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குளோபல் வார்மிங் - நான் என்ன செய்ய முடியும்?

Kuttyjapan Webmaster — Sun, 22 Oct 2006 10:24:00 +0000

குளோபல் வார்மிங் - நான் என்ன செய்ய முடியும்?

சிறிது நாட்களுக்கு முன் The Day After Tomorrow படம் பார்த்த போது கொஞ்சம் பீதியாகத்தான் இருந்தது. சரி மனித இனத்தின் முடிவு இப்படித்தான் இருக்கும் போலிருக்கிறது. என்ன, நாம் நினைப்பதைவிட மிகச் சீக்கிரமாக இம்முடிவு ஏற்பட சாத்தியக்கூறுகள் உள்ளது. உலக நாடுகளும், உலக தலைவர்களும், ஐ.நா சபையும் ஒன்று சேர்ந்து யோசித்து இந்த குளோபல் வார்மிங் பிரச்சனையை சமாளிக்க வேண்டும். தனி மனிதனாய் நாம் என்ன செய்ய முடியும் என்று தான் இது நாள் வரை நான் எண்ணிக் கொண்டு இருந்தேன்.

ஆனால் இணையத்தில் இது குறித்து தேடும் போது கிடைத்த தகவல்கள் என்னை ஆச்சரியத்தில் ஆழ்த்தின. அதிக அளவு கரியமில வாயுவை(CO2 ) காற்று மண்டலத்தில் கலப்பதே இந்த குளோபல் வார்மிங்கிக்கான காரணம் என்பது நாம் அறிந்ததே. மின்சாரம் மற்றும் எரிபொருள் உபயோகத்தை முடிந்த வரை கட்டுப்படுத்தினால் காற்று மண்டலத்தில் கலக்கும் கரியமில வாயுவின் அளவையும் கட்டுப்படுத்தலாம். எனவே நீங்கள் மின்சாரம் மற்றும் எரிபொருள் உபயோகத்தை முடிந்த வரை சிக்கனப்படுத்தினாலே குளோபல் வார்மிங்கை தடுக்க உம்மால் இயன்றதை செய்து விட்டீர்கள் என்று அர்த்தம்.

1. வேலை முடிந்ததும் கணினியை அணைப்பது.
2. 10 நிமிடத்திற்கு மேல் கணினி செயல்படாமல் இருந்தால், கணினி திரை தானாகவே அணைவது போல் கணினியில் settings செய்தல்.
3. நடந்து செல்ல முடிந்தால், எரிபொருள் வாகனங்களைத் தவிர்ப்பது
4. துணி துவைக்கும் இயந்திரத்தில் வெந்நீர் ப்யன்படுத்துவதை தவிர்ப்பது
5. தேவையற்ற இடங்களில் மின்விளக்குகளை அணைத்தல்.
6. கதவு மற்றும் சன்னலை திறந்து வைத்து இயற்கை வெளிச்சம் பெறுவது
7. Incandescent light bulbs பதிலாக Compact fluorescent light bulbs பயன்படுத்துதல்.
8. நம் வாகனத்தில் சக்கரங்களின் காற்றழுத்தத்தை சரியான அளவில் வைத்திருத்தல்.
9. நம் வாகனத்தை சரியான வேகத்தில் ஓட்டுதல்
10. நம் வாகனத்திற்கு Emission Test செய்து சரிபார்த்தல்

இது போல் ஒரு தனிமனிதனால் குளோபல் வார்மிங்கை த்டுக்க என்னவெல்லாம் செய்யலாமெனெ சில இணையதளங்களில் மிகத்தெளிவாக குறிப்பிட்டுள்ளார்கள், அதற்கான சுட்டி

http://www.fightglobalwarming.com/page.cfm?tagID=135
http://www.worldwildlife.org/climate/involved/individuals.cfm

இத்தளத்தில் குறிப்பிடப்பட்டுள்ள, உலகளவில் குளோபல் வார்மிங்கை எதிர் கொள்வதற்கு எடுக்கப்பட்டு வரும் விஷயங்கள் நம்பிக்கையூட்டுவனவாக உள்ளன. Greenhouse gases ( விலங்கு கழிவுகளில் இருந்து தயாரிக்கப்படும் வாயு ), Green Power (காற்று மின்சாரம், சூரியமின்சாரம்) , எத்தனால் என்று பல மாற்று எரிசக்திகள் குளோபல் வார்மிங்கை கட்டுபடுத்த உபயோகப்படுத்தப்பட போகிறது

இத்தளத்தில் குறிப்பிட்டுள்ள பல குறிப்புகளை நடைமுறைப்படுத்த நம்மால் இயலும். இதை செயல்படுத்துவதின் மூலம் நீங்கள் பணத்தையும் சேமிக்கலாம். உங்கள் கொள்ளுபேரன் விளையாட இவ்வுலகத்தையும் காப்பாற்றி வைக்கலாம். எல்லாம் மிக எளிய விடயங்கள். இதில் குறிப்பிட்டுள்ள விடயங்களை செயல்படுத்த அரசாங்கத்தின் தயவு தேவையில்லை, அரசியல்வாதிகளின் பரிந்துரை தேவையில்லை. இதற்குபின்னும் நான் ஏன் இதையெல்லாம் செய்ய வேண்டுமென்று தோன்றினால் ஒரேஒரு தடவை The Day After Tomorrow படம் பார்க்கவும்.

India workers use cell phones to dial in prosperity

Kuttyjapan Webmaster — Sun, 15 Oct 2006 12:37:00 +0000

India workers use cell phones to dial in prosperity
Explosion in number of subscribers fuels economic boon and productivity for many who had previously struggled to make a living
By Kevin Sullivan
WASHINGTON POST
PALLIPURAM, India - Babu Rajan pointed off the starboard bow and shouted: "There! There!"

In choppy, gray seas four miles from shore near India's tropical southern tip, Rajan spotted the tinselly sparkle of a school of sardines. He ordered his three dozen crewmen to quickly drop their 5-ton net overboard.

Within five minutes, the cell phone hanging around his neck rang.

"Hallo!" he shouted, struggling to hear over the big diesel engines of his 74-foot boat, Andavan. "Medium sized! Medium sized!" he said, estimating the haul for a wholesale agent calling from port, who had heard by cell phone from other skippers that Rajan had just set his nets.

Minutes later Rajan's phone rang again -- another agent at a different port. Then one of Rajan's regular customers called: Is it a good catch? When will you be here?

"It's good! But let me finish here!" Rajan shouted, sweating as he helped to haul in the huge red net.

He hung up and laughed: "When I have a big catch, the phone rings 60 or 70 times before I get to port."

The cell phone is bringing new economic clout, profit and productivity to Rajan and millions of other poor laborers in India, the world's fastest-growing cell phone market.

At the beginning of 2000, India had 1.6 million cell phone subscribers; today there are 125 million -- three times the number of land lines in the country. With 6 million new cell phone subscribers each month, industry analysts predict that in four years nearly half of India's 1.1 billion people will be connected by cell phone.

That explosive growth has meant greater access to markets, information about prices and new customers for tens of millions of Indian farmers and fishers.

A convenience taken for granted in wealthy nations, the cell phone is putting cash in the pockets of people for whom a dollar is a good day's wage. And it has made market-savvy entrepreneurs out of sheep herders, rickshaw drivers and even the acrobatic men who climb up palm trees to harvest coconuts here in Kerala state.

"This has changed the entire dynamics of communications and how they organize their lives," said C.K. Prahalad, an India-born business professor at the University of Michigan, who has written extensively about how commerce -- and cell phones -- are used to combat poverty.

"One element of poverty is the lack of information," Prahalad said. "The cell phone gives poor people as much information as the middleman."

For less than a penny a minute -- the world's cheapest cell phone call rates -- farmers in remote areas can check prices for their produce. They call around to local markets to find the best deal. They also track global trends using cell phone-based Internet services that show the price of pumpkins or bananas in London or Chicago.

Indian farmers use camera-phones to snap pictures of crop pests, then send the photos by cell phone to biologists who can identify the bug and suggest ways to combat it. In cities, painters, carpenters and plumbers who once begged for work door-to-door say they now have all the work they can handle because customers can reach them instantly by cell phone.

T.V. Ramachandran, director general of the Cellular Operators Association of India, a private industry group, said construction of new cell towers is expanding most rapidly in rural areas, and India's coverage area has tripled in the past year. He said cell phone growth is driven by the young -- more than half the population is younger than 25 -- and, increasingly, by people in neglected rural areas.

In a country where the World Bank calculates that nearly 80 percent of the population lives on less than $2 a day, Ramachandran said cell phones have become the "poor man's phone."

Rajan said the dealers who buy his wares don't necessarily like the new balance of power, but they are paying better prices to him and thousands of other fishers who work this lush stretch of coastline. "They are forced to give us more money because there is competition," said Rajan, who estimated that his income has at least tripled to an average of $150 a month since 2000, when cell phones began booming in India. He said he is providing for his family in ways that his fisherman father never could, including a house with electricity and a television.

"When I was a kid we never had enough money for clothes and books, so we never really went to school," said Rajan, 50. "Now everything is different."

At 5:30, Rajan's cell phone rang for the first of dozens of times that day. Rajan pulled it out of his breast pocket, where he keeps it at the end of a red cord around his neck in a plastic protective case. The captain of another boat cutting through the dark sea, visible only by its red and green running lights, was calling to plot strategy.

The skippers agreed that they would steam about 14 miles offshore, where Rajan's crew had landed almost $2,000 worth of sardines two days earlier, a great catch. In a flurry of calls, Rajan and other skippers were all clearly worried because yesterday had been a disaster. After 12 hours at sea under a broiling sun, nobody had caught enough sardines to make a decent lunch for a cat.

"I can't imagine life without my phone," said Rajan, who has curly hair, a graying beard and a body hardened by work. Before cell phones, he said, he couldn't communicate with other boat captains. Few of them could afford expensive marine radios, so if someone hit a massive school of sardines, there was no way to alert friends on other boats.

And if the boat broke down, as they frequently do, Rajan said he would have to wait at sea and hope that help happened along. Now he can call his mechanic, who also carries a cell phone, to ask for emergency service. And if the crew has a family emergency on shore, the news arrives instantly -- as it did a week ago when a crewman's father-in-law died suddenly.

"We should have had this power a long time ago," Rajan said as a pink-orange sunrise peeked through the clouds.

After nine hours at sea, at 1:44 p.m., Rajan was ready to give up for the day. The wind was kicking up a choppy sea, making it hard to spot the ripples and sparkles made by schools of sardines. Then, from his perch high in the bow, he spotted them about 50 yards off the bow. He jumped up and down and shouted to the crew members, who scrambled to their places.

By 3 p.m., the open boat was loaded with fish and the Andavan turned toward port, an hour away. Standing on the deck soaked with sweat, Rajan started returning phone calls. He dialed the number of the wholesale agent at his home port, who offered about $13 for each 110-pound box of fish -- about 12 cents a pound.

Rajan agreed to the deal. He said if his load had been bigger and it had been earlier in the day, he would have called around to check prices at other ports. But he said for a smallish load late in the day, the first price offered was fair. And he said the dealer was forced to offer a decent price, knowing that Rajan could still go elsewhere. As insurance, Rajan returned the call of the other dealer who had called him, just to keep good relations for another day.

Rajan said that without his phone, his catch might have gone to waste. Because he called ahead to the port, buyers there knew that he was coming, what kind of fish he had and the size of his catch. In the past, Rajan said, he would sometimes arrive at port late in the day only to find that all the buyers had gone home, unaware that another boat was coming. His catch would go unsold and he and his crew would go unpaid.

"Even if it takes us one or two hours to get there, they will still be waiting for us," Rajan said, smoking a cigarette on the Andavan's deck. "It was never like that before."

Right to information act India's magic wand against corruption

Kuttyjapan Webmaster — Thu, 31 Aug 2006 06:40:00 +0000

Right to information act India's magic wand against corruption
Siddharth Srivastava, New Delhi

Lost in the din of the Indo-U.S. nuclear deal and reservations for backward classes in higher educational institutions, has been a change that will likely overhaul the relationship between the government and the people of India forever.

In the few months of existence, the Right to Information (RTI) Act has already engendered mass movements in the country that is bringing the lethargic, often corrupt bureaucracy to its knees and changing power equations completely. Some say, the RTI, more than the nuclear pact, will perhaps be the one rule of law that the Manmohan Singh-Sonia Gandhi combine will be remembered most in history, though the duo may not have actually realized the difference it can make to the lives of the common man.

From issues related to ration cards, passports, driving licenses, civic problems, government aid money for poverty alleviation to flood relief, notices are being filed across the country, with government officials, for a change, at the receiving end. If they do not reply satisfactorily within a month, their salaries are liable to be cut, as per the new law. Many have already faced the worst.

Some officials have complained of being victimized, but there is no sympathy for them, as it is the large number of the masses who have had to kowtow to dictates and non-performance for so long.

The legislation gives Indians the power to ask officials about almost anything, except issues of national security, cabinet papers and information protected by the courts. For a nominal fee, officials have to deliver reports on the progress of applications for voter's ID card, water and electricity connections.

As this correspondent has noted, there are only two opinions about the Act that came into force last winter. A senior government official said that he has never felt as harassed in replying to queries, while the head of a resident's welfare association said that the RTI is the biggest boon.

The concerned residents have ensured that a local road, that on paper was supposed to be functioning very well, is fixed, via a RTI appeal. Arvind Kejriwal, who founded Parivartan (Change), one of the organizations that fought for the law, is among this year's winners of the Manila-based Ramon Magsaysay Award for his RTI grassroots campaign.

"This law has instilled a fear among the officials," Manish Sisodia, a campaigner with Parivartan as been quoted. "In a democracy, we say the common man is the master but it is rarely so. RTI gives them this power - to open any file, any document and any door. It's proving to be a very effective tool to fight corruption, though corruption can never go from India."

Predictably, elements in the higher echelons of the bureaucracy have been seeking a dilution in the Act and almost succeeded in convincing their political masters of the need to exclude file nothings, a move that would have substantially turned the tables in favor of the government servant (referred colloquially and sometimes pejoratively as babus).

The original Act covers a wide range of information defined as "any material in any form including records, documents, memos, e-mails, opinions, advises, press releases, circulars, orders, log-books, contracts, reports, papers, samples, models, data material held in any electronic form and information relating to any private body which can be accessed by a public authority under any other law for the time being in force." Obviously, the babus were not happy and wanted more protection.

Following a furor, the government has retracted the move that was cleared by the cabinet, at least for now. The government has more or less given up the idea of bringing the RTI (amendment) Bill that seeks to keep file nothings out of the purview of the Act this monsoon session of Parliament, reportedly at the instance of Sonia. "As far as the amendment to the RTI Act is concerned, officially we are not saying that we are dropping the cabinet decision on file nothings, but it may well be that the amendment is not brought at all," a senior union minister has been quoted.

RTI activists who conducted a referendum reported 98.7 per cent of people, including those in Delhi, voted against the proposed amendments. Armed with the new law, about 700 pressure groups and charities have jointly launched a nationwide drive to make people aware of their rights in early July. About 1,500 volunteers set up information center camps at key government offices in 47 cities, resulting in over 14,000 RTI applications being filed. Ironically, several of the petitioners include government servants questioning service conditions such as transfers, suspensions or promotions.

Four RTI activists, including Kejriwal, have said: "We urge the government to leave the RTI Act 2005 as it is for a few years. This is a historic legislation and this government deserves to be congratulated for this. Let some people within the bureaucracy not be allowed to undo the good work of the government."

The Central Information Commission (CIC) that monitors the RTI has also been involved in its own battle on the issue with the government, speaking against the proposed amendment.

This correspondent too has filed a petition under the RTI seeking status of refund of security deposit (US$350) for a telephone connection, the service provided by a government owned firm. The phone has been disconnected for four years now, with no sign of the money. A reply should be due soon.

It may be recalled that India ranks among the most corrupt nations in the world. Studies by the Berlin-based Transparency International and other indices such as the Corruption Perception Index have consistently ranked India as one of the worst as far as corrupt practices go. As per Transparency, India has secured a lowly spot at number 88 (out of 159 countries surveyed) of the most corrupt places on the planet, along with unlikely companion countries such as Gabon, Mali, Moldova, Tanzania and Iran.

Earlier this year, the World Bank (WB) decided to hold back over $ 1 billion meant for health programs in the county due to allegations of fraud and corruption. India, keen to project itself as an economic powerhouse, thus joined the ranks of countries such as Bangladesh, Chad, Congo, Kenya and Argentina against whom similar action has been taken.

There have been various attempts to put a figure to the dimension of corruption: Government loss of $50 billion due to tax evasion; $10 billion due to delay in projects due to bureaucratic red tape; corruption costs the Indian taxpayer nearly $7 billion a year. Former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi famously said that for every rupee spent by the government for development less than a tenth of the amount actually reaches the beneficiary and this too is an exaggerated figure.

The writer is a New Delhi-based journalist. He can be reached at srivastava_siddharth@hotmail.com.

How to Disable Non Genuine Windows Warning Messages

Kuttyjapan Webmaster — Sat, 15 Jul 2006 09:28:00 +0000

Looks like someone in the world already able to bypass that...

http://techtics.iblogzz.com/2006/05/07/disable-non-genuine-windows-warning-messages/

Remove the Ads from MSN, Windows Live Messenger

Kuttyjapan Webmaster — Sat, 15 Jul 2006 09:24:00 +0000

For instant messaging, I use MSN Messenger. One of the major annoyances are the ads and the annoying tabs loading, etcetera, etcetera. Remove the ads from MSN Messenger, Windows Live Messenger and Windows Messenger with the tools described below.

I found this tool called MSN Universal Patcher ++. It removes the ads from MSN Messenger, and enables multiple sessions of the messenger, allowing you to login into multiple accounts at the same time. In other words, you can start MSN Messenger three times, and login with three different accounts. It works for MSN Messenger 7.5.0324 and below.

How to use it:

1. Close MSN Messenger. ( if it’s open ).
2. Download the Patcher.
3. Open the patcher and click on “Inschakelen” and “Onzichtbaar” ( the tool is Dutch, I can’t change that ).
4. Click on Patch.
5. Done.

If you think that this is a good idea, please respond in the comments :)

Update: Another patcher for Windows Live Messenger. Works the same way as described above. Download it here

Install Windows Media Player 11 bypassing validation

Kuttyjapan Webmaster — Sat, 15 Jul 2006 08:58:00 +0000

Install Windows Media Player 11 bypassing validation

Step 1: Download the Installer package from Microsoft download site.
Step 2: Use WinRAR to EXTRACT the mpsetup.exe to a local directory (NOT NETWORK PATH)
Step 3 : Download cracked legitlib.dll
Step 4 : Replace legitlib.dll in this folder with the one which you got from step 3
Step 5 : Run setup_wm.exe
Step 6 : Thats it

Internet Explorer 7 (Beta 3 ) Genuine ByPass

Kuttyjapan Webmaster — Sat, 15 Jul 2006 08:55:00 +0000

Microsoft has released a new Internet Explorer 7. The new version is Beta 3.

They also updated the validation again.

Here is a way to bypass it.

0. Remove IE 7 Beta 2 ( if installed ).
1. Download IE 7 Beta 3 from the MS website.
2. Extract it with WinRAR or another extraction tool to a new directory.
3. Download the patched iecustom.dll.
4. Copy the iecustom.dll to the update folder, and click yes when asked to overwrite.
5. Run update.exe ( not iesetup.exe ! ).
6. When the installation is succesfull, reboot and run xmllitesetup.exe.
7. Done.

How To Increase your Hotmail Storage space to 25MB

Kuttyjapan Webmaster — Sun, 08 May 2005 21:40:00 +0000

How To Increase your Hotmail Storage space to 25MB

Login ur hotmail account
go to options.
Go to "Personal"
Click "My Profile"
Change Country to "United States"
Wait for browser to load United states settings.
Change the state to "Florida"
Enter zip code "33332"
Click "update"
Click "Continue"
Go to "Language" and make sure its "English"
Paste this link in the same browser.
http://by17fd.bay17.hotmail.msn.com/cgi-bin/Accountclose
Wait until the Screen says you're Hotmail is Closed and ready to be deleted.
Click "Close Account".
Now Click on reactivate and click continue
ReLogin to Hotmail ..!!
Your account size will now increase to 25 MB which a mnth later becomes 250 mb. ( all your OLD mails will BE RETAINED )
Now change your profile back to your country and state.

Thats it..

Opinion & Analysis - Is India taking off?

Kuttyjapan Webmaster — Sat, 07 May 2005 08:24:00 +0000

Opinion & Analysis: "Is India taking off?

A collection of articles takes a jab at the question but there are too many imponderables.

Over 40 years ago, the American economic historian W W Rostow defined �take-off� in his book The Stages of Economic Growth as �the interval when the old blocks and resistances to steady growth are finally overcome � The forces making for economic progress � expand and come to dominate the society.

Growth becomes its normal condition�. According to Rostow�s linear stages of economic growth, India should have reached its �maturity,� or the state in which its technological and entrepreneurial skills can provide anything of India�s choosing.

This is the question that two American scholars, Alyssa Ayres and Philip Oldenburg (editors), ask in their anthology, India Briefing: Take-Off at Last?

First, the contents. Apart from the Introduction, which takes an overview of the economic-political-cultural-and-business scenario, the breakdown, chapter-wise, by Indian scholars based in the US or America-returned Indian academics are: “Politics: The BJP Falls from Power” by Niraja Gopal Jayal (JNU); “Indian Economy: New Pathways to Growth and Development” by Isher Ahluwalia (former director and chief executive of the Indian Council for Research on International Economic Relations); “India’s International Relations: The Space for Stability, Space, and Strength” by Amitabh Mattoo (formerly JNU and now vice-chancellor of Jammu University); “The Cultural Background of Hindutva” by Richard Davis (professor of religions, Bard College, New York); “Work and Wealth” by Renana Jhabvala (national coordinator of the Self-Employed Women’s Association); “The Business of Bollywood” by Manjeet Kripalani (Bureau Chief, Business Week); and “Downloading India: A Guide to Online Resources”.

What the contributors have provided is a useful summing up of the present state of play in their respective area studies.

What is of interest is that the editors and contributors address their concerns to the central question of power in the economy, when everything in the world today merges into everything else, politics into economics, economics into sociology and history, and so on, “Economics as a separate science,” as Bertrand Russell said long ago, “is unrealistic and misleading if taken as a guide in practice.

It is one element—a very important element, it is true—in a wider study, the science of power.” Power should therefore be “a recurrent theme in any economic study of a theoretical or applied nature”.

When it all boils down to a question of power, it becomes important to factor in the cultural forces that aid or impede economic growth.

This is especially true of us, where any attempt to modernise is haunted by “the ghost of dead religious beliefs” that have largely been emptied of authentic spirituality.

For instance, in the Hindi belt, where, to quote Marx, “an impoverished present decks itself out in the alluring insignia of a sacred past,” nothing moves without an understanding of the cultural background of different regions.

Two essays deal with what one would call “the cultural theory of economic growth”: the BJP’s fall from power, and Hindutva, which uses culture to explain the economic and political outcomes.

Taken together, they provide useful recaps for someone new to the political scene who would like to know how the “saffronisation of power” developed.

But they do not offer much comment on the essential nature of the BJP and its ideological mentor, the RSS, and its militant Hindutva philosophy. Nor do they explain the reasons for the factionalism within the BJP or how its philosophies would be reconciled with the imperatives of coalition politics.

But all the facts, “who comes, who goes”, are all there, which provide the foundation to delve further into the politics of the BJP and its NDA allies.

Dr Ahluwalia’s economic survey of the last decade examines the origins of the present buoyant optimism.

For a decade, the economy had seen a real growth in GDP of about 6 per cent. Dr Ahluwalia’s hope is that with “the right policy mix” we could take off on a markedly steeper growth path, “something close to 8 per cent.”

This sort of acceleration is necessary to provide opportunities for India’s growing population and faster-growing workforce. During the present decade, in one estimate, India’s labour force will expand by 50 per cent more than all of East Asia’s (including China) put together.

Without further structural reform, such a growth spurt seems unlikely—especially with the kind of attitudes the Left has taken.

Besides, there are many other areas of darkness. It was this “darkness”, especially in rural and small-town India, that cost the BJP its job in the last elections.

As we stand today, there are many imponderables and no one can say with any confidence, “I’ve seen the future and it works.” If we keep tumbling through, that would be enough.

Miracle that�s India, yet we demonise it

Kuttyjapan Webmaster — Sat, 07 May 2005 08:16:00 +0000

Miracle that�s India, yet we demonise it: "Miracle that�s India, yet we demonise it

The uncultured habit of Indians, here in US, to slam everything that is India to gain cheap points by pandering to the public's desire for melodrama, goes to the heights of slander.

Growing up in the southern city of Bangalore in the early 70�s, I was appalled to see differing political factions of Iranian students indulging in open street fights. What a loutish group these people are, I thought to myself. It was a classic example of washing one�s dirty linen in public in a different country. It evoked a sense of disgust in me. It is the same feeling that I sense, here in New York, when I view the local desi scene in the context of the denial of an US visa to Narendra Modi, the Chief Minister of Gujarat.

I do not wish to dwell on the pros and cons of the issue at hand but would rather like to analyse what such episodes do to our image as a nation and a people. How does it reflect upon of all of us � the secular groups, the nationalist factions or whatever (I hate these labels for they mislead). Is this the right forum to wash our dirty linen? Does it serve any purpose apart from demoralising us?

We as a nation appear to be excessively obsessed about how we are perceived. What will the world think of us is question that we often ask ourselves and is a mantra that is chanted again and again. Now who or what is this “world” that we keep referring to? Is it the Western governments? Is it the Western media? Or is it the lay public in these countries? And how is this opinion shaped? Does it stem from an independent judgment? Or is it a reflection of how we project ourselves?

During colonial times the British encouraged an unsavoury image of India in order to justify their rule; the natives are unfit to rule themselves was their premise. According to them, snake charmers, emaciated cows on the streets and ubiquitous dirt seemed to embody India, prompting even Mahatma Gandhi to dub such descriptions as nothing more than ‘a drain inspectors report’. Writing in Young India, Mahatma Gandhi said, “Katherine Mayo’s book Mother India is the report of a drain inspector sent out with one purpose of opening and examining the drains of the country to be reported upon… If Miss Mayo had confessed that she had gone to India merely to open out and examine the drains of India, there would be little to complain about her compilation. But she says, in effect, with a certain amount of triumph “the drains are India….”

As these stereotyped images of India conjured during colonial times fade away today, another one, uglier and more repulsive than the previous, is being created. Events are being exaggerated or blown out of proportion in order to sensationalise news items and thereby make them more appealing to a Western audience. However the culprits this time are not the West or Europeans. The detractors are our own homegrown writers enthusiastically misusing a newfound access to the world stage with each one trying to outdo the other in this calumny.

Pankaj Mishra is the author of the novel, the Romantics and is a regular contributor to the New York Times. On the eve of Clinton’s visit to India in March 2000, in a scene that conformed to a Nazi how to manual, 33 Sikhs are rounded up and gunned down in cold blood by Islamic militants. The hideous crime shocks the nation and reverberates throughout the world. But Pankaj Mishra chooses to see it differently. In an article titled, “Pride and Blood in Kashmir”, (NYT, March 22, 2000) he uses this barbaric act, not to castigate the militants for their brutality, but to censure the Indian Government for its highhandedness. He quotes a Border Security Force personnel who tells him, “I don’t believe in this human rights nonsense.” Pankaj Mishra concludes, “The military arms of all-powerful authorities in New Delhi have been used to suppress regional discontent.” In effect he is telling the outside world that Indian democracy is a sham.

In another article (Hinduism’s Political Resurgence, NYT, February 25, 2002), Pankaj Mishra goes one step further preferring Pakistan under the dictator Musharraf to democratic India under the BJP: “While General Musharraf strives toward a secular polity, the ruling politicians of India head in the opposite direction.” Imagine the irony when he surmises: “Oddly, the illiberal tendencies a military dictator seeks to expel, with popular support, from Pakistan seem to be finding a hospitable home in democratic India.”

These writers are at their worst or best (from their perspective) when they report on anything to do with Hindu nationalism. Reproduced below is a paragraph from Pankaj Mishra’s, “The Other Face of Fanaticism” (NYT, Feb 2, 2003). Referring to the Gujarat violence he writes: “The scale of the violence was matched only by its brutality. Women were gang-raped before being killed. Children were burned alive. Grave-diggers at mass burial sites told investigators “that most bodies that had arrived….were burned and butchered beyond recognition. Many were missing body parts-arms, legs and even heads. The elderly and the handicapped were not spared.” Is this the image of India that we wish to project to the outside world? Again am I saying: hush up these evil acts?

No. Use the right forums to seek redress if that is your real intention. Do not sensationalize events to garner personal glory.

A. Ghosh’s report in Time magazine is along the same lines. He speaks of how people boasted of the killings associated with the Gujarat riots and then adds:

“Some, if not all, of this was undoubtedly pure braggadocio. The stories sounded fake, or at least embellished for effect. "It was like a bunch of schoolboys boasting about imaginary achievements," said my friend. "But these so-called achievements were murderous." What was especially scary was the casual, matter-of-fact tone in which this conversation was conducted. "These guys seemed no more agitated than they would have if they were talking about the weather," said my friend. "It was like an everyday discussion."

If Ghosh realises that these incidents are not entirely true (embellished for effect) and suggestive of ‘pure braggadocio’ as he himself puts it, why does he feel the need to document them especially in an international magazine? Apart from netting him a byline and falsely maligning Indians does it serve any function?

Look how Meenaksi Ganguly writing in Time uses one man’s words to denigrate the Hindus as a whole: “Another man, who claimed to have killed nine Muslims that day, offered this explanation: "I am just a Hindu. That is enough, because I was acting for all Hindus."

Their writing is graphic in a most negative way and is meant to portray the worst of India. Read this excerpt from Shashi Tharoor’s article, paying close attention to the words I have italicised (India’s Past Becomes a Weapon, NYT, March 6, 2002): “In 1992 a howling mob of Hindu extremists tore down the Babri Masjid, which occupied a prominent spot in a town otherwise overflowing with temples. The mosque had been built in the 1520's by India's first Mogul emperor, Babur; the Hindu zealots vowed to replace it with a temple to Ram. In other words, they want to avenge history by undoing the shame of half a millennium ago”. Such writings effectively conjure up an image of a country filled with bloodthirsty religious fanatics.

As these articles indicate, most articles about India appearing in the foreign news media are penned by Indians or people of Indian origin. During the months of March-April 2002, the Washington Post had 12 reports (most of them not complementary) on the Gujarat riots: six were by Rama Lakshmi, 5 by Rajiv Chandrasekaran and 1 by Salman Rushdie .

In the debate about Gujarat, Indian newspapers are extremely fond of referencing an ‘international’ organization; the New York based Human Rights Watch. But do you know who authored the report on Gujarat put out by HRW? Smitha Narula, a person of Indian origin.

So an objective evaluation reveals that what we perceive as western opinion is really not so. It is in fact a veneer that has been deviously crafted by Indian political groups pursuing a narrow agenda.

What makes these Indian writers depict India in this fashion? There are two reasons for this. One is that the Western public (like the public everywhere) craves for melodrama which these Indian writers are ever willing to provide even at the cost of truth and honesty. In addition, the urge to ‘get published’ in the Western press drives these individuals to dramatize events. Secondly this is the result of an ideological warfare that is being waged by the Indian left against the Hindu right. Unfortunately, the so-called liberal wing in India has a large cadre of well educated (not intellectuals, mind you) Westernised journalists who are able to interact with their counterparts in the West and thereby propagate their one-sided views.

Compared to the pessimism that pervades the writings of Indian authors, Western writers tend to be more fair and positive about India. Reproduced below is an abstract from an op-ed piece titled, Vote France Off the Island ( NY Times,Feb 9,2003) by the noted columnist Thomas Friedman: “Sometimes I wish that the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council could be chosen like the starting five for the N.B.A. All-Star team — with a vote by the fans. If so, I would certainly vote France off the Council and replace it with India. Then the perm-five would be Russia, China, India, Britain and the United States. That's more like it.

Why replace France with India? Because India is the world's biggest democracy, the world's largest Hindu nation and the world's second-largest Muslim nation, and, quite frankly, India is just so much more serious than France these days. France is so caught up with its need to differentiate itself from America to feel important, it's become silly. India has grown out of that game. India may be ambivalent about war in Iraq, but it comes to its ambivalence honestly. Also, France can't see how the world has changed since the end of the cold war. India can.”

In another article captioned, Where Freedom reigns (NY Times, August 14, 2002) Friedman concludes: “The more time you spend in India the more you realize that this teeming, multiethnic, multireligious, multilingual country is one of the world's great wonders -- a miracle with message. And the message is that democracy matters.

This truth hits you from every corner. Consider Bangalore, where the traffic is now congested by all the young Indian techies, many from the lower-middle classes, who have gotten jobs, apartments -- and motor scooters -- by providing the brainpower for the world's biggest corporations. While the software designs of these Indian techies may be rocket science, what made Bangalore what it is today is something very simple: 50 years of Indian democracy and secular education, and 15 years of economic liberalisation, produced all this positive energy.”

Reading this article made my heart well with pride. I made a copy of the article and had my American-born daughters read it again and again. Even when commenting about something unpleasant like the Hindu-Muslim riots of Gujarat, a foreigner like Friedman is willing to analyse the events objectively. His observations are tempered with good sense and good judgment. Though critical of the riots and the Hindu nationalist BJP; he is reluctant to demonise events. His keen journalistic eye observes that the riots did not spread to other parts of India as one would expect.

“No, India is not paradise. Just last February the Hindu nationalist BJP government in the state of Gujarat stirred up a pogrom by Hindus against Muslims that left 600 Muslims, and dozens of Hindus, dead. It was a shameful incident, and in a country with 150 million Muslims -- India has the largest Muslim minority in the world -- it was explosive. And do you know what happened?

Nothing happened.

The rioting didn't spread anywhere.”

So am I saying that violent crimes and brutal injustice should be hushed-up or swept under the rug? Am I suggesting that a foreigner’s view is more important than an Indian’s?

The answer is no on both accounts. My only grouse is with the forum that one uses for this purpose. Such type of exposure on the international front hardly serves any constructive purpose.

The world is not going to shower accolades on us for washing our dirty linen in public. They will only use this information to chastise us and imply obliquely that we are not yet ready to be granted a permanent seat in the UN. Further it tends to strengthen colonial notions of Indians as uncivilized natives incapable of resolving their problems in a sophisticated manner.

All said and done, India still boasts of an infrastructure that works. Our courts do hand out fair judgments. Our newspapers posses a degree of freedom that is unmatched in the world. That this freedom has been blatantly misused in recent times is another story. More importantly, we have a functioning parliament that allows every grievance to be voiced publicly. So if one genuinely desires redress without ulterior motives, these are avenues that can be tapped and should be. Recourse to the world stage is relevant only in cases of suppressed nations which India is not.

Now, run your vehicle on waste plastic fuel! - Its going to be the future

Kuttyjapan Webmaster — Sat, 26 Mar 2005 17:30:00 +0000

Chennai, Mar 25 : In a major breakthrough in technology, students of Chennai break a hard nut, turning plastic into fuel, almost equivalent to petrol but comparatively very cheap!

Even as the new product has been certified by the Chennai Petroleum Corporation, these students have proved that there can also be an optimum utilisation of waste.

Mechanical engineering students of the Velammal College find a way out to dispose off non-degradable plastic by converting it into useful petroleum products like petrol, diesel and kerosene.

Through several experiments and a secret catalyst, a team of students discovered a method of generating petroleum products from one of the most problematic plastic waste. The team included Sridhar, Jaikar Sathish, V Lakshmanan and Guru Prasa.

"We make use of biomedical waste and plastic carry bags which mainly consist of waste polythene and polypropylene," said Jaikar, one of the students.

"We approached Chennai Petroleum Corporation. They have tested and certified the fuel being produced by students. Now we have also approached Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Chennai to test its quality," said Dr Rathinasababathi, Principal of the college.

He added, "This petrol is pollution-free and gives extra mileage. It is also cost effective when compared to normal petrol."

These students have proved that there can also be an optimum utilisation of waste. It is estimated that India generates 5600 tonnes of plastic waste daily, out of which Chennai alone generates close to 150 tonnes of plastic waste everyday. That is bound to grow. It is reassuring that inventive minds all over India are working to turn a huge problem into an advantage- hopefully one that doesn't compromise the environment.

The technology adopted to achieve this innovation is very simple. Plastic waste is heated to a very high temperature of 110 :C, mixed with non-plastic wastes, compacted, and cut into blocks, which have a long shelf life. 'With low moisture levels and ash content and higher calorific values than coal, the blended fuels can easily substitute coal'. The technology, which is awaiting commercialization, has a market for both the industrial and domestic sectors. The industries that this technology can benefit are the ones that are energy-intensive: cement, sugar

Congratulate him for telling the truth, bluntly

Kuttyjapan Webmaster — Sun, 06 Mar 2005 23:45:00 +0000

Congratulate him for telling the truth, bluntly

This is a collection of articles by Mr.S Gurumurthy of New India Press...

Definetely its a thought for everyone...

Visit at http://www.newindpress.com/Column.asp?ID=IEM20050207205534

Keep it going Mr. S Gurumurthy

India's R&D: Reaching for the Top - Good Article

Kuttyjapan Webmaster — Thu, 03 Mar 2005 22:34:00 +0000

India's R&D: Reaching for the Top

Raghunath A. Mashelkar
India

Raghunath A. Mashelkar began life in poverty, sometimes hungry and shoeless. Now he is the director general of the Council of Scientific & Industrial Research (CSIR), a chain of 38 publicly funded industrial R&D institutions in India, and president of the Indian National Science Academy. That personal experience of ascendance from dire circumstances, improvements in his country's infrastructure, and changing patterns of scientific emigration and immigration have convinced him that India is fated to become one of the world's greatest intellectual and economic engines. Before becoming a leading architect of his country's science and technology policies, Dr. Mashelkar did pioneering work in polymer science and engineering, which earned him many international laurels. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society (London), a Fellow of the Academy of Sciences for the Developing World (TWAS), and a Foreign Fellow of the U.S. National Academy of Engineering. Dubbed a "dangerous optimist" in India, he is deeply committed to championing the cause of the developing world. He is also known in India for several high-powered "Mashelkar Committees," which have influenced such societal sectors as higher education, drug regulatory systems, and national automobile fuel policy.

Five years ago, during my presidential address to the Indian Science Congress, I made a prediction: "The next century will belong to India, which will become a unique intellectual and economic power to reckon with, recapturing all its glory, which it had in the millennia gone by," I told the gathering of 5000, among them the country's prime minister.
It must have sounded crazy. How could a country with so many impoverished people, and so many illiterates, rise to have such a central global role? What possibly could have given me the confidence to make such a prediction?

The confidence came from a little boy. In the late 1950s, this boy struggled to have two meals a day while he studied under the streetlights and went barefoot to school. This same boy almost left school in 1960, because his poor widowed mother could not support his education. That this boy, who is myself, could become the president of the Indian Science Congress is what gave me the confidence to say that India could again achieve intellectual and economic greatness. If this miracle could happen to any Indian, then given an opportunity, it can happen to every Indian.

My own turn toward science began at a poor school in Mumbai (the local name for Bombay). I remember Principal Bhave, who taught us physics. One day, he took us outside the classroom to demonstrate how to find the focal length of a convex lens. He focused the sun's rays onto a piece of paper and told us that the distance between the paper and the lens was the focal length. Then he held the lens in place until the paper burned. That's when he turned to me and said, "Mashelkar, if you can focus your energies like this and not diffuse them, you can burn anything in the world!" I decided at that moment to become a scientist.

I indeed focused on my goal, invariably placing first in my classes. After earning a bachelor's degree in chemical engineering from Bombay University in 1966, I received fellowship offers for graduate study in the United States and Canada. But I decided to remain in India to pursue my studies toward a Ph.D. I did postdoctoral research in the United Kingdom, held a faculty position there, and then had a brief stint in the United States as a visiting professor. But in the mid-1970s, when attractive offers came my way for faculty positions in top schools in the United States and United Kingdom, I decided to return to India.

In this essay, I focus on the importance of returnees to poor countries such as India. I will examine how demographic shifts are creating shortages of skilled scientists and engineers in developed economies and leading to a new dynamic in human capital that is enabling some developing countries to emerge as "global R&D hubs." I also address ways in which global funding sources can be leveraged in such countries to create new knowledge devoted to the global good.

Intellectual Capital

Let me first address the issue of migration of talented students from the developing world to the developed world. In 1926, the distribution of scientific productivity was analyzed by Alfred J. Lotka of the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company in New York. The result of his investigation, which remains largely valid, was an inverse square law of productivity, by which the number of people producing n papers is inversely proportional to n2. This means that for every 100 authors who produce, say, one paper in a given period of time, there are approximately 100/22, or 25 authors, who produce two papers and one author, who will produce 10 papers. Thirty years later, the same law was found to be applicable to patents.

This means that the bulk of scientific and technological creativity and productivity lies in the minds and abilities of a small number of highly talented individuals. Since India gained independence in 1947, the country has consistently lost such individuals to the developed world. The country's leaders comforted themselves by assuming that the number of scientific émigrés was too small for a country of 1 billion people to worry about. But they were not considering Lotka's law and so did not realize that by losing the top tier of talent, we also lost most of our intellectual energy.

Indica-tions of things to come. The Indica car, first designed and built in India for Indians in the 1990s, now is selling in European markets.
recent report by the United Nations Development Programme* estimates that 100,000 Indian professionals leave the country every year to take up jobs in the United States. If one considers the potential economic gains, which these exceptionally talented people could have brought to India, one realizes that the economic losses due to this mass migration are enormous.
Invariably it is assumed that the main driving force for the brain drain is economic. People go to the developed world in search of a higher income, so the theory goes. But I do not think material gain is the only reason. After all, according to a recent study by the U.S. National Science Foundation, the number of scientists and engineers who left Japan to work in the United States and who did not return jumped by 100% between 1995 and 1999. Yet Japan, unlike India, already is a developed country with many high-paying jobs. The Italian scientist Riardo Giacconi, a Nobel Laureate in Physics, summed up what might be the most important factor behind such a brain drain when he said: "A scientist is like a painter. Michelangelo became a great artist, because he had been given a wall to paint. My wall was given to me by the United States."

Only now are such walls becoming available in developing countries, but for reasons that could not have been anticipated 10 years ago.

This past December, I visited the John F. Welch Technology Centre in Bangalore. With 2300 employees, it is General Electric's (GE's) largest single location for R&D in the world. I found that 700 of the employees were young Indians, who had chosen to come back to India from the United States during the preceding 3 to 4 years. GE is not alone in setting up shop in India. More than 100 global companies including IBM, Motorola, and Intel have established R&D centers in India during the past 5 years, and more are coming. Many Indians who received their training and early work experiences abroad are now returning to India to work in these research centers. There is a silent scientific repatriation taking place in India.

Why are the foreign companies, some of whom have budgets larger than India's entire $6 billion R&D budget, moving a sizable portion of their R&D infrastructures to India? I was present in Bangalore, 5 years ago, when the John. F. Welch Technology Centre was set up. When Welch, who then was still GE's chief operating officer, was asked why he was taking this step, he replied: "India is a developing country, but it is a developed country as far as its intellectual infrastructure is concerned. We get the highest intellectual capital per dollar here."

One way to understand what Welch meant is to calculate the number of scientific research publications the country produces per dollar that is spent on R&D in India. Using the data provided by Sir David King (chief scientific adviser to the UK government) for scientific publications in major, peer-reviewed journals (SCI publications), I calculated the number of journal publications per gross domestic product (GDP) per capita per year. The top three nations were India (31.7), China (23.32), and the United States (7.0). John Welch's intuition was right!

My calculation has to be viewed carefully, of course. After all, the percentage of all global SCI publications produced by India and China is less than 2% each. But this also means that if India and China were to increase their science and technology ranks by several fold (which they are perfectly capable of doing) and invest more per scientist (which already is happening), then it is possible for both countries to enhance their competitiveness several fold. Indeed, if we apply Lotka's law of scientific productivity, India's and China's competitive advantage ought to increase by several orders of magnitude as more and more of the most talented scientists return. In this way, by shifting much of their R&D activity to countries such as India and China, the world's industries can greatly bolster the domestic intellectual capital of these countries.

Scientific Repatriation

As the direction of the brain drain shifts away from developed countries, rather than toward them, shortages in R&D personnel in developed economies are likely to arise. And as that happens, there will be a greater drive toward multiple geographical and organizational sources of technology. The impact of such shortages can be seen by citing an example from the European Union (EU). For the EU to meet the goal set at the 2002 Barcelona Summit of increasing R&D spending as a share of GDP to 3% by 2010, the EU will have to add 700,000 new researchers to the workforce. As one EU representative put it recently, there will be a greater draw on "Third World researchers." As the professional opportunities and personal comforts in their own countries increase, however, will these researchers prefer migrating to Europe or working in their own countries?

The incentive to stay put is greater than ever. When I returned to India in 1976, the personal comforts and professional opportunities there were unbelievably limited. I remember having to endure a 3-year waiting list to get my first telephone, a 2-year wait to buy a scooter, and a 6-month wait to buy a black-and-white TV. Today you can walk into a showroom and choose from among 20 TV models. And millions of mobile phones now are sold in India every month.

Now consider the professional side. In my earlier career as a scientist, it took me 2 years to buy a special type of flow meter that I needed for my work on polymers. It was a struggle to gain access to even a rudimentary computer. And scientific journals used to arrive by sea mail, which made it hard for us to remain up-to-date on current research. Now we have our own supercomputers and, thanks to the cyber world, our scientists read Science at the same time as their American counterparts!

Tradition's future. Researchers in India are scouring traditional remedies, like this miraculous fish treatment for asthma, for clues to new medicines.

Most importantly, today's returnees to India are finding that the opportunity to do cutting-edge research has increased many fold compared to what it was when I returned in the 1970s. The latest Intel chip and the latest GE aeroengine are being designed in Bangalore, for example. True, these are multinational companies with headquarters outside of India, but India-based companies are changing too. For one thing, on 1 January 2005, India enacted a new patent regime that is compliant with the World Trade Organization's TRIPS (Trade Related Intellectual Property Rights) agreement, which establishes a set of rules to ensure that intellectual property rights are respected in international trade contexts.
In anticipation of the new challenges that will follow in the wake of this action, Indian drug and pharmaceutical industries have increased their R&D spending by 400% in the past 4 years, and they are now looking to hire hundreds of Ph.D.'s. They also are shifting toward more in-house innovative research. Rather than just copying drug molecules made by others, the R&D programs of these industries now are trying to create new therapeutic molecules. In a similar fashion, the Indian automobile industry now is exporting indigenously designed and manufactured cars such as the Indica to European markets.

Global Goods

Multinational companies are locating their R&D resources in India to create proprietary knowledge for private good--that is, for the stockholders--through private funding. However, my dream is to create a global knowledge pool for global good through global funding. Here, India can become an agent for change. This global-good perspective could become the case in diverse sectors ranging from biotechnology to information technology to space research.

This dream already has some momentum. First, consider a pedagogical tool, the computer-based functional literacy (CBFL) program, developed by Indian software pioneer Faqir Chand Kohli. Within a mere 8 to 10 weeks and at a cost of a mere U.S. $2 (provided a discarded computer is supplied for free), an illiterate adult using this tool can read his or her first newspaper. In the past 2 years alone, 40,000 adults from five states in India have been made literate. If CBFL is launched as the technical engine of a national literacy movement, in less than 5 years, 200 million adult illiterates can learn to read. The same Indian innovation could be of great service to the rest of the world's estimated 854 million illiterates too! To this end, the Indian Institute of Technology in Madras has created a low-cost wireless Internet access system that needs no modem and eliminates expensive copper lines. It is just what is needed to offer CBFL to low-income communities throughout India and beyond. The technology already is in use in many countries, among them Fiji, Yemen, Nigeria, and Tunisia, to name a few, and it has been licensed to manufacturers in India, Brazil, China, South Africa, and France.

India can similarly become an innovation hub for global health. Its reputation as a low-cost manufacturer of high-quality generic drugs already is high. Now discovery, development, and delivery of new drugs to the poor is another area in which India is becoming stronger. By following alternative paths rather than beaten ones, India is aiming to develop drugs at prices that are more affordable to more of the world's people. For instance, India is trying to build a golden triangle between traditional medicine, modern medicine, and modern science. By culling clues from traditional medical practices, researchers here are doing a sort of "reverse pharmacology," which is showing great promise. Our recent program on developing a treatment for psoriasis through a reverse pharmacology path (presently in phase II human clinical trials) is expected to take 5 years and cost $5 million. If successful, the resulting treatment will be priced at $50, quite a step down from a new $20,000 antibody injection treatment developed by a western biopharmaceutical company! The opportunities that are unfolding are breathtaking.

As I see it from my perch in India's science and technology leadership, if India plays its cards right, it can become by 2020 the world's number-one knowledge production center, creating not only valuable private goods but also much needed public goods that will help the growing global population suffer less and live better.

References

*United Nations Development Programme, Human Development Report 2001: Making New Technologies Work for Human Development (Oxford Univ. Press, New York, 2001).

National Science Board, Science and Engineering Indicators 2002; available at www.nsf.gov/sbe/srs/seind02/start.htm.

D. King, Nature 430, 311 (2004)

4 reasons why FM deserves full marks

Kuttyjapan Webmaster — Mon, 28 Feb 2005 17:54:00 +0000

4 reasons why FM deserves full marks
February 28, 2005

Yes, Finance Minister P Chidambaram deserves full marks for presenting what is probably the most forward-looking budget in many years. If implemented as proposed, this could be a major step towards taking India into the next phase of economic growth, supported by higher rates of savings and investment.

Why does PC deserve full marks?

Here are four reasons:

The FM has taken the first step towards restructuring the income tax structure for individuals. This is an area, which usually evokes high emotion when tinkered with. Prima facie, the FM has been able to restructure it to everybody's benefit. Try and beat that!

Efforts are finally on to bring two thirds of the population, which is currently dependent on agriculture and related activities into the mainstream of economic development. As benefits of these new initiatives trickle in, overall economic activity will get a significant push.

Amartya Sen has often mentioned that long-term growth in India will require progress on three issues – health, education and land reforms. The FM has made significant progress, at least in terms of allocations, to the first two. Again, if implemented well, the benefits of these initiatives will have a significant impact on the long-term growth of the country.

Finally, by lowering import barriers and rationalising domestic duty structures the FM has set the stage for a more competitive domestic economy. Such productivity/efficiency benefits will have a significant impact on individual incomes in the future.

This budget is not without controversial proposals though. One such proposal is to tax cash withdrawals of over Rs 10,000 per day at the rate of 0.1%.

While the FM is at pains to explain that the aim of the proposal is to curb the flow of unaccounted for (or 'black') money, it will do little more than increase the paperwork of the income tax department.

If we were to bet on which budget proposal will be rolled back or modified, this would be it.

In totality, however, the FM has done a brilliant job in walking the tight rope of managing expectations, giving sops and raising expenditure while at the same time keeping the fiscal deficit in check.

The stage has been set for 'Bharat Nirman'. Now its over to the ministers and bureaucrats to implement these proposals. One only hopes that the past does not repeat itself with respect to the 'execution' of these plans.

How to save $1bn - India's New Aviation Policy

Kuttyjapan Webmaster — Sun, 27 Feb 2005 22:55:00 +0000

T N Ninan: How to save $1bn

It is funny how protectionist policies work, because they usually protect the guy you didn’t have in mind as a beneficiary.

Take a look, for instance, at the spate of announcements on reduced air fares and you realise who was benefiting the most from the policy of restrictive aviation rights: not our national champions Air India and Indian Airlines, but British Airways and Lufthansa and Emirates and all the others who have been milking Indian passengers.

Waking up to the threat of fresh competition from newly recognised players like Jet and Sahara, and realising that the Indian customer will now have the benefit of genuine choice, most of the established airlines have slashed fares by up to 50 per cent, so that you can now fly to London for less than Rs 20,000.

Even after making allowances for the fact that this is the slump season (being also the exam season in India), and that traffic will pick up in the summer months (and fares might go up then), it seems reasonable to assume that the average fare will have dropped by about 25 per cent simply because the skies have been opened up by a civil aviation minister who understands business.

Some 6 million Indians travel overseas each year. If you take the average fare that each of them pays as being about Rs 30,000 (the off-peak cost of a round trip to London), and assume a 25 per cent saving on this fare from now on, we are looking at shaving off travel costs by about Rs 7,500 per head; or, a total of Rs 4,500 crore (i.e. a billion dollars) being saved by all 6 million people.

This is many times more than whatever notional loss Air India and Indian Airlines (supposedly the beneficiaries of the old policy) will suffer in the new regime.

In any case Air India is launching its own low-cost airline, Air India Express, with new aircraft and freshly hired crew on less generous terms, and slashing fares to West Asia by between 30 per cent and 40 per cent, if their station managers overseas are to be believed.

So it may well stay ahead of the game.

Now, a billion dollars each year is money saved mostly in foreign exchange. It is enough to buy all the new planes that the new airlines have been talking of, so in a national accounting sense the country is getting its new aircraft free.

Then there is the additional benefit that will flow from cheaper fares on India routes: more foreign travellers will drop by, instead of flying on to Bangkok.

This will be helped by new airports and a proper tourism infrastructure (whenever they come), but the important point just now is that India is seen as an expensive destination and that can change.

Indeed, open up aviation another step by allowing more charter flights, and you will see the big travel companies offering genuinely low-cost India packages. India today gets fewer tourists than almost any south-east Asian destination that you can name.

Double the number of incoming tourists, from 3 million to 6 million, and the spin-off benefits will be immense. Starting with lots of jobs.

The underlying point is a well known one that bears repetition: protectionism usually ends up protecting the wrong guy. It could be the producer, at the cost of the consumer. And it may not be the producer you have in mind.

India has long believed that its textile policy is protecting more than 30,000 small-scale garment manufacturers, but the real beneficiary has been China, which has walked away with the world’s market.

Now the majority of those 30,000 garment manufacturers will be out of business anyway because the global market is only interested in volume suppliers, but there is no point trying to protect them because playing the volume game in textiles will create an estimated 15 million jobs in the next seven years, as India’s textile industry expands.

So let’s take a bow to Praful Patel for doing what needed to be done, and to the guys who negotiated the new textile trade package 10 years ago (and who were pilloried by all those leftists for allegedly having sacrificed India’s interests at the WTO negotiating table).