER 30 years now, Egyptian armed forces have received over a billion dollars annually from the U.S. A part of the function of this largesse is to incorporate the upper layers of the military establishment into the neoliberalising big bourgeoisie of Egypt. Here, Chief of Staff Sami Anan (second from left) and other military officials at a Christmas-eve mass in Cairo.

Reaction, restoration and the global right

How have the insurrectionary movements fared in the outcomes until now?

History is Necessity, Hegel has taught us. In other words, historical outcomes do not coincide with revolutionary desire or insurrectionary will but are determined by possibilities inherent in – and limited by – the larger prevailing structures. In short, only the possible happens. The impossible does not. The great slogan of 1968, "Be Realistic; Imagine the Impossible", captures the noblest of revolutionary desires but is also profoundly anti-Hegelian. The Leninist formula, reformulated in my own words, is more viable: imagine the impossible, remain true to your dream, act on that portion of the impossible that is possible.

At the most general level, the Arab movements of 2011 can be seen as the third wave of anti-dictatorship movements in the Tricontinent, following upon the earlier Latin American ones and then the Asian ones (the Philippines, Indonesia, Pakistan). In another dimension, and at least in their initial manifestations in Tunisia and Egypt, they were also uprisings against the intensification of neoliberal policies under Ben Ali and Hosni Mubarak whose own families and close associates were seen to have accumulated enormous wealth through corruption and privatisation of public assets. This aspect was further accentuated by the spiralling food prices which rose even more sharply in 2010/11 than in 2008, when food riots had broken out in a host of Asian and African countries. However, in the actual unfolding of those rebellions, as they took the colouration mainly of urban middle class protest, the focus shifted away from neoliberal devastation to dictatorial forms of rule and the personal corruption of those dictators.

The secular character of the initial youth rebellions of Egypt and Tunisia also indicated revulsion against the depredations of Jehadi Islam that had caught many a youthful imagination in the recent past. However, that revulsion against extremist Islam in an age of identitarian politics itself led to a certain softening of attitudes towards the new 'moderate' image that the Egyptian Brotherhood and the Tunisian Ennahda had cultivated for themselves, even as the Salafis decided to play by the liberal-democratic rules of parliamentary elections. In some other countries, notably Yemen, Bahrain, Libya and Syria, the issue of extreme authoritarianism of the regimes was further complicated by the fact that their power base was rooted in sectarian (Bahrain, Syria, Yemen) or tribal minorities (Libya after Qaddafi's initial 'nationalist' phase was over, but also Yemen). This minoritarian character was sometimes intermeshed with regional divides (in Libya most notably but also Yemen). The pressing issue of a radical redistribution of wealth was thus submerged everywhere under the weight of electoralism, Islamism, sectarianism, regionalism and a generalised hope that the U.S.-led ' international community' will bring them the gift of democracy and human rights.

REUTERS/HANDOUT

THE SAUDI MONARCHY - and by extension all the monarchies banded together in the Gulf Cooperation Council, which now serves as a network of U.S. dependencies and military basing facilities - acts as the financial powerhouse in the Arab world, increasingly dictating economic policies elsewhere, and now as an outright interventionist force. Here, King Abdullah (left) of Saudi Arabia with the heads of other countries comprising the GCC before their meeting in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, on December 19, 2011.

Levels of state formation are also highly uneven across the region. Throughout most of its known history, Egypt has had a powerful central state, and this centralisation of power was only enhanced with the Free Officers' coup of 1952. The first Arab constitution was drafted in Tunisia, in 1861, under French tutelage, and after independence Habib Bourguiba took care to nurse the institutions of a modern state and civil society as well as a highly educated middle class. By contrast, countries such as Qatar and Bahrain are small, autocratic sheikhdoms, while Libya is so internally divided among its myriad tribes and regions that it gives the impression of being more of a tribal confederation than a modern state; in the latter decades of his rule, Qaddafi himself often appeared to be as much a buffoon as the very caricature of a wealthy Bedouin monarch. To a great degree, all the authoritarian rulers, including the Nasserist and Baathist ones, suppressed political institutions they could not control directly and prevented the emergence of a modern and civil public sphere, to the extent that the mosque was often the only widespread public institution where issues of social concern could be discussed and concomitant local organisations could be devised, often in the outward form of public charities. With the relative exception of Tunisia, virtually all these regimes adopted some variety of Islamism, to one extent or another.

In Egypt, Anwar Sadat used the Muslim Brotherhood methodically in his fight against the Nasserists and the leftists; Mubarak established a relationship of competitive collaboration with them, opening up great spaces for them in the educational and judicial structures, sometimes permitting them into Parliament and at other times denying them such rights in order to furbish his credentials as a defender of secular modernity against political Islam. With the relative exception of Tunisia and Syria, all regimes allowed tens of billions of dollars to be poured into the coffers of the Muslim Brotherhood from the Gulf countries, notably Saudi Arabia, which has been the patron saint of the Brotherhood ever since Nasser evicted them from Egypt in the 1950s; Sadat brought them back in the 1970s with much fanfare, in collaboration with Saudi Arabia and full U.S. backing. Every European country where the Brotherhood sought to establish its offices, from Switzerland to Britain, allowed such monies to come to them unchecked; this was also true of the Tunisian Ennahda after its leaders took up plush residence in European exile. Today, millionaires and even billionaires can be found among the core leadership of the Egyptian Brotherhood, and, in the new democratic dispensations that arose as a consequence of the 'Arab Spring' all variety of Islamists have put these virtually unlimited funds to good use.

The Arab world has had an intense and uniquely different experience of colonialism and imperialism. The Maghreb, or western North Africa – Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia – was colonised earlier by the French who devised different methods of ruling in the three countries. European pressure and then outright British colonisation of Egypt came very much as a Western project to thwart (successfully) Egypt's attempt, first undertaken under Muhammad Ali, to devise its own independent path into modernity. Much of the Arab East, the Mashreq, fell to the colonial powers only after the defeat and dissolution of the Ottoman empire; the creation of Israel is also a specific result of that history. With the exception of Egypt and Morocco, all other Arab states are confections of colonial division and artefact. And, oil (later gas) has been the main solvent in all colonial, imperial designs since at least the 1940s (British obsession with oil is older). President Franklin D. Roosevelt was the first to commit the U.S. to eternal alliance with the Saudi monarchy – and by extension all the monarchies now banded together in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), which now serves, all at once, as a network of U.S. dependencies and military basing facilities – as the financial powerhouse in the Arab world increasingly dictating economic policies elsewhere, and, most recently, as an outright interventionist force. It was the brutal action of the Saudi armed forces that suppressed the rebellions not only in Saudi Arabia's own eastern provinces but also in Bahrain. Troops from Qatar and the Arab Emirates worked in unison with NATO in Libya. Saudi and Qatari funding is now going to the Muslim Brotherhood in Syria, not to speak of the hundreds of fighters imported from Libya for infiltration into Syria, with the mediation of the GCC and the Turkish government, NATO's own Islamists.

Destruction of anti-imperialist Arab nationalism

The promotion of Saudi influence, the destruction of secular and inevitably anti-imperialist Arab nationalism, and the destruction of every Arab (or Irani, for that matter) armed force that may potentially pose a threat to Israel have been the primary objectives of the U.S. in West Asia. The Israeli victory over Nasserist Egypt was the first great turning point in these endeavours, and the subsequent regimes of Anwar Sadat and Mubarak cemented that equation. For over 30 years now, Egyptian armed forces have received well over a billion dollars annually from the U.S. so that the entire officers' corps is beholden to U.S. interests. A part of the function of this largesse is to incorporate the upper layers of the military establishment into the neoliberalising big bourgeoisie of Egypt. Virtually the whole of the Arab world has been secured in this fashion. Syrian and (non-Arab) Irani regimes have their own accommodative relationships with Israel, and yet, because of their own divergent national interests, they are still regarded as potential threats to Israel, and must therefore be harnessed. The ongoing Shia-Sunni sectarian divides in the Islamic and Islamising world fits neatly into these designs, so that regimes as different as those of Turkey and Saudi Arabia and Israel can now cooperate, under U.S. aegis, in utilising the genuine democracy protests against the Assad dictatorship for their own purposes, in unleashing the Muslim Brotherhood, and more generally preparing overt and covert armed intervention there.

LUCA BRUNO/AP

MILAN, ITALY, DECEMBER 13, 2011: An elderly woman begs in a downtown area. The movements of 2011 arose in a time of near-total defeat of the socialist Left (except in Latin America) and the worst economic downturn in the capitalist core in some 80 years, among other factors.

The U.S. has had a very old relationship with the Muslim Brotherhood, dating back to the days of the Truman Doctrine, the Eisenhower presidency, and the relocation to Switzerland of Said Ramadan, the Brotherhood's international organiser and conduit to various governments, intelligence services and Islamist organisations. We need not dwell on that past. As the 'war on terrorism' (and on 'Islamo-fascism' as Americans call it), progressed, with ambiguous results, there was a renewed policy distinction between Bad Muslim and Good Muslim, and a view now gained strength that the only way to really contain 'Islamo-fascism' was to hand over the region to Good Muslims. Gulf monarchies were already among the Good Muslims, and the Brotherhood too had been in that category from time to time. Through the aegis of Saudi Arabia, the U.S. now began exploring the possibility of bringing together these two categories – Gulf monarchies for their kingdoms; the Brotherhood and its variants for the rest of the Arab world – into something of a hegemonic force for the region. This view was further strengthened with the emergence of an Islamist ruling bloc in Turkey, the historic home of secularism in the Muslim world, that was overturning the Kemalist legacy but with enthusiastic allegiance to NATO and neoliberalism.

This 'Turkish model' was now ready to be implemented elsewhere. Could Rached Ghannouchi, the leader of the Tunisian variant of the Brotherhood that goes under the name of Ennahda, be made into another Recep Tayyip Erdogan? In the event, the Brotherhood was favourably disposed to the idea, having witnessed the brutal but successful suppression of Jehadi Islam in Algeria, the worldwide defeat of Al Qaeda and its affiliates (except, thus far, in Pakistan), and, by contrast, the peaceful Islamist takeover in Turkey through what Gramsci might have called a passive revolution. Could this not be done in countries like Tunisia and Egypt, too, the Brotherhood was to ask itself? That was the position also of those intellectuals of the Brotherhood, such as Tariq Ramadan, who are strategically located in the West. Once the insurrectionary storm erupted, Islamists in both countries devoted themselves to the task of winning the elections, with Saudi, Qatari, American and Turkish support, and in dialogue with elements of old regimes that were now crumbling.

On their part, the Egyptian Brotherhood issued public assurances that, once in power, it would abide by the treaty with Israel, the very lynchpin of U.S.-Israeli policies in the region, and it never raised a voice against the neoliberal economic model; indeed, the Brotherhood has always opposed workers' strikes and trade union militancy in the name of the 'national economy'. Even the Egyptian Salafists have by and large fallen in line; in the Egyptian election results announced so far, the Brotherhood and the Salafists seem to have together made a clean sweep, winning 70 per cent or more of the seats. As for Ghannouchi, the U.S. was the first country he visited after winning a plurality in the Tunisian elections, and submitted due assurances.

Arab countries are tied together by older histories, language and, for the majority of the population, some variant of the Islamic belief. For the rest, there are vast differences among countries and, in some cases, between regions inside individual countries. Each country that came in the eye of the storm experienced a different outcome. Protests in countries like Algeria and Jordan fizzled out without much effect, though they too have very sizeable Islamic movements that live a semi-clandestine existence. Morocco experienced only minor protests, the king shrewdly introduced some constitutional amendments, and the Islamists won the elections anyway.

KOSTAS TSIRONIS/AP

ATHENS, JUNE 10, 2011: Government employees protest against the spending cuts and tax hikes proposed by the Greek government. The financial oligarchy seems to have decided that a neoliberal Europe can arise only if social Europe is consigned to the graveyard, and it has therefore launched the most sweeping attack on the European working class that it has faced since the 1930s.

Tunisia had a genuinely peaceful liberal democratic transition with the emergence of a newly elected coalition government led by the Islamists but with a substantial presence of the centre-left that seems to have no distinct programme of its own for any Tunisian break with the neoliberal order. A milder, characteristically Tunisian version of Islamism is assured while Ghannouchi and his group are in the lead, but the party is full of much more conservative, Salafist-style elements, and it is far from clear what a leadership transition will bring; as late as the 1980s, Ennahda used to be a party of jehadi violence.

Pre-emptive counterrevolution

In Libya, there was rather little of the modern, democratic insurrection of the type we witnessed in Tunisia and Egypt; the rebellion was soon armed and infiltrated by the Western special forces; it had a far great regionalist element, accentuated further by tribal rivalries; and the emerging dispensation is even more Islamist than Qaddafi's own Islamic pretensions. The outcome was determined not so much by internal factors as by NATO intervention, and while Qaddafi had himself made a neoliberal about-turn some years ago, the new rulers are likely to pursue neoliberalism and pro-NATO policies with far greater devotion, if and when their rule gets stabilised (Aijaz Ahmad, "Libya Recolonised", Frontline, November 18, 2011).

Unlike Libya, Syria is only partially a personal dictatorship, rests much more on a powerful party structure, a modern army largely loyal to the regime, a brutal but efficient intelligence network, and even a bourgeoisie whose fortunes have been largely tied to the regime, even though many business interests are also aligned with the opposition. Syria is also comparatively more modern and secular, and, demographically, a mosaic of religious and ethnic minorities, alongside an Arab Sunni majority. Muslim Brotherhood has a substantial presence, especially in cities like Homs and Homa, but nothing comparable to Egypt, and the prospect of a devout Sunni regime emerging in Damascus presses the various minorities to seek protection from the regime. Mass disaffection with the brutality and corruption of the regime is enormous, and Syria has a genuine, modern, secular, homegrown opposition inside the country, some of which may have ties with the expatriates who have made common cause with the French and the Americans, and are now asking for no-fly zones, "humanitarian corridors", covert interventions, etc. Burhan Ghallioun, who has emerged as the titular head of this expatriate opposition, has publicly offered assurances that if the West brings his Syrian National Council (SNC) to power, Syria would break its alliance with Iran, revoke its assistance to Hamas and Hizbullah, and seek only a negotiated settlement with Israel over the Syrian territory of the Golan Heights which Israel has occupied and annexed. The Arab League, dominated by Saudi Arabia and other GCC cohorts, provides legitimacy to this expatriate opposition and to the Euro-American designs in Syria, as it did in Libya. What we are witnessing today is something of a social decomposition in what was once Arab world's most urbane corner.

In Egypt, the U.S. had three layers working for an outcome favourable to its interests. First, and over many years, a large number of Egyptian activists had been trained and co-opted into the democracy promotion project by such entities as Freedom House, Republican Democracy Institute, etc.; those who were thus trained included several of the individuals who emerged as highly influential figures in the youth rebellion, including some leaders of the April 6th Youth Movement and Wael Ghonim of Google. It would be foolish to infer that a rebellion of such proportions was simply the handiwork of these few dozen individuals. The training and financial sponsorship should be viewed more in the nature of contingency planning, that is, just in case an unstoppable anti-Mubarak movement materialises, a cohesive group of individuals, commanding the requisite material and technological resources, must be in place so as to guide the spontaneous outbreak in the desired directions as much as possible. This is not dissimilar to what was done earlier in several East European countries, and some of these Egyptian democracy activists were, in fact, trained in not only the U.S. but also countries like Slovenia. For a country so much under U.S. and Israeli pressure for generations, it was quite remarkable how little anti-imperialist and anti-Zionist agitation there was in the Tahrir Square uprising that brought down the U.S.-supported dictatorship.

EMMANUEL DUNAND/AFP

NEW YORK, OCTOBER 5: A march by "Occupy Wall Street" demonstrators. There has been very little upward movement of real wages of the American working population since the onset of neoliberalism in the late 1970s. The vast majority of the population has kept up its standard of living over the past 30 years only by incurring more debt, mainly from mortgages, credit cards and student loans.

The other two props of U.S. power in Egypt, namely, the Army and the Brotherhood, were of course more substantial. So, the issue of Mubarak's dictatorship was resolved mainly by a military coup d'etat, and the issue of democracy is being resolved currently through the formation of an elected government dominated entirely by the Brotherhood and other Islamists. In public, elements of the governing military junta sometimes express concern about the future role of the Brotherhood, but this can be safely viewed as pressure tactics to get the Brotherhood to give public guarantees over the issues of Israel, neoliberal economy, and the sanctity of military ties with the U.S.

All in all, one can say that, with the partial exception of Tunisia where some gains have been made by way of making a liberal democratic order, what we have experienced across the region is something of a pre-emptive counterrevolution which has been, in most places – Libya, Yemen, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Oman and Syria – violent. This outcome reflects the existing balance of force, both in the military domain and in terms of the organisational capacities of the respective Islamist forces, not to speak of the vastly superior financial resources of the Right in general. This Right includes the emerging dispensation in Egypt as much as the dying one in Syria.

What, then, of Europe?

The European impasse

The E.U. as a whole, and the eurozone, which comprises of the majority of the countries in the Union, has always been a bundle of contradictions. The original idea of a common home for all of Europe was based on the vision of a social Europe in which the social safety nets of the type prevailing at the time in Scandinavian countries and the Franco-German zone would be extended to the whole of Europe, policies and common funds would be created for bridging the gaps between the richer and poorer zones of Europe, and the Union would march from being a mere union of sovereign nation-states to something of a federation with central institutions that would be increasingly answerable to a trans-European electorate.

DANNY MOLOSHOK/REUTERS

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, Los Angeles, November 28, 2011: A protest by students against rising tuition fees. Student debt in the U.S. now stands at roughly $1 trillion, more or less equal to credit card debt, and is set to rise sharply with escalating educational costs.

In reality, what has emerged is a travesty of that vision. By the time the Union really developed its main institutions, neoliberalism had become the entrenched ideology of the European ruling classes, shared equally by the social democrats and the historic parties of the Right. What emerged, first of all, was a Bankers' Europe in which the central financial institutions were answerable neither to electorates nor to the constituent national parliaments; the European Bank, for instance, is answerable only to its own members who are all representatives of Europe's major banks. Second, it became a highly lopsided union of wealthier and poorer – even far poorer – countries. Germany was the major financial and industrial powerhouse whose banks set the terms for the financial architecture of the union; which exported advanced industrial goods to the poorer countries of the E.U.; and which acquired vast and cheap labour reserves in the eastern zones after the collapse of communism. It is mainly the German, Scandinavian and French banks that came to dominate the weaker economies through debt. Meanwhile, the creation of a single currency deprived the weaker economies of the European periphery – the ones that import goods and bank finance from the more advanced core – the opportunity to create their own monies to cope with deficits and balance of payment problems.

The incorporation of social democracy into this neoliberal project of Bankers' Europe meant also that the European working classes who had looked to socialist parties for protection of their quite advanced social rights no longer possessed a political instrument to wage a winnable struggle against the bankers and their neoliberal political cohorts. The strike was now their only weapon, in countries where industrial economies were shrinking and their own unions stood midway between labour and capital. The fact that neoliberalism came to the European continent much later than it did to the U.S., Britain and elsewhere, meant also that it had far greater experience in dismantling the social state. That dismantling has been going on for some time, but the onset of the current crisis has been used to unleash processes that would destroy the social compacts thoroughly. That process is already far advanced in countries like Latvia, Ireland and Greece but is also getting extended to Spain, Portugal and even major European economies like Italy and France. Eventually, it will catch up with Scandinavia and Germany as well.

The defection of social democracy to neoliberalism is one aspect. Meanwhile, governments may now be appointed, in one country after another, not by reference to parliaments and electorates but at the behest of bankers, as has happened already in Greece and Italy where elected leaders were expected to resist the more extreme pressures from banks and the E.U.'s financial institutions. Not the least danger is the growing strength of parties of the Far Right across Europe, from Austria to Denmark, and from France to Hungary. Islamophobia and more generally campaigns against non-European immigrants feed into such mobilisations of the Far Right, which then presents itself as protecting the rights of "real" Europeans. Sections of the working class and the unemployed youth, having lost moorings in parties of the Left, are particularly prone to this radicalism of the Right. If Islam is an identity in the Arab world, anti-Islam is also an expanding identity in Europe.

Not all parts of Europe are hurting equally. German prosperity by and large continues. At the other end of the spectrum, collapse of basic incomes is so extreme for large sections of the population in a country like Greece that many families there are now compelled to give up their children to the care of public shelters because parents can no longer take care of them.

SIMON DAWSON/BLOOMBERG

THE VISION OF a social Europe has given way to a Bankers' Europe in which the central financial institutions are answerable neither to electorates nor to the constituent national parliaments; the European Central Bank, for instance, is answerable only to its own members who are all representatives of Europe's major banks. Here, an Occupy movement's protest board outside the headquarters of the ECB in Frankfurt, Germany.

It is in the midst of all this that strikes and protests occurred all across Europe throughout 2011, at times on a massive scale. Manifestations of the public outrage have been various: strikes by workers, notably public sector workers; student strikes; mass rallies combining strikes and popular protests; and, as in the case of the Spanish indignados, just a mass outrage of gigantic proportions, led by the youth but inclusive of all sections of society. Political parties have either been the target of these mobilisations or have, at best, trailed far behind the masses.

In Europe, as in the Arab world, vast numbers of people are on the move but counterrevolution has the initiative. These are politics of the interim, when people have lost faith in their rulers but have found nothing to put in their place. One only hopes that such are the processes through which an iron of the future is forged. The articulation of an anti-capitalist alternative that is appropriate for our times is still far from visible.

Conclusion

And what have been the great gains of 2011?

In all the countries where these strikes, mass protests and insurrections have occurred, there is now a great global conversation, among the populace at large, on issues of human dignity and transitions from political to economic democracy. Latin America still remains the primary home of an insurgent Left for which issues of the nature and constitution of state power is itself the primary issue for transformative politics. In at least some corners of Europe, there is now a renewed debate over the very legitimacy of the fundamental structures of liberal democracy, the lamentable tie between domesticated workers' organisations and the corrupt political parties of the bourgeoisies, and the inability of all these to render any substantial degree of social and economic justice. Arab youth is in the process of learning, in a trial through fire, that liberal democracy is a mere premise, and a very precarious one at that, where the very procedures of its institutions, in a class-divided society, favour the rich, the powerful, the demagogic, the corrupt. And, if the Arab insurrections teach us yet again the central significance of the great narratives of national uprisings, the very mode of organising in the Occupy movements reminds us of the little narratives of politics in its immediate moorings: the public space of a park, this house confiscated by the banks, that dilapidated school deprived of the material means to educate its children; the vision of organising a million mutinies to light a single prairie fire. Attending to the whole, one has the feeling that one is hearing fragments of every language that the Left has spoken over the last 150 years.

This is how the grand, faltering experiment in changing the post-Soviet world goes on.

अमेरिका नजर रखेंगा कि ट्विटर अपनी नीतियां कैसे लागू करता है

2012-01-28T06:11:00.001-08:00

अमेरिका नजर रखेंगा कि ट्विटर अपनी नीतियां कैसे लागू करता है

Saturday, 28 January 2012 17:16

वाशिंगटन, 28 जनवरी (एजेंसी) अमेरिका ने ट्विटर पर की गई टिप्पणियों को चुनिंदा रूप से सेंसर करने की ट्विटर वेबसाइट की ओर से की गई घोषणा पर कहा है कि वह इंतजार करेगा और यह देखेगा कि माइक्रो ब्लागिंग साइट अपनी नयी नीति को कैसे लागू करती है।
विदेश मंत्रालय की प्रवक्ता विक्टोरिया नूलैंड ने कहा, ''हम अभिव्यक्ति, सभा और आनलाइन संपर्क करने की मौलिक स्वतंत्रताओं की रक्षा करने को प्रतिबद्ध हैं।''
उन्होंने कहा, ''विदेश मंत्री ने अपनी इंटरनेट स्वतंत्रता को लेकर दिये गए अभिभाषण में कहा था कि निजी कंपनियों की ओर से किये गए निर्णय का इस बात पर प्रभाव पड़ेगा कि सूचना का प्रवाह किस तरह से होता है या इसका प्रवाह इंटरनेट या मोबाइट नेटवर्कों पर नहीं होता है। इसका प्रभाव लोगों पर पड़ेगा। इसके साथ ही इसका प्रभाव सरकार पर भी होगा कि वह क्या कर सकती है और क्या नहीं कर सकती है।''

नूलैंड ने कहा कि चतुर कंपनियों को ऐसे वृहद नीतियां बनानी की आवश्यकता है जो उनकी कार्रवाइयों को निर्देशित करेंगी।