The Rockets' Red Glare -- from Pak Against the US!
The USCIA manipulated Pakistan's military and govt for 60+ years, since the early 50's, the US got Pakistan to fight its US-invented Cold War, trained terrorists on Pakistan and Afghan sovereign soil.
Both Pakistan and Afghanistan's internally weak post-colonial governments took the US bait but also engaged in war profiteering and terror against their own people.
These US-initiated marriages were headed, from the word go, for Divorce Court, way way before the PAKISI and its proxy, the Haqqani,started firing the rockets on US posts (read occupation), mentioned in your article.
You sow what you reap, US.
Ditto Pak and Afghanistan.
In India, we did not allow one US soldier to set foot on Indian soil. We stayed out of your fabricated Cold War. We maintained cordial relations with both the US and the Soviets, and signed a strategic "treaty of friendship and cooperation" with the Soviets while building a vibrant democracy based on our own Gandhi-led liberation struggle.
See the resulting difference?
Learn from this, Pakistan and Afghanistan.
The USCIA will not.
------------------------------------
New York Times copyright
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/17/world/asia/cross-border-fire-frustrates-american-troops-in-afghanistan.html
Showing posts with label India. Show all posts
Showing posts with label India. Show all posts
Monday, October 17, 2011
Sunday, October 9, 2011
China Manipulates its Currency to Cheat Workers Everywhere
China's Currency Manipulation Cheats Workers Everywhere
by Chithra KarunaKaran on Sunday, October 9, 2011 at 4:11am
China's Currency Manipulation hurts the world's workers and small businesses.
China's currency manipulation cheats workers in EVERY country, including China.
Yesterday the Dalai Lama called China's totalitarian rulers "liars" and "hypocrites" in the context of South Africa (China's largest trading partner and newest member of BRICS) refusal to grant a visa to the Dalai Lama on the occasion of fellow Nobel Peace Laureate Desmond Tutu's 80th birthday. Presumably, South Africa was fearful of China's disapproval.
Here's the point however -- Whether it is Human Rights abuses or manipulating its currency value at the expense of workers and small businesses everywhere, China leads!
For China, Performing as Sweatshop Nation to the World is finally beginning to expose its ugly downside.
None of the BRICS, India included, have spoken out against China's artificial lowering of the value of its yuan.
Great for China, bad for workers everywhere, bad for small businesses everywhere, very profitable for bankers, multinational corporations and fat cat Republican legislators in the US Congress.
Why has the US Congress taken so long to wake up to China's faux role in the world economy?
Why has currency manipulation by China been tolerated by the US for so long?
Because America's biggest businesses have profited and made Republicans richer? While small businesses in the US have suffered and millions of Americans are jobless or underemployed?
Those who are occupying Wall Street in my city of New York need to add China's currency manipulation to their manifesto against bankers and multinationals.
China's rulers are unethical.
The US Govt, especially House and Senate Republicans, through delaying action against China, is also unethical.
The time is now for the renminbi to reflect the actual value of the yuan, and if the Chinese keep balking on upward revision, through punitive action against China for cheating workers and small businesses everywhere.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
the Hill copyright
Ignoring Chinese currency manipulation costs America jobs
By Rep. Sander Levin (D-Mich.) - 10/03/11 06:44 PM ET
In the 15 months since China announced that it would float its currency, the renminbi (RMB) has appreciated a paltry 6 percent against the U.S. dollar, well below what economists say it should. In fact, according to one reputable estimate, the RMB is still 28 percent below its true value.
The impact on America is clear. The currency manipulation by China costs at least 1 million American jobs, according to Fred Bergsten, director of the Peterson Institute for International Economics. Bergsten has said it “is by far the largest protectionist measure adopted by any country since the Second World War — and probably in all of history.” Nobel Prize winning economist Paul Krugman estimates that the cost of China’s action is closer to 1.5 million jobs.
As our manufacturers compete with Chinese companies to produce the products of the 21st century — from solar panels to battery cells — currency manipulation is one of the most egregious tools China is using to give its exporters an upper hand.
Yet in the face of compelling evidence for action, Republican leaders have offered no plans to bring up the Currency Reform for Fair Trade Act that I reintroduced this year together with Democratic Rep. Tim Ryan of Ohio and Republican Rep. Tim Murphy of Pennsylvania. The bill is designed to rein in China’s currency manipulation and has more than 200 co-sponsors. A virtually identical bill passed the House a year ago with support from the majorities of both parties.
What’s more, the Senate is preparing to act on legislation this week that includes the central components of the House bill.
Meanwhile, China continues to purchase U.S. Treasury bills in order to leverage its currency and maintain its low value. Combined, the practices artificially lower the cost of imported Chinese products and increase the cost of American exports to China.
The Currency Reform for Fair Trade Act (H.R. 639) would allow countervailing import duties for U.S. industries that are injured by the undervalued RMB. The Commerce Department, as a result of the legislation, would have the authority to impose import tariffs to offset the negative consequences of China’s undervalued currency. The bill reverses a current Commerce Department practice that has precluded it from treating foreign government currency practices as an export subsidy while also directing the department on how to measure subsidies provided to foreign producers through currency undervaluation.
Overall, the measure could help reduce our trade deficit by $200 billion.
Our nation’s workers and businesses deserve a level international playing field, and this measure provides concrete action to help make that a reality. With 14 million Americans still looking for work, it is far past time that Republican leaders took up legislation that has a history of bipartisan support and will help strengthen the hands of American workers and businesses.
There is no excuse for inaction. The specter of a “trade war” has been raised by opponents, as it is so often used against action. It masks the fact that there is economic competition — indeed, a battle — among nations and it is unwise to let the other nation refuse to abide by long-ago-developed international rules to help prevent trade wars, including rules against currency manipulation.
House Republican leaders argue that the focus should be on other Chinese practices, relating to lack of protection of intellectual property and technology transfer requirements. We should be pursuing action on all fronts — instead of playing one off against another — especially since there has been no legislative action by the House majority on any.
Levin is the ranking member on the House Ways and Means Committee.
=================================================================================
AP copyright
WASHINGTON — In one of Capitol Hill’s longest running battles, opponents of China’s trade policies have used threats, negotiation, protests from small American businesses and even the occasional Peking duck dinner in a failed effort to stop China from manipulating its currency.
Enlarge This Image
J. Scott Applewhite/Associated Press
Lindsey Graham, left, and Charles E. Schumer proposed a tariff on Chinese goods.
After eight years, that campaign is on the verge of a breakthrough, as the Senate appeared ready Thursday to approve a get-tough approach that had stalled numerous times before: a bill to punish China with high tariffs on some exports if it fails to adopt a market-driven exchange rate.
Economists say China’s artificially cheap currency has cost the United States jobs and billions in lost trade. But opponents of tariffs, including major manufacturers doing business in China, warn that penalizing China could start a trade war that would hurt American businesses even more.
“We’re already in a trade war,” Senator Charles E. Schumer, the New York Democrat who has led the push for tariffs, said in an interview. “We can’t afford to just do nothing. This is a message to China that the jig is finally up.”
The American jobless problem have combined to give the tariff proposal newfound momentum, as the Senate spent much of the afternoon Thursday debating it.
Supporters, casting the measure as a way to spur job growth, were confident the Senate would approve it. Even the measure’s fiercest opponents were grudgingly predicting passage in the Senate, and probably the House.
But 11-hour resistance by leading Republicans has clouded the outcome in the House, where the speaker, John A. Boehner, this week called the tariff plan “dangerous,” and it is unclear if the issue will even come up for a House vote.
China itself voiced strong objections this week and charged that meddling by the United States in Chinese currency violated world trade protocols. The Chinese Embassy has retained one of Washington’s most powerful lobbying shops, Patton Boggs, to represent its interests for $420,000 a year.
Lobbyists for General Motors, Caterpillar, steel producers, textile manufacturers, toy makers, poultry farmers and other businesses have also weighed in, supporting or opposing the tariffs depending on their own business relations with China.
Generally, large manufacturers like Caterpillar that operate in China have opposed it, warning of a backlash. Smaller businesses, like a tube maker in Ohio or a ceramics maker in upstate New York, have supported tariffs because they say China has artificially lowered its prices and gained an unfair edge.
While the Chinese renminbi has risen 6 percent against the dollar since China loosened currency controls last year, economists say it is still vastly undervalued. Meanwhile, China’s trade surplus with the United States stands at $273 billion — more than triple the gap a decade earlier.
In Senate testimony this week, the Federal Reserve chairman, Ben S. Bernanke, went so far as to link China’s undervaluing of its currency to the slow economic recovery worldwide.
“The Chinese currency policy is blocking that process,” Mr. Bernanke testified. “And so it is to some extent hurting the recovery process.”
The Obama administration, however, has been noncommittal about the tariff proposal.
At a news conference on Thursday, President Obama would not say whether he would veto the bill it if it passed, but he raised concerns.
On the one hand, he said, “China has been very aggressive in gaming the trading system to its advantage,” and “it is indisputable that they intervene heavily in the currency markets.”
But he cautioned that he did not want to see the World Trade Organization strike down any steps the United States might take. “Then suddenly U.S. companies are subject to a whole bunch of sanctions,” Mr. Obama said.
Both supporters and opponents of the tariffs see the outcome as hugely significant financially and politically.
Page 2 of 2)
That was evident this week when the Club for Growth, a conservative free-market advocate that has led opposition to the bill, warned lawmakers that a vote supporting tariffs “will count heavily as an antigrowth action” on the group’s Congressional “scorecard,” which helps determine the group’s level of support.
Add to Portfolio
General Motors
Go to your Portfolio »
Club for Growth’s political muscle is already being felt. In the House, 99 Republicans supported a tariff plan last year. But after the club intensified its opposition, Representative Tim Ryan, an Ohio Democrat who favors tariffs, complained this week that “all of a sudden you can’t get a lick of Republican support.”
Early in the week, Chris Chocola, a former congressman who leads the Club for Growth, was pessimistic about chances of stopping the bill.
“It’s not politically expedient to defend China, so you won’t find many who will do that in words or deeds,” he said.
By midweek, after sharply critical remarks from Mr. Boehner on Tuesday, Mr. Chocola’s outlook had brightened.
“I give Boehner a lot of credit,” he said. “He clearly doesn’t want to bring it to the floor. And we’re trying to do everything we can to prevent it from getting to the floor.”
The maneuvering reflected the stops and starts on the issue as a whole since 2003, when Mr. Schumer and Senator Lindsey Graham, the South Carolina Republican, first proposed a 27.5 percent tariff on Chinese goods.
The two senators visited China in 2005 to press economic officials there to allow their currency to rise to market rates. They were greeted with a high-level banquet at the Great Hall of the People — Mr. Schumer pronounced the Chinese dishes “extraordinary” — and by China’s assurances that it would begin liberalizing monetary policies and allowing market forces to determine values.
The United States saw some early signs of improvement, but progress stalled. The Bush administration, after avoiding confrontations with China for years on the issue, took it to the World Trade Organization in 2007 over trade barriers.
The United States imposed tariffs on Chinese tires in 2009, and China followed the next year with steep tariffs on American poultry imports. Tariff opponents see the tit-for-tat as a small-scale version of the kind of trade wars they predict will break out en masse if the current plan becomes law.
“Every time we engage in protectionist behavior,” Mr. Chocola said, “bad things happen.”
===================================================================================
NYTimes copyright
As Its Economy Sprints Ahead, China’s People Are Left Behind
Shiho Fukada for The New York Times
A shopkeeper napping on a busy shopping street in Jilin. While Western companies look at China as a potentially huge market, consumers in Jilin and other heartland cities mostly settle for what state-run department stores and mom-and-pop shops offer.
By DAVID BARBOZA
Published: October 9, 2011
JILIN CITY, China — Wang Jianping and his wife, Shue, are a relatively affluent Chinese couple, with an annual household income of $16,000 — more than double the national average for urban families.
Endangered Dragon
The Price of Growth
This is the second in a series of articles examining China’s system of government-managed capitalism and the potential weaknesses that could threaten the nation’s remarkable economic growth.
Graphic
China’s Reluctant Consumers
Map
Enlarge This Image
Shiho Fukada for The New York Times
Yang Yang and her son, Guo Liming. To save money, Ms. Yang, her husband and son recently moved in with her parents.
They own a modest, three-bedroom apartment here in this northeastern industrial city. They paid for their son to study electrical engineering at prestigious Tsinghua University, in Beijing. And even by frugal Asian standards, they are prodigious savers, with $50,000 in a state-run bank.
But like many other Chinese families, the Wangs feel pressed. They do not own a car, and they rarely go shopping or out to eat. That is because the value of their nest egg is shrinking, through no fault of their own.
Under an economic system that favors state-run banks and companies over wage earners, the government keeps the interest rate on savings accounts so artificially low that it cannot keep pace with China’s rising inflation. At the same time, other factors in which the government plays a role — a weak social safety net, depressed wages and soaring home prices — create a hoarding impulse that compels many people to keep saving anyway, against an uncertain future.
Indeed, economists say this nation’s decade of remarkable economic growth, led by exports and government investment in big projects like China’s high-speed rail network, has to a great extent been underwritten by the household savings — not the spending — of the country’s 1.3 billion people.
This system, which some experts refer to as state capitalism, depends on the transfer of wealth from Chinese households to state-run banks, government-backed corporations and the affluent few who are well enough connected to benefit from the arrangement.
Meanwhile, striving middle-class families like the Wangs are unable to enjoy the full fruits of China’s economic miracle.
“This is the foundation of the whole system,” said Carl E. Walter, a former J. P. Morgan executive who is co-author of “Red Capitalism: The Fragile Financial Foundation of China’s Extraordinary Rise.”
“The banks make loans to who the Communist Party tells them to,” Mr. Walter said. “So they punish the household savers in favor of the state-owned companies.”
It is not just China’s problem. Economists say that for China to continue serving as one of the world’s few engines of economic growth, it will need to cultivate a consumer class that buys more of the world’s products and services, and shares more fully in the nation’s wealth.
But rather than rising, China’s consumer spending has actually plummeted in the last decade as a portion of the overall economy, to about 35 percent of gross domestic product, from about 45 percent. That figure is by far the lowest percentage for any big economy anywhere in the world. (Even in the sleepwalking American economy, the level is about 70 percent of G.D.P.)
Unless China starts giving its own people more spending power, some experts warn, the nation could gradually slip into the slow-growth malaise that now afflicts the United States, Europe and Japan. Already this year, China’s economic growth rate has begun to cool off.
“This growth model is past its sell-by date,” says Michael Pettis, a professor of finance at Peking University and senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “If China is going to continue to grow, this system will have to change. They’re going to have to stop penalizing households.”
The Communist Party, in its latest five-year plan, has promised to bolster personal consumption. But doing so would risk undermining a pillar of the country’s current financial system: the household savings that support the government-run banks.
Here in Jilin City, where chemical manufacturing is the dominant industry, the state banks are flush with money from savings accounts. The banks use that money to make low-interest loans to corporate beneficiaries — including real estate developers, helping fuel a speculative property bubble that has raised housing prices beyond the reach of many consumers. It is a dynamic that has played out in dozens of cities throughout China.
As Its Economy Sprints Ahead, China’s People Are Left Behind
Published: October 9, 2011
(Page 2 of 3)
Meanwhile, China’s central bank in Beijing also depends on the nation’s vast pool of consumer savings to help finance its big investments in the foreign exchange markets, as a way to keep the currency artificially weak. The weak currency helps sustain China’s mighty export economy by lowering the global price of Chinese goods. But it also makes imports unaffordable for many Chinese people.
Enlarge This Image
Shiho Fukada for The New York Times
Wang Shue and her husband live frugally and put much of their income into savings.
Endangered Dragon
The Price of Growth
This is the second in a series of articles examining China’s system of government-managed capitalism and the potential weaknesses that could threaten the nation’s remarkable economic growth.
Multimedia
Graphic
China’s Reluctant Consumers
Map
Enlarge This Image
Shiho Fukada for The New York Times
Left, a billboard announcing Jilin Fortune Plaza, a real estate project in Jilin, China. Local governments have come to view such projects as a source of easy riches.
News reports of the nouveaux riches in Beijing and Shanghai snapping up Apple iPhones, Gucci bags and Rolex watches may conjure Western business dreams of China’s becoming the world’s biggest consumer market. But consumer choice here in Jilin and many other heartland cities is confined largely to the limited offerings of dingy state-run department stores and mom-and-pop shops. Any sales of global “brands” come mainly in the form of the counterfeits and knockoffs often sold at outdoor markets.
On a recent weekday at the Henan Street flea market, crowds sifted through stacks of clothes that included $3 T-shirts with images of Minnie Mouse and $5 imitation Nike sports jerseys. Just a few yards away, an authentic Nike store selling the real thing for $35 had nary a shopper. Because consumers have so little spending power, many global-brand companies do not even bother to open stores in cities like Jilin.
With the faltering economies of the United States, Europe and Japan limiting China’s ability to continue relying on growth through exports, the Chinese government knows the importance of giving its own consumers more buying power. Already, the central government has pushed to raise rural incomes and has even offered subsidies to buy cars and household appliances.
The question is whether the government can change its entrenched economic system enough to truly make a difference. “The central government is committed to increasing the share of consumption in G.D.P.,” says Li Daokui, a professor of economics at Tsinghua University and a longtime government adviser. “The issue is what is going to be the means.”
THE SAVERS
Frugality Born
Of Necessity
If China is to make consumer spending a much larger share of the economy, it will need to encourage big changes in the habits of people like Mr. Wang, 52, a highway design specialist, and Ms. Wang, also 52, who retired as an accountant seven years ago because of health problems.
“We’re quite traditional,” says Ms. Wang, who draws a pension. “We don’t like to spend tomorrow’s money today.”
But tomorrow’s money may not be worth as much as today’s — not as long as their savings account earns only a 3 percent interest rate while inflation lopes along at 6 percent or more.
Yet the Wangs see no good alternatives to stashing nearly two-thirds of their monthly income in the bank. They are afraid to invest in China’s notoriously volatile stock market. And Chinese law sharply limits their ability to invest overseas or otherwise send money outside the country.
Nor do the Wangs feel flush or daring enough to join the real estate speculation that some Chinese now see as one of the few ways to get a return on their money — risky as that might prove if the bubble bursts.
Mainly, like many in China, the Wangs save because they worry about soaring food prices and the high cost of health care, which the People’s Republic no longer fully provides. They also worry about whether they can afford to buy a home for their son, a cost that Chinese parents are expected to bear when their male children marry.
“If you have a daughter, it’s not so expensive,” Wang Shue said. “But with a son you have to save money.”
Housing prices have become crucial in pushing up savings rates. Here, too, analysts say government policies are shifting wealth away from households.
In the case of the Wangs, they are being forced to move to make way for a new real estate development authorized by municipal authorities — the sort of project that local governments throughout China have come to regard as an easy source of riches.
Although the Wangs and other current residents have received some cash compensation for the apartments they are leaving, the Jilin City government has sold the land to a developer that plans to demolish the current dwellings and erect a new complex with more, and more expensive, apartments.
(Page 3 of 3)
The Wangs are not sure they will be able to find a home comparable to their current apartment from the money they are being paid. But the developer and the local government are expected jointly to earn a profit of more than $50 million.
Endangered Dragon
The Price of Growth
This is the second in a series of articles examining China’s system of government-managed capitalism and the potential weaknesses that could threaten the nation’s remarkable economic growth.
Multimedia
Graphic
China’s Reluctant Consumers
Map
Add to Portfolio
• McDonald's Corporation
• PetroChina Company Ltd
• Procter & Gamble Company
• Apple Incorporated
• JPMorgan Chase & Company
• NIKE Inc
Go to your Portfolio »
A POLICY’S HISTORY
Averting a Crisis,
But Forming a Habit
Why would China, which hopes eventually to surpass the United States as the world’s biggest economy, deliberately suppress the consumer market that might help it reach that goal?
Some analysts trace the current policies to habits formed in the late 1990s. That’s when the bloat of China’s giant, uncompetitive state-run corporations nearly brought China’s economic expansion to a standstill. Suddenly, with state-owned companies facing bankruptcy, the state banks were saddled with hundreds of billions of dollars in nonperforming loans; many banks faced insolvency.
To avert a crisis, Beijing allowed state-owned companies to lay off tens of millions of workers. In 1999 just one of those companies, the parent of PetroChina, a big oil conglomerate, announced the layoff of a million employees. And to shore up the banks, Beijing assumed tighter control over interest rates, which included sharply lowering the effective rates paid to depositors. A passbook account that might have earned 3 percent in 2002, after inflation, would today be effectively losing 3 to 5 percent, once inflation is factored in.
That is how Chinese banks can provide extremely cheap financing to state-owned companies while still recording huge profits. It has also helped the banks provide easy financing for big public works projects, which besides the high-speed train system have included the 2008 Beijing Olympics and the monumental Three Gorges Dam.
It was during this same period that the Communist government discarded the longstanding “iron rice bowl” promise of lifelong employment and state care. Beijing shifted more of the high costs of social services — including housing, education and medical care — onto households and the private sector.
Together, these measures added up to the managed-market system now known as state capitalism. They worked so well that they not only helped resuscitate China’s failing banks and state companies, but also fueled the nation’s economic boom for more than a decade. But the system also took an enormous economic toll on personal pocketbooks.
“We’d like to spend, but we really have nothing left over after paying the bills,” said Yang Yang, 34, a school administrator who lives in Jilin City with her husband, a police officer, and their son, 10. “Even though our son goes to a public school, we need to pay fees for after-school courses, which everyone is expected to take. Almost every family will do this. So there’s a lot of pressure on us to do it, too.” To save money, Ms. Yang, her husband and son recently moved in with her parents.
Nicholas R. Lardy, an economist at the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington, calculates that the government policies exacted a hidden tax on Chinese households that amounted to about $36 billion in 2008 alone — or about 4 percent of China’s gross domestic product. Over the last decade, Mr. Lardy says, that figure probably amounted to hundreds of billions of dollars — money that banks essentially took from consumers’ hands.
The distortions may have actually cost households far more, because his figures do not include hidden costs like artificially high prices for imports.
For many Chinese economists, the state capitalism that helped jump-start growth has become counterproductive.
“China is already beyond the point where the law of diminishing returns starts biting,” said Xu Xiaonian, an economist who teaches at the China Europe International Business School in Shanghai.
Mr. Xu argues that China risks repeating the mistakes Japan made in the 1980s and early 1990s, when it relied too long on a predominantly export economy, neglected domestic markets and allowed real estate prices to soar. Since Japan’s bubble burst in the mid-1990s, its economy has never really recovered.
“If we don’t change, we will follow those same footsteps,” Mr. Xu said. “We have already seen the early signs of what we might call the Japanese disease. China invests more and more, but those investments generate less and less growth.”
PREDICTIONS FOR CHANGE
A Radical Overhaul,
But Within Reach
Some economists predict major changes, noting that the Chinese government has the cash and the power to alter course as drastically as it did in the late ’90s, this time in the people’s favor.
“China has faced more daunting challenges in the past,” said Wei Shangjin, a professor at the Columbia Business School. “I don’t doubt that they want to do it. The question is, Can they successfully engineer such a major restructuring of the economy?”
Certainly, multinationals like McDonald’s, Nike and Procter & Gamble are still betting billions of dollars that China will grow into the world’s biggest consumer market within a few decades.
But raising consumption will require a radical overhaul of the Chinese economy — not just weaning state banks off household subsidies but forcing state-run firms to pay much higher borrowing rates. It would also mean letting the currency rise closer to whatever value it might naturally reach. It would mean, in other words, a significant dismantling of the state capitalism that has enabled China to come so far so fast. “To get consumption to surge,” said Mr. Pettis, the Peking University lecturer, “you need to stop taking money from the household sector.”
=====================================================================================
by Chithra KarunaKaran on Sunday, October 9, 2011 at 4:11am
China's Currency Manipulation hurts the world's workers and small businesses.
China's currency manipulation cheats workers in EVERY country, including China.
Yesterday the Dalai Lama called China's totalitarian rulers "liars" and "hypocrites" in the context of South Africa (China's largest trading partner and newest member of BRICS) refusal to grant a visa to the Dalai Lama on the occasion of fellow Nobel Peace Laureate Desmond Tutu's 80th birthday. Presumably, South Africa was fearful of China's disapproval.
Here's the point however -- Whether it is Human Rights abuses or manipulating its currency value at the expense of workers and small businesses everywhere, China leads!
For China, Performing as Sweatshop Nation to the World is finally beginning to expose its ugly downside.
None of the BRICS, India included, have spoken out against China's artificial lowering of the value of its yuan.
Great for China, bad for workers everywhere, bad for small businesses everywhere, very profitable for bankers, multinational corporations and fat cat Republican legislators in the US Congress.
Why has the US Congress taken so long to wake up to China's faux role in the world economy?
Why has currency manipulation by China been tolerated by the US for so long?
Because America's biggest businesses have profited and made Republicans richer? While small businesses in the US have suffered and millions of Americans are jobless or underemployed?
Those who are occupying Wall Street in my city of New York need to add China's currency manipulation to their manifesto against bankers and multinationals.
China's rulers are unethical.
The US Govt, especially House and Senate Republicans, through delaying action against China, is also unethical.
The time is now for the renminbi to reflect the actual value of the yuan, and if the Chinese keep balking on upward revision, through punitive action against China for cheating workers and small businesses everywhere.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
the Hill copyright
Ignoring Chinese currency manipulation costs America jobs
By Rep. Sander Levin (D-Mich.) - 10/03/11 06:44 PM ET
In the 15 months since China announced that it would float its currency, the renminbi (RMB) has appreciated a paltry 6 percent against the U.S. dollar, well below what economists say it should. In fact, according to one reputable estimate, the RMB is still 28 percent below its true value.
The impact on America is clear. The currency manipulation by China costs at least 1 million American jobs, according to Fred Bergsten, director of the Peterson Institute for International Economics. Bergsten has said it “is by far the largest protectionist measure adopted by any country since the Second World War — and probably in all of history.” Nobel Prize winning economist Paul Krugman estimates that the cost of China’s action is closer to 1.5 million jobs.
As our manufacturers compete with Chinese companies to produce the products of the 21st century — from solar panels to battery cells — currency manipulation is one of the most egregious tools China is using to give its exporters an upper hand.
Yet in the face of compelling evidence for action, Republican leaders have offered no plans to bring up the Currency Reform for Fair Trade Act that I reintroduced this year together with Democratic Rep. Tim Ryan of Ohio and Republican Rep. Tim Murphy of Pennsylvania. The bill is designed to rein in China’s currency manipulation and has more than 200 co-sponsors. A virtually identical bill passed the House a year ago with support from the majorities of both parties.
What’s more, the Senate is preparing to act on legislation this week that includes the central components of the House bill.
Meanwhile, China continues to purchase U.S. Treasury bills in order to leverage its currency and maintain its low value. Combined, the practices artificially lower the cost of imported Chinese products and increase the cost of American exports to China.
The Currency Reform for Fair Trade Act (H.R. 639) would allow countervailing import duties for U.S. industries that are injured by the undervalued RMB. The Commerce Department, as a result of the legislation, would have the authority to impose import tariffs to offset the negative consequences of China’s undervalued currency. The bill reverses a current Commerce Department practice that has precluded it from treating foreign government currency practices as an export subsidy while also directing the department on how to measure subsidies provided to foreign producers through currency undervaluation.
Overall, the measure could help reduce our trade deficit by $200 billion.
Our nation’s workers and businesses deserve a level international playing field, and this measure provides concrete action to help make that a reality. With 14 million Americans still looking for work, it is far past time that Republican leaders took up legislation that has a history of bipartisan support and will help strengthen the hands of American workers and businesses.
There is no excuse for inaction. The specter of a “trade war” has been raised by opponents, as it is so often used against action. It masks the fact that there is economic competition — indeed, a battle — among nations and it is unwise to let the other nation refuse to abide by long-ago-developed international rules to help prevent trade wars, including rules against currency manipulation.
House Republican leaders argue that the focus should be on other Chinese practices, relating to lack of protection of intellectual property and technology transfer requirements. We should be pursuing action on all fronts — instead of playing one off against another — especially since there has been no legislative action by the House majority on any.
Levin is the ranking member on the House Ways and Means Committee.
=================================================================================
AP copyright
WASHINGTON — In one of Capitol Hill’s longest running battles, opponents of China’s trade policies have used threats, negotiation, protests from small American businesses and even the occasional Peking duck dinner in a failed effort to stop China from manipulating its currency.
Enlarge This Image
J. Scott Applewhite/Associated Press
Lindsey Graham, left, and Charles E. Schumer proposed a tariff on Chinese goods.
After eight years, that campaign is on the verge of a breakthrough, as the Senate appeared ready Thursday to approve a get-tough approach that had stalled numerous times before: a bill to punish China with high tariffs on some exports if it fails to adopt a market-driven exchange rate.
Economists say China’s artificially cheap currency has cost the United States jobs and billions in lost trade. But opponents of tariffs, including major manufacturers doing business in China, warn that penalizing China could start a trade war that would hurt American businesses even more.
“We’re already in a trade war,” Senator Charles E. Schumer, the New York Democrat who has led the push for tariffs, said in an interview. “We can’t afford to just do nothing. This is a message to China that the jig is finally up.”
The American jobless problem have combined to give the tariff proposal newfound momentum, as the Senate spent much of the afternoon Thursday debating it.
Supporters, casting the measure as a way to spur job growth, were confident the Senate would approve it. Even the measure’s fiercest opponents were grudgingly predicting passage in the Senate, and probably the House.
But 11-hour resistance by leading Republicans has clouded the outcome in the House, where the speaker, John A. Boehner, this week called the tariff plan “dangerous,” and it is unclear if the issue will even come up for a House vote.
China itself voiced strong objections this week and charged that meddling by the United States in Chinese currency violated world trade protocols. The Chinese Embassy has retained one of Washington’s most powerful lobbying shops, Patton Boggs, to represent its interests for $420,000 a year.
Lobbyists for General Motors, Caterpillar, steel producers, textile manufacturers, toy makers, poultry farmers and other businesses have also weighed in, supporting or opposing the tariffs depending on their own business relations with China.
Generally, large manufacturers like Caterpillar that operate in China have opposed it, warning of a backlash. Smaller businesses, like a tube maker in Ohio or a ceramics maker in upstate New York, have supported tariffs because they say China has artificially lowered its prices and gained an unfair edge.
While the Chinese renminbi has risen 6 percent against the dollar since China loosened currency controls last year, economists say it is still vastly undervalued. Meanwhile, China’s trade surplus with the United States stands at $273 billion — more than triple the gap a decade earlier.
In Senate testimony this week, the Federal Reserve chairman, Ben S. Bernanke, went so far as to link China’s undervaluing of its currency to the slow economic recovery worldwide.
“The Chinese currency policy is blocking that process,” Mr. Bernanke testified. “And so it is to some extent hurting the recovery process.”
The Obama administration, however, has been noncommittal about the tariff proposal.
At a news conference on Thursday, President Obama would not say whether he would veto the bill it if it passed, but he raised concerns.
On the one hand, he said, “China has been very aggressive in gaming the trading system to its advantage,” and “it is indisputable that they intervene heavily in the currency markets.”
But he cautioned that he did not want to see the World Trade Organization strike down any steps the United States might take. “Then suddenly U.S. companies are subject to a whole bunch of sanctions,” Mr. Obama said.
Both supporters and opponents of the tariffs see the outcome as hugely significant financially and politically.
Page 2 of 2)
That was evident this week when the Club for Growth, a conservative free-market advocate that has led opposition to the bill, warned lawmakers that a vote supporting tariffs “will count heavily as an antigrowth action” on the group’s Congressional “scorecard,” which helps determine the group’s level of support.
Add to Portfolio
General Motors
Go to your Portfolio »
Club for Growth’s political muscle is already being felt. In the House, 99 Republicans supported a tariff plan last year. But after the club intensified its opposition, Representative Tim Ryan, an Ohio Democrat who favors tariffs, complained this week that “all of a sudden you can’t get a lick of Republican support.”
Early in the week, Chris Chocola, a former congressman who leads the Club for Growth, was pessimistic about chances of stopping the bill.
“It’s not politically expedient to defend China, so you won’t find many who will do that in words or deeds,” he said.
By midweek, after sharply critical remarks from Mr. Boehner on Tuesday, Mr. Chocola’s outlook had brightened.
“I give Boehner a lot of credit,” he said. “He clearly doesn’t want to bring it to the floor. And we’re trying to do everything we can to prevent it from getting to the floor.”
The maneuvering reflected the stops and starts on the issue as a whole since 2003, when Mr. Schumer and Senator Lindsey Graham, the South Carolina Republican, first proposed a 27.5 percent tariff on Chinese goods.
The two senators visited China in 2005 to press economic officials there to allow their currency to rise to market rates. They were greeted with a high-level banquet at the Great Hall of the People — Mr. Schumer pronounced the Chinese dishes “extraordinary” — and by China’s assurances that it would begin liberalizing monetary policies and allowing market forces to determine values.
The United States saw some early signs of improvement, but progress stalled. The Bush administration, after avoiding confrontations with China for years on the issue, took it to the World Trade Organization in 2007 over trade barriers.
The United States imposed tariffs on Chinese tires in 2009, and China followed the next year with steep tariffs on American poultry imports. Tariff opponents see the tit-for-tat as a small-scale version of the kind of trade wars they predict will break out en masse if the current plan becomes law.
“Every time we engage in protectionist behavior,” Mr. Chocola said, “bad things happen.”
===================================================================================
NYTimes copyright
As Its Economy Sprints Ahead, China’s People Are Left Behind
Shiho Fukada for The New York Times
A shopkeeper napping on a busy shopping street in Jilin. While Western companies look at China as a potentially huge market, consumers in Jilin and other heartland cities mostly settle for what state-run department stores and mom-and-pop shops offer.
By DAVID BARBOZA
Published: October 9, 2011
JILIN CITY, China — Wang Jianping and his wife, Shue, are a relatively affluent Chinese couple, with an annual household income of $16,000 — more than double the national average for urban families.
Endangered Dragon
The Price of Growth
This is the second in a series of articles examining China’s system of government-managed capitalism and the potential weaknesses that could threaten the nation’s remarkable economic growth.
Graphic
China’s Reluctant Consumers
Map
Enlarge This Image
Shiho Fukada for The New York Times
Yang Yang and her son, Guo Liming. To save money, Ms. Yang, her husband and son recently moved in with her parents.
They own a modest, three-bedroom apartment here in this northeastern industrial city. They paid for their son to study electrical engineering at prestigious Tsinghua University, in Beijing. And even by frugal Asian standards, they are prodigious savers, with $50,000 in a state-run bank.
But like many other Chinese families, the Wangs feel pressed. They do not own a car, and they rarely go shopping or out to eat. That is because the value of their nest egg is shrinking, through no fault of their own.
Under an economic system that favors state-run banks and companies over wage earners, the government keeps the interest rate on savings accounts so artificially low that it cannot keep pace with China’s rising inflation. At the same time, other factors in which the government plays a role — a weak social safety net, depressed wages and soaring home prices — create a hoarding impulse that compels many people to keep saving anyway, against an uncertain future.
Indeed, economists say this nation’s decade of remarkable economic growth, led by exports and government investment in big projects like China’s high-speed rail network, has to a great extent been underwritten by the household savings — not the spending — of the country’s 1.3 billion people.
This system, which some experts refer to as state capitalism, depends on the transfer of wealth from Chinese households to state-run banks, government-backed corporations and the affluent few who are well enough connected to benefit from the arrangement.
Meanwhile, striving middle-class families like the Wangs are unable to enjoy the full fruits of China’s economic miracle.
“This is the foundation of the whole system,” said Carl E. Walter, a former J. P. Morgan executive who is co-author of “Red Capitalism: The Fragile Financial Foundation of China’s Extraordinary Rise.”
“The banks make loans to who the Communist Party tells them to,” Mr. Walter said. “So they punish the household savers in favor of the state-owned companies.”
It is not just China’s problem. Economists say that for China to continue serving as one of the world’s few engines of economic growth, it will need to cultivate a consumer class that buys more of the world’s products and services, and shares more fully in the nation’s wealth.
But rather than rising, China’s consumer spending has actually plummeted in the last decade as a portion of the overall economy, to about 35 percent of gross domestic product, from about 45 percent. That figure is by far the lowest percentage for any big economy anywhere in the world. (Even in the sleepwalking American economy, the level is about 70 percent of G.D.P.)
Unless China starts giving its own people more spending power, some experts warn, the nation could gradually slip into the slow-growth malaise that now afflicts the United States, Europe and Japan. Already this year, China’s economic growth rate has begun to cool off.
“This growth model is past its sell-by date,” says Michael Pettis, a professor of finance at Peking University and senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “If China is going to continue to grow, this system will have to change. They’re going to have to stop penalizing households.”
The Communist Party, in its latest five-year plan, has promised to bolster personal consumption. But doing so would risk undermining a pillar of the country’s current financial system: the household savings that support the government-run banks.
Here in Jilin City, where chemical manufacturing is the dominant industry, the state banks are flush with money from savings accounts. The banks use that money to make low-interest loans to corporate beneficiaries — including real estate developers, helping fuel a speculative property bubble that has raised housing prices beyond the reach of many consumers. It is a dynamic that has played out in dozens of cities throughout China.
As Its Economy Sprints Ahead, China’s People Are Left Behind
Published: October 9, 2011
(Page 2 of 3)
Meanwhile, China’s central bank in Beijing also depends on the nation’s vast pool of consumer savings to help finance its big investments in the foreign exchange markets, as a way to keep the currency artificially weak. The weak currency helps sustain China’s mighty export economy by lowering the global price of Chinese goods. But it also makes imports unaffordable for many Chinese people.
Enlarge This Image
Shiho Fukada for The New York Times
Wang Shue and her husband live frugally and put much of their income into savings.
Endangered Dragon
The Price of Growth
This is the second in a series of articles examining China’s system of government-managed capitalism and the potential weaknesses that could threaten the nation’s remarkable economic growth.
Multimedia
Graphic
China’s Reluctant Consumers
Map
Enlarge This Image
Shiho Fukada for The New York Times
Left, a billboard announcing Jilin Fortune Plaza, a real estate project in Jilin, China. Local governments have come to view such projects as a source of easy riches.
News reports of the nouveaux riches in Beijing and Shanghai snapping up Apple iPhones, Gucci bags and Rolex watches may conjure Western business dreams of China’s becoming the world’s biggest consumer market. But consumer choice here in Jilin and many other heartland cities is confined largely to the limited offerings of dingy state-run department stores and mom-and-pop shops. Any sales of global “brands” come mainly in the form of the counterfeits and knockoffs often sold at outdoor markets.
On a recent weekday at the Henan Street flea market, crowds sifted through stacks of clothes that included $3 T-shirts with images of Minnie Mouse and $5 imitation Nike sports jerseys. Just a few yards away, an authentic Nike store selling the real thing for $35 had nary a shopper. Because consumers have so little spending power, many global-brand companies do not even bother to open stores in cities like Jilin.
With the faltering economies of the United States, Europe and Japan limiting China’s ability to continue relying on growth through exports, the Chinese government knows the importance of giving its own consumers more buying power. Already, the central government has pushed to raise rural incomes and has even offered subsidies to buy cars and household appliances.
The question is whether the government can change its entrenched economic system enough to truly make a difference. “The central government is committed to increasing the share of consumption in G.D.P.,” says Li Daokui, a professor of economics at Tsinghua University and a longtime government adviser. “The issue is what is going to be the means.”
THE SAVERS
Frugality Born
Of Necessity
If China is to make consumer spending a much larger share of the economy, it will need to encourage big changes in the habits of people like Mr. Wang, 52, a highway design specialist, and Ms. Wang, also 52, who retired as an accountant seven years ago because of health problems.
“We’re quite traditional,” says Ms. Wang, who draws a pension. “We don’t like to spend tomorrow’s money today.”
But tomorrow’s money may not be worth as much as today’s — not as long as their savings account earns only a 3 percent interest rate while inflation lopes along at 6 percent or more.
Yet the Wangs see no good alternatives to stashing nearly two-thirds of their monthly income in the bank. They are afraid to invest in China’s notoriously volatile stock market. And Chinese law sharply limits their ability to invest overseas or otherwise send money outside the country.
Nor do the Wangs feel flush or daring enough to join the real estate speculation that some Chinese now see as one of the few ways to get a return on their money — risky as that might prove if the bubble bursts.
Mainly, like many in China, the Wangs save because they worry about soaring food prices and the high cost of health care, which the People’s Republic no longer fully provides. They also worry about whether they can afford to buy a home for their son, a cost that Chinese parents are expected to bear when their male children marry.
“If you have a daughter, it’s not so expensive,” Wang Shue said. “But with a son you have to save money.”
Housing prices have become crucial in pushing up savings rates. Here, too, analysts say government policies are shifting wealth away from households.
In the case of the Wangs, they are being forced to move to make way for a new real estate development authorized by municipal authorities — the sort of project that local governments throughout China have come to regard as an easy source of riches.
Although the Wangs and other current residents have received some cash compensation for the apartments they are leaving, the Jilin City government has sold the land to a developer that plans to demolish the current dwellings and erect a new complex with more, and more expensive, apartments.
(Page 3 of 3)
The Wangs are not sure they will be able to find a home comparable to their current apartment from the money they are being paid. But the developer and the local government are expected jointly to earn a profit of more than $50 million.
Endangered Dragon
The Price of Growth
This is the second in a series of articles examining China’s system of government-managed capitalism and the potential weaknesses that could threaten the nation’s remarkable economic growth.
Multimedia
Graphic
China’s Reluctant Consumers
Map
Add to Portfolio
• McDonald's Corporation
• PetroChina Company Ltd
• Procter & Gamble Company
• Apple Incorporated
• JPMorgan Chase & Company
• NIKE Inc
Go to your Portfolio »
A POLICY’S HISTORY
Averting a Crisis,
But Forming a Habit
Why would China, which hopes eventually to surpass the United States as the world’s biggest economy, deliberately suppress the consumer market that might help it reach that goal?
Some analysts trace the current policies to habits formed in the late 1990s. That’s when the bloat of China’s giant, uncompetitive state-run corporations nearly brought China’s economic expansion to a standstill. Suddenly, with state-owned companies facing bankruptcy, the state banks were saddled with hundreds of billions of dollars in nonperforming loans; many banks faced insolvency.
To avert a crisis, Beijing allowed state-owned companies to lay off tens of millions of workers. In 1999 just one of those companies, the parent of PetroChina, a big oil conglomerate, announced the layoff of a million employees. And to shore up the banks, Beijing assumed tighter control over interest rates, which included sharply lowering the effective rates paid to depositors. A passbook account that might have earned 3 percent in 2002, after inflation, would today be effectively losing 3 to 5 percent, once inflation is factored in.
That is how Chinese banks can provide extremely cheap financing to state-owned companies while still recording huge profits. It has also helped the banks provide easy financing for big public works projects, which besides the high-speed train system have included the 2008 Beijing Olympics and the monumental Three Gorges Dam.
It was during this same period that the Communist government discarded the longstanding “iron rice bowl” promise of lifelong employment and state care. Beijing shifted more of the high costs of social services — including housing, education and medical care — onto households and the private sector.
Together, these measures added up to the managed-market system now known as state capitalism. They worked so well that they not only helped resuscitate China’s failing banks and state companies, but also fueled the nation’s economic boom for more than a decade. But the system also took an enormous economic toll on personal pocketbooks.
“We’d like to spend, but we really have nothing left over after paying the bills,” said Yang Yang, 34, a school administrator who lives in Jilin City with her husband, a police officer, and their son, 10. “Even though our son goes to a public school, we need to pay fees for after-school courses, which everyone is expected to take. Almost every family will do this. So there’s a lot of pressure on us to do it, too.” To save money, Ms. Yang, her husband and son recently moved in with her parents.
Nicholas R. Lardy, an economist at the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington, calculates that the government policies exacted a hidden tax on Chinese households that amounted to about $36 billion in 2008 alone — or about 4 percent of China’s gross domestic product. Over the last decade, Mr. Lardy says, that figure probably amounted to hundreds of billions of dollars — money that banks essentially took from consumers’ hands.
The distortions may have actually cost households far more, because his figures do not include hidden costs like artificially high prices for imports.
For many Chinese economists, the state capitalism that helped jump-start growth has become counterproductive.
“China is already beyond the point where the law of diminishing returns starts biting,” said Xu Xiaonian, an economist who teaches at the China Europe International Business School in Shanghai.
Mr. Xu argues that China risks repeating the mistakes Japan made in the 1980s and early 1990s, when it relied too long on a predominantly export economy, neglected domestic markets and allowed real estate prices to soar. Since Japan’s bubble burst in the mid-1990s, its economy has never really recovered.
“If we don’t change, we will follow those same footsteps,” Mr. Xu said. “We have already seen the early signs of what we might call the Japanese disease. China invests more and more, but those investments generate less and less growth.”
PREDICTIONS FOR CHANGE
A Radical Overhaul,
But Within Reach
Some economists predict major changes, noting that the Chinese government has the cash and the power to alter course as drastically as it did in the late ’90s, this time in the people’s favor.
“China has faced more daunting challenges in the past,” said Wei Shangjin, a professor at the Columbia Business School. “I don’t doubt that they want to do it. The question is, Can they successfully engineer such a major restructuring of the economy?”
Certainly, multinationals like McDonald’s, Nike and Procter & Gamble are still betting billions of dollars that China will grow into the world’s biggest consumer market within a few decades.
But raising consumption will require a radical overhaul of the Chinese economy — not just weaning state banks off household subsidies but forcing state-run firms to pay much higher borrowing rates. It would also mean letting the currency rise closer to whatever value it might naturally reach. It would mean, in other words, a significant dismantling of the state capitalism that has enabled China to come so far so fast. “To get consumption to surge,” said Mr. Pettis, the Peking University lecturer, “you need to stop taking money from the household sector.”
=====================================================================================
Saturday, September 24, 2011
Beauty & Inferiority
http://community.nytimes.com/comments/india.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/09/24/being-comfortable-in-your-own-skin-tone/?sort=oldest&offset=2
New York Times
Comment #27
Ethical Democracy
New York
September 25th, 2011
1:50 am
Beauty & Inferiority
India is a vast crowded complex space where numerous, seemingly conflicting stereotypes (and ideals) persist.
That's Democracy -- thirty-one centuries in the making. Give or take a few.
Where else would you have Fair and Lovely makeup, side by side with celebrating the birthday, as a national holiday, of Krishna the dark blue God of Love?
I'm an atheist, don't use beauty products, just juxtaposing contrastive ideals by way of illustration.
The author (see her article below) claims and I quote \"Over a decade of living in North America – where tans are pursued and Halle Berry is a beauty icon – helped that. Far away from the subcontinent, obsessed with Victorian ideas of beauty, it was refreshing to be part of a society that embraced a wider spectrum of skin tone.\"
Really? Even Aretha Franklin and more recently, Beyonce pretty much went blond, or do you think their hair color and skin tone are a happy accident? To uphold the US, the epicenter of racist ideology of Whiteness, is just plain ignorant and a gross distortion of racialized discourse in the US.
And, yikes, have you never heard of the racialization of the Black Irish?
Yes, they have white skin. But black hair! A Black Irish woman at London's Heathrow airport was detained, (she claimed to me), because she was Black Irish. That was in the mid-1980's, so, way before Islamist hysteria following 9/11.
People use many strategies for constructing The Other.
Suck it up , Suryatapa, you really speak from class privilege and therefore Power (dark brown though you may be), so stop being superficial, focus instead on maternal and child malnutrition in your writings, make fewer blow-dry (you have a hair problem too?) visits to the beauty salon (most Indians, including me, and I live in New York, have never been inside one) get over it, live your own life, think your own thoughts be receptive to disparate perceptions, misguided though some obviously are, be HUMYN and don't blame it on India and Indians.
Please don't let your next article be about the big boobs of Indian goddesses and how inadequate that makes you feel!
Take responsibility for constructing your own mindset.
It's not that you \"do not compute.\" You cant compute.
Or rather, you choose not to.
Harsh -- but sometimes truths are inconvenient.
Dr. Chithra KarunaKaran
City University of New York [CUNY]
Ethical Democracy As Lived Practice
http://EthicalDemocracy.blogspot.com
=======================================
http://india.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/09/24/being-comfortable-in-your-own-skin-tone/?hp#preview
The article follows:
New York Times copyright
Being Comfortable in Your Own Skin (Tone)
By SURYATAPA BHATTACHARYA
Suryatapa at the age of six in her childhood home in Siliguri, West Bengal.
I am Indian – but after more than 15 years of living abroad, some aspects of Indian life feel fresh, if not new or altogether welcome.
Three months ago, I wandered into a salon in Kolkata with my mother and came face-to-face with a prejudice I hadn’t had to deal with in all the years abroad.
The beautician insisted she could remove my “deep tan.”
But my dark skin was not the result of a tanning bed disaster – I was born with it.
Lady with pink talons and bright pink lipstick: I can lighten you up by several shades.
Me: No.
Lady: You are roaming in the sun too much.
Me: Don’t touch my face.
No one in India seems to think it unusual to try to slap some bleach, or a herbal equivalent, on my skin to reveal a whiter me. It is mildly irritating when it comes from my beloved aunts, and maddening when strangers suggest my dark skin is something to be “fixed.”
Being dark made me feel self-conscious.
As a kid I had several nicknames that stung. Darkie, Blackie and Kaalia (pinched from the title of a Bollywood film, about someone with dark skin). My color defined me and it stuck. A friend from school sent me a message on Facebook recently. It read: Kaalia, remember me? When I pointed out that it was insulting, I was called out for being “too sensitive.”
“We called you that with love,” he said. Like that should justify the hurt.
In Bengali, the word phorsha (fair) is used interchangeably with beautiful, and with family it was no different. Well-meaning aunts and their neighbors worried about my marriage prospects. Perhaps, they suggested, a little less sun exposure, or maybe a few extra layers of sandalwood paste or a homemade concoction that the neighborhood swore by?
But I was a problem child. You couldn’t drag me home from playing outside and even back then, I wouldn’t let anyone touch my face. The aunts sighed but never really gave up.
To be dark in India is not necessarily to be invisible. Instead, in this country, it is everyone’s business to correct it or cover it up. The personal is open to public opinion, whether it makes you squirm or not.
Few Indians seem to be comfortable in their dark skin. The matrimonial classifieds every weekend ask for or offer prospective brides who are never described as dark; at best (or worst) they are “wheatish.”
So it is no surprise that a multi-billion rupee market in fairness products thrives in India. Bollywood superstars such as Shah Rukh Khan and Priyanka Chopra are complicit in the act, appearing in airbrushed, whitened versions of themselves, urging you to pick up a tube or two of the latest product. From lotions and soaps to whitening underarm deodorant; every body part it seems is could be a few shades lighter.
In a moment of adolescent weakness, I too was convinced to go on a regimen of drinking milk with crushed turmeric. Urban legends abound of how turmeric and milk, with their blood cleansing properties, had turned someone’s friend’s sister into a fair maiden – so I gulped down this vile concoction, gagged and never touched it ever again.
As an adult I’ve become much more comfortable with the color of my skin.
Over a decade of living in North America – where tans are pursued and Halle Berry is a beauty icon – helped that. Far away from the subcontinent, obsessed with Victorian ideas of beauty, it was refreshing to be part of a society that embraced a wider spectrum of skin tone.
So when I moved back to India, I was surprised and offended all over again, as I confronted people who still think porcelain skin is the epitome of beauty.
The last time I visited my parents in West Bengal, I paid a visit to the hairdresser. As I instructed the hairdresser on how to blow-dry my hair, the lady in the chair next to me seemed intrigued by my conversation. After several furtive glances she could no longer help herself and asked: “Do you do tanning?” I was dumbstruck and could barely stammer out a surprised “no.”
In retrospect, her assumption says a lot about how Indians equate skin tone with beauty, confidence and social standing. To her, my dark skin was incommensurate with me – a confident professional in a fancy salon.
I do not compute.
Suryatapa Bhattacharya is the India correspondent for “The National” newspaper.
======================================================================
New York Times
Comment #27
Ethical Democracy
New York
September 25th, 2011
1:50 am
Beauty & Inferiority
India is a vast crowded complex space where numerous, seemingly conflicting stereotypes (and ideals) persist.
That's Democracy -- thirty-one centuries in the making. Give or take a few.
Where else would you have Fair and Lovely makeup, side by side with celebrating the birthday, as a national holiday, of Krishna the dark blue God of Love?
I'm an atheist, don't use beauty products, just juxtaposing contrastive ideals by way of illustration.
The author (see her article below) claims and I quote \"Over a decade of living in North America – where tans are pursued and Halle Berry is a beauty icon – helped that. Far away from the subcontinent, obsessed with Victorian ideas of beauty, it was refreshing to be part of a society that embraced a wider spectrum of skin tone.\"
Really? Even Aretha Franklin and more recently, Beyonce pretty much went blond, or do you think their hair color and skin tone are a happy accident? To uphold the US, the epicenter of racist ideology of Whiteness, is just plain ignorant and a gross distortion of racialized discourse in the US.
And, yikes, have you never heard of the racialization of the Black Irish?
Yes, they have white skin. But black hair! A Black Irish woman at London's Heathrow airport was detained, (she claimed to me), because she was Black Irish. That was in the mid-1980's, so, way before Islamist hysteria following 9/11.
People use many strategies for constructing The Other.
Suck it up , Suryatapa, you really speak from class privilege and therefore Power (dark brown though you may be), so stop being superficial, focus instead on maternal and child malnutrition in your writings, make fewer blow-dry (you have a hair problem too?) visits to the beauty salon (most Indians, including me, and I live in New York, have never been inside one) get over it, live your own life, think your own thoughts be receptive to disparate perceptions, misguided though some obviously are, be HUMYN and don't blame it on India and Indians.
Please don't let your next article be about the big boobs of Indian goddesses and how inadequate that makes you feel!
Take responsibility for constructing your own mindset.
It's not that you \"do not compute.\" You cant compute.
Or rather, you choose not to.
Harsh -- but sometimes truths are inconvenient.
Dr. Chithra KarunaKaran
City University of New York [CUNY]
Ethical Democracy As Lived Practice
http://EthicalDemocracy.blogspot.com
=======================================
http://india.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/09/24/being-comfortable-in-your-own-skin-tone/?hp#preview
The article follows:
New York Times copyright
Being Comfortable in Your Own Skin (Tone)
By SURYATAPA BHATTACHARYA
Suryatapa at the age of six in her childhood home in Siliguri, West Bengal.
I am Indian – but after more than 15 years of living abroad, some aspects of Indian life feel fresh, if not new or altogether welcome.
Three months ago, I wandered into a salon in Kolkata with my mother and came face-to-face with a prejudice I hadn’t had to deal with in all the years abroad.
The beautician insisted she could remove my “deep tan.”
But my dark skin was not the result of a tanning bed disaster – I was born with it.
Lady with pink talons and bright pink lipstick: I can lighten you up by several shades.
Me: No.
Lady: You are roaming in the sun too much.
Me: Don’t touch my face.
No one in India seems to think it unusual to try to slap some bleach, or a herbal equivalent, on my skin to reveal a whiter me. It is mildly irritating when it comes from my beloved aunts, and maddening when strangers suggest my dark skin is something to be “fixed.”
Being dark made me feel self-conscious.
As a kid I had several nicknames that stung. Darkie, Blackie and Kaalia (pinched from the title of a Bollywood film, about someone with dark skin). My color defined me and it stuck. A friend from school sent me a message on Facebook recently. It read: Kaalia, remember me? When I pointed out that it was insulting, I was called out for being “too sensitive.”
“We called you that with love,” he said. Like that should justify the hurt.
In Bengali, the word phorsha (fair) is used interchangeably with beautiful, and with family it was no different. Well-meaning aunts and their neighbors worried about my marriage prospects. Perhaps, they suggested, a little less sun exposure, or maybe a few extra layers of sandalwood paste or a homemade concoction that the neighborhood swore by?
But I was a problem child. You couldn’t drag me home from playing outside and even back then, I wouldn’t let anyone touch my face. The aunts sighed but never really gave up.
To be dark in India is not necessarily to be invisible. Instead, in this country, it is everyone’s business to correct it or cover it up. The personal is open to public opinion, whether it makes you squirm or not.
Few Indians seem to be comfortable in their dark skin. The matrimonial classifieds every weekend ask for or offer prospective brides who are never described as dark; at best (or worst) they are “wheatish.”
So it is no surprise that a multi-billion rupee market in fairness products thrives in India. Bollywood superstars such as Shah Rukh Khan and Priyanka Chopra are complicit in the act, appearing in airbrushed, whitened versions of themselves, urging you to pick up a tube or two of the latest product. From lotions and soaps to whitening underarm deodorant; every body part it seems is could be a few shades lighter.
In a moment of adolescent weakness, I too was convinced to go on a regimen of drinking milk with crushed turmeric. Urban legends abound of how turmeric and milk, with their blood cleansing properties, had turned someone’s friend’s sister into a fair maiden – so I gulped down this vile concoction, gagged and never touched it ever again.
As an adult I’ve become much more comfortable with the color of my skin.
Over a decade of living in North America – where tans are pursued and Halle Berry is a beauty icon – helped that. Far away from the subcontinent, obsessed with Victorian ideas of beauty, it was refreshing to be part of a society that embraced a wider spectrum of skin tone.
So when I moved back to India, I was surprised and offended all over again, as I confronted people who still think porcelain skin is the epitome of beauty.
The last time I visited my parents in West Bengal, I paid a visit to the hairdresser. As I instructed the hairdresser on how to blow-dry my hair, the lady in the chair next to me seemed intrigued by my conversation. After several furtive glances she could no longer help herself and asked: “Do you do tanning?” I was dumbstruck and could barely stammer out a surprised “no.”
In retrospect, her assumption says a lot about how Indians equate skin tone with beauty, confidence and social standing. To her, my dark skin was incommensurate with me – a confident professional in a fancy salon.
I do not compute.
Suryatapa Bhattacharya is the India correspondent for “The National” newspaper.
======================================================================
Friday, September 2, 2011
JKL not J&K: 2 Ladakh Panchayats Press for Name Change of State
JKL not J&K: 2 Ladakh Panchayats Press for Name Change of State
by Chithra KarunaKaran on Friday, September 2, 2011 at 6:41am
On Sunday July 24, 2011 I sent out an informal verbal invitation to a prominent resident of Mulbekh, Ladakh suggesting a meeting of gram panchayats of Wakha and Mulbekh, shortly after their election following a 31 year lag, mainly due to violent ISI-fed unrest in the Kashmir Valley and the Pak attack on Kargil, not to mention the battle for Siachen. Epic events but ordinary humans find ways to connect with one another with a little help from the nation-state.
I was astonished and moved when all 18 members showed up around noon at the Chang Chup Chosling nunnery where I was staying. The Nunnery served lunch, following the meeting.
Amazing showing, where else can you get that kind of response?
Their presence showed the hunger to develop local representation and recognition, local self-governance and underlined the determination to push for economic equality for the entire Ladakh region, in order to to bring it on a par with Jammu and the Vale of Kashmir. When self-interest meets the collective interest as in this case, then there's hope for progress.
I posted the following news story (see below) to Rising Kashmir which carried an edited version, on a delayed dateline which pissed me off. The story was picked up by Dost Khan of State Times, published from New Delhi.
My Qs. now are:
Will Panchayat power in Ladakh be strong and united enough to gain local support to effect a name change for the State?
Will the name change be merely cosmetic or will the name change usher in genuine economic equality for Ladakhis, with their Kashmiri and Jammuite sisters and brothers?
Will wait see if Wakha and Mulbekh (where I have been working for the past 5 years) can bare their snow leopard teeth and seize the initiative.
================================================================
News article follows:
editor@risingkashmir.com
Attn: Shujaat Bukhari
News exclusive to Rising Kashmir newspaper
Wahka, Ladakh
Dateline: July 24, 2011
Byline: Chithra KarunaKaran
JKL not J&K: Ladakh Demands Economic Equality -- not Discrimination
Mulbekh and Wakha Panchayats Pass Unanimous Resolution to Press for Name Change of State
The newly elected members of the Panchayats of Wakha and Mulbekh in Ladakh region,
in a combined meeting of their respective Sarpanchs and Panchs, 18 in total, voted unanimously by voice vote and provided their signatures (see below), in favor of a resolution to press for recognition and inclusion of Ladakh in the name of the State.
"From now on we want our State to be known as JKL, not J&K." stated a member from Mulbekh after the vote.
In a meeting lasting over two hours, which took place at the Chang Chup Chosling monastery premises here in Wakha, and conducted in a mixture of Ladakhi, English, Urdu and Hindi, the panchayat explained their reasons for passing the resolution.
"Nyachang nya naam inna kyong gis yaphas chyang duk," said a female panch from Mulbekh. Translated: Whenever there is an opportunity, they discriminate against us in every way.
A panchayat member from Wakha, observed:
"Nyachang Ladakhspa gunglang danda yargyas cha gas," (We Ladakhi people want equal development and prosperity like Jammu and Kashmir.")
Following the unanimous passage of the above Resolution, the joint Wakha-Mulbekh Panchayat members engaged in a lively and productive discussion in which they expressed determination to cooperate to develop indigenous resources and products of Ladakh region in order to 1) generate income for Aam Ladakhis and 2) revenue for implementation of panchayat activities on a priority basis.
"We are not paid any salary for our panchayat work, but the Minister may be paid more than Rs. 45,000 per month. Also we are directly responsible to the people. They can see what we do
As examples of developing products from local resources, they spoke about making incense sticks,soap,herbal teas, mosquito repellent from local plants, trees, shrubs, roots and seeds that are unique to the Ladakh region.
Panchayat members discussed the feasibility of raising cash among their members as well as seeking microcredit resources from the State and the Centre.
"We know we can be successful and try to emulate the success of panchayats in advanced states like Kerala."
In particular, some panch members from both Wakha and Mulbekh emphasized the importance of placing women at the forefront of panchayat activities. If women can develop skills based on local knowledge and they earn money, it will benfit their children and their families directly,observed one panch member from Wakha.
Following are the signatories to the unanimous Resolution to rename the state as JKL -- Jammu Kashmir Ladakh. No ifs ands and buts. JKL not J&K.
Mulbekh Panchayat Members:
A.K. Hussain Panch
Padma Yangdol "
Stanzin Namgail "
Mohd. Hussain "
Tsewang Norboo "
Sonam Dolma "
Tsewang Tundup "
Tsering Tundup Sarpanch
Wakha Panchayat Members:
Tsering Kunzes Panch
Tsering Norboo "
Mohd. Murtaza "
Mohd. Ali "
Mohd. Hadi "
Sakina Banoo "
Sonam Tsering "
Haji Mohd. Mussa "
Tsering Stanzin Sarpanch
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
RK newspaper carried the truncated, delayed, byline omitted version below:
I'm posting here the DELAYED, TRUNCATED (note omissions and delayed dateline) Rising Kashmir article, byline omitted:
Headline:
Add Ladakh into J&K’s name:(sic) Panchs of Wakha, Mulbekh urge
Sunday, 07 Aug 2011 at 11:35
Rising Kashmir News
Srinagar, Aug 07: The newly elected members of the Panchayats of Wakha and Mulbekh in Ladakh region,in a combined meeting of their respective Sarpanchs and Panchs, 18 in total, voted unanimously by voice vote and provided their signatures, in favor of a resolution to press for recognition and inclusion of Ladakh in the name of the State.
"From now on we want our State to be known as JKL, not J&K." stated a member from Mulbekh after the vote.
In a meeting lasting over two hours, which took place at the Chang Chup Chosling monastery premises here in Wakha, and conducted in a mixture of Ladakhi, English, Urdu and Hindi, the panchayat explained their reasons for passing the resolution.
“Whenever there is an opportunity, they discriminate against us in every way” said a female panch from Mulbekh.
A panchayat member from Wakha, observed, “We Ladakhi people want equal development and prosperity like Jammu and Kashmir."
Following the unanimous passage of the Resolution, the joint Wakha-Mulbekh Panchayat members engaged in a lively and productive discussion in which they expressed determination to cooperate to develop indigenous resources and products of Ladakh region in order to generate income for Aam Ladakhis and revenue for implementation of panchayat activities on a priority basis.
"We are not paid any salary for our panchayat work, but the Minister may be paid more than Rs. 45,000 per month. Also we are directly responsible to the people.
As examples of developing products from local resources, they spoke about making incense sticks, soap,herbal teas, mosquito repellent from local plants, trees, shrubs, roots and seeds that are unique to the Ladakh region.
Panchayat members discussed the feasibility of raising cash among their members as well as seeking microcredit resources from the State as well as from the Centre.
"We know we can be successul and try to emulate the success of panchayats in advanced states like Kerala."
In particular, some panch members from both Wakha and Mulbekh empasized the importance of placing women at the forefront of panchayat activities. If women can develop skills based on local knowledge and they earn money, it will benfit their children and their families directly,observed one panch member from Wakha.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Now here's the pickup from State Times of my news article that was earlier made available by me to Rising Kashmir's editor:
‘From now, call it Jammu Kashmir Ladakh State’
Posted by Administrator on Aug 9th, 2011 and filed under J&k, Page-1. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry
DOST KHAN
JAMMU: Should the state of Jammu and Kashmir be rechristened as Jammu Kashmir Ladakh, or JKL for the sake of convenience?
Ask Peoples Democratic Party or National Conference, it will serve like a red rag to the bull. But, the truth is that a strong voice has emanated from the Land of Lamas for renaming the state as JKL.
The recently elected Sarpanchs and Panchs of the Panchayats of Wakha and Mulbekh in Ladakh region at a joint meeting have forcefully demanded the State to be named as Jammu Kashmir Ladakh. Eighteen representatives of the two Panchayats have unanimously voted one-line resolution demanding: “From now on we want our State to be known as JKL, not J and K.”
This is departure from the strong demand of the Union Territory status for Ladakh and assertion as an equal partner in the affairs of the State. So, is it a beginning of a new chapter in the State with trouble thrust upon, which a few separatists call their exclusive domain or a few mainstreamed, deeming their fiefdom?
Ladakh is undergoing a subtle transformation with the people getting politically more conscious and reasonably awakened. Unlike the other two regions of the State, the people of Ladakh have developed a unique trait of getting united, irrespective of their party affiliations, when it comes to protecting or projecting the interests of the region.
After discarding the State flag and the emblem, the Ladakh Autonomous Hill Development Council has decided early this year to adopt an insignia, which is almost akin to the National Emblem. By adopting a separate flag and a separate emblem depicting the Ashoka Pillar symbol, the people of Ladakh have, in fact, showed their resentment to the hegemony of Kashmiris over the administration and deprivation of their due in the development and participatory involvement in governing the State.
Dispensing with the State emblem and flag created furor among the ‘mainstreamed’ political parties with the main opposition, People’s Democratic Party reacting sharply and vowing to protect the State’s unique identity and thereby keep it distinctively away from the national mainstream.
The major partner in the State coalition dispensation, National Conference, however, underplayed the development with Chief Minister Omar Abdullah comparing the LAHDC with Srinagar Municipality, saying it too has a different emblem. Omar knows he is willfully downplaying the development which is certainly more than that appears to eyes. LAHDC is in no way just like any other municipality or municipal corporation. They have a mechanism similar to what once used to be in the national capital of Delhi. They have their own protocol and they view the council just like a Legislative Assembly. The Mayor of Srinagar Municipal Corporation or, for that matter, Jammu Municipal Corporation do not unfurl the tricolor on the Independence or Republic Day at the main official functions but in Leh and Kargil Chief Executive Councilors do not only unfurl the flag but also take salute at the march-past. So, saying that the LAHDC is just like SMC is like pretending as an ostrich and let the issue lie on a back burner till the current tenure of governance lasts. PDP has been fighting for the just cause of the people of Kashmir but gets red faced when the other two regions assert their position in the diverse Jammu and Kashmir set up. Jammu has not been assertive as the Ladakh region has emerged lately because Jammu leaders are reconciled with playing the second fiddle to the Kashmiri bosses. They are happy as long as they get small morsels for the province and mouths full for their personal selves, even if these are left overs, for satiating their appetite. But, the people of Ladakh have certainly differentiated themselves from the people of Jammu. Patriots to the core, they have out rightly rejected the cult of gun, shown high degree of self esteem and rebuffed unequivocally non-sense activities against the Indian nation. In fact, Ladakh has remained quite a peaceful region of the turbulent Jammu and Kashmir State since the outbreak of Pak sponsored terrorism.
Reacting to the decision of the LAHDC, Mehbooba Mufti pledged: “PDP will fight any attempt to dilute the special status of Jammu and Kashmir under the Constitution. Leh is part of the State. The emblem controversy is unfortunate.” This is unfortunate- okay- but what about the Self Rule doctrine that almost seeks semi Azadi for the State, presumptuously Jammu and Ladakh included?
Surprisingly, vocal and agile over every issue or non-issue, the separatists have not reacted to this development, perhaps deliberately, as this will shatter their edifice of Greater Kashmir. They have been projecting the entire Jammu and Kashmir, Ladakh included, as an occupational land facing the ‘repression’ of India. The world at large has also been misled, or it has preferred to remain ignorant, about the harsh realities in the State. Ladakh has never aligned itself with any movement spearheaded by Kashmiris. In fact, sick of discrimination and step motherly treatment, they have been demanding Union Territory status for the Ladakh region, which is a big rebuff to those seeking Azdai, Autonomy or Self Rule.
It is equally surprising why the larger Indian civil society or peace activities have never thought about the people living across Zojila. If they ever think so, they will be shocked to know that Jammu and Kashmir is not just a city and few towns that demand Azadi, Autonomy or Self Rule. It is a vast land, inhabited by nationalist Gujjars, Paharis, Baltis, Sikhs, Shias, Pandits, Dogras besides a large chunk of Muslims, who are as good compatriots as in any part of India.
[end of State times pickup news article]
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Note: I hope this news exposure and my Blog Twitter and FB will help the panchayts of Wakha and Mulbekh to gain exposure and succeed in accomplishing the name change to JKL. Ladakh exists! Let the name change show it. -- CKK
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
by Chithra KarunaKaran on Friday, September 2, 2011 at 6:41am
On Sunday July 24, 2011 I sent out an informal verbal invitation to a prominent resident of Mulbekh, Ladakh suggesting a meeting of gram panchayats of Wakha and Mulbekh, shortly after their election following a 31 year lag, mainly due to violent ISI-fed unrest in the Kashmir Valley and the Pak attack on Kargil, not to mention the battle for Siachen. Epic events but ordinary humans find ways to connect with one another with a little help from the nation-state.
I was astonished and moved when all 18 members showed up around noon at the Chang Chup Chosling nunnery where I was staying. The Nunnery served lunch, following the meeting.
Amazing showing, where else can you get that kind of response?
Their presence showed the hunger to develop local representation and recognition, local self-governance and underlined the determination to push for economic equality for the entire Ladakh region, in order to to bring it on a par with Jammu and the Vale of Kashmir. When self-interest meets the collective interest as in this case, then there's hope for progress.
I posted the following news story (see below) to Rising Kashmir which carried an edited version, on a delayed dateline which pissed me off. The story was picked up by Dost Khan of State Times, published from New Delhi.
My Qs. now are:
Will Panchayat power in Ladakh be strong and united enough to gain local support to effect a name change for the State?
Will the name change be merely cosmetic or will the name change usher in genuine economic equality for Ladakhis, with their Kashmiri and Jammuite sisters and brothers?
Will wait see if Wakha and Mulbekh (where I have been working for the past 5 years) can bare their snow leopard teeth and seize the initiative.
================================================================
News article follows:
editor@risingkashmir.com
Attn: Shujaat Bukhari
News exclusive to Rising Kashmir newspaper
Wahka, Ladakh
Dateline: July 24, 2011
Byline: Chithra KarunaKaran
JKL not J&K: Ladakh Demands Economic Equality -- not Discrimination
Mulbekh and Wakha Panchayats Pass Unanimous Resolution to Press for Name Change of State
The newly elected members of the Panchayats of Wakha and Mulbekh in Ladakh region,
in a combined meeting of their respective Sarpanchs and Panchs, 18 in total, voted unanimously by voice vote and provided their signatures (see below), in favor of a resolution to press for recognition and inclusion of Ladakh in the name of the State.
"From now on we want our State to be known as JKL, not J&K." stated a member from Mulbekh after the vote.
In a meeting lasting over two hours, which took place at the Chang Chup Chosling monastery premises here in Wakha, and conducted in a mixture of Ladakhi, English, Urdu and Hindi, the panchayat explained their reasons for passing the resolution.
"Nyachang nya naam inna kyong gis yaphas chyang duk," said a female panch from Mulbekh. Translated: Whenever there is an opportunity, they discriminate against us in every way.
A panchayat member from Wakha, observed:
"Nyachang Ladakhspa gunglang danda yargyas cha gas," (We Ladakhi people want equal development and prosperity like Jammu and Kashmir.")
Following the unanimous passage of the above Resolution, the joint Wakha-Mulbekh Panchayat members engaged in a lively and productive discussion in which they expressed determination to cooperate to develop indigenous resources and products of Ladakh region in order to 1) generate income for Aam Ladakhis and 2) revenue for implementation of panchayat activities on a priority basis.
"We are not paid any salary for our panchayat work, but the Minister may be paid more than Rs. 45,000 per month. Also we are directly responsible to the people. They can see what we do
As examples of developing products from local resources, they spoke about making incense sticks,soap,herbal teas, mosquito repellent from local plants, trees, shrubs, roots and seeds that are unique to the Ladakh region.
Panchayat members discussed the feasibility of raising cash among their members as well as seeking microcredit resources from the State and the Centre.
"We know we can be successful and try to emulate the success of panchayats in advanced states like Kerala."
In particular, some panch members from both Wakha and Mulbekh emphasized the importance of placing women at the forefront of panchayat activities. If women can develop skills based on local knowledge and they earn money, it will benfit their children and their families directly,observed one panch member from Wakha.
Following are the signatories to the unanimous Resolution to rename the state as JKL -- Jammu Kashmir Ladakh. No ifs ands and buts. JKL not J&K.
Mulbekh Panchayat Members:
A.K. Hussain Panch
Padma Yangdol "
Stanzin Namgail "
Mohd. Hussain "
Tsewang Norboo "
Sonam Dolma "
Tsewang Tundup "
Tsering Tundup Sarpanch
Wakha Panchayat Members:
Tsering Kunzes Panch
Tsering Norboo "
Mohd. Murtaza "
Mohd. Ali "
Mohd. Hadi "
Sakina Banoo "
Sonam Tsering "
Haji Mohd. Mussa "
Tsering Stanzin Sarpanch
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
RK newspaper carried the truncated, delayed, byline omitted version below:
I'm posting here the DELAYED, TRUNCATED (note omissions and delayed dateline) Rising Kashmir article, byline omitted:
Headline:
Add Ladakh into J&K’s name:(sic) Panchs of Wakha, Mulbekh urge
Sunday, 07 Aug 2011 at 11:35
Rising Kashmir News
Srinagar, Aug 07: The newly elected members of the Panchayats of Wakha and Mulbekh in Ladakh region,in a combined meeting of their respective Sarpanchs and Panchs, 18 in total, voted unanimously by voice vote and provided their signatures, in favor of a resolution to press for recognition and inclusion of Ladakh in the name of the State.
"From now on we want our State to be known as JKL, not J&K." stated a member from Mulbekh after the vote.
In a meeting lasting over two hours, which took place at the Chang Chup Chosling monastery premises here in Wakha, and conducted in a mixture of Ladakhi, English, Urdu and Hindi, the panchayat explained their reasons for passing the resolution.
“Whenever there is an opportunity, they discriminate against us in every way” said a female panch from Mulbekh.
A panchayat member from Wakha, observed, “We Ladakhi people want equal development and prosperity like Jammu and Kashmir."
Following the unanimous passage of the Resolution, the joint Wakha-Mulbekh Panchayat members engaged in a lively and productive discussion in which they expressed determination to cooperate to develop indigenous resources and products of Ladakh region in order to generate income for Aam Ladakhis and revenue for implementation of panchayat activities on a priority basis.
"We are not paid any salary for our panchayat work, but the Minister may be paid more than Rs. 45,000 per month. Also we are directly responsible to the people.
As examples of developing products from local resources, they spoke about making incense sticks, soap,herbal teas, mosquito repellent from local plants, trees, shrubs, roots and seeds that are unique to the Ladakh region.
Panchayat members discussed the feasibility of raising cash among their members as well as seeking microcredit resources from the State as well as from the Centre.
"We know we can be successul and try to emulate the success of panchayats in advanced states like Kerala."
In particular, some panch members from both Wakha and Mulbekh empasized the importance of placing women at the forefront of panchayat activities. If women can develop skills based on local knowledge and they earn money, it will benfit their children and their families directly,observed one panch member from Wakha.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Now here's the pickup from State Times of my news article that was earlier made available by me to Rising Kashmir's editor:
‘From now, call it Jammu Kashmir Ladakh State’
Posted by Administrator on Aug 9th, 2011 and filed under J&k, Page-1. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry
DOST KHAN
JAMMU: Should the state of Jammu and Kashmir be rechristened as Jammu Kashmir Ladakh, or JKL for the sake of convenience?
Ask Peoples Democratic Party or National Conference, it will serve like a red rag to the bull. But, the truth is that a strong voice has emanated from the Land of Lamas for renaming the state as JKL.
The recently elected Sarpanchs and Panchs of the Panchayats of Wakha and Mulbekh in Ladakh region at a joint meeting have forcefully demanded the State to be named as Jammu Kashmir Ladakh. Eighteen representatives of the two Panchayats have unanimously voted one-line resolution demanding: “From now on we want our State to be known as JKL, not J and K.”
This is departure from the strong demand of the Union Territory status for Ladakh and assertion as an equal partner in the affairs of the State. So, is it a beginning of a new chapter in the State with trouble thrust upon, which a few separatists call their exclusive domain or a few mainstreamed, deeming their fiefdom?
Ladakh is undergoing a subtle transformation with the people getting politically more conscious and reasonably awakened. Unlike the other two regions of the State, the people of Ladakh have developed a unique trait of getting united, irrespective of their party affiliations, when it comes to protecting or projecting the interests of the region.
After discarding the State flag and the emblem, the Ladakh Autonomous Hill Development Council has decided early this year to adopt an insignia, which is almost akin to the National Emblem. By adopting a separate flag and a separate emblem depicting the Ashoka Pillar symbol, the people of Ladakh have, in fact, showed their resentment to the hegemony of Kashmiris over the administration and deprivation of their due in the development and participatory involvement in governing the State.
Dispensing with the State emblem and flag created furor among the ‘mainstreamed’ political parties with the main opposition, People’s Democratic Party reacting sharply and vowing to protect the State’s unique identity and thereby keep it distinctively away from the national mainstream.
The major partner in the State coalition dispensation, National Conference, however, underplayed the development with Chief Minister Omar Abdullah comparing the LAHDC with Srinagar Municipality, saying it too has a different emblem. Omar knows he is willfully downplaying the development which is certainly more than that appears to eyes. LAHDC is in no way just like any other municipality or municipal corporation. They have a mechanism similar to what once used to be in the national capital of Delhi. They have their own protocol and they view the council just like a Legislative Assembly. The Mayor of Srinagar Municipal Corporation or, for that matter, Jammu Municipal Corporation do not unfurl the tricolor on the Independence or Republic Day at the main official functions but in Leh and Kargil Chief Executive Councilors do not only unfurl the flag but also take salute at the march-past. So, saying that the LAHDC is just like SMC is like pretending as an ostrich and let the issue lie on a back burner till the current tenure of governance lasts. PDP has been fighting for the just cause of the people of Kashmir but gets red faced when the other two regions assert their position in the diverse Jammu and Kashmir set up. Jammu has not been assertive as the Ladakh region has emerged lately because Jammu leaders are reconciled with playing the second fiddle to the Kashmiri bosses. They are happy as long as they get small morsels for the province and mouths full for their personal selves, even if these are left overs, for satiating their appetite. But, the people of Ladakh have certainly differentiated themselves from the people of Jammu. Patriots to the core, they have out rightly rejected the cult of gun, shown high degree of self esteem and rebuffed unequivocally non-sense activities against the Indian nation. In fact, Ladakh has remained quite a peaceful region of the turbulent Jammu and Kashmir State since the outbreak of Pak sponsored terrorism.
Reacting to the decision of the LAHDC, Mehbooba Mufti pledged: “PDP will fight any attempt to dilute the special status of Jammu and Kashmir under the Constitution. Leh is part of the State. The emblem controversy is unfortunate.” This is unfortunate- okay- but what about the Self Rule doctrine that almost seeks semi Azadi for the State, presumptuously Jammu and Ladakh included?
Surprisingly, vocal and agile over every issue or non-issue, the separatists have not reacted to this development, perhaps deliberately, as this will shatter their edifice of Greater Kashmir. They have been projecting the entire Jammu and Kashmir, Ladakh included, as an occupational land facing the ‘repression’ of India. The world at large has also been misled, or it has preferred to remain ignorant, about the harsh realities in the State. Ladakh has never aligned itself with any movement spearheaded by Kashmiris. In fact, sick of discrimination and step motherly treatment, they have been demanding Union Territory status for the Ladakh region, which is a big rebuff to those seeking Azdai, Autonomy or Self Rule.
It is equally surprising why the larger Indian civil society or peace activities have never thought about the people living across Zojila. If they ever think so, they will be shocked to know that Jammu and Kashmir is not just a city and few towns that demand Azadi, Autonomy or Self Rule. It is a vast land, inhabited by nationalist Gujjars, Paharis, Baltis, Sikhs, Shias, Pandits, Dogras besides a large chunk of Muslims, who are as good compatriots as in any part of India.
[end of State times pickup news article]
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Note: I hope this news exposure and my Blog Twitter and FB will help the panchayts of Wakha and Mulbekh to gain exposure and succeed in accomplishing the name change to JKL. Ladakh exists! Let the name change show it. -- CKK
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Saturday, October 16, 2010
Why Neither India nor Pak can Trust the US: The Headley Instance
Q. Why was the India Gov so wretchedly uninformed?
Q. Why has India, the world's largest democracy not positioned itself to take cognizance of US-Pak intelligence-gathering and collusion in cross-border terrorism?
See my additional comments [ ] within the text of this NYTimes article, still working on it.
Chithra KarunaKaran
Ethical Democracy As Lived Practice
http://EthicalDemocracy.blogspot.com
----------
NYTimes copyright
U.S. Had Warnings on Plotter of Mumbai Attack
David Guttenfelder/Associated Press
Indian soldiers fought terrorists at the Taj Mahal Hotel in 2008.
By JANE PERLEZ, ERIC SCHMITT and GINGER THOMPSON
Published: October 16, 2010
This article is by Jane Perlez, Eric Schmitt and Ginger Thompson.
Enlarge This Image
Verna Sadock/Associated Press
David Headley in federal court in Chicago in 2009. In March, he pleaded guilty to helping plan the 2008 attacks on Mumbai.
Less than a year before terrorists killed at least 163 people in Mumbai, India, a young Moroccan woman went to American authorities in Pakistan to warn them that she believed her husband, David Headley, was plotting just such an attack.[What did the US do?]
It was not the first time American law enforcement authorities were warned about Mr. Headley, a longtime informer in Pakistan for the United States Drug Enforcement Administration whose roots in Pakistan and the United States allowed him to move easily in both worlds.
Two years earlier, in 2005, an American woman who was also married to the 50-year-old Mr. Headley told federal investigators in New York that she believed that he was a member of the militant group, Lashkar-e-Taiba, created and sponsored by Pakistan’s powerful intelligence agency.[What did the US do?]
Despite those warnings by two of his three wives Mr. Headley roamed far and wide on Lashkar’s behalf between 2002 and 2009, receiving small arms and counter surveillance training, scouting targets for attack, and building a network of connections that extended from Chicago to Pakistan’s lawless frontier.
Then in 2008, it was his handiwork as chief reconnaissance scout that set the stage for Lashkar’s strike against Mumbai, an assault intended to provoke a conflict between nuclear-armed adversaries, Pakistan and India.
It is unclear what United States officials did with the warnings they had gotten about Mr. Headley — who has pleaded guilty to the crimes and is cooperating with authorities — or whether they saw them as complaints from wives whose motives might be colored by their strained relations with their husband.
A senior administration official said Saturday, “We took the information, passed it around to the relevant agencies, and what came back was that the F.B.I. had a file on Headley, but it didn’t link him to terrorism.”[Example of continuing turf war between FBI and CIA. Who benefits? ISI]
Mr. Headley’s ability to hide for years in plain sight has rekindled concerns that the Mumbai bombings are another instance of a communications breakdown among the agencies involved in combating terrorism, much like the enormous intelligence failures before the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
It also raises the question of whether United States officials were reluctant to dig deeper into Mr. Headley’s movements because he had been an informant for the D.E.A.[ ] More significantly, it may provide another instance of American reluctance to pursue evidence that some officials in Pakistan, its major ally in the war against Al Qaeda, were involved in planning an attack that killed six Americans.[the US neo-imperial project wqwhether in Iraq or Palestine or South Asia, is impervious to ethical geopolitical considerations]
The Pakistani government has insisted that its spy agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate, a close partner of the C.I.A., did not know of the attack. The United States says it has no evidence to counter this, though officials acknowledge that some current or retired ISI officers probably played some role.[ ]
State Department officials and the F.B.I. said that they investigated the warnings they received about Mr. Headley, but that they could not confirm any connections between him and Lashkar-e-Taiba. And D.E.A. officials said they ended their association with him at the end of 2001, at least two months before Mr. Headley reportedly attended his first terrorist training.
The investigative news organization ProPublica reported the 2005 warning from Mr. Headley’s American ex-wife on its Web site and in the Saturday issue of The Washington Post. By ProPublica’s account, she told authorities that Mr. Headley boasted about working as an American informant while he trained with Lashkar. According to that report, she gave authorities audio cassettes and ideological material, and described e-mails she believed he exchanged with extremists.
But she was not the only one to come forward. An examination of Mr. Headley’s movements shows that United States authorities also heard from his Moroccan wife that he was involved in a terrorist group that was actively plotting against targets in India. Beyond these warnings, interviews illustrate his longstanding connections to American law enforcement and the ISI.
Among the findings:
¶ An officer of the Pakistani spy agency handed Mr. Headley $25,000 in early 2006 to open an office and set up a house in Mumbai to be used as a front during his scouting trips, according to Mr. Headley’s testimony to Indian investigators in Chicago in June.[ ]
¶ The ISI officer who gave Mr. Headley the cash, known as Maj. Iqbal, served as the supervisor of Lashkar’s planning, helping to arrange a communications system for the attack, and overseeing a model of the Taj Mahal Hotel, so that gunmen could find their way around, according to Mr. Headley’s testimony to the Indians.
¶ While working for Lashkar, which has close ties to the ISI, Mr. Headley was also enlisted by the Pakistani spy agency to recruit Indian agents to monitor Indian troop levels and movements, an American official said.[ ]
Mr. Headley was well known both to Pakistani and American security officials long before his arrest as a terrorist. He went to an elite military high school in Pakistan, whose graduates went on to become high-ranking military officers and intelligence operatives. After arrests in 1988 and 1997 on drug-trafficking charges, Mr. Headley became such a valued D.E.A. informant that the drug agency sent him back and forth between Pakistan and the United States.[Yet another example of the US agencies' turf war, the right hand doesn't know what the left hand is doing]
Q. Why has India, the world's largest democracy not positioned itself to take cognizance of US-Pak intelligence-gathering and collusion in cross-border terrorism?
See my additional comments [ ] within the text of this NYTimes article, still working on it.
Chithra KarunaKaran
Ethical Democracy As Lived Practice
http://EthicalDemocracy.blogspot.com
----------
NYTimes copyright
U.S. Had Warnings on Plotter of Mumbai Attack
David Guttenfelder/Associated Press
Indian soldiers fought terrorists at the Taj Mahal Hotel in 2008.
By JANE PERLEZ, ERIC SCHMITT and GINGER THOMPSON
Published: October 16, 2010
This article is by Jane Perlez, Eric Schmitt and Ginger Thompson.
Enlarge This Image
Verna Sadock/Associated Press
David Headley in federal court in Chicago in 2009. In March, he pleaded guilty to helping plan the 2008 attacks on Mumbai.
Less than a year before terrorists killed at least 163 people in Mumbai, India, a young Moroccan woman went to American authorities in Pakistan to warn them that she believed her husband, David Headley, was plotting just such an attack.[What did the US do?]
It was not the first time American law enforcement authorities were warned about Mr. Headley, a longtime informer in Pakistan for the United States Drug Enforcement Administration whose roots in Pakistan and the United States allowed him to move easily in both worlds.
Two years earlier, in 2005, an American woman who was also married to the 50-year-old Mr. Headley told federal investigators in New York that she believed that he was a member of the militant group, Lashkar-e-Taiba, created and sponsored by Pakistan’s powerful intelligence agency.[What did the US do?]
Despite those warnings by two of his three wives Mr. Headley roamed far and wide on Lashkar’s behalf between 2002 and 2009, receiving small arms and counter surveillance training, scouting targets for attack, and building a network of connections that extended from Chicago to Pakistan’s lawless frontier.
Then in 2008, it was his handiwork as chief reconnaissance scout that set the stage for Lashkar’s strike against Mumbai, an assault intended to provoke a conflict between nuclear-armed adversaries, Pakistan and India.
It is unclear what United States officials did with the warnings they had gotten about Mr. Headley — who has pleaded guilty to the crimes and is cooperating with authorities — or whether they saw them as complaints from wives whose motives might be colored by their strained relations with their husband.
A senior administration official said Saturday, “We took the information, passed it around to the relevant agencies, and what came back was that the F.B.I. had a file on Headley, but it didn’t link him to terrorism.”[Example of continuing turf war between FBI and CIA. Who benefits? ISI]
Mr. Headley’s ability to hide for years in plain sight has rekindled concerns that the Mumbai bombings are another instance of a communications breakdown among the agencies involved in combating terrorism, much like the enormous intelligence failures before the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
It also raises the question of whether United States officials were reluctant to dig deeper into Mr. Headley’s movements because he had been an informant for the D.E.A.[ ] More significantly, it may provide another instance of American reluctance to pursue evidence that some officials in Pakistan, its major ally in the war against Al Qaeda, were involved in planning an attack that killed six Americans.[the US neo-imperial project wqwhether in Iraq or Palestine or South Asia, is impervious to ethical geopolitical considerations]
The Pakistani government has insisted that its spy agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate, a close partner of the C.I.A., did not know of the attack. The United States says it has no evidence to counter this, though officials acknowledge that some current or retired ISI officers probably played some role.[ ]
State Department officials and the F.B.I. said that they investigated the warnings they received about Mr. Headley, but that they could not confirm any connections between him and Lashkar-e-Taiba. And D.E.A. officials said they ended their association with him at the end of 2001, at least two months before Mr. Headley reportedly attended his first terrorist training.
The investigative news organization ProPublica reported the 2005 warning from Mr. Headley’s American ex-wife on its Web site and in the Saturday issue of The Washington Post. By ProPublica’s account, she told authorities that Mr. Headley boasted about working as an American informant while he trained with Lashkar. According to that report, she gave authorities audio cassettes and ideological material, and described e-mails she believed he exchanged with extremists.
But she was not the only one to come forward. An examination of Mr. Headley’s movements shows that United States authorities also heard from his Moroccan wife that he was involved in a terrorist group that was actively plotting against targets in India. Beyond these warnings, interviews illustrate his longstanding connections to American law enforcement and the ISI.
Among the findings:
¶ An officer of the Pakistani spy agency handed Mr. Headley $25,000 in early 2006 to open an office and set up a house in Mumbai to be used as a front during his scouting trips, according to Mr. Headley’s testimony to Indian investigators in Chicago in June.[ ]
¶ The ISI officer who gave Mr. Headley the cash, known as Maj. Iqbal, served as the supervisor of Lashkar’s planning, helping to arrange a communications system for the attack, and overseeing a model of the Taj Mahal Hotel, so that gunmen could find their way around, according to Mr. Headley’s testimony to the Indians.
¶ While working for Lashkar, which has close ties to the ISI, Mr. Headley was also enlisted by the Pakistani spy agency to recruit Indian agents to monitor Indian troop levels and movements, an American official said.[ ]
Mr. Headley was well known both to Pakistani and American security officials long before his arrest as a terrorist. He went to an elite military high school in Pakistan, whose graduates went on to become high-ranking military officers and intelligence operatives. After arrests in 1988 and 1997 on drug-trafficking charges, Mr. Headley became such a valued D.E.A. informant that the drug agency sent him back and forth between Pakistan and the United States.[Yet another example of the US agencies' turf war, the right hand doesn't know what the left hand is doing]
Sunday, May 9, 2010
A Tale of 2 Faisals -- and the Nation-States that Shaped them
Two Faisals -- one became a topper, the other a terrorist. How did this happen?
Thousands of Indians from all over the world sent messages of congratulation through newspapers, phone calls and sms, to a 28 year old doctor, Faesal Rasool Shah from Kashmir. Faesal topped the IAS exam conducted by the Union Public Service Commission.
Indians everywhere exulted at young Faisal's success.
Indians get to celebrate doctors -- not terrorists.
Q.How that did that chain of events materialize? Out of thin air? Or from an ETHICAL path chosen 65 years ago?
The scene shifts earlier in the very same week, to another Faisal, to an image of a smiling young man in designer sunglasses, Fisal Shahzad. But this time the young man, a Pakistani-American from an upper middle class, privileged, influential air force family has clumsily detonated a bomb in Times Square in the US, country of his adoption.
Q.How that did that chain of events materialize? Out of thin air? Or from a less- than-ethical path chosen by a colonized nation-state 65 years ago? A path that was forged against its own people? A path of destruction, bloodshed and an embittering border where none before had existed? Is young Faisal Shahzad, the Pakistani-American the direct descendant in a six-decade history of Brit colonialism, Brit-driven Partition, Pakistan's puppet-state collusion with US neo-imperialism?
And that other more enduring and ever inspiring Faisal from India's Kashmir, how did he survive against tragic adversity? How did he accomplish excellence?
Which Nation-state withstood neo-imperialism of the US military-Corporate-Complex and produced a topper instead of a terrorist?
-----------
more....that's what a blog is for...reflection....
Thousands of Indians from all over the world sent messages of congratulation through newspapers, phone calls and sms, to a 28 year old doctor, Faesal Rasool Shah from Kashmir. Faesal topped the IAS exam conducted by the Union Public Service Commission.
Indians everywhere exulted at young Faisal's success.
Indians get to celebrate doctors -- not terrorists.
Q.How that did that chain of events materialize? Out of thin air? Or from an ETHICAL path chosen 65 years ago?
The scene shifts earlier in the very same week, to another Faisal, to an image of a smiling young man in designer sunglasses, Fisal Shahzad. But this time the young man, a Pakistani-American from an upper middle class, privileged, influential air force family has clumsily detonated a bomb in Times Square in the US, country of his adoption.
Q.How that did that chain of events materialize? Out of thin air? Or from a less- than-ethical path chosen by a colonized nation-state 65 years ago? A path that was forged against its own people? A path of destruction, bloodshed and an embittering border where none before had existed? Is young Faisal Shahzad, the Pakistani-American the direct descendant in a six-decade history of Brit colonialism, Brit-driven Partition, Pakistan's puppet-state collusion with US neo-imperialism?
And that other more enduring and ever inspiring Faisal from India's Kashmir, how did he survive against tragic adversity? How did he accomplish excellence?
Which Nation-state withstood neo-imperialism of the US military-Corporate-Complex and produced a topper instead of a terrorist?
-----------
more....that's what a blog is for...reflection....
Thursday, April 22, 2010
37.2%. A Number to Remember. A Number to Lower to ZERO.
37.2%. THIRTY-SEVEN point TWO PER CENT.
A Number to Remember. A Number to be Ashamed of.
A Number to be Repelled by.
A Number to Recoil from.
A Number to Lower to ZERO.
The India Government has finally admitted that more than ONE-THIRD of our entire population lives Below the Poverty Line. 400 Million children, women and men.
Millions more have died in previous decades from hunger, malnutrition, starvation and the diseases and disorders resulting from such horrific deprivation.
Now finally the heartlessly cynical netas, babus and armchair economists of the India Govt. at least on paper, have faced up to the grim facts.
37.2%. 400 million plus children, women and men.
But a number on paper is not enough.
We the People cannot rest until that figure reaches ZERO.
We the People cannot rest until 37.2 PLUMMETS to zero.
It must not take India another 63 years to make it zero.
37.2%
THIRTY-SEVEN point TWO PER CENT.
Now make it 0. NOW.
ZERO
Each One Feed One.
Each one Feed More. TODAY. NOW. ASAP.
Then India has a chance of becoming a DEMOCRACY worth the name.
Chithra KarunaKaran
Ethical Democracy As Lived Practice
http://EthicalDemocracy.blogspot.com
----------------
http://www.righttofoodindia.org/
------------
infochangeindia.org copyright
India raises official poverty estimate
India’s Planning Commission has adopted the Suresh Tendulkar Committee’s methodology for poverty estimation, which includes spending on education and health, besides calorie intake, taking the number of the country’s poor to a whopping 37.2% from the 27.5% earlier estimated
After a lot of deliberation, the Indian government has concluded that it has around 100 million more people living below the poverty line than in 2004. This was after the country’s top policy planning body raised its estimate of the nation’s official poverty rate to 37.2% of the population, from 27.5%, a key development as the government drafts legislation to give the poorest Indians a right to state-subsidised foodgrain.
The move by the Planning Commission, which wasn’t announced formally but was confirmed by a senior government official, pegs the number of Indians in poverty at around 410 million -- more than 100 million above the previous estimate.
The change comes after critics said the earlier poverty estimate left too many destitute households out of the government’s food entitlement programmes. But the new poverty figure is unlikely to please food activists and politicians who feel it still vastly underestimates the number of people in need of assistance.
The 37.2% poverty line is based on a new methodology recommended by a panel headed by former economic advisor Suresh Tendulkar, in a report submitted to Planning Commission Deputy Chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia in December 2009. Although the report still has to be officially accepted, for the limited purposes of food security the Planning Commission agreed to Tendulkar’s recommendations at a recent meeting of its members.
The earlier definition of poverty was based on calorie intake, according to which only 27.5% of people were living below the poverty line and the number of BPL families was around 65 million. With the Plan panel accepting the Tendulkar methodology, 37.2% of the total population, or 81 million families, will be placed below the poverty line.
The new poverty estimate, which will reflect the impact of high growth recorded during the decade, will be available in 2011. Computation of the number of BPL families at this stage assumes significance in view of the government’s decision to enact a food security law under which 25 kg of foodgrain will be provided every month, at Rs 3 per kg, to every BPL family.
The Planning Commission, mandated by the empowered group of ministers, chaired by Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee, to finalise the BPL numbers, will now meet the secretaries of food and expenditure to calculate the cost of providing food security to so many poor.
The burden on the central exchequer for implementing the food security law will depend on the number of BPL households and the quantity of subsidised foodgrain available with the government. Food subsidy stood at around Rs 72,000 crore in the last financial year.
“Two different poverty lines -- one for food security and the other for all other purposes -- for one country sounds odd. But this has been the most expedient solution for the time being,” said an official who did not wish to be named.
This will raise the number of those eligible for free food significantly -- but nobody’s sure how much. The widely quoted number is close to 10 crore families; some states put it at over 11 crore; the Planning Commission puts it somewhere between 7.5 and 8 crore. The worry is that it demonstrates, again, a dangerously halfhearted commitment to food security: dangerous because it will neither be abandoned nor effectively implemented, and the country could end up with a system that feeds too few and costs too much.
“This is a very low, suppressed poverty line. We reject it,” Kavita Srivastava, an activist who led a ‘right to food’ rally in the capital recently, said. “As far as we’re concerned, it still doesn’t tell us the real number of poor.”
Among the protesters at the rally was 50-year-old Kesar Sahu who lives in a slum in Rajasthan’s capital, Jaipur, and supports herself and two daughters by sweeping floors and cutting vegetables at schools. The Rs 1,000 she earns in a good month isn’t enough to make do, even with existing government subsidies, she said. “We’re only getting 35 kg (of foodgrain) now. We really need 50 kg to get by. Everyone should get that much.”
Though India’s economy emerged from the global downturn with a solid gross domestic product growth of 7.2% in the year ended March 31, the country’s poor are struggling to deal with year-on-year food inflation that is hovering around 17%. Even before rising food prices, India was struggling with high malnutrition rates.
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s government has pushed for legislation that will provide 25 kg of wheat and rice per month to households deemed officially below the poverty line. India already has a programme in place to distribute about 35 kg of subsidised foodgrain to poor households, but the rate is about 50% more expensive than what’s now being proposed.
Moreover, there is no law that guarantees food subsidies -- they are given at the central government’s discretion. And the current programme is plagued by corruption, with one-third of grain pilfered or rotting before it reaches needy households.
Experts say a third of the world’s poor are in India, living on less than $ 2 per day, worse than in many parts of sub-Saharan Africa.
Source: The Indian Express, April 19, 2010
Press Trust of India, April 19, 2010
The Economic Times, April 18, 2010
Wall Street Journal, April 18, 2010
--------------------------------------
Economic Times copyright
NEW DELHI: India
now has 100 million more people living below the poverty line than in 2004, according to official estimates released on Sunday.
The poverty rate has risen to 37.2 percent of the population from 27.5 percent in 2004, a change that will require the Congress-ruled government to spend more money on the poor.
The new estimate comes weeks after Sonia Gandhi, head of the Congress party, asked the government to revise a Food Security Bill to include more women, children and destitutes. [my emphasis added]
"The Planning Commission has accepted the report on poverty figures," Abhijit Sen, a member of the Planning Commission told Reuters, referring to the new poverty estimate report submitted by a government panel last December.
India now has 410 million people living below the U.N. estimated poverty line of $1.25 a day, 100 million more than was estimated earlier, officials said.
India calculates how much of its population is living below the poverty line by checking whether families can afford one square meal a day that meets minimum nutrition needs.
It was not immediately clear how much more the federal government would have to spend on the poor, as that would depend on the Food Security Bill when it is presented to the government after the necessary changes, officials say.
India's Planning Commission will meet the food and expenditure secretaries next week to estimate the cost aspects of the bill, government officials said.
A third of the world's poor are believed to be in India, living on less than $2 per day, worse than in many parts of sub-Saharan Africa
, experts say.
The government spends only 1 percent of its Gross Domestic Product (GDP) on healthcare facilities, forcing millions to struggle to get medicines, Oxfam and 62 other agencies said in a report called: "Your Money
or Your Life" last year.
While India's economy is slowly recovering from a global recession with a GDP growth of 7.2 percent, millions of poor in rural India are finding it difficult to cope with around 17 percent food price inflation.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
A Number to Remember. A Number to be Ashamed of.
A Number to be Repelled by.
A Number to Recoil from.
A Number to Lower to ZERO.
The India Government has finally admitted that more than ONE-THIRD of our entire population lives Below the Poverty Line. 400 Million children, women and men.
Millions more have died in previous decades from hunger, malnutrition, starvation and the diseases and disorders resulting from such horrific deprivation.
Now finally the heartlessly cynical netas, babus and armchair economists of the India Govt. at least on paper, have faced up to the grim facts.
37.2%. 400 million plus children, women and men.
But a number on paper is not enough.
We the People cannot rest until that figure reaches ZERO.
We the People cannot rest until 37.2 PLUMMETS to zero.
It must not take India another 63 years to make it zero.
37.2%
THIRTY-SEVEN point TWO PER CENT.
Now make it 0. NOW.
ZERO
Each One Feed One.
Each one Feed More. TODAY. NOW. ASAP.
Then India has a chance of becoming a DEMOCRACY worth the name.
Chithra KarunaKaran
Ethical Democracy As Lived Practice
http://EthicalDemocracy.blogspot.com
----------------
http://www.righttofoodindia.org/
------------
infochangeindia.org copyright
India raises official poverty estimate
India’s Planning Commission has adopted the Suresh Tendulkar Committee’s methodology for poverty estimation, which includes spending on education and health, besides calorie intake, taking the number of the country’s poor to a whopping 37.2% from the 27.5% earlier estimated
After a lot of deliberation, the Indian government has concluded that it has around 100 million more people living below the poverty line than in 2004. This was after the country’s top policy planning body raised its estimate of the nation’s official poverty rate to 37.2% of the population, from 27.5%, a key development as the government drafts legislation to give the poorest Indians a right to state-subsidised foodgrain.
The move by the Planning Commission, which wasn’t announced formally but was confirmed by a senior government official, pegs the number of Indians in poverty at around 410 million -- more than 100 million above the previous estimate.
The change comes after critics said the earlier poverty estimate left too many destitute households out of the government’s food entitlement programmes. But the new poverty figure is unlikely to please food activists and politicians who feel it still vastly underestimates the number of people in need of assistance.
The 37.2% poverty line is based on a new methodology recommended by a panel headed by former economic advisor Suresh Tendulkar, in a report submitted to Planning Commission Deputy Chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia in December 2009. Although the report still has to be officially accepted, for the limited purposes of food security the Planning Commission agreed to Tendulkar’s recommendations at a recent meeting of its members.
The earlier definition of poverty was based on calorie intake, according to which only 27.5% of people were living below the poverty line and the number of BPL families was around 65 million. With the Plan panel accepting the Tendulkar methodology, 37.2% of the total population, or 81 million families, will be placed below the poverty line.
The new poverty estimate, which will reflect the impact of high growth recorded during the decade, will be available in 2011. Computation of the number of BPL families at this stage assumes significance in view of the government’s decision to enact a food security law under which 25 kg of foodgrain will be provided every month, at Rs 3 per kg, to every BPL family.
The Planning Commission, mandated by the empowered group of ministers, chaired by Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee, to finalise the BPL numbers, will now meet the secretaries of food and expenditure to calculate the cost of providing food security to so many poor.
The burden on the central exchequer for implementing the food security law will depend on the number of BPL households and the quantity of subsidised foodgrain available with the government. Food subsidy stood at around Rs 72,000 crore in the last financial year.
“Two different poverty lines -- one for food security and the other for all other purposes -- for one country sounds odd. But this has been the most expedient solution for the time being,” said an official who did not wish to be named.
This will raise the number of those eligible for free food significantly -- but nobody’s sure how much. The widely quoted number is close to 10 crore families; some states put it at over 11 crore; the Planning Commission puts it somewhere between 7.5 and 8 crore. The worry is that it demonstrates, again, a dangerously halfhearted commitment to food security: dangerous because it will neither be abandoned nor effectively implemented, and the country could end up with a system that feeds too few and costs too much.
“This is a very low, suppressed poverty line. We reject it,” Kavita Srivastava, an activist who led a ‘right to food’ rally in the capital recently, said. “As far as we’re concerned, it still doesn’t tell us the real number of poor.”
Among the protesters at the rally was 50-year-old Kesar Sahu who lives in a slum in Rajasthan’s capital, Jaipur, and supports herself and two daughters by sweeping floors and cutting vegetables at schools. The Rs 1,000 she earns in a good month isn’t enough to make do, even with existing government subsidies, she said. “We’re only getting 35 kg (of foodgrain) now. We really need 50 kg to get by. Everyone should get that much.”
Though India’s economy emerged from the global downturn with a solid gross domestic product growth of 7.2% in the year ended March 31, the country’s poor are struggling to deal with year-on-year food inflation that is hovering around 17%. Even before rising food prices, India was struggling with high malnutrition rates.
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s government has pushed for legislation that will provide 25 kg of wheat and rice per month to households deemed officially below the poverty line. India already has a programme in place to distribute about 35 kg of subsidised foodgrain to poor households, but the rate is about 50% more expensive than what’s now being proposed.
Moreover, there is no law that guarantees food subsidies -- they are given at the central government’s discretion. And the current programme is plagued by corruption, with one-third of grain pilfered or rotting before it reaches needy households.
Experts say a third of the world’s poor are in India, living on less than $ 2 per day, worse than in many parts of sub-Saharan Africa.
Source: The Indian Express, April 19, 2010
Press Trust of India, April 19, 2010
The Economic Times, April 18, 2010
Wall Street Journal, April 18, 2010
--------------------------------------
Economic Times copyright
NEW DELHI: India
now has 100 million more people living below the poverty line than in 2004, according to official estimates released on Sunday.
The poverty rate has risen to 37.2 percent of the population from 27.5 percent in 2004, a change that will require the Congress-ruled government to spend more money on the poor.
The new estimate comes weeks after Sonia Gandhi, head of the Congress party, asked the government to revise a Food Security Bill to include more women, children and destitutes. [my emphasis added]
"The Planning Commission has accepted the report on poverty figures," Abhijit Sen, a member of the Planning Commission told Reuters, referring to the new poverty estimate report submitted by a government panel last December.
India now has 410 million people living below the U.N. estimated poverty line of $1.25 a day, 100 million more than was estimated earlier, officials said.
India calculates how much of its population is living below the poverty line by checking whether families can afford one square meal a day that meets minimum nutrition needs.
It was not immediately clear how much more the federal government would have to spend on the poor, as that would depend on the Food Security Bill when it is presented to the government after the necessary changes, officials say.
India's Planning Commission will meet the food and expenditure secretaries next week to estimate the cost aspects of the bill, government officials said.
A third of the world's poor are believed to be in India, living on less than $2 per day, worse than in many parts of sub-Saharan Africa
, experts say.
The government spends only 1 percent of its Gross Domestic Product (GDP) on healthcare facilities, forcing millions to struggle to get medicines, Oxfam and 62 other agencies said in a report called: "Your Money
or Your Life" last year.
While India's economy is slowly recovering from a global recession with a GDP growth of 7.2 percent, millions of poor in rural India are finding it difficult to cope with around 17 percent food price inflation.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Thursday, October 8, 2009
Every Terror Attack Leads Back To US
Every Terror attack leads back to US.
Don't blame ISI, Taliban or Al AlQaeda. Did they exist before the US began to meddle, infiltrate West Asia and South Asia?
Pakistan has been subjugated by the US Department of State since the early 50's.
Yes, each terror entity should be brought to Justice -- at the same time the US govt. stands accused before the International Criminal Court.
The US trained the Mujahideen during the Cold War that the US INVENTED to bring down the USSR. Today, they are the Taliban.
India should not have an embassy in Kabul -- hospitals, schools, yes, embassy NO.
Does India have an embassy in Palestine? I didn't think so.
Chithra Karunakaran
Ethical Democracy As Lived Practice
http://EthicalDemocracy.blogspot.com
----------------------------------------------
Dawn newspaper Pakistan copyright
http://www.dawn.com/wps/wcm/connect/dawn-content-library/dawn/news/world/11-large-blast-heard-in-afghan-capital--il--01
-----------------------------------------
Times Of India copyright
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/home/india/Taliban-claims-responsibility-for-Indian-embassy-blast/articleshow/5102304.cms#write
----------------
NYTimes Copyright
12 Die as Bomb Hits Near Indian Embassy in Kabul
By SABRINA TAVERNISE and ABDUL WAHEED WAFA
Published: October 8, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/09/world/asia/09afghan.html?ref=global-home
-----
Yahoo news copyright
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091008/ap_on_re_as/as_afghanistan
-------------------
Don't blame ISI, Taliban or Al AlQaeda. Did they exist before the US began to meddle, infiltrate West Asia and South Asia?
Pakistan has been subjugated by the US Department of State since the early 50's.
Yes, each terror entity should be brought to Justice -- at the same time the US govt. stands accused before the International Criminal Court.
The US trained the Mujahideen during the Cold War that the US INVENTED to bring down the USSR. Today, they are the Taliban.
India should not have an embassy in Kabul -- hospitals, schools, yes, embassy NO.
Does India have an embassy in Palestine? I didn't think so.
Chithra Karunakaran
Ethical Democracy As Lived Practice
http://EthicalDemocracy.blogspot.com
----------------------------------------------
Dawn newspaper Pakistan copyright
http://www.dawn.com/wps/wcm/connect/dawn-content-library/dawn/news/world/11-large-blast-heard-in-afghan-capital--il--01
-----------------------------------------
Times Of India copyright
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/home/india/Taliban-claims-responsibility-for-Indian-embassy-blast/articleshow/5102304.cms#write
----------------
NYTimes Copyright
12 Die as Bomb Hits Near Indian Embassy in Kabul
By SABRINA TAVERNISE and ABDUL WAHEED WAFA
Published: October 8, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/09/world/asia/09afghan.html?ref=global-home
-----
Yahoo news copyright
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091008/ap_on_re_as/as_afghanistan
-------------------
Wednesday, September 16, 2009
Segregation vs. Social Justice in Democracy: The India Case
EthicalDemocracy
New York City
September 16th, 2009
4:23 am
My NYT Comment #75.
EthicalDemocracy
New York City
September 16th, 2009
8:39 am
Segregation vs. Social Justice in Democracy: The India Case
\"New Peace in commute\" for India's women? Your article illustrates the axiom -- No Justice No Peace.
Women-only commuter trains are an integral part of an adhoc, unequal, inadequate and functionally inequitable public transportation policy in Indian Democracy.
Gender segregation on public transportation reinforces the most negative aspects of India's powerfully entrenched patriarchy. Sequestered travel on a train to work is predictively unlikely to increase women's safety, or equal participation in India's democracy.
India's public transportation systems are grossly underfunded. This inequity punishes the poor, especially the poorest women. The nation's poorest women, don't get to ride these commuter trains. That structural inequity is the crux of the problem. In a nation-state that should be providing adequate public transportation for ALL, while making every attempt at a smaller carbon footprint, regardless of what the West does.
Finger-pointing at the West will not help Indians become more ecologically responsible or more socially just, as they attempt to meet their expanding transportation needs.
An Indian policy implementation of relentless attrition in funding, blatantly devalues PUBLIC TRANSPORTATION as a universal social good that should be intentionally deployed, through policy, by both the Centre and the States, as a powerful social leveler, in our unprecedented democratic civil society.
I travel to India twice a year every year (since 1999), spending a total of 5 months, every visit. Over this past summer, I traveled in Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Delhi, Jammu & Kashmir, logging thousands of miles and several days on trains and buses. That's democracy on wheels.
A woman, I travel alone in India, entirely by State public buses, state-run commuter trains and the Indian railways ((Second Class sleeper), refusing to use cars proffered by my middle class relatives. Any form of PUBLIC transport is acceptable to me.
Now that may appear eccentric or overly zealous but I am attempting, always in flawed fashion, to sincerely develop ethical practices of civic participation, in myself (no one else), within Indian democracy.
In my view, India cannot afford to produce, much less dispose, a paper cup, as millions carelessly do daily on the Indian trains, any more than India can afford to promote PRIVATE transportation over PUBLIC transportation. Mass Public Transit is a core social justice issue in India's current stage of development, right up there with food/water security, shelter, universal healthcare, universal primary/ secondary education, employment.
My Indian women and men co-travelers in Democracy, especially the burgeoning, heavily subsidized and bribegiving/bribetaking, complicit-in-corruption middle class, who are the main beneficiaries of the women-only commuter trains, can fight JOINTLY for adequate affordable PUBLIC transportation for ALL, instead of cynically choosing cars over buses and/or riding separately in trains.
Such vigorous civic participation would likely advance the Greater Collective Good (GCG), a wholly attainable ideal of ethical democracy.
Satyameva Jayate!
Chithra KarunaKaran
Ethical Democracy As Lived Practice
http://EthicalDemocracy.blogspot.com
-----------------------------------------------------------------
New York Times copyright
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/16/world/asia/16ladies.html
On India’s Railways, Women Find New Peace in Commute
New York City
September 16th, 2009
4:23 am
My NYT Comment #75.
EthicalDemocracy
New York City
September 16th, 2009
8:39 am
Segregation vs. Social Justice in Democracy: The India Case
\"New Peace in commute\" for India's women? Your article illustrates the axiom -- No Justice No Peace.
Women-only commuter trains are an integral part of an adhoc, unequal, inadequate and functionally inequitable public transportation policy in Indian Democracy.
Gender segregation on public transportation reinforces the most negative aspects of India's powerfully entrenched patriarchy. Sequestered travel on a train to work is predictively unlikely to increase women's safety, or equal participation in India's democracy.
India's public transportation systems are grossly underfunded. This inequity punishes the poor, especially the poorest women. The nation's poorest women, don't get to ride these commuter trains. That structural inequity is the crux of the problem. In a nation-state that should be providing adequate public transportation for ALL, while making every attempt at a smaller carbon footprint, regardless of what the West does.
Finger-pointing at the West will not help Indians become more ecologically responsible or more socially just, as they attempt to meet their expanding transportation needs.
An Indian policy implementation of relentless attrition in funding, blatantly devalues PUBLIC TRANSPORTATION as a universal social good that should be intentionally deployed, through policy, by both the Centre and the States, as a powerful social leveler, in our unprecedented democratic civil society.
I travel to India twice a year every year (since 1999), spending a total of 5 months, every visit. Over this past summer, I traveled in Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Delhi, Jammu & Kashmir, logging thousands of miles and several days on trains and buses. That's democracy on wheels.
A woman, I travel alone in India, entirely by State public buses, state-run commuter trains and the Indian railways ((Second Class sleeper), refusing to use cars proffered by my middle class relatives. Any form of PUBLIC transport is acceptable to me.
Now that may appear eccentric or overly zealous but I am attempting, always in flawed fashion, to sincerely develop ethical practices of civic participation, in myself (no one else), within Indian democracy.
In my view, India cannot afford to produce, much less dispose, a paper cup, as millions carelessly do daily on the Indian trains, any more than India can afford to promote PRIVATE transportation over PUBLIC transportation. Mass Public Transit is a core social justice issue in India's current stage of development, right up there with food/water security, shelter, universal healthcare, universal primary/ secondary education, employment.
My Indian women and men co-travelers in Democracy, especially the burgeoning, heavily subsidized and bribegiving/bribetaking, complicit-in-corruption middle class, who are the main beneficiaries of the women-only commuter trains, can fight JOINTLY for adequate affordable PUBLIC transportation for ALL, instead of cynically choosing cars over buses and/or riding separately in trains.
Such vigorous civic participation would likely advance the Greater Collective Good (GCG), a wholly attainable ideal of ethical democracy.
Satyameva Jayate!
Chithra KarunaKaran
Ethical Democracy As Lived Practice
http://EthicalDemocracy.blogspot.com
-----------------------------------------------------------------
New York Times copyright
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/16/world/asia/16ladies.html
On India’s Railways, Women Find New Peace in Commute
Sunday, September 13, 2009
SOCIAL JUSTICE & The Green Revolution
An expanded version of my Comment NYTimes #25.
EthicalDemocracy
New York City
September 13th, 2009
11:58 am
http://community.nytimes.com/comments/www.nytimes.com/2009/09/14/business/energy-environment/14borlaug.html?sort=oldest&offset=1
I am proud that I grew up as a schoolgirl in India knowing who Borlaug was. No, his name did not appear in my grievously irrelevant postcolonial high school curriculum, but in newspapers I read avidly even then.
Borlaug richly deserved his renown. He fed people. I salute Borlaug. He died yesterday in Texas, age 95. Bless him for working untiringly, and without exception, for the Greater Collective Good (GCG).
I quote from your NYTimes article to make 2 related points and assert that both Borlaug and his critics were wrong about the unprecedented Green Revolution ignited throughout the Global South, by him.
Your article states:
"The Green Revolution eventually came under attack from environmental and social critics who said it had created more difficulties than it had solved.
Dr. Borlaug responded that the real problem was not his agricultural techniques, but the runaway population growth that had made them necessary."
My Point #1:
The self-styled "social and environmental critics" were part of the problem. They represented the political class that, at least in India, cynically overturned many of the potential benefits of the Green Revolution,by preventing farmers from leading the GR, instead exploiting these innovative farmers, through middlemen who brokered speculation in grain prices and stockpiling grain instead of feeding the starving. So, blame the pols. and their client middlemen. These pols and middlemen are still causing farmer suicides in many parts of India. Go figure.
My Point #2
Borlaug was a plant geneticist, he was neither a politician nor a political sociologist. Borlaug mistakenly blamed accelerated population growth for the limited success of the Green Revolution. He blamed WE the People, the ordinary beneficiaries of his extraordinary accomplishment. I know I ate better because of Borlaug. Millions did.
Every study conducted in former colonized nation-states, shows that accelerated population growth is mainly the INTERIM (note interim) result of Social Justice indicators -- access to food, water and shelter, better healthcare, ergo freedom from famine, the chance to survive.
If these social goods CONTINUE and become PERMANENT, the rate of population growth will causally go DOWN, not up. Ordinary people are rational maximizers. Species including our own, adapt to survive, If a people's food supply is assured and their social wellbeing is assured, they will have fewer children, not more. It would not make sense to them to threaten their food supply by being prolific at reproduction. This is true from Sweden to Singapore, a fact based on evidence not opinion.
Social Justice impedes runaway population growth. Hunger (which is a core component of social INjustice) accelerates population growth. So, Borlaug was mistaken (though he saw the big picture on social justice) to blame a faster population growth before and during the GR.
Social Justice redistributive policies, (which are the responsibility of government not the obligation of individuals, that is precisely why we have govts) did NOT accompany the GR, hence populations (especially birth rates) continued to increase. More food through the GR, did not end up feeding timely all the people it was intended for.
Social Injustice breeds accelerates birth rates, which are of importance when studying population growth rates.
Don't Blame Borlaug & His Green Revolution.
Chithra KarunaKaran
Ethical Democracy As Lived Practice
http://EthicalDemocracy.blogspot.com
----------------------------------------------------------
NYTimes copyright
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/14/business/energy-environment/14borlaug.html
Norman Borlaug, 95, Dies; Led Green Revolution
By JUSTIN GILLIS
A Nobel Peace Prize winner, he developed high-yielding crop varieties that helped to avert famines worldwide.
-----
NYtimes copyright
http://tierneylab.blogs.nytimes.com/
http://tierneylab.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/09/15/greatest-human-being-rip/?hp
--------
NYTimes copyright
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/20/weekinreview/20martin.html
Lynsey Addario for The New York Times
DINNERTIME Sudanese refugees unload bags of food at a camp in neighboring Chad. The refugees had fled the violence in Darfur.
* Recommend
* Twitter
*
E-Mail
* Send To Phone
* Print
* Reprints
* ShareClose
o Linkedin
o Digg
o Facebook
o Mixx
o MySpace
o Yahoo! Buzz
o Permalink
o
Article Tools Sponsored By
By ANDREW MARTIN
Published: September 19, 2009
This past week the world celebrated the life and achievements of Norman Borlaug, the Iowa-born plant scientist who created high-yielding wheat varieties to stave off famine.
Skip to next paragraph
Related
Norman Borlaug, Plant Scientist Who Fought Famine, Dies at 95 (September 14, 2009)
Dr. Borlaug, who died at age 95 on Sept. 12, led the so-called Green Revolution that created bumper crops in once impoverished countries like Mexico, India and Pakistan. In lauding Dr. Borlaug’s achievements, the United Nations’ World Food Program said he had saved more lives than any man in history.
But the eulogies for Dr. Borlaug often neglected an important and perplexing fact. Despite his accomplishments, more people are hungry today than ever and that total should exceed one billion people this year for the first time, according to the United Nations.
How can so many people be hungry when farmers produce enough food, at least in theory, to feed every person on the planet?
The answers are complex and involve everything from American farm politics and African corruption to war, poverty, climate change and drought, which is now the single most common cause of food shortages on the planet.
But David Beckmann, president of the antihunger group Bread for the World, boiled the causes down into one unifying theme — “a lack of give a damn.”
“It’s mainly neglect,” he said. “Political neglect.”
The yield gains of the last half-century, both in the developed and developing world, led to grain surpluses and low prices, creating a sense of complacency about agriculture and hunger.
“There was an attitude following the Green Revolution that the problem was solved,” said Gary H. Toenniessen of the Rockefeller Foundation.
So much grain was being produced so cheaply that Western leaders encouraged poor nations to buy grain on the world market rather than grow it themselves. Surplus was shipped to poor countries as food aid. But that aid system has often been ineffective in alleviating hunger in a timely way and in addressing broader agriculture problems facing impoverished countries. Support for agricultural research in developing countries was also cut back for other priorities. The result? While the food supply grew faster than the world’s population from 1970 to 1990, as the Green Revolution’s gains took hold, the situation has now reversed itself. Productivity gains in agriculture have slowed, and since 1990, the growth rate of food production has fallen below population growth.
The consequences have been particularly dire in sub-Saharan Africa, where the gains of the Green Revolution have been difficult to replicate. Among other problems, irrigation — which was key to the Green Revolution — is relatively scarce in Africa.
Few paid attention to these problems until last year, when a confluence of events caused food prices to spike to record levels. Riots erupted in many nations, and even American consumers felt pinched as prices soared.
Prices have come down in the United States, but the situation in Africa remains dismal due to an exploding population and now, a severe drought that threatens millions. The World Food Program says it is critically short of funds.
At a July summit meeting, President Obama and other leaders of industrialized nations pledged $20 billion for agricultural development in poor countries.
Activists say that some of the tools for success are within reach provided the financing and political will persist: those tools include seeds fine-tuned to local conditions, fertilizer and better roads and other infrastructure improvements.
The more difficult problems may lie within our borders. Farm programs are among the most entrenched entitlements in Washington. But crop subsidies and America’s habit of shipping grain to the poor tends to undermine robust markets in developing countries.
Dr. Borlaug, who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1970, understood well the limitations of the Green Revolution’s success. After receiving the Congressional Gold Medal in 2007, he noted that the “battle to ensure food security for hundreds of millions of miserably poor people is far from won.”
“World peace will not be built on empty stomachs or human misery,” he said. “It is within America’s technical and financial power to help end this human tragedy and injustice, if we set our hearts and minds to the task.”
==================================================================================
EthicalDemocracy
New York City
September 13th, 2009
11:58 am
http://community.nytimes.com/comments/www.nytimes.com/2009/09/14/business/energy-environment/14borlaug.html?sort=oldest&offset=1
I am proud that I grew up as a schoolgirl in India knowing who Borlaug was. No, his name did not appear in my grievously irrelevant postcolonial high school curriculum, but in newspapers I read avidly even then.
Borlaug richly deserved his renown. He fed people. I salute Borlaug. He died yesterday in Texas, age 95. Bless him for working untiringly, and without exception, for the Greater Collective Good (GCG).
I quote from your NYTimes article to make 2 related points and assert that both Borlaug and his critics were wrong about the unprecedented Green Revolution ignited throughout the Global South, by him.
Your article states:
"The Green Revolution eventually came under attack from environmental and social critics who said it had created more difficulties than it had solved.
Dr. Borlaug responded that the real problem was not his agricultural techniques, but the runaway population growth that had made them necessary."
My Point #1:
The self-styled "social and environmental critics" were part of the problem. They represented the political class that, at least in India, cynically overturned many of the potential benefits of the Green Revolution,by preventing farmers from leading the GR, instead exploiting these innovative farmers, through middlemen who brokered speculation in grain prices and stockpiling grain instead of feeding the starving. So, blame the pols. and their client middlemen. These pols and middlemen are still causing farmer suicides in many parts of India. Go figure.
My Point #2
Borlaug was a plant geneticist, he was neither a politician nor a political sociologist. Borlaug mistakenly blamed accelerated population growth for the limited success of the Green Revolution. He blamed WE the People, the ordinary beneficiaries of his extraordinary accomplishment. I know I ate better because of Borlaug. Millions did.
Every study conducted in former colonized nation-states, shows that accelerated population growth is mainly the INTERIM (note interim) result of Social Justice indicators -- access to food, water and shelter, better healthcare, ergo freedom from famine, the chance to survive.
If these social goods CONTINUE and become PERMANENT, the rate of population growth will causally go DOWN, not up. Ordinary people are rational maximizers. Species including our own, adapt to survive, If a people's food supply is assured and their social wellbeing is assured, they will have fewer children, not more. It would not make sense to them to threaten their food supply by being prolific at reproduction. This is true from Sweden to Singapore, a fact based on evidence not opinion.
Social Justice impedes runaway population growth. Hunger (which is a core component of social INjustice) accelerates population growth. So, Borlaug was mistaken (though he saw the big picture on social justice) to blame a faster population growth before and during the GR.
Social Justice redistributive policies, (which are the responsibility of government not the obligation of individuals, that is precisely why we have govts) did NOT accompany the GR, hence populations (especially birth rates) continued to increase. More food through the GR, did not end up feeding timely all the people it was intended for.
Social Injustice breeds accelerates birth rates, which are of importance when studying population growth rates.
Don't Blame Borlaug & His Green Revolution.
Chithra KarunaKaran
Ethical Democracy As Lived Practice
http://EthicalDemocracy.blogspot.com
----------------------------------------------------------
NYTimes copyright
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/14/business/energy-environment/14borlaug.html
Norman Borlaug, 95, Dies; Led Green Revolution
By JUSTIN GILLIS
A Nobel Peace Prize winner, he developed high-yielding crop varieties that helped to avert famines worldwide.
-----
NYtimes copyright
http://tierneylab.blogs.nytimes.com/
http://tierneylab.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/09/15/greatest-human-being-rip/?hp
--------
NYTimes copyright
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/20/weekinreview/20martin.html
Lynsey Addario for The New York Times
DINNERTIME Sudanese refugees unload bags of food at a camp in neighboring Chad. The refugees had fled the violence in Darfur.
* Recommend
*
* Send To Phone
* Reprints
* ShareClose
o Linkedin
o Digg
o Facebook
o Mixx
o MySpace
o Yahoo! Buzz
o Permalink
o
Article Tools Sponsored By
By ANDREW MARTIN
Published: September 19, 2009
This past week the world celebrated the life and achievements of Norman Borlaug, the Iowa-born plant scientist who created high-yielding wheat varieties to stave off famine.
Skip to next paragraph
Related
Norman Borlaug, Plant Scientist Who Fought Famine, Dies at 95 (September 14, 2009)
Dr. Borlaug, who died at age 95 on Sept. 12, led the so-called Green Revolution that created bumper crops in once impoverished countries like Mexico, India and Pakistan. In lauding Dr. Borlaug’s achievements, the United Nations’ World Food Program said he had saved more lives than any man in history.
But the eulogies for Dr. Borlaug often neglected an important and perplexing fact. Despite his accomplishments, more people are hungry today than ever and that total should exceed one billion people this year for the first time, according to the United Nations.
How can so many people be hungry when farmers produce enough food, at least in theory, to feed every person on the planet?
The answers are complex and involve everything from American farm politics and African corruption to war, poverty, climate change and drought, which is now the single most common cause of food shortages on the planet.
But David Beckmann, president of the antihunger group Bread for the World, boiled the causes down into one unifying theme — “a lack of give a damn.”
“It’s mainly neglect,” he said. “Political neglect.”
The yield gains of the last half-century, both in the developed and developing world, led to grain surpluses and low prices, creating a sense of complacency about agriculture and hunger.
“There was an attitude following the Green Revolution that the problem was solved,” said Gary H. Toenniessen of the Rockefeller Foundation.
So much grain was being produced so cheaply that Western leaders encouraged poor nations to buy grain on the world market rather than grow it themselves. Surplus was shipped to poor countries as food aid. But that aid system has often been ineffective in alleviating hunger in a timely way and in addressing broader agriculture problems facing impoverished countries. Support for agricultural research in developing countries was also cut back for other priorities. The result? While the food supply grew faster than the world’s population from 1970 to 1990, as the Green Revolution’s gains took hold, the situation has now reversed itself. Productivity gains in agriculture have slowed, and since 1990, the growth rate of food production has fallen below population growth.
The consequences have been particularly dire in sub-Saharan Africa, where the gains of the Green Revolution have been difficult to replicate. Among other problems, irrigation — which was key to the Green Revolution — is relatively scarce in Africa.
Few paid attention to these problems until last year, when a confluence of events caused food prices to spike to record levels. Riots erupted in many nations, and even American consumers felt pinched as prices soared.
Prices have come down in the United States, but the situation in Africa remains dismal due to an exploding population and now, a severe drought that threatens millions. The World Food Program says it is critically short of funds.
At a July summit meeting, President Obama and other leaders of industrialized nations pledged $20 billion for agricultural development in poor countries.
Activists say that some of the tools for success are within reach provided the financing and political will persist: those tools include seeds fine-tuned to local conditions, fertilizer and better roads and other infrastructure improvements.
The more difficult problems may lie within our borders. Farm programs are among the most entrenched entitlements in Washington. But crop subsidies and America’s habit of shipping grain to the poor tends to undermine robust markets in developing countries.
Dr. Borlaug, who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1970, understood well the limitations of the Green Revolution’s success. After receiving the Congressional Gold Medal in 2007, he noted that the “battle to ensure food security for hundreds of millions of miserably poor people is far from won.”
“World peace will not be built on empty stomachs or human misery,” he said. “It is within America’s technical and financial power to help end this human tragedy and injustice, if we set our hearts and minds to the task.”
==================================================================================
A Grievious Wrong Wrought By The Brits
A Grievious Wrong Wrought By The Brits
The India-Pakistan Divide, the India-Pakistan-Bangladesh Divide, the Kashmir Accession, the Afghanistan Impasse, were 300 years in the making. It took a lot of doing.
The people of South Asia have inherited the Imperial Project. They have yet to move their leaders to dismantle and overturn the ideology and practice of that imperial Project. It took the British (and lesser colonial powers) that long, 300+ years, in days, months and years, in decades and centuries, to robustly execute their Oppress-Exploit-Divide-Rule strategy. This strategy is in stark evidence today throughout the Global South, Angola to Zimbabwe, Indonesia to Iran, Singapore to Seychelles.
Lest we forget, we in South Asia are still playing out that strategy in 2009, with real oppressors on the ground or in the air, and imagined enemies among our very own sisters, brothers and cousins. The Great South Asian Family Quarrel has transposed itself onto the emergent struggling nation-state, carefully fractured by our departing Brit masters. Pesky relatives believe the malicious gossip and decide to walk out of the door while tea is being poured and sweets are being distributed. The taste in our mouths is bitter, watered by tears over the days of bloody parting.
We ourselves have become master performers of that cynical strategy of our erstwhile masters. Ironically we have ourselves mastered that strategy, added new rules and regulations. We oppress each other. Our families have turned on their own members. So it is today in our region, South Asia.
So it will continue -- unless we reflect and return to ourselves, our deeper collective selves.
more...
The India-Pakistan Divide, the India-Pakistan-Bangladesh Divide, the Kashmir Accession, the Afghanistan Impasse, were 300 years in the making. It took a lot of doing.
The people of South Asia have inherited the Imperial Project. They have yet to move their leaders to dismantle and overturn the ideology and practice of that imperial Project. It took the British (and lesser colonial powers) that long, 300+ years, in days, months and years, in decades and centuries, to robustly execute their Oppress-Exploit-Divide-Rule strategy. This strategy is in stark evidence today throughout the Global South, Angola to Zimbabwe, Indonesia to Iran, Singapore to Seychelles.
Lest we forget, we in South Asia are still playing out that strategy in 2009, with real oppressors on the ground or in the air, and imagined enemies among our very own sisters, brothers and cousins. The Great South Asian Family Quarrel has transposed itself onto the emergent struggling nation-state, carefully fractured by our departing Brit masters. Pesky relatives believe the malicious gossip and decide to walk out of the door while tea is being poured and sweets are being distributed. The taste in our mouths is bitter, watered by tears over the days of bloody parting.
We ourselves have become master performers of that cynical strategy of our erstwhile masters. Ironically we have ourselves mastered that strategy, added new rules and regulations. We oppress each other. Our families have turned on their own members. So it is today in our region, South Asia.
So it will continue -- unless we reflect and return to ourselves, our deeper collective selves.
more...
Thursday, March 12, 2009
Incredible India vs. Malnourished India
My comment #13.
March 13, 2009 8:10 am
Link
March 13th, 2009 0:40 am
Incredible India vs. Malnourished India
Sorry bureaucrats and politicians, you can't eat democracy and the right to vote. People need food.
The video that accompanies the article (below) is horrifying. It provided images of the most egregious cases of malnutrition, images I have never seen in all my years traveling all over India. They certainly exist.
Child and women's malnutrition especially are rampant in the poorest, most economically disadvantaged parts of India, but also where GROWTH trumps DEVELOPMENT.
While the article provided information on increased malnutrition in growth-driven Gujarat and Maharashtra it would have been useful to contrast this with data from say, Tamil Nadu and Kerala, where more equitable socio-economic conditions have prioritized development over growth and likely lessened malnutrition.
Absolute hunger among is prevalent among infants, toddlers and young children in India, but there is a pronounced pattern of child and women's malnutrition in those parts of India where patriarchy is the incontestable norm; women don't have land rights; women's educational attainment is low; public health and other social services are negligible.
What is unsupportable is the India government's criminal policy of stockpiling foodgrains by the Food Corporation of India (FCI) in rodent-infested warehouses, when clearly the most urgent priority must be given to distribute a variety of food staples rapidly and efficiently to people in areas where it is most needed.
As the article and video make clear, malnutrition is entirely preventable and is costly for education, health, employment and other sectors of the Indian economy.
While the government clearly must do much more, this is a problem that requires vigorous and widespread civil society consciousness-raising and participation to grapple with this shameful inequity that cruelly denies our children (as well as their mothers) a most basic need.
Democracy is a mockery without it.
Chithra KarunaKaran
Ethical Democracy As Lived Practice
http://EthicalDemocracy.blogspot.com
Recommended by 34 Readers
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
As Indian Growth Soars, Child Hunger Persists
Malnutrition in India is worse than in many African nations, stunting the growth of children like this girl in Shivpuri, photographed in November 2008.
By SOMINI SENGUPTA
Published: March 12, 2009
http://community.nytimes.com/article/comments/2009/03/13/world
/asia/13malnutrition.html#postComment
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2009/03/13/world/asia/20090313-malnutrition-audioss/index.html
New York Times copyright
Additional sources:
UNICEF
http://www.unicef.org/sowc08/index.php
International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI)
http://www.ifpri.org/
World Health Organization (WHO)
http://www.who.int/countries/ind/en/
all sources are copyrighted by the related organizations
===================================================================================
March 13, 2009 8:10 am
Link
March 13th, 2009 0:40 am
Incredible India vs. Malnourished India
Sorry bureaucrats and politicians, you can't eat democracy and the right to vote. People need food.
The video that accompanies the article (below) is horrifying. It provided images of the most egregious cases of malnutrition, images I have never seen in all my years traveling all over India. They certainly exist.
Child and women's malnutrition especially are rampant in the poorest, most economically disadvantaged parts of India, but also where GROWTH trumps DEVELOPMENT.
While the article provided information on increased malnutrition in growth-driven Gujarat and Maharashtra it would have been useful to contrast this with data from say, Tamil Nadu and Kerala, where more equitable socio-economic conditions have prioritized development over growth and likely lessened malnutrition.
Absolute hunger among is prevalent among infants, toddlers and young children in India, but there is a pronounced pattern of child and women's malnutrition in those parts of India where patriarchy is the incontestable norm; women don't have land rights; women's educational attainment is low; public health and other social services are negligible.
What is unsupportable is the India government's criminal policy of stockpiling foodgrains by the Food Corporation of India (FCI) in rodent-infested warehouses, when clearly the most urgent priority must be given to distribute a variety of food staples rapidly and efficiently to people in areas where it is most needed.
As the article and video make clear, malnutrition is entirely preventable and is costly for education, health, employment and other sectors of the Indian economy.
While the government clearly must do much more, this is a problem that requires vigorous and widespread civil society consciousness-raising and participation to grapple with this shameful inequity that cruelly denies our children (as well as their mothers) a most basic need.
Democracy is a mockery without it.
Chithra KarunaKaran
Ethical Democracy As Lived Practice
http://EthicalDemocracy.blogspot.com
Recommended by 34 Readers
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
As Indian Growth Soars, Child Hunger Persists
Malnutrition in India is worse than in many African nations, stunting the growth of children like this girl in Shivpuri, photographed in November 2008.
By SOMINI SENGUPTA
Published: March 12, 2009
http://community.nytimes.com/article/comments/2009/03/13/world
/asia/13malnutrition.html#postComment
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2009/03/13/world/asia/20090313-malnutrition-audioss/index.html
New York Times copyright
Additional sources:
UNICEF
http://www.unicef.org/sowc08/index.php
International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI)
http://www.ifpri.org/
World Health Organization (WHO)
http://www.who.int/countries/ind/en/
all sources are copyrighted by the related organizations
===================================================================================
Tuesday, March 10, 2009
Tibet Rising not Uprising -- Again
Dalai Lama Harshly Condemns China Over Tibet
By EDWARD WONG
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/11/world/asia/11tibet.html?hp
http://community.nytimes.com/article/comments/2009/03/11/world/asia/11tibet.html
New York Times copyright
------------------------------
My comment #46
March 10th, 2009 9:15 am
Tibet Rising not Uprising -- again
This is a 50 year dilemma, originating in and fueled by imperial British "buffer state" Tibet policy.
The memory of the mis-named 'uprising' definitely calls for a celebration, something the Chinese government will not tolerate.
How can China possibly permit a celebration that calls attention to its own oppression?! The Beijing Govt. is on the wrong side of history.
The Dalai Lama has never asked for outright liberation and nation-state sovereignty for Tibet. The Dalai Lama has reasonably and rightly maintained that Tibetans can be part of China, while the Chinese for their part need to respect both in letter and spirit, religious, cultural freedom and economic freedoms of Tibetans.
Instead the Chinese have operated with a heavy hand, centralizing instead of devolving local power into the hands of Tibetans. China has an almost unbroken history of centralized government, the Beijing govt. simply doesn't know any better at this stage in their own development.
Note that Dharmsala is in India. The Dalai Lama and his thousands of followers have lived in India since 1959 when the Dalai Lama and the Panchen Lama fled to India and were given peaceful refuge here.
Dharmsala is no Darfur.
I grew up in India seeing and hearing about the Dalai Lama who was a close associate of Jawaharlal Nehru, (a co-founder of the Non-Aligned Movement), and other Indian political leaders. Tibetans over the years have been born in India in the half century that their "country" has been under occupation. They have lived and worked throughout India as well as sought refuge and economic opportunity throughout the world. However, Tibetans are entitled to their own historic homeland, which of course they can and must peacefully share with others, local ethnic Chinese especially who have also lived there historically.
The Dalai Lama has never pressed for Tibetan independence from China while residing in India, because to press for Tibetan independence would jeopardize India's rightful stand on sovereignty over Kashmir. Indian secularism and democracy are being tested in Kashmir, no less than the less visible quandary of Tibetan refugee rights to enjoy freedom while in their long unfair exile. In any event, Tibet and Kashmir are not comparable, they each follow a distinct colonial and post-colonial trajectory.
If only China can be quietly yet urgently persuaded to allow 1) full cultural religious freedoms of Tibetans, 2) unconditional right of Tibetans to return if they please to their ancient, peaceful homeland, 3) to develop their own unique notion of being a 'people.' in the world.
Idealistic pragmatism can be the ethical choice in Tibet. The loss of the ancient ways in Tibet (while Tibetans themselves, not Beijing, decide how they want to shape their own lives in a modern Tibet), would be a loss for us all.
The Arc of Justice bends slowly but it bends toward Tibet and the Tibetan people.
Chithra KarunaKaran
Ethical Democracy As Lived Practice
http://EthicalDemocracy.blogspot.com
Recommended by 28 Readers
===================================================================================
By EDWARD WONG
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/11/world/asia/11tibet.html?hp
http://community.nytimes.com/article/comments/2009/03/11/world/asia/11tibet.html
New York Times copyright
------------------------------
My comment #46
March 10th, 2009 9:15 am
Tibet Rising not Uprising -- again
This is a 50 year dilemma, originating in and fueled by imperial British "buffer state" Tibet policy.
The memory of the mis-named 'uprising' definitely calls for a celebration, something the Chinese government will not tolerate.
How can China possibly permit a celebration that calls attention to its own oppression?! The Beijing Govt. is on the wrong side of history.
The Dalai Lama has never asked for outright liberation and nation-state sovereignty for Tibet. The Dalai Lama has reasonably and rightly maintained that Tibetans can be part of China, while the Chinese for their part need to respect both in letter and spirit, religious, cultural freedom and economic freedoms of Tibetans.
Instead the Chinese have operated with a heavy hand, centralizing instead of devolving local power into the hands of Tibetans. China has an almost unbroken history of centralized government, the Beijing govt. simply doesn't know any better at this stage in their own development.
Note that Dharmsala is in India. The Dalai Lama and his thousands of followers have lived in India since 1959 when the Dalai Lama and the Panchen Lama fled to India and were given peaceful refuge here.
Dharmsala is no Darfur.
I grew up in India seeing and hearing about the Dalai Lama who was a close associate of Jawaharlal Nehru, (a co-founder of the Non-Aligned Movement), and other Indian political leaders. Tibetans over the years have been born in India in the half century that their "country" has been under occupation. They have lived and worked throughout India as well as sought refuge and economic opportunity throughout the world. However, Tibetans are entitled to their own historic homeland, which of course they can and must peacefully share with others, local ethnic Chinese especially who have also lived there historically.
The Dalai Lama has never pressed for Tibetan independence from China while residing in India, because to press for Tibetan independence would jeopardize India's rightful stand on sovereignty over Kashmir. Indian secularism and democracy are being tested in Kashmir, no less than the less visible quandary of Tibetan refugee rights to enjoy freedom while in their long unfair exile. In any event, Tibet and Kashmir are not comparable, they each follow a distinct colonial and post-colonial trajectory.
If only China can be quietly yet urgently persuaded to allow 1) full cultural religious freedoms of Tibetans, 2) unconditional right of Tibetans to return if they please to their ancient, peaceful homeland, 3) to develop their own unique notion of being a 'people.' in the world.
Idealistic pragmatism can be the ethical choice in Tibet. The loss of the ancient ways in Tibet (while Tibetans themselves, not Beijing, decide how they want to shape their own lives in a modern Tibet), would be a loss for us all.
The Arc of Justice bends slowly but it bends toward Tibet and the Tibetan people.
Chithra KarunaKaran
Ethical Democracy As Lived Practice
http://EthicalDemocracy.blogspot.com
Recommended by 28 Readers
===================================================================================
Tuesday, February 24, 2009
50th Anniversary 1959-2009: MLK in the Land of MKG
50th Anniversary 1959-2009 MLK in the Land of MKG
This year Black History Month has especial significance. The White House used to be the WHITES' House. Three hundred years of resistance and struggle have propelled a Black President into leadership of the United States. Obama is 50% white and 50% but such is the power of the "one-drop-rule" of racialized white supremacacism that he cannot possibly stand up and say "Hey I'm Black-white or White-Black." The most he can say, and he did say was self-deprecatingly "a mutt like me."
Without the blood sweat tears of those three hundred years of persistent struggle, such a historic moment might have been even further delayed. Today, during Black History Month in the United States, I am marking for special mention the 50th anniversary of Martin Luther King's historic visit to India to the several places of Gandhi's activism, assassination and cremation.
Ethical Democracy as Lived Practice is about examining and reflecting upon such ethical moments. Self-in-Society-Studies focuses on this visit and its implications and repercussions.
More to come...
This year Black History Month has especial significance. The White House used to be the WHITES' House. Three hundred years of resistance and struggle have propelled a Black President into leadership of the United States. Obama is 50% white and 50% but such is the power of the "one-drop-rule" of racialized white supremacacism that he cannot possibly stand up and say "Hey I'm Black-white or White-Black." The most he can say, and he did say was self-deprecatingly "a mutt like me."
Without the blood sweat tears of those three hundred years of persistent struggle, such a historic moment might have been even further delayed. Today, during Black History Month in the United States, I am marking for special mention the 50th anniversary of Martin Luther King's historic visit to India to the several places of Gandhi's activism, assassination and cremation.
Ethical Democracy as Lived Practice is about examining and reflecting upon such ethical moments. Self-in-Society-Studies focuses on this visit and its implications and repercussions.
More to come...
Tuesday, January 13, 2009
Dynastic Politics & the Challenge to Ethical Democracy
In Tamil Nadu Nadu and at the Center dynastic politics is especially tenacious, with Karunanidhi asserting family ties over state governance (sons Azhagiri, Stalin) as well as at the national level(daughter Kanimozhi as member of parliament). At the centre, the Congress is attempting to bring Rahul Gandhi into line as the next prime miniserial candidate.
Dynastic politics poses an ethical problem for the optimal development of democracy. More on this later...
Dynastic politics poses an ethical problem for the optimal development of democracy. More on this later...
Tuesday, January 6, 2009
Elephants, Tigers & Ethical Democracy
In these Blog pages much of my focus is on India's path to Ethical Democracy. It is both a process and a destination. Given the unequalled and unprecedented example of Maulana Azad and Mohandas Gandhi, India can do no less. India is at a remote distance from both the process and the destination towards ethical democracy but it is reasonable to state that India has started on that path which it began at least 2500 years ago. I say this because Democracy is not a western invention but a universal human impulse towards fairness, which in its ultimate analysis is an evolved behavior that we share with certain mammals especially the great apes.
Recently there were two separate but obviously related news articles in the Indian press, one on protests against the establishment of a Tiger Reserve in Mudumalai and another, on "marauding wild elephants" allegedly 'wreaking havoc" in North Eastern India.
I don't have time (will do so later) to develop the points raised by these two articles, these points being 1)balancing livelihood needs with animal protection and 2) habitat loss
It is clear that a humane and vigorous policy of protecting and increasing wildlife as part of a larger longterm policy of increasing and exploiting biodiversity resources for purposes of furthering health and employment opportunities have to be seen as keystones to ethical democracy. Demonizing wildlife, causing habitat loss and promoting livelihoods that don;t provide returns on investment in employment are faulty cost ineffective pathways to irresponsible governance. None of these quick fix options that are inimical to wildlife conservation will help build ethical democracy in India. Nature and Culture are inextricably interrelated.
Recently there were two separate but obviously related news articles in the Indian press, one on protests against the establishment of a Tiger Reserve in Mudumalai and another, on "marauding wild elephants" allegedly 'wreaking havoc" in North Eastern India.
I don't have time (will do so later) to develop the points raised by these two articles, these points being 1)balancing livelihood needs with animal protection and 2) habitat loss
It is clear that a humane and vigorous policy of protecting and increasing wildlife as part of a larger longterm policy of increasing and exploiting biodiversity resources for purposes of furthering health and employment opportunities have to be seen as keystones to ethical democracy. Demonizing wildlife, causing habitat loss and promoting livelihoods that don;t provide returns on investment in employment are faulty cost ineffective pathways to irresponsible governance. None of these quick fix options that are inimical to wildlife conservation will help build ethical democracy in India. Nature and Culture are inextricably interrelated.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)