Infochange India News Features Analysis Adjust kar lenge: The new SEZ policy?

Infochange India News Features Analysis Adjust kar lenge: The new SEZ policy?

Adjust kar lenge: The new SEZ policy? By Aseem Shrivastava
What do the latest changes in the Special Economic Zones policy mean?
The cataclysmic events at Nandigram on March 14 – in which no one still knows how many people were killed, how many raped, how many are still missing – led to the scrapping of the 10,000-acre SEZ for the Indonesian Selim Group and the CPM’s hasty retreat from the area. Most importantly, the central government was forced back to the drawing board. It came out with some not insignificant changes in policy. What are they? There is a ceiling of 5,000 hectares (12,500 acres) put on an SEZ. There was no cap earlier. Much more significantly, state governments can no longer acquire land for an SEZ on behalf of private developers. In other words, though the government stopped short of spelling this out in so many words, no recourse is going to be taken to the Land Acquisition Act of 1894. It is also left unspecified whether SEZs are to be treated as a “public utility” nonetheless, exempting them from the full operation of the Industrial Disputes Act (which gives workers various bargaining rights). Nor can state governments form joint ventures with private developers if they do not already have land in hand to offer the project. States can also acquire land to develop SEZs on their own, provided they stick to the new relief and rehabilitation package to be announced soon. Moreover, at least 50% of the total area in an SEZ is to be earmarked for processing units. Earlier, the norm was 35% for multi-product SEZs. SEZs will also have tougher export norms to meet—instead of being merely net foreign exchange earners, they will have to have export earnings at least equal to their purchases from the domestic tariff area. These were the major changes announced. If actually implemented, the changes are significant. For instance, the new policy implies that private developers will have to deal directly with farmers and landowners to acquire SEZ land. There will be a free market in land for once, without interference from the state. In a country like India, where the acquisition of large chunks of contiguous land in a farmed area is complicated by the number of different owners the acquiring company has to deal with, the transaction costs for the company are substantial. (Of course no such problem would arise if government invited the private sector to purchase degraded land, but who wants to spend any money on building infrastructure when it is already there to piggyback on?) There is also the risk that the company may fall short of the minimum land required for the industry in question due to the unwillingness of one or a few owners to sell their property. This was the very reason that the Land Acquisition Act of 1894 was invoked to accumulate land for SEZs. The state would then effectively act as a broker for private companies, hardly a role behoving a democratically elected set of people’s representatives. The conflicts and protests during the last several months in West Bengal, Maharashtra, Punjab and elsewhere, have revealed the moral folly of such an approach. (In contrast to their Communist counterparts in West Bengal, the Gujarat government has skilfully minimised such conflicts by staying out of land deals in the first place. It has also avoided some problems by keeping agricultural lands out of the reckoning.) “This is not the Gita or the Bible. No?” That is how Union Minister for Commerce and Industries Kamal Nath responded to the media when queried about the new policy ruling on land ceilings for SEZs. Not surprisingly, just the previous day the Reliance spokesman on SEZs, Anand Jain, had told NDTV: “I am sure this is not a final no. There is much more to come. We will go to the government, we will place our ideas with them, and we are sure they will change their mind.” A good sample of how policies are made, unmade and remade in this fascinating democracy. Policies are made in the shadows. The government implements them by stealth. People protest. Government appears to budge. Money whispers. The media feels sorry for the megacorps. Politicians nod. They wait for people to get tired. Soon everything goes back to where it started. Kamal Nath was visiting China when he made that remark. Perhaps the perspective of distance made him feel secure in making the statement, within two weeks of the meeting of the Empowered Group of Ministers on SEZs. The echoes of Nandigram might have faded in the din of Beijing. Being the biggest accumulator of SEZ land in the country, Reliance was “hardest hit” by the policy ruling of April 5. It had the sympathies of the media. Reliance has been in the process of acquiring, among other properties, two huge areas of over 25,000 acres each near Gurgaon in Haryana and near Mumbai. Evidently, their confidence is unshaken by the new policy ruling. They are not giving up: “The cap on the size of SEZs does not exist in any other country. This is one of the vital issues that will be taken up with the government,” Anand Jain told PTI the other day. (SEZs do not exist in most countries, the reason why caps on their size do not exist either.) Reacting to the government’s decision to distance itself from acquiring land for SEZs, he said: “The government cannot have it both ways. They cannot insist on the SEZ being on contiguous land and then refuse to get involved...” It becomes clearer how the government is being cornered to play the role of land broker once again. When asked how Reliance would acquire land in the face of protests by farmers and activists, Jain told NDTV that the compensation package to farmers will be like a lottery. So much for fair compensation. Exactly who calls the shots when it comes to economic policymaking ultimately becomes clear when you listen to Kamal Nath after his return to New Delhi: “Should a proposal for an SEZ be for an area larger than 5,000 hectares, after examining its impact on the economy overall, the government could consider it…Once the rehabilitation policy is in place the government will look into it. It (the ceiling) is not part of the SEZ Act, but part of the rules.” So why all the song and dance about the government changing SEZ policy? It wastes a lot of the public’s time. Movers and shakers According to The Times of India, having learnt from the events at Nandigram, the newly elected government of Prakash Singh Badal in Punjab may reverse its predecessor’s decision to acquire 485 acres of land for the giant builder-developer DLF across seven villages near Amritsar. This despite clearance from the central government for the SEZ projects in the state. Yogesh Verma, head of the SEZ division of DLF told the newspaper: “We had decided to go to Punjab following an assurance by the state government to provide us land. How can it go back on its promise? Land acquisition for our project should be considered retrospectively.” Given that DLF is planning investments of Rs 1,800 crore at an SEZ near Ludhiana, in addition to the Rs 453 crore planned for the Amritsar SEZ, it remains to be seen whether the Badal government is strong enough to stick to its word. The new Punjab government will do well to remember that the Amarinder Singh government had suffered a bitter defeat in the recent assembly elections in Punjab thanks to its pro-corporate, anti-farmer policies. There is no barren land in Punjab, only some of the most fertile arable land in the world. The anger and resentment of farmers against state policies runs high. Besides DLF in Punjab there are investors in other parts of the country who are looking for a reinstatement of the original SEZ policy of the government. There is, for instance, the South Korean steel transnational POSCO, slated to bring the largest-ever foreign investment into India ($12 billion or Rs 52,000 crore, in order to access cheaply some of the best and largest iron ore deposits in the world) and waiting for the Orissa government to complete acquisition of the 4,000-odd acres of land in Jagatsinghpur district. The acquisition has been stalled not merely by the central government’s recent policy of suspending the clearance of SEZs (before April 5) but also by the fierce resistance the state has faced from three local tribal villages who are defending their heritage in a way no less zealous than the peasants of Nandigram fought for theirs. POSCO has applied pressure from the top, by getting the mayor of Seoul to approach the Indian Prime Minister himself. A dozen platoons of the Orissa police have surrounded the three villages, waiting for orders to strike. The villagers are ready for them. But Nandigram is too haunting a recent memory to allow either the Prime Minister or the Chief Minister (Naveen Patnaik) to take recourse so readily to force yet again. Besides, it would be a direct contradiction of the stated change in government policy (on April 5) if the government still found it within reason to use the Land Acquisition Act to take over the land from the tribal communities. And yet, an Orissa government release to The Times of India on April 20 has the temerity to claim that “the government of India requested government of Orissa to expedite land allotment to POSCO…POSCO may negotiate with land users for acquisition of private land if they want SEZ status, in which case the state government can facilitate the process.” So there we go: the state as land broker yet again. The alternative It is clear that the State must stay out of land acquisition (for SEZs or indeed, for any other purpose). That is the message of Nandigram and Singur. Wouldn’t the farming community then be vulnerable to local land mafias, who can be deployed by private builders and developers to seize the land of farmers? The State has a Constitutional responsibility to defend the private property of farmers and peasants. It is legally obliged to use its coercive policing powers to ensure that the land mafia does not use threat or force to seize the land from vulnerable peasants. This must be the demand made of governments across the nation as regards the policy of land acquisition. If governments can’t learn that lesson from Nandigram and Singur, they should at least draw it from the string of recent electoral defeats for incumbent parties throughout India. People have had enough of their needs being trampled upon by a State all too cosy with corporate India – in cruel disregard of pre-existing rights of the underprivileged. nfoChange News & Features, April 2007

The Higher the growth, the greater the antagonism - Prabhat Patnaik

INDIA ABROAD, APRIL 13, 2007

PRINT EDITION, PAGE A-40

'THE HIGHER THE GROWTH, THE GREATER THE ANTAGONISM'

Economist Prabhat Patnaik discusses the dark side of India's economic growth with Senior Editor Suman Guha Mozumder

India's economy may be booming, its industries thriving, its middle class heady with the promise of a great future. But Prabhat Patnaik, a professor of economics at Jawaharlal Nehru University, worries what the changes augur for the rest of the nation. Patnaik was in New York last month to take part in a public conversation on 'An Emergent India: Problems and Prospects' along with Nobel Laureate and Columbia's economics Professor Joseph Stiglitz. In an interview with INDIA ABROAD after the discussion, Patnaik, who is also vice-chairman of the Kerala State Planning Board, talked about his concerns about modern India.

Q. There were concerns, especially during the rule of the government led by the Bharatiya Janata Party earlier that while India was shining -- a slogan coined by the BJP -- it was not shining on all its population. Have things changed under the Manmohan Singh government?

A.I think they are continuing pretty much the same way. But one of two things that have happened is of some importance. One is the passing of the Employment Guarantee Act, which promises every rural household 100 days of guaranteed employment. It was initially launched only in 200 districts but it's understood that it will be extended to the whole country.

A lot of campaigning was done to get this through. This act differs from every other previous employment program as it actually makes it a right [to be employed]. But the only problem with it is the state machinery is so enmeshed in neo-liberalism that I do not think that even though it is rights based -- even though it is the case that anybody who demands employment and does not get it can take the government to court -- much might happen. The problems of non-implementation are to be found almost everywhere. Poor and unemployed people do not take the government to court. They just cannot. But, at the same time, I think this is something that gives us a handle, at least when public and political organizations take the cause of the poor and fight on their behalf. So it is a very enabling thing to do. The basic directions of neo-liberal policies have not changed, but because of intensive campaigning, this act has been passed, which is of potential significance.

Q. If the basic policies have not changed and, as you mentioned, poverty is actually increasing in India despite the growth ...

A. I would not even say that poverty is increasing despite the growth. I would say that the kind of growth we are experiencing in India is actually based on an exacerbation of antagonism. As a result it is growth where to expect a trickle-down effect would be absurd. In fact, the higher the growth, the greater the antagonism. Suppose you have higher growth. Then there will be even more demand for, let us say, a Wal-Mart to be opened. Therfore, there will be an even greater dispossession as far as petty and retail traders are concerned.

So, it is a kind of growth where it is not that higher growth would pull everybody up, but on the contrary higher growth would actually make things worse for a whole lot of people at the bottom.

Q. Could you elaborate?

A. When you have higher growth, there is more income at the upper level. Because of the kind of growth, which inequalizes growth any way, there will be more demands, let's say, for a golf course, or luxury apartments and therefore agricultural land will be taken away and there will be more dispossession of the peasants. So, it is not just that higher growth is associated with greater poverty, but actually this is a kind of growth where it is part of the intrinsic nature of the growth itself.

Q. So you mean this kind of higher growth would spell out displacemement from traditional occupations like agriculture and, in turn, lead to poverty?

A. Yes. That is the kind of situation I am talking about.[The result can be] unemployment, dispossession and displacement of petty producers and peasants, and a greater agrarian crisis etc. Suppose you have an even higher growth rate, there will be more people demanding that an airport be constructed. If there are more people demanding such things, investments will go there and not to social sectors or to the rural infrastructure development. So, in that sense, the increasing growth on one side and the increasing poverty on the other side are in fact interlinked.

Q. So, as they say, the rising tide will not lift all the boats.

A. Exactly. It's futile to expect that higher growth will actually have a trickle-down effect. Even now, higher growth has not touched the poor; if we still have even higher growth, it is not going to touch the poor. That is not going to happen.

Q. Tell me then, how does one go about industrializing a country like India? Obviously, you need to acquire land. Given the resistance against acquisition these days, what is the way out?

A. The point is, the peasants who are displaced must themselves have an interest in the industry that is being created for them. They should be employed. Also, you need to give them equity. Let them get compensation.

If you look at the case of Orissa, the tribals were given compensation, but within two years, their land value has gone up 10 times. Now they feel cheated. Therefore, for the foregone capital gain they would have made, you have to give them an equity share. You have to work a whole package, not just make promises, before taking their land, [ensure] they are compensated for the land, compensated for the loss of employment and for the capital gains foregone and share equity.

Q. Recently, a member of India's Commerce Ministry's Parliamentary Consultative Committee said in New York that the government is considering giving them equity and will announce that very soon. Do you think once that is done, the problems relating to land acquisition will be resolved?

A. My fundamental point is that these issues have to be settled through social consultations and negotiations. These are not issues about which you can just impose [a solution] on the peasants. In other words, legally, it is true that the government has the right to take land [after providing] adequate compensation for building something there for the public good. But here, we are talking about building industry by the private sector, so you cannot use the old principle or the law. It has to be negotiated properly with the peasants. It has to be done on the basis of democratic consultations.

Gone are the days when you could just tell peasants that you are taking their land and just give them some money in lieu. In a way they [protests] are good. It is a case of assertion by ordinary people, assertion of peoples' democratic rights and expression of a voice of people who are marginalized.

I welcome it, in fact, because normally such people would be brushed aside in the name of development. But if somebody stands up and says 'sorry, I'm not interested in giving you land,' then you have to negotiate with him. Now that is basically the assertion of a democratic right.

Q. Although this is not for a special economic zone, the Left Front government in West Bengal has taken land in Singur apparently with the consent of the farmers. Despite this, one is seeing protests and resistance building up there and elsewhere almost daily. Do you think it is a case of peasants being frustrated by the Left's turnaround after fighting farmers' rights and for the equitable distribution of land?

A. Actually, if you look at the details of the land acquisition, the West Bengal government's terms were probably better than many other states. In Orissa, I know those who were agitating against land acquisition used to demand the same terms as those of Bengal. There are two problems. One of course, is that many peasants who had given their land to the government for reasonable money, believed at the time of the sale that there was no option. Later, they found out the truth and began harboring second thoughts. The other thing is there is a problem with land acquired in West Bengal. Some of the unrecorded sharecroppers there have to be compensated.

The West Bengal government arranged for compensation for those who are recorded tenants. But, apparently, there were some unrecorded sharecroppers in the Singur area. This is not official as yet, but the government is going to compensate them as well. This is something being worked out. The issue is not just whether the West Bengal terms are good or bad, the issue is different. What is happening now is that various states in India are engaged in cutthroat competition to attract private investment.

The logic of capitalism is that capitalists compete against one another. But here, the capitalists have a monopoly and these governments are ruthlessly competing against each other to attract investments.This is absurd and West Bengal is caught in the same trap. I think the states and the [federal government] should get together. I think what is more worrying is that public exchequers are being used by the various state governments to subsidize capitalists.

Q. I remember you talked about the dwindling social sector expenditure by the government. Do you think the present unrest, incidents like peasants' suicides, etc. have something to do with the decrease in the social sector expenditure, especially in the farm sector?

A. Without a doubt. What many people do not understand is that obviously, when the peasants' prices fall or the costs rise, peasants' income dwindles and when that happens, if the peasants have access to a whole lot of things like free education, free healthcare, they have some security. They feel that while their income has dwindled, there are other areas from where they can have some security.

But, simultaneously [along with income decrease], if you find that your social sector expenditure is also dwindling, you have a situation that, when your father falls ill, you are forced to go to a money lender to be able to take him to hospital. At that point of time, you are not thinking about the fall in your income.

But if you had a proper government-funded medical service, some of these problems would not arise. The peasantry is driven to desperation because of reduced income that has been accompanied by reduced social security. The two together has actually made it impossible, which is why most of them are indebted to money lenders. The health expenditure, in fact, is a very important cause of debt to money lenders.

Q. Do you find it ironic that, somehow, the decline in social sector expenditure has coincided with the rising growth story of India?

A. That is quite correct. [Economist] Amartya Sen started this idea of the Kerala model. It was a wonderful case of social sector expenditure, covering all levels of human development, but when that was happening you found that growth was very little. On the other hand, in more recent years, growth has picked up, and social sector expenditure has dwindled. So it is a very clear example of how growth does not really enable you to have larger social sector expenditure. In fact, social sector expenditure requires a degree of commitment by the government.

Q. It is often felt that, in India there has been over emphasis on tertiary education and under emphasis on primary education. How do you link this to development?

A. I reject that view. I think it is not a question of one versus the other. In fact, the education sector as a whole has been neglected. Our total expenditure on education as a proportion of GDP is less than what the South African government used to spend on blacks during the apartheid era. So, India's expenditure on education as a proportion to GDP has been meager. It has to be raised; unfortunately, we had this idea for a long time of raising education expenditure to 6% of GDP, but we have come nowhere near it and are way below it even today.

How can you run a modern economy without ideas generated? Ideas are generated in universities. I think freedom of a country depends on having independent ideas. You can't borrow other countries' ideas and then expect to remain free. That being the case, this idea in some quarters that somehow India is spending too much on education is wrong. In fact, we have to spend more on education, both primary and tertiary.

Q. But there has been opposition from the Left to the entry of foreign universities in India.

A. That is right. It services no purpose. You have to strengthen your own universities because this whole business of foreign universities does not work. Our problems are different; our societies are different. In other words, education is not something like a supermarket. It must address itself to societal needs and, for that to happen, you cannot just have a little branch of Harvard or Columbia. It has to be specific to the country and society.

Q. Do you see any fundamental change coming in the 11th five-year plan?

A. Not really. I think the original approach paper was very conservative. There is a lot of criticism. It is pretty much going along the old way. I do not see any significant change in the five year plan.

Q. Where is India going, as far as development is concerned?

A. Let me put it this way. If the notion of development consists of becoming a big power, a major player in international arena and so on, then India has taken it seriously. But that is not my notion of development. Development is an improvement in the living condition of the people, and if that is the notion of development, I believe India is not doing well at all. To me, big-power status is irrelevant. What is relevant to me, as Mahatma Gandhi once said, is wiping away the tears from the eyes of every India. That is what we have to do.

HSC_Report.pdf (application/pdf Object)

HSC_Report.pdf (application/pdf Object)

Communally secular or secularly communal? by V. Sundaram

SPECIAL STORY: "'. "
Communally secular or secularly communal?

V SUNDARAM

'If India has to be saved from total destruction, Election Commission of India will have to derecognise the Congress Party first for its unabashed Communal Secularism'

- All the People of India.

If Muslim terrorists destroy the Madurai Meenakshi Temple in Tamil Nadu or Guruvayurappan Temple in Kerala or Puri Jagannath Temple in Orissa, the communal Congress Party or all the Islam-Embracing, Christianity-Coveting or Hindu-Hating political parties forming part of the so called non-communal coalition UPA Non-Government (in actual fact an NGO!!) in New Delhi will not view such criminal deeds as unprovoked acts of religious fanaticism or communal vandalism but as noble deeds of Islamic humanity and compassion forming a legitimate and indivisible part of 'Minority Rights'. What is shocking is that the CBI, IB, RAW, Ministry of Home Affairs and all the other enforcement agencies of the Government of India will also be equally enthusiastic and perceptive and smoothly slide along the same path with the same pseudo-secular fervour! All these disgraceful enforcement agencies under the indirect political control of a coterie having direct links with Italian Mafia will only get unduly disturbed by a routine RSS peaceful Baitak anywhere.

Against this known and 'solid' background, I am not at all surprised that the Congress Party and all the other pseudo-secular political parties are raising a big 'Hangama' against a CD that was sought to be released by some functionaries of the BJP Party in UP. If the BJP Party is communal, Congress Party is also equally communal. The Samajvadi Party, RJD, CPI (M), CPI, LJP, DMK, and all the other political parties supporting the Congress are no less communal. But the Election Commission of India will treat only the BJP as 'Saffronized and Communal' and all the other political parties, including all brands and shades of Muslim political parties as 'Non-Saffronized, Secular and Non-Communal'. In my view Dr.Manmohan Singh is communal. Sonia Gandhi is communal. Arjun Singh is communal. Shivraj Patel is communal. Mulayam Singh Yadav is communal. Lalu Prasad Yadav is communal. Ram Vilas Paswan is communal. Prakash Karat and Brinda Karat are communal. Thus we can go on without end in the murky cess-pool of our low level national politics today.

I was looking into the internationally accepted definitions of 'Racism.' All of them uniformly point out that any form of discrimination against any particular religion within a country or a State is a definite form of condemnable and reprehensible 'Racism'. Even the United Nations has adopted this approach. In Turkey, the Kurds have been the victims of 'Racism'. In Bosnia, we have the disgraceful phenomenon of racial discrimination against the Muslims.

In the light of this definition, I can adduce irrefutable documentary evidence to show that the surrogate UPA government in New Delhi (under the power without responsibility stranglehold of an Italian woman in absolute ownership of a Private Unlimited Company called the Congress Party!!) is a government which actively practices undeclared, unstated, undefined but definitely politically promoted 'Racism' founded on Minority Communalism against the peace-loving HINDUS in majority in India.

Nowhere in the world can we see the national disaster of a duly elected government officially announcing and promoting a pernicious policy of 'Racism' derived from Minority Religious Communalism particularly against the majority. Are we not having State-sponsored Communalism against the majority? Let me give some concrete instances to substantiate my major charge of 'Communalism' against the majority' which I am raising against the UPA Government, the Congress and all the other so called secular political parties:

1. In the dastardly name of 'Minorityism' on paper and petty vote bank politics in practice, the Congress Party under the leadership of Jawaharlal Nehru, a sworn enemy of Hinduism, surreptitiously slipped in Articles 29 and 30 of the Constitution in order to convert the Hindus in Majority in India into serfs of the 'Minority' in perpetuity. Does it not show that the Congress Party has been 'communal' ever since our Independence?

2. After declaring India as a secular State, the Congress Party under Jawaharlal Nehru introduced Haj subsidies for the Muslims in 1959. We do not have Haj subsidies in any other Islamic or non-Islamic country in the world. Was this not truly 'communal'? In this context, the poor Hindus of India from Kashmir to Kanyakumari and from Rann of Kutch to the Bay of Bengal, would like to pose some simple and straight questions to the UPA government in general and Manmohan Singh and Sonia Gandhi in particular: 'What crimes or sins we have committed as Hindus not to qualify for subsidies to visit places of our pilgrimage like Kasi, Manasarover, Haridwar, Rishikesh, Badrinath, Kedarnath, Dwaraka, Puri, Kancheepuram, Madurai, Srirangam, Rameswaram, Kanyakumari, etc.? Are we in minority in India? Are we not discriminated against on the ground of the religion of our forefathers from times immemorial? Are you suggesting that we would instantaneously qualify for these subsidies only by converting ourselves voluntarily and cheerfully to Islam under the direct supervision of two Union Cabinet Ministers like Arjun Singh and Antuley?

3. Was it not an announcement of religious discrimination against the Hindus in majority - the recent policy pronouncement of Manmohan Singh that government of India will always follow the philosophy of 'Muslims First' in the matter of apportionment of development funds? As a responsible Prime Minister, is he not taking India on the treacherous path of fragmenting the country on 'communal' lines just in order to corner some Muslim votes in different parts of India? The real truth about the 'communal' fraud, the whole fraud and nothing but the fraud about the disgraceful Justice Sachar Committee has come out into the open. Why is the Election Commission keeping quiet when Congress leaders talk about the 'communal' glory and the grandeur of Justice Sachar Committee Report?

4. Why did the Union Finance Minister, recently announce a new 'Communal' programme of 'COMMUNAL LOANS' by asking the Banks to refashion and restructure their lending policy by earmarking 15 per cent of the priority sector loans exclusively for the minorities? Will it not throw open the gates of all the Banks in India to the Mullahs and the Moulvis to bring to bear their religious influence even on routine technical and financial matters relating to loans and advances in the banking sector?

5. Having declared India a 'secular' country under the Indian Constitution, will it not be illegal on the part of government of India to talk of religious minorities?

6. Was not Sonia Gandhi practicing 'Communalism' against the Hindus in majority in India when she described the RSS as a rightist organisation with a long track record of stoking the religious prejudices, inflaming the religious passions and polarizing the Indian society? Was she not aware of the Supreme Court verdict to the effect that the RSS is a purely socio-cultural organisation meant for the promotion of Hindu unity and Hindu solidarity? Does she not have contempt for this considered verdict of the Supreme Court?

7. Soon after the Mumbai train blasts, Sonia Gandhi visited Mumbai and declared that 'the feelings of the minority Muslims should not be hurt,' in spite of being fully aware of the fact that these acts of terror were perpetrated by the Muslims with the full backing of ISI in Pakistan. Is not the UPA government treating the peaceful and law abiding Hindus of India as the Jews in Nazi Germany?

In order to counter the impact of the 'Communal' (!) CD floated by BJP, a known and rabidly anti-Hindu group of 27 celebrities under the leadership of Shabana Hashmi has brought out a new CD for selling their anti-Hindu secular message in the on going UP Assembly Elections. Two young Anhad volunteers, Mohammad Zabeeh Afaque and Mir Basit Hussain, have made the VCD, one-and-a-half hours in length, with �stop hate� messages from these celebrities. The most spectacular thing about the fraudulent secularism of Shabana Hashmi, her husband and their other Muslim friends and non-Muslim colleagues in the Anti-Hindu Secular Brigade is that they will never take up the cause of the organized genocide of Kashimiri Pandits in Kashmir.

To sum up in the sharp words of Mohan Iyer:

1. UPA announcing quota for Muslims, on the basis of religion, is not communal.

2. Manmohan Singh, giving a clarion call that Muslims must have first access to national resources, is not communal.

3. Postponing Afzal's hanging, for the sake of UP elections, is not communal.

4. Releasing the communally doctored Justice Sachar Report is not communal.

5. Lalu, releasing Banerjee Commission Report on Godhra carnage (when Nanavati commission was enquiring into the incident) on the eve of Bihar Elections is not communal.

6. Rahul, telling that Babri Masjid would have been safe under Gandhi dynasty, is not communal.

7. Mulayam Singh's current attempt to close the criminal cases against SIMI terrorists is 'not communal'.

On the other hand according to the Election Commission, the Congress and all the other 'Secular Parties':

A. Talking about ethnic cleansing and massacre of Hindus in Kashmir is communal.

B. Talking about Bangladeshi infiltration is communal.

C. Talking about Bombay, Varanasi, Coimbatore, Delhi Muslim terrorist bomb blasts, is communal.

D. Talking about the genocide and ethnic cleansing of Hindus in Pakistan and Bangladesh is communal.

E. Talking about the greatest genocide on earth - i.e. the massacre of more than 100 millions of Hindus, during Muslim Rule for 700 years, is communal.

IF THIS IS GOING TO BE THE PHILOSOPHY OF OUR SECULAR POLITICIANS AND PSEUDO-SECULAR JOURNALISTS, EVEN GOD CANNOT PREVENT THE SECOND PARTITION OF INDIA.

(The writer is a retired IAS officer)

e-mail the writer at vsundaram@newstodaynet.com

Unseemly race in arms

People's needs for food, health and education ignored

India on Wednesday test-fired the Agni-3 from Chandipur near Balasore on the
Orissa coast. It has a confirmed range of 300 KMs, and carries an explosive load of 1« tonnes. It is capable of carrying a nuclear war-head, and DRDO engineers claim that its range can be extended upto 5000 KMs. India's first experiment with it, in July last year, had failed. Now its success enables India to hit, if required, the main cities of Asia, from Turkey to Japan.
It qualifies India as an Asian power capable of projecting its military power far beyond the border. But, why so much of effort for something which is never likely to be used? Apparently, it was in response to the Pak experiment with its nuclear-capable, radar-avoiding Babar (HATF-VII) cruise missile, with a range of only 700 KMs. It, carries an explosive load, if necessary even a nuclear war-head of 500 kgs, although nuclear war-heads usually weigh around a ton. Though sub-sonic in speed these cruise missiles can avoid any anti-missile defence system. It is a product of Sino-Pak techno-cooperation, and is Pakistan's visible response to India's on-going experiments with the Brahmos produced with Russian cooperation. The Brahmos have a shorter range of 300 KMs, and can carry a lighter war-head of 300 kgs, but are super-sonic in their speed. So, the hing-cost race goes on.
Formerly, it was restricted to the armies and air forces of the two countries, but the same competitive attitude has now been extended to the realm of missiles, also. The purchase of tanks, planes, or highly sophisticated gadgets by either of the two countries immediately provokes the other to go in for their latest equivalent, in one way or the other.
Just as nothing is ideally hygenic to a doctor, and nothing is really sacred to a bishop, similarly nothing is really secure to the men in uniform. You may ask any of them and he will expatiate on the growing danger to the country's independence and integrity to protect which we should spend the last drop of our sweat and blood. There is nothing Indian or Pakistani about it. The military top brass, every where and always, smell danger and ask for more troops and equipments. But, in that process, the reality of the danger imagined and the remote possibility of the use of these highly expensive arms are usually lost sight of.
Let us take the case of India and Pakistan. Are they going to use their Brahmos and Babars against each other? If there was any chance of their misuse in the past, obviously there is none since 2004. The ruling establishments of both the countries and the masses, though usually mute, have realised the pleasures and privileges of peace. The utter futility of a war between two nuclear-armed states is obvious even to the blind. The people in the two countries want peace and an opportunity to make profit through investments. So, another major war between the neighbours of South Asia is presently out of question and these hi-tech weapons of the 21st century become obsolete within half a generation. Besides, when the highly developed nations of the world indulge in an arms race, they actually pander to the interest of their industrial -military complex. But, not so in our case. Virtually every single piece of these highly expensive sophisticated gadgets has to be bought from rich countries round the world, with the foreign exchange earned by the sweat of the brow of our poor. And, both India and Pakistan are buying these weapons with resources which could and should have been used for the upliftment of the poor neglected masses. Even now nearly 48% of the population of 'shining India' are under -nourished and only 61% are effectively literate. If in Pakistan the number of those under -nourished is around 10% less the proportion of illiterates is over 10% more. In both the countries there is much to be done to provide the majority with potable water, proper sanitary facilities, old age case and access to schools, medicare and markets. The masses in both the countries are crying for these basic needs of theirs. When these are neglected well-armed states, like the Shah's Iran and the USSR, collapsed, while a completely demilitarised Costarica, which disbanded its army in 1949, is an oasis of peace, progress and stability in the whole of Latin America notorious for insurgencies, coup-d'tats, blood-thirsty guerrillas and state -sponsored killers.
The frontiers of a state can never be protected as long as the foundations of its freedom and future are not based in the hearts of a happy population committed to save it in their own interest.

SEZs: One More Anti-Bharat Act by India

Gmail - [Aid-awareness] SEZs: One More Anti-Bharat Act by India

'Judiciary should be brought under RTI'

'Judiciary should be brought under RTI'

Forbes.com - Magazine Article

Forbes.com - Magazine Article





The World's Richest People
Plugging A Math Gap
Megha Bahree 03.26.07

Harvard mathematician Shing-Tung Yau says China trails the pack in his field. He's tapping money and power to change that.

Americans suffer from an inferiority complex when it comes to math. They see China's students scoring higher in international comparisons and Chinese professors populating the math faculties at the best U.S. universities. But Shing-Tung Yau, a Chinese-born Harvard mathematician, doesn't see it that way. At the highest levels, he says, mathematicians in China are far behind their Western counterparts: "Most Chinese still use technology from America. I want them to create their own research so they don't rely on others and don't copy."

A dozen years ago Yau set out to make that happen. He's been building three advanced math institutes--in Hong Kong, Beijing and Hangzhou, 100 miles southwest of Shanghai--and conducting a relentless courtship of wealthy moguls. Thanks to millions chipped in by Li Ka-shing (No. 9 on the billionaires list), Robert Kuok (No. 104), brothers Ronnie and Gerald Chan and others, Yau's institutes have trained hundreds of postgraduates. Many are going on to teach in Chinese universities, slowing the brain drain that has long had China sending its smartest students abroad, never to return. "I hope these students will have an influence on the future of China," he says. "For China to become a society built on technology, it needs a solid background, and math is the basic language for that. Physics, software, engineering, banking, insurance--all depend on math research."

The flow of funds has helped Yau persuade Chinese math minds from around the world to sign on as associates of his institutes. But a big attraction is the 57-year-old Yau himself: He's the leading Chinese mathematician and ranks among the top ten in the world, says Phillip Griffiths, a math professor and a former president of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. Yau has been a professor at Harvard for 20 years, specializing in geometry, differential equations and mathematical physics. A U.S. citizen, he won the Fields Medal (the equivalent in mathematics of a Nobel Prize) in 1982, a MacArthur "genius grant" in 1985 and the President's National Medal of Science in 1997. "Yau is like God in China," says Tony Chan, the assistant director for mathematics and physical sciences at the National Science Foundation outside Washington, D.C. and a visiting professor at the Hong Kong institute. "He goes to China and he can see the premier. In the U.S. even the director of the NSF cannot see President Bush."

But in the past year Yau has gotten into two very public spats. One was with Beijing University, which he accused of corruption. The other was with the New Yorker, which in August portrayed him as trying to steal credit for proving the Poincaré conjecture, a 103-year-old problem that was the holy grail of topology. The theorem concerns a three-dimensional space with no boundaries. It says that if in this space any closed-curve object, such as a rubber band, can be shrunk to a point, then the space is topologically equivalent to a sphere. Yau says the magazine's charge is completely false; other news outlets looking into the issue found evidence to back him up.

Occupying three floors of the simply named Academic Building No. 1 of the Chinese University of Hong Kong in the New Territories, the Institute of Mathematical Sciences started slowly. "In Hong Kong most rich men [who give to schools] want a building named after them," says Yau. "But we didn't even have a building."

An undergraduate at Harvard led Yau to his first big donor, one who didn't ask for naming rights and turned down an honorary degree. That donor was the student's father, Malaysian tycoon (but Hong Kong resident) Kuok. He gave $6 million that started an endowment and attracted the institute's first full-time faculty member in 1998, a professor from New York University. Then Kuok introduced Yau to his friend, Asia's richest resident, Li Ka-shing, who donated $1.3 million. Ronnie Chan, a Hong Kong real estate magnate who had known Yau since the professor's days teaching at Stanford University in the 1970s, introduced him to his uncle, Thomas Chen, who dished out another $1.3 million.

A $2 million check came from William Mong, owner of Shun Hing Electronic Holdings in Hong Kong, a Panasonic distributor since the 1950s. The Japanese brand's technology "made me wish we had more capable engineers in Hong Kong and China, and that's my aim now." The money helped endow a chair and hire another permanent faculty member. Today the institute gets 100 applicants from China and elsewhere in Asia for each class of 20 in its five-year master's-and-Ph.D. program. The program includes such novel topics as betting on horse races, creating 3-d images of people and predicting the weather.

For Yau's Morningside Center in Beijing, he got help from the Chinese government and the Chan brothers. The government donated a plot, and the brothers put up the money for the building that the center shares with the Chinese Academy of Sciences. It trains 250 researchers a year in six-month sessions. Now, in a bid to take on research institutes abroad, it offers an award that it hopes will someday rival the Fields Medal.

Yau is one of eight children. His family fled across the border to Hong Kong after the Communists took control of China in 1949. Growing up without electricity and running water in a village near Chinese University--where his father was a professor--he was more interested in skipping school than in learning arithmetic. But when he was 14 his father died and he became serious about his studies. He enrolled at Chinese University and in 1969 moved on to graduate school at UC, Berkeley. In 1971, at just 22, Yau earned his Ph.D.

---

Next to his math talent, the most remarkable thing about Yau is his ability to collect money. "Yau knows how to sell," says Peter Li, a math professor at UC, Irvine. "He is relentless in his pursuit, like a car salesman." Yau says he is very practical about it, although his friends say a better term is "too direct."

"Normally you have to go to ten dinners with these rich people before you can ask about a donation," says Yau. "But I don't have that kind of time, so I ask after the first dinner." He tells potential donors: "Money is nothing. It's all about your legacy." Over breakfast at a Howard Johnson motel he once persuaded a Chinese engineer living in New Jersey to donate $2 million to his Center of Mathematical Science in Hangzhou.

And maybe it's this bluntness that got him into trouble with Beijing University--which he accused of inflating the value of its research--and the New Yorker. "He's a very forceful personality, and in academia they may not be used to a bulldozer of a guy," says a friend of Yau's. The magazine alleged that Yau was taking credit for solving the Poincaré conjecture away from a Russian mathematician, Grigory Perelman. Yau demanded an apology, but the magazine issued a statement saying it stood by its story. "That article was a misunderstanding of the culture of mathematics and a misunderstanding of Chinese culture," he says. Perelman had posted the answer online, but he didn't fully show how he solved it. That set off several teams in a race to recreate Perelman's discovery and fill in the details. Two of Yau's students, spurred by Yau, won this race in 2006.

Yau is an impatient man. Sitting in his office in Harvard Square, he answers e-mails while chatting with a visitor. "There is a fear in the news media that China is rising," he says. "But it's better to create understanding between cultures, and math is a common language for that." His vision, he says, is to make his Hong Kong institute--his only one that awards doctorates--the Harvard of Hong Kong. "It took Harvard a few hundred years to be built. Hopefully, it won't take us as much time."

Click Here for List of Billionaires from Asia and Australia.

The Telegraph - Calcutta : Opinion - Santa Claus Visits Tatas - Ashoke Mitra

The Telegraph - Calcutta : Opinion

Santa Claus visits the Tatas
- Freebies from a debt-ridden government
Cutting Corners - Ashok Mitra

The uproar over Nandigram — and Singur — in West Bengal will not die away soon. Competitive democracy has its own laws; those opposed to the party ruling in the state will try to squeeze the maximum advantage from the discomfiture it has brought upon itself.

Speculation continues on the riddle as to why, despite repeated assurances to the contrary, the state administration fell back on a colonial-type police offensive to re-assert its authority in Nandigram. The underlying reason, informed sources suggest, was a strong message from the Salim group, who were promised vast stretches of land in the area for their chemical hub project; they might move away elsewhere, the message said, if the land was not handed over to them within the next few weeks. That set the panic bell ringing; the sequel has been horrifying.

Nothing illustrates more glaringly the spell globalization has cast on the country, even on those whose ideology and praxis should have prepared them to cope with it in a better manner. Industrialization, the rationale of which few will dispute, is being taken to be synonymous with industrialization under private auspices. To talk of industrial growth in the state sector is assumed to be heresy. Questions such as whether a particular private project will actually lead to a net increase in employment or output are discouraged too. Fables are having a field day: the private sector means efficiency to the nth degree, public enterprise is the other name for sloth, incompetence and wastage. The stunning achievements of the National Thermal Corporation, Bharat Heavy Electricals, Nalco, the Oil and Natural Gas Commission, the Gas Authority of India or the Indian Oil Corporation in recent years are conveniently ignored. Also brushed aside is any reference to the huge resources at the command of public sector fiscal agencies such as the Life Insurance Corporation of India and the Unit Trust of India.

As in the other poorer countries, here too fiscal devices are introduced at the behest of US-led international financial institutions to compel ruling politicians to desist from taking new initiatives in the public sector. The Fiscal Responsibility and Budgetary Management Act is being applied to admonish both the Centre and state governments not to ‘fritter’ resources on public sector extravaganzas. There is, in consequence, a gradual maturing of the belief that industrial activities are a natural monopoly of private entities, foreign as well as domestic.

The Left Front in West Bengal is the product of a historical movement which had as its credo the expansion of public goods and industrial growth through the deus ex machina of the public sector. Those currently in charge of the Front government in the state have apparently convinced themselves that, in the era of globalization, ideological shibboleths are poison, development ipso facto is development sponsored by the private sector, the government has only the residuary obligations to acquire land, on behalf of private tycoons, on which industry is supposed to be set up, and, in addition, provide costly infrastructural facilities the private sector will not build on its own because of their low profitability.

Once development is defined in such constricted terms, maximizing the rate of return for private operators becomes the only criterion by which to judge success. The logic is simple: if private profit expands, capitalists feel good; if capitalists feel good, they will expand their activities and the economy will have growth. The state government does not dare to enquire whether activities undertaken by capitalists will be on the basis of any careful analysis of costs and benefits, or whether in deciding the technology for the investments undertaken, alternative choices will be considered. Fifty years ago, when official faith in economic planning was still extant in the country, any investment proposal would be examined, taking into account the expected rate of income growth, the expected rate of employment growth and the expected rate of surplus or profit. With the eclipse of the planning era, such elementary practices have gone the way of all flesh; the only desideratum regarded as relevant is the expected rate of generation of private profit.

This transformation is illustrated most luridly by the details the state administration in West Bengal has finally been forced to disclose concerning the agreement it has reached with the Tata group apropos the small car project at Singur. The Tatas are, of course, rolling in money. Only a couple of months ago, they invested a sum roughly the equivalent of Rs 50,000 crore to take command of a giant international steel complex. To persuade this fabulously rich group to start a modest-sized car factory here, the state government has already spent something around Rs 150 crore to acquire close to 1,000 acres of land. The least that was expected was that it would recoup this amount from the Tatas. Nothing of the sort. Instead, the Tatas have been handed over this entire tract of land on a ninety-year lease without any down payment at all. For the first five years of the lease, they will pay only one crore rupees; for the next twenty-five years, the payment will increase by 25 per cent at five-year intervals; for the next thirty years payment will be raised at five-year intervals by 33 per cent; for the final twenty years, the rent will be only Rs 20 crore per year.

The discounted present value of what the Tatas have agreed to pay, any respectable accountant will vouchsafe, will hardly exceed Rs 50 crore. Equally necessary to take into account here are the historical trends in the rate of inflation and the likely explosion of real estate values through the decades of the 21st century. The conclusion is incontrovertible: the government is, really and truly, making a free gift to the Tatas of the land in Singur.

That is, however, only a minor part of the story. The state government is, in addition, offering the Tata group a gift coupon in the way of a loan worth Rs 200 crore carrying a nominal interest of only 1 per cent (as against the rate currently charged by the banks of at least 10 per cent); the principal, one suspects, is never intended to be returned. Finally, in terms of the lease agreement, the entire proceeds for the first ten years of the value-added tax on the sale of this precious car in West Bengal are proposed to be handed back to the Tatas, again at a nominal interest of only 1 per cent. If 40,000 cars are sold every year in West Bengal — not an unreconcilable assumption — with a value- added tax at 12.5 cent, this particular act of magnanimity on the part of the state would ensure an extra bonanza of more than Rs 500 core for the Tatas.

All told, therefore, the group is being offered the allure of around Rs 850 crore by the state government, apart from their being spared the bother of acquiring the land through their own efforts. The deal does not though mention what the Tatas are, in exchange, offering West Bengal. There is not even a stray reference to the likely employment, direct or indirect, consequent to the setting up of the plant. Were the employment generated not to exceed 10,000, that would just about equal the number of share-croppers and landless farm workers displaced at Singur following the acquisition of land. The state’s outlay of Rs 850 crore would be for nothing.

Suspend the debate over the ideology of development. Also steer clear of the pastime of apportioning moral responsibility for the deaths and other incidents in Singur and Nandigram. Forget for the moment the dubious economics too. What about one’s sense of aesthetics though? Does it not appear obscene that a state government, carrying a burden of debt of more than Rs 150,000 crore and with a countless number of problems, would offer a freebie of Rs 850 crore to an industrial group which has made an outlay of over Rs 50,000 crore only the other day to satisfy their expansionary ego overseas?

1971 War: How the US tried to corner India

1971 War: How the US tried to corner India
The Rediff Special/ Claude Arpi

1971 War: How the US tried to corner India

December 26, 2006




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'India won a glorious victory against Pakistan in the 1971 war. It was the first decisive victory in a major war in centuries. And it was won singlehandedly, in the face of opposition and threats from a majority of the UN member-States, including a superpower. Every Indian patriot felt proud of this glittering chapter in the nation's history.'

-- Dr S N Prasad in his introduction to the Indian government's 'restricted' Official History of the 1971 War.

I am not usually a great defender of United States policies, but I have to admit that in the field of right to information, the US is far ahead of the Indian babus who obstinately block access to Indian archives under the lame pretext that this could 'endanger national security'.

A few months ago, the Office of the Historian at the US State Department released Volume XI of the Foreign Relations of the United States devoted to the 'South Asia Crisis, 1971': in other words, the Bangladesh War.

Flashback: 1971 War, 35 Years On

This 929-page publication groups together documents which were already known like the minutes of Henry Kissinger's secret visit to China in July 1971 as well as scores of freshly declassified material available for the first time to the public.

It throws light on a less known angle of the India-Pakistan conflict: The role of the nascent friendship between the United States and China. This is a welcome new piece in the puzzle of the history of the 1971 War.

Another piece is the Hamidur Rahman Report, ordered by the government of Pakistan after the war, which analyses the Pakistani defeat. 'Due to corruption... lust for wine and women and greed for land and houses, a large number of senior army officers, particularly those occupying the highest positions, had not only lost the will to fight but also the professional competence necessary for taking the vital and critical decisions demanded of them for the successful prosecution of the war.'

The US administration saw the unfurling events differently.

According to Kissinger, then American President Richard M Nixon's national security adviser, 'When the Nixon administration took office, our policy objective on the subcontinent was, quite simply, to avoid adding another complication to our agenda.'

But events in the subcontinent and the Chinese factor forced Nixon to change his stand. The new closeness between Washington, DC and Beijing and the involvement of the Pakistan president as a secret go-between greatly influenced US policy.

Then US President Richard Nixon According to the State Department historian, 'When the fighting developed, the Nixon administration tilted toward Pakistan. The tilt involved the dispatch of the aircraft carrier USS Enterprise to the Bay of Bengal to try to intimidate the Indian government. It also involved encouraging China to make military moves to achieve the same end, and an assurance to China that if China menaced India and the Soviet Union moved against China in support of India, the United States would protect China from the Soviet Union. China chose not to menace India, and the crisis on the subcontinent ended without a confrontation between the United States and the Soviet Union.'

The first US documents deal with the background of the conflict. Nixon's position was clear: 'We should just stay out -- like in Biafra, what the hell can we do?'

But everybody did not agree with him. In a telegram sent on March 28, 1971, the staff at the US consulate in Dhaka complained, 'Our government has failed to denounce the suppression of democracy. Our government has failed to denounce atrocities. Our government has failed to take forceful measures to protect its citizens while at the same time bending over backwards to placate the West Pak dominated government... We, as professional public servants express our dissent with current policy and fervently hope that our true and lasting interests here can be defined and our policies redirected in order to salvage our nation's position as a moral leader of the free world.'

When US Secretary of State Will Rogers received this 'miserable' cable, he informed President Nixon that the 'Dacca consulate is in open rebellion.' This did not change Nixon's opinion: 'The people who bitch about Vietnam bitch about it because we intervened in what they say is a civil war. Now some of the same bastards...want us to intervene here -- both civil wars.'

From the start, the Nixon administration knew 'the prospects were "poor"... the Pakistani army would not be able to exert effective control over East Pakistan.' Washington believed India was bound to support Mujibur Rahman. The CIA had reported that 'India would foster and support Bengali insurgency and contribute to the likelihood that an independent Bangladesh would emerge from the developing conflict.'

It is here that the Chinese saga began. In a tightly guarded secret, Nixon had started contacts with Beijing. The postman was Pakistani dictator Field Marshal Yahya Khan.

When on April 28 1971, Kissinger sent a note defining the future policy option towards Pakistan, Nixon replied in a handwritten note: 'Don't squeeze Yahya at this time.' The Pakistan president was not to be squeezed because he was in the process of arranging Kissinger's first secret meeting to China. The events of the following months and the US position should be seen in this perspective.

Indira GandhiIn May, Indira Gandhi wrote to Nixon about the 'carnage in East Bengal' and the flood of refugees burdening India. After L K Jha, then the Indian ambassador to US, had warned Kissinger that India might have to send back some of the refugees as guerillas, Nixon commented, 'By God we will cut off economic aid (to India).'

A few days later when the US president said 'the goddamn Indians' were preparing for another war, Kissinger retorted 'they are the most aggressive goddamn people around.'

During the second week of July, Kissinger went to Beijing where he was told by then Chinese prime minister Zhou Enlai: 'In our opinion, if India continues on its present course in disregard of world opinion, it will continue to go on recklessly. We, however, support the stand of Pakistan. This is known to the world. If they (the Indians) are bent on provoking such a situation, then we cannot sit idly by.' Kissinger answered that Zhou should know that the US sympathies also lay with Pakistan.

On his return, during a meeting of the National Security Council, Nixon continued his India bashing. The Indians, he noted, are 'a slippery, treacherous people.'

The State Department historian says, 'in the perspective of Washington, the crisis ratcheted up a dangerous notch on August 9 when India and the Soviet Union signed a treaty of peace, friendship and cooperation.' It was a shock for Washington as they saw a deliberate collusion between Delhi and Moscow.

During the following months, the situation deteriorated and many more refugees came to India. The Indian prime minister decided to tour Western capitals to explain the Indian stand. On November 4 and 5, she met Nixon in Washington, who told her that a new war in the subcontinent was out of the question.

The next day, Nixon and Kissinger assessed the situation. Kissinger told Nixon: 'The Indians are bastards anyway. They are plotting a war.'

To divert the pressure applied by the Mukti Bahini on the eastern front, the Pakistan air force launched an attack on six Indian airfields in Kashmir and Punjab on December 3. It was the beginning of the war.

The next day, then US ambassador to the United Nations George H W Bush -- later 41st president of the United States and father of the current American president -- introduced a resolution in the UN Security Council calling for a cease-fire and the withdrawal of armed forces by India and Pakistan. It was vetoed by the Soviet Union. The following days witnessed a great pressure on the Soviets from the Nixon-Kissinger duo to get India to withdraw, but to no avail.

The CIA reported to the President: 'She (Indira Gandhi) hopes the Chinese (will) not intervene physically in the North; however, the Soviets have warned her that the Chinese are still able to "rattle the sword" in Ladakh and Chumbi areas.'

Henry KissingerFor Kissinger it was clear that Indira Gandhi wanted the dismemberment of Pakistan.

On December 9, when the CIA director warned Nixon that 'East Pakistan was crumbling', Nixon decided to send the aircraft carrier USS Enterprise into the Bay of Bengal to threaten India.

Let me recount an anecdote related to me by Major General K K Tewari (retd), Chief Signal Officer, Eastern Command, during the 1971 War.

General Tewari was present at a briefing the three defence services held for Indira Gandhi. She was seated at a large table. On one side was General S H F J Manekshaw, the army chief, and on the other Admiral S M Nanda, the navy chief.

During the course of the presentation, the admiral intervened and said: 'Madam, the US 8th Fleet is sailing into the Bay of Bengal.' Nothing happened; the briefing continued. After sometime, the admiral repeated, 'Madam, I have to inform you that the 8th Fleet is sailing into the Bay of Bengal.' She cut him off immediately: 'Admiral, I heard you the first time, let us go on with the briefing.'

All the officers present were stunned. Ultimately, their morale was tremendously boosted by the prime minister's attitude. She had demonstrated her utter contempt for the American bluff.

On November 10, Nixon instructed Kissinger to ask the Chinese to move some troops toward the Indian frontier. 'Threaten to move forces or move them, Henry, that's what they must do now.'

This was conveyed to Huang Hua, China's envoy to the United Nations. Kissinger told Huang the US would be prepared for a military confrontation with the Soviet Union if the Soviet Union attacked China.

On December 12, the White House received an urgent message. The Chinese wanted to meet in New York. General Alexander Haig, then Kissinger's deputy, rushed to the venue, but was disappointed. Huang just wanted to convey his government's stand in the UN, no words of an attack in Sikkim or in the then North East Frontier Agency (now, the northeastern states).

The myth of the Chinese intervention is also visible in the secret Pakistani dispatches. Lieutenant General A A K Niazi, the Pakistani army commander in Dhaka, was informed: 'NEFA front has been activated by Chinese although the Indians for obvious reasons have not announced it.'

Until the last day of the war, Pakistan expected its Chinese saviour to strike, but Beijing never did.

In Washington, Nixon analysed the situation thus: 'If the Russians get away with facing down the Chinese and the Indians get away with licking the Pakistanis...we may be looking down the gun barrel.' Nixon was not sure about China. Did they really intend to start a military action against India?

Finally, on December 16, Niazi surrendered to Lieutenant General Jagjit Singh Aurora. Nixon and Kissinger congratulated themselves for achieving their fundamental goal -- the preservation of West Pakistan. They were also happy for having 'scared the pants off the Russians.'

Kissinger's South Asia policy upset many in the US, not only the American public, the press but also the State Department, and more particularly, Secretary of State Rogers who was kept in the dark most of the time.

It is worth mentioning an episode which, of course, does not appear in the American archives -- The Tibetan participation in the conflict. After the debacle of 1962, the Government of India had recruited some Tibetans youth in the eventuality of another conflict with China. The Special Frontier Force was trained in Chakrata in Uttar Pradesh under the command of an Indian general.

In 1971, nine years after its creation, the SFF was sent to East Pakistan to prepare for the arrival of regular Indian troops. Their saga is one of the least known parts of the Bangladesh war.

Late October 1971, an AN-12 airlifted nearly 3,000 Tibetans who later assembled at Demagiri close to the India-East Pakistan border. On the other side of the border were the Chittagong Hill Tracts. Armed with Bulgarian-made assault rifles, the SFF was given the task of organising guerrilla raids across the Chittagong Hill Tracts. Opposite the SSF, in thick jungles and leech-infested marshes, was stationed a Pakistan brigade, including a battalion of its elite Special Services Group.

The Indian army knew this brigade was a threat to one of its corps preparing to advance on Dhaka.

During the second week of November, Operation Eagle began. Leaving Demagiri in canoes, the Tibetans commandos entered East Pakistan. The SFF then started overrunning one Pakistani post after another.

By the time the war was officially declared, the Tibetans had already been inside East Pakistan for more than three weeks. Using both their Bulgarian rifles and native knives, they advanced swiftly. Their Indian commandaner, Major General S S Uban later said, 'They were unstoppable.'

On December 16, the SSF was 40 kilometers away from Chittagong port, having successfully managed to neutralise the Pakistani brigade.

After Pakistan's surrender, they paraded through Chittagong. Unfortunately, 49 Tibetans lost their lives for a nation which was not theirs.

The release of the State Department volume on the 1971 conflict is a posthumous homage to the courage of the Indian Army which despite heavy odds and the might of the United States freed Bangladesh from Pakistani clutches.

Some aspects are still missing to make the puzzle complete.

First, the Indian history from the Ministry of Defence does not detail the political compulsions of Indira Gandhi's government. Second, the secret operation involving the Tibetan Special Frontier Forces in the Chittagong Hill Tracts is virtually unknown. Lastly, the Chinese involvement from the Chinese point of view remains unexamined.

Like the Henderson Brooks' report on the 1962 border war with China, it may take a few decades more to be revealed.

India Together: SEZs: Lessons from China - 9 February 2007

India Together: SEZs: Lessons from China - 9 February 2007
ECONOMY
SEZs: Lessons from China
While single-minded pursuit of exports has helped China touch record growth figures, millions have been left behind, besides incurring huge environmental costs. And without even the limited dose of welfare that China offers its poor farmers, India must wary of copying China's SEZ-approach, writes Bhaskar Goswami.

9 February 2007 - China's record economic growth rate fuelled by the Special Economic Zones (SEZ) is often advocated as the reason for India to adopt this approach. Since the 1980s, China implemented a series of measures and policies with the sole purpose of achieving rapid economic growth. As evidence over the years has shown, this single-minded pursuit of growth has lowered the efficiency and effectiveness of economic policies, besides incurring huge resource and environmental costs. The Chinese experience offers a valuable lesson for India.

Cost of Export-driven Growth

China has to feed 22 percent of the world's population on only 7 percent of land. In July 2005, China's countryside had over 26.1 million people living in absolute poverty and was home to 18 percent of the world's poor, according to Chinese Minister Li Xuju quoted in the People�s Daily. Every year, an additional 10 million people have to be fed. Despite this daunting target, between 1996-2005, "development" caused diversion of more than 21 percent of arable land to non-agricultural uses, chiefly highways, industries and SEZs. Per capita land holding now stands at a meager 0.094 hectares. In just thirteen years, between 1992 and 2005, twenty million farmers were laid off agriculture due to land acquisition.

As more arable land is taken over for urbanization and industrialisation, issues related to changes in land use have become a major source of dispute between the public and the government. Protests against land acquisition and deprivation have become a common feature of rural life in China, especially in the provinces of Guangdong (south), Sichuan, Hebei (north), and Henan province. Guangdong has been worst affected. Social instability has become an issue of concern. In 2004, the government admitted to 74,000 riots in the countryside, a seven-fold jump in ten years. Whereas a few years ago, excessive and arbitrary taxation was the peasants' foremost complaint, resentment over the loss of farmland, corruption, worsening pollution and arbitrary evictions by property developers are the main reasons for farmers' unrest now.

UNEP worked with Google to produce before-and-after satellite images of a hundred 'hotspots' and integrate them into Google Earth.

Titled UNEP: Atlas of Our Changing World, Shenzen's before and after pics are for the period between 1979 and 2004 are available through this program. (See: the UNEP site for more.)
While rural China is up in arms against acquisition of land, SEZs like Shenzen in Guangdong showcasing the economic miracle of China, are beset with problems. After growing at a phenomenal rate of around 28 percent for the last 25 years, Shenzen is now paying a huge cost in terms of environment destruction, soaring crime rate and exploitation of its working class, mainly migrants. Foreign investors were lured to Shenzen by cheap land, compliant labour laws and lax or ineffective environmental rules. In 2006, the United Nations Environment Programme designated Shenzen as a 'global environmental hotspot', meaning a region that had suffered rapid environmental destruction.

There's more. According to Howard French, the New York Times bureau chief, most of the year, the Shenzen sky is thick with choking smoke, while the crime rate is almost nine-fold higher than Shanghai. The working class earns US$ 80 every month in the sweatshops and the turnover rate is 10 percent � many turn to prostitution after being laid off. Further, real-estate sharks have stockpiled houses which have caused prices to spiral and have created a new generation of people French calls "mortgage slaves" in an article in the International Herald Tribune on 17 December 2006.


Illustration: Farzana Cooper

The mindless pursuit of growth following the mode of high input, high consumption and low output has seriously impacted the environment. In 2004, China consumed 4.3 times as much coal and electricity as the United States and 11.5 times as much as Japan to generate each US$1 worth of GNP, according to the The Taipei Times. Some 20 per cent of the population lives in severely polluted areas (Science in Society) and 70 percent of the rivers and lakes are in a grim shape (People�s Daily). Around 60 per cent of companies that have set up industries in the country violate emission rules. According to the World Bank, environmental problems are the cause of some 300,000 people dying each year. The Chinese government has admitted that pollution costs the country a staggering $200 billion a year - about 10 per cent of its GDP.

While export-driven policy for economic growth has helped China touch record growth figures, the income gap is widening and rapidly approaching the levels of some Latin American countries. Going by a recent report by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, China's Gini coefficient � a measure of income distribution where zero means perfect equality and 1 is maximum inequality � touched 0.496 in the year 2006. In comparison, income inequality figures are 0.33 in India, 0.41 in the US and 0.54 in Brazil. Further, the rural-urban income divide is staggering � annual income of city dwellers in China is around US $1,000 which is more than three times that of their rural counterparts.

In certain areas such as asset distribution or years of schooling China's levels of inequity are lower (i.e., more favourable) than India. However, when one looks at it at the aggregate level, the picture is different.

The levels of inequity in China have been rising through the last three decades, whether between rural and urban, within them, or on an aggregate basis.

According to Zhu Ling, between 1978 and 1995, the Gini coefficient of rural income increased from 0.21 to 0.34 and that of the urban from 0.16 to 0.28.

With the economy opening up rapidly post-1995 and also due the massive concessions that China was forced to make in order to join the WTO, the trend continues and the aggregate Gini coefficient in 2006 was around 0.5.


• SEZs: Invitation to chaos
• High cost of easy forex
It is in this backdrop that India's SEZ thrust must be seen. Following China, India is replicating a similar model where vast tracts of agricultural land are being acquired for creating SEZs and other industries. The September 2005 notification on Environment Impact Assessment is lax for industrial estates, including SEZs, and apprehensions of dirty industries coming up in these zones are quite real. Further, with drastic changes in labour laws favouring industry being considered, the plight of workers in these SEZs will be similar to those in China. Such a mode of development is environmentally unsustainable and socially undesirable.

Further, it is now widely acknowledged that Chinese exports have also been boosted by its undervalued currency, something which Ben Bernanke, chairman of the US Federal Reserve, terms as an "effective subsidy". This is a luxury that Indian exporters do not enjoy. The argument for setting up SEZs to emulate China's export-led growth is therefore questionable.

Is export-driven growth through SEZs desirable for India?

There is no doubt that exports play a significant role in boosting GDP. However in the case of a country with a sizeable domestic market, the choice lies with the producer to either export or supply to the domestic market. Ila Patnaik of the National Institute for Public Finance and Policy wrote in the The Indian Express in December 2006 that household consumption in India at 68 percent of the GDP is much higher that that of China at 38 percent, Europe at 58 percent and Japan at 55 percent. This is an important source of strength for the domestic manufacturing industry of India.

Given the high level of consumption of Indian households, it is quite possible that this rush is fuelled not by the desire to export out of the country but by the possibility of exporting from SEZs into the Domestic Tariff Area (DTA). The SEZ Act is also designed to facilitate this. Any unit within the SEZ can export to the DTA, after paying the prevailing duty, as long as it is a net foreign exchange earner for three years. It is therefore a win-win situation for these units.

The sops in a SEZ will reduce the cost of capital while labour reforms will ensure trouble-free operations. Further, given the considerable international pressure to reduce industrial tariffs, SEZs will be able to export to the DTA at highly competitive prices. This does not augur well for units outside the SEZs who will now face unfair competition. As cheaper imports have already played havoc with the livelihoods of artisan sector of the economy, cheaper imports into DTA from SEZs will also adversely affect the domestic industry. No wonder many of them now want to migrate into SEZs.

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In a country with 65 percent of the population depending on agriculture as a means of livelihood, industry ought to be complementary to agriculture. Through SEZs however, industry is being promoted at the cost of agriculture. Valuable resources spent to create SEZs will be at the cost of building better infrastructure for the rest of the country, something that will affect both the domestic industry as well as agriculture.

Other lessons India could learn from China: Welfare

While the Chinese experience with export-driven economic growth definitely offers many sobering lessons, there are many other areas where India can learn from China. China has initiated a series of measures to arrest social tensions and rising inequality in rural areas. In April 2004, the State Council, China's cabinet, halted the ratification of farmland for other uses and started to rectify the national land market. The Minister of Agriculture, Du Quinglin, promised "not to reduce acreage of basic farmland, change its purpose or downgrade its quality".

China also abolished agricultural tax in 2006 and increased subsidy for food grain production by 10 percent. To boost rural income, the selling price of grain was increased by 60 percent in 2005. In 2004, out of a total 900 million farmers in China, 600 million received US$ 1.5 billion (Rs.6,630 crores approximately) as direct subsidies. 52 million of the Chinese farmers have joined in the rural old-age insurance system and 2.2 million received pensions in 2005. More than 80 million farmers had participated in the rural cooperative medical service system by the end of 2004, and 12.57 million rural needy people had drawn allowances guaranteeing the minimum living standard by the end of 2005.

India, on the other hand, either does not have any of these safety nets or is in the process of dismantling the few that exist. There is much to learn as well as unlearn from the Chinese experience. Until that is done, millions of poor across the country will be made to pay an even higher price than the Chinese did for following this flawed approach. ⊕

Bhaskar Goswami
9 Feb 2007

The writer is with the New Delhi based Forum for Biotechnology and Food Security.

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Comments (4)

* Posted by Samir Suneja,

Well Bahskar ..well said ..but the catch is that ...you save the country or yourself...you would like to live a 30 year good life or would you like to conrtibute to the countries definitely say a 2000 year life ... the whole value system is degrading and this is only a fallout, that India as a country seems to be on this way ..
Samir

* Posted by Sridhar R,

Very timely article - Bhaskar. The hype of the SEZ's in China we knew was more an argument of convenience. The proponents of this model, have always been taking such examples, and then refuse to tell what is the other side of the story. And in this other side there will always be the poor, the marginalised, the farmers, workers - who form the losing class. Then the State will run a "shining" campaign that eventually gets demolished at the end of five years of elected government. Lets hope that "politicians" like Sonia Gandhi, Veerappa Moily, Pranab Mukherjee et al take back the reins of the government from "bureaucrats" like Manmohan Singh, Chidambaram, Kamalnath and Ahluwalia's. Not that Politicians were better off (like Budhadeb) but atleast they eventually have to come back to the people. Yes ! I do sound like I still have some hope in people's democracy !!

* Posted by Yeshwanth Pai,

The article is an eyeopener for the policy makers in Delhi and perhaps elsewhere in the world, who are keen on following SEZ models. Policy makers should consider whether their own children in 30 years' time will have to face and be victimsed for the social evils their policies would have caused.

* Posted by Prakash M Apte,

There is no doubt that the concept of SEZ whether the Chinese or any other model is totally unnecessary in India. Yet it has found favour with the national and state governments. Why? Because it is the best way to camoflauge land grab for the developers in the garb of economic development.

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