Total Pageviews

Reformers Do Win Elections in India

September 26, 2012, 2:09 am
By SAMBUDDHA MITRA MUSTAFI

Mamata Banerjee and other chief ministers who are opposing the new economic policies of the Manmohan Singh government probably have not read Chapter 3 of the latest book edited by two renowned Indian economists Jagdish Bhagwati and Arvind Panagariya.

In the chapter titled “Economic Reforms and Election Outcomes,” Poonam Gupta and Mr. Panagariya use data analysis from the 2009 national elections to bust a standing myth in India's power corridors â€" that pro-growth economic reforms equals to political suicide.

The myth reached its apogee after the 2004 election results â€" which saw the Bharatiya Janata Party-led coalition, which had loudly advertised its free-market stance, bite the dust along with Andhra Pradesh's chief minister, Chandra Babu Naidu, also a poster boy for reform who had aggressively wooed foreign investors in his state. Most analysts saw the results as a pushback from India's have-nots - the farmers and lower-income groups who were not receiving the promised trickle-down benefits of India's growth and globalization.

But in their haste to find an overarching explanation to an unexpected verdict, these analysts and politicians, including many winners, overlooked some key facts, according to Ms. Gupta and Mr. Panagariya.

First, Indians vote on state-level issues and parties even in the national elections. So the results of the national elections were in effect a sum of several local elections, which renders a generic national explanation tenuous at best. The economists found no decisive, nationwide urban-rural or rich-poor split in votes.

Second, in  2000-03, India's average annual growth rat e had slipped below 5 percent and Mr. Naidu's state was growing at less than 4 percent in 2001-03. While the economy was beginning to bounce back by the end of 2003, the B.J.P.'s high-decibel “India Shining” rhetoric ignored the shaky economic outlook of the day.

The 2004 mandate was not for anti-growth, socialist policies of the past, the economists argue. In fact, it was the opposite: Voters wanted more meaningful, high-growth reforms, not fewer.

The data analysis by Ms. Gupta and Mr. Panagariya strongly supports this hypothesis. They first divided India's states into three categories:  high-growth, medium-growth and low-growth depending on the state's deviation from the national growth rate. Then they looked at how state ruling party candidates fared in the elections in the different categories.

The results are remarkable because they go right against the conventional wisdom that India's voters still find economic reforms hard to swallow.
In th e reformist high-growth states, 85 percent of the ruling party candidates won their seats, compared to only 52 percent and 40 percent in the medium- and low-growth states respectively. Just take a look at most of the chief ministers who were returned to power by voters in recent times, like Sheila Dixit, Nitish Kumar, Narendra Modi, Bhupinder Singh Hooda, Naveen Patnaik, the ruling coalition in Maharashtra â€" they all delivered growth rates above 9 percent per annum.

The growth laggards â€" Rabri Devi, Mayawati, Vasundhara Raje Scindia, Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee, Virbhadra Singh â€" were booted out. They all failed to effect significant change in their states and delivered growth rates below the national average.

As the authors point out, this correlation between growth rates and election outcomes is a relatively new phenomenon because breakout growth of 8 to 10 percent has been seen in India only recently. So it is not surprising that many of India's old-school c aste and class-based regional leaders are finding it difficult to adjust to the new normal.

In a poor country like India, economic reforms and growth should be common sense in politics. The authors point out that growth benefits lower-income groups much more than the rich. For a poor Indian, 10 percent growth could mean the difference between hunger and subsistence; for the rich, it would merely mean the difference between comfort and more comfort.

So the assumption that the anti-reform politicians seem to be working on is that Indians want to stay poor â€" that they do not want to grow and improve their lives. But as the numbers show, this perverse, feudal brand of politics is being squeezed out of 21st century aspirational India.

To retain their relevance and keep winning elections in a growth-hungry country, Ms. Banerjee and some of her fellow chief ministers should read at least Chapter 3 of “India's Reforms: How They Produced Inclusive Growth.”

Sambuddha is an independent journalist. He can be reached on Twitter @some_buddha



Kashmiris, Disabled by Conflict, Battle for Compensation

September 26, 2012, 1:18 am
By BETWA SHARMA

KASHMIR - Shaida Banu attends stitching lessons in Silikot village near the Line of Control on the Indian side of Kashmir. A tailor teaches embroidery and patchwork in a large schoolroom with sewing machines and a chalkboard. Not far is a cordoned-off plot of mines laid out to prevent militants entering from the Pakistan side.

Ms. Banu, 22, wants to support her family by making clothes, but there isn't enough dress material available in this mountainous terrain. “My father is old, my mother dead and my brother disabled - I feel responsible,” she said. In 2001, her mother was shot in the head by a bullet from the other side while herding goats. Two years later, her brother lost his leg to an exploding shell while fetching water.

Hundreds of people were disabled in the cross-fire between India and Pakistan, especially during the peak of the militancy in the 1990s, and many families still struggle with the aftermath. Army porters had their legs blown off while running over mines. “You could step out of your house and return with a limb gone,” recalled Mohammed Sheikh, 60, who lost his leg in 1999 when a shell landed in his village.

One hamlet, where most inhabitants have lost limbs, is called “village of the handicapped.” Mines are still strewn over the countryside. Over time, disability made it hard for families to earn a livelihood. “I have five sisters to marry off, but there isn't enough money,” said Irshad Ahmed, Ms. Banu's 25-year-old brother. Mr. Ahmed, who hobbles about on an artificial leg, earns 4,000 rupees ($80) monthly by doing odd jobs for the army.

There isn't much to do in these parts except manual labor or herding. This is difficult for elderly handicapped men, whose movements are constrained by the dangerous topography. Cars and buses rarely service the routes to far-flung villages on the L.O.C. between Pakistan and India.

The government offers “militancy victims” 750 rupees per month. Those who can't prove their injuries were related to the conflict are entitled to a monthly disability dole of 400 rupees. But the money is slow to arrive for even those who can prove their eligibility. Some disabled men claim that their hair has turned gray waiting for meager relief that was a decade late.

Mr. Sheikh said that even though it is futile, he still goes to make his compensation requests from the local Social Welfare Department in Uri town of Baramulla district, which receives the bulk militancy-related applications because of its proximity to the L.O.C. “I can't afford the fare, and all you do is wait the whole day,” he said, leaning heavily on his can e.

The government office is housed in a rundown building with broken windows and furniture. Nobody was there one weekday afternoon except Sushil Bhatt, a young staffer, who sits in a dark, freezing room. Mr. Bhatt said he suspected that more people, illiterate and tucked away in remote areas, still don't know about the compensation program. Women, for instance, rarely file claims. “They are very shy and are not allowed to come so far so we need to reach them,” he said.

For years, however, reaching out to injured people was difficult. Officials say that villages near the L.O.C., suspected of harboring militants, were inaccessible for a long time. These high-security areas continue to be controlled by the army. “It's only recently become safe to move, but we still face restrictions,” said Mr. Bhatt.

Some people never completed the paperwork to prove they were conflict victims. “They went from pillar to post and then gave up because the procedure too k too long,” said Mohammed Rather, who oversees compensation for Baramulla district.

Villagers also recall disabled persons dying without ever receiving help. It is often said here that when one handicapped person dies, another moves up the list to get their due.

Tens of thousands of people are also on the waiting list to get the general disability dole of 400 rupees monthly in the state of Jammu and Kashmir. “Inadequacy of funds is our main problem,” said Jeet Lal Gupta, secretary of the Social Welfare Department for the state. An additional 800 million rupees, split between the central and state government, is needed to cover the pending cases, according to Mr.Gupta.

The monthly sum of 750 rupees is often inadequate for militancy victims to live on or afford proper medical attention. One local official described the amount as “a joke.” But the state government lacks the funds to increase the monthly dole or the one-time reparation of 75,000 rupe es for the completely disabled.

Recently, however, a local court awarded 1 million rupees to a mine victim. Syed Qadri, a lawyer from the Human Rights Law Network in Srinagar, suggested that handicapped people should jointly pursue litigation. “The government has to be challenged, but people are illiterate or too scared,” he said. That may be, but many of the disabled folk living near the L.O.C. also lack the means or knowledge to fight a legal battle.

Meanwhile, up in the mountains, Mr. Sheikh bangs nails into his artificial leg with a wooden plank - “to keep it going or I cannot walk,” he explained. The artificial limbs, provided by the army, haven't been changed for several years. They are held together by tattered cloth, tape and rusty nails.

The distribution of prosthetic legs, like compensation, was haphazard. And there isn't a plan to replace these damaged legs. A handful of aids and appliances, like wheelchairs or hearing aids, are supplied by the government at subsidized rates, but their allocation in outlying areas is random because of the lack of proper records on how many people are disabled. Local officials even recommend outsourcing the job to nongovernmental organizations as the only way of getting it done.

Villagers assert that it's the government's responsibility to make them comfortable because their lost limbs and livelihood are a consequence of a conflict they did not want or make. Money or no money, however, Mr. Sheikh plans to end his visits to the ramshackle building in Uri town. “Too old and too tired,” he said.



Vivid Dispatches From Syria\'s Front Lines

September 25, 2012, 6:25 pm
By ROBERT MACKEY

Eighteen months have passed since an adviser to President Bashar al-Assad of Syria scolded a BBC correspondent in Damascus for reporting that video posted on YouTube by activists appeared to contradict official accounts of a crackdown on protesters broadcast on state-run television. “The events are happening in Syria,” Bouthaina Shaaban insisted, one week into the uprising, “therefore, it's Syrian television who tells the truth, nobody else.”

Now that the Syrian government has lost its monopoly on the flow of information - and on the use of violence to impose its will - the Assad government has become somewhat more willing to grant limited access to foreign correspondents to report on the battle for control of Syria's largest cities.

One of those correspondents, Bill Neely, the International Editor for Britain's ITV News, filed a remarkable video report this week from Homs, where parts of the city are still held by armed rebels, six months after the Free Syrian Army retreated from the district of Baba Amr under heavy bombardment.

Mr. Neely, a Belfast native who began his career covering sectarian violence by Christian militias, explained on the ITV News Web site that the government snipers he met in Homs were just 50 yards away from the rebels, in a ruined neighborhood where “the front line has moved no more than five hundred yards,” since May. “One hundred yards a month, at a cost of hundreds of lives. A day ago, five Syrian soldiers were killed here.”

After he returned to Damascus from the front line in Homs, Mr. Neely reported on Twitter that Assad loyalists were still fighting to retake parts of the capital from the rebels on Tuesday.< /p>

Lyse Doucet, a Canadian correspondent and anchor who is in Damascus for BBC News, filed two reports this week, one from a village in the western region of Latakia, the heartland of the president's Alawite sect, and a second from the capital.

Her first report showed mourners at the funeral of a government soldier in an Alawite village fiercely loyal to the president, where one man told her: “There are two sides. The conflict is severe and villainâ€" and we don't like it. We don't like it, we don't want it, but we are forced, we are compelled to do it.”

Writing on Twitter after she returned to Damascus from Latakia on Sunday, Ms. Doucet reported hearing explosions, one of them just outside her hotel.

Images of the security forces scrambling to respond to the explosion outside the Damascus Four Seasons Hotel, and of a man being detai ned and head-butted by a security officer, were included in Ms. Doucet's second report, broadcast on Tuesday.

Ms. Doucet's most recent report also showed that the government still restricts the movement of foreign journalists quite heavily. Her crew managed to film the security forces blocking her from reporting in a northern district of the capital and then sending a fighter in plain clothes to listen in on her interview with a fruit seller near a government checkpoint.

On Tuesday, the Guardian published a portrait of “the bloody stalemate” in Syria's largest city, Aleppo, reported from behind rebel lines in recent weeks by the correspondent Ghaith Abdul-Ahad. The reporter's journey to that front line was featured in a long video report broadcast last week by PBS.



Video of Obama\'s U.N. Address

September 25, 2012, 2:19 pm
By ROBERT MACKEY

As my colleague Helene Cooper reports, President Barack Obama devoted most of his address to the United Nations General Assembly on Tuesday to the Arab democracy movement and the tension between free speech and mutual respect among cultures and faiths in an era of instant, global communication.

PBS Newshour posted video of the entire 30-minute speech online.

Video of President Barack Obama addressing the United Nations General Assembly on Tuesday in New York.

Mr. Obama's remarks began and ended with a tribute to “an American named Chris Stevens,” the ambassador to Libya who was killed in Benghazi this month, on the first day of protests over a trailer for a crude film about the life of Islam's founder posted on YouTube in California.

The president praised Libyans who marched in their thousands to protest the killing of the diplomat, and three other Americans, and discussed the impossibility of constraining speech now that it is possible for Syrian protesters and anti-Islam zealots alike to harness the power of the Web to reach a global audience with their broadcasts.

I know that not all countries in this body share this particular understanding of the protection of free speech. We recognize that. But in 2012, at a time when anyone with a cell phone can spread offensive views around the world with the click of a button, the notion that we can control the flow of information is obsolete. The question, then, is how do we respond?

And on this we must agree: There is no speech that justifies mindless violence. There are no words that excuse the killing of i nnocents. There's no video that justifies an attack on an embassy. There's no slander that provides an excuse for people to burn a restaurant in Lebanon, or destroy a school in Tunis, or cause death and destruction in Pakistan.

In this modern world with modern technologies, for us to respond in that way to hateful speech empowers any individual who engages in such speech to create chaos around the world. We empower the worst of us if that's how we respond.



Video Reports From Japan, Taiwan and China on Confrontation Off Disputed Islands

September 25, 2012, 11:18 am
By ROBERT MACKEY

As my colleague Hiroko Tabuchi reports from Tokyo, the Japanese Coast Guard fired water cannons on Tuesday at a flotilla of Taiwanese fishing boats off a chain of islands claimed by Japan, Taiwan and China. Japan's state broadcaster, NHK, captured some of the confrontation on video.

A video report from NHK World, the broadcaster's English-language satellite channel, showed a Japanese ship spraying water at one of the Taiwanese boats.

Video of a confrontation between the Japanese Coast Guard and Taiwanese fishing boats in a report from NHK World, the English-language channel of Japan's state broadcaster.

In its report on the face-off, the Taiwan ese broadcaster TTV showed more of the flag-draped fishing vessels off the islands, which Japan calls the Senkaku and China calls the Diaoyu.

Taiwanese television's report on a flotilla of vessels from Taiwan turned back by the Japanese Coast Guard in disputed waters.

The standoff was shown from a third angle in a video report broadcast just after noon local time by the Shanghai-based Chinese satellite channel Dragon TV. That report was later posted on the news section of Youku, a video-sharing site in China, where it was viewed nearly 900,000 times in a few hours.

Watching the confrontation unfold from Hong Kong, an American journalist, Doug Meigs, observed on Twitter that Chinese officials might well view the clash between two allies of the United States in the region with satisfaction.



Image of the Day: September 25

September 25, 2012, 11:08 am
By THE NEW YORK TIMES

In West Bengal, a Cash-Free Microfinance Program Opens Doors for Women

September 25, 2012, 9:08 am
By SONIA FALEIRO

Canning, West Bengalâ€"A debt crisis in India's microfinance sector in Andhra Pradesh in 2010 revived the question of how to help the hard-core poor without forcing them into a debt trap. Now it appears that microfinance institutions may have had an alternative all along.

The hard-core poor, or people who live far below the national poverty line, are vulnerable to even small changes in circumstance, from a shift in daily wages to the onset of heavy rains. Repaying a microloan can become an untenable proposition.

This is particularly true of rural women, who accounted for 97 percent of microfinance loans in India in 2011 according to the data center MixMarket, but are less likely than men to be lit erate or to have the same skills and experience to earn as much. This is where a handful of microfinance institutions - among them Bandhan, currently India's largest such lender - come in.

Bandhan's Targeting the Hardcore Poor program was inspired by one pioneered by BRAC, a community development group, in Bangladesh in 2002. Bandhan's program is not for profit and offers cash-free grants to selected participants in poor villages for 24 months. A “grant” refers to everything a borrower may need to start and ply a sustainable trade - everything, that is, but cash.

A crucial aspect of the program is lifestyle changes to advance good health and critical awareness. A borrower is taught to manage money, but is also made aware of the need to drink clean water and eat two meals a day. They're schooled in basic numbers and letters.

The borrower, who is often a woman, never has to repay the cost of the goods. Only if she graduates f rom the program, though, by making a profit and adopting the lifestyle changes, will she be considered for a micro-loan, and, therefore, entry into the microfinance system. At this point she's considered dependable enough to handle money, protecting herself while also reassuring the lender.

Sabuajaan Mollah, 54, lives in Canning, one of West Bengal's poorest areas. She goes from door to door selling trinkets. Mrs. Mollah, who's widowed, wasn't just provided with the trinkets, but also a cane basket and plastic bags to carry them in.

When Bandhan approached Mrs. Mollah in December, she, her elderly mother and her 16-year-old daughter were surviving on just one meal a day. She worked as a domestic help in Kolkata, several hours away. At times her employers paid her in boiled rice. Mrs. Mollah now earns an average of 300 rupees ($5) a day and puts aside 10 rupees a week. It's a small amount, but it's more than she's ever been able to save. “Now we eat twice a day, ” she says.

Although the grant is cash-free, the program isn't. Mrs. Mollah is given a livelihood stipend of 140 rupees a week to support her during the program.

Golehar Sheikh, who lives a few hours away from Mrs. Mollah, is who Mrs. Mollah hopes to become in 24 months. Mrs. Sheikh, 36, successfully graduated from Bandhan's program in 2009. Since then she's taken three successively larger microloans and hopes to soon own her own shop.

Every evening, Mrs. Sheikh takes a train to Kolkata, where she buys beef from the wholesale market on Park Street. At night she sleeps in the market, in a shared room paid for by local traders who want to encourage poor entrepreneurs like her to take their time shopping. The raw meat sits at the foot of her mat, bundled in layers of cloth, plastic and sacking.

At dawn, Mrs. Sheikh returns to Canning, covering as many as five villages on foot with her basket on her head. Beef is forbidden to Hindus, so Mrs. Sheikh, who 's Muslim, confines herself to Muslim-majority villages.

Eight years ago, after being abandoned by her husband, Mrs. Sheikh and her two daughters moved into a shack at the edge of someone else's field. She begged for alms and foraged for fruit. Today, she lives in a two-room hut and has land of her own. Hers is still a difficult life, but she has assets she can count on should her luck again change. “I have dreams for my daughters,” she says. “And now I can help them come true.”

SKS Microfinance, the lender that triggered the Andhra Pradesh crisis, was also inspired by BRAC to create a similar program, which lasts 18 months. And Trickle Up, which offers a three-year program in four states, says that 100 percent of its borrowers, who are all women, have increased their net assets by an average of $330. Prior to graduating, the women had minimal assets and most were in debt. These programs, like that of Bandhan, are not for profit, and are funded largely (o r, in the case of Trickle Up, entirely) by donors.

In 2011 the M.I.T. economist Abhijit Banerjee co-authored a randomized test of Bandhan's program. He says that the team found “very strong positive results” and that it was clear that “beneficiaries were substantially better off in terms of how much they ate, measures of depression, schooling for children and other indicators.”

The hard-core poor have no liquid assets, which they require to pull themselves out of poverty. But putting mere cash in the hands of people whose immediate concerns are regular meals and safe shelter is risky for them and for their lenders.

This is why the bridge programs inspired by BRAC are so important. They offer the poor opportunity but without the initial risk of debt. But they also demand commitment and require change in the habits that may hurt the potential gains from microloans.

“I have a daughter to marry off,” says Mrs. Mollah. “So I work all day and worry all night. But I've seen a transformation in my life. What more can I ask for?”

Sonia Faleiro is the author of Beautiful Thing: Inside the Secret World of Bombay's Dance Bars. Read her latest OpEd for The New York Times, ‘For India's Children, Philanthropy Isn't Enough.'



A Conversation With: Landesa Founder Roy Prosterman

September 25, 2012, 5:16 am
By SHIVANI VORA

More than four decades ago, Roy Prosterman left a high-paying job at a white-shoe law firm in search of a different kind of job satisfaction. He ended up finding it in Landesa, a Seattle-based nonprofit that he founded, which works to secure land rights for the rural poor in countries around the world. Founded in 1966, the group is better known by its former name, Rural Development Institute.  Today, Landesa has 120 employees; it has operated in more than 50 countries, including China, Vietnam and Russia, and says 100 million families have benefited from its work. Thirty percent of the group's $13 million annual budget is spent in India.

Mr. Prosterman, 77, an emeritus professor of law at the University of Washington, has received wide recognition for his efforts, including the Gleitsman International Activist Award, which honors leadership in social activism, and the inaugural Henry R. Kravis Prize in Leadership.  He has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize twice, in 1993 and 2003.

India Ink recently interviewed Mr. Prosterman via e-mail about his interest in land rights, the challenges of working in India and why he thinks his model works.

What sparked your interest in land rights in the first place, and made you give up a lucrative law career?

In the 1960s, I was a young lawyer traveling for clients for extended periods to Liberia and Puerto Rico. Then I left the practice of law to teach property, antitrust and international investment law at the University of Washington Law School, not really knowing where that was going to take me.

The sudden “spark” happened when of one of my law students asked me what I t hought of a recent law review article that argued that land reform for the landless poor in Latin America could be carried out cheaply, by using various legal theories to trace land rights back through lengthy periods of intervening time, and take land away from present holders without paying for it.

My immediate reaction was that it certainly sounded as though the issue of deep poverty related to landlessness was a huge one, but if you tried to solve it that way you would likely end up with civil war instead of land reform.

If you were really serious about resolving the problem, those countries' governments and international aid donors would have to come up with the necessary resources to acquire the needed land at a fair price, and then redistribute it.

So what were your next steps?

I set to work on a law review article that set forth that critique, which came to the attention of U.S.A.I.D., and I ended up as a land-law consultant for a U.S.A.I.D.-c ommissioned study of the land-tenure situation in South Vietnam, as the Vietnam War was raging. It didn't take much research or fieldwork to see that the Vietcong were drawing their support largely from the tenant farmers who were the great bulk of the rural poor, promising them land of their own if they won.

I ended up doing the basic formulation of a land-to-the-tiller law, and then advocating for it in the U.S. and South Vietnam. The law was adopted in 1970, and a million tenant-farmer families became owners of the land they tilled. The original landlords were paid a decent price, though partly in bonds that had not all matured when the communists took over.

The twin results of this reform were that rice production went up by 30 percent and indigenous Vietcong recruitment in the South went down from a range of 3,500 to 7,000 men a month to 1,000 a month.

How did you come to focus on India?

India has the highest concentration of poor people on the p lanet, and most of them are rural and (as I could see from fieldwork that I began as far back as 1972, as well as desk research on the literature) lack secure rights to land of their own.

What are the specific programs you carry out in India now?

The “new generation” measures that we are now working on, in various combinations, in Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, West Bengal, and Odisha, prominently include state governments which allocate small house-and-garden plots (a tenth of an acre or less) to the completely landless rural poor. These plots have women's names jointly on the title as owners. The relatively small amounts of land needed come either from existing public lands or from negotiated government purchases of private land. We also provide training and local deployment of paralegals and “Community Resource Persons” to help local administrators ensure actual possession, title documentation and presence in the land records. We are also using paralegals to help deal with small errors, omissions or inconsistencies in the key documents relating to rural land rights and deal with land-rights issues for the large network of self-help groups serving poor rural women.

What are some of the challenges you face in working in India?

A built-in one is that land issues are a subject for state-level action under the Indian Constitution.

In India, the Center can have a role in funding state measures, cajoling and urging, but the Center can't actually make or implement the legal rules as to land rights.  Thus Landesa needs a separate presence in each state where we are offering advice, as well as in Delhi. Another challenge is found in the frequent turnover of many senior and midlevel civil servants, at the state level, and to some extent in Delhi: this means that new relationships often need to be formed, and officials often need time to come “up to speed” as to land-related programs.

Another challenge affect s “convergence,” on programs such as allocation of house-and-garden plots, where a variety of related support measures may be needed to gain full benefit from the small parcel, from help with housing to water wells, to technical assistance for vegetable growing.

These activities may involve a number of different government departments, whose actions may need various kinds of coordination or speeding up.

Your model relies a lot on partnership with governments - why, and how does this work?

Large-scale pro-poor land tenure reform programs require the strong and effective support of a government to be approved, formulated and carried out. And there are additional considerations: to get various departments to act together to assist the new recipient of a micro-plot, it is extremely helpful to get signals coming from as close to the top as possible.

In an Indian state, it is very desirable that the chief minister fully understands, and is fully behind, the program, sending signals to that effect all down the line. The support of the central government, coming from the top, is also highly desirable, in India and elsewhere. So we try, fairly early, to arrange to meet with the topmost policy makers: the prime minister or chief minister, as well as the cabinet minister or ministers and senior civil servants involved in rural land issues.

In some country settings, we may find that there is no interest whatsoever - or even hostility.

Have you run into situations where Landesa's work or motivation has been questioned?

Not in recent years, but back in the Cold War days. For example in El Salvador in the early 1980s, we were sometimes attacked by both extremes of the political spectrum for our land tenure work.

How do you see the issue of land rights for the world's poorest playing out over the next decade or two?

Largely through a range of new approaches, which will encourage governments to become wi dely and actively involved in land rights for the poor. At the same time, there may be new challenges, such as large-scale land acquisitions by foreign governments, companies or “portfolio investors” that will have to be identified, and solutions that protect land rights of the poor will need to be crafted and implemented.

Would it not be better to provide many of these people skills that could get them a good manufacturing or service sector job, rather than giving them a small piece of land that will at best let them eke out a living, and at some point be subdivided between their children?

Keep in mind that land reform neither creates nor destroys land. It simply puts a given population â€" present or future â€" into a relationship with that land base that is most productive and equitable. Also keep in mind that the very fact of giving people secure rights to at least some small sliver of the earth's surface strongly motivates them to make improvements that increase production and allow the family to make a number of basic-needs investments that are likely to strongly affect the variables in your question: better-nourished children are less likely to die in infancy or early childhood; lower infant and child deaths, in turn, reduce the pressure to have more children.

This lays the groundwork for a smaller next generation and increased family resources also go to educating both girls and boys for longer periods. There are a number of successful examples of these things happening.



India Enters \'Era of Regionalism\'

September 25, 2012, 4:47 am
By NIHARIKA MANDHANA

The Indian government has, for the moment, averted a political crisis. Despite full-throated resistance from the Bharatiya Janata Party and at least a dozen regional parties, which organized nationwide protests last week to oppose economic policy changes introduced by the government, it managed to cobble together sufficient support in Parliament to stay afloat.

Still, the ongoing political turbulence has once again shot India's several small-but-ascendant state and regional parties to prominence. Last week, even as the Congress party scrambled and jockeyed to remain in power  and the B.J.P. had little more than outraged protest for ammunition, these bit players grabbed center stage, assuming a make -or-break role in the government's survival.

Indeed, the political turmoil began when the Trinamool Congress, West Bengal's governing party and a key member of India's  governing United Progressive Alliance, withdrew its support over the economic moves, reducing the government to a minority. Two other regional parties, both from Uttar Pradesh, extended their support to the faltering government, bringing the coalition back from the brink of collapse.

India's political landscape, which was controlled almost exclusively by the Congress party in the 1950s and '60s, is now crowded by a patchwork of state-level parties animated by local interests and backed by strong electoral bases. Recent events provide a preview, analysts say, as the country's political machinery begins to gear up for general elections, scheduled for 2014.

“This is the era of regionalism,” said Zoya Hasan, dean at the School of Social Studies at Jawaharlal Neh ru University in New Delhi. “States have become the most important theaters of politics in the country.”

Televised images of regional leaders from across the country protesting side by side have revived the idea of a Third Front, an assortment of state parties that would function as an alternative to the two national parties, the Congress and B.J.P., which lead the United Progressive Alliance and the National Democratic Alliance, respectively.

Naveen Patnaik, a vocal proponent of a non-Congress, non-B.J.P. alliance and the chief minister of Odisha, told the Indian magazine Tehelka in March, “I certainly feel the need for a third front as the U.P.A. is scam-ridden and the N.D.A. is communally tainted.”

But Third Front coalitions have had only limited success. Two have formed national governments, but neither came close to finishing a full term. “The idea of the Third Front is a fraught idea,” not least because many regional parties are political and ideological rivals, said Ms. Hasan. “What binds them is anti-Congressism, not much else.”

Many of these parties arose to represent groups that felt sidelined by the Congress party.  “Those who didn't get a voice in the Congress started looking at alternatives,” said E. Sridharan, a Delhi-based political analyst.

Some sprang up to assert a distinct regional identity, like the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam in Tamil Nadu and the Sikh-centric Akali Dal in Punjab. Others, like Uttar Pradesh's Samajwadi Party and Bahujan Samaj Party, emerged from social movements for rights for India's marginalized groups.

Regional leaders attribute their success to their presence at the grass roots. “People support the Samajwadi Party because we work hard on the ground,” Akhilesh Yadav, chief minister of Uttar Pradesh, told India Ink. If the people of Uttar Pradesh have a problem, Mr. Yadav said, they can find leaders of the Samajwadi Party, but not of the Congress or the B.J.P.

Another key reason for these parties' rise, said Ms. Hasan, author of the 2012 book “Congress After Indira: Policy, Power, Political Change,” is that the Congress party has witnessed “not gradual, but dramatic erosion” as an organization.   When its leader Sonia Gandhi relinquished the post of prime minister in 2004, there was an expectation that she would bring about the party's “renewal,” Ms. Hasan said. “But that didn't happen,” she said.

Since 1989, no single party has won enough seats in the Indian Parliament to form a government on its own. While the Congress and the B.J.P. individually win the largest blocks of seats â€" the former has 205 and the latter 114 in the present Lok Sabha, or lower house of Parliament â€" regional parties, which garner a small but significant number of seats, have played a crucial role in propping up coalition governments.

Bolstered by their clout, many regional parties have become increasin gly assertive. Earlier this year, a clutch of powerful regional leaders, including   J. Jayalalitha of Tamil Nadu and Narendra Modi of Gujarat, blocked the government's efforts to create a national counter-terrorism center. The body would encroach on the powers of the states and deal a blow to federalism, local leaders complained.

Yet, a Third Front government is unlikely to emerge from the 2014 elections, analysts say. “How important they become,” Mr. Sridharan said, referring to the regional parties, “will depend on how much the Congress and B.J.P. need them.”



UB Group Companies\' Stock Up on Deal Talk

September 25, 2012, 3:44 am
By THE NEW YORK TIMES

United Spirits, part of Vijay Mallya's cash-strapped group of companies, confirmed Tuesday it was in deal talks with global alcohol giant Diageo in a notice to the Bombay Stock Exchange. United Spirits' stock price rose on the news, to 1098.80 rupees a share at noon in India, up 3.6 percent for the day. United Spirits stock hit a 52 week high of 1,099.95 rupees a share on Monday on rumors deal talks were underway.

The stock price of Mangalore Chemicals and Fertilizers, another UB Group company, also surged 11 percent on Tuesday, trading at 47 rupees at noon, after the Times of India reported that two bidders were interested in Mr. Mallya's 30 percent stake in the company, citing unnamed sources.

The full United Spirits statement is below:

United Spirits Limited and Diageo plc confirm that Diageo plc is in discussion with United Spirits Limited and United Breweries (Holdings) Limited in respect of possible transactions for Diageo plc to acquire an interest in United Spirits Limited. However there is no certainty that these discussions will lead to a transaction.



Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)